The original Star Wars is back – but what if George Lucas is right about it not being much good? Lucas said the original 1977 version was half a movie and preferred the 1997 digital remaster. theguardian.com
I was 16 when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977 in the theaters. It blew me away.
RIP Jean Marsh, who created and starred in “Upstairs, Downstairs.” She was born into the working class. “If you were very working class in those days, you weren’t going to think of a career in science,” she said in 1972. “You either did a tap dance or you worked in Woolworth’s.” nytimes.com
Life advice from octogenarian Roger Rosenblatt at the New York Times:
2. Make young friends.
For older folks, there is nothing more energizing than the company of the young. They’re bright, enthusiastic, informative and brimming with life, and they do not know when you’re telling them lies.
Also:
6. Everyone’s in pain.
If you didn’t know that before, you know it now. People you meet casually, those you’ve known all your life, the ones you’ll never see – everyone’s in pain. If you need an excuse for being kind, start with that.
A lovely, wise and funny essay.
Do me a favor please: If you’re reading this on Mastodon, please reply. Late Friday afternoon, I migrated my Mastodon account (which is, or was, @mitchw@mastodon.social) to my MIcro.blog blog (@MitchW@mitchw.blog).
But I’m not sure if it worked.
So please let me know if you see this message on Mastodon, and also please let me know if you recall whether you followed me on @mitchw@mastodon.social or @MitchW@mitchw.blog.
Thanks!
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media. newyorker.com. Kyle Chayka writes an in-depth profile of Bluesky CEO Jay Graeber.
“I’m Not a ‘Gatsby’ Scholar. I’m a ‘Gatsby’ Weirdo.” Andrew Clark has listened to “The Great Gatsby,” read by Jake Gyllenhaal, more than 200 times since 2020. This is a lovely short essay about a lot more than one man’s obsession with a single book. nytimes.com
I think I’ll sign up for the Pro subscription for ChatGPT again. I’m intrigued by the new persistent memory feature.
The Week ChatGPT Truly Became an Assistant. parkerortolani.blog
A roomba that continuously says “polish polish” would get annoying quickly.
James Lundberg, writing at The Atlantic, describes how the new technology of photography changed people’s perceptions of themselves and their faces.
When Abraham Lincoln was running for President in 1860, a little girl wrote him a letter advising him to grow a beard to improve his appearance. And so he did.
“If you will let your whiskers grow,” she wrote, “you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.”
I think this story is familiar to most Americans, taught in schools. What I did not realize until reading this article is that Lincoln’s looks were an issue because photography was new — it first came to the US 21 years earlier. Photo studios quickly swept the country and set off a fad for portraiture.
Those having their likeness taken for the first time did so with some combination of wonder and trepidation. Posing before the camera, early sitters said they felt drafts of air on their face or tingling in their cheeks. The process was orchestrated by a camera operator under a blanket–whom [Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing in The Atlantic in 1859] described as a chemical-wielding “skeleton shape, of about a man’s height, its head covered with a black veil.” The experience seemed to partake of the occult. And the results, often ghostly because of the long exposure times required, only strengthened such feelings.
These early sitters weren’t entirely wrong. There was no sorcery involved, but something was happening to them in front of the camera. Becoming an image, reckoning with an entirely new form of self-presentation, introduced an intense awareness not just of the self, but of the face.
Parallels to the later invention of television and smartphones are apparent.
