Sunday assorted links

1. Why is California so closely connected with melancholy?  Here is a smart, critical review of La La Land, but I think it misses the point: the movie is a critique and indeed subtle reflection of what is (supposedly) an all-pervasive mediocrity of contemporary life and art.  Setting the opening musical number in a traffic jam plays up the contrast with the older, “more glorious” musicals quite deliberately.  At the same time, the movie questions whether the past was ever so glorious after all.

2. Librarians report on what is the strangest thing they have found in a library book.

3. Might Peter Thiel run for governor of California?

4. An Arkansas city won’t let them live in a $1500 trailer, minimum legal value there is $7500.

5. Trump, Strauss, and Bingham’s “The Verdict of the People.”  And would you leave Parliament to run the V&A?

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