Devs (2020)

In his blog, Scott Aaronson has nailed Devs as a "cultural appropriation," which, all things considered, is a compliment. Aaronson was referring to the culture of quantum computing in particular, but much more is appropriated and is aptly summarised---again, by Aaronson---as existential musings of Aaronson's eleven-year-old self.

Alex Garland (writer, director, and, according to credits, "creator") comes across as a team player, but, on this project, he has denied himself a team. This handicap notwithstanding, the series endures, in large part thanks to its visuals and Sonoya Mizuno's physique. The words she's been programmed to utter fall flat, but her body knows how to be present. Thankfully, the director knows that it knows.

Two facts redeem the series. First, the eleven-year-old Aaronson used to ask good questions; one can look for answers elsewhere. Second, the shortcomings of the story line and the dialogue, flat and stereotypical characters, and factual errors can all be written off as a noisy simulation of a simulation of... Noisy, but still worth living or, at least, examining.

Anne with an E

The series is a cliched soap opera saved by the great Canadian acting. Every character, no matter how minor, is played by an actor worthy of being a lead. Indeed, the lengthy format that is the series enables the creators to dispose of the traditional notion of a lead character. Almost.

As the tenets of a soap opera demand, there ought to be no end in sight. There is plenty of room for season 4.

Columbus (2017)

Some cities are so small that they loom large—over its populace, who sleep at 9pm, over the streets, dark, deserved, over the indoors, belonging to someone else, over the air, indifferent and transmitting the sounds that would only be heard in a place where sounds visit but rarely stay. There are cities so small that they loom large by virtue of embodying the dreams of a man (or a handful) who cared and who faced few obstacles in a place not sedated by tradition.

There are people so large that they need to come to a place that is small in order to rewrite themselves uninhibited and with purpose, instead of being haphazardly overwritten by a metropolis. There are people so large that they need to escape a city that is small in order to write not one but several stories each of which would comprise a life.

Little Women (2019)

There is no one correct way to live one's life. If one is struggling to decide whether to devote one's life to the career, the family, or idle hedonism, one is likely not to be wrong whatever one chooses. In the short term, by virtue of near indifference, one should not be disappointed by any choice. In the medium term, one is unlikely to be able to adhere to the wrong choice for long and will soon reconsider. In the long term, one can find consolation in having lived a life that is, if not optimal, then at least interesting and unconventional. One's many selves (e.g., as viewed from the temporal perspective) likely disagree on what optimum is anyway. Whatever one chooses is likely to please some selves and upset others. The pleased self ought to be promoted.

The cast has been chosen masterfully. Even Meryl Streep's overacting seems oddly appropriate for her episodic part. Actors and actresses have not been chosen for their Hollywood looks. As a result, it is left to the story---not to assortative matching---to reveal who will end up with whom.

The dull persona of Friedrich adds ambiguity to the story. A Frenchman trying to pass for a German or a humourless German trying to pass for a Frenchman---we are never told---he is the one that Jo settles for, as an afterthought, to universal delight. As she admits it to her editor, her first choice had been taken. She may end up being a better writer for that, more open to the world.

The picture is timeless, for its story celebrates the universal: freedom and the plurality of aspirations.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

“We are trying to give the world positive ways of dealing with their feelings,” says Tom Hanks (as Fred Rogers) in the movie, as well as in the trailer. These words can be the motto of civilisation, which is perpetual discovery of better ways to help individuals channel their feelings into creative, positive-sum pursuits.

In the movie, Fred Rogers is ever present. Given you cannot be somewhere else, you might as well make the most of it and be where you are. This is a nontrivial act to come to terms to and execute.

Matthew Rhys (here, portraying Lloyd Vogel) affirms himself as an everyman leading man.

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

Vladimir Samoylov times his narration so immaculately and inhabits the characters and the author's mind so well that the audiobook is best listened to at its intended speed.

The Master and Margarita is not many things. It is not as depressing as Russian literature is supposed to be. Indeed, the book is optimistic. The Master and Margarita is not magical realism, at least as long as magical realism is interpreted as sloppy surrealism. The book is not a satire, at least as long satire deploys political jibes to solicit approving nodes from ideological brethren. Indeed, the book is solicitous of no one but, perhaps, the drawer. The Master and Margarita is a private project that attempts to construct a causal system that would explain the events that are significant for humans and that would justify optimism.

The novel is humanist in that it celebrates individuals; it celebrates life. If one is in the business of cataloguing individual motives as being either good or evil, and one acknowledges the evil, then one no longer can be a humanist, for most individuals harbour evil, as well as good; one no longer can celebrate life as one finds it. Then, a humanist faces the choice between committing acts of evil in order to alter the life as one finds it and accepting both the good and the evil as parts of the human condition that deserves celebration. The latter option is the logically consistent one and is the one chosen by Bulgakov.

Individuals are selfish and yet not without a pro-social spark, an idiosyncratic idea of justice. Bulgakov the humanist celebrates the world in which each individual follows both motives---the selfish and the prosocial one---with abandon, without anyone telling this individual how to resolve the tension between the two motives and without anyone rebuking him for not being pro-social enough or pro-social in the right way.

John Roemer's Kantianism captures features of this philosophy. Each individual does unto others not as these others may wish that be done onto them (nor as some philosopher might wish) but as he himself wishes others did onto him. Under some conditions (all-positive or all-negative externalities), such behaviour leads to Pareto efficient outcomes. Under other conditions, it does not do so. What matters (to Bulgakov) is that everyone live his life to the fullest.

Robert Sugden proposes a notion of a responsible individual, an individual who has no regrets, who cares about the freedom to make mistakes more than he cares about being protected from mistakes. Bulgakov (in The Master and Margarita) advocates the notion of a just society as a responsible society, a society that maximises the freedom of individuals without passing judgment on the virtue of the actions that this freedom enables.

Ainars Mielavs

(Mūzikas nams Daile, 29 December 2019)

Mielavs is a musician---a city musician, perhaps, for he treats music as a complex emergent phenomenon, a collaborative effort, akin to a city quarter, that cannot be planned and mastered by each participant in isolation. Mielavs's voice is just one of several instruments in the band, and is more for it.

He loathes repeating himself. It must be that he has not figured out life yet. He wants it to continue.

The first of the three new songs he sang will become a hit.