Claire

March 18, 2024

No Cuts to Libraries!

https://www.nypl.org/speakout Last week, leaders of NYC's three public library systems (NY, Brooklyn, Queens) launched a campaign against Mayor Eric Adams' and the NY City Council's proposed budget cuts in the coming FY 2025; these cuts would be the highest proposed budget cuts to the libraries in over a decade. If you're a NYC residen...
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March 11, 2024

Godzilla (1954)

Bravo, bravo to Oppenheimer tonight, for its 7 wins, which included Best Picture. For me, it felt like the first time in a while that the Oscars have awarded cinematic achievement, for a movie that deserves to join the canon. Over the summer, there were early critiques of the movie that it didn't show what happened on the other side of...
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March 4, 2024

such a perfect day 💍

Peter and I are engaged to be married !! Peter proposed with the help of my best friend Reid, and his family of talented musicians. At the end of a warm, wonderful folksy house concert featuring Cricket Blue and Bold Forbes, Bold Forbes announced they had a final song and began playing Perfect Day by Lou Reed. By the second chord, I kn...
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February 12, 2024

Year of the 🐉

Happy Lunar New Year 🧧 It's Year of the Dragon! From Wikipedia, dragons are: “intense and powerful individuals capable of great good, who make great leaders but are rather unpredictable. [They] are said to be intelligent, magnanimous, charismatic, charming, authoritative, confident, eloquent, and artistic, but can also be manipulative,...
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February 5, 2024

Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?

Sophomore year of college, I became close with a group of boys. I had just gone through my first breakup, and was feeling desperately lonely, unloved, and seriously unhappy. This group adopted me and often made it their weekend mission: Operation Cheer Claire Up. In a sea of dehumanizing frat boy behavior, these boys loved me as friend...
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January 29, 2024

Saint Omer, Thelma and Louise, Céline and Julie Go Boating

Some people were frustrated/angry this week (example and example) that Barbie's Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were not nominated for acting/directing Academy awards, even though the movie was nominated for 8 other awards (including Best Picture, where Robbie is nominated with her production company LuckyChap). The overwhelming sentime...
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January 22, 2024

kwee’s weeks in photos

HNY 2024 + rose parade 🌹 —Marie Antoinette “Language-learning app Duolingo has been steadily firing contract writers and translators, replacing them with artificial intelligence, in one of the most high-profile instances yet of a company getting rid of human workers in favor of AI.” Trying to spend less on eating out, so trying to make...
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January 15, 2024

2023 Movie and Book Round-up

Favorite movie(s) released in 2023 A tie: Oppenheimer and May December Oppenheimer: A brilliantly-paced, three-in-one movie: Midnight in Paris for physicists, heist flick, courtroom drama. A beautiful film to look at, with a thrilling score. Most importantly however, a movie about how a group of men convinced themselves they were simpl...
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December 18, 2023

13 articles of clothing I gave away today

“If I got rid of my two copies of Powers of Horrors—even though I know I'll never read either again—it would be as if I were rejecting my younger self, saying to my younger self I never really valued you. —Dodie Bellamy in "Hoarding as Écriture"” While hoarding is generally viewed shamefully, this reflection from Bellamy honors for me ...
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November 27, 2023

Tks

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything thy goodness sends —Ralph Waldo Emerson
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November 13, 2023

5 Calls App

https://5calls.org/ iPhone app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/5-calls-contact-your-congress/id1202558609 If you're interested in calling your representatives in the US government to voice concerns, raise an issue, or make your stance as a constituent clear, I started using the 5 Calls iPhone app this week, and I highly recommend it ⭐⭐⭐...
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October 30, 2023

Futuramaween

————————— Live long and prosper 🖖
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October 23, 2023

this week: a play, an exchange, a movie

a play: Jaja's African Hair Braiding This play was so much fun, it made me wish it was a movie so I could watch it over and over again. Though without the stage experience, we wouldn't have gotten the crackling, cackling atmosphere of Jaja's salon. A character that stuck out to me was Bea, a woman who is an interpersonal disaster: she ...
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October 16, 2023

Night Thoughts by Wallace Shawn

Earlier this week, someone was telling me about a lovely celebrity run-in she had: she was walking on the High Line in the early morning, and was enjoying the way the morning light was lighting the walkers' faces. As she stared at people, one person in particular responded with a wave and a delightful smile. It was Wallace Shawn: Which...
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October 2, 2023

the wailing (2016)

The Wailing does what my favorite horror movies do best: it ruminates on and reflects our world back to us in a kaleidoscopic, creepy funhouse. There's something about entering a universe that looks like ours, but has exaggerated features in the form of horror symbolism and imagery, that makes the commentary on our world oftentimes mor...
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September 25, 2023

kwee's weeks in photos

Help is on the way when the rhythm is glad there is nothing to be sad sasha ❤🔥 Montreal for Dom & Josh: Big in Japan Bar with some tips from the bartender, Dandy's Maple Butter Tart, and poutine of course ziggy peke meets ziggy peke ice packs, electric hand fans, and shade-seeking dainty little true indigo ❤ ziggy & nellie ❤ After init...
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September 4, 2023

Sarah Sze

One cold weekday afternoon in 2012, I went to a show at the Asia Society for an artist called Sarah Sze. I had the gallery entirely to myself, and as the afternoon passed, I had the sense I was convening with something truly special. I felt awe and wonder at the intricacy of her pieces, at how spontaneous, yet carefully-constructed eve...
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August 28, 2023

happy national cinema day 🎦

I know that National Cinema Day is a marketing thing to get people in the door at large theater chains, but as a devoted, obsessive movie-goer, I wanted to use the occasion to highlight my NYC cinema favorites/worsts in the categories that matter most to me: Best Repertory Programming • Film Forum • BAM Film • Film at Lincoln Center • ...
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August 20, 2023

thirty-fun

Cakepiles and Your most cancellable take and Love in the shape of a napkin ring and Kitti and a scoundrel Richard Burton and Late-nite Urban hikes and Fun and funky and full of food and three-movie jubilee aka Megenheimer: a space odyssey and A Pink Plastic necklace and A honk and Lamborghinis and Ice cream tiramisu.
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August 14, 2023

Bday book wishlist

I’m not allowed to buy any books for the next while because I have too many (in general, but also specifically that I haven’t yet read), but here is a shortlist of books I’m most interested in right now. Would accept as a gift for my bday tho🥰 Fiction Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler: as a part of Lincoln Center's Summer for t...
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August 7, 2023

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

My 7 reasons: 1. The animation of inanimate objects 2. Pee-Wee's Big Expressions 3. The most colorful cast of characters francis dottie amazing larry and mario madam ruby large marge speck 4. Magical interiors 5. Laugh-out-loud funny take a picture, it'll last longer au revoir simone remember the alamo 6. Movie within a movie 7. Pure m...
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July 24, 2023

remind me

https://youtu.be/VF8LMQQ0rEw https://vimeo.com/3514904 Koyaanisqatsi
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July 17, 2023

kwee’s weeks in photos

July: 💋🚽 💐 Looty, seriously Saha and Coetzee ❣🥲 Friend Brian put a new album out: The Arc ♥♥♥ Halloween 2007 😭 Almost-Cerberus Alston Lake, with Alan and Cusco Drive-in Dial of Destiny on a rainy, lightning-filled night ((immersive)) https://twitter.com/svershbow/status/1675506128971526144?s=20 But I’ll eat some corn and watch a fire w...
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July 10, 2023

a crossword made on/for a lazy sunday

Template from Peter on Figma (slightly modified to 8x8 because that happened to be the size of the puzzle I created with pencil and paper). Pretty cool the template has been used by 412 people since he put it on Figma 2 years ago! ((P.S. I'm sorry for breaking some crossword construction rules; I am but an infrequent crossword do-er, a...
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July 3, 2023

affirmative action

After this week's Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, I kept seeing persuasive snippets of Justice Jackson's dissent and decided to go to the source: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf (Justice Jackson's dissent starts on page 209 of the .PDF) It was my first time reading a Supreme Court opinion; I think ...
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June 26, 2023

kwee’s weeks in photos

A Mogwai walks among us 👬♥ The most perfect person’s bday Gentle giant James Cromwell 👏👏👏 Ziggy’s Zaddies Marc Rebillet @ Union Sq. (Didn’t know it was him at the time, realized it was him later after seeing it pop up on TikTok) An At-home Men-in-Dresses film festival: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Some Like it Hot warm and fuzzy ...
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June 19, 2023

🌈Pride + Movies🎥

this month on TOILETPAPER What I've learned from my queer movie canon... All About My Mother (1999) Agrado's monologueWhen I first watched this movie as a teen, and specifically this scene with Agrado, it made me realize that another person's truth has nothing to do with mine; that my experience of my own body and gender doesn't preclu...
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June 12, 2023

wildfire smoke in the city

On Tuesday, I went for a little walk in the late afternoon, and noticed it felt really spooky; there was an orange-gray pallor to the world and it smelled...smoky? I took a few pics and then went back inside: *cityscape in the image was spookier than it appears* And, then we in NYC all discovered the wonders of wildfire smoke and what ...
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June 5, 2023

side quest to Dublin

Dubbalin Our layover to get home was in Dublin, but when the final leg of our flight was unexpectedly cancelled, we ended up having an extra 2 days in the city. When we went to Ireland last year, we had COVID during the portion of the trip where we would have explored Dublin, so it felt like a bit of a fortunate do-over (amidst the fru...
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May 29, 2023

Italy 🤌

The Leopard, an engrossing historical fiction book written in the 1950s about the Risorgimento (Italy's unification in the 1860s). I couldn't put the book down on the plane ride over, and it felt like a useful primer for the week ahead 🐆🍝 Beautiful carsickness Story of a countryside dog 😭 Assisi, of St. Francis A most immediate and sat...
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