Jen Myers

Resurrection On The Criterion Channel

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Criterion Channel is now streaming Bi Gan’s Resurrection. I loved watching this film so much.

Cal Newport On Cognitive Fitness

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“We need to think about cognitive fitness the way we think about physical fitness. There should be a simple rule for being a thinker in an age of AI: Don’t let AI write anything for you. Writing is to cognitive health what steps are to physical health. Write that email from scratch. Write that memo with the bullet points from scratch. Don’t flee that strain. You need it as much as you need those 10,000 steps a day.”

— Cal Newport

Kronos Quartet Tiny Desk Concert

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Kronos Quartet from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series with, among others, an impressive rendition of “Ohio.”

This Is Not The Computer For You

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

"This is not the computer for you"

Taylor Schultek Elsewhere

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Taylor Shultek, Elsewhere (2025)

Recently: 14 March

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Links

“There’s something genuinely countercultural about rejecting massive platforms, tech surveillance, and optimized algorithms: you are choosing to operate outside the norms, outside the system that the web has become. You’re not feeding the machine. You’re building for your self. You’re making something because you want to make it, on your own terms, and you’re putting it where anyone can find it, if they want to.” The artisanal web.
What we think is a decline in literacy is a design problem.
Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.
Let’s lay the debate over the assumed misogyny of Blue Velvet to final rest with this essay from Willow Maclay about how Isabella Rossellini crafted the role of Dorothy Vallens.
“Self-deception need not involve false belief: just as the deceiver can attempt to produce a belief which is — as it happens — true, so too a self-deceiver can set herself to believe what is in fact true. A canny self-deceiver can focus on accurate but irrelevant observations as a way of denying a truth that is importantly relevant to her immediate projects.” On the positive power of self-deception.

Reading/Watching/Listening

I’ve just started it, but so far Will Sloan’s new biography of Ed Wood, Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, is great.
Winter is dragging its feet out the door, so I’ve been bolstering my spirits by reading my way through the Miss Fisher mystery series. I’m a big fan of the television series so I worried that the books wouldn’t make enough of their own impression—but that is very much not the case. They have enough style and substance in their own right.
I saw The Bride!. It was messy but not without its delights.
I dug up City that Never Sleeps mostly for its vintage Chicago content, but turns out it’s a sharp, unique film noir that is worth seeking out.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to see a second show on Nine Inch Nails’ latest tour. It was a good time. I’m not going to post an awful phone video of that, though. Instead, here’s a favorite of mine from 2006, featuring Peter Murphy (who, a couple of years after this, put on probably my favorite show I’ve ever seen in my life). Cheers.

Robert Henri The Art Spirit

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture—however unreasonable this may sound. The picture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past. The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments, activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.”

— Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

The Rite Of Spring

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday, I went to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä perform an inspired program: Le Bœuf sur le toit, An American in Paris, and The Rite of Spring. After a demoralizing week of confrontation with the worst sort of modern obsession with mechanized production for production’s sake, it was a particularly reaffirming artistic experience. The orchestra was on fire and Mäkelä (CSO’s new wunderkind music director, whom I had never seen conduct before) is a joy to watch. The whole house was on their feet for four straight ovations afterwards. So, a reminder, should you need it, that humans and the things they make, and share with each other with honesty and enthusiasm, are still pretty great and valuable.

Andrew Wyeth The Witching Hour

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew Wyeth, The Witching Hour (1977)

Herman Melville On Greatness

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick