The shelf was getting a little unbalanced, with too much fiction, but a tip from NPR’s Books We Love led me to Dreilinger. Of the Thoreau, I’ve got The Maine Woods and Cape Cod to read. The Bellotti is for a book club at work—not my usual cup of tea, but I want to contribute to the discussion. I have promised myself that I will crank through another story in the French parallel text collection; will I ever find time for the Echenoz? Juggling two volumes is too much trouble for the subway.
Month: November 2021
Vertical
In many ways, the streamers [like Netflix and Amazon] have been rebuilding Hollywood’s old studio system. That system, which lasted roughly from the 1920s to the 1950s, was powered by vertical integration. Major studios like Paramount or Warner Bros. didn’t just own a bunch of soundstages, but also the theater chains that screened their movies, meaning they had complete control over every aspect of a movie’s creation—a straight line down from film production to distribution to exhibition.
Even the sharp corners of ostensibly “bad” moves are being rounded over:
Critic Judy Berman argues in The Baffler, for instance, that the internet and the larger “streaming void” it perpetuates have slowly been killing the cult film, the “scruffy, desperately original, and intermittently brilliant works of transgressive art” once enjoyed communally on the midnight circuit, but now cynically engineered for social media engagement, à la Sharknado. Naturally, it’s not just the makers of would-be Rocky Horrors who are suffering.
Although she mentions the creative financing that powered Irving Levin’s distribution of Ida Lupino’s Filmmakers movies, she misses the opportunity to comment on the similar pattern shown by The Cannon Group during its ownership by Golan and Globus.
Etymogenesis?
A (more or less) newly-described means of animal reproduction, featuring my friends of genus Ambsytoma, and Mark Liberman is curious about how the term was formed: kleptogenesis.
Suitland Bog
Lynn Rust’s Microbial Ecology class field-tripped to Suitland Bog (a magnolia bog that’s actually a fen). The property was once mined for sand and gravel before M-NCPPC picked up some of the land, while allowing development on another parcel. (In the inexorable logic of new streets being named for what they replaced, Rock Quarry Terrace passes through one of the nearby townhouse subdivisions.)
In the successional upland accessed by ample parking at the community center, we found the rocky, sandy soil of the Coastal Plain. Virginia Pine (Pinus virginia) is waiting to be overtaken by the beeches and oaks, while Blackjack Oak (Quercus marilandica) hunkers in the understory. Thundering helicopters from nearby Joint Base Andrews are just something you have to deal with.
In the bog itself, we easily found Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea). According to Lynn and the park ranger, this introduced species is outcompeting the sundews, and is subject to some culls. Yellowing leaves of Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) were recognizable.
Bisected by a power line cut, the place definitely shows the marks of human influence, and could use some major trash pickup love. I don’t remember, but I reckon that my visit in 2013 was from the other entrance, from the south.
Christmas Bird Count 2021: Seneca: 1
I am the new leader for sector 14 of the Seneca circle for the Christmas Bird Count. Our count day is Sunday, 19 December. If you’re interested in helping bird the north half of Reston, Dranesville, and the south half of Great Falls, let me know!
Day 0
My Winogradsky column project for Microbial Ecology, taught by Lynn Rust. We sampled sediments from the Wheaton Branch stormwater ponds on Dennis Avenue. Hope I added enough egg yolk (S) and not too much newspaper (C)!
We won’t see results for a few weeks.
That explains Blofeld’s cat
“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond’s exposure to infectious agents,” by Wouter Graumans et al.
We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage, sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis.
Particularly worrying:
While Bond was traveling to Japan (1967) shortly after the H2N2 pandemic (1957–1958), his actions were at odds with knowledge on the different modes of respiratory virus transmission. Bond regularly joined crowds without social distancing including on public transport.
Silver Line progress report: 52
Phase 2 has hit the “substantially complete” milestone. But not so fast—
Metro can begin some testing, but other pre-service evaluations can’t start until work on the rail yard is complete. According to the rail yard project’s most recent monthly update, the estimated timeline for completion is February 2022.