Five Bullets 1.23.26: Searching for New Land
What's capturing my attention: Circles In Space AI Policy, Lee Morgan, The Jungle, Sketchbook Library & more.
Hi Friends -
Happy Friday! Here’s what’s capturing my attention this week:
I want to be transparent so I wrote the Circles In Space AI Policy. This newsletter will always remain human-generated but I’ve used AI before to craft headlines, generate SEO tags, and create images. Thus, the policy to clear things up.
Just a few months after recording his classic album The Sidewinder, trumpeter Lee Morgan returned to Van Gelder Studio in February 1964 backed by a lineup of Blue Note’s heavy hitters to record Search For The New Land. I’ve been spinning this album on repeat and it reminds me of Coltrane’s music, exploring both in and out, rather than the brash trumpet Morgan is known for. My favorites are the title track and Mr. Kenyatta, named for Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president after it’s independence from the British empire.
You can’t beat used bookstores! I found a like-new copy of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for less than $3 last weekend. Jack London called it the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.” Sinclair went undercover to expose the poor working conditions of the meat-packing industry which led to the Meat Inspection Act.
Over the holiday weekend I updated my personal website and reflected on my experiences writing online. I started blogging there a few years back and those posts became this newsletter but since coming to Substack I’ve struggled with how to use the website. I think I’m going to write pieces there which don’t exactly fit here. It’s always been a place where I can experiment freely.
Art opens my mind to new ways of thinking, like this interview with German artist Anselm Kiefer. I’m also checking out The Sketchbook Library, which shows the limitless creative possibilities in a single book: comics, drawings, watercolor, stories, photos and more.
What are you creating this week? Email me by hitting reply or by leaving a comment below.
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Have a great weekend,
Keith