I have chosen to live this way, to live near the sea without running water, to surround myself with simple beauty. My days have been emptied of all fanfare and complication.
Diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, Joseph Monninger meditates on life, death, and beauty from his small seaside cottage for Down East.
A friend reached out that they'd heard I'd been looking for old mixed CDs I'd made, sending this one along: You Can Do What You Want. I'm Goin' Home.
Based on the victoryshag.com tag, I'd guess this is from 2002 - 2004 as that project ran 1999 to 2004, but the Polmo Polpo track didn't come out until 2002. The mix is mostly instrumental, but for some spoken dialogue over the opening and closing tracks. She also sent along photos of the front and back cover artwork. As an aside, the guy who made the cover (and some of the past covers I've posted) was my roommate at the time. The woman who sent along the mix is my ex girlfriend, who is now his wife. They've got two great kids.
If you're keen, you can listen to all the tracks by searching on Youtube. Or, if you're a member of A Tiny Bell, you can listen to the assembled playlist I've compiled below the fold.
Though I recall the title of the mix (it's a theft from somewhere I've forgotten) and I'm familiar with all the tracks, I do not remember making this mix or the occasion.
Great site for the celiac in your life: Jodi Ettenberg's Gluten-Free Cards for international travel. Heading to Japan, Vietnam, Poland, Latin America... ? For $10 you can get a country-specific guide to eating gluten-free on your travels.
Here's Joan Westenberg on the onslaught of Tech where it's not needed:
I would have happily paid double for the experience of simply flipping through a menu and talking to another human being. ...
I can tell you right now that anyone working in a decent venue would rather have a line of people ordering at the counter than be juggling iPads and QR codes while barely interacting with human beings.
I won't say there's a ton in the article that I haven't thought myself, but mentioning the worker side of it is a nice touch. As a lifelong retail worker I can't help but agree with the points being made.
I'm somewhat privileged because I'm a hermit and couldn't give a damn about visiting the latest trendy places. I simply refuse to participate. "Oh, I can only order using Instagram? Thanks, but I'll eat elsewhere." Truly, there is not a meal on the planet that I'd download an app to eat.
Hell, a couple months ago I walked into what I thought was a CIBC (one of the largest banks in Canada), only to be told, "Oh no, you can't pay your credit card balance here. This is a cashless bank." What the actual fuck is the point of such a thing?!
Read the full article on Westenberg.
My dislike of Facebook and Instagram is probably obviously. I haven’t been on either service in years, but someone on Metafilter shared this one-page site created by Jon Oliver’s team and I thought it was worth sharing: How to Make Yourself Less Valuable to Meta, which tells you the steps you should take to best protect your data when using those services.
Foto is a relatively new app for iPhone and Android that works similar to how Instagram worked before it got plagued with ads, commercialism, and other things that complicated its simplicity. Some differences:
Kevin Kelly's got some great travel tips:
If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails.
I've done this with housekeepers in Cuba and the Dominican and got some great meals and conversation. Offer a local restaurant price and get a terrific home cooked meal.
If you detect slightly more people moving in one direction over another, follow them. If you keep following this “gradient” of human movement, you will eventually land on something interesting—a market, a parade, a birthday party, an outdoor dance, a festival.
It doesn't have to groups. I also follow interesting-looking people and have ended up at great restaurants, and once, in Spain, watched a religious parade that I would have otherwise completely missed.
Lots more on KK's site: 50 Years of Travel Tips.
Ugh, this is depressing. BBC Eye Investigations found an "Indian pharmaceutical company is manufacturing unlicensed, highly addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa where they are driving a major public health crisis in countries including Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D'Ivoire."
Full article: BBC Undercover Filming Exposes Indian Pharma Firm Fuelling Opioid Crisis contains footage of the exec talking about his ideal target market of teenagers, saying that it's very unhealthy for them but they just want to get high and this is the way business is done today.
The first four pictures are from DiDonato's Home series. The last two are from the Elsewhere series.
Everything visible at BookeDiDonato.com.
Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris has been made into two films, one by Andrai Tarkovsky and the other by Stephen Soderbergh. Honestly, I cannot stand either one (though the Cliff Martinez score for the Soderbergh film is delightful).
The novel has been published in numerous languages in dozes of editions. The Hype & Hyper site has cataloged a ton of them. Wonderful to see how one title can inspire so many different interpretations.
