Werner Herzog's memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of this renowned filmmaker. While I'm not a huge fan of his films, even though I've seen many, I find Herzog's perspective as a writer to be compelling.

One of his most famous concepts is ecstatic truth, a term he coined to describe a form of truth that is not bound by factuality. This is not to be confused with the Republican notion of "alternative facts," as Herzog is not ignoring or denying facts. Rather, he seeks to illuminate and enhance them, much like how Miles Davis might explore a musical note by not playing it directly, but by playing around it. This idea of "ecstatic truth" resonates with me. Years ago, I shared with a lover a story I’d written, only to have her accuse me of fabricating details. My response at the time was that the story represented a more essential truth, even if the specifics were not entirely factual. “But it’s not truth,” she said.

“It’s narrative truth,” I replied.

"So, a lie."

Obviously, she wasn't having it.

Let me say one thing about ecstatic truth. The simplest way to explain it is by looking at Michelangelo’s Pietà, the statue. Jesus in the arms of Mary is a thirty-three-year-old man, tormented on a cross and taken down, but his mother is only seventeen. It’s one of the most beautiful sculptures that was ever created. And my question now is did Michelangelo try to cheat us, did he try to give us fake news, defraud us, lie to us? The answer, of course, is no. He shows us a deeper truth of both figures.

— Werner Herzog, Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection

Read The Ecstatic Truth in the New Yorker (2006).

Read Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection in the New Yorker (2022).

Read Werner Herzog Defends His Ecstatic Truth (2023).

The Verge on AI in photography with the release of the new Google Pixel:

An explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake. 

Some of the examples they offer:

These were created in-camera. No additional software or skills required.

The conclusion of The Verge's article? We're fucked.

Those are street maps of some of the places I've lived.

Make your own on the City Roads website.

If you saw Wim Wenders' most recent film, and are not someone who has visited Japan, I'm guessing you were impressed with the public bathrooms of Tokyo.

These photos were gathered by EastEast for their piece, In Praise of Shadows, Ruminations on the aesthetics of a Japanese toilet.

I have a bit of a fascination with "time-tracking" devices that do not tell you the time. These days, I wear an Apple Watch Ultra 2 for health reasons. For many years, I wore a DURR.

What's a DURR? You wear it on your wrist, like a watch, and every 5 minutes, it touches you. Yes, really.

Here's how the designer pitched it:

It's an interesting thing to have something silently tell you that five minutes have passed since the last time it told you five minutes had passed. And yes, it does nothing else and the five minute interval is fixed.

My DURR looks like this:

The chassis and buckle are milled, sandblasted anodized aluminium. The strap is vegetanned leather. It takes a standard CR2032 watch battery. Mine's been kickin' for 10+ years, though I did have a few panicked days when I thought it was on the fritz. Turns out CR2032s have a high rate of failure.

When not using it to make me hyperaware of time itself, I used it as a navigation tool. I walk a lot and know how fast I do it. So, morning-wake-up, I'd look at a map to see where I wanted to end up. Then, I'd memorize a pattern of turns based on five minute intervals. Like this: 3 Left, 2 right, 1 left, 5, look for the tunnel, 2 right... This meant I would walk for 3 vibrations (15 minutes) and then turn left, walk for 2 vibrations (10 minutes) and turn right, etc. Obviously, this was not an exact science as I'd get waylaid by friendly dogs, people, buildings I wanted to photograph, not-friendly dogs, talkative prostitutes, curious locals, etc.

I'd usually arrive at my destination without again checking a map, though I never got there in the estimated time and rarely spoke the local language enough to understand road signs. The clumsiness of my method resulted in many adventures and many fantastic misadventures. I walked thousands and thousands of miles this way. In LA, in Spain, in Vanuatu, Cuba, the Dominican, and Toronto.

Only 700 DURR exist — 1000 were made, 300 of which didn't function. I regret not buying one or two more when I had the chance. They were made by industrial designer-artist duo, Skrekkogle, and if I remember correctly were about $150. The partnership has dissolved and the two men behind it have vowed to never make more. When I thought mine had died, I pleaded with one of them to let me know if he had any kicking around that he would part with... he didn't respond.

For a few years I tried to get industrial designers I knew to develop one with me on Kickstarter. They all thought I was nuts. Last year, someone else did exactly that and sold about a $150,000 worth. I initially funded the project but backed out, not liking the proprietary band (it's the only thing I don't like about my DURR); I wanted it to take a standard watch band.

If you're still confused how the DURR can actually be useful, here's some press on the Alpha version from The Verge. Mine was the Beta release. And here's a physician talking for a couple minutes about his own Beta release:

In the next Products I Love post, I'll write about the keyboard in my DURR photo: the WayTools Textblade, a truly remarkable device that never saw the light of day.

McSweeney's has done the Herculean task of cataloging "Trump's worst cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes."

Even having lived through it, it is hard to believe the breadth and quantity of this man's offences. Absurd and astounding.

The list is also available as a PDF.

Staggering reporting by the Washington Post — Abused by the Badge — finds "at least 1,800 state and local law enforcement officers who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022."

This interactive article was posted 2 months ago, yet didn't cross my radar. And I have pretty good radar. As a result, I've decided to do my part to get it more widely seen.

Caleb Stein's, Down By the Hudson, a series of b&w photos taken at a watering hole in Poughkeepsie, NY, explores the camaraderie and simplicity a gathering place engenders by simply being.

The full series, including gallery shots and accompanying text, is on Caleb's site.

Anecdote Alert

The image of the soaped-up boy reminds me of people I encountered on a weekend drive as a teenager. I was camping with some friends at a lake. There was a cliff with a rope tied to an overhanging tree. Locals would emerge from the water "clean," after soaping up, swinging, and letting go. One child, who couldn't yet have been 10, forgot to wipe his palms on his shorts before grabbing the rope. The excess Sunlight stymied his grip and he plunged into the shallowest part of the lake, just that side of the rocks. When I think of it, I see him strike stone and break — some times his head, some times his arm, most often his leg — complete with crack!, or blood, depending on what's been struck. It's an overwhelming "memory" that I have to remind myself didn't happen. He was fine, though a bit shook. I don't doubt that what he saw bursting through the water — the horrified looks on the observers' faces — is burnt into his brain the way the reverse has settled in mine.

That whole weekend was one of the strangest of my youth, and none of it in a good way.

James Mollison's extraordinary series, Where Children Sleep, offers portraits of kids and their "bedrooms" from places around the world. So much to think about these, especially when contrasted with one another. Equality, opportunity, privilege, burden, culture. Fantastic stuff.

The entire series of 56 diptychs can be viewed on Mollison's website.