j f @glossydinosaur@myna.social
moderate confidence
RIP, condolences to his daughter. Passages of "Passage to Juneau" stayed with me for years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/books/jonathan-raban-dead.html
I never got past the trashiness of figure skating aesthetics in my youth, and it was far too expensive and gendered to hold my attention for long. Strange that, in 2022, it became one of the activities I loved most in the world, up there with playing guitars and reading. (I should have made the obvious inference from my joy in both downhill skiing and dance.) Because 2022 also had a fire-haired teenage girl landing five quadruple jumps in the Olympics to (in part) the Stooges, it has been a MUCH easier aesthetic sell to the younger generation.
In a completely different register, here is a masterclass in knife-shoe footwork from Mao Asada, set to Bach and performed in a truly preposterous outfit for which no justification can be imagined and it doesn't matter:
This piece, which starts out sounding like "Electric Counterpoint" with fewer tracks but does not end that way, is the most striking music I've heard in a long time:
So first things first. (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprotornis ) #sturnidae
moderate confidence
