I’ve had a major breakthrough in treatment of my depression, which has been chronic & omnipresent for 35 years. I’m ecstatic the dark voice has faded so much, even gone silent for good sized chunks of day! And I’m terrified it will roar again. And the vista of the life it consumed is harrowing.
🎵 Boy, the new Vampire Weekend album was worth the wait! And the lyrics…so good. A sample from “Classical”:
400 million animals competing for the zoo
[…]
The temple’s gone, but still a single column stands today
That sinking feeling fades, but never really goes away
A staircase up to nothingness inside your DNA
📺 Noted Video → Champion Chess Tour/Matches
Read in 2024: Moral Victories by David Lovejoy 📚 — Interesting, semi-fictionalized account of the fascinating life of Savielly Tartakower. I’m not sure if I like the amount of fictionalization and speculation, but the author does note where it’s happening. What a character!
Restarting my meditation practice has been interesting. A major change in my depression treatment has both allowed me to fall into a groove faster than ever before, but my wandering mind has changed its style of wandering and I can’t stop feeling like my heart is pounding even when it isn’t.
2024 Chess Open Candidates Round 13 Predictions
Honestly, I’m hoping that by predicting all-draws, we have a bloody round instead! Same in the Women’s tournament, where I am voting against my favorites in two cases!
- Nepo-Naka: 1/2-1/2
- Pragg-Fabi: 1/2-1/2
- Vidit-Abasov: 1/2-1/2
- Gukesh-Alireza: 1/2-1/2
Women’s
- Vaishali-Lei: 1/2-1/2
- Salimova-Lagno: 1-0
- Tan-Goryachkina: 1/2-1/2
- Humpy-Muzychuk: 1-0
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00358 ◊ When a Child Asks About Angels ◊ Stuart Dischell
When a Child Asks About Angels
When my brother was swept away in a culvert
During a flash flood and entered a drainpipe
Under a road, the stopped motorists, two elderly
Sisters on their way home from church, counted
Their breath until he spilled out in the ditch
On the other side alive where they cheered him
From the rail and walked down the path in the rain
In their Sunday shoes, flowered hats, and dresses, and they
Guided him through the trees to the shelter of their car.
I am grateful forever to their blanket and thermos
And how they hugged him warm with their bodies
While he was trembling, their huge gorgeous bodies.
—Stuart Dischell
—found in Children with Enemies (2017)
The 2024 Chess Candidates tournament is wild!
This has been the most exciting Chess Candidates tournament—or any chess tournament—I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow is round 13 of 14 and we have a three-way tie for first, with Fabiano Caruana, who was considered by most to be the tournament favorite just a half-game back. And in the final two rounds, three games feature those top four, plus games with some of the potentially most dangerous folks from further down the leaderboard. It’s wild.
No small amount of the excitement is coming from the time control, with two hours flat for the first forty moves + thirty-minutes and thirty-second increment starting at move 41 (with no third time control). I have mixed feelings about this. The chess lover in me doesn’t like speeding the classical game up, but the spectator is loving the drama.
It’s very possible we’ll go into tie-breaks. If we do, with the tie-breaks being rapid games, it will surely be high drama, but I will have solidly divided feelings: I don’t think classical chess should ever be decided by time-controls that do not quality as classical chess by the organizing body. I know this is the view of a Romantic dinosaur, but there you have it!
While I appreciate the drama of Nakamura’s routine streaming and his relaxed attitude (or the partial pretense of one: I believe that he is relatively relaxed about the tournament, but I don’t think he literally “does not care”), I’m not too interested in the ancillary drama in the form of Alireza’s ShoeGate followed by his—rather worked up—father being escorted from the venue, where he had the chance to launch a tirade to a reporter.
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00357 ◊ Racists in Space ◊ Ashley M. Jones
Racists in Space
”Nobody wants to go back to that crazy racist life.”
”No, nobody wants to go back to riding a horse and buggy.”
”No, we not going back to that. People trying to go to space.”
—pulled from a conversation with my parents
Meet George Jetson—his Klan robe is made of supersonic polyester—-Jane, his wife, bakes space cookies for Mr. Spacely, the Grand Space Dragon. They host dinner parties, and Rosie the Negrobot sings the old cotton songs.
A space joke: How many niggers does it take to make a Spacely’s Sproket? None, cause ain’t no niggers in space. We left them in steamy Alabama, in the hills and trees of Virginia back on Earth.
Here, we breatne in little clear bubbles fastened around our necks. Curious, we think, these tourniquets that save our space-aged lives. Curious, we think—we used to fasten a bubble of air, a rope around a black man’s neck, called it a noose and waited till the air crackled out of his body. How much faster he’d implode in space, how quickly his body would turn inside out to greet the gaping black.
—Ashley M. Jones
—found in Terminus Magazine (2017; Issue 14)
2024 Chess Open Candidates Round 12 Predictions
What a pair of tournaments. My favorite in the Women’s field, Anna Muzychuk, just can’t finish a win, while Lei Tingjie and Tan Zhongyi are crushing the field. Meanwhile, Naka is staging a wild “comeback,” Nepo is playing defense like Petrosian, and we have the prospect of the youngest challenger ever emerging when the smoke clears. Good stuff!
Anyway, my predictions:
Open:
- Naka-Alireza: 1-0
- Abasov-Gukesh: 1/2-1/2
- Fabi-Vidit: 1/2-1/2
- Nepo-Pragg: 1/2-1/2
Women’s
- Lagno-Lei: 1/2-1/2
- Muzychuk-Vaishali: 1-0
- Goryachkina-Humpy: 1-0
- Salimova-Tan: 0-1
2024 Chess Candidates Round 11 Predictions
I think I’m going to stop predicting what I think will happen, which I’m terrible at anyway, and instead “predict” what I hope will happen, which just as hard because I actually like everyone who’s playing. But for entertainment value:
Open:
- Pragg-Nakamura: 1-0
- Vidit-Nepo: 1-0
- Gukesh-Fabi: 1/2-1/2
- Alireza-Abasov: 0-1
Women’s
- Tan-Lagno: 0-1
- Humpy-Salimova: 0-1
- Vaishali-Goryachkina: 1-0
- Lei-Muzychuk: 0-1
2024 Chess Candidates Round 10 predictions:
I haven’t tallied my prediction results…is it possible to be less than 0? Nonetheless, let’s roll! Or walk. Quietly, carrying a big rook.
Open:
- Naka-Abasov: 1-0
- Caruana-Alireza: 0-1
- Nepo-Gukesh: 1/2-1/2
- Pragg-Vidit: 1/2-1/2
Women:
- Lagno-Muzychuk: 1/2-1/2
- Goryachkina-Tingjie: 1/2-1/2
- Salimova-Vaishali: 1-0
- Tan-Humpy: 1-0
2024 Chess Candidates Round 9 predictions:
Just bet on the opposite of whatever I predict. But I must forge ahead. Note that my wishlist would be rather different. Maybe I should just start posting that instead!
Open:
- Vidit-Naka: 1/2
- Gukesh-Pragg: 1/2
- Alireza-Nepo: 0-1
- Abasov-Caruana: 0-1
Women’s
- Tingjie-Salimova: 1-0
- Humpy-Lagno: 1/2
- Vaishali-Zhongyi: 0-1
- Muzychuk-Goryachkina: 1/2
📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00356 ◊ Sylt II ◊ Valzhyna Mort
Sylt II
The wind that makes your hair grow faster
opens a child’s mouth full of strawberry and sand.
Slow and sure
on the scales of the ocean
the child’s head outweighs the sun.
Inside the wind –
a blister of a church,
its walls thicker than the room from wall to wall
where the wind shifts shade and light
as if they were two rival chess pieces
or two unmatched pieces of furniture.
Inside the church – such a stillness;
a feather which floats clenched in a fist of dust
becomes a rock by the time it hits the ground.
Organ pipes glint like a cold radiator
caged in a case carved as a tree, its branches
tied up with a snake.
Organ pedals, golden and plump, are the tree’s only fruit.
It is all about the release of weight.
The player crushes the pedals like grapes underneath his feet.
My body, like an inaccurate cashier, adds your weight to itself.
Your name, called into the wind,
slows the wind down.
When a body is ripe, it falls and rots from the softest spot.
Only when a child slips and drops off a tree,
the tree suddenly learns that it is barren.
—Valzhyna Mort
—found in Collected Body (2011)
2024 Chess Candidates Round 8 predictions:
We’re only starting the second half, but things are going to get out of reach for many hopefuls if Ian wins and they don’t…
I have no long trains of logic behind my last minute picks today, but I need to get them in under the wire, so:
Because, why not…
- Hikaru 1/2-1/2 Fabi
- Nepo 1-0 Abasov
- Pragg 0-1 Firouzja
- Vidit 1-0 Gukesh
Women’s:
- Lagno 1/2-1/2 Goryachkina
- Salimova 0-1 Muzychuk
- Tan 1/2-1/2 Lei
- Humpy 1- 0 Vaishali
Have to spin up a WordPress site because…reasons. I now have many reasons to avoid Bluehost. Prevaricating pre-sales support, terrible tech-support that spent four days in confusion then told me I had to upgrade to have a single site.
Dreamhost? Up and running in a few minutes with accurate support.