Blade Runner 2049
"Blade Runner 2049" is quite simply an awesome movie. The cinematography is absolutely amazing.
Further Reading
Every memory leaves its own imprint in the brain. Classifying all possible phases of matter. What makes a perfect croissant. Why an old theory of everything is gaining new life. Thomas Kuhn’s revolutionary ideas. Is evolutionary science due for an overhaul? What Unicode will make possible. And more.
Further Reading
A story by Ali Smith. Why write fiction in 2017? Clemens Setz visits the Netherlands. The last remaining speaker of Taushiro. Goethe. What bullets do to bodies. A history of humans trying and failing to understand the minds of apes. The correspondence of Descartes and Elisabeth of Bohemia. And more.
The Best Books of 2017
The best books I read in 2017 in various categories: best fiction, best science, best economics, best book about the USA, most useful, most eye-opening.
Further Reading
Corina Tarnita deciphers patterns in soil created by competing life-forms. How memories form and recall works. Inequality in nature and society. A literary tour of the U.S. Žižek on ideology as the original augmented reality. Workforce implications of machine learning. Books about bread. And more.
The Best Albums of 2017
Some of my favourite albums of the year and the ones that I expect to listen to for some time to come were classical recordings.
Further Reading
Why certain glaciers are prone to surging abruptly. 21 essential albums from ECM’s catalog. Interview with Edward Witten. Steven Mithen on why our ancestors started farming. Phil Klay on war as a test of religious faith. Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot can now do a backflip. And more.
Further Reading
The fatal flaw of neoliberalism. Physics has demoted mass. Video shows CRISPR editing DNA in real time. There's more to Edvard Munch than The Scream. Operation Icebridge. Nietzsche's musings on his lost umbrella raise deeper philosophical questions. The art of the Russian Revolution. And more.
Dutch Masters from the Hermitage
"Dutch Masters from the Hermitage" is a phenomenal exhibition and a rare chance to see some treasures from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Further Reading
Found: The universe’s missing atoms. Untangling spider biology. Conversations with Tim O'Reilly and Hélène Cixous. The coming software apocalypse. A history of mathematical typography. There never was a tulip fever. How ether transformed surgery. A history of the first peoples in America. And more.
Kein Licht
It was funny, moving, interesting and inspiring and then it was all over. I wish I could replay it. I wish I remembered more of what I'd seen and heard.
Irving Penn at the Grand Palais
To celebrate the centenary of his birth the Grand Palais in Paris has organized a large Irving Penn retrospective. I'm glad I visited the show, because I discovered a number of photos I hadn't seen before.