Heavy Rotation
Thoughts on Andor
Hey to kick things off here's my take on my favorite series of 2022. -B
Andor is real Star Wars. It’s on the same order of magnitude of Star Wars as rogue one which was on the same order of magnitude as the OG three. Other Star Wars'(es?) have been good. Even momentarily that good. But no single other full thing has had “it”. They haven’t felt like Star Wars. Most were too slick. Or too ensemble. Or too tenuously charted. These were not critical failures per se but they were a barrier to the mountain top.
I don’t know where I read this lately, but Star Wars isn’t sci fi, it’s fantasy. When the technology does more than facilitate epic fantasy in space we go sideways. Lightsabers are just magic swords. The Death Star is just a dragon. Jedi are just wizards. If you explain the magic (midichlorians, palpatine-al clones) it goes poof.
Star Wars came from the 70’s which was a more physical age. Electronics were big and bulky and noisy and dangerous. Industry was nasty and amazing. Andor has that hot lacquered motor winding smell. Even in Coruscant it’s a little art deco with grunge down below. Gatsby would recognize it. Our modern social metaverse foundationed gnostic world, divorced from the indignities of physics and molten iron, barely resembles it.
The casting is fantastic. The characters are clean and complex and compelling. The tension is clear and overwhelming. The empire is suffocating but not distant and full of people who are just like us on the outside. They aren’t faceless nazis but they are terrifying. The empire is a machine and not an emperor and somehow that is infinitely worse.
Prequels often struggle with being confined by what comes next, but not this one. Somehow it has cracked open the shell and found an enormous landscape, an epic myriad of new ground that doesn’t require Luke to drop in or Darth Vader to saunter by to stand up on its own.
More of this please
Timeless Things
34 discoveries in 34 years - by Brian Phillips
Calvin's second coolest buddy named Brian writes this amazing list of things every year. You should check it out and follow my lead and subscribe to Brian's emails. -B
Food
For Real Stop Baking Your Mac and Cheese
This is the title of an email I sent myself the other day when I ran across another stupid tiktok about making mac and cheese where they bake it. WRONG WRONG WRONG
Here's a recipe for a knockoff of the way the Italians meant for this king of pasta to be consumed- Kraft mac n cheese style. -B
The Soap Box
Tweet by Fernando 🌺🌌 on Twitter
Our central existential threat is how small our ambitions are."Conserving energy" we should use 10,000x more energy."Finite resources" space."Overpopulation" there should be 10³⁰ humans."Reducing our footprint" the human footprint should bestride the Hubble volume.
Hyperbole aside the sentiment is interesting. What is society's (secular) goal for ourselves? What are we trying to accomplish? This may not be it (aside from the energy abundance piece which I'm 100% on board with) but let's talk about what it should be! -B
The Energy Ladder - Doomberg
Modern society is awash in stuff. There’s stuff at the grocery store. At the hardware store. At Amazon and eBay. We eat stuff, wear stuff, buy stuff, and store stuff. Click some buttons, swipe a card, tap a phone – and presto! Stuff appears.
An incredibly powerful framework of the escalating energy content from wood to coal to oil to methane. Societal progress has always been tied to moving up the ladder. Our energy transition strategy has to take this into account in order to drive continued prosperity for the globe.
Here's the full blown essay. It is a free link from their archive. The subscription for their current content is $300 per year (WOWZERS) which is about 6x most substackers. But they have such an interesting perspective, although a bit pessimistic for me. -B
Health and Fitness
Thoughts on the potato diet
H/T Caitlin
There's for real a diet out there where you can eat as much as you want, prepared any way that you want, as long as what you eat is ONLY potatoes. Apparently it works? Which calls into question basically, well, everything we know? Where's my nutritionists at? Y'all please hit reply and tell me how dumb this is? -B
_______ is not real life
How to "Hack" your Gen-X colleagues and bosses
4: Focus with Gen X on mission and results. Not seniority, effort, or hours worked. You’ll often hear Gen X say, “If someone gets the job done in half the time, that’s fine.”
UH...... ALLL OF THISSSS
Also, as Calvin and our wives know, one of my favorite pasttimes is freaking out Millenials and Zoomers by replying to their long text messages with just "k". Gen-X sees that as efficient and sufficient. Those below us perceive it as "literal violence" and often need therapy to recover. It's amazing.... -B