12.6 | a belated roast of the british museum

“How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’
‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things.”

– R.F. Kuang, 'Babel or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution'

✉️ letter #46

Back in Europe over the summer, I was so convinced that I'd figured out a format that would make it a lot easier for me to push out a travel vlog... basically, I thought, if it was all voice over and a cut of the scenery I filmed, it wouldn't take me much time at all to churn out something cute to memorialize my time spent in some random location.

But then OF COURSE I felt like I had to say something, and then I realized I hadn't quite filmed enough to cover what I wanted to say, and we're left with me wracking my brains to figure out how to clear that conundrum for the next five months.

So yeah, in early July, after my trip to Cambridge I headed to London for a few days, and this travelogue is a bit of an amalgamation of that journey. I ended up writing nearly ten minutes about the Qing Dynasty exhibit that anchored the British Museum's summer program, including how it stole (lol go figure) a translator's work... and I had nowhere near enough footage to pad those ten minutes.

In the end, it's probably better that I cut a lot of that talk out, it would've really dragged on. The only part I feel that's really missing is my actual review of the actual China's Hidden Century exhibit instead of it's context... which is this:

Considering how big the role Opium Wars and Hong Kong and European Concessions etc., had on modern Chinese life - including influencing the revolutionaries that finally overthrew the Qing Empire - I would have expected it to be referenced a bit more. Instead, the exhibit was mostly about pedestrian life.

To be fair, I liked that the museum focused a lot on pedestrian life, rather than just royalty or big events. I have been to many exhibits within China about the Qing Dynasty, but I’ve never really gotten to hear what the perspective of a merchant or a soldier would have been. And it WAS very beautifully presented, with an engaging narrative that flowed naturally and didn’t get confusing despite the many walks of life it showcased.

Basically, I didn't have enough filmed to let me actually say what I appreciated about it. The exhibit ended in early October, but you can still read a lot of the work that went into creating it here. As much as I might roll my eyes at the title they choose or their cover up antics, I really am always amazed and delighted by how well the Brits design an exhibition.

Now to attempt going through the rest of my 2023 travel footage - Berlin, Budapest, Montreal and more(?) - without creating this headache for myself.

🎼 the soundtrack | An Arrow in The Wall (CHVRCHES remix) - Death Cab for Cutie

It's Spotify Wrapped season and again I have no desire to really actually show anybody what I've been listening to all year... except to note that wow, did NOT expect that I had been re-listening to so much Death Cab for Cutie. I suspect this is partially because my friend Kim bought me a ticket to their Madison Square Garden concert, and in preparation I just put my college indie playlist on repeat.

I did then discover this ravey remix by CHVRCHES of one of their new songs, which was really fun to drunk walk home to.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

The United States' Fifth National Climate Assessment warns that infectious diseases are spreading because of the warming climate and this is a handy little map for that piece of horrible news. [Grist]

• Is the mainstream American media ignoring Trump's "delusional and catastrophic" posture on climate change? I'd say it's not so much ignoring as there being already too much insanity to report on Trump already, but Adam Johnson argues it's something we really need to pay attention to. [Jacobin]
• Is this good news? I can't tell. This last decade has seen weather grow way more extreme, but even if the ensuing disasters have been the costliest, they've also been the least deadly. We're apparently getting better at getting people out of harm's way in time. [Yale e360]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

Scientists might have figured out how elephants evolved to have their signature long trunks... and it could have been as a response to climate pressure?? [LiveScience]

• "Whether you’re prospecting for Giving Tuesday or reporting on political nonprofits, ProPublica’s revamped Nonprofit Explorer app makes research easy with its millions of Form 990s and other tax records." [ProPublica]
• Daniel Libeskind heard you liked skyscapers. Well, he wants to give you a slap skyscraper on top of a skyscraper. [Citylab]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Speaking of museums, if you were keeping up with me during the summer, you might have noticed me talking about Indiana Jones and how much the newest movie didn't suck. In fact, I liked it so much that I went to bat for it on Facebook and... on LinkedIN.

I don't know why I felt compelled to share my pop culture musings on LinkedIN, maybe I just felt it was the closest I would post anything adjacent to marketing & business advice. This is what I wrote on there:

Indy 5 was basically everything you'd expect in an Indiana Jones movie - lots of creative vehicle chases, Nazi punching, puzzle solving, weird relics based on a very generous interpretation of real ancient history, wacky comedic sidekicks, a love-hate relationship with a sardonic woman, etc. etc. etc. So I was surprised to find out it had negative reviews

On read through, all the negative reviews seemed to have one thing in common: for this movie to have succeeded in that reviewer's mind, it needed to both live up to their nostalgia-colored view of the previous movies, while also saying completely different and philosophically deeper than any of them.

Reading those reviews reminded me how often we are so enamored with the amorphous idea of something that it blinds us to what the thing actually is.

What Indiana Jones is is a great franchise that stays true to its premise: a pulpy adventure featuring a guy who loves history setting off unrealistically unimpaired ancient traps to stop Nazis from getting cool treasures before they can go to the Met. Occasionally, it evokes something more emotional than that, but if the "more" is all you're hoping for, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Ironically, that is exactly the lesson the entire series imparts! Time and time again, bad guys become obsessed with relics, not for their context but for what power they are speculated to hold. Time and time again, they are hoisted by their own petard. Meanwhile, time and time again, Indiana Jones learns to see, and enjoy, what's been right in front of him all along.

I'm sure we can all think of things in our own lives that we've elevated past what they are, thereby sucking out all enjoyment of them. If Indy 5 does nothing else, perhaps it can serve as a good reminder to stop doing that.

Anyway, just wanted to put it out there that I found it pretty watchable, and if you missed it in its cinematic run (as did, it seems, a lot of people), you can now stream it on Disney+.

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