blogpost

2024: In Review

January 2, 2025January 2, 2025 ericryangrant

INTRO

If 2023 was a year of big, obvious changes, 2024’s changes felt more subtle. Less of the big, large life events like welcoming our first child or changing jobs, but slow changes like watching Silas take his first steps, say his first dozens of words, and Maya and I making our little life changes to keep up with a 1-year-old and live our wonderful lives here in Brooklyn.

For me, that’s the easiest way to make sense of the year, through Silas. Through how much growth there is between 7 months and 19 months and the changes that Maya and I made (and are making) as parents. Sometimes in writing these reflections, I think so little has changed over the course of a year since much is subtle or undetected as the days go by. But this couldn’t be different when looking at that lens through how much Silas has grown. And so the year becomes full(er) of life. Happily so.

We had some of our favorite moments this year as parents—playing with a more sentient kiddo and taking him to see family and to Madison and rampaging through the playgrounds of Cobble Hill (and the restaurants). But we also our scariest moments too; as Silas got sick in November with several viruses at once and had a series of febrile seizures leading to us spending Thanksgiving week in the pediatric ICU (he’s totally recovered and fine, though it certainly has added some parental anxiety in our mix that I’m not sure will ever fully recede).

We ended 2024 just the same way we ended in 2023, in Rincón, Puerto Rico with our family and Maya’s sister family. A great trip—and so much fun to see Silas get to waddle across the sand and play in the ocean. We’ll start 2025 with a visit from my mom and sister, and then I’ll turn 37 years old. An age that feels young enough to still do so much and old enough to know what limits there might be on that contribution (personal, professional, human, etc…)

In other thoughts, this blog of mine has gotten a bit stale. The last three of four posts are Years in Review (dating back to 2021), so perhaps this coming year I’ll think of a new way to use this online space, which may mean not continuing with the Years in Review. We’ll see. This is number 11 (I think?). I do enjoy going back to read previous years thoughts but perhaps there’s another way to do this. Leaving it open to revisit in late 2025. See you again, then. Otherwise, here’s the breakdown of 2024.

2024 FAVORITES

Favorite New Thing

Silas ages 7-19 months

It’s not technically a “new” thing (and Silas was my favorite thing from last year when he was really a “new” thing, so this feels a bit like chating) but this year was a bunch of new things for Silas and for us as parents. Looking back at last December and seeing pics of him at 7 months it’s remarkable how much he’s grown this year. And even with the fear of this entire section of the blogpost being just updates on Silas and his growth, my favorite new thing is the progress that happens between 7 and 19 months.

Just this year, Silas learned to: stand, walk, run, talk, animal sounds, “no”, foods, TV shows, who I am (“dada”) and a million more things. Rather than watching him see the world, being with him feels like a real interaction with personality. So much fun. So much drama. Never a dull moment really, several of which were spent chasing him down hallways or playgrounds.

Here’s a side-by-side at the beginning of the year and the end!

If I had to pick a non-Silas related favorite new thing, I think maybe I’d go with this Longform podcast retro (Vulture). My favorite podcast ended this year and I loved reading some retrospects on its influence. It was really my (and many’s) introduction to podcasts, well before they was such a big thing. And the three Longform hosts were doing things that many weren’t—most of all sticking to one theme that was super niche and not trying to do anything like a pivot along the way. I loved it. You can read my own toast to Longform here.

Other favorites: Oh Mary! Broadway play, 99% Invisible’s series on The Power Broker, the best meal (a former category) of the year at Joe Beef in Montreal, A series of interviews with Bob Dylan roadies,

Favorite Book Read in 2024

Pulphead (John Jeremiah Sullivan)

A book of essays over a decade old makes this year’s top pick. I really loved diving into the world that Sullivan conjures up against a wide variety of topics (examples: a Christian rock festival, Michael Jackson, the author’s house being used in a TV show). Each essay carried the same voice and attention to detail across them, but with a unique flair and telling. I was pulled in tight to each and every story in here even if I had no care about the subject going in.

My expectations here were high. I had never heard of John Jeremiah Sullivan but as the Longform podcast was ending, each of the three hosts picked a special guest for their final episode and Evan picked this writer—one he had tried to get for the many years of the show. This was high, high praise in itself, so I had to check out the book. It did not disappoint. Excited to read more of Sullivan’s journalism from here.

You can see all of my 2024 books read here.

Other favorites: The Anomaly (Herve Le Tellier), Libra (Don DeLillo), The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel), The Memory Palace (Nate DiMeo)

Favorite 2024 Movie

A Real Pain

I’ll note that I still have a lot of 2024 movies to see that are on my list but I’m ending the year with Jesse Eisenberg’s ‘A Real Pain’ as my favorite.

The movie is well-shot, well-casted, and certainly well-soundtracked (all Chopin). Kieran Culkin is getting a lot of praise for his work (and rightfully so) as the misfit, depressed cousin of the main character as they go back to Poland on a sort of grief tour. But the movie also does more than just offer him a supporting actor role, it goes into how we deal with our relationships of the past and the present, and most importantly, the confluence of these. The cousins have grown apart, their unique tie (the grandmother) has passed, and now they’re pushed back again where all of that meets.

The movie doesn’t tie everything up neatly, which I enjoyed. Nor does it rely on tropes you have may have seen from Holocaust movies. I thought Eisenberg wrote a smart script and shot a great movie—that was enjoyable to watch and sensitive enough to make you think about the relationships mentioned above.

Other favorites: Juror #2

Favorite 2024 TV Show

Langston Kerman’s ’Bad Poetry’

One of my favorite standup specials in recent years was shot at one of the best venues I could imagine: Chicago’s The Green Mill bar (AND he shot it from the stage behind the bar, not the stage upfront).

I think Langston Kerman’s gift here is that his punchlines come from all angles, and his joke construction is rarely the same. He goes from slapstick puns to talking over funny recordings, to telling long stories about family life. Really enjoyed the range here and clearly just a super talented standup—but maybe more so a talented comedy writer. Reminds me certainly of John Mulaney who directed the special.

Other favorites: Slow Horses season 4, English Teacher

Favorite 2024 Article

American Vulcan (Tablet Magazine – August 2024)

Probably my single most recommended piece of content this year was this profile of entrepreneur Palmer Luckey. And luckily for us, it’s super longform. Luckey is a controversial figure and is not shy about confronting that controversy (mainly stemming from being kicked out of Facebook after it bought his Oculus technology for billions of dollars), but he also approaches it with so much self-awareness it’s remarkable. He knows its not healthy to dwell on things, but dwell he does. Including dwelling on the Faustian bargain of him not saying anything keeps the technology he loves (VR) moving in a better direction.

And that’s just part of the story. The other is how he made Oculus in the first place (fascinating), his personal life (fascinating), and his now second company, Anduril, which is going to massively beat out Oculus in value as a private defense contractor (fascinatingly relevant). Longform is never better than when it has a compelling main character that you can tell the story of over a large swath of time and this one does not disappoint (aided by Luckey not doing many of these articles).

Other favorites: Burning CDs and Printing Lyric Sheets for Bob Dylan, and another Dylan one – interview with Suzi Ronson, Anatomy of a Murder (Atavist Magazine)

Favorite 2024 Album

Hurray For The Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive

This was a good year for music (my favorite song list is probably longer than many years past now) but this album was on repeat for much of the second half. I like every song on it from the great ‘Alibi’ that kicks it off to the end of Ogallala (with the chants of “to watch the world burn”). Alynda Segarra covers a small continent worth of material on this record: from grief, lost poets, cross-dressers, drug use, etc… And across all of that, the music is this perfect little slice of Americana, with all all the spunk and rebellion that should accompany that genre hitting that content. And still it too provides the little messages of hope that the artist needs to get by. That their heroes needed. Can’t say enough good things about this one—and I suspect I’ll be listening to some of its tunes for years to come.

Other favorites: Pearl Jam – Dark Matter, Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

Favorite 2024 Song

St. Vincent – ‘Broken Man’

I heard St. Vincent say that a lot of her 2024 album was written on explorations that grew out of little riffs and starts. And that ‘Broken Man’ was one of those. It’s easy to see that in the song’s first few bars, a bangy little jaunt that joins St. Vincents harmonious gnarl of rebellion. And the song kind of seems like it’ll carry on like that. The second verse continues what the first started and we learn we’re lyrically dealing with a broken person whose looking for some answers. And then boom we get this lick of guitar feedback and a bit of call of response. The song is off to its own races then. I had no idea where it was going and half the times I re-listen to the song I still can’t remember where it goes. Just the brutal ask of “who the hell do you think I am” over and over again, knowing the answer that comes is going to that same brokenness explored early one. It’s one of St. Vincent’s best and most urgent songs, fitting its own title, the title of the album (All Born Screaming) and “clothes on fire” video that accompanies it. I loved a lot of songs this year but I don’t think any single one hit me as much as this one did.

Other favorites: Hurray for the Riff Raff – ‘Alibi’, ‘Buffalo’ and ‘Hourglass’ ,Waxahatchee – ‘Evil Spawn’ and ‘Tigers Blood’, Pearl Jam – ‘Scared of Fear’, MJ Lenderman – ‘Wristwatch’, Sleater-Kinney – ‘Needlessly Wild’, Alkaline Trio – ‘Teenage Heart’

Favorite 2024 Podcast Episode

Brendan O’Brien interview (Rick Beato’s Youtube)

Counting this one as a podcast which I think is fair! Brendan O’Brien is the producer of many, many famous albums, particularly rock ones from the 90s and 2000s. He worked with the Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Gaslight Anthem and many others. But for me the thing that makes this interview so great (and he does very, very few of these) is him talking about the work he did with Pearl Jam in the 1990s. He produced their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5h albums (Vs. through Yield). O’Brien is the infamous person who told Eddie Vedder that Betterman was going to be a huge hit so Vedder made sure it was left off of Vs. Stories like that are abound in this interview, but most of it just about loving your craft, obsessing over details, and getting very lucky when working with big bands doing amazing records. There’s also a lot of talk over gear and many “inside baseball” things about producing records I didn’t understand but definitely appreciated. Beato has a youtube channel with loads of content but he’s been doing great interviews with aging people in rock and roll (another one with Mike Mills that was also a lot of fun)

Other favorites: Roman Mars Describes Chicago As It Is, Revisionist History – John Birch vs the PTA, Zach Harris on Longform,

Favorite Place Visited in 2024

Madison, WI

Not a new place at all but my first time back in 5 years and Maya and I got to bring Silas. We had amazing weather to run around the town with, and it was a supreme joy to watch Silas barrel down State Street and hang at the Terrace. Truly a new kind of memory on top of the wonders of old.

(My favorite new place was probably Verona, Italy, where my mom, sister, and I got to do a day trip and a Roman history walking tour. Really beautiful old town with lots of remnants still from its days in the empire (including their beautiful colosseum).

PHOTOS

And lastly, some favorite photos from this last year!

Long Live Longform.

July 31, 2024 ericryangrant

The best podcast of the last decade ended last month.

This is totally subjective, of course, and I’m not going to spend much time defending the assertion.

What I can say is that it was the only podcast I listened to each and every episode of, often the very same Wednesday it was posted. It had a 12 year run. It rarely and barely strayed from its original concept: an hour-long interview with a journalist, writer, editor, creative, etc…Anyone who produced longform work.

Longform being imperative. It had to have substance. Depth. Meaning. The work often bordered on the obsessive. They were projects that lasted years. Sometimes the guest, so burnt out from their obsession, seemed to not even want to talk about it. While the format was familiar, the conversations were ranging.

The three hosts took turns doing the interviews, each with their own style. Others have described the unique styles of the three—Aaron, Max, and Evan—but each was willing to let a conversation take its necessary course. To dive deep into craft through their own form of strategic interrogation. They rarely made it about them (though based on the quality of their individual podcast pursuits, they are natural storytellers too)

I remember precisely when I started listening. It was 2015 and I was on a beach in Vancouver not doing a whole lot of anything. I popped some headphones in and turned on an unheard-of podcast. (This was well before podcasts were as popular as now. I have no idea how I came to it and why I started on episode #130).

Episode #130 of Longform was already a few years into the podcast’s journey. It was an interview with a journalist named Mac McClelland (who has since changed their name). I was totally unprepared for what came next. The episode was a meditation on trauma. A deep, almost painful conversation about what happened to the author investigating a story. At times, silence occupied what seemed like minutes. It was not the polished, heavily edited interviews that were common at the time.

I was enthralled. Not only was it a great conversation but it was one of the first times I had heard a deep exploration of the person behind the journalism. The story of the story. I immediately started listening to all the previous episodes. And then each new one after.

In today’s crowded podcast ecosystem, it isn’t nearly as rare for one to be so niche-focused like Longform was. With so many podcasts come so many corners of the human (and non-human) experience. But it’s still very rare to have done it for 12 years, week in and week out, and to capture some of the best authors doing the best work over that time. It introduced me to countless writers, publications, and other podcasts. It truly featured the best of the best of their craft.

Singularly, what it did better than anything else I’ve listened to—the reason I’ll miss it the most—was it as a podcast entirely dedicated to the pursuit of humans telling stories. And the lengths we’ll go to (sometimes that we have to go to) in order to tell the best, most enduring ones.

2023: In Review

December 24, 2023January 2, 2024 ericryangrant

Intro

Wow! 2023 was one for the books. Quick headlines: got TWO new jobs, moved into a new apartment, finished grad school (after 3.5 years)……and, oh yeah, we had a baby!

Silas Harry Grant joined us in May this year and he’s wrapping up 2023 as a healthy, happy, cuddly little boy. We love him and we’re pretty sure he loves us if smiles are any indication. Maya was an amazing trooper through a rough pregnancy and some curveballs near the end of term (the little guy didn’t want to stay in one position). She delivered our little dude at just under 7 pounds and we spent our first nights as parents overlooking Central Park.

Parenthood has been how I expected it…..in the sense that it couldn’t be anything like how I expected it. Full of little moments of immeasurable joy and long hours of exhaustion. The first few months kicked our butts at time, though we were running on new-parent energy. Then we crossed our fingers and did what we could to get him to to sleep and nap regularly. And once he did, and we established a bit more of our routine through the days, things started to get easier. And then new challenges came—teething, ear infections, etc…But he’s also learned a whole slew of new tricks like smiling, rolling, scooting and, his favorite, watching our cat Rizzo do her zoomies around the apartment.

It’d be impossible to extricate anything that happened this year from becoming a parent, the highs and the lows. Everything seems to have been a mirror off of that, and Maya and I couldn’t be happier with how things look as we end the year. There’s so much growth ahead for Silas and for us as parents. I think I’m only beginning to understand the transformation that parenthood has had on me—so lots to explore in years to come.

As I wrote in the lede, I did have two new jobs this year—which I’ll write a bit more about in the ‘Professional’ section below.

And I got to end the year with another big accomplishment: finishing my Masters program. I graduated officially on December 15th and found out that I got an ‘A’ on my final project—a 29-page paper analyzing advertising performance based on customizations. A real way to wrap up the three-and-a-half-year journey of learning Data Science, and really getting back into mathematics. Super happy to have done the intense Learning journey, and even happier to be done.

A very memorable year for my family and me has nearly come to a close—and we’ll get to see that closing on the beach in Puerto Rico! Wishing you (whoever is reading this) the best in the year ahead & beyond.

Favorites

Favorite New Thing of 2023

Silas Harry Grant

See above. The epic everything-ness of bringing a child into this world. Silas has been everything we could have hoped for and more. Here’s some pics through 7 months of the boy we call bubba.

Other favorites: Jittery White Guy Music blog (honorable mention for this—I’ve struggled to find many folks who have a similar musical overlap as I do and then I found this blogger, a 60s-something retired lawyer. So that’s cool, I guess). Also, the Neighborhoods Substack –exploring NYC one neighborhood at a time.

Favorite Book Read in 2023

The Wager

David Grann’s newest book is about shipwreck, murder, and mutiny…And, as many of his books before (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Lost City of Z) was a great read, particularly in my most landlocked and early morning walking weeks (would highly recommend the audiobook).

I told many people about this book which has a great plot headline (was there really a mutiny after a British naval ship wrecked off the coast of Chile?)—but the book was packed with incredible details about the powerful Navy, how much of naval life has stuck in our vernacular (toe the line, pipe down, etc..), and the details of life aboard a ship, or marooned on an island.

Other favorites: The Devil in the Grove, All The King’s Men, The Grapes of Wrath, American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Favorite 2023 Movie

Oppenheimer

I loved Oppenheimer and thought Nolan did a great job capturing the complexity of the figure—finding his place in modern science, in political circles, in leadership, and in the many years after the bomb where he was one of the most famous men on Earth. Cillian Murphy did an excellent job portraying all of the above—and the rest of the cast was solid.

The scene with the bomb will be one of the most memorable in film history I think (at least this period) and I found it to be a more emotional movie than one might expect (though Nolan’s filmmaking usually tries to put humans at least in line with its plots).

Most of all, it felt important that Nolan (or anyone with enough clout to make a longform movie) made this movie about the figure (felt similarly to Killers of the Flower Moon being made for exposure, what a story! It just wasn’t as good of a film for my money). Oppenheimer’s complexity is a perfect thought experiment for those achieving infamy by pushing the bounds of science (a theme extended in one of my favorite articles of the year on Thomas Midgley Jr.)

Other favorites: Past Lives, The Killer

Favorite 2023 TV Show

The Bear Season 2

Chicago’s own The Bear had a killer, albeit brief, season one breakout (was probably my runner-up last year)—and Season 2, thank goodness, came quickly after. It brought back its great characters, great shots of the city, great soundtrack (for me, anyway)—but Season 2 took its stories outside of the restaurant and deep into the lives, problems, and histories of its chefs (and non-chefs). This season of The Bear kept me on my feet, never knowing what each episode would bring, or even the format, location, or length of each episode. It set a high bar for a Season 3, and was my favorite show in what I found to be a fairly low quality TV year.

Other favorites: Party Down Season 3 (especially this episode), Beef, How To With John Wilson Season 3

Favorite 2023 Article

The Trillion-Gallon Question (Christopher Cox, NYTimes)

If the visual at the top of this article doesn’t intrigue you, I don’t know what to say. It’s amazing—and puts the sheer power of water at the center of this. For many years, we’ve tamed the power of that natural resource, through dams and other infrastructure. But is that infrastructure ready for the heavier and more powerful storms that we’ll likely see in the next decades?

You’re right if you said “No” and so this article plays out much like another favorite from years ago on the big earthquake eventually coming for the west coast. On the dam front, we have made some moves like adding spillways and extra capacity into systems, but there’s also a long trail of bureaucracy to getting these things done, and millions of people who may be forced to evacuate homes if we can’t figure out alternative ways to keep water back after massive storms. A scary article—but an important one.

A note: You’ll see below I’ve added eight other favorites to this category—and that list seems to grow each year. Longform journalism is really incredible—for those that like to read books, often these are just as intensely moving and impactful as the best of longform nonfiction, consider reading more! You can start by paying for an indie publication like The Atavist!

Other favorites: The Mirai Confessions: Three Young Hackers Who Built a Web-Killing Monster Finally Tell Their Story (Andy Greenberg, Wired), The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes (Steven Johnson, NYTimes Magazine), Emergencies, Frameshifts and What They Tell Us About Our Place In The World (Spencer Scott, Substack), Dead Reckoning (Robert Kolker, The Atavist), Who Killed The Fudge King (Tom Donaghy, The Atavist), The Botched Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer (Robert Kolker, NYT Magazine)

Favorite 2023 Album

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

This almost feels unfair since it’s a covers album—and not just any covers album but a song by song remake of one of the most infamous live performances ever, Dylan Going Electric. Cat Power, who herself has several covers in my top whatever of songs all-time, does them serious justice, particularly the Side A which is the acoustic set before Dylan changed (his) music forever.

Cat Power uses her voice to take the songs beyond simple covers and convey some of the emotion that Dylan often does live but that gets tumbled in the rag and bone shop of his own voice. It’s a joy to listen to a sort of modern incarnation of the set and it’s the only album this year I pre-ordered months before it came out.

Other favorites: the record (Boygenius), Hackney Diamonds (The Rolling Stones), The Window (Ratboys), Rat Saw God (Wednesday), The Price of Progress (The Hold Steady)

Favorite 2023 Song

Boygenius – ‘Satanist‘

Probably the runner up for album of the year (plus the EP that followed), Boygenius had like four songs in my Spotify wrapped but none got as much play time as ‘Satanist’ (‘Cast Iron Skillet’ by Jason Isbell was my top played 2023 song for whatever that’s worth—though this song was my top played overall in 2023 by a mile).

Satanist is a little pop punk ditty with some shredding guitar (see Julian Baker go off here on the SNL performance)—and one of the few Boygenius songs that has writing credits for all three ‘boys’, with each takes turn singing a verse. The lyrics are playfully darkly romantic, catchy, whimsical, etc….all backed by a few power chords and good enough to call in Dave Grohl for occasional drumming duties.

Other favorites: Jason Isbell – ‘Cast Iron Skillet’, The National – ‘Once Upon a Poolside’, Youth Lagoon – ‘Rabbit’, The Hold Steady ‘Grand Junction’, The Gaslight Anthem – ‘Michigan, 1975’

Favorite 2023 Podcast Episode

The Six Triple Eight (Memory Palace)

The amazing story of unlikely heroes in WWII—a group compromised almost entirely of black women who were deployed to Birmingham in the middle of the war to help sort mail. Which sounds easy—except that sorting had been disregarded for years and millions upon millions of letters sat in a warehouse completely unorganized. The group was given six months to sort through what’s estimated to be about 17 million pieces of mail.

Working at a sorting pace of 65,000 pieces of mail a day, including things like homemade bake goods that had gone bad and letters address to “my brother” or “Private Smith”, the unit had to keep up with where soldiers had been moved to in order to get the right mail to the right people. Everyone considered it impossible to get this done in the 6 months they were given…..and yet they got it done in 3.

An amazing story about some of the heroism and hard work that often goes overlooked with an operation like a war, and the people who never got the honor or respect or accolades they deserved for factors like race and gender.

Other favorites: Revisionist History’s 6-part series on guns in America (particularly episode 6), Finn and the Bell (Rumble Strip Vermont)

Favorite 2023 Place Visited

Cooperstown, NY

We didn’t make it to a ton of new places this year, but the few new places were fantastic. We went out upstate with friends at the beginning of the year and did a Satruday in Cooperstown, a nice little upstate town, edged out by a big lake. It would be like the hundreds of others of that type if not for the Baseball Hall of Fame—and the town’s frank obsession with the sport. Everything in Cooperstown (at least in the downtown area) is baseball—from the coffee shops to liquor stores—and I couldn’t get enough. It’s undoubtedly worth a trip for the fans among us—and Maya and friends were nice enough to indulge me.

Pictures

2022: In Review

December 29, 2022 ericryangrant

2022 felt like a return to some normalcy from the previous two years, despite the world still working its way through a pandemic-upended existence. I look back at the previous two years and see that this year’s ‘Travel’ list below has grown substantially (to something like 15 roundtrip flights and a few driving trips). All of this just meant we got to see more family & friends this year which Maya and I cherished; and it was wonderful to flip back through all the year’s photos in preparation for writing this.

We got to spend a few weeks out west with friends in the Bay Area, got back to Chicago four times (three weddings!), got to visit my sister on campus on St. Louis, and made it back to Europe for the first time in three years (London, Cardiff, Amsterdam for me, Maya did 2 weeks just in Amsterdam).

This was the first full year of Maya and my marriage. We planned to head back to our wedding venue (a restaurant) for our anniversary only to not be able to make it because Maya was feeling the effects of her pregnancy. A good reason to skip out! So we’re looking to 2023 as the next big step in our lives as we’ll (hopefully) welcome our healthy baby boy into this world.

We had already added another member of our family this year when we brought home a new kitten in January. See (lots) more about Rizzo below! I changed jobs in April for what was a great opportunity then and has been, well, not as great as promised but still the right move for me. Working at Coinbase (and in crypto) has not been the sunniest place to be in 2022, but hoping for better days ahead. And I really like my job and my team (more below on that too).

What else? We’re ending our year with a bit of a staycation in NYC and have made the most out of what is actually a great time to be here—going into the city for shows and museum visits, spending cold days in movie theaters, and walking around on cold, empty winter streets (though we did just walk by Oscar Issac just the other day!).

I have a lot to be grateful for in 2022. Thank you to everyone that was part of it. I have no doubt that 2023 will be a world-changing year for me and I can’t wait!

Favorites

Favorite New Thing of 2022

Rizzo the cat!

On a cold day in January, Maya and I rented a car and drove to an animal shelter in Soho to see about adopting a kitten. They had just gotten six or seven kittens in and asked if we could come back after a few hours. We walked off to see (the great) The Tragedy of Macbeth at the (great) Angelika theater and sauntered back to find that the kittens were ready to be adopted (if we wanted).

We went in to their holding room and one kitten, a small black girl, reached her paw out to Maya (she was still heavily sedated from being spayed just a day or two prior) and it was love at first touch. We brought that cat home, whom we named Rizzo after my favorite Chicago Cub. As we were driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, she popped her head out of the carrier for the first time since the shelter to fully take in her new borough. Now she’s a Brooklyn cat for life.

Since then, Rizzo has brought us immense joy and has quickly become my constant companion (to Maya’s dismay) as I work from home. Some pics below and a video of her playing her favorite game (jumping and chasing hair ties around our apartment).

Other Favorites: What Makes This Song Stink Youtube series, Maine blueberries, getting back into weightlifting

Favorite Book Read in 2022

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Maya and I both really enjoyed this one and heard back from several folks we recommended it to that they felt the same. Gabrielle Zevin’s story of two video game makers (and their producer) is a trip through time, a lesson on video game design, and a study in characters who commit everything to their art form, especially when that makes them contrarians or outcasts.

It’s a really enjoyable, fairly quick read that has plenty of humor in it, emotional connectivity, and ups and downs through the characters’ lifetime. If you’re put off at all by a plot revolving around video games (and video game culture), I assure you that’s where it takes its base but it goes far beyond there (the title, for instance, is from Macbeth!).

Other Favorites: Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel), Why Fish Don’t Exist (Lulu Miller), Red Notice (Bill Browder)

Favorite 2022 Movie

Everything Everywhere All At Once

There’ve been a few theater-going experiences I remember vividly over the last ten years or so. This is the third—the others being Whiplash and Arrival. The theme with these three specific experiences—amongst dozens of other cinema trips—is an utter ignorance of what is about to be unspooled in front of me over the next two or so hours. That feeling, that total surrender to whatever’s coming while realizing that it’s the work of utter talent makes those trips so memorable, the films all the more captivating.

EEAAO was just like this, though the warning signs were there. The Internet was already on this one (“unlike anything you’ve seen”, “hard to describe”, etc…) and I think if I had to have waited any longer to see it, it may have been spoiled. But I was lucky to see it early on—on a random Monday morning in April in between jobs—and it wow’d me something big.

The totally unknowning-ness of what the next scene(s) would bring (action? family drama? comedy?). The Daniels really put together a movie with everything and did so cohesively. Can’t wait to see what they do next.

Other Favorites: Vengeance, Tàr, Armageddon Time

Favorite 2022 TV Show

Severance

For all the critics’ takes of the last decade that TV is now as good as movies are/were, I haven’t quite bought in. I still prefer the tightness of movies to the hours-long slog of most TV series (and each season being something like a sequel). But Severance (Season 1) managed to be not only tight (not a lot of wasted moments), but suspenseful, well acted, and exceptionally well directed. And it never seemed to drag on.

I’m probably in the minority here of not wanting another season (though I feel that way about most shows), but I’m sure I’ll be excited when it’s back. Hopefully they can keep the great shots of the workplace (the colors!) and the pace of season 1. If not, the idea behind the show is as interesting of a premise as we’ve seen and worthy of the central question—is severing yourself worth it? What’s the fallout? What does that tell us about the future to come?

Other favorites: Bad Sisters, Severance, The Rehearsal, The Bear

Favorite 2022 Article

‘Did the FBI Steal Nine Tons of Civil War Gold?‘ (Chris Heath, The Atlantic)

This one is both fun and infuriating, but an all-around good read. It’s got treasure hunters, state and national land ownership rights, the FBI, and, at the end of it, the great question that the title begs.

This may spoil the article just a bit (probably not though), but there isn’t a resolution in this case. What we do know—what we get from the article—is that several people are/were very sure that there was buried gold in a specific cave in Pennsylvania, and the FBI took this seriously enough to plan a whole dig there.

What happened during and after that dig, however, is not just unknown but rather suspicious. So much in fact that the treasure hunters who began the journey are still on the case.

Read this one for a great old-time thriller, I really enjoyed it. And I thoroughly enjoyed all the other ones here. I read or listened to (mostly listened to, through the Audm app) hundreds of these long articles this year and saved each of the ones below to my file immediately after finishing.

Other favorites: ‘It Was Just a Kayaking Trip. Until It Upended Our Lives’ (Jon Mooallem, New York Times), ‘Is Selling Shares in Yourself the Way of the Future?’ (Nathan Heller, New Yorker), ‘True Grit’ (J.B. Mackinnon, Atavist), ‘Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It’ (Sean

Favorite 2022 Album

(tie) Gang of Youths – angel in realtime // Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up Here

I get to make the rules around here so I’m making this a tie. If I really, really had to pick, I think the BCNR album was a bigger deal for me (more plays, more awe of them making this album) but this year was another one where Gang of Youths was the most played artist and getting to see them in Brooklyn was a major highlight. AND I think their ‘angel in realtime’ album is spectacular. Both these albums had 3 tracks in my Spotify top 10 this year and it looks like the entirety of the GoY album is in my top 100.

I had never heard of Black Country, New Road before this year and happened to catch a positive review of their album before checking it out. I was floored. It sounds like nothing I’ve heard before—part jazz, part monotonous singer/lyrical wizard, part eclectic rock, part a whole bunch of other musical experimentation (read: lots of instruments). Some of the songs somehow come together in a poppy way, others remain esoteric enough to be less accessible but still really, really good. Give it a listen (start with the songs below).

On the Gang of Youths side, this album may not be as good as their last (which is a 10/10 album for me) but after hundreds of listens, I’m confident it’s a great step forward for them. They’re proving they should be a band for many years to come and Dave, the lead singer, is just getting more and more creative in his approach, his lyrics, and the band is surrounding him with richer music. Their live shows prove just how much juice this band has and how big they can be!

Other favorites: Wet Leg – Wet Leg, and that might be it. Man I really don’t listen to much new music anymore!

Favorite 2022 Song

Black Country, New Road – ‘Concorde’

Hard to pick a favorite from the two albums above but ‘Concorde’ feels like the winner—and was the most played in my Spotify this year. It’s the most accessible song from the ‘Ants From Up Here’ album and carries through the lyrical theme of airplanes as romance, and the musical theme of jazz-y exploration. And the music video is about as weird as you might expect if you listen to the full album.

Other favorites: Black Country, New Road – ‘Good Will Hunting’, Gang of Youths – ‘goal of the century’, Angel Olsen – ‘Big Time’, Porridge Radio – ‘Back To the Radio’

Favorite 2022 Podcast Episode

‘Third Eye Blind’ (Bandsplain)

Look, this may be a surprise pick for anyone who hasn’t paid attention to Third Eye Blind since the 90s (I wouldn’t expect most to). But here are two truths: (1) their debut album is a perfect album and (2) that this Bandsplain episode captures this truth.

It’d be more accurate to say not that this is necessarily my favorite full podcast episode but the time where that first album is discussed (59:00-1:57:17) is my favorite hour of podcast content this year.

Typically, Yasi (the host) will play 1-3 songs per album when doing an artist on Bandsplain, and yet she—rightfully—plays six songs from their debut, including the final four tracks which are just excellent.

The best moment of all? That shriek of “The background!?! The f*cking Background!” at 1:36:48. It’s just the exact right reaction at that point of getting all the way through this album only to find that the last few tracks are better than anything that has already come. The fact that the album is so much better than anything else the band did, well, makes it all worth the expletives and incredulity this episode is riddled with. And that moment is before she even gets to ‘Motorcycle Drive By’ or ‘God of Wine’ to fully close things out!

Other favorites: In Triplicate (Revisionist History), Madame G (Episode 1, Persona: The French Deception), ‘Radiohead’ (Bandsplain, 2 parts), ‘Weather Conditions above Mount Fuji’ (Memory Palace)

Favorite 2022 Place Visited

Cardiff, Wales

I believe this was the only new place I visited all year! But I have to say, Cardiff was a delight. I got to venture to Wales from London with my cousin Rob for a few days. We got an Airbnb just outside the main part of town but an easy walk and right around the town’s main castle and big park. The city was abuzz for the weekend which we found out later was because it was Pride weekend. We caught a bit of the parade and spent our nights out at bars with excellent cover bands (of which there were many).

We did a short hike one day and a stop at a pub outside the city (getting only a little bit lost). We visited a seaside town where Rob’s dad hailed from and overall just got a small glimpse of what looks to be a beautiful country (Wales). Would recommend anyone who makes it to the UK to try and get to Wales if they can.

Of course, visiting some of the more familiar places were great too! Amsterdam came right after Cardiff and was definitely a highlight as Maya and I got to enjoy summer there—biking around, eating great cheese, and drinking good beer!

Pictures

2021: In Review

December 30, 2021 ericryangrant

General Commentary

It’s year NINE doing these reviews and, as usual, it’s been a reward going back to previous years to check on my musings, favorites, and photos. Combining this write-up and the “meditations” exercise I’ve done for the same span of time can actually be a fair amount of work, so I really do mean “reward” in the previous sentence.

2021 in some ways is ending similarly to 2020—I’m out near the eastern tip of Long Island while the city feels choked by COVID and there’s questions of what normalcy may ever return or how we adjust to understand the very definition of that word.

And yet we have had vaccines and boosters and things are more understood this year—people around the world are still dying and we are not done with grief by a long shot but some mysteries have evaporated. We have, with some luck, seen family in 2021 and friends and are learning to live within an era of health as a public matter.

And that’s the world. Personally, 2021 was a BIG year and there’s so much to be grateful for what I got to personally experience in the span of it all.

I proposed to Maya just 15 days into 2021. (She said yes).

We waited until she finished her MBA to start wedding planning in earnest but we knew we wanted to move quickly given uncertainties around us. So we did. She finished school in late March and we started looking at venues and paying close attention to COVID restrictions in NYC.

We found a venue that would help us put on an outdoor wedding, though it’d be smaller than we likely would have done in a non-COVID world. That meant we weren’t able to celebrate with everyone we would have liked but given how things went, we made the best of the cards dealt to us.

Fast forward to October (though I’d be remiss not to mention a bachelor party in pulchritudinous Pittsburgh with some great friends) – and we got an absolutely perfect weekend for a wedding. We had the time of our lives celebrating with family and friends – pictures were great, parties were had, and everyone was safe. We talk often of just how perfect it all really went.

We honeymooned shortly after (and after Jesse’s wedding in Atlanta) in the desert near Palm Springs and enjoyed both the luxury of our resort and the out-of-worldness of nearby Joshua Tree.

We got to see both Maya’s and my family several times this year. We welcomed a new addition to Maya’s sister’s family (baby Elie in August). My sister Lindsey went off to college. My sister Sammi moved back into Chicago and started a job at Depaul. I moved jobs at Linkedin (more below) and finished up my first full year of grad school (in Analytics).

In all, lots happened for us. And despite 2021 being still-too-much inside and not enough exploring the playground that is New York City — we were able to get vaccinated and boosted and get back out in the world and that’s worth treasuring even if it wasn’t the year we had hoped for all around.

Favorites

Favorite New Thing

Solo Biking with Headphones

Likely not the most groundbreaking of “new” things here. Expanding on my favorite thing of last year (biking) – this year I bought a new road bike and set a goal to ride almost double my 2020 miles.

I didn’t get there because of some back issues during the year but I did get in some great rides around NYC with friends (and a very near contender for my favorite thing of both 2020 and 2021 is the NYC sites I’ve gotten to see by biking all over) and a bunch of solo ones around Prospect Park where I felt comfortable enough (a feeling not given on the Brooklyn streets) to put headphones in, cancel noise out, and listen to music or, more likely, a podcast or narrated article.

It’s this last one in particular, audio versions of longform articles (narrated by professionals) that probably fits this “favorite thing of mine”. Taking some laps around the Park (about a 3-3.5 mile loop) while listening to a great article is a great reset, learning opportunity, and breath of fresh air (literally).

A lot of this is done with the Audm App, which could itself be a contender for my “favorite new thing” this year if the app itself weren’t so frustratingly lacking of features. While it’s loaded with dozens of new audio-articles a day, there’s no way to filter, the search barely works, and there’s so few ways to customize it. Luckily, it’s bailed out by hosting the best journalistic writing narrated by amazing voice actors.

Other Favorites: John Wilson, DAOs, mRNA vaccines, James Webb Space Telescope

Favorite Book Read in 2021

The Overstory by Richard Powers

When I told Maya I was embarking on a 612 page book about trees, I did so with a huge smile on my face. What could be better, right?

Alas, the book wasn’t only about trees—it had people in it too. And Powers really delivered on both fronts. An epic tale intertwining a half-dozen characters who share little in common other than a deep rooted (intended) connection with a select species of trees.

Later, their lives take on disparate (but in some cases connecting) paths, including their adult relationship with trees. Some are intense enough to dedicate their lives to their saving, others are more reserved. But no matter, Powers’ characters are deep, complicated, and a joy to read. The first sections of the book – where the author does short story introductions of each character — were some of the best 200 or so pages of reading I’ve done in a long time

Other Favorites: The Hard Crowd (Rachel Kushner), Lincoln Highway (Amor Towles), The Professor and The Madman (Simon Winchester)

Favorite 2021 Movie

Bo Burnham: Inside

A contender for 2021’s Favorite ‘Thing’ and Favorite Album, Bo Burnham’s Inside was the best thing I saw this year — and seeing was both hearing and taking in our lives in a pandemic: shut-in, closed-off, and sometimes quite sad. But in all of that—the limitations brought on by being shut “inside”—there’s an artistic opportunity to play with and Bo outdid the rest.

I’ve really enjoyed Bo’s previous specials (especially this) – but Inside took it maybe fifteen steps further. Part musical, part diary, the special is a vulnerable, confessional Bo wavering between the struggles of pandemic life and the artistic breakthrough that he can muster by having all the time in the world (oh, and the pains of editing in near infinite time). The special will always be tied to COVID and this time in my life, but it’s the piece de resistance of the whole of it. And even beyond that I’ll listen to “That Funny Feeling” AND laugh every time he hits the chorus in the first Bezos song.

Other Favorites: The Velvet Underground, In & Of Itself, Plan B

Favorite 2021 TV Show (new category)

The Beatles: Get Back

This is the first year I’m putting the TV show category in and probably the year I’ve watched the most TV in more than a decade. That’s both with the pandemic keeping us inside as well as grad school shrinking my free time to a more TV-appropriate slot at the end of the night rather than a movie.

But, 2021’s TV watching was pretty good and this was a competitive category for me. All the other favorites below could have been the winner for me but Peter Jackson’s Beatles “documentary about a documentary” was truly something else.

Eight hours with one of my favorite bands would have been enough but what the documentary (or, as Jackson put it “a documentary about a documentary”) really showed is just how their magic worked in the studio, and even in the sort of project planning sessions that ultimately determined their concert on the roof (and not in Libya).

To see the young Beatles (all under 30-years-old) in hours of new footage would have been a gift. But Jackson’s restoration did it in high-def, did a remarkable job of making sure the audio was commiserate with the visuals, and gave enough diversity in the footage to make seven hours pass like nothing. Those clips where Paul is having the eureka moments of ‘Get Back’ and ‘Let It Be’ blew us away, even coming in knowing that he’s one of the greatest songwriters ever to live.

Other favorites: The Great (Season 2), I Think You Should Leave (Season 2), How To With John Wilson (Season 2), Hacks (Season 1)

Favorite 2021 Article

‘What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind’ by Jennifer Senior (The Atlantic)

The hands-down pick for me this year was Jennifer Senior’s study of one family’s grief in losing its 26-year-old in 9/11. The story of Bobby McIlvaine (whom the author knew and the personal connection here strengthens the story) is a tragedy from the start: he was young, on the verge of proposing to his girlfriend, and not even supposed to be in/near the World Trade Center on 9/11. But that’s just the beginning.

The actual story is how the family (and girlfriend) spent the last 20 years in the spin-out from that day, and each takes a substantially different direction. What we get in totality from the article is the diversity of grief, a study in marriage, in relationships, in keepsakes from those who have past – and cameos from Kobe Bryant, Toni Morrison, the 9/11 truther movement, and the author’s search for a quote that may or may not exist.

Other favorites: They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War by Andy Greenberg (Wired), The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner (New Yorker), I Had a Chance to Travel Anywhere. Why Did I Pick Spokane? by Jon Mooallem (NYT Magazine), The Girl In The Picture by Nile Cappello (Atavist)

See even more on my Longform list here.

Favorite 2021 Album

An Overview On Phenomenal Nature (Cassandra Jenkins)

I can’t say for sure that this pick will hold up as a favorite or if the album felt 2021-y enough to warrant dozens of re-listens. Only time will tell.

The album is unlike much else that came my way this year (like those other favorites below) but from the first words and chords it seemed to stick. It’s somewhat spoken word, somewhat jazz, and somewhat indie rock wrapped into one. It feels both warm in her soft voice and utterly cold as she speaks of the water in Norway and the grief she felt at the death of friend and collaborator David Berman.

“Hard Drive’ is the strongest track on the album (see below) but ‘Michelangelo’ kicks it off with a….well, not bang per se, but something like that. I found that Jenkins album, played beginning to end, conjured up just the right space of ambiguity to sit within and that her words were poetic and specific enough to be in the throngs of a great storyteller while also combining my personal experience in empathy.

Other Favorites: Open Door Policy (The Hold Steady, Daddy’s Home (St. Vincent), total serene ep (Gang of Youths)

Favorite 2021 Song

Cassandra Jenkins – ‘Hard Drive’

The jewel of the album, ‘Hard Drive’ takes on real quotations from an oversharing museum security guard, mentions of a faraway inn, and the double meaning of “hard drive” that at first one probably takes to mean the technical noun instead of a difficult journey. Either way, Jenkins, who spends much of the album talk-singing (my favorite), builds an unforgettable tune behind the lyrics on this one.

Form certainly equals function here – the tune itself is kind of a long, slow-mountain-twisting drive itself and when the song wraps, it’s hard to tell whether it was a two or twenty minutes long (preference would have been for the latter).

In a year of not much moving around, the tune gave me the headspace of wide, open places and the roads that get swallowed up the landscape around it — the lives we live in big cities that too can be swallowed, especially when we’re stuck at home and see it only through the windows. This year was a hard drive for many — but there’s a joy in Jenkins’ voice that lifts it all up to an ending in a kind of heavenly place, looking down on us, sharing its wisdom as benevolence.

Other favorites: Gangs of Youth – ‘asleep in the back’ , The Hold Steady – ‘Heavy Covenant; Weather Station – ‘Parking Lot’, Weather Station – ‘Tried to Tell You’, Bleachers ft. Bruce Springsteen – ‘Chinatown’, Bleachers – ‘45’

Favorite 2021 Podcast Episode

The Woods (The Memory Palace)

In college, I took a course called “history through commodity” where we picked a consumer item and wrote an essay on how its journey was part of a larger historical story. I did mine on the VW Beetle and the emergency of German-friendly buying in the United States by the 1960s.

But one article we read was about the Singer Sewing Machine, one of the most popular consumer items in the early 20th century. This podcast episode, done by Nate Dimeo on his amazing Memory Palace, starts with that machine and its need for a large cabinet made from a certain type of wood. Cue the mass planting of trees, then the decline of the machine’s popularity, an eventual new need for the tree, and on and on the story of history goes. The tree becomes part of a wider history and then by proxy so too do the birds that populate those trees.

And by 2021, those birds—the once-famous Ivory-Billed Woodpecker—are now critically endangered. So goes the story. A “natural history through humanity” kind of story. It’s a short episode (14 minutes) and worth a listen for anyone to think back of just how much our own story influences the natural world—trees, birds, and everything that’s part of that ecosystem.

Other favorites: Daniel Lanois (WTF with Marc Maron), Day X: Part 1 (New York Times), The Daily: Jan 24, 2021* (New York Times), Ramit Sethi (Tim Ferriss Podcast), The Lost Password (Exit Scam)

Favorite 2021 Place Visited

Joshua Tree National Park

So great to be back at a National Park, and what a dream this place was. Literally, it felt like you were exploring some kind of twisted, burnt-up dreamland. From the Joshua Trees themselves—producing a million green sparks praying to some celestial being—to the glow of the Cholla cacti there, everything is a bit peculiar and a whole lot beautiful.

Maya and I honeymooned nearby in Rancho Mirage and got out to Joshua Tree for two full days, getting to explore the desert towns nearby and on the last visit doing a late night stargazing which was amazing in its own right.

Joshua Tree was certainly the most unique landscape we saw this year and though hiking through it gives you miles of much-of-the-same, it’s so out of the ordinary to see what you’re seeing that it really doesn’t get old. Plus getting to see all the trees in their aggregate was something special, and the bright milky way that was visible once the sun went down (we booked a wonderful two hour stargazing “tour”).

Other favorites: Arsenal Bowl (Pittsburgh), The Art Institute of Chicago, Wrigley Field (3x), Greenwood Cemetery

Pictures

Wedding Pictures

Floating

June 11, 2021 ericryangrant

In part of my “returning back to normal” process that many of us are entertaining at the moment, I booked a float for today. It’s my first time floating in at least three years—since I left Chicago—and even before I left I was probably doing so only a few times a year.

This, in contrast to when I first start floating (in Vancouver) when I’d go weekly. I was hooked and today reminded me why that happened.

For the uninitiated, floating is putting your body in a small pool or pod of heavily salted water, so heavily salted, in fact, that you float completely. The water is room temperature and the floating is easy. Once you lay back, it happens at once.

But that’s not all. To fully offer a unique experience, the pod you go in turns all dark and is soundproof. Many will use earplugs as well to dampen even the quietest sounds and the effect is what’s known as sensory deprivation.

And you do this for an hour. Or so.

It is claustrophobic. Yes. But you can get out whenever you’d like.

Many have asked me, what did you do in there?

The answer is not easy: I think. I stretch. I meditate. Sometimes I sleep. I count breaths. I move my body. I try to avoid touching my face because my salted hands will burn through my pores. I do so much and yet so little. But the world is locked out, as is my phone, email, whatever.

It’s serene and wonderful and every time I do it I come out feeling refreshed. Actually, it’s not quite refreshed. What is that feeling?

It’s hard to describe the feeling. It’s something akin to refreshed and renewed (or rejuvenated). I come out with more energy, a clearer head, a more limber body (being able to lay in this sort of zero-gravity is the best thing for my back when it’s feeling jammed).

Some in the floating “world” say that it can be a replacement for sleep or rest. But even that isn’t quite an approximate of the life in me when I leave. It’s something like having a filter cleared. Having some moss removed, or extra muons or atoms that are clinging to my body being unmoored from me. It reminds me of how Michael Pollan talks about our “modes” in his How to Change Your Mind book.

Today was no different. I can’t wait to go back. I’m so grateful we’ve recovered enough from this pandemic for me to be able to do things again like float.

2020: In Review

December 29, 2020January 6, 2021 ericryangrant

General Commentary

Okay, 2020 In Review. How to start? How to organize this year’s post as though it’s just like the ones before it?

This was a tough year, the kind of tough year that I—and the collective we—will remember for decades to come. We rarely get the kind of foresight of meaning, or the knowledge of a fork in the road. But 2020 will likely be that in some way—a given yardstick to measure things from.

I wrote in another reflection exercise that I felt humbled about this year. Humbled by the reminding this year gave that there are many things bigger than us (singularly and the small existence and network that we encounter close enough to be daily)—and that those bigger things will come and go and leave their yield on us in ways we won’t control.

Many, many people have anthologized this year in existence far better than I can, so I won’t dwell too much on the macro-experience of 2020. Instead, I’ll focus on what I have all to myself.

And that thing I have that is unique is these reviews themselves, dating back to 2013. Years from now, I’ll be able to come back to this post and see if I can decipher how 2020’s changes in living may have influenced my categorical favorites below. That and the pictures full of masks, the new gear bought for a home office, and the emails from family and friends setting up Zoom calls instead of times that I’m arriving at O’Hare.

I’m happy, then, to be posting my year in review blogpost now for the 8th straight year and look forward to the next eight from here.

There were some highlights that this year brought that I want to share too: I got to move in with Maya to a wonderful apartment in Brooklyn, friends and family stayed healthy (more important than the real bummer it was not see my family at all in 2020), I was wrong in my February article that Trump had already won the election, I got into grad school, took up new hobbies (see below), and so much more. I’m grateful for all of these things just as I’m grateful for the sun-coming-out-of-the-clouds optimism that 2021 brings and the years beyond—as I and we return to what we call “normal” with a hangover of the months living in the unknown.

Is that all I have to say looking back on these twelve months? Surely not—more words will come as they always do. But I think I’ll leave it there for brevity and get to some 2020 lists & favorites!

Random Categories

Travel – I usually list out all the places I’ve been throughout the year but I’ll skip that this year – I wrote a little about two places I did get to visit near the end of this post.

Writing – Didn’t get a lot of writing done this year other than some sporadic journal and random jots about the year and coping with it all. It was a year that inspired my creative juices in other ways (problem-solving with data, for instance) – though I do have a writing goal for 2021 that I hope to continue. I did manage to publish nine posts on this blog though (prior to this one), so thats something.

Reading – Instead of listing that my books here which makes for a long post, I put this year (and some previous years’) finished book list on a live page on my blog. I finished 36 books this year, one less than last. See my favorites below!

Professionally – This was my first full year with LinkedIn Learning and I felt more comfortable in my role in enabling customer success. That would be saying enough but we, like most businesses, found ourselves having to adjust in March as the world stayed home to work. Fortunately, our product is made for that transition and our biggest challenge this year (perhaps) was keeping up with the demand and supporting our clients through the changes using our tool. Usage doubled in the span of a few weeks and has remained strong, challenging me to think about value and engagement beyond expectations, and thinking deeply about how professionals learn and grow their skillsets in a new decade.

Pearl Jam – Will have to wait on this one – with the hopes of a 2021 show or two (especially if that means Madison Square Garden).

Favorites

Favorite New Thing

(tie) Data Science and Cycling

Couldn’t make a decision between these and since this is my own blog, I don’t have to.

Data Science really took a hold of me this year and I wonder if that interest will be tied to the absolute flood of important public information we got this year that different channels were challenged to visualize for the massers (examples: COVID spread, poll/election returns).

For me it was a bit more personal as I expanded my use of data at my job as well as extra-curricular. I started my first full “class” online in data science (detailed here) after doing some self-learning on SQL. Long story short, the journey continued (see other posts) and applied to a grad school program at Georgia Tech in Analytics…..and I’m starting in January. Read more on that here.

And on to cycling—my exercise routine for the COVID summer and a great way to see New York City (see more below in the ‘book’ section). Getting a bike this year was probably one of the best purchases I’ve made (even though I’m due for an upgrade on that). It got me moving outdoors as the city had to shut down, but even more than that it allowed me to see so much of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. I even made trips into Jersey and Westchester.

I’m already looking forward to spring to get back on the bike for long rides through the boroughs, across bridges, and to new neighborhoods and parks in this amazing American city.

Other favorites: Monarch butterfly hibernation (albeit briefly), public health, SPACs

Favorite Book Read in 2020

The Power Broker by Robert Caro

The behemoth of many a-bookshelf, The Power Broker took me about 10 months to get through (clocks in about 1300 pages, in small type) but the pay off was worth it. No book encapsulates you in a life nor asks you to be the judge of a man the way Caro does when it comes to Robert Moses.

For me, finishing this book—about the man who singularly made the most impact on the geography of New York City (from bridges, to tunnels, to highways, parks and more)—went alongside one of newest hobbies in 2020: cycling.

And specifically cycling around Brooklyn and the rest of NYC. Seeing the extent of what this city offers is absolutely unimaginable and each ride (when I could go further or somewhere new) offered its own amazement of discovery. And, having finished the Power Broker months before I started cycling, in my mind it comes back to that people who made the decision to shape these very places. Many of those decisions came back to Moses himself, over the span of four or five decades.

Other landmarks, like Tavern on the Green, the Verrazano bridge, and the BQE – have pages and pages in Caro’s book about the brokerage Moses undertook to get things done, but always those things were done in his way.

A fascinating read that gets into the nefarious parts of the man and leaves the reader suspended in both awe and frustration constantly.

Other favorites: A Gentleman in Moscow, The Right Stuff, How Not To Be Wrong, House of Leaves

Favorite 2020 Movie

Boys State

2020 was a political year. So there may not have been a better year for this documentary to come out, even if just to remind you that the frustrations of the “game” of politics may be unavoidably natural. Or perhaps you’d come away from this thinking that it’s gotten so pervasive that even wide-eyed youths are using underhanded tactics.

The documentary—which follows a handful of high school boys on a weeklong convention to form a proto-government—is as suspenseful as any election you’ve followed. Along the way it uplifts you, frustrates you, and gives you a glimpse into how the youth (at least in Texas) approaches age-old political issues. And, I think, that would go for wherever you sit along the political spectrum, a feat becoming rarer by the day.

Admittedly, I still have quite a few 2020 movies on my list to see (all of the Small Axe, for instance), so just as the movie slates were pushed back this year so too is my viewing of them. This section may be edited.

Other favorites: The Vast of Night, Palm Springs, The Trial of the Chicago Seven, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Sound of Metal

Favorite 2020 Article

The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet (Wired)

Andy Greenberg’s longform article on Marcus Hutchins will make for a terrific coming-of-age-in-the-age-of-hacking movie or book someday (or inspire as much). It has all the hallmarks: a prodigy, a misdirected kid who uses his talents for wrong, and then that same kid who grows up to reverse the wrongs he’s made. It’s as Campbell-ian of a hero’s journey as it gets.

And it’s all true. And told in a way that helps non-tech readers like myself understand why Hutchin’s work (on both the evil and hero side) is so effective. The article is a wild ride of a story, told in a thoughtful and suspenseful way, that ultimately ends with….well, just read it!

Other favorites: Look at my full list of longform article favorites here

Favorite 2020 Album

Local Honey (Brian Fallon)

In a year with album releases from Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan, it was never likely to be an eight-song Americana album that became my most listened to album, but that’s the way it was.

Not like Brian Fallon was a longshot, his solo stuff has been on my lists before, and if my list of my favorite songs of the last decade was able to include 2009’s The ‘59 Sound, then Fallon’s main band would have made the list for at least half the songs on that album.

In Spotify’s review of my year, three of the eight songs on Local Honey are in my top 10, and occupy the first and third spot (the highest songs released in 2020 for that matter), so the album makes sense.

But front to back, this album is a gem. It’s got an easy and laid back sound to it (the first time he’s gone full folk on his albums) and yet the storytelling is full and the lyrics are deep and unique. He’s either a master of his craft or just someone who fits squarely in my tastes, I suspect it’s a bit of both though leaning on that latter. No matter – this one will be listened to for years to come I’m sure.

Other favorites: Gigaton (Pearl Jam), Saint Cloud (Waxahatchee), Fetch The Bolt Cutters (Fiona Apple), Rough & Rowdy Ways (Bob Dylan)

Favorite 2020 Song

Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Kyoto’

Bridgers had her well-deserved big blow up this year and her newest album did not disappoint. This song, in particular, has stuck with me since it came out. It’s catchy, that’s for sure, but I think what I enjoy most (and stays true version to version online now that she’s done) is the sort of meandering story she tells in the lyrics.

It reminds me of a poet, not necessarily in the depth of language, but in the transition from story to abstract to story to emotional reckoning. It has something of a Frank O’Hara quality in that way, particularly the second verse….or for a more apt comparison it reminds me a lot of my favorite song from 2015, Courtney Barnett’s ‘Depreston’. Seems like a pattern!

Not to mention Bridgers re-worked the song in this incredible piano version.

Other favorites: Fiona Apple – ‘I Want You to Love Me’, Brian Fallon – ‘Hard Feelings’, Pearl Jam – ‘Comes Then Goes’, Waxahatchee – ‘Arkadelphia, Waxahatchee – ‘Fire’

Want more music? I made a list of my 100 favorite songs of the last decade at the end of last year. You can check that out here.

Favorite 2020 Podcast Episode

The Case of the Missing Hit (Reply All)

I listened to a good deal of podcasts this year — on my metro commute in the mornings before March and then while exercising or playing video games at home. I think next year I’d like to keep a list of my favorite episodes (the way that 2019 introduced the category below of my favorite longform article).

As for this episode, it’s just pure fun. Reply All was hit or miss this year, though still one of my favorite podcasts and the hosts have a unique ability to make some episodes really, really fun. This is one of those—and the effort and length that the host goes to solve this mystery shows why they can’t be putting out this episodes all that often.

Not intrigued to listen to it yet? How about The Guardian calling it potentially the best podcast episode ever? Give it a listen!

Favorite Place Visited

(tie) Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary and Maine

I only really went one new place this year and I’m grateful or even that. In August, Maya and I went to Portland, Maine for a week and day-tripped around the area. Maine was lovely in the summer – some crowds in some places and certainly different because of the pandemic (many restaurants in Portland were closed, for instance, though the breweries had wide open areas to sit outside.

Maine itself though is the perfect combination of beaches (for the short months anyway) and hills and mountains for hiking and may be one of the few places on the East coast where you can do both so easily in the same day. We took advantage.

And then we added to that with delicious lobster rolls, fresh blueberry pie, and local beers & spirits.

In February, before the lockdown, after a great bachelor party in Mexico City, I stayed for a few extra days with a friend. My biggest regret from 2019’s months in Mexico City was not getting to see the massive monarch butterfly migration to a town near CDMX in the early winter. So this time I wasn’t going to miss it!

It ended up being one of my favorite travel days in some time. We booked a guided tour and a driver picked us up from Mexico City for a three hour drive (or so) to the sanctuary. Despite being warned we were on the later end of the season (end of Feb.) there were still hundreds of thousands of butterflies up in the trees and swirling around (often times looking for sun). The guide talked through the whole migration pattern and the generations that die off in that journey (just think for a second that the butterflies that make it to Mexico have never been there, likely born somewhere in the middle of the States, so how do they know where to go?).

Pictures

Data Science Learning Journey – Months 4 and 5

December 27, 2020 ericryangrant

A little behind on the updates here, so I’ll combine the last two months of this journey together. This will also likely be the last of these longer updates, as the journey has solidified its own long-term path. I’ll probably utilize LinkedIn going forward for mini updates.

The big update is this: next month I’ll start my first (official) classes as part of the Online Masters in Analytics (OMSA) through Georgia Tech.

I put official in parentheses above since I did take an audited class from this program this fall – Intro to Analytics Modeling – done through edX as a MOOC. I did homework, took tests, and was graded just as a student was, all of which I described in previous posts. I ended up getting a 90% in that class which I’m proud of and should mean that I can get “advanced standing” on that class (which is a required course for the masters). It gives me an extra slot to take an elective of my choice while doing the full program.

The class was a good introduction to the Masters at large (or at least from what I’ve read) and I enjoyed learning all about different types of models one can build from data sets (regressions, exponential smoothing, different categorization and classification models, etc..). The tests were tricky at times but manageable and made sure to gage understanding of using the correct model given a desired outcome or starting set of data.

As part of a course, I wrote a five page paper on bike sharing systems in large cities and what models could be used to make individual stations more effective (read: not run out of bikes or be full when someone wants to return one). I enjoyed putting some practicality behind the theoretical in the class and think of it terms of a popular program I see everyday (there’s a Citibike dock less than a block from my apartment).

It looks like, as part of the program, I’ll be starting a class in January called Computing for Data Analysis which is entirely in Python. My Analytics Modeling course was in R and I started this year’s learning adventure by self-teaching SQL, so this will be the third language to get exposed to.

I’ve really enjoyed learning from DataCamp before so I’m taking its Python Skill track (started just a few days ago) from the beginning, in hopes that I can grasp the language enough to understand the class (the timeline is about four weeks and I’m sure I’ll continue to learn after it starts).

What started as a journey of exploring a burgeoning interest of mine (moving past what I could do with an Excel file, for instance) has now become a commitment to a Masters of Science which will likely take two to three years to complete. So the journey will go on for some time and it’s really become something I’ve loved learning more about.

I don’t know where it will take my career but based on both data on the changing world of work and my own qualitative perspective, the analytics and data science skillsets are not going anywhere for a long time. It should provide some interesting and challenging work opportunities in the future.

how biden won – a letter

November 15, 2020 ericryangrant

Dear Lindsey,

Four years ago I wrote you a letter answering a question: how did Donald Trump win the 2016 election? To do so, I scraped together everything I could figure out at the time to provide some kind of rationale. As much as I was writing for you, I was writing for myself. I needed explanation too. I had spent several months insisting it couldn’t and wouldn’t happen and was stung in the days after by an anxiety of what was to come.

Now we’re in 2020, just after the next Presidential election. This time Trump lost. The tides of the country had changed enough in the ballot box to say he wasn’t wanted anymore. I thought I’d write another letter—because I find myself wanting an explanation again.

Of course, so much else has changed in four years, particularly in just the last eight months. But, even more than that, you have changed. You’re seventeen now and aware enough to know what’s going on. You’re taking government in school and you’ve now met folks who voted for Trump.

You don’t need my rationale anymore. There’s less for me to teach you now. And yet it still feels like a gift to be able to write out a letter. Because Joe Biden did in fact win the presidency, but not in a way that we might have expected. Questions still abound.

I do think that when things settle Biden will have won this race by a large margin, but that’s relative. No one really wins these things by an enormous margin and, anyway, more than 70 million people voted for four more years of Trump (many of them voted for him again), despite our own incredulity at the idea of wanting him to continue.

I do see a future where close elections are common (as they have been). With micro-targeted messaging on platforms like Facebook and the model of spatial consumption entrenched in political thought, the country will increasingly be divided into (two) camps and those camps will evolve to bring in the maximum number of voters. Said another way, both parties are likely guaranteed to get at least 45% of the vote each election. That explains some of it.

The rest is a game—where sides can and will denigrate the incredible necessity of our free press (as Trump has done and is continuing to do) and politicians stretch laws in voter registration and gerrymandering (neither of which, due to state elections this year, is unfortunately going to get much better).

That all sums up to where we’ve gotten to, and in some ways tells the story of the inextricably consistent support Trump had through this tenure as President—a metric that stayed almost stuck around 43% in polling, not wavering during COVID failures, or summits with Kim Jong-Un (neither when these seemed to be going well or not).

People stayed stuck in their bubbles over the last four years and the system seems designed to keep us there, infuriated with the other side who we understand, and are exposed to, less and less. The difference in the election was a sway of independent voters, who manage to either not sit in a bubble or vote against it, and the larger turnout of those bubbles (on both sides actually).

I could go over an analysis of the election for a long time. I’m fascinated by how we vote, how we make these decisions, and how the system takes advantage of some of these things. It’s the perfect combination of psychology, sociology, and government—and yet it’s maddening, isn’t it?

So where do we go from here?

That’s the question. New leaders bring new policies and strategies. As much as Trump worked to reverse Obama’s policies (with very mixed results), Biden will too work to undo what Trump put in place. This back-and-forth gives American politics a certain see-saw that can both hurt the population and also maintain a status quo. It takes a lot to break it—but new generations like mine and yours are moving toward being a larger force in the economy, politics, business, and more. What direction will we take it?

The short-term is to help those that are hurting. Right now, that’s all of us, prevented from living our normal lives as they were before. But some are hurting more than others. Millions are unemployed. Millions are at risk of falling below the poverty line and into the pains of hunger. Those in power seem to not care they way we would like them to—hinging on the hope of a vaccine coming quickly.

And then what? We enter a new age. The post COVID world. Much will change. Public Health will be a prominent force. We’ll have a large force of the American population that will not like what they are told. Public Health may well require a small sacrifice of personal liberty. The balance of which may be the great struggle of the next generations, because if it’s not the health of our society in a viral disease, it’s likelier going to be in the grave threat of climate change.

And so we have work ahead of us as a nation. Where we are angrier than ever at those who disagree with us, and yet we need cooperation so badly to surmount our greatest challenges.

Four years ago I wrote:

In those years and the ones after, there will be many times you want to fight with great vengeance. And fight you will. And so will I. But our fighting is not done with brutality, or hate, or shaming. It is done with discourse, with wisdom, with trust and empathy and love and hope and optimism. We will not revert to any level lower than that. And on the days you find it too hard to do that and so much easier to cut someone down, to debase a group of people, to hate…..you call me. And we’ll talk through it, kid.

Well we made it four years and I think we did what we set out to do. Fought by learning, by growing wiser and smarter and more tactical about securing a brighter future ahead. But the fight doesn’t stop. To achieve that which we want—a world of peace, grace, equality, wisdom, and more—the journey has miles more until we sleep.

There’s been a hint of what’s to come from President-elect Biden in his recent speeches. I expect he’ll continue a theme in his inaugural message in January—to reflect and echo a sentiment from 160 years ago. It was then when a different new President addressed the nation.

I expect that Biden will take words from Lincoln, in Lincoln’s first inaugural address, where he looked out a nation divided—where half of it would not accept him as its leader. He knew his greatest challenge was to unite the states once more. With that burden on him, he spoke with grace, ending his speech with this:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

–Eric

Data Science Learning Journey – Month #3

October 28, 2020 ericryangrant

Trying to keep some standard to updating these – so this will be the October update. You can find the past two updates by scrolling on the main page of my site here.

The last six weeks have definitely had their own learning experience – including my first real “test”, in the form of the first midterm for the class I’m auditing. That class is Introduction to Analytics Modeling, through Georgia Tech’s online masters in analytics (more on that later).

It was the first academic test I’ve taken since 2010 and I was more than a little rusty preparing and studying for it – likely overdoing my focus on some parts and wasting some time. Oh well – it wasn’t for naught, I got a 90% on the first test which made me quite happy.

The test for this class was quite different. While the weekly homework assignments are almost exclusively done in R—forcing me to learn that language and how to run tests in it, code “for loops” and the like for cross-fold validations and sum square errors (as just another example)—the test was much more analytical. There was no math and no coding on the test – but rather practical questions on applying certain types of models on data sets.

That test also covered a lot of ground—regression, exponential smoothing, SVM, KNN, validation, and more. So it was a lot to take in. And to add that analytical thinking on to the skillset I’m building in learning how to analyze data in R Studio.

I say that because I’m pleased I was able to get some practice in on that latter point in the last six weeks too. I took some more LinkedIn Learning courses in prep for the midterm like Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Machine Learning which has several crossover videos on algorithms from class. Another was the third Statistics Foundation class which filled in some blanks in modeling I’ve had from now taking a stats class in over a decade.

On top of this, I continued using DataCamp for coding learning and practice. I didn’t want my newly learned (this summer) SQL skills to wither away so I finished the Introduction to SQL course on DataCamp, and started the Intermediate SQL course (as well as the course specific to Joining Data), but mostly I’ve been using their daily practice (in-app and online to brush up on this).

And then I continued to push my R language skills, in class specifically, and on DataCamp. nicely, DataCamp has courses that teach R specifics as well as explaining concepts—so it was really nice to take part of the Correlation and Regression course in R while studying these concepts….and the same goes for Exploratory Data Analysis.

It was a solid month (and a half) since my last post and I learned a lot and had some of that learning validated with the positive midterm score.

But the other big event in this span was getting into the full Georgia Tech Online Masters in Analytics program (after applying in August) and deciding now if I want to pursue that (it’s a part-time program, I say “full” above because I’m essentially auditing once class from it now). It’s looking very likely that I’m going to go through with the program, which would continue this Data Science Learning Journey for years to come!

On my next update I’ll go into that program more and targets of some classes I’ll be taking. I’ll also mix in some work I’m doing in my day job (these are more reminders for myself!)

INTRO

CATEGORIES

2024 FAVORITES

Favorite New Thing

Favorite Book Read in 2024

Favorite 2024 Movie

Favorite 2024 TV Show

Favorite 2024 Article

Favorite 2024 Album

Favorite 2024 Song

Favorite 2024 Podcast Episode

Favorite Place Visited in 2024

PHOTOS

Intro

Categories

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Favorite New Thing of 2023

Favorite Book Read in 2023

The Wager

Favorite 2023 Movie

Oppenheimer

Favorite 2023 TV Show

The Bear Season 2

Favorite 2023 Article

The Trillion-Gallon Question (Christopher Cox, NYTimes)

Favorite 2023 Album

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

Favorite 2023 Song

Boygenius – ‘Satanist‘

Favorite 2023 Podcast Episode

The Six Triple Eight (Memory Palace)

Favorite 2023 Place Visited

Cooperstown, NY

Pictures

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Favorite New Thing of 2022

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite 2022 Movie

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Solo Biking with Headphones

Favorite Book Read in 2021

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Favorite 2021 Movie

Bo Burnham: Inside

Favorite 2021 TV Show (new category)

Favorite 2021 Article

Favorite 2021 Album

An Overview On Phenomenal Nature (Cassandra Jenkins)

Favorite 2021 Song

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Pictures

Wedding Pictures

General Commentary

Random Categories

Favorites

Favorite New Thing

(tie) Data Science and Cycling

Favorite Book Read in 2020

The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Favorite 2020 Movie

Boys State

Favorite 2020 Article

Favorite 2020 Album

Local Honey (Brian Fallon)

Favorite 2020 Song

Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Kyoto’

Favorite 2020 Podcast Episode