31 August 2024 - Three day weekend

[scenicdesign71]

...to be followed, which is just as nice, by a four-day week.  I'm finding this work enjoyable and just-challenging-enough despite frequent longueurs; especially given the higher pay rate, I'd welcome more of it when this job is done (though there is less of it available these days than there was even a few years ago).  But the schedule is demanding, and a holiday long-weekend/short-week is always nice.

When we do return next week, we'll be starting our final two episodes, which, in keeping with traditional dramatic structure, means bigger scenes, higher stakes and (since it's a horror story) gorier set-pieces — but also more focus on our previously-established primary sets and locations, which by now hold few surprises (knock on wood).  It should be fun, and I am really looking forward to seeing the finished show when it comes out next year.

This morning I read two New Yorker articles, one rather depressing and the other rather encouraging on their respective very-different subjects:

The New Yorker:  Why So Many People are Going "No Contact" with Their Parents

The New Yorker:  Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art

The first examines changing contemporary attitudes toward familial estrangement.  The second argues against AI-generated art at a more or less definitional level — a tactic which has elsewhere often smelled of desperate tautology, but which this particular writer manages to unpack with more dexterity and precision than most.  He even manages to expand the debate, from defining "art" to defining "intelligence", in a way that is especially gratifying (spoiler: even on their own spurious terms, the techno-optimists may not have much to crow about).

And now I have to get back to my design work, for a Zoom meeting tomorrow.  More on that to follow at some point...

[KathyB]

Today I had Chinese food delivered. I ordered enough for at least two meals, and I ordered at least one dish (beef lo mein) that I know will taste just as good when reheated. (I also ordered orange chicken, which is definitely better the day it's ordered, and wonton soup.)

Other than that, my accomplishments for the day include doing a load of laundry and a load of dishes.