In the way I imagined it, music would be a huge part of the road trip to New Orleans – and not just at the destination. I can’t say I was disappointed. We started on the first night, in Vegas, by going to see the Blue Man Group in our own hotel. A quite pleasant and easy-going show that was a nice opener to the week.

In Santa Fe, we randomly walked by the Skylight and saw the signs for Tinariwen, which was a delightful surprise. I had previsouly seen them in France playing in front of a large festival crowd but they’ve also played at Coachella. In other words, I wasn’t expecting to find them playing in a small venue in New Mexico. The band is from Mali and play Tuareg music. Pretty much all seven dreadlock-wearing people in town were in the audience that night. It was also the first time I ever saw someone meditate in the lotus position at a concert (true story).

Come Austin and our waitress recommends the White Horse, in which we find a band playing actual, real country music. People make room on the dance floor, each song starts slow and builds up to being more dancey. The fellows are handsome (in some slightly hipster-y way but nothing as insufferable as in the Bay Area), the ladies are pretty, partners switch partners song after song. This place is a huge reason why I want to come back to Austin.

Two days before the beginning of the trip, I had the chance to see Yelle in San Francisco. Before leaving I knew their tour would be taking them roughly on the same path as us but always a day early or late. As we’re making way to Houston, I realize the extra stop might just be our luck. And it was. The venue was the kind I love: small, packed, hot, sticky. Yelle delivered once again and knowing the lyrics and the tunes made for a much better show on my end.

Finally, New Orleans, where the music simply vibrates throughout the city. At every corner of every street, bands play in bars with their windows and doors fully open to the world. Kids with makeshift tap shoes beg for a quarter, young amateur orchestras of 15 play for 6 or 7 hours in a row. Early on Saturday evening, I find myself having a chilled beer sitting at the Bamboula’s on Frenchmen St. The sun is setting and a young quartet is playing jazz. Perfect doesn’t even start to describe it.

Yang Yongliang is a Chinese artist who has drawn incredibly detailed, fictional landscapes of futuristic cities intertwined with massive natural structures. I recently came across his work and was simply left speechless.

The same city depicted in the first picture above is also shown in what appears to be a much larger piece. The minutiae is simply breathtaking - it’s hard to fathom the amount of work that must have gone into producing just a single piece.

The closest thing it reminds me of is the art of Stephen Wiltshire or that of Masamune Shirow in Ghost in the Shell.

For years, my Friday morning routine was set in stone: I sat down in front of my work computer, opened up the website of the Daily Show and started catching up with the episodes of the past week. It was nice and easy: a solid two hours of good programming on the day before the week-end rolls in… And all of sudden, the drive to do this went away.

When Jon Stewart took time off last year and Oliver assumed temporary control, it was a stern realization of how much Stewart had designed a show that couldn’t be run by anyone else – or at least, not by someone the caliber of John Oliver. The following months were disapointing as it seemed Oliver was just going to step down and resume working as a simple cast member. Then Last Week Tonight happened and the rest is history: with under a third of Comedy Central’s reach, Oliver racks in ratings that are in the same ballpark as Colbert.

In Vulture today, Matt Zoller Seitz takes a stab at explaining what happened and completely nails it:

But that forward-motion thing: It really matters. When you watch Oliver’s show, you’re riding a bike through terrain that keeps changing. Its Comedy Central progenitors are more like stationary bikes: There is the feeling of motion, sometimes furious motion, and perhaps there are tangible benefits (We’re keeping our minds lean? I’ll see myself out, thanks), but are you really getting anywhere? Every Daily Show is, in a sense, the same show; the gags change and sometimes there’s a splendidly silly image, but the feeling of a well-oiled machine is unavoidable. At the end, you feel that certain core beliefs have been repeated and thus strengthened, and that’s about it

Two days ago, I was on a plane flying from New Orleans to San Francisco. The nine days before that consisted of that same trip, in reverse, in a car. We only had a couple of planned stops – the first night in Vegas and the last two in New Orleans. Between those two points lied a relative freedom, a balance between where the road can take us and where we wanted to go. It was a prototypical american experience; the motorized and air conditioned version of the old school walkabout.

In Michael Moore’s 1997 movie, there’s a scene where he is getting interviewed on the radio. Following a question from the host, they brainstorm what would be a better name for the United States of America. In a laugh, they end up agreeing on “The Big One”. After this trip, it’s essentially impossible to disagree with Moore’s judgment: this is one big country.

Long roads, endless plains, massive dams, gigantic holes in the ground, mile-long trains, big craters. And it’s also remarkably empty. Besides narrow corridors of civilization lie prairies and mountains as far as the eye can see. We saw the Hoover dam, we got snowed on at the rim of the Grand Canyon, we saw Meteor Crater and then came the New Mexico desert and the desolation of West Texas.

I took a bunch of pictures which I will be working on soon and I also have a couple other write-ups that I want to publish soon.

Mankind has been looking at the night skies for thousands of years and have found it in both a source of curiosity and of enjoyment. Long before the technology was available to take the pictures we are familiar with today, artists and scientists have been drawing depictions of our universe ranging from the most accurate to the most absurd. Cosmigraphics, recently published by Michael Benson, is a collection of such drawings

While some of those document natural occurrences such as galaxies or the transit of Venus, others are attempts at showing the structure and layering of the universe – as it was perceived at the time. One of the most striking piece is the painting of the rings of Saturn by Maria Clara Einmart. The colors, the arrangement and the various shapes fit perfectly together in a way that can only be called beautiful.

Via Brainpickings

I suppose every person has those bands, those “you know by name” – those you have gotten recommendations for, those you have read about, those that are within a one-click purchase that never happens. Bands you feel like you already know except there’s just this one detail: you’ve never gotten around to listen to their music.

On the other hand, I have always much preferred being surprised by artists in a live performance. And so, tonight was kinda special for me in both those respects. I’m just back from a concert by French singer Yelle who is currently touring the U.S. and was at the Regency Ballroom tonight.

I had no idea what I was going to find, except for a friend telling me their music was very dance-y. And dance-y it was. From the beginning to the end, the audience was jumping up and down, faster and with more drive than I have seen in a lot of other shows. My ignorance of the tunes was in no way an issue – getting into the groove was easy as pie – it’s always better when there is company.

The french lyrics were not a deterrent to the crowd, au contraire. A lot of people in the audience tonight were of course French but not overwhelming. As such, it was quite a surprise to see a crowd in SF singing the chorus of À cause des Garçons — a cover of an old cheeky ‘80’s song.

As a bonus, the band stuck around for over an hour after the show to meet and greet the fans, take pictures, and sign posters. Complètement fou! It’s the kind of little things that easily wins me over.

For the past two months, I’ve been experimenting with the process of making fruit jam, which is something that turns out to be both very easy and very enjoyable. Not that I’m a master cook but I think jams are a very approachable way for people new to cooking to play with a recipe and deliver something that is almost universally appreciated.

Jam is really just a matter of combining fruit, sugar, heat and time. I started with a small batch of apricots and literally no idea what I was doing. I boiled sugared water and added the diced fruits, let simmer under low heat and added sugar until the acidity was gone. This resulted in a considerably less sweet product than what may be found in the store. I moved on to trying with peaches (which resulted in a sauce since peaches do not turn into a gel) and pluots (which I came across at the store and had no idea existed before then).

Last week, I picked up three flats of strawberries at the Alemany farmer’s market, for under $60. Each yielded about 10 large jars, which makes each jar about 6 or 7 times as cheap as one the organic one from the store. I brought a set of 10 jars to participate in the most recent Strava Jam. With a little help from my designer friend Anastasia, the jars came out looking fantastically fancy:

The recipe for the strawberry jam is up on my cooking blog.