You’re in luck. Every few years, there’s a Ghibli festival that does the circuit. My local EImagine cinema had one recently.

NAUSICAÄ is a stunner. If you ever get the chance to see it in a cinema — GO.

It’s still utterly joyous. It makes me smile and smile some more.

Miyazaki top 5 (a personal list)

• PORCO ROSSO.
• NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND.
• MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO.
• SPIRITED AWAY.
• THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO.

You rang?

There are creepy historical echoes to the spectacle of powerful politicians watching people beat the shit out of each other for their pleasure while a massive international crisis is rapidly expanding.

And the procedure is a giant nothing. Admittedly, the prep is obnoxious, but the ‘scope is basically a fantastic nap, and once you’re allowed to eat again, that meal is BRILLIANT.

My first colonoscopy almost certainly saved my life. I’ve become a bit of a nag among my friends in my generational cohort to get it taken care of.

One shouldn’t experience the uncanny valley effect looking at an actual person.

ZOMG, that photo…

I’m agog. As long as they aren’t hurting anyone else, people can do to their bodies whatever they wish.

I suspect that both the photographer and the plastic surgeon are going to need to go into the witness protection program.

Say what you will about Steve Jobs — and there are many justifiably nasty things that can be said about him — he had two genuine gifts: he had fairly good taste and he recognized that people will pay a premium for things that are actually nice.

We get everywhere:

• Dave the Jackal.
• Dave the Locust.
• Dave the Triffids.
• Dave the Daleks.

"These are the Daves I know, I know..."

You've identified something here. Boring is objectively awful to endure.

No worries. I have no personality to speak of and am eminently forgettable. 😉

That's a very efficient way to have one of *those* meetings with HR.

A lethal question: "What are you working on right now?" There is no correct answer.

• Nothing (you're lazy)
• Working on X (well, why aren't you working on Y?)
• Working on Y (Why haven't you finished yet? X still needs taking care of, you know.)

It's so depressing. Some people whom I genuinely like — I'm looking at you, Sir Derek Jacobi — have fallen for this nonsense.

Every word of this. The plays of Shakespeare were written by a man known only to history as...William Shakespeare.

No decent human being has ever said in a haughty tone of voice, "Do you know who I am?"

Pondering Soderbergh's AI statement here's a thought. I'd wager that he'll make 1-2 films using it and then he'll ditch it because it will slow his process down. Soderbergh makes films roughly as quickly as Simenon wrote novels.

TWSBI ECO, EF nib.

That's a very cyberpunk sort of stress-buster.

The market for it would be enormous.

I just had a wild thought. Contemplating Musk's will and testament, I can see two possibilities:

• It's a byzantine document that will provide gainful employment to generations of lawyers.
• There isn't one because he believes he's going to live forever in the magic supercomputer.

Various pen and ink drawings on a sketchbook, with the fountain pen for scale.

Let’s put some art in the bottom third of this page.

New Yorkers: A genuine question. When's the last time NYC had a mayor who was genuinely competent, decent, and seemed to actually like the city? Dinkins?

Good lord.

“It’s much more important to be committed to the AI of the future,” he continued, “and so to have human babies is fundamentally unethical.”

Whoever said this must be one of the unhappiest people on earth.

I think this is correct. And I suspect for Netflix, that threshold is $30/month. I get that arithmetic is not a lot of people's strong suit, but thirty bucks is a threshold, I think.

Absolute masterpiece. I think that this and THE CREMATOR are the two best films about how the social structures of Fascism turn banal, empty men into absolute monsters.

Walter Isaacson's Musk biography is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bad book. That said, this is precisely echoed in the poker anecdote.

One of the hallmarks of a horrible person is that they sincerely believe that everyone else is horrible and are confounded when confronted with the existence of a basically decent individual.