What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[rotting bones]

Western classical (ish):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY4KqKDWCUc

Western contemporary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o84y-5-cO0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZB-7tAJBRc

Pride of Bengal contd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOCKa8mSnIU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7nFU23ry7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6eetkvVCm4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8qBY_JS-0M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8z5a1O0K4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwsm8QZt9CQ

Anime nostalgia (all from the same show):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMsOlhzPEfY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4VWgs7A6w4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJvwnQJLweM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBbGJ_8JPhU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYDcadIKSUg

PS. I reread a book by Petronius recently. My translation is titled Satyrica. Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35nbNvYZwag

[Nachtswalbe]

A tweet about how female protagonists in superhero comics are portrayed as still being conventionally feminine:
https://twitter.com/aalleexxllaaww/stat ... 8397092864

[Pabappa]

A tweet about how female protagonists in superhero comics are portrayed as still being conventionally feminine:
https://twitter.com/aalleexxllaaww/stat ... 8397092864

I dodged this stereotype without really trying to when I was very young. My early comics were about superheros my own age, with a very large cast .... mostly boys but with some girls too. As I grew older, I aged the superheros too, and eventually I had to draw boys and girls differently. But they had well-developed personalities and names, so e.g. it wasnt "Thundergirl", etc ... each superhero, including the girls, either went by their given name or by a byname such as Rainbow. Even when I added new female characters not based on my early childhood writing, I still kept them as focus characters on their own and not "female protagonists" etc. In fact for a good period of time, the girls were more foregrounded than the boys ... I was inspired to some extent by my sister's early comic, where she had a cast of 4 girls and 1 boy.

[Man in Space]

Stardust – "Music Sounds Better with You" (the extended version)

[Yalensky]

Watching: Cowboy Bebop. Boy does the plot sometimes run on coincidence and the backstory can be a little vague but boy does it look and sound cool. Occasionally it hits the perfect mood. Loving the multicultural melting pot of the future solar system. Favorite episode: "Toys in the Attic," which begins as tropey space horror but ends in winking ridiculousness.

Reading: Making my plodding way through The Lord of the Rings. For a month or two I was stuck in Tom Bombadil's house, but after that my pace picked up. I'm now in book 3. Having not read the books for 15+ years it's great to notice how different the book can be from the movies: the attention to landscape and weather and itinerary, how animal-like the black riders are, how surprisingly limited the big action scenes are. I've also learned a few new words, such as glede and eyot.

[Raphael]

Watching: Cowboy Bebop. Boy does the plot sometimes run on coincidence and the backstory can be a little vague but boy does it look and sound cool.

Haven't watched it, but I generally think that the importance of plot in works of fiction is overrated. I don't see why everything in a work just has to be important for The Plot. I don't mind reading a book that basically a collection of vignettes as long as the vignettes are interesting enough to read.

[MacAnDàil]

I've been currently mostly reading books for my PhD, but occasionally get the time to read other books like La fabrique du crétin digital by the neuroscientist Michel Desmurget. One of the most citation-filled books I've found. Also, 21 Lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari that I got out the library.

As for music, I have been getting CDs from the local library often lately. I was listening to a CD by French people playing Viking music and my girlfriend thought it sounded Celtic or African and suggested the idea that Scottish African music would exist. In finding about the idea, I discovered this gem: Nelson Mandela`s Welcome To The City Of Glasgow by Blair Douglas

[rotting bones]

I just started Piketty's Capital and Ideology. Can't predict how long it will take me to finish it.

PS. During a recent bout of anxiety, I skimmed Twentieth-Century Music Theory and Practice by Edward Pearsall from my university's library to calm down. Surprisingly, I had already encountered bits and pieces of the material elsewhere. I probably absorbed just enough of the new stuff to trigger more "Hey, where did I hear that before?" reactions in the future. I also watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQt46gvYO40 and listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H-2PWISfxE

[vlad]

A tweet about how female protagonists in superhero comics are portrayed as still being conventionally feminine:
https://twitter.com/aalleexxllaaww/stat ... 8397092864

This is not about superhero comics. The author says "It's an amalgamation of lots of stories from my childhood up till now."

I literally cannot think of a single superhero comic this applies to. Can you?

[rotting bones]

I looked at Feigiap's artwork again, eg: https://www.deviantart.com/feigiap/art/ ... -463590172

PS. That reminds me, if anyone is interested, here are some scenes of natural (and artificial) beauty I photographed in Mizoram last year: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N_ym7m ... sp=sharing

[Ares Land]

Barbarians on Netflix. A fictionalized account of Arminius and the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

The story of Arminius is fascinating in its own right. (The real Arminius, a German hostage who became a Roman officer and equestrian, switched sides and united German tribes in what would be the greatest Roman defeat in centuries).
The cool part is that the Roman characters speak Latin! I don't know how accurate the pronunciation is, but it certainly fools me. (They use a classical pronunciation, with unpalatized c ang g, so it's period-accurate in that respect.)
The Germans speak, well, German. (I'm a little disappointed they didn't use proto-Germanic but it's probably for the best!)

Another cool bit is seeing the Romans as the evil empire. (Those centurions sure give off a great Darth Vader vibe).

[Ryusenshi]

Another cool bit is seeing the Romans as the evil empire. (Those centurions sure give off a great Darth Vader vibe).

Nul ne peut bafouer l'Empire romain.

[Ares Land]

Oh, I'm reading Dixon's Dyirbal grammar.

The Recent history of the tribes section is a horror story.

Women would be appropriated at whim by the settlers and, if an aboriginal husband complained,he was likely to be sent to the semi-penal settlement on Palm Islandon the grounds that he was a trouble-maker. It is interesting to note that only two half-castes grew up in the Tully region in the first quarter of this century; many were born but all others were killed soon after birth, by their white fathers.

[Raphael]

Finished Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized. To be honest, I had pretty low expectations - Klein is one of the people behind Vox, and Vox has made some notorious blunders. But I was pleasantly surprised. It's well-written, easy to read, well-researched, and well-documented. Nice introduction to some aspects of current and historical US politics. A bit short compared to what I usually read, though - or perhaps it just seemed like that because it was such an easy read.

[rotting bones]

Watching YouTube videos instead of doing any of the work I'm supposed to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7gfDjgeV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAEz4LzGf90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG4kSalvAB0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tIUvgc5dKI

[Raphael]

Currently reading Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes: The Way to the White House. I didn't expect that a book about a US presidential election that happened 32 ago, when politics and the world in some aspects still worked quite differently from now (though, of course, in other aspects they're very similar), would interest me much, but fuck, the man could write. Apparently one of those old-school journalists who had ink running through their veins.

[Pedant]

Surprisingly enough Darkwing Duck is turning out to be really, really good. Particularly the moments between Drake and Gosalyn, it’s been ages since I’ve found such a wholesome relationship (and between two such skilled and yet flawed characters).
On an unrelated note, Michael Palin’s North Korea is quite the page-turner!

[Raphael]

In order to distract myself, I started watching Borgen, now that it's on Netflix. I'm only a bit more than two episodes in, so I can't really judge it that well yet, but so far, I think it's quite good, though a bit contrived at times. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to seeing Euron Greyjoy in a suit and tie, though.

[Raphael]

I just started reading Noam Scheiber's The Escape Artists - How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery. I'm not sure I agree with Scheiber's main point, but it's interesting to read a book that's critical of Barack Obama without seeing him as the Devil incarnate or buying into the ridiculous claims made by his more unhinged opponents.

[rotting bones]

BS I found online:

Tapur Tupur, film song that hews closely to Bengali tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTsxOzNdbRQ

Bengali Islamic folk in a moderately rustic dialect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOON79vH9yI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kewrB2Qkjqs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwGyc9BUs2w

City Pop nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZpeH_UfNiQ

Observations on Japanese TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtnVU4BU39E
Classical music on Japanese TV with nice dramatic shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaq-6U7ZJt8

Why I Love Living in Malaysia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_TXHqT3gWU
Meet the Smartest Trumpist in the World AKA your mind on solipsism: https://twitter.com/realchrislangan?lang=en
As if reality weren't surreal enough, I then found Star Wars Kabuki: https://youtu.be/735WWLau__Q?t=747

Harvard Law student faints 14 minutes into a moot court competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ-WJssJgdg

Box Fort (Short Horror): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVUgm6ICiE

Burmese opera (?): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... iHo7qwtgqV