Top Ten for December 15, 2022
As someone fascinated with Weimar I came embarrassingly late to the fantastic Babylon Berlin series, an adaptation of Volker Kutscher’s crime novels – the main titles are so great I never skip through them. The series borrows some style and tone from Lars von Trier’s Europa, especially its iconic opening sequence
Jodorowsky’s Tron, ChatGPT economics pundit – no job is safe from AI
Next-level reputation laundering: the German agency that enabled the completion of Nord Stream 2 with Russian money and avoided sanctions for doing so was called the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment
Paul Hindemith is, and has been for a long time, deeply unfashionable which is a shame as there are so many great works, like Ludus Tonalis and the Piano Concerto from the forties, to the raucous Kammermusik of the twenties, to the marvelous Op 15 nocturnes of 1919
“Common good constitutionalism” – the next step in conservative thought beyond originalism, this time positing that “ruling well” and “natural law”, not protecting and promoting individual liberty, should be the highest goals of the state
Dylan Vandenhoeck’s astonishing perception-paintings – via the excellent contemporary-painting blog Two Coats of Paint
AI-generated music via spectrograms – sounds like 90s Drop-era Eno but the real brilliance is the Stockhausen-like interpolated transitions between sounds; there’s an automated DJ project which looks terrific as well
The great Backlisted pod on the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic