🌱 The summer has yet to start, but the new pumpkins are already coming along nicely.
“As we live our lives ever more publicly, we have come to prioritize arguing—the flashy, viral, gotcha kind—over learning. Elevated Stupidity is the natural result: the beautiful, eloquent defense of opinions left over, unchallenged, from when you were six.”
Took a little detour to the outskirts of Utrecht today. It was more than worth it. Blauwkapel, Utrecht.
🎵 Testing out the new Spatial Audio features of Apple Music. I like the genre-specific playlists Apple made for showcasing this. To me, it works best with classical music and jazz, probably because of the higher dynamic range of the recordings.
📺 Yesterday, we watched the first season of Feel Good and we loved it. Excited for season 2!
The rakish comedian explores trauma, gender, and addiction with humor as silly as it is cutting in one of the best LGBTQ TV shows of the year. 🏳️🌈
🎥 Iris (2001) ★★★★
True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
🎵 My week in music (week #21 2021)
Alex Paterson and one time collaborator Andy Falconer on their ‘Adventures Beyond The Underworld’ debut album (from 1991..?!) are going back to their roots on this great new collaboration: Sedibus & The Orb - The Heavens.
Watching today’s mountain stage of the Giro d’Italia while enjoying one of my favourite Belgian beers.
🍺 La Chouffe Blonde ★★★★
”Eventually terrible memories turn into great ones. So if they call you, embrace them. If they hold you, erase them.”
🎵 Lost in Yesterday - Tame impala 💬
🦔🌱 Recently ‘our’ hedgehog woke up from hibernation. To help it get its strength up again, I made a cat-proof feeding station. Or so I thought: the entrance turned out to be too small, leading to some hilarious situations. And maybe a new friendship with one of our own cats..!
Our two kittens have been spayed recently and are now old enough to go outside on their own. Fascinating to see how they’re exploring this new expanded world, both in their own way. Here, they’re ‘sisterly’ on the watch out for the evil neighbour cat.
🎵My week in music (week #19 2021)
Very much enjoyed the new album Medieval Femme by Fatima Al Qadiri.
🌱 Just like some other older plants in our garden, our climbing hydrangea will be fully blooming for the first time. Maybe the more moderate temperatures feel more business as usual for them?
📚 The current situation in Gaza made me think again about this thought provoking book by Dominique Moïsi: The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World. It really is a clash of predominant cultural emotions: fear versus humiliation.
Pretty happy with the results of my dinner table renovation project.
The only ads I really would like to see!!
Signal >> Blog >> The Instagram ads Facebook won’t show you
🎥 Lost in Translation (2003) ★★★★½
🎥 On the Rocks (2020) ★★★
Certainly not Sofia Coppola’s (or Bill Murray’s) best movie, but it does successfully make the case for not overthinking everything or being too suspicious in long term relationships.
Dadaist poem by my 8-year-old daughter. ♥️
🌱 The blauwe druifjes (grape hyacinths) in our garden are blooming remarkably long and beautiful this year. Probably due to the colder than average weather conditions the last couple of weeks.
🌱 Today, I saw several Bombylius Major (large bee-flies) sunbathing in our garden. Not a bee, but a fly in disguise:
The fly uses this mimicry of bumblebees to its own advantage, allowing close access to host solitary bee and wasp nests in order to deposit its eggs.
🌱 Apple tree in full bloom.
🍺 Brewdog’s Dead Pony Club session IPA. ★★★★
Strange name, excellent low-alcoholic beer.
🎵 My week in music (week #15 2021)
This album is an excellent sampler of early sixties jazz by “The Modernists” from Soho, London. It gave me a big smile on my face during my sunny Sunday morning run.
🎥 Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) ★★★★★
Tonight, we watched Amélie with the whole family, 20 years (!) after we first watched it, and it was again a memorable experience. It instantly became our daughter’s favourite, which shows how great and timeless this film is.
