Friday, September 26, 2025

G'morning. What's new with you?

Item 1: a link

I've been sitting on this one for a while, thinking I'd eventually get around to fleshing out my notes and providing you real value. But who am I kidding? That's never going to happen. How about a bunch of links instead?

So I was in New York City quite a while ago now and I went to the Museum of Modern Art ("MoMA" to cognescenti) and watch about half an hour of Christian Marclay's "The Clock" – which was fun. And then I started wondering what else this artist has done, which brought me to this 2008 NY Times piece about Apple, uh, paying homage? to put it charitably?, to Christian Marclay’s “Telephone”. That story mentions the 2003 Honda ad "The Cog", which I remembered fondly, and which turns out to be another corporate cooption of human creativity – specifically, “Der Lauf der Dinge" (The Way Things Go)" (1987) by Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

Anyway, just to bring this full circle, Kottke recently posted about someone who is working on reverse-engineering all of "The Clock". I hope when they finish they'll turn their attention to Apple's "Hello".

Item 2: a list

Great Apes, Ranked:

1. Gibbon
2. Human
3. Bonobo
4. Gorilla
5. Orangutan
6. Chimpanzee

Item 3: a media recommendation

Item 4: word of the week

Phreatomagmatic

I know I shouldn't have had that second helping of Cincinnati chili (or probably the first), but I still think it's quite rude to call me "The Phreatomagmatic Phreak of the Week".

Item 5: a photograph

See ya!

Thanks for reading. See you in spooky season 👻