SCALES #26: lookin back, lookin back, lookin back
Hello!
This issue: just a few short follow-up items.
SCALES #25 and writing about music.
I've been reading more of Ben Ratliff's Every Song Ever and my respect for his prose has grown after my own mushy attempts in the last issue. It takes skill to stitch together his far-ranging musical examples with elegance, without getting bogged down in overstuffed sentences.
SCALES #16 & #17 and "Ways of Seeing".
"Internetting With Amanda Hess" is a video series strongly in the John Berger tradition, except aimed at deconstructing digital media in 2017 in its own language: vertical aspect ratio! weaponized gifs! hyperactive app switching! Installments so far on political memes and selfie "beauty" filters. Best viewed in the New York Times Snapchat Discover story.
SCALES #13 (&c.) and historic preservation.
To what extent can buying old vintage diners, fixing them up, and then shipping them off to places with high diner demand be considered "historic preservation"? "[N]ew owners receive a binder of carefully curated records, photos, and anecdotes of the business they’ve just resurrected—built-in talking points for hungry patrons."
SCALES #6 and secular variations in time.
A roughly 30-year cycle of slowdowns in the length of a day seems to be a leading indicator of periods with a larger number of intense earthquakes (!). The hypothesis is they're both consequences of periodic sloshing around of the Earth's core.
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Couldn't get over this leftover banner from a neighborhood Halloween celebration.
Subject line courtesy of Ms Lauryn Hill,
—Adam