2025 Wrap-Up

Books, Movies, and Music

It’s the time of year when I give out suggestions that no one asked for.

Books:

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future - Dan Wang

Going Nuclear: How Atomic Energy Will Save the World- Tim Gregory

Abundance - Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson

Dan Wang describes China as a nation ruled by engineers and the United States as a nation ruled by lawyers. There are tradeoffs with both forms of leadership. China can build things 10x faster than we can. Do they always do a good job? Mmm, no. Do they build what they need, or what they think they will need? Well, let’s just say that not every success story stays a success story. China has an ongoing series of 5-year plans. They will slide into their 15th 5-year plan next year. They get a lot done. Some of it is risky. Some of it is poorly built. Some of it comes at the displacement of large numbers of people. Their plans are not guaranteed to succeed. But at least they have a plan. That said, they have people like Jimmy Lai in solitary confinement for almost 2,000 days, so screw’em.

Conversely, we don’t seem to be building anything in this country other than football stadiums. Our navy needs a serious upgrade. Tennessee is so unwilling (and probably incapable) to put together a decent regional public transportation system for the Nashville area that they are letting a company dig a tunnel under it for profit.

Abundance is Klein and Thompson’s blueprint for their party to return to power: embrace big ideas, build, and get out of our own way. Whether their pleas become part of a convention platform, their party will be in power soon enough. The adage, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” comes to mind. That said, it would be nice if one party in this country had an actionable plan when they regained power. So yeah, build something. Be ambitious. You want to build a larger train network? Cool. I like trains. Can you finish a line? You want to incentivize companies to build houses? Great. We’re about 4 million housing units short in this country right now. You want to build nuclear plants? Go for it. Maybe, don’t build another solar thermal plant.

Tim Gregory’s Going Nuclear cheerleads for nuclear energy. It’s his job. But someone has to make the case. I feel like at every stage of my adult life, people have been saying, “We can’t use nuclear. It takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant.” I have been an adult for over 30 years. Think of what we could have by now if we had started building. A nuclear plant can last about 60 years before being decommissioned. We could have hit net zero with a combination of nuclear fission, wind, and solar, and possibly kept it going until the brains of the planet figured out fusion.

To summarize some of Gregory’s cheerleading, here are things I noted while reading it:

1. 1 gram of coal powers a lamp for 15 minutes. 1 gram of uranium powers a lamp for 30 years.

2. Nuclear fusion has been “40 years away,” every year, for the past 40 years.

3. Windmills require 340x more mining than nuclear plants.

4. Greta Thunberg sailed to NYC for a speech. It took 15 days to cover 3000 miles. On the boat were her, a cameraman, her father, and two skippers. The captain of the ship flew back to Europe after the crossing. Five new skippers flew from Europe to NYC to take the boat back, and another skipper flew back to retrieve Thunberg and her father. She would have had less impact on the environment if she just flew there herself.

Wild Thing - A Life of Paul Gauguin - Sue Prideaux

I never thought I would read a book sympathetic to Paul Gauguin. I don’t know how I feel about that. Yes, I feel bad that Gauguin lost his father on a transatlantic boat ride when he was young, as his family was leaving France to live in Peru. His mother had a terrible life as well. I’m sure that set up a lot of personality issues that would arise in his life. Throughout his childhood in France, he referred to himself as a “savage from Peru.”

But even in a book this sympathetic, it was difficult to find anyone who actually liked Paul Gauguin. He had admirers and followers of his art, but did he have friends? I don’t know. He was in the Navy. No one seemed to like him there. He was in finance. No one seemed to like him. His family booted him out of the house. He led a peripatetic life, constantly wearing out his welcome. He led such a misanthropic life that he ended up in Tahiti to escape the West and people, only to find upon his arrival that the West had set up shop there. So he decamped to even more remote islands, working his way through a couple of child brides, only to die at the age of 54 with heart issues, leg wounds that wouldn’t heal, half blind, and regularly using morphine.

I mean, good for you, Sue Prideaux, to try to find his humanity. You didn’t find much, but it made for a good read.

Mood Machine - The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist - Liz Pelly

Liz Pelly’s book is repetitive, but it does a good job of laying out Spotify's shady history and its plans to squeeze musicians in the future.

Movies:

One Battle After Another

There Will Be Blood cost $25 million to make. Rumors set the budget for One Battle After Another at around $150 million. There is no observable $125 million difference in these two movies. Even if Leonardo DiCaprio made $20 million for his part of this movie, there is still not a $105 million difference. It’s not my money, so I’m not too worried about any of this. It’s a great movie. But seriously, what are y’all doing over there in Hollywood?

Weapons

Weapons has a lot of things that don’t really make sense, and because of that, they don’t bother trying to explain any of it. Why does this old witch need 17 kids in her basement to live? How does she drain their souls for power? Why didn’t this kid’s mom know that her aunt was this evil? I grew up in the 80s, so I don’t expect every loose end to get tied off in a movie. I was happy to watch Weapons and go along with it. No one else in town knows what’s going on. Why should I?

Caught By the Tides

I have only seen two Jia Zhangke movies, Caught by the Tides and Ash Is Purest White, the latter being a well-made bummer. Caught by the Tides is a combination of candid video Zhangke filmed over twenty years, spliced together with scenes from movies he made over the same time period, and shaped into a new story. The narrative is compelling enough, but the movie best captures the seismic shifts in China during the first quarter of the 21st century.

Sorry, Baby

Given how much I hate new novels written about a character that just got out of a creative writing program, it is a good thing no one told me the plot of Sorry, Baby, because I wouldn’t have bothered to watch it. Kudos to you, Eva Victor, for writing, directing, and starring in a movie that, as a one-sheet, I would never have given a chance, but which you turned into a rock-solid movie. That all sounds like a “meh” recommendation, but it’s really good.

Movies I Wish Were Better, but Were Still Good:

Cloud

Sister Midnight

Warfare

The Shrouds

Pop:

Here’s a pop music playlist if you have Apple Music. I don’t really curate playlists. I put entire albums into one list and hit shuffle.

Rochelle Jordan - Through the Wall

Erika de Casier - Lifetime

Both Jordan and de Casier managed a new spin on some ‘90s tricks, making old people like me happy.

Nadia Reid - Enter Now Brightness

“Cry on Cue” might be my favorite pop song of the year. It feels like an extra Christine McVie song.

Falle Nioke - Love from the Sea

David Mead - January, San Fernando

Mead’s 1999 debut album, The Luxury of Time, straddled Paul(s) McCartney and Simon. The production on it is properly warm and lush. Twenty-six years later, his new album recaptures some of that spirit on a smaller budget, but Mead is forever underappreciated.

Wishy - Planet Popstar EP

Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Payphone - Wild Butterfly

Geese - Getting Killed

Jordan Rakei - Live from the Royal Albert Hall

Reissues:

Studio - West Coast

Prince - Around the World in a Day

Not Pop:

Here’s an Apple playlist for this category.

Macie Stewart - When the Distance Is Blue

Probably my most listened to record of the year. Before hearing this, the only reason I knew Macie Stewart’s name was for arranging strings on a Ducks Ltd record. I love Ducks Ltd, and they put on a great show at The Blue Room this year, but Stewart’s album is more my speed these days. That said, go see Ducks Ltd if you ever get the chance. They do this crazy thing on stage: have fun.

Stewart’s album is beautiful and difficult to describe. Just spin it.

Romeo Poirier - Off the Record

In 1993, The Beach Boys released a career-spanning box set titled Good Vibrations. Included in the set was a disc of demos, “stacks of vocals” acapella versions of songs, session outtakes for “Good Vibrations,” among other songs. If you’re like me, and you take a lot of inspiration from watching or listening to just about anyone try to make anything, then this was a gold mine of listening to Brian Wilson mold his little orchestra into shape. Cheryl Donegan used the “Good Vibrations” track in one of her videos. That was my introduction to it.

Maybe Romeo Poirier has the same fascination with between-takes chatter and peripheral sounds of a studio session that I have. He collaged an entire album of it into a compelling listen.

Brian Eno/Beatie Wolfe - Lateral

Eno and Wolfe released three albums this year. Only one has no vocals, so it's the best one.

Kara-Lis Coverdale - From Where You Came/Changes in the Air

Two great albums in one year.

Joy Guidry - Five Prayers

John Cale - Mixology (Vol 1)

Chicago Underground Duo - Hyperglyph

Steve Gunn - Music for Writers

Jeremiah Chu, Marta Sofia Honer - Different Rooms

Cole Pulice - Land’s End Eternal

Loscil - Lake Fire

William Tyler - Time Indefinite

More Eaze, claire rousay - No Floor