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The new iPhone has a thing called Portrait mode, where you can bring someone’s face/body into stark relief against a white or black background.
(The phone probably has lots of other features I may never bother trying to learn how to use. Mostly I’m just excited I don’t have to carry around a spare battery pack like I did with my old phone, which couldn’t hold a charge for more than two hours.)
Portrait mode is overkill. For me, anyway. I get that we live in a selfie society with apps that will filter out all your wrinkles, whiten your teeth, make your eyes blue, and other bullshit. All for… what? To boost your self-esteem by making you more “attractive” than you really are? To market yourself on dating apps? To put professional photographers out of business? Gross and no thank you.
But I paid a fuck ton of money for this thing, so I figured I’d play with it – at SFMOMA.
First up: A sculpture by Dave Hanson. It’s life-sized and easy to mistake him for a real cop.
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Portrait mode recognized some small Sargent Johnson sculptures:
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And finally, a sculpture called Mask II by Ron Mueck, who must be a lot of fun to hang out with. This thing is roughly the size of my car and is so creepy it doesn't need any filters.
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You'd think this one would stand out in the starkest relief but maybe it's possessed?
That concludes today's amateur photography exhibit. If anyone knows how to make this stupid phone recognize animals’ faces, let me know and the next email will be 1000000 times cuter.
On setting goals
Last week I asked you if you set long-term goals for yourself, lived life in the present moment, or somewhere in between. Some responses:
'I've never been good at answering the question 'Where do you see yourself in five/ten years?' It gave me enough anxiety to sign a one-year lease that one time I ever did that; not that I ever had plans to leave, but the flexibility of being able to decide that on a month-to-month basis was way more comforting. I definitely live life as it comes and see where it takes me. Which is not to say that I don't have goals of how I'd like to spend my time - it just feels presumptuous to have a grand vision that we can expect to come into reality no matter what crazy and unexpected shit the universe throws at us."
"Post-it notes were a big thing my freshman year of college.You had to find the best ones, with some cute something on it. Then when your friends were drunk, they would leave you messages. Ed was a screw-up in college, finished on the 5-year plan, grew up, got a law degree, had kids, earned the respect and admiration of many who knew him, lost his battle with colon cancer after a four-year fight. He wrote on my door one night, 'you can't get lost if you don't know where you are going.'"
"For what it's worth, 10 years ago, I told a (work) friend that I wanted a job where I did half the work for twice the money. I kinda got that now. I also said I was gonna become a volcanologist (so that my work would take me to tropical islands)."
Good stuff
- More research on the link between diet and depression. (NPR)
- Why are rich people so mean? (WIRED)
- “To be truly kind to yourself… is to realize that whatever shame, embarrassment, disappointment, sorrow or anxiety you might be experiencing, those feelings are being shared, somewhere, by someone else. Because they’re all inescapable aspects of being biological humans dealing with our universal human shit. And it’s this element… that helps explain why some 75 percent of us are emotionally generous with friends but are continually short-changing ourselves.” Skim over the divas-clutching-themselves paragraphs in this article and know you're not alone. (MEL Magazine)
- Why office workers can't sleep. (LitHub)
- The chore war Is real and your marriage Is losing. (Men’s Health)
- Sam Irby is on a tear with her recaps of Judge Mathis episodes. (Substack newsletter)
For next week
I'm a morning person struggling to write this thing at night, after spending all day staring at a screen in the office. I'm gonna try to rearrange my schedule so there's more time to write with my morning coffee, but if I fail (again), help me out with some questions for Svetlana? As always, you can reply directly to this email and anything I share will be anonymous.
Pass it on
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