Finds: Lost British folk, Louisiana rap and brass bands, Jamaican patois, Okeeffe and longevity

Lost British folk. Jon Mark, 60s folk-rock, later transitioned to new age. ~1,000 plays on spotify. Should be many thousands more. 

Japanese jazz/hip hop from saxophonist Uyama Hiroto (aka Hiroto Uyama). Cerebral but accessible.

The Ethiopians, Fire a muss muss tail. According to jamaicanpatwah.com, “This saying is used to describe someone (or a system) that is clueless. It encourages people to stop being complacent, as you will be unprepared when disaster strikes.”

Excellent melange of R&B, brass band rhythms, Louisiana rap, and … something else that is beyond genre. Cheeky Blakk pops into the studio and rips some dancehall flows. I love it. 

Louisiana rap is the flowest.

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.” →Bertrand Russell, How to Grow Old, 1956 (via Maria Popova) 

Writing well is (still) important. Playing around with ChatGPT this week and I noticed the need for precisely crafted language when writing prompts. Attention to specialized vocabulary and clear intent leads to better results. While students may be paying less attention to writing due to AI shortcuts, the benefits of practice and vocabulary are evident. But maybe not in the way you would expect. It’s all language. 

Georgia Okeeffe. American Masters, 59 minutes. Lots of rare material here. In one section she talks about how her paintings of bones (of which there are many), do not symbolize death, she just appreciates the shapes. Maybe the question for Okeeffe is, can you see the shape and not the symbol? Okeeffe was a consummate worker, ate wisely, lived a healthy lifestyle, painted over 2,000 oil paintings, and lived to 98 years old. Made by documentarian Perry Miller Adato. The filmmaker made many biographical films about artists and appears to have led an interesting life. New to me. 

Useful archive of all books discussed on Conversations with Tyler.  https://cwtbookarchive.com/ 

Speaking of, Tyler did a shorter podcast with Soumaya Keynes  about cuisine, restaurants, supply chains, and economics. Best reveal: he purchases frozen sausages from Texas BBQ country for home delivery. While I understand the entry point for dialogue with Tyler is often through the framework of economics, I think it’s limiting. The better framework is no framework. Or all frameworks?

As it turns out, it wasn’t just Valentine’s Day hearts. Reese’s foil-wrapped Peanut Butter Eggs no longer contain milk chocolate, either, The New York Times found on Thursday after an investigation that involved going to a drugstore near the office to buy a bag and read the ingredients. Source: NYTimes. 

As a response to recent scientific advances with AI, British astronomer David Kipping said,  “I don’t know that I want to live in a world where everything around me is just magic.” 

I see it differently. Please, more magic.