For the 100th post on Frontier Magazine, Brian Sholis—self-proclaimed library devotee—indulges in sharing recently built libraries around the world.

Congratulations on 100 posts, Brian!

Richard Brody on the life and work of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. I'm looking forward to reading the upcoming biography, and I've quite a few of her films to catch up on.

I've been flip-flopping between Spotify and Apple Music myself, and can relate to this piece by Kyle Chayka. Changes to their apps in recent years have not favoured (album) listeners like myself. It's fascinating and saddening to see one platform steer the way we consume music into a certain direction.

In response to a recent post by Elle Griffin (“No one buys books”), Lincoln Michel decides a more positive take is needed.

“This site explores the graphic design of Penguin book covers, with a focus on series editions. […] The covers presented on this site are all from my own collection of about 1400 Penguins, which have been chosen for the beauty or interest of their cover designs. They span the history of the company all the way back to 1935 when Penguin Books was launched.”

What a collection — beautiful.

I've not watched any other videos about the Vision Pro because I will not buy the goggles and I've been somewhat sceptical of this product direction, but Casey Neistat's video does an excellent job of showing what it's like to use this thing in real life, and gets across well the hints it provide at a future with spatial computing. It's… kind of exciting?

I've been replaying James Blake's latest album “Playing Robots Into Heaven” somewhat obsessively, and was reminded of this conversation he had with Brian Eno, for who he plays the music and who then provides him with his honest impression.

“ChatGPT rejects any notion of creative struggle.” Nick Cave's elaborate and thorough answer to questions about ChatGPT and creativity, written on his Red Hand Files blog, read aloud by Stephen Fry.

“For the last two years, Sheila Heti has been writing to—and with—a chatbot. But what happens when the software gets updated?”

Drawing comparisons to the late Joan Didion, Gopnik outlines why Ernaux's win of the Nobel Prize in Literature signifies an importance of memoir as a genre in times of Twitter and TikTok. I have not read enough of Ernaux's work and am therefore in what he describes as the second camp, but The Years was one of my favourite books read in 2021. Time to head to the book store once more.

“Her ascension marks a recognition that memoir, in all its many faces and poses—direct, self-critical, rueful and comic, engagé and not—is perhaps the leading genre of our time, as much as the novel was for the first half of the twentieth century.”

Three of Fitzcarraldo's authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and they have not been in business for even 10 years. The New York Times published a profile on the publishing house. Trying to account for the Nobel success, Testard [the founder of Fitzcarraldo] said that his taste just happened to align with “a bunch of older bourgeois Swedish people.” Delightful!

A fantastic profile of Jonny Greenwood, best known for his work with Radiohead, elaborating on his work as a composer of incredible film scores.

“Are you on drugs?” my mom finally asked, anxiety flashing across her face. My dad said nothing. I dispelled her accusation by opening up my investment account on my iPhone and turning the screen towards her to show her the balance.

“Oh my God, are you one of those … GameStop people?”

Alexander Hurst on the numbers that came, the numbers that danced, and the numbers that disappeared.

“One thing I am never not thinking about, though, is how all nonfiction today feels pushed into providing solutions to inexorable problems—and how our habits as readers, and what we want from nonfiction texts, increasingly reflect that “historically specific… method of valuing work and existence” that Odell explores. We want a book to be productive, a good use of our time. But I’m not sure this is a great way to think about art or writing or reading.”

A thoughtful essay on time by Amanda Montei, touching upon a book I've been meaning to read (Jenny Odell's Saving Time), upon time reclaimed by mothers, gendered time, upon having “enough time”, which … no one ever seems to have.

An older read, tweeted by its author in response to a thought on the advancement of technology and personal computers, and the [in my opinion] seemingly boring solutions we design and build using them.

“Some things are easy to do and others are difficult. Move with the grain, and you can unlock amazing experiences. Cut against the grain, and you will struggle with even the most basic tasks. It's common for young designers to propose designs that are either impossible or too costly to build. It's okay—you're learning the grain.”

A confronting but sobering read by Anne on why we're all still exhausted from this pandemic.

“Several attributes and practices valorized by a monochronic understanding of time — which we could also call Rapid-Growth Capitalism time, or Productivity Fetishist time, or White Bourgeois time — are objectively in service of efficiency. And yet, big surprise, they are often highly inefficient.”

Anne Helen Petersen on time (the misery of monochronic time, to be exact), based on the unwillingness of (certain) academics to accommodate for and use digital calendars, and calendar invites.

Craig Mod outlines his growing up with Zelda, and his discovery of Breath of the Wild, in his Ridgeline newsletter, forever grateful to the people who enabled him to play it as a child, and to the creators of the game, and to the mountains of Japan.

Dan Charnas—who wrote Dilla Time, one of my favourite books of last year—digs around and highlights how a cassette tape titled Another Batch did wonders for J Dilla's notoriety. “The sounds, signatures, and techniques that actually made Dilla influential all coalesced on Another Batch.”

After reading Dan Charnas' book on J Dilla, I am even more convinced he belongs among the legends. This op-ed in the LA Times briefly explains why. If you're a fan of J Dilla—or The Roots, or Thundercat, or Kamasi Washington, or Erykah Badu, or...—I highly recommend you read Dilla Time.

“It is entirely reasonable to set a schedule so that in 24 hours, 8 hours are spent sleeping, 8 hours are spent working, and 8 hours are spent living. Any work that can’t be achieved in 8 hours can—must—wait until the next day.”

A long read distilling two years of learning by Emmanuel Quartey, who designed a home for his family in Accra, Ghana. Fascinating peek at the design process—one can only hope to be able to dabble with a project like this at some point in life.

Thank you to Nat for bringing this to my attention; a very thoughtful handbook created by the folks at Fictive Kin, on how you can transform your website into an “ROI-generating money machine”.

Figma's report on collaboration (published in 2022), aiming to “better understand what it takes for people and teams to collaborate well—to identify gaps and empower people to improve their experience”, containing some insightful teams for collaborative teams.

Editor in Chief Gemma Gracewood revisits a year of publishing interviews and long-reads on the Letterboxd Journal. I hope there will be many more years to come.

This 5-chapter podcast by journalist Alex Pappademas is the best podcast on music I've found in quite some time. Instead of dissecting the music beat by beat, he dives deeper into the creative process and the context in which the music was made, speaking to the collaborators that helped Kendrick make the album, as well as to the man himself. “Good Kid was the classic, DAMN. was the blockbuster, and To Pimp A Butterfly the masterpiece.”

Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is, already, one of my favourite books I've read in 2022. It's an incredible and sensitively written book. He has now won a MacArthur “genius” grant, and spoke to The New Yorker about his approach to writing.

The Eames Institute enlisted Instrument to “co-create a digital platform to unveil their vast collection to the world”. A dream client if there ever was one, the folks at Instrument asked themselves: can a website have a soul? The answer is a resounding yes, and the accompanying case study documents that work beautifully.

While everyone's scampering back to build and publish personal websites, let's not forget about those who never went away (although, admittedly, Jason did take a brief hiatus, which feels even briefer considering the timespan of Kottke.org).

“25 years is more than half of my life, spanning four decades (the 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s) and around 40,000 posts — almost cartoonishly long for a medium optimized for impermanence.”

Congratulations, Jason! Please, keep at it!

As I watched Jerrod Carmichael's latest special “Rothaniel” – which is really, really special – I was reminded of this conversation he had with Tyler, The Creator back in 2018. An interview unlike any other, and I've thought about it often since I first saw it.

Jerry Useem with some interesting nuggets with regards to what we're missing out on when we don't commute.

A long summary of Johnny Rodgers' experience building a modern home in the woods. “It covers the 5 years from before we bought the land to after we completed the house and took residency.” Not quite as long a read as the one by Emmanuel (linked below), but a nice way to dream—inspiring read.

A fascinating look behind the scenes of Bookshop.org's unexpected growth. What may come across as an overnight success is (of course) the result of lots of hard, hard work (although, there is an element of 'overnight' hidden in the bookselling-boom of the pandemic).

I'm currently awaiting my Bookshop affiliate profile. I was already linking to them from my newsletter, and will soon be linking to them from my website, as well.

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul reflects on his latest movie—his first not shot in Thailand— the process of shooting it on film, and the role sound design played in its creation. I absolutely loved watching this in the cinema and highly recommend you do so, if you can.

Fascinating essay on how digital platforms (like iTunes, Spotify and the like) have killed “collecting” as a hobby.

Letterboxd reflects on their first decade on the platform by interviewing some early members. Having joined the platform in 2013, it's nice to read how other people have used it and what it's brought them.

I got squeezed into the rabbit hole that is Mandy Brown's website, and dug up this work note on praise. The act of praising others, to me, is a muscle you train, and a habit you learn to finesse. Praising others at work is an important thing to do often, and do well. “If you can get really good at noticing when your colleagues are truly killing it—and then sharing what you notice—you will all get even better at those things together, even faster than you think.”

“I want to consider that we borrow some lessons from Le Guin and Shevek and look at ambiguity not merely as something to manage or navigate through, but as something to hold. Something to make space for.”

This essay by Mandy Brown about embracing ambiguity has lingered in my mind ever since I read it. In her newsletter, she wrote that the essay is more “tentative” than she's comfortable with, but I think its tentativeness strengthens the piece. As Mandy writes, and I am inclined to agree: “I’m coming around to thinking that ambiguity, like change, is a constant companion. And maybe instead of manipulating or avoiding it, we need to listen to what it has to say.”

A Dutch man named Martijn purchased two historic cabins on top of a hill in Italy with the goal to renovate them and create a homestead. He's a photographer, so the process of him doing so is incredibly well documented. I've seen folks get put off a bit by the idea of him “being alone in nature, yet followed persistently by a drone”, but I've really enjoyed watching these videos.

They're very soothing, and you can watch them actively or have them on in the background. It's fascinating to see him go about everything from shielding himself from the cold, to setting up solar panels, or driving wood up the hill to build a temporary cabin. Lovely stuff. Thanks for sharing, Marius!

As the new season of Succession kicks off, it's worth (re)reading this profile of Jeremy Strong—who takes playing the role of Kendall Roy incredibly seriously.

Over on Criterion's “Current”—a blog that quickly morphed into a full-blown magazine on film—Mike McQuade dives into his design process for the Criterion Collection edition of Citizen Kane. Iconic, yet divisive.

A profile of Kendrick Lamar and the moves he's made since leaving T.D.E., the label he was with since 2007.

“It’s hard to overstate the shock it caused in the rap world when Kendrick announced that he was leaving T.D.E. It was like when the Jackson 5 left Motown. When Prince left Warner Bros. When Jay-Z left Def Jam.”

The last album he released on T.D.E., “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”, is monumental, but this Big Step does feel like a clean slate, and I am so looking forward to seeing all the things he – Pulitzer Kenny – will do next.

My colleague Amy recommended this podcast with Molly Mielke in which she speaks about her thesis on computers and creativity, which I'm linking to here. It's a delightful read, one that makes me excited about the future of computers & computing. To quote Molly:

“Computers have, since their inception, been a rigid tool that the human user has had to adapt to use... However, through standardization, moldability, and abstraction, we can dramatically expand the utility of computers while broadening their capacity to help more people solve their problems creatively.”

A lovely deep dive into Madlib's “Sound Ancestors”, a highly underrated album, in which the creator identifies a parallel between the combination of Madlib/Four Tet and Miles Davis/Teo Macero.

I've written about it before: the cinematography of The Batman is fantastic. It's a dark, immersive world, portrayed with shots wet with rain and dirty with grime. Patrick Tomasso published a video essay last year that details the work that director Matt Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser did to achieve it.

I've been a fan of Perfume Genius ever since he released No Shape in 2017. His latest album, Ugly Season, is out now and accompanied by the film above. I highly recommend you listen to the album in full—start to finish, no interruptions, preferably with headphones on—because it is an experience. To me, this is his finest album yet; an album that combines and builds upon all the beautiful things he's created over the years and, at the same time, takes it to another level. The visual by Jacolby Satterwhite is mind-boggling, a mesmerising tasting platter of Ugly Season.

I recently watched this documentary about Martha Cooper, who photographed much of—if not all of—New York's graffiti in the 1970s and 1980s. The documentary is an inspiring piece of work, and Martha comes across as a delightful individual, with a fantastic legacy of documenting people rising above their environments.

Seek it out, if you can!

Brought to my attention by Fabian, in response to my essay on the intimacy of experiencing a film in a movie theatre, Soderbergh's address—dating back to 2013—is an impassioned speech, arguing that film culture is “under assault by the studios”.

The New York Review of Software. I'd subscribe. (Though reading the sentence that mentions revisiting software a few years later served as a sad reminder that a lot of software wouldn't survive until the revisit.)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about and making improvements on our house in the past year. Our house is old (built around 1907) and, while we have some forward-looking plans, it is sometimes difficult to know where or how to start. In swoops Simon Sarris' Substack. He built a beautiful home in New Hampshire and has documented the process, providing some useful guidance and recommendations along the way.

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I make no secret of my infatuation with Better Call Saul (sorry!). I think it is one of the best shows the best show ever made. It is funny and dark, slow but challenging, and bold and daring. It one-upped Breaking Bad and elevated that universe to new heights. In the video above, Thomas Flight does an excellent job explaining the why and how.

A blogpost by Tim O'Reilly from 2009, but timely as ever. On working on things that matter, on creating value, and on taking the long view.

“That’s why a time like this, when the bubble is bursting, is a great time to see how important it is to think about the big picture, and what matters not just to us, but to building a sustainable economy in a sustainable world.”

“What if, instead of thinking of the metaverse as a set of interconnected virtual places, we think of it as a communications medium?”

Tim O'Reilly published an incredibly thoughtful post on the Metaverse, what it is, and what he thinks it isn't. It's refreshing to see him break down the walled garden that has been under construction ever since the term was coined.

Lately I've been digging into methods for asynchronous work and learning about how to implement them, because I think we (still) have a little way to go in that respect. I've found Twist's newsletter on the matter very insightful. It's not too preachy and highlights pros and cons of asynchronous (and synchronous) work in an accessible way. If you're into designing how a company (your company?) communicates, this is a good place to start.

“You didn’t have to agree with her, but you had to submit to her sentences.” In remembrance of Joan Didion, who passed away late in 2021.