Loose Ends 2024

Time to close out 2024 with various things that were on my mind throughout the year that I didn't write about. As several posts throughout the year suggest, it was another great year to explore music, particularly classical music. I discovered someone new in African-American composer Brain Nabors. His Pulse from 2019 really caught my attention. This piece lasts for almost 12 and a half minutes and is lively, even playful, almost optimistic but most certainly confident. There's little conflict or dissonance to be heard though it is clearly contemporary and relevant.

Though performed more or less continually, Pulse consists of the classic three-part structure with the first two parts containing most of the rhythmic drive of the work. Part three is much softer and more tranquil, ending with the uttermost peace and rest. A wonderful few minutes of music that I returned to several times during the course of the year. It is inspirational to me. How lucky I am to have found it! Nabor's other works are (mostly) okay but none of them grabbed me like Pulse. He's just past 30, so a young composer yet. I'll definitely keep an eye out for him.

I was equally taken in by Anton Dvořák's Serenade for Wind Instruments. It is not purely winds that we hear. There is a pronounced supporting part of a single cello and double bass. It is a marvelous and rewarding piece of music. This is a more ambitious piece than Nabors' Pulse, with four late-Romantic movements over the course of about 26 minutes. The the first movement establishes an upbeat, somewhat celebratory vibe and is dynamic, transforming into something completely different in the end than is was when it started. The second movement is a minuet that shows how far this form had evolved since Haydn's almost universal minutes in his 106 symphonies. It is appropriately brief. The Andante third movement is perhaps the best part of the work, also displaying a variety of tempos and flows. The finale is spritely yet forceful and sometimes dance-like. This is a splendid composition!

I watched True Detective 4: Night Country starring Jodie Foster. While still not as good as the first season, this fourth attempt at the “True Detective style” was fairly successful in recreating some of the real magic of season one. But it is sputtery and contain a lot of story elements that struck me a obviously formulamatic and simply not that interesting. It was worth a viewing though. I'd put it on par with Lovecraft Country from 2020. Not great but not bad either. Definitely an improvement over seasons two and three.

Among the other classic albums I listened to from 1974 this year, Jackson Browne's California folk rock styled Late for the Sky became estranged for me. In college this was one of my favorite albums. Listening to it now, 50 years after its release, I found it fatiguing at times and overly whiny. The magic disappeared from this one. I guess that's a different kind of nostalgia for me, a melancholic feeling where former comforts no longer speak to us. “After the Deluge” is still an awesome, steady, spiritual tune off this one though.

I sold all my gold this year except for the stack of American Eagles I bought around 2000 when the commodity was about $400 per ounce. I actually only had a fraction of what I once owned, having sold into previous rallies these past years. I made my last purchase of gold in 2022, I think. It reached a record high just over $2,700 in October 2024 but I was out before that. I didn't really worry about timing the peak this time because Jennifer and I are handling our money differently these days. 

We have money managers for the first time and they did quite well for us this year. We still have a large cash position with which to buy into more opportunities. Dollar cost averaging.  I'm particularly interested in disruptive technologies and placed smaller bets on that throughout the year. I made more money off gold than I ever did on anything else over about 25 years of controlling my own investments. The money mangers handle all that now and the plan does not include gold. I made a great gain on my final sale of gold, predominantly GLD. I still hold my silver position but it is really a trivial amount.

I blogged about Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer in 2023. In 2024 it won seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Christopher Nolan (his first), while Robert Downey, Jr (whose performance was particularly praised in my initial review) became just the seventh actor all-time to make a clean sweep of the major Supporting Actor awards across all major critic and organization ceremonies. In an earlier Nolan film (2005's The Dark Knight), Heath Ledger made a similar sweep, another one of the rare seven.

Among other films and streaming videos, Dune 2 sucked. It was visually stunning at times but I did not care. I've seen plenty of visually stunning content in my life so it takes more than that to make something special. The big problem, of course, is that, while it is probably a great interpretation of the source material, that same material does not speak to me in any way. It is simpleton and boring, basically, so how am I supposed to like it? I'd give it a 6 because its admittedly well-made even if I didn't care for it and I've seen a lot worse. The whole thing just me yawn. I can't connect.

Same deal with the second season of Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power. I watched the weekly synopsis' from the YouTube channel Nerd of the Rings and that was enough. I wouldn't pay two cents for this series. It takes ridiculous liberties with Tolkien's basic material, which is their right. They paid hundreds of millions of dollars for their specific rights.  Whatever. What they have done with those rights is appalling, really. The actual forging of the Rings of Power was of interest but, otherwise, the narrative is completely disappointing. It does not feel like Tolkien at all, though the visuals make it appear to be, at times. Whatever. The biggest sacrilege is apparently forcing the character of Gandalf into the story when everyone familiar with Middle-earth knows the wizard isn't supposed to be there yet. Gag.

I did not bother to see either Ridley Scott's Napoleon or Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. The reviews were horrific and not in a controversial way like when Malick's Tree of Life came out. That turned out to be a masterpiece effort. Neither of these films had much support at all. On Rotten Tomatoes, both critics and the audience rated Scott's effort a rotten 48%. It seems one of my favorite directors and one of my favorite actors, Joaquin Phoenix, did a disastrous job of depicting a subject I find fascinating, though the uniforms and generic battle sequences seem to be worth watching sometime when I can rent it cheaply. Coppola musters a ghastly 35% among the audience with critics giving a slight better 45% as of this post. Again, one of my favorite directors apparently made a mess of things. Again, an inexpensive home viewing awaits some day in the future.

Speaking of disappointments, the Atlanta Braves had a blasé season. They lost last year's 20-game winner, Spencer Strider, at the beginning of the season due to injury. Max Fried battled a minor injury, performed subpar and refused the Braves $21 million offer to come back next year (he has since been signed by the Yankees - ugh). Goodbye Max. Free agent acquisition Chris Sale won the coveted Cy Young Award as well as Comeback Player of the Year for his return from surgery and posting a Maddux-like 18 – 3 record with an outstanding 2.38 ERA. I hope he can keep it up in 2025.

We also lost MVP-caliber player Ronald Acuna, Jr. to injury. Following his phenomenal 41 home runs and 74 stolen bases in 2023 (the only 40/70 in baseball history), it was quite a blow that no one on the team could pick up. We made it to the Wild Card round but got eliminated in straight loses to San Diego. Offensively, the team started the season like it was 2023, when they set all kinds of records and were compared with the incredible 1927 Yankees. We won three out of four games throughout April and had the best record in all of baseball going into May. But we were mediocre after that, partly due to injuries and also due to some players just not really preforming well. Brian Snitker is one of baseball's best managers but he couldn't find the spark in 2024.

Ah, the phasing out of Windows 10. I will have to get a computer capable of handling Windows 11 in 2025. That's not a resolution, it is a necessity. In the meantime, Microsoft has decided to take partial control on my PC by forcing Edge to pop up with some type of Windows ad every freaking time I sign in to my computer. It is irritating as hell, which I suppose is the point. Both my laptop and my PC don't have the specs to handle Windows 11 efficiently. So, Microsoft thinks it can just force its messaging upon me whether I want it or not. Screw them. I briefly considered just switching to Apple since I love my iPads and Safari so much, but I will probably stick with the operating system most of my stuff already runs on.

I switched web browsers this past year. Since my retirement, I completely abandoned Google Chrome for security reasons. I never use Microsoft Edge. Since 2020 I predominantly used FireFox but I started having some performance and security issues with that platform too. So, in 2024 I gave both Opera and Vivaldi a try. I still use both today but I prefer Opera. It offers a more secure environment and can run rings around FireFox in terms of performance. I suppose this sort of thing will continue to evolve. Maybe I'll end up trying something else in the near future. I hate how pushy Edge is and do not care of its integrated default to the Bing search engine. It may no longer be possible to stick with one favorite browser for the web given how quickly technology is changing.

Of course, I reviewed Neil Young's On the Beach album and Volume III of his boxed set Archives release earlier in the year. Once again, Neil had multiple releases throughout this time period. One of these that I didn't blog about was Early Daze which is a collection of songs he recorded with the original Crazy Horse lineup at the time of their first album Everybody Know This Is Nowhere in 1969. This is not a particularly remarkable set of songs except for the fact that it features Danny Whitten at the height of his abilities before his downward spiral with alcohol, heroin and other drugs ended up killing him.

But in 1969 Danny was at his best, demonstrating the fullness of his emerging talent as sort of the unofficial “leader” of the Horse. Of the ten songs on Early Daze two were written by Whitten, the rest were by Neil. One of the two, “Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown,” eventually made it in a different recording onto Neil's Tonight's the Night album released three years after Danny's death. The other was “Look at All the Things” which later appeared on the first Crazy Horse album. This is a very strong song. I have not listened to that record in many years and had forgotten most of it.  (As an aside, the first Horse album also features Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It" which I remember well and would become a hit when covered by Rod Stewart later in the decade.)

Both songs feature Whitten on lead vocals. He had an earthy but lyrical singing voice which harmonized well with Neil. He would have probably developed into a bigger talent but, instead, he became part of the inspiration for Neil's hit “The Needle and the Damage Done” released in 1972 (actually before Whitten's death though during the worse part of his addiction). Early Daze is an assortment of songs that feature alternate takes of tracks from other albums. It is a meaningful document of how much work Neil always put in to making a record. Lots of takes of material often used elsewhere, or not at all. But it also shows that Neil was willing to take a back seat to Whitten and the rest of the band on a few numbers.

Healthwise I continued to battle my strange form of insomnia throughout the year. I can fall asleep easily but have difficulty staying asleep for more than five hours. I am scheduled for a sleep study in March. I requested the study months ago and they were booked out for almost six months. I guess I'm not the only one with the problem. Also, I battled a flea infestation over the last month of summer. I had been working outside and laid my sweaty clothes on our rock wall behind the house to dry in the sun. I stupidly put the clothes back on to finish mowing and was eaten alive. It was a difficult situation for a couple of weeks but I finally got rid of the fleas and healed from the many bites I had mostly on my lower body. It was a miserable learning experience. (Actually, I should have known better!)  The joys of country living!

On a far more positive note I am about 15.4 years younger biologically than my chronological age! That is according to very detailed blood work supplied through Function Health, who took a dozen vials of blood from me over a ten-day period. They ran all sorts of tests (including Alzheimer's which revealed that I am neutral) and supplied me with the most detailed analysis I've ever had of what my blood reveals. Out of 105 bio-markers checked I was out of range on 10. I already knew about most of them.  It supplied helpful advice as to how to address my specific needs, which led to some dietary adjustments for me. I'll probably get a recheck in 2025 for comparison purposes.

This is exciting news for me as I have literally worked hard on my diet, exercise and lifestyle choices since I was in my 30's to try to be as "young" as possible when/if “the Singularity” happens in the next 10 – 15 years. I want to be able to take advantage of any major breakthroughs in longevity that occur in the coming years, if they actually happen. If not, well at least I am as healthy as I can be – or trying to be, at least. One dietary adjustment I made had nothing to do with my blood work. I discovered the antioxidant benefits and other pluses available in dark chocolate and oatmeal. My breakfast includes oatmeal, chia seeds (to regulate blood sugar), hemp seeds (for added protein), 100% cocoa baking powder and a crumpled up protein bar along with just a splash of chocolate Muscle Milk for flavor and added protein.  I also enjoy one piece of 85% cocoa (or 72% when the other is unavailable) with a couple of handfuls of walnuts as a snack most afternoons.

Hurricane Helene was the big weather event of the year in the southeast. It devastated large swaths of eastern Georgia and especially the North Carolina mountains with fierce winds and a ridiculous amount of rainfall, causing widespread flooding and wind damage which totaled in the billions of dollars. We were lucky here. All toll the storm dumped 9 inches of rain in 2.5 days and the wind gusts remained no more than 40 mph.  Six inches of that rain fell in the final 24 hours of the event. We lost power briefly but that was actually before the hurricane passed to our east. If you have to deal with a hurricane you definitely want to be on its west side because most of the wind, rain and spawned tornadoes occur in the upper right quadrant of the storm. It was touch and go for a while there but I was ultimately relieved when Helene's eye passed almost right over Twin Oaks but slightly to the east. This came during the middle of a drought here and was followed by almost 8 weeks of hot and dry weather afterwards.

I want to comment briefly about Israel's continuing assault on the Gaza strip among other regional targets (the proxy war with Iran seems to be widening as of this post).  I have never found my voice to write of the epic tragedy in detail.  In October 2023 the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched an inexcusable incursion into Israel from Gaza, resulting in the deaths of some 1,200 Israeli civilians with about 250 hostages taken.  To date, Israel's response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including thousands of children.  Supporters of Israel are quick to point out you can't make a one-to-one comparison of casualties given the nature of the operation; that the casualties in Israel's response cannot be labeled as excessive.

But I find myself asking these apologists whether Israel is justified in killing all Palestinians in Gaza?  Could the response completely wipe-out the population of Gaza?  Of course, not.  That truly would be genocide.  So, if the actual response is not genocide and traditional definitions of "proportionality" do not apply, how many Palestinian deaths would be too many?  It seems the pro-Israeli side contends that it is permissible to kill as many as required to eliminate Hamas, which hides among its own people.  Okay.  But there has to be some kind of limit to the death and suffering if killing absolutely everyone is not allowed.  Are 100,000 civilian deaths tolerable in response to 1,200 dead Israelis and 250 hostages?  

On the one hand, the entirety of the Gaza strip was made into a terrorist operational center with a vast underground tunnel network that took years to construct in secret without any Palestinian either noticing or mentioning it to the Israelis.  In addition to being an obvious failure of Israel's intelligence gathering arm, that suggests mass collusion of the part of the Palestinian people, though that has not been proven.  Obviously, Israel cannot allow even a shred of this carefully planned and constructed network to remain in place.

But, on the other hand, Israel wants to pretend as if this heavy-handed bombing and mass killing was their only choice.  This is false.  A much more covert and tactical operation could have been chosen, assisted by heavy-handed military intervention as necessary to protect the special nature of the tactical operations.  This would have allowed Hamas command posts, apparently placed with intention under Palestinian hospitals, for example, to be taken out through the tunnel system rather than bombing the hospitals themselves (filled with civilian patients) with bunker-busting munitions that crushed the tunnels underneath.  It was, and still is, possible to eliminate Hamas through intelligence and covert operations, tactically targeting terrorists with special forces instead of heavy bombing and sweeping the whole country with its standard military.  Don't tell me this was not a legitimate option.  Israel's response was and is completely justified in the name of self-preservation.  But their choice among their operational alternatives leaves something to be desired.  Two wrongs do not make a right.  What a pathetic mess the entire region is, Israel included! 

I have a few resolutions for 2025. I thoroughly enjoyed attempting to eliminate politics from my life in 2023 and plan to return to that mode next year. The only exception (barring something truly epic and unusual) is that I might post something on the consequences of regressive politics in the contemporary world. Otherwise, the Democrats have a lot of soul-searching to do (blue collar moderation) and Trump looks ready to go on an authoritarian rampage. More positively, I'm going to work toward incorporating more strength training into my weekly regimen. I'm not exactly sure what form that will take yet. Jennifer and I planned to visit NYC to tour some of the great art museums there back in 2020. COVID got in the way of all that. Then came other family needs that required my attention.  Hopefully, we will be able to make the trip in 2025. I plan to re-read Proust (already started) and will be blogging about that incredible work of literature at some point.  I'm in no hurry so it might take a while. I plan to become a paying subscriber to Claude, it is my preferred LLM despite not being able to access the internet like ChatGPT. I just find its analysis and language capabilities to be superior. Finally, I have been working on some positive attributes to my personal philosophy for the past couple of years. I hope to begin sharing that with readers and to develop my ideas further in that regard.

Onward!

 

(Written without AI assistance.)