❤️ this stoic tweet:
With no intellectual framing:
With better intellectual framing:
🎵 My week in music (week #51 2020)
Highlight of the week was definitely Sounds of Sudan (1986). I remember renting this CD from the local library back in the early 90s and listened to it for days in a row. Excellent recording quality and a great introduction to Afro-Arab music.
🎥 The Mandalorian ★★★★
I’m not a big Star Wars fan, but The Mandalorian was totally worth the watch. Of course Jon Favreau deserves all the praise but to me the most impressive feature of the series is actually the theme song and original music composed by Ludwig Göransson. 🎵
🎄Made a short visit with my youngest daughter to the ‘world’s tallest Christmas tree’ (370 m): the Gerbrandy Tower in IJsselstein. (Photo credits: Joosje Hoogerwerf)
🎵 My week in music (week #50 2020)
Particularly enjoyed Paolo Conte’s Azzurro and Gli Impermeabili. I listened to his music a lot in my student days…
🎥 The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) ★★★½
We really live in the anthropocene: Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass
🎵Cabaret Voltaire are still going strong. Love their latest album Shadow of Fear ❤️
I’ve been writing in my personal journal for 2 years now and I must say it truly changed my life. I use Day One for this and the best feature for me is definitely the On This Day feature. The longer you use it, the better it gets. And it keeps your inner dialogue running.
🎵 Now playing Actress - Turin (feat. Aura T-09) ❤️
🎥 Mother Dao, the turtlelike (1995) ★★★★
Entirely consisting of archival footage, this intense poetic documentary by Vincent Monnickendam depicts how Dutch colonial imperialism was imposed upon the Indonesians. I was very impressed by the sound design of Jandries Groenendijk.
🎵 My week in music (week #49 2020)
The Bleep Top 10 Albums of the Year 2020 list is one of my favourite end-of-year playlists and this year was no different. Lyra Pramuk, Actress and Tara Clerkin Trio will end up on my personal list as well.
🌱 Had a nice day cleaning up our garden for the incoming winter. Our 🦔 guest is probably already asleep. I’m amazed by the idea that there will be a living creature in there for months without eating and drinking…
🎥 Kerstmis in Floradorp (1997) ★★★★
A great documentary by René Roelofs on Christmas celebrations in a working class area in Amsterdam-Noord.
📺 🇳🇴🎄The Norwegian series Jul i Svingen (Christmas in Svingen) (2006) has a cult-status over here in the Netherlands. Every year around Christmas, whole families gather in front of the TV to watch the adventures of Linus. I wonder if that’s the same in other countries?
🎵 Love the ‘Build your Radio Station’ feature of Concertino!
The chosen ones.
It took some time, but I’m really getting used to using Siri and the new Widget Screen / App Library to quickly find and open apps in iOS 14.
It’s way faster than scrolling through pages and pages of folders with apps.
Bonus: a distraction free homescreen.
🦔🌱 Our little hedgehog is preparing for hibernation in our garden! Carrying leaves and other material inside its temporary house. I suspect this will be the last footage of this season, because it’s started freezing during the night.
📚Thrilling excerpt from John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life in Smithsonian Magazine. I just bought the e-book version.
“I hope I die before Yoko,” he said, “because if Yoko died I wouldn’t know how to survive. I couldn’t carry on.”
🎵 The Prodigal Son - Ry Cooder (2018) ★★★★★
What a boss. Nobody’s fault but mine is my favourite, a version of Blind Willie Johnson’s classic song only Ry Cooder could have made. Heavily processed sounds, but with a very traditional and organic feel nonetheless.
🎵My week in music (week #48 2020)
These little ones were just added to my collection of decent quality headphones.
I’m pretty impressed: noise cancellation is good, spatial audio with head tracking is simply amazing.
I think we’ve got every 🎧 use case covered now…
🎵 Alphons Diepenbrock: Symphonische Suite ‘Elektra’
Alphons Diepenbrock (1862 - 1921) was and still is a very under appreciated Dutch composer. Although autodidactic as a composer, his music sounds very original, somewhere in between Mahler and Debussy.
🦔🌱 New hedgehog adventures from our garden. Our adorable little hedgehog really seems to be preparing for hibernation. A lot of visits during the night and I think he / she sleeps there almost every day. Also, a nice cameo from our neighbour’s cat.
🎵My week in music (week #47 2020)
Listened to a lot of great work from the 80s by percussionist David van Tieghem. His album These things happen (1984) is one of the best avant-garde instrumental pop albums ever.
🗞 Great interactive article on ubiquitous generative adversarial networks in The New York Times
“We created our own A.I. system to understand how easy it is to generate different fake faces.”