Hitting The Links: 11/9/25
Lots and lots of links, plus a couple of doppelgänger updates, a LEGO Enterprise, some BIRDY!, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Double Double
On the last day of the conference in Frankfurt, I dropped in on the booth of a prospective member company. The BizDev lead, whom I’ve known for years, told me that she saw my doppelgänger the day before: “Right down to the hair!”
The guy didn’t respond when she called my name a few times, so she hurried over to say hello, only to realize that she had the wrong guy. She was embarrassed and actually pulled up my picture on LinkedIn to show him.
I told her about my clone situation, and how some people send me pictures when they encounter one of my doubles. She was bummed that she didn’t snap a pic of the guy.
Then this week, while I was sitting at the negotiating table with the FDA and other industry groups, I got a text from Tom Tomorrow. (I had my laptop out to take notes and text with one of my remote negotiating partners.) He wrote, “do you have a new side gig modeling lego builds?”, and sent these pix:
Now, you guys have heard about/seen my various doppelgängers in these newsletters, so I’m not going to make any fake profundity out of the situation, but holy crap did I feel seen. Kinda feel like there’s a Boys From Brazil situation going on. Anyway, if you buy the Enterprise LEGO set, apparently you get Danish-Gil as a bonus.
Birdy Of The Week
Birdy got groomed this week, and here she is immediately before that, throwing herself down on one of her beds so we couldn’t bring her downstairs to meet her fate.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Rian Hughes • Josh Neufeld • Dean Haspiel & Whitney Matheson • Ron Rosenbaum • Lance Richardson • Tom Tomorrow • Kayla E • Hunter Prosper
RIP Diane Ladd . . . RIP Gilson Lavis . . . RIP Maria Riva . . . RIP John Cleary . . . RIP Frozen Burrito King . . . RIP Donna Jean Godchaux . . . RIP Marshawn Kneeland . . . RIP Mia Hamant . . . RIP Lee Tamahori . . .
Also, George Banks died. So did James Watson (the obituary is by someone who died five years ago). And Dick Cheney.
Speaking of rich folks getting the wrong ideas from SF, here’s another story about NEOM, and how the entire design of the centerpiece buildings defies the laws of physic and finance. The graphics are great, so go do the free registration with FT & read this one.
Good interview by Steven Heller with Peter Kuper about his new book, Wish We Weren’t Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse.
Some of the writing is cutesy-grating, but neat photo-essay of hiking pilgrimage in Japan, via Jason Kottke.
Morgan Sjogren writes about her ongoing hikes of the Glen Canyon and the challenges of maps.
Kinda beautiful piece about a day in Peter Hujar’s life from 1974, and the movie that’s being made about it.
Looks like Air Mail is gonna disintegrate in short order. I liked some of the pieces each week.
I led off the first ish of Haiku for Business Travelers with a poem about my dream of being a ghost and how it was like being on Twitter with zero followers. I’m pretty sure a couple of publicists have cancelled guest-pitches because I don’t have a gigantic number of followers on social media, but I’m fine with having you guys around. Anyway, now it’s apparently cool to be unfollowed.
Great piece by Barbara Nessim about her recent talk at Brooklyn Museum.
Levi Stahl’s latest newsletter is part 1 of his commonplace book of boredom.
I came across this book recommendation model from this week’s Recomendo email, and it put up some neat titles for me (as well as a lot that I’d already read, which I noted and fed back in for more fine-tuned recommendations). (It uses Goodreads, so if you have a problem with them/Amazon, don’t use it, I guess.)
Current/Recent Reading
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook - Jennifer Hayden
Shadow Ticket - Thomas Pynchon
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (tr. John E. Woods) (~90 pages left!)
+ the mourner’s Kaddish every morning, in Aramaic
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I got whomped by a pretty bad headcold a day or two after returning from Germany/England. The combo of flights, train & subway rides, and trade show mass of people means I only have myself to blame. (It made Thursday’s round-trip to FDA for those negotiations pretty rough. I was a zombie by the time I got on the train back home, albeit a Fast Zombie, as I arrived at BWI Amtrak station about 45 seconds before a delayed train arrived, and had to race to get my later ticket switched and jump on.)
Still, I managed to get in weights on Monday and yoga on Wednesday. But travel, busyness, podcastery and laziness kept me from doing any more. Haven’t done my morning exercise routine the past 3 days because of congestion and NyQuilization. Also haven’t meditated too much; I tried yesterday afternoon, but corpse-pose and post-nasal drip were a bad combination.
I look okay, though (last morning in London, a week ago):
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll back on Wednesday, with a new episode, a new Instax, and maybe some art. On Sunday I’ll be back with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Spirits are using me / Larger voices calling,