Joe Steel isn’t asking for much from an updated Apple TV, though I don’t know that he’ll get any of it. His piece reads more as a critique of what Apple offers than a wish for what could come next. In the TV space, Apple, one of the pioneers of digital entertainment¹, is years behind. Hoping change is coming soon.

(via Six Colors.) :)

It’s been years since I last watched Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Current events gave me a hankering to revisit it, so I rented the Blu-ray and popped it in last night. Some stray thoughts.

I’ve always remembered the overtly sexual mechanics of the film’s opening sequence, but I had forgotten Pablo Ferro’s beautifully designed titles. Over the years, graphic design has become a more central daily concern for me, so I sit in wonder of the gorgeous lettering. From card to card I stand mystified by the creative placement of each word. It feels at once perfect, everything in its place, and yet completely wrong, setting fire to common sense.

I was planning to add in a remark about how organic and alive these titles feel compared to the similar but much drier titles to Men in Black, but it seems those were done by…Pablo Ferro. Go figure.

One thing that feels so shocking by today’s standards is how compact Kubrick, along with Terry Southern and Peter George, manage to keep a narrative about the end of the world. If a film about an impending nuclear holocaust were made today, there would be at least one sequence where you see wide shots of public squares around the world reacting to the news. You would see people running in the streets. Or at the very least, given the secrecy of the scenario, scenes of happy life going on undisturbed. These sorts of macro scenes are crutches that help set the visual stakes. Dr. Strangelove brilliantly resists this urge, limiting itself to three main locations: Ripper’s base, the War Room¹ and Major Kong’s plane, with only a brief moment in Turgidson’s mirror-clad hotel room. Kubrick gives the audience enough credit to understand the stakes.

I forgot just how good Peter Sellers is as President Merkin Muffley.² His extended call with the Russian premier is one of the most brilliant bits of one-sided telephone. It’s Bob Newhart level good. I tend to think of him as Dr. Strangelove, desperately trying to control his right arm, but it is the Muffley role that, I would argue, requires a higher level comic genius.

Speaking of the good doctor, I noticed on this viewing that he is introduced at the exact halfway point of the film. I think he may appear in a single shot prior to that, but it is when his name is first uttered that he bursts into the film, changing the mechanics of the story. It feels as though the film’s title is a setup for a joke whose punchline is Strangelove’s entrée.

George C. Scott’s comic timing is a thing of beauty. He lands every single laugh. Line’s like “I’d like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in” and “He’ll see the big board!” could so easily be dry, but coming from him they’re centerpiece bits. I need to catch up on more of Scott’s films, but he is always a towering figure in anything I’ve seen him in. Even in a frothy picture like Not with My Wife, You Don’t!, he seems to work at one speed: intense.

It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but it blows my mind a thirty-something James Earl Jones sounds exactly like an eighty-something James Earl Jones.

Another little something: “WORLD TARGETS IN MEGADEATHS.”

Something I never took note of before last night is the film’s visual effects. Any viewer can discern that they are looking at miniature aircraft superimposed over flying footage, but great care is taken to match the lighting conditions and movement of the planes to the background footage. The effect works well, perhaps better than audiences need it to. Kubrick, of course, was a detail-oriented filmmaker.

I forgot there is a comedic beat between when Slim Pickens takes his iconic ride on a nuclear missile and the film’s concluding “We’ll Meet Again” sequence. Another stroke of genius to have a room full of powerful men discussing, to the bitter end, the sexual Xanadu they could have created underground if only they had had the foresight. Kaboom.

I can’t quite figure out if Dr. Strangelove, a political satire steeped in the blackest cynicism of its era, is timeless or not. The film plays just as well today, but perhaps it is because the Cold War looms larger than we’d like to admit.

I hope I don’t wait as many years to revisit the film again. No doubt, I will find even more in it the next time around.

I recall, often, something John Gruber wrote a few years back when Andrew Sullivan gave up blogging:

Blogging isn’t hard work in the way that coal mining is, but above all else it demands enthusiasm. There’s no other way to keep going — blogs cease when their authors run out of enthusiasm.

Admitting you’ve lost your enthusiasm is hard to do because it’s practically admitting defeat. I’m not yet ready to throw in the towel on the candler blog. I can admit that my enthusiasm has waned, but I refuse to be defeated.

I take great pride in having built a home for my thoughts on the web. When inspiration strikes, I love being able to publish my work at an outlet I control completely. But I suppose that diminished enthusiasm has caught up with me, keeping me from writing regularly.

I want to get back to it, though. Perhaps I need to tweet less. Or maybe there is something about my writing workflow that has gone wonky. I’ll work through it, and I’d like to do so on these pages, if you’ll indulge me.

This is my second post in a row about blogging. I’ll try to avoid that. I don’t know that I’ll write about the same sort of stuff I’ve always written about film, technology and the like. Probably, I will. To be honest I don’t know what I’ll write next, which has always been the fun of having a site like this.

Well, shit. Yesterday indie web ad network The Deck shut down. John Gruber, whose Daring Fireball was a founding site, wrote a beautiful post-mortem last night. The network simply couldn’t stay afloat as web publishing goes through its current upheaval. Social is eating everything, including ad revenue. It’s frustrating, but not surprising.

I always aspired to be a member of The Deck. When this site was at its most productive, it was a part of the InfluAds network. Later I switched to Fusion Ads. Both operated on a similar principal to The Deck: one well-designed ad per page. But then BuySellAds, which operates the Carbon network, scooped both up. Under BuySellAds I watched Fusion’s payments go from a small monthly pittance to literally nothing. So I cut ads entirely.

The candler blog turned eight last week. I often joke that I started the site right at the end of blogging but got stuck with the name because the domain I wanted wasn’t available.¹ It’s quaint, in 2017, to have a site with blog right in the name, but I don’t plan on changing it any time soon. Blogging is so old now that its detractors have set their sights elsewhere; writing on your own website has become old media.I don’t know what the future of publishing is. Medium thinks it has an idea, but, uh…they’ve said that before.

Social is gobbling up time, attention and traffic. Once it was a boon to the open web; now it’s an alternative to it. The biggest loss is not that sites like this one may shrivel up, it’s that the next wave of writers won’t even consider owning their own little slice of the web.

The Deck going away is a loss made all the more frustrating by the fact that there isn’t really an alternative to it. Writers will always find a way to write, though. My hope is that the next generation of writers will find a way to put their words on the web on their own terms. Social doesn’t offer that. Blogging always has, and always will.

Seven years ago this week I visited Austin for the first time.

Four and a half years ago I moved here.

Two and a half years ago I met the woman of my dreams.

On Saturday, we got hitched.

There’s not much more to say, really. Our wedding was beautiful, and we’re both bursting with joy that we were able to share it with family and friends. I wanted to share it with you, the folks who read this site. It seems silly for me to go on writing here without mentioning such a major milestone.

I’m covering my eighth SXSW, which starts tomorrow. (Well, today, really.) My relationship with this festival is strange. Had it not been for this film fest in the heart of Texas, I don’t know that I would ever have had the courage to move here. Which means I may never have met my wife. I’m glad I did.

Anyway, time to load up on films. Look for my writing here and on Death and Taxes.

Oh and if you’ve been reading the candler blog for some time, you won’t be surprised by our guest book. Very happy we were able to make this happen.

(Photos by Nicole Ryan Photography. Texas-sized Field Notes by Draplin Design Co. and Industry Print Shop.)

In a break from regularly scheduled Scriptnotes programming, screenwriter John August spoke with his Quote-Unquote Apps collaborator Nima Yousefi about Donald Trump’s executive order banning Muslim¹ refugees and others from entering the United States. It’s a great, simple listen that almost brought me to tears on my ride home last night.

Nima does amazing work with John. When he was just a baby, his family fled the Iranian Revolution for the US. Any delay on their asylum in the US was life or death. That’s not hyperbole; it’s fact.

Listen to the episode and let Nima speak to his own experience. His most salient point is that we are talking about people here. Real people. It’s easy to offer up armchair commentary about an order that won’t make a dent in your daily life. But just think about the fact that we’re talking about human beings here. This is happening, and it’s happening on our watch.

Ah, 2016, you horrible mess of a year, goodbye forever. Well, goodbye in just another moment. First I’d like to take stock of all the movies I saw and stuff I read. Then we can move it along to 2017.

Last February I wrote a bit about how I would try my best to track my viewing throughout the year. For the most part I managed to keep a decent log in Day One, but it wasn’t a perfect solution. Getting the films out of the app so I could organize them in a list proved frustrating. It made me wish I had stuck with Letterboxd all year.

Anyway, in that same February post I set the following goal for myself:

If I can do it, I’d like to try and keep a ratio of at least 6:1 in terms of old vs. new films I watch this year. In other words, for every six films I watch I should see at least one 2016 release.

How did I do? I saw 65 older films and 31 new releases, 2:1. Not bad! But 31 is way too low. Last year I saw 35 new releases, so this is kind of a let-down. I think the list of older films I saw this year is extremely well-rounded, but I feel like I barely saw any of the major new films of the year.

So let me just get this out of the way now: my goal for 2017 is to see at least 50 new releases and maintain that 2:1 ratio of older films.

I can’t really do a top 10 list this year since I feel like I missed so many great films. Films I enjoyed the most, in no particular order, would probably be Hail, Caesar!, Miles Ahead, Green Room, Little Sister and Morris From America. I was a huge Sausage Party booster when it premiered, but my enthusiasm wore off a bit when it came out in theaters.

If those films are any indication, it should be clear that smaller, more independent films are where all the action was in 2016. Rogue One is probably the best tentpole film of the year, but look at the competition… I know few will agree with this, but of the superhero films (set Rogue One aside for a moment) last year I probably enjoyed X-Men: Apocalypse the most. Pound-for-pound it felt the most visually interesting.

I was a voracious reader in 2016. Somewhere along the way I got into comics. I’m still working my way through older titles, though I dipped my toes into single issues with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run of Black Panther. I’m still not quite ready to be a guy who hits the comic shop up every Wednesday (single issues confuse the hell out of me) but I’ll keep reading what I can.

My favorite comic discovery was probably China Miéville’s Dial H, which is so, so good. That led me to his The City & The City, a wild concept executed perfectly.

I really tried to branch out my reading last year and I think the list below shows I did a decent job doing so. Some of the reading had purpose, scratching little itches about ideas I had at the time. Some was just a distraction. The Aeneid almost destroyed my reading streak for the year, but I powered through and I’m glad I did. A curiosity: why is The Odyssey perpetually filmed but The Aeneid is practically invisible in cinema. It seems the only movie version of the tale is Giorgio Venturini’s 1962 The Avenger. It’s on YouTube…

So here it all is in one place: stuff consumed in 2016. The films link to IMDb, the books and comics go to Amazon.¹ I tried my best to keep the links as useful as possible, pointing to the info I would want to know. I indicated if I saw films at a festival. All of the new releases I saw this year were either DCP screenings or seen at home. I indicate if the older movies were seen on film or DCP; otherwise I watched them at home. Books and comics are in the order they were read.

New Releases

• Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero, Jonathan Kesselman, AFF 2014
• Creative Control, Benjamin Dickinson, SXSW 2015
• Hail, Caesar!, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, February 13
• Presenting Princess Shaw, Ido Haar, March 11 SXSW — My Review
• Little Sister, Zach Clark, March 12 SXSW
• Midnight Special, Jeff Nichols, March 12 SXSW
• Don’t Think Twice, Mike Birbiglia, March 13 SXSW
• Hardcore Henry, Ilya Naishuller, March 13 SXSW
• Keanu, Peter Atencio, March 13 SXSW
• Sausage Party, Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, March 14 & August 14 SXSW — My Review
• Carnage Park, Mickey Keating, March 15 SXSW
• A Stray, Musa Syeed, March 16 SXSW — My Review
• Morris From America, Chad Hartigan, March 16 SXSW
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder, April 3
• Deadpool, Tim Miller, April 9
• Dough, John Goldschmidt, April 28 — My Review
• The Invitation, Karyn Kusama, April 17
• Captain America: Civil War, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, May 26
• X-Men: Apocalypse, Bryan Singer, June 4
• The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015, July 9
• Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier, July 13
• Ghostbusters, Paul Feig, July 16
• Amanda Knox, Rod Blackhurst & Brian McGinn, October 7
• The Girl on the Train, Tate Taylor, October 8
• Weiner, Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, November 26
• Zootopia, Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush, November 26
• Sing Street, John Carney, November 28
• Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle, November 30
• High-Rise, Ben Wheatley, 2015, December 6
• Sing, Garth Jennings, Christophe Lourdelet, December 26
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Gareth Edwards, December 29

Older Films

• The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino, 2015, January 3 70mm
• Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray, 2015, January 9
• Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, January 22
• The Man Who Loved Women, Blake Edwards, 1983, January 28 35mm
• American Dreamz, Paul Weitz, 2006, January 30
• A Man Escaped, Robert Bresson, 1956, January 30
• Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009, January 31 DCP
• Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, February 1
• Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Rob Hedden, 1989, February 2 35mm
• Irrational Man, Woody Allen, 2015, February 5
• My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988, February 8 DCP
• The Man Who Loved Women, François Truffaut, 1977, February 9
• Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975, February 9
• Mistress America, Noah Baumbach, 2015, February 10
• The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Preston Sturges, 1944,
• Candyman, Bernard Rose, 1992, February 16 35mm
• Smorgasbord, Jerry Lewis, 1983, February 19
• Confidentially Yours, François Truffaut, 1983, February 20
• Fury, Fritz Lang, 1936, February 23 35mm
• The Invisible Man, James Whale, 1933, February 23 35mm
• World of Tomorrow, Don Hertzfeldt, 2015, February 26
• Spotlight, Tom McCarthy, 2015, February 26
• Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes, 1998, February 29 35mm
• Zombie, Lucio Fulci, 1979, March 1 35mm
• Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki, 2008 March 2 DCP
• Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater, 1993, March 4
• Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Leslie Harris, 1992, April 8
• House, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977, April 12 35mm
• What We Do in the Shadows, Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, 2014, April 15
• The Trial, Orson Welles, 1962, April 26
• Amy, Asif Kapadi, 2015, April 28
• All the Way, Jay Roach, May 25
• The Comedy of Terrors, Jacques Tourneur, 1963, June 9
• Loves of a Blonde, Miloš Forman, 1965, June 21 35mm
• Prince of Darkness, John Carpenter, 1987, June 21 35mm
• Anomalisa, Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman, 2015, July 12
• Big Night, Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott, 1996, July 13
• The Big Short, Adam McKay, 2015, July 16
• Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen, 1986, July 19 35mm — Hannah came up in a post later in the year.
• The Lost Boys, Joel Schumacher, 1987, July 26 35mm
• Tenebre, Dario Argento, 1982, August 2 35mm
• After the Fox, Vittorio De Sica, 1966, August 4
• The Naked Kiss, Samuel Fuller, 1964, August 4
• The Big Lift, George Seaton, 1950, August 6
• Zero for Conduct, Jean Vigo, 1933, August 6
• Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas, 2014, August 7
• Persona, Ingmar Bergman, 1966, August 9 35mm
• Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, August 9 DCP — I wrote about seeing these two films back-to-back.
• The Red Shoes, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948, August 11 35mm
• Pete’s Dragon, Don Chaffey, 1977, August 12
• Bob Roberts, Tim Robbins, 1992, August 12
• The Wrong Box, Bryan Forbes, 1966, August 17
• Point Blank, John Boorman, 1967, August 18
• Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, August 20 35mm
• Pretty Maids All in a Row, Roger Vadim, 1971, August 23
• The Americanization of Emily, Arthur Hiller, 1964, August 27
• The Phynx, Lee H. Katzin, 1970, August 31
• The Verdict, Sidney Lumet, 1982, September 1
• Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley, 1992, September 2
• A Woman, Charles Chaplin, 1915, September 3 DCP
• A Night In The Show, Charles Chaplin, 1915, September 3 DCP
• Police, Charles Chaplin, 1916, September 3 DCP
• Another Woman, Woody Allen, 1988, September 23
• Identification of a Woman, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1982, November 27
• Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg, 1993, December 18

Books Read

• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
• Hasidic Jew Night at the Roller Rink, Keith Ruckus
• Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75, Tom Perrina
• Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth, A.O. Scott — Some thoughts from April.
• Film After Film: (Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?), J. Hoberman
• The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
• Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf
• The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
• The Circle, Dave Eggers
• On Photography, Susan Sontag
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
• The Natural, Bernard Malamud
• The City & the City, China Miéville
• The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami
• Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America, Philip Dray
• The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
• The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, Brooke Gladstone
• Indignation, Philip Roth
• The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, Gretchen Bakke Ph.D.
• South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami
• Jelly Roll: A Blues, Kevin Young
• Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, Gene Wilder
• Field Work: Poems, Seamus Heaney
• Aeneid Book VI: A New Verse Translation, Virgil, Seamus Heaney
• Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life, Michael Lewis
• Walden, Henry David Thoreau
• The Aeneid, Virgil
• Design as Art, Bruno Munari

Comics

• Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book One, Brian K. Vaughan
• Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book Two, Brian K. Vaughan
• Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book Three, Brian K. Vaughan
• Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7: Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man, #7), Brian K. Vaughan
• Y: The Last Man, Vol. 8: Kimono Dragons (Y: The Last Man, #8), Brian K. Vaughan
• Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book Five, Brian K. Vaughan
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street (Transmetropolitan, #1), Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 2: Lust for Life (Transmetropolitan, #2), Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard (Transmetropolitan, #3), Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum (Transmetropolitan, #4), Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 5: Lonely City (Transmetropolitan, #5), Warren Ellis
• Black Panther #1, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Black Panther #2, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 6: Gouge Away, Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 7: Spider’s Thrash (Transmetropolitan, #7), Warren Ellis
• Dial H, Vol. 1: Into You, China Miéville
• Dial H, Vol. 2: Exchange, China Miéville
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 8: Dirge (New Edition), Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 9: The Cure, Warren Ellis
• Transmetropolitan, Vol. 10: One More Time (Transmetropolitan, #10), Warren Ellis
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter, Darwyn Cooke
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit, Darwyn Cooke
• Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score, Darwyn Cooke
• Richard Stark’s Parker: Slayground, Darwyn Cooke
• Superman Archives, Vol. 1, Jerry Siegel
• Superman, Volume 1: What Price Tomorrow?, George Pérez
• Superman, Volume 2: Secrets and Lies, Dan Jurgens
• The Flash, Volume 1: Move Forward, Francis Manapul
• The Flash, Volume 2: Rogues Revolution, Francis Manapul
• The Flash, Volume 3: Gorilla Warfare, Francis Manapul
• Superman, Volume 3: Fury at World’s End, Scott Lobdell
• The Flash, Volume 4: Reverse, Francis Manapul
• The Flash Vol. 5: History Lessons (The New 52), Brian Buccellato
• Superman, Volume 4: Psi War, Scott Lobdell
• Superman: Red Son, Mark Millar
• Superman, Volume 5: Under Fire, Scott Lobdell
• Superman: The Men of Tomorrow, Geoff Johns
• Dark Night: A True Batman Story, Paul Dini
• Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel, Jules Feiffer
• Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Alan Moore
• Superman, Volume 1: Before Truth, Gene Luen Yang
• Superman, Volume 2: Return to Glory, Gene Luen Yang

I have a tiny slice of the internet here on the candler blog, and I can do with it as I please. So I will take an editorial stance, a quiet protest of letters: I will not give Donald Trump an honorific.

Here, on these pages, and in my tweets and Facebook posts and whatever other scraps of writing I have editorial control over, he will either be Mr. Trump, Donald Trump or plain old Trump. Nothing more.

It’s a small but important reminder to me that he is not my president. He represents hatred and bigotry, cronyism and corruption, mismanagement and failure. He is an American embarrassment, so I’ll withhold the honorific until he earns it. He’s got a long way to go.

I’ve started this piece so many times. A million different ways. All year. I’ve been trying to find the words, but never have. I hoped others would. They did, but it didn’t matter.

Donald Trump has all the hallmarks of a fascist dictator. He is a racist, a xenophobe. He espouses white supremacy. Make no mistake: the America he thinks used to be great was punishing for many. His rhetoric puts Americans at home and abroad in danger. And we knew it. Our country elected him with eyes wide open.

I regret not publishing those words before today. I write now simply to be heard. I want to make sure I say out loud that we didn’t all support him. None of us knows what the future holds, but when I look back on this era, at least I can say I was not for Trump. History should know that we existed, that we tried.

Growing up Jewish, two words are hammered into you: never forget. My people have had a very rough go over the centuries, particularly in the previous two. We were run out of Europe amid a campaign of intimidation, amid massacres. Some, like my relatives, were lucky enough to make it to America a generation before Hitler.

Jews have enjoyed incredible acceptance in the United States. But Jews were also accepted in Europe, once upon a time. History moves slowly and is rarely clear when you’re in the middle of it. The lesson passed down to me after a century of unspeakable horror was one of vigilance. Pay attention. Engage. Question. And never, ever forget.

It’s not paranoia that has me feeling this way. It’s experience.

The Ku Klux Klan is jubilant. Trump’s divisive talk has galvanized racists, bigots and anti-Semites in this country. Many of Trump’s supporters don’t see themselves that way, and I’m sure millions of them are well-meaning Americans frustrated by our political system. Yet they have thrown in with a dangerous crowd. I worry where this leads.

Ever since Trump announced his candidacy by viciously attacking Mexican-Americans, Martin Niemöller’s famous stanzas have been ringing in my head daily.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When I speak with friends about my concerns as a Jew, they often tell me it won’t happen here, that I am overreacting. But it’s already happening, just not to me. A man spent a year-and-a-half selling Americans on the forcible expulsion of millions of immigrants and shutting them off from us behind a wall. And then he got elected president. If the mass deportations happen, or if the wall gets built, this is a dark path for our country. And that will only be the beginning.

I’ve been quiet here for too long. If I don’t speak up now I may never get the chance.

A closing thought. This world is nothing without art. Culture is not an addendum to civilization; it is its raison d’être. Today was a tough day and there will be many of those ahead. But the beauty around us has not disappeared. If anything it stands out in stark relief more than ever. Creativity has sustained humanity through its toughest moments. So if you create, create like hell. We need you to.

Me, December 2012:

I don’t begrudge Instagram their efforts to monetize their service, nor Facebook’s attempt to get a bit of money back on their billion dollar investment. That doesn’t mean I need to be a part of it though.

And so I’m moving to Flickr.

Last September:

I’ve been inching closer to returning to Instagram in the past year…

This week I signed up for Instagram once again. I’ve been feeling the slow pull back into it for some time, but the final straw was getting an iPhone 7 Plus last weekend. I’m already having a great time shooting with all three (!) cameras on the 7 Plus, and I know I’m going to want to share those photos.

Why did I leave Instagram four years ago? The short answer: ads. I didn’t like Instagram’s terms back then because they wanted the ability to sell user photos to brands without giving the photographer a cut. They reverted their terms after a public revolt, but the damage had been done for me. I lost trust in the company and left.

If I’m honest with myself I can admit that my writing about leaving Instagram played a bigger role in my resisting coming back than the reasons I originally left. That may seem silly, but stubbornnes usually is. Getting over that hurdle and taking a serious look at why I wouldn’t join again was a years long process.

I was right to leave then, but I’m also excited to come back. I’ve seen the fun that friends and family have with the app. There is something about it that really makes it a powerful photo sharing platform. I’m still wary about Instagram and Facebook, but I can be wary from the inside instead of from the outside looking in.

When I deleted my account, Instagram said I was forfeiting my username for good, but that turns out not to have been true.¹ So if you’re looking for me on Instagram, I’m @poritsky.

Here’s my first photo, taken with Apple’s beta “Depth Effect.” That’s Hazel. I suspect there will be plenty of her in my feed. Happy snapping.