John E. Branch Jr.

5th-gen. Texan now in NY. Into tech & culture. All views my own or stolen from admirable sources. (I write, but not for NYT.)

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Even snowy egrets in Florida know the drill for #grwm, aka #GetReadyWithMe. Just check today’s Bing landing page, at https://t.co/qVE7t457h9

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

One of life’s little mysteries is why the end-credit song for Three-Body, the Chinese TV adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, almost exactly quotes a familiar line from Blade Runner.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

I never took a voice class. But I went to school with one!

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

I’m well aware of this because: It’s now 50+ years after Apollo 11, I’m writing and thinking about space, and I’ve got a blasted cold. <burn sizzle grimace wink looney-eye-roll>

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Maybe the biggest surprise of the 1st space race: not that people tired of it but that it led to complaints, ironic but sometimes at least half serious. To wit: “They can put a man on the Moon, but they can’t solve the common cold?!?!”

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

I won’t say you should read more books, but if you read none, you may be a drag to others. The current Economist says this about books and book clubs (at https://t.co/7sFIRztjuP):

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

I think this is partly wrong and partly unbalanced, but it left my head spinning: https://t.co/MqZ3F9jnGN [sub only]

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Seen on the Wired landing page today. Haven’t read it but can guess how it starts.
Step 1—Travel back in time by about a week.
Step 2—Avoid breaking time-travel rules.…

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

This teaser headline appeared in:
A—The Onion
B—The New York Times
C—AI News for Youse
D—Other

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Come to think of it, AIs have written nothing on the subject, good, bad, or indifferent, that I know of. They may have been _prompted_ to write something about their own writing or other form of artistry, but that’s different. Have they no initiative?

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

It’s very hard to keep up and be sure, but for me, all the best stories about AIs venturing into human cultural creation have been written/made by humans. Example: the Coppélia ballet. Balanchine’s version will be up in May at @NYCBallet.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Issues of George are now much wanted, the WSJ says. Too bad it went out of business because not enough people wanted a copy! (A cultural Catch-22, that.) BTW, I worked there briefly, as a copy-editor errant. https://t.co/Cy9xDgsdlL via @WSJ

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Oops! Forgot the link. Novelist @BruceHolsinger, via Tess Pollok and @LAReviewofBooks, is interviewed at https://t.co/ui3jmOiY5s

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Novelist @BruceHolsinger, via Tess Pollok and @LAReviewofBooks, on _not_ using AI in writing.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

The NYT Balance for 3/22/26 Arts section
Pieces (video &/or text) about Antigone: 2
Pieces about BTS: 9
(Exact numbers hard to determine because of crossover between “live coverage” and separately listed articles. [In case you wonder, there was no “live coverage” of Antigone.])

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Theatrical art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was often lovely, atmospheric stuff. Alphonse Mucha, whose Bernhardt posters I’ve seen for decades, didn’t do it all alone. Today I found this, a poster of Alla Nazimova as Hedda Gabler by Sigismund Ivanowski from 1907.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Over the weekend, I saw a man on the train reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Something is strange and ironic about this. My guess is that the practitioners of war no longer think they need to read the book. They think they could write it, and so we get another farrago.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Found a new movie about surveillance, justice, and AI, called Mercy. Looks like it’s about 99% less complicated than Nick Harkaway’s novel Gnomon. OTOH, it has Rebecca Ferguson. #MercyMovie

Also, FWIW, the universe may be less complicated than Harkaway’s novel Gnomon.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Besides, the writing in those shows, complex but clear, is a welcome relief. So is the talent—the high capability—of actors such as Michiel Huisman, Franka Potente, and Sidse Babett Knudsen.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Current talk about Venezuela and Colombia reminds me of a limited TV series called Echo 3. And talk of Greenland and Denmark reminds me of a series called Borgen: Power and Glory.

[John E. Branch Jr. @JEB54]

Some might say this means I watch too much TV. Maybe I do, but I learned things from Echo 3 and from Borgen: Power and Glory that help me understand those parts of the world.