Recently

I visit SFMOMA pretty often. I miss Washington DC’s free and easy Smithsonian museums, which you could walk through on the middle of a run if you wanted to. SFMOMA is the standout for me - easier to navigate than the de Young, far more diverse than the Legion of Honor, located right near most people’s offices.

This visit Sara Cwynar’s pieces took me by surprise. The charm and multi-scale power of her prints are a bridge between the past and future – digital aesthetics with analog techniques.

I’ve been listening to Divine Fits, a short-lived supergroup with Britt Daniel (Spoon) and Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade). Each of the Wolf Parade-associated bands have had some effect on me, especially Sunset Rubdown – which featured heavily in now-embarrassing AIM Instant Messenger away messages at one point, and Handsome Furs. ‘My Love is Real’ is the hit on this one.

This article about Billy Joel and kayfabe, and the theory of kayfabe were on my mind this month, as was the Farm to Taber podcast and, via her episode with Michelle Allison, so was Terror Management Theory.

Also this piece, New Productivity, about ‘spreadsheet-ish productivity startups.’ I’m not sure how long it’s been, but, well – there aren’t many things happening in technology that seem right to me. Medium-to-large companies are union-busting. The VR boom is consolidating, AI is consolidating, blockchain seems to be fading (phew). Maybe top-line trends are never the interesting stuff, or the dominance of big tech is snuffing out truly eccentric ideas.

• Sara Cwynar images by… Sara Cwynar
• Divine Fits photo By Jkorn91, CC BY-SA 4.0