Mr. Davies > Recent Status Updates

I’ve had to learn five major trade languages and eight nomadic languages just in case. It’s insane.

Red Devlin, reporter: “Oh go on” and “sure you can”

Something about those clicking sounds woke me up for a second, and I understood that nothing had ever been wrong with Trip. Or with anything.

1990’s Kamel Ted cigarettes joke!

And I just searched up, following "Union of emptiness and clarity -- or luminosity -- is just so important," the movie "the Kurosawa Dreams thing where the little boy stole the cherries?"

“We can’t all be Tom Buchanan.”
I’m nervous about Anthony, but that’s a great insult.

Colonialism economics (mercantilism) explained

Religion was the sole font of morality …
Vs. “schoolteachers and educated people” — don’t be dogs

Canned pears over fresh -/ postwar industrialization and consumer culture

Ch. 8 Lowering Defenses — another AI feedback chapter, and this might be the one to include in my AI syllabus this semester

Anecdote about 2006, future husband, and first text messages — brilliant

Fascinating narration about struggle to cede tech writing and pursue fiction — 92 “information” vs “convey feelings”

… it's interesting to consider the first big internet companies through Bourdieu's lens. If it could be said that Amazon, with its infinite catalog of cheap products, appealed to our desire for economic capital, and Google, with its infinite provision of information, to our desire for cultural capital, then Facebook was about social capital.

Anyone can be a singer-songwriter wielding a guitar, she reminded herself, but exceptional bass players and percussionists are nearly impossible to find in any economy.

I’m enjoying the flashback via Jazmin Monelle’s publishing experience

— “Jazzmin Monelle wondered if this was her lot in life, to constantly hear music she could only half place, in a manner that would eventually drive her mad.”

“Neftalí was in a bind. Her mind felt carpeted with dead leaves that desperately needed raking,”

And we get a nice summary of conflicts to end the slightly confusing Professor/money machine episode.

First impressions — some clunky early dialogue, but fabulous metaphors and similes

331
"I want you to say you're terrified. Because I'm terrified want you to tell me what to do," Thurwar cried, and she felt much at once she was already trying to bottle the feeling, becau to survive she had to curate. Curate everything.

Hendrix Young —
I look at the men and my one wrist. I'm here with them because to love a voice is a painful thing. And now that I've traded my arm to get it back, my whole inside knows I can't return to the silence, less I throw myself against the saw again, more precisely.

Evidence, Chapter 3

Book within a book — worth re-reading these chapters as they would hypothetically be?

As I climb to my feet I notice that the knees on my trousers are sullied. The floor is dirtier than it appears. We both regard the evidence.

Novel in novel titled Evidence.

“It isn’t sci fi.”
Gene laughed then, in a way that was not kind. “Your fantasy book then.”

Weird to read her 2022 adulation of Musk in summer 2025

What did [Pacioli] see over Leonardo’s shoulder?

O sessile repetition and variation: when Leonardo developed an interest, he would gnaw away at it for years whether it seemed useful or not.

This confident, unambiguous title suits the book, which expresses Michael's interior life more honestly and completely than many autobiographies: his intellectual development, his spiritual needs, the career of which he could justly be proud….

zibaldone -- "una insalata di piu herbe" -- an early commonplace book

Ch. 3 summary -- "The raw materials of the commercial revolution had sparked an artistic revolution."

David Hockney, "No Sketching" comment

All of these material advantages would have naturally led to the sketchbook's next great benefit: a step change in the quality of preparation that an artist could put into a work ...
The sketchbook also allowed an artist to develop their own style and repertoire, an additional memory bank that collected a body of material to refer to at a later date.

She touched my cheek. This thing she did. I closed my eyes.

"We hold the past in our body," she said. "It never forgets. But it can learn to let it go."

She held my face in her hands and then kissed my cheek.