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Imagining Astronauts Overhead

04.28.2022 by M Donaldson // 2 Comments

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Early in the morning — 4:00 AM on the dot — I was woken by a deep but distant rumbling sound. At first, I thought the sub-bass rattle was from one of the formidable car stereos often heard rolling through a busy intersection a mile to the west of my place. But there was no rhythmic consistency, so these weren’t jeep beats.

Then I remembered seeing, previously that day, an alert for a SpaceX launch scheduled just before the rumble eased me out of my sleep. Four astronauts were on their way to the space station. 

I live over 50 miles away in Orlando, and, on a cloudless day, I can see the Cape Canaveral launches on the horizon over my backyard lake. It’s one of my favorite things about living here. But I’ve never heard the sound of a launch from here before, much less get woken by one. Perhaps it was the tranquil evening; the lift-off sounds resting on light winds blowing in my direction. I quickly fell back asleep, imagining astronauts overhead.

There’s a moral conflict when awful people do good things. I love spaceflight — I was hooked ever since I gawked over the first Space Shuttle launch from a pier in Cocoa Beach. So, of course, I’m happy that SpaceX has revitalized the rocket industry and gotten more people excited about space exploration. And, tangentially, I’m thrilled that Tesla made electric cars sexy to the point where every major car company is now invested in plug-in vehicles. But the billionaire behind all of this is a knucklehead. What makes him more awful is that he gets all sorts of ‘passes’ because of his money and influence as a perceived genius. 

Furthermore, his stated aspirations with Twitter show he shares a pervasive, toxic idea with other awful people in the monied class: that rich people should be able to exclusively define free speech as something that excludes the financially privileged from consequences.

I’ll keep cheering on rocket launches, though I simply like rockets, SpaceX or otherwise. And my next car will be an electric one. It won’t be a Tesla.

🔗→ Some great thoughts on this topic from Ezra Klein.

Categories // Commentary Tags // Cape Canaveral, free speech, spaceflight, SpaceX, Tesla

Unhelpful Minimalism

12.06.2018 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

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Stepped outside yesterday afternoon and happened to look toward the easterly sky, and caught the tail end of a SpaceX rocket as it left the atmosphere. We’ve got a great, unobstructed view of Cape Canaveral launches from our house, even though we’re just under 60 miles away. The sky was cloudless, so I wish I had seen it from the beginning. Is there any way to receive alerts for impending rocket launches from the Cape? There are a couple of iPhone apps I’ve tried that supposedly do this, but they don’t work — no notifications received yesterday.⁣⁣⁣ (Dec. 18 Update: the iOS app LaunchTime did send a notification an hour before today’s aborted launch.)

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Read a fine profile on Phillip Glass in the Washington Post, titled If You Think You Know Who Philip Glass Is, You Probably Don’t. ⁣⁣⁣From that article:

Glass also addresses the fallacy that all he does is play the same chords over and over. Certainly the language he developed, unhelpfully labeled ‘minimalism,’ involved subtle variations of similar patterns. But, “It never repeated all the time,” Glass writes in his memoir, “for if it had, it would have been unlistenable.” The chords are constantly shifting and changing; that’s the point. ⁣

Some amusement here at the label of minimalism as ‘unhelpful,’ as most approach the categorization head-on.⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Last night we watched the documentary McQueen (streaming on Amazon Prime): fascinating, heartbreaking.⁣⁣ I learn a lot from documentaries about creative people who I previously knew nothing about.

Watch on YouTube

I’ve started slowly working my way (and it will be slow) through Quietus’s ‘Albums of the Year’ list, a yearly tradition. I’m at 100 and enjoying the album Lekhfa by Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh … we’re off to a good start. (UPDATE: now I’m on to 99, the latest Simian Mobile Disco album, which a treat as well.)⁣⁣⁣⁣

Categories // From The Notebook Tags // Minimalism, Movie Recommendations, Music Recommendations, SpaceX

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8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."

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