Dan Kois, on Slate, rips into “Joker”, which today was nominated for a surprising 11 Oscars:

Today—as Joker receives 11 Oscar nominations, the most of any movie, including Best Picture and Best Director—is the day that someone must stand astride the tracks and say: Enough. Stop the madness. Joker is not the best picture of the year. Joker is dumb as hell.

The entire article is a fun-to-read tirade against the movie—it’s the sort of contrarian opinion piece that Slate used to be renowned for.

Kois’s flip-out reminds me of how I felt when the 2015 movie, “Mad Max: Fury Road” was nominated for Best Picture. That movie, and the world it depicts, doesn’t make a lick of sense, but people still gush over it.

At this point in my life, I think the Oscars themselves are “dumb as hell” and are best ignored.

This album is probably known as one of R.E.M.’s lesser efforts. When it came out in 2001, I didn’t like it. Compared to R.E.M.’s earlier work, it felt pat and drowsy. The mid-tempo arrangements lacked insistence and energy, and all the studio sound effects felt unnatural and unmusical to me at the time. I played it once and didn’t listen to it any more.

A few years later, one of my friends said, offhandedly, after “All the Way to Reno (Our’s Gonna be a Star)” came on the radio, that he absolutely loved the album. I got to hear it through new ears, and came to love how good it sounds, and to think of the songs as dark, late night, chill-out rock, whose arrangements and instrumentation move between spareness to lushness in interesting ways.

📺 “Russian Doll" is a really trippy take on the Groundhog Day-type plot. It has managed to get really, really weird now that I’m close to the end. (No spoilers, please!)

I’m working overtime now because life is unfair sometimes.

My iPhone 7 Plus has—for a second time, due to a battery swap over a year ago—gotten to the point in its life where I have to recharge it a couple times to make it through the day. It’s not at the point where a new battery is warranted, but it is starting to feel old.

🎵 Today’s album: “The King is Dead” by The Decemberists. It’s acoustic, Americana-inspired, and is one of the best produced, best sounding albums in my collection. The sound is so warm and the melodies so gentle that it’s easy to forget the album’s themes of death and rebirth.

🎵 Today’s album, “Cut & Stitch” by Petrol Girls. It’s fun, furious, feminist punk rock, peppered with rage, teeming with energy, tinged with emotion, and full of interesting and varied soundscapes.

❓Do any micro-bloggers use reusable grocery bags? I’m trying to find something suitable for huge shopping trips (imagine a shopping cart filled to the brim). The boxy, rigid-sided ones seem appealing, but I’m not so sure about machine washing them, which apparently is necessary.

🎵 Today’s album: “Diatom Ribbons” by Kris Davis

Kris Davis is a jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. The New York Times crowned “Diatom Ribbons” as the #1 jazz album of 2019:

Kris Davis, 39, has spent years as her generation’s powerhouse pianist in waiting. No longer. On “Diatom Ribbons,” her skills as a composer, band assembler, system builder and improviser — a musical auteur, basically — come fully into focus. Ms. Davis builds her compositions on crooked patterns and splintered loops that somehow become a kind of magnetic touchstone, bringing together wildly diverse musicians in tangled unity.

I don’t listen to jazz that much anymore but I used to listen to it for hours on end as I read and wrote my way through my senior year of college. (It helped that I could get countless jazz CDs for free at the library.) “Diatom Ribbons” is more edgy and experimental than the classic jazz I grew up on, but I found it quite enjoyable. Listening to it is like visiting a musical world I kind of understand, and kind of don’t, but feeling warm and welcome all the same.

I need to start thinking of exercise as an excuse to watch TV rather than as punishment for eating too many cookies.

🤫 Don’t mind me, I’m just testing new 🎧 today. 🎵😃🎵

As with the original Segway, my thoughts on this new product are: “why would anybody want this?”

🎵 In lieu of music this morning, I’m listening to the folks at The Incomparable overanalyze The Rise of Skywalker. It’s fun to listen to, especially because the last two Star Wars movies were so divisive. It will be fun to hear Gruber’s take on “The Talk Show” someday.

This article about ChromeOS’s shortcomings made me wonder just how much better the web would be if Google had never bought Android. Once, Google made some of the best user-facing software for the web. It has not done so in years, in my opinion.

🎵 Today’s album: “Two Hands” by Big Thief. I saw this album on the top of Bob Boilen’s top ten albums of 2019 list. I liked it a lot more than I liked UFOF, but I don’t think this band speaks to me. I probably will revisit the first half of this album sometime, but that’s about it.

I forgot this guy was even running for president.

🎧 Does tremolo that ping-pongs between the left and right channels bother everybody who listens through headphones, or is it just me? It literally makes me feel seasick. 🤢

🎵 I can’t decide on an album to listen to this morning. I wish there was a playlist for “how do I start the work week on a Thursday after nearly two weeks off?” I guess Jason Snell’s 2019 Selections playlist will do for now.

This list of the 50 best shows on Netflix cheats a bit by actually recommending 100 series. The amount of content out there is just overwhelming.

I want to start coding every night once again. I kind of fell out of the habit last year due to being sick, exhausted, or busy with holiday-related stuff. Now’s as good a time as any to jump back into my personal projects with both feet.

When Christmas Day and New Years Day fall on Wednesdays, the end of the year feels like a series of three-day weekends, rather than a week or so off. Tomorrow and Friday will likely be quiet, kind of pointless work days.

I am not planning to look back and reflect on 2019. Instead I will look forward to the future.

🎬 I really enjoyed Rise of the Skywalker. Sure, it contains fan service, but, honestly, all sequels are fan service. I liked it a lot more than The Last Jedi, and think that reviewers like A.O. Scott are just blowing off steam about franchise films or something.

🎵 Album of the day: Better Oblivion Community Center’s eponymous debut. B.O.C.C. is the duo of Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. I’m only familiar with Conor Oberst, and I think this album fits in very well with the rest of his work. It is quiet, moody indie rock. The songs are beautiful and the production sounds good.

When I read articles about the obesity rate in the United States, like this one, I’m surprised to learn that it is as low as 40%. It seems so much higher here.