Sunday, January 29, 2023
The Ringer - "Throw Up Your Hands and Raise Your Voice! Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!"
Thirty years later, Conan O’Brien reflects on the making and legacy of “Marge vs. the Monorail,” one of the best ‘Simpsons’—and sitcom—episodes of all time"
Previously,
Legendary Simpsons Writer John Swartzwelder (May 2021)
The Three-Body Problem
What's on Netflix - "‘The Three-Body Problem’ Netflix Series: Everything We Know So Far"
"Netflix has wrapped filming on its ambitious new sci-fi adaptation series of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy, led by True Blood‘s Alexander Woo and Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Here’s everything we know about the series coming in 2023 as of October 2022."
2023 Coachella Lineup
Pitchfork - "Coachella 2023 Full Lineup Announced"
Previously,
Coachella 2019 Lineup (Jan 2019)
Desus & Mero on Beyoncé at Coachella (April 2018)
Coachella 2013 Lineup (January 2013)
Coachella 2012 (April 2012)
Coachella 2012 Lineup (January 2012)
California Dreaming... (January 2010)
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Vancouver House by Bjarke Ingels Group
Bloomberg - "Vancouver Skyscraper Twists Around Zoning Restrictions"
Previously,
Synthetic Ski Slope On Top of a Danish Waste-to-Energy Plant (Feb. 2020)
The Bjarke Ingels Group Plans for the Oakland Athletics (Nov. 2018)
Each Apartment Has Its Own Pool (Dec. 2016)
Two World Trade by Bjarke Ingels (Jun. 2015)
New Business Story (Sep. 2012)
Architect Bjarke Ingels (Oct. 2011)
You People
Written by Kenya Barris,
Jonah Hill
Directed by Kenya Barris
Starring Jonah Hill,
Lauren London,
David Duchovny,
Nia Long,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus,
Eddie Murphy
Producing "Gourmet Cheeseburgers" that "can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere"
New Yorker - "How Much Netflix Can the World Absorb?"
"Bajaria told me that the ideal Netflix show is what one of her V.P.s, Jinny Howe, calls a “gourmet cheeseburger,” offering something “premium and commercial at the same time.” She praised the Latin American group for its recent track record of making slick telenovelas that draw large audiences outside Spanish-speaking regions."
...
"During Bajaria’s thirty-six hours in Mexico City, her meals were more of the white-tablecloth variety. She had breakfast at the Four Seasons with Carolina Rivera, a Mexican telenovela writer who worked on “Jane the Virgin” for the CW and now creates Spanish-language content for Netflix, and dinner at an upscale vegan-friendly restaurant with the five female leads of “Las Viudas de los Jueves” (“The Thursday Widows”), which was described to me as a Mexican “Desperate Housewives.” On her only full day in town, she delivered the keynote address at a Netflix-sponsored unesco luncheon on the grounds of Los Pinos, the former Presidential palace. Her private car rolled up to the turquoise gate at noon. Inside, the dangling fronds of massive Montezuma cypresses hid a sunken patio from view, but there was no missing the entrance, which was marked by a huge sign emblazoned with a scarlet “N.” In her address, which lasted exactly three minutes, Bajaria repeated a phrase that has become boilerplate for a globalized Netflix: “We truly believe that great storytelling can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere.”"
Inventing a Quantum Computer
New Yorker - "The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer"
"A full-scale quantum computer could crack our current encryption protocols, essentially breaking the Internet. Most online communications, including financial transactions and popular text-messaging platforms, are protected by cryptographic keys that would take a conventional computer millions of years to decipher. A working quantum computer could presumably crack one in less than a day. That is only the beginning. A quantum computer could open new frontiers in mathematics, revolutionizing our idea of what it means to “compute.” Its processing power could spur the development of new industrial chemicals, addressing the problems of climate change and food scarcity. And it could reconcile the elegant theories of Albert Einstein with the unruly microverse of particle physics, enabling discoveries about space and time. “The impact of quantum computing is going to be more profound than any technology to date,” Jeremy O’Brien, the C.E.O. of the startup PsiQuantum, said recently. First, though, the engineers have to get it to work."
Friday, January 6, 2023
The Rose Bowl—"a football castle in a forest clearing"
New York Times - "At 100, the Rose Bowl Has Seen Many Sunsets"
"Inside, the stadium is a canvas come to life. The grass is always the most lush green, and the end zones — painted the colors of the two teams — and the midfield rose are the most vibrant. In most years, as the sun sets late in the third quarter, the spectators — and the million homebound viewers shut in by a winter freeze — are treated (or taunted) by the sunlight dappling the San Gabriel Mountains hues of orange, pink and red.
The rest of the year the Rose Bowl is more than a college football centerpiece.
It has hosted four Super Bowls, World Cup finals for men and women, an Olympic soccer final, and concerts by Pink Floyd, U2 and Beyoncé. For the last 40 years, it has been home to U.C.L.A. football, and for longer than that a monthly Sunday flea market. Most days it is a fulcrum of the community — a place for joggers, bikers, swimmers and golfers.
Its future, though, is uncertain.
The expansion of the College Football Playoff means that this year’s game will be the last matching the Big Ten against the Pac-12 unless they’re pitted against each other through the vagaries of a playoff. The Rose Bowl game will be part of the playoff, but to do so it is giving up its prime New Year’s Day position.
The Rose Bowl will be a site for the 2028 Olympic soccer competition, but not for the World Cup in 2026, which will be hosted by Mexico, Canada and the United States. Instead, World Cup games will be about 20 miles south, at the glittering $4.9 billion SoFi Stadium, which will be the site of this season’s College Football Playoff championship game on Jan. 9."
"“I think it’s the greatest venue for a big game for football anywhere in the country,” Aikman said recently of the Rose Bowl. “I got to play there for a Super Bowl, but my biggest regret is I never played in the actual Rose Bowl game. It’s the most beautiful setting there is. It’s a magical place.”"
Poker Face
Created by Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper, The Last Jedi, Knives Out, Glass Onion)
Starring Natasha Lyonne, Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Starring Natasha Lyonne, Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Thankful for Libraries
The Guardian - "This year I’m thankful for US public libraries – beautiful icons of a better civic era"
"If the public library did not already exist as a pillar of local civic engagement in American towns and cities, there’s no way we would be able to create it. It seems like a relic of a bygone era of public optimism, a time when governments worked to value and edify their people, rather than punish and extract from them. In America, a country that can often be cruel to its citizens, the public library is a surprising kindness. It is institution that offers grace and sanctuary, and a vision of what our country might one day be.
To the eyes of a modern American, it can be a strange, even disorienting vision. For one thing, public libraries are unusually beautiful places, the kind of buildings that make you feel underdressed. In many American cities, the public library ranks among the most ornate and stately fixtures of downtown. They’re erected in early-20th century high style, like the Egyptian revival building at Los Angeles’ Riordan Central Library, or Boston’s neoclassical McKim building. Or sometimes they’re modern monuments to an ongoing investment in public services, like Seattle’s fantastic main branch, a gleaming structure in glass enmeshed in steel latticing.
...
The majesty of library buildings is matched only by the nobility of their purpose. The public library does not make anyone money; it does not understand its patrons as mere consumers, or as a revenue base. Instead, it aspires to encounter people as minds. The public library exists to grant access to information, to facilitate curiosity, education, and inquiry for their own sake. It is a place where the people can go to pursue their aspirations and their whims, to uncover histories or investigate new scientific discoveries.
And it is available, crucially, to everyone. It costs nothing to enter, nothing to borrow – in New York, and in many other cities, the public library system has even eliminated late fees. All the knowledge and artistry of its collection is available to the public at will, and it is a privilege made available, without prejudice, to rich and poor alike."
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