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Weak XLI

9 October 2025

No. 4,909 (cartoon)

If you see something, say something.

Something.

Well spotted!

10 October 2025

Lost Details and Nuances

I like to serve up fresh, juicy nuggets to chew on daily, but today it’s time to refry some flavorous leftovers.

I’m going back to a familiar topic: the enshittification of listening to recorded music. Once upon a time, my friends and I were young and financially poor, but we nevertheless managed to afford pretty good stereo systems. Now, people listen to music in monaural from tiny tinny speakers in their phones. In a way, it’s like going back in time to the sixties, when engineers mixed music to be heard through cheap car radios.

At least contemporary recordings by demanding musicians are amazingly clear ... with the right speakers. In my case, that means expensive headphones. It’s disconcerting to listen to albums I’ve been hearing for decades and discover previously unheard nuances, especially intricate bass lines.

I’m bringing this up again because it just occurred to me that there’s a parallel with my photography. For my second of two reruns, no one can see everything that’s going on with my visual art unless s/he’s looking at my large monitor. Or unless I make a large print, something I’ve never done and probably never will.

And with that, I’m closing the recycling center for the day.

11 October 2025

Robbed of Joy

There’s a new inspirational poster in my favorite toilet stall at the local college.

Comparison Is the Thief of Joy

-Theodore Roosevelt
Staff recommended

The little pearl o’ wisdom is fine, but I have a problem with the attribution: Teddy never said that. As noted on 30 May, the binmen in Flint have “Comparison Is the Thief of Joy” emblazoned on the side of their garbage truck, and were smart enough not to falsely attribute the quote.

And since I just compared the sanitation engineers to some ignorant perfessors, I’ve been robbed of joy. Why, I do believe I’ll have a cocktail rich in joie de vivre to recover.

12 October 2025

Diane Keaton, Photographer

Diane Keaton died yesterday. Almost all the headlines mentioned her role in Annie Hall, but it’s not her thespian excellence I remember from the 1977 movie; it’s the Nikon F2 Photomic she used in her role. That may or may not have been acting; she was a very good photographer.s

I suspect she might have disagreed with my assessment. In the only interview with her I scanned, she said, “I shoot the pictures, but I’m not doing them in any big way. I just like it. I like images.”

And if that ain’t art, then [some clever analogy].

13 October 2025

Columbus Day

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day and/or Columbus Day, depending on who you ask. Some people Columbus say never discovered anything, but I know that’s not true.

Columbus discovered that he was lost.

14 October 2025

Shed

I’ve been looking at the same abandoned shed in the New Mexico desert through the same screened window for years. I was never interested in it visually until today, when I imagined it out of focus and seen through a grid of tiny squares. A sixtieth of a second later I made Shed.

(This is yet another piece that got mangled by the limitations of the Internet; the intricate pattern of the screen morphed into an unpleasant moiré pattern.)

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart