Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 146

Fold Over Dept.

I finished the fourth, and I hope final, draft ofWelcome to the Foldearlier today. Rather than ration out what was left of the edits over the next couple of days, I just decided to sit down and finish everything in one marathon session, and it worked out better that way.

Read more at Genji Press

Someone Who Cares Dept.

Heres a Quarter | Whatever

... after a certain point, it may become obvious that some people just want to complain, or to be angry, or to be an asshole, or whatever, and that nothing a reasonable person can do will ever make those people happy or satisfied.So you givethem a quarter, metaphorically or otherwise, and tell them to call someone who cares. Because you have other thingsto do. And then you go on doing those things you need to do. They wont be happy, but then they were never going t...

Angst

Little-seen movies foment expectationsthey have a hard time living down. Once a forgotten film resurfaces thanks to home video or a reissue campaign, it has to liveor die on its own, without the protecting encrustation of the mythology accrued around it.This is as it should be; any work of art deserves to be seen as it actually is, and not through the distorting lens of reputation.

Gerard Kargl'sAngst, unseen for decades, is as good a case study as any for a movie that transcends its own myt...

A Better Tomorrow Dept.

Tom Vanderbilt Explains Why We Could Predict Self-Driving Cars, But Not Women in the Workplace

... when I took a subway to a caf to write this article and electronically transmit it to a distant editor, I was doing something I could have done in New York City in the 1920s, using that same subway, the Roosevelt Brothers coffee shop, and the telegram, albeit less efficiently. (Whether all that efficiency has helped me personally, or just made me work more for declining wages, is an open questi...

Fold It In Half Dept.

I'm a little morethan two-thirds of the way through what I hope is the last pass of edits onWelcome to the Fold, and I am now kicking myself, hard, for not taking advantage of the services of an editor for my previous works.

Read more at Genji Press

Crowded Garage Dept.

The Crowding-Out Effect of Gargantuan Movies - The New York Times

For years, Hollywood has pursued event-style movies intended to play to everyone — old and young, male and female, domestic and foreign. (Old is defined by the studios as anyone over the age of 35.)But some of these offerings have grown so colossal that other movies, even very expensive and heavily marketed ones that receive decent reviews, are having a hard time getting noticed.

Emphasis mine. On the other hand, Universal ha...

The Smartest Guys In The Medium Dept.

Karl Popper's speculations about the rise of polyphonic music.

... the doctrine that the genius must be in advance of his time is almost wholly false and vicious, and opens up the universe of art to evaluations which have nothing to do with the values of art. Intellectually, both theories are on such a low level that it is astonishing that they were ever taken seriously. The first can be dismissed as trivial and muddled on purely intellectual grounds, without even looking more closely at art...

Breaking The Roaring Silence Dept.

I spent all of last week, with some days on both sides, traveling for both work and vacation, and deliberately avoided plugging myself back into the World Digital Brain Grid for the duration of the runaround. This included blogging, but I'm back now, so you can expect regularly scheduled service to resume right about ...now.

Read more at Genji Press

Politaesthetics Dept.

One of the things I heard bruited around during the recent dust-up over the Hugos was something generally spoken by people who were either avowedly apolitical, or clandestinely reactionary (and sometimes not even aware they were being so). The line typically went something like this:I don't care who wrote a story, I care whether or not it's good.

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Gleeful Disdain Dept.

No, I wasn't chastised by anyone about the post that went up earlier today, which I have since looked back on and shaken my head over. I added that note about my tone being out of line entirely on my own, because at one point today I peeked at it, and asked myself, "Who is that raging monster behind the keyboard?" That raging monster was the guy in the mirror. Surprise, surprise.

There are days when I succumb to the temptation to say something really juicy and angry about a subject I feel pas...