Week in review 2024-10
Monday, March 11, 2024
Notes on the week
I have the apartment to myself this weekend, as Elle is back home for a few days. She’s been asked to be the official photographer for an exhibition, and I couldn’t be more proud. It’s a big deal to get paid for your work in the creative arts, and it serves not only as an external validation of your skills and abilities, but also serves to quieten the little voice inside that can be so quick to belittle and detract from the progress you’ve made. One of the tricks to surviving in the arts seems to be finding a gig adjacent to your practice that can be your ‘money job’, the one that keeps the lights on until you get set up as an ‘established artist’. I think this might be exactly one of those gigs.
On a side note, I have a whole ‘theory’ on success in the arts, and how there are 5 or 6 major filter events that an artist must pass through in order to make a living with their work, I’ll dive into it another time.
I’ve been using Day One a lot again. It’s a journalling app that I find is really nice to use, especially when you lower the expectation on yourself. I’m not forcing myself to write deep reflective pondering on the days events, just a few quick lines about what happened. I think it’s so easy to lose memories, especially of the smaller moments, over time so it’s a good idea to keep track, and remind yourself of them in years to come. I try to make sure that there’s at least one photo is each post though, as the visual really helps jog the memory.
We are two weeks into the F1 season, and the on track action is predictably boring. Red Bull and Max have extended their lead over the rest of the field, and it’s a very real possibility that he will win every single race this year. A dramatic prediction two races in, but the advantage of the Red Bull car, and the lack of challenge from Max’s teammate makes it plausible at the very least.
However, as so often is the case, the most dramatic part of F1 isn’t the on track action, but the off-track. The controversy around Red Bull leader Christian Horner refuses to go away, and after an internal investigation cleared him of any wrong doing, a ‘leak’ of text messages between Horner and the accuser found it’s way onto the internet. From the outside looking in, it appears that a full scale power war is taking place within the team, with factions lining up behind Horner, and others behind Helmut Marko, head of the Red Bull young driver program. Marko’s influence is significantly larger than his role would entail, as he is responsible for Red Bull signing Max, and the Verstappen camp are fiercely loyal to him, with Max going so far as to say that if Helmut was to leave, or be forced out, he would go with him.
None of this is resolved, a million questions hang in the air, and if the racing continues to be dull I hope that this drama at least keeps coming for rest of the year.
Links
The Marvel that is modern chip manufacturing
The rise of fast fashion and the global air freight industry
A single year on Pluto is longer that the history of the USA
The internet is a mall, we need corner shops
Viticci is a mad scientist with the MacPad
Baarle is such a strange Dutch/Belgian town
A journey through folklore in Wexford
Reading
I threw Moby Dick overboard, try as I might I just couldn’t get into it enough to truly enjoy it. It’s been replaced with “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology” by Chris Miller. It documents the origins, rise , and continued importance of the global semi-conductor industry. It’s fascinating, insightful and a book that couldn’t be more relevant today. If you see Nvidia becoming the hottest company in the world seemingly overnight, and wonder what’s the competitive advantage, or how they can keep such a monopoly on the AI chip market, this book is for you.
Listening
Jacob Collier, who is quite possibly the singularly most talented musician on the planet, has released the final part of his four album “Djesse” project. I adore Jacob’s musicality, but if I had to criticise his work, I just wish that 1% more of his abundant talent had gone towards his songwriting ability. His songs are always technical marvels, but his ability to move a listener emotionally is usually restricted to his interpretations of existing songs. I don’t know if this is the record where he emerges from this, but it’s absolutely a step towards it.