The Atlantic

At the frenetic pace of the zeitgeist, much of the buzz about this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates has largely boiled off. But it’s a thoughtful reflection on the pressures and expectations put on black artists by their own culture and the internal conflict between embracing that or striving for a white acceptance at the expense of community. An important article to read regardless of  the color of your skin.

Atlas Obscura

Okay, mea culpa: I’ve lived in Sonoma County area now for more than 14 years (14 years and three days, in fact!) and I have yet to visit either Luther Burbank’s home and gardens nor his experimental Farm in Sebastopol. It’s on my list. After reading this article It might happen sooner than later. 

Atlas Obscura

Staying in the metaphorical garden here. I love the idea of roadtripping just to find these obscure, unmarked Champion trees – the best of their species. I’ve already looked up some of the trees in California to figure out where they might be and how I could find them… This is fun stuff and a good excuse for an adventure!

Inverse

I came across this after a really bad spell this week (see forthcoming Selfie post for week 18). It’s an interesting way to look at money and how we get trapped into a negative cycle of spending. Do be mindful of the potentially seizure-inducing background at that page – it’s painful.

Medium

I didn’t realize until I wiped the tears from my eyes that this had been written in 2013, so there’s a chance you might have already read this, like, forever ago. Or, if like me this is the first you’ve encountered it, enjoy. Oh, and warning for extreme profanity.

YouTube

One of my all-time favorite songs that just slays me every time. Eddie Vedder’s wonderful voice just brings something more to it. I needed this this week.

This is the most recent episode from the YouTube channel Movies With Mikey and I chose it because I kept nodding at every point he made (spoiler: I loved The Last Jedi effusively). But I absolutely adore Movies With Mikey in general and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Some of my favorite episodes are his episode about John Wick, the one covering the still-criminally-unappreciated film Adaptation, and the wonderful episode he did about The Force Awakens which literally had me tearing up. A little backstory – because Mikey gives thoughtful, detailed takes on these films, it seems callous to just say “Watch these because they’re awesome” and leave it at that. Context!! – Mikey Neumann had a dream job at Gearbox Studios and was the creative force behind the Borderlands and Brothers In Arms video game franchises. He was absolutely A Big Deal. And then life intervened. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and literally had to learn how to live again. Realizing the high-powered, high-stress job in the video game industry wasn’t going to work anymore, he swapped his hobby (“Movies With Mikey”) in for his full time job, and, voila! Okay, not “voila!” (more like Patreon and dedicated fans). There’s a great recap and interview with Mikey that came out in January in Paste Magazine (maybe you’ve already read it because, like me, you always read Paste. You do, right? Right?) and you should totally check it out because Mikey is awesome. Seriously.

Atlas Obscura

Donald Olson looks at an Ansel Adams and believes he can determine exactly when and where Adams tripped the shutter on his camera. The way he and his team does this by unpacking clues in the sky and shadows absolutely fascinates me. I certainly don’t have the aptitude or tenacity for the task, but that’s the point: someone is passionate about this. And, sure, in the greater scheme of things is it important to know exactly when and where Ansel Adams stood in Denali National Park to take “Denali and Wonder Lake”? No, but this same sort of obsessive attention to detail can give us a richer context of the moment of creation. Along the same lines, I adored Errol Morris’ exhaustive examination of shadows of cannon balls on a road in the Crimea to determine whether the famous Roger Fenton 1855 war photograph “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” was staged or not (I’m not spoiling this one!). The link is to the original printing of Morris’ essay in the New York Times in 2007, but it was also collected in his book Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, helpfully hyperlinked with an Amazon affiliate link 😉 

Popular Mechanics

This news broke earlier this week and I wondered the same thing that Ezra Dyer does in this article (full disclosure: Ezra Dyer has been my auto journalistic crush for a long time) — is this strategy to stop selling most of its cars in the US a shortsighted move that will backfire once gas prices inevitably rise? But Dyer makes some good points. As if to underscore this, the Detroit News report FCA Chrysler reported record first quarter earnings — Fiat/Chrysler cut their low-end cars a few years ago in favor of Ram trucks, and, most importantly, Jeep. Meanwhile, Reuters reported Hyundai’s car-heavy US portfolio has dragged them down to a six-year low. I’m not wholly convinced this is a great move, but this takes me part of the way there. Seriously, the Focus RT and Fiesta ST have been such forbidden fruit on these shores for… well, ever. And now… it’s going to be that way again. *sigh*

I’ve been looking for an alternative to cable television since I moved. I’ve been trying the different live TV services since they first came out — Sling TV was the one that seemed most promising, but it was pricey. My biggest priority was the ability to watch the Giants and Warriors. You could with Sling, but you had to add this package, and that package… YouTube started their own live TV service, but it lacked the different stations for sports. I honestly didn’t even consider Apple’s live tv option because it’s… really wanting. Hulu Live, though, has all the different channels and I was already subscribed to their premium service. It’s not perfect — there’s still some stuttering occasionally, and the guide is just a mess. But it’s the best so far in this nascent field.

Avengers: Infinity War

This might be a bit premature — Fern and I are seeing this in about an hour. But I think it’s pretty safe to say it’ll be epic.
Editor: This post went up late because we had to go to the theater before I had a chance to finish this. I will say I enjoyed Avengers: Infinity War quite a bit, but it’s a lot. That’s all I’m gonna say.