Five Bullets 1.20.23
This week: MCNY, Semiconductors, & Rube Goldberg
Hello and welcome back to Circles In Space for Five Bullet Friday, where each Friday I share some interesting stuff I collected during the week.
Good morning everyone!
It’s a sunny day here in New York City with blue skies and temperatures in the 40s. Apparently we’re in the fourth longest stretch in the city’s history without snow. I’ve lived here all my life and for the area to not have significant snowfall this late in the season is definitely strange. The cause could be due to La Nina (or climate change?).
This week’s bullets:
Earlier in the week I visited the Museum of the City of New York, which I recommend checking out. The exhibit Activist New York detailed the city’s activism history from worker and immigration rights to gender equality and religious freedom. I was surprised to learn that the largest protest in U.S. history took place on June 12, 1982 in Central Park, with an estimated one million people gathering to call for nuclear disarmament, coinciding with a United Nations council on nuclear weapons.
This week I read Joyce Carol Oates’s novella The Rise of Life on Earth. I hadn’t read any of Oates’s work, who has written over 50 novels, in addition to short stories and novellas, so I picked this one up when I found it in a box of discarded books. The book was sad, tragic, horrifying and wasn’t anything like what I expected. Oates employed an inventive use of form and structure, which she explores more in her Masterclass. Oates’s novel Blonde, a biographical fiction novel about Marilyn Monroe was recently adapted to film. I’ll definitely be checking out some more of her work.
A few podcasts with writers I checked out this week:
Blogger/author Seth Godin on the Rich Roll Podcast
Screenwriter/producer of The Hurt Locker & Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal on The JRE.
Debut novelist Kai Thomas on The Writer Files
From China’s threatening incursion of Taiwan to the U.S. federal government’s legislation to expand chip manufacturing plants, everyone’s talking about semiconductors (or microchips) lately. If you’ve got 30 minutes, journalist and YouTuber Johnny Harris breaks down this ongoing geopolitical chess match into easily understandable chunks.
I can’t get enough of Rube Goldberg machines lately! They capture my imagination and are oddly mesmerizing. Some background on cartoonist Rube Goldberg. A few contraptions: OK GO’s music video; this Honda commercial ; a musical instrument powered by marbles.
Got something to share? Leave me a comment! I’m always on the lookout for something new to dive into.
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That's all for this week!
As always, thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Until next time,
KW