Hitting The Links: 6/29/25
We've got lots of great links, a near-forgotten connection, some meditation insights, and BIRDY!
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Strangers in the Night
A funny thing happened at the ASPR roundtable I attended in Washington, DC on Tuesday. I was talking with one of the staffers at the information desk and was sure I knew him from somewhere. He seemed to recognize me, too, so I figured it was from past supply chain or pandemic preparedness events, maybe an FDA panel or something.
Then he asked if I’d gone with him to a closed-door FDA meeting on serialization back when he was with [company X]. I realized that was it; he’d been working for one of my member companies, and in 2016 the FDA invited us to sit down with the other major industry trade groups for a listening session on that topic.
He had a great exchange with someone from a Very Large Pharma Company, which I’ve cited for years as an example of how giant companies can unwittingly give the feds a skewed idea of what resources and timelines are for certain projects, because the feds — in this case FDA — never hear from The Little Guys.
With that resolved, we talked a little about his role with ASPR, the goings-on at his former company, etc.
Back in the auditorium, I realized I was glad that he had trouble remembering me. I meet a lot of people in my career and tend to make enough of an impression that they remember me quite distinctly. The problem is, I meet a lot of people in my career and it’s impossible for me to recall many of them. So I was pretty relieved that he didn’t say, “How can you not remember me? That FDA meeting was the most important event of my life!”
It’s nice to just be a passing part of someone else’s life.
Birdy Of The Week
From Friday’s walkies:
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Paul Karasik • Kate Maruyama • David Denby • Peter Stothard • Cecile Wajsbrot • Keiler Roberts • Peter Kuper
RIP Lalo Schifrin . . . RIP Bill Moyers . . . RIP Dave Parker . . . RIP Bobby Sherman . . . RIP Arnaldo Pomodoro . . . RIP Marcia Resnick . . . RIP Lynn Hamilton . . . RIP Susan Beth Pfeffer . . . RIP Carolyn McCarthy . . . RIP Rod Nordland . . . RIP Rebekah Del Rio . . . RIP Walter Scott . . .RIP Fred Smith . . . RIP Mick Ralphs . . . RIP Mr. Eclipse . . .
The Guardian has a bunch of authors’ summer reading suggestions. So does the Times Literary Supplement.
Chris Ware designed a set of USPS stamps! (If only they were postcard-metered. . . .)
Go read/view this Christoph Neimann visual essay on art and AI: “The power of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting is not that she witnessed better sunsets than the rest of us.”
Katelan Foisy has opened a store for some of her designs!
Big ol’ TCJ interview with Peter Kuper.
The NYT put out this list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century. I’ve seen half of them (but won’t tell you which half), and was disappointed that neither The Nice Guys nor Kung Fu Hustle are on the list. They put out their 100 best books of 21c list last year, and I’ve only read 15 of those. Make of that what you will.
JFC, will these people stop trying to biohack their way into immortality and just learn to live fuller lives? I mean, yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my CLL diagnosis. My health’s been fine since then, but my approach to life has been changed since I started hearing the ticking of the clock. I feel like I’ve tried to live more, be more a part of the world, not waste too much of what remains.
Along those lines, Nick Cave wrote about his pre-concert ritual, which is pretty compelling.
Current/Recent Reading
Annihilation: Book 1 of The Southern Reach - Jeff VanderMeer
Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land - Rachel Cockerell
The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 2 - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins & Pike)
“I seem to have been designed as a machine for the relentless devaluation of life! I want to be different for once!” Ulrich retorted.
Or
Even when he merely turned his head in curiosity, the sinews of his neck tautened like the rigging of a sailboat tacking with the wind into the blue. There was always more to him than she could grasp, which acted as a spur to her desire to fling herself bodily on him to catch hold of it.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I missed weights on Wednesday (work, podcast) and yoga on Thursday (business meeting in Iselin), but got my workouts in Friday & Saturday. Not sure about weights today; depends on how I feel when I get back from a podcast session in Brooklyn.
Meditation hasn’t been consistent either, with the travel and work, but had an interesting experience on Friday. My father’s dealing with More Health Problems, and Friday’s session gave me space to really acknowledge his suffering, as well as that of my inner child, and to let that surface. I also, through a story too long/boring to tell, got to thinking about some of the good things he did in his life, things that helped other people, and tried to center those, as opposed to my grievances about my upbringing.
The next morning, walking Birdy, a song popped into my head: You Think You’re A Man, by Divine. I heard it once or twice during my 6-week trip to Israel in 1984 for my bar mitzvah and never again, but me being me, it’s been wedged in my brain ever since. (Other music from that trip: the whole Born in the U.S.A. album played on cassette by my cousin while she tore ass driving across a desert, and White Horse, by Laid Back, which yes was about cocaine.)
A few years ago, we watched a documentary about Divine, and it turned out they were the singer. I knew nothing about Divine or John Waters when I was 13, so that was a nice bow on top of a 40-year-long brainworm.
But meditating yesterday, after dealing with more stuff at Dad’s house, I brought that song back up, and it occurred to me that they chorus — “You think you’re a man / But you’re only a boy” — was my undermind Sending Me A Message about that inner-child integration.
I’ve said in recent weeks/months that my meditation hasn’t been as fruitful as it was when I started doing it this year, that I’ve been too in-the-world. At the same time, I feel more of an overall . . . continuity of my consciousness? . . . within myself, along with those insights.
That is, I sometimes feel more in tune outside of those sessions, in ‘waking life,’ so maybe that’s a sign of how this practice has been changing me.
Also, I took a great post-workout pic yesterday, but I’ll spare you the flex.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe a new Instax, & some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
If you wanna be rich / You got to be a bitch,