I’d been deliberately putting off reading Ming Thein’s last several blog posts. Not because I wasn’t excited but because they seemed to have stopped being published. I feared that either something had happened to him, or that the blog had reached an end.
Fortunately he continues to do well. Sadly, his blog is done.
Ming has been writing for a whole lotta years, and has focused his blog on photography writ large. There’s some gear reviews but the real thing I learned, and still learn, from his work is how to think more deeply about making images, about telling stories with them, and letting narratives emerge as years of images are collected, edited, and set aside until a time they should be made public.
His explanation for ending the blog is, well, that he’d written everything. There was no topic he hadn’t covered, and he stated that:
… I’ve done enough thinking and dissection about how and why I shoot that the whole enormous mass has become intuitive – and I want to go back to applying that and shooting the things that interest me, for me, without feeling the need to create content for the entertainment of somebody else.
His blog isn’t alone—I was inspired to blog more than two decades ago by blogs and bloggers that are long-lost to the link rot of the Internet—but is the most recent of the sites that are just over. He plans to keep it alive and running for the foreseeable future but, as the Internet has taught us, it’ll eventually fade away from sight.
On the one hand I’m a bit morose about this state of affairs, and feel like maybe our digital artifacts should just operate this way: as present, delightful, and ephemeral. But, on a more positive note, I guess I see it as an author hanging up their keyboard because a given work is concluded. As a professional writer I can appreciate and respect, and deeply understand, why that happens even as I wish the writing would just continue ad infinitum.
Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.
For the past several weeks I’ve been sorting through all of the hundreds of photographs I’ve taken during the current state of pandemic we’re all living within. My photography is often a reflection—often unbeknownst to myself—of my thoughts and attitudes. The earliest weeks of the pandemic saw me making images of the city as though it were empty, grey, or isolated. And while those moods still pervade through later photos, there are increasingly also bursts of colour and joy, though still mixed with an emptiness to the city that calls into question what things will be like in six, twelve, or twenty-four month’s time. Many of the shots I’m taking, now, still feel almost documentary in nature, but at what point does the documentation end, and it simply becomes contemporary street photography?
Inspiring Quotation
More simply, real change only happens when the thing that white supremacists fear becomes true: that the mainstream increasingly becomes rather than simply appropriates the “ethnic.”
-Navneet Alang
Personal Photography Shots
I’ve been going out, once a week or so, to get a walk and make photos while walking around my city. Unlike past months, I’ve contributed a set of these rather than other artists’ images.
ZHU & Tinashe-Only (Single) // Beats by ZHU and vocals by him and Tinashe make for a very danceable track. I’m really hoping that they do more work together or, failing that, that we at least get more work from ZHU for the summer.
Yiruma-Room With A View (EP) // Without a doubt, Yiruma has created some of the most beautiful classical piano work that I’ve heard this year.
Kenlani-It Was Good Until It Wasn’t // The tracks “Can I” and “Everybody Business” are, for me, the real standouts on this album. I admit that I was hopeful that “Grieving”, with James Blake would be really awesome, but their styles just didn’t quite seem to come together. Her work with Tory Lanez, as well as Jhené Aiko, are far more balanced given how their styles compliment Kehlani’s own.
Good Reads
Barton Gellman—Dark Mirror // Gellman was one of three reporters who were directly entrusted with the Snowden archives, and spent years reporting out of the documents. His assessment of what it was like to report on what he learned, the nature of the surveillance apparatus, working with Ed Snowden, and his broader thoughts on the relationship between public government and national security are erudite and fantastically interesting. I’ve just devoured this book and cannot recommend it highly enough.
How Should Biden Handle China? // This piece is less useful, to be honest, in thinking through what policy the United States or its allies should adopt than is assessing engagement strategies that aren’t working. Setting aside the irregularities and chaos associated with the Trump administration’s approach, the assessment of how European efforts have been equally unhelpful are informative for guiding policy makers on what hasn’t worked even when policy activities have been carried out by governments with comparatively competent foreign policy bodies. While an understanding of what doesn’t work isn’t inherently useful in knowing what does work, it at least provides a set of strategies that seem to be unproductive to take up in a new administration.
1989-1996 Canadian Housing Collapse Looks Eerily Similar to Today // Economists around the world have been warning of a Canadian housing bubble for a very long time. But Canadians have ignored the warning and dove into the market on the dual fear that they would otherwise never be able to buy a home, and the notion that renting amounts to throwing money away. The result has been a lot of Canadians owning homes they can’t afford. As the bubble pops, we’re going to see just how much economic havoc is going to follow from these decisions for the housing market as well as the economy more broadly (housing, in Canada, constitutes one of the largest sectors in the economy).
The Jungle Prince of Delhi // I’ve had this article open to read for months and months, but kept not getting to it. That’s a shame, as it is (and remains) a terrific story filled with past dynasties, the histories of British colonialism, the hard task of journalism, and the capability of truth to be creatively imagined into being. I can’t recommend this detective piece highly enough.
Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.
Inspiring Quotation
When you give something, you’re in much greater control. But when you receive something, you’re so vulnerable.
I think the greatest gift you can ever give is an honest receiving of what a person has to offer.
– Fred Rogers
Great Photography Shots
Some of the photos for the 2020 All About Photos Awards are just terrific.
My April best-of playlist features some classic alternative and a lot of not-so-new rap and R&B. I guess this is the first full playlist I’ve created purely when in self-isolation?
Neat Podcast Episodes
Lawfare-Jim Baker in FISA Errors // Baker previously was responsible for, in part, reviewing the FISA applications put before the FISC. Recently, the DOJ IG found that 29 of 29 applications they reviewed had errors, including a seeming failure to document or prove the facts set out in the applications. Baker assessed the legal implications as well as the normative implications of the deficits, and the need to develop stronger managerial control over all future applications.
CBC Ideas—The Shakespeare Conspiracy // Using Shakespeare as a kind of distancing tool—he’s long dead and so unlikely to enliven contemporary political passions—Paul Budra explores how different scholars and public intellectuals have asserted who Shakespeare ’really was’ and the rationales behind such assertions. In an era where the West is increasingly concerned about the rise of conspiracies this espisode provides a range of productive tools to assess and critique new and emerging conspiracies.
NPR throughline—Buzzkill // Mosquitos are, without a doubt, responsible for more human deaths than anything else on earth. This superb short podcast goes through how mosquitos have been essential to empire, warfare, and changes to humans’ genetic makeup.
Good Reads
The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic // Anderson has done a spectacular job showcasing the beautiful humanity of Weird Al. In tracing his origin story, and explaining the care and time Al puts into his work, and the love he has for his fans, you really appreciate just how lovely a man he is. If anyone is a Tom Hanks for the geeks, it may end up being Weird Al.
There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say // It’s as though having engineers of particular ethnicities, building products that work for them, while also lacking employees of other ethnicities, has implications for developing technology. And the same is true of when developers do not include people with diverse socio-legal or socio-economic backgrounds.
The chemistry of cold-brew coffee is so hot right now // God bless the coffee-obsessed scientists who’ve taken a deep dive into the way that coffee beans respond to different extraction methods, as well as provide their own cold brew recipes. I can’t wait to see what research percolates out of this lab going forward!
What’s the Deal With False Burrs? // Having only recently managed to properly clean my home grinder, I was curious to learn a bit more about the differences in burr grinders. While I’m satisfied with my current grinder I can predict—based in owning a ‘faux’ burr grinder—that a Baratza Encore or Virtuoso is in my near future.
LIDAR: Peek Into The Future With iPad Pro // The recent release of the newest iPad Pro iteration has been met with a lot of yawns by reviewers. That makes a lot of sense, given the combination of the ongoing crisis and relatively minimal changes over the 2018 iPad Pro. The only really major new thing is a LIDAR system that is now part of the camera bump, but no mainstream reviewers have really assessed its capabilities. Fortunately the folks from Halide—a smartphone camera company—have dug into what LIDAR brings (and doesn’t bring) to the floor. Their review is helpful and, also, raises the question of whether professionals who do modelling should be consulted on the utility of these kinds of features, just as photographers—not gadget reviewers—should be asked deep and probing questions about the cameras that are integrated into smart devices these days.
The Mister Rogers No One Saw // Fred Rogers has had a number of films made about him and his life, but this essay by Jeanne Marie Laskas is different because it is so deeply personal about the relationships Fred had with those around him, and with the author. He inhabited a world that was just a little bit different than our own; his creativity was drawn from this place. But it was also a creativity linked with a deep ethic of work, where he focused on ensuring that his art was as perfect as possible. And left unstated in the article is one of the real testaments to his work: he would re- edit episodes, years after they had first been produced, when he found there were elements he was unhappy with or that no longer adequately represented what he had learned was a more right way of thinking about things. Also left unwritten in this piece was Fred’s belief that children we resilient and could be taught about the world; his shows dealt with issues like the Vietnam war and nuclear war in ways that were approachable to children who deserved to be involved in understanding their world, and always knowing they weren’t alone in it, and that it was perfectly ok to have feelings about it.
New York and Boston Pigeons Don’t Mix // The sheer size of pigeon populations–they extent across vast swathes of urbanized (and road connected) land–is pretty amazing. But, equally interesting, is how rural environments seem to, effectively, segregate populations from one another. It’s just another example of how genetically diverse groups can exist all around us, without our ever realizing the distinctiveness.
Cool Things
I Miss the Office // If you want office sounds for your work at home, then this site has you covered. (Also, if this is what you’re missing you’re kinda weird!)
The Slow Fade of City Life // When the last two images are accurate, you know it’s a lot easier to get through the lack of the city.
Campari and Orange Juice // I have to say, this is my new favourite brunch drink. It tastes almost like grapefruit juice, though the real secret—not in this recipe—is to aerate the Campari and OJ in a blender before mixing in a cocktail shaker. The aeration really opens up the Campari and gives the whole drink a level of creaminess it otherwise wouldn’t have.
Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.
I’m the (very) proud new owner of a Fuji X100F. The X100 series is what really drew me back to photography five or six years ago. I had the original X100 and, as someone who was coming from a camera phone, it was incredibly frustrating! The knobs and dials were cool but I had no idea how to use the camera. As I wrote, personally, at the time:
… the Fuji is awesome looking. But I can’t take a decent shot whatsoever with it at the moment. It’s going to take me a while to just understand the relationship(s) between the various settings in order to get some decent shots from it.
That camera ended up getting sold to pay rent and food, sadly, but my want for a replacement never left. In its stead I’ve used (and loved) a Sony RX100ii and an Olympus EM-10ii, and it’s on those cameras that I’ve learned an awful lot about photography. I’d be lying if I said I’d used more than 20% of their capabilities. However, over the past several years I’ve shot tens of thousand of photos with them and so have a better appreciation for framing, composition, and generally the kinds of settings that I’ll need for different shooting situations.
I was still a bit trepidatious about the new X100. The 35mm focal length hasn’t, typically, been my absolute preferred focal length (that honour belongs to the 50mm focal length), but I’m starting to think that part of my concerns around 35mm have been linked to what a micro four-thirds sensor showcases as 35mm. Specifically, with the X100F I can see just enough more that I don’t feel as compressed as I do shooting with the equivalent focal length on my Olympus. And, of course, I am absolutely adoring the colour that I’m getting out of the Fuji!
Inspiring Quotation
You can learn the technique, but passion is cultivated through dedication, love, pride as respect in your work.
Piero Bambi
Great Photography Shots
I am forever in love with the colours that people pull out of street scenes in Japan; it’s part of why I’d like to visit Japan or, perhaps more likely, Hong Kong once/if things settle there. Portela’swork in Kobe, Japan, is just stunning.
Music I’m Digging
For my first monthly playlist of 2020, I’ve actively gone through older albums that I know I enjoy and selected what I love. As such, there’s some diversity in when tracks were published, though in terms of the actual genres it’s ahead as normal: R&B, alternative, and some singer/songwriter dominate the tracks.
Neat Podcast Episodes
Oppo-A Huawei Executive Defends Their Record // This is, without a doubt, one of the most aggressive Canadian interviews I’ve heard about Huawei. Fundamentally, it seems like a core issue with these kinds of interviews, generally, are that journalists are ill-prepared to develop and run a series of parallel lines of argumentation, and then conclude at the end with assessments of what the responses to all those parallel lines ultimately constitute. Even with some of the weaknesses in the interview I think that it is, hands down, the best interview with a Huawei executive on the appropriateness of Canada relying on the Huawei’s equipment in next-generation mobile networks.
Good Reads
How 17 Outsize Portraits Rattled a Small Southern Town // Burch’s article does a good job in both outlining how much work goes into public art projects—the process that goes into them is as, if not more, important that the output—as well as how public art can initiate important and needed social dialogues.
Is Duty-Free Dead? On the Trail of Travel-Exclusive Unicorns // As someone who now searches through duty free shops hunting for novel whiskies, Goldfarb’s article on the relative dearth of interesting drams rings depressingly true. While I did find a truly unique bottle of Danish pleated whiskey in Copenhagen last year I’m hard pressed to think of anything interesting I’ve otherwise come across in the past year or two of flying. In contrast, just four or five years ago I could routinely find drinks that were entirely unavailable in the regions I lived in. Sad times…
The Shadow Commander // The assassination of Qassem Suleimani sent reverberations throughout the world, as governments held their breath while wondering what consequences would follow from the American action. But what was evident in the media following the killing was that few people truly appreciated who he was, what he had done, or why the Americans would want to kill him. This older article in The New Yorker does a good job in explaining his life, how he became a powerful power broker in the region surrounding Iran, and how he exercised this power to kill or undermine American and Western interests for decades. While it stops well short of justifying the American assassination—it was written seven years before the action—it does help non-experts better appreciate some of the thinking that presumably went into the military decision to want to kill Suleimani.
Toy Story 3 IRL Movie // For 8 years, the creators of this film have been painstakingly remaking Toy Story 3 with stop animation. The completed product is just absolutely amazing.
Excited Pixels 