Why read (and reread)

Emphasis mine:

But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place? A combination of my own experience and other things I'd read. None of which I could at that moment remember! And eventually I'd forget that Hilbert had confirmed it too. But my increased belief in the importance of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

...

For example, reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-formed.

From Paul Graham. 

For a period of a few years, I stopped reading Graham, or perhaps he wasn't writing as much, I'm not sure which. But recently he's been on some kind of streak.

The Knight of Cups

That's the title of Terrence Malick's next movie, and here's the trailer.

Of course I will rush out to see this at the earliest possible date, but it is amusing how easy it would be, at this point, to make a spoof Malick trailer. I'm surprised no aspiring editor out there has recut some other movie's trailer into a Malick-style trailer, complete with the soaring, lyrical classical music score and whispered voice-over.

The ghost of Long John Silver

Sarah Baird writes of the visual dissonance of seeing new businesses moving into old fast food restaurant spaces in New Orleans.

Lately I’ve been seeking out these puzzles in architectural form throughout New Orleans, where I live, and where numerous new, often independent businesses are popping up inside the shells of old fast food chains. Each time I enter a car rental office, a new Chinese restaurant, or a pharmacy that used to be a fast food restaurant, I find myself unable to shake its familiar ambiance no matter how different the new business may be. Just like I struggled to say ‘yellow’ when a word was written in orange, I stand inside a Taco Bell-turned-Enterprise longing to order a crunch wrap supreme instead of negotiate the price of my economy sedan. It’s cognitive dissonance at its finest.

This deeply rooted attachment to the form and function of fast food chains is, of course, no accident. These companies were early adopters of architectural branding — the process of creating easily recognizable, distinctive buildings that reflect a brand’s “personality” and attract customers through a variety of spatial and lighting techniques. The brick and mortar stylings of drive-thru restaurants — from the golden arches on McDonald’s to the chuckwagon shape of the first Roy Roger’s — are seared not only into our personal memories, but the collective public consciousness.

Once a Taco Bell, now “the city's premiere Korean restaurant”

I experience similar momentary cognitive dissonance when I see a blog that has borrowed a more famous blog's well-known template, something especially common with Tumblr and Wordpress.

Chelsea Peretti: One of the Greats

Jonah Peretti is doing some great things at Buzzed, but his sister Chelsea ended 2014 strong too with this brilliant standup special for Netflix. I saw her perform as an opener for Sarah Silverman a few times at the Largo in Los Angeles when I lived there. She was good then, but this act showcases her after some level ups.

I think all the talk of House of Cards being based on proprietary Netflix viewing habit data is vastly overblown, but I do wonder if all the standup Netflix has funded is based on empirical proof of the repeat viewability of standup comedy (not to mention its relative low cost versus a TV series.