“You got to tilt a windmill sometimes.”
– Palmer Luckey
It’s called “Planned Obsolescence” . A phrase I didn’t know existed. It’s the number one killer of great products every year.
This is for all the super hardcore turbo nerds out there.
Category: Art
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“Sneakers are for doing stuff”
– Tom Sachs
I haven’t been this hyped for a pair of sneakers in ages. Honestly it’s the story, this seventeen minute video that turned the dial. The Mars Yard aren’t Marty McFly’s Mags or Jordan 11s. But like Jordans they have that feel of “If I only had a pair I could be a full time, famous artist, in Manhattan.
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I want to portray a devoted individual who pursued his dream head-on. Dreams possess an element of madness, and such poison must not be concealed. Yearning for something too beautiful can ruin you. Swaying toward beauty may come at a price. Jiro will be battered and defeated, his design career cut short. Nonetheless, Jiro was an individual of preeminent originality and talent. This is what we will strive to portray in this film.
– Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazki is talking about Jiro here, but he could easily be talking about himself, talking about every artist that walked the earth.
Miyazaki, Hayao. The Art of the Wind Rises. United States: VIZ Media LLC, 2014. pg8
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I think (at least hope) I will get writing soon. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking. I am continuously revolving thoughts and images in my mind. When I finally put pen to paper, the result may startle some of my colleagues, because I shall do a good deal of the writing in the form of short paragraphs full of images and metaphors. It will look more like poetry than physiology. But I am persuaded that that is the only way I can begin to express my thoughts without doing violence to them (or to the subject)
– Oliver Sacks
Sometimes you capture a passage, only because you like it. Letters is a delight. The genre of letter writing books is underrated, and with AI (sometimes I hate writing that) might be even more valuable.
Sacks, Oliver. Letters. Edited by Kate Edgar. New York: Knopf, 2024. pg205
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In 11th grade, I took AP Language and Composition. One of the strangest, most formative assignments we were given was to hand-copy essays by great writers. I transcribed Emerson’s Self-Reliance, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I wrote out JFK’s and FDR’s speeches. I copied Coleridge and De Quincey in longhand.
At the time, I was annoyed by the drudgery. There’s a difference between watching the Karate Kid, and actually having to do the menial labor so glorified in the film. My hand hurt from hours of handwriting. It felt archaic, even monastic.
But over time, something shifted. By copying the rhythms of others, I started to hear my own. I began to notice choice: in sentence length, in diction, in tone. Style was no longer invisible, it was architecture. And with that came freedom, the emergence of my own style. That class single-handedly taught me how to write.We copy to learn.
Pair with the Art of Manliness’ How to Become a Better Writer? Copy the Work of Others! piece.
Also Zohar Atkins is writing some great stuff.
Atkins, Zohar. 2025. “The Signature and the Shadow from the Turing Test to the Picasso Test.” Second Voice, May 20, 2025. https://substack.com/home/post/p-164007090.
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I seem to have lost my ability to focus and force my way back into a novel. So today I introduced a period of martial law. Never leaving my desk, writing a set amount during a set period of time, all the familiar methods I used to fall back on. There is great satisfaction to be had from looking at the empty page, at your notes, at what you’ve already done, then will yourself, almost force yourself, to write some more, and finding that it actually works. It means I am still able to use my imagination to escape from this world into the imagined world of my novel.
Sheer will. Sometimes it takes sheer will and martial law to type one page.
Pamuk, Orhan. Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022. United States, Knopf Canada, 2024. pg 162
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“Those who read, own the world.”
-Werner Herzog
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If, as I maintain, a prime reason why we should read is to strengthen the self, then both Whitman and Dickinson are essential poets.
-Harold Bloom
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I began to read just after I was four. The letters on the page suddenly gave in and admitted what they stood for.
– Penelope Fitzgerald
Some descriptions are well…FIRE. As read from Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life.
Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United States, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. pg 28
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"Now first we fence the garden through,
With this for me and that for you,"
Said Oliver. - "Divine!" said Oakes,
"And I, while I raise artichokes,
Will do what I was born to do."As read from Edwin Arlington’s poem Two Gardens in Linndale.
The great quest of life…find what you were born to do.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Robinson: Poems: Edited by Scott Donaldson. United Kingdom: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007. pg 106
Floodlights and Goalposts 