sangsara.net

Tag: Apple

  • Week 28.24

    Week 28.24

    My weekly ‘Going to the Apple Store’ streak continued on Monday when I accompanied my dad for his demo of the Vision Pro. Rather than use my unit with an imprecise fit, I thought it’d be better for him to get the proper experience, and sure enough, he had completely different strap and light seal sizes from mine. He’s had some experience with immersive headsets, mainly from flying his FPV drone and other vehicles, but in terms of interacting with spatial UIs and XR objects this was a first. He came away very impressed, apart from the usual complaints (weight, price). He wasn’t planning to buy one going in, but I wonder if he’s thinking about it now.

    Aside: One hobby I’ve been meaning to play around with in the Vision Pro is sculpture, which is much more intuitive (read: idiot friendly) to do in 3D space with your hands than on an iPad with a Pencil. There’s just not a great app for it that I’ve found yet, although it’s possible at a blobby sort of level in AirDraw — Finger Paint, so I’m starting there.

    If Apple still made their AirPort wireless networking hubs (many smart people still say to this day that discontinuing them was a strategic error), I might have had cause to visit a store again next week. Since they don’t, I bought a set of TP-Link WiFi mesh routers instead and set them up over the weekend. One of the power adapters was faulty out of the box, but fortunately our old system’s were compatible, so that’s sorted.

    Aside: There was a tense moment on Friday night when a ‘pop’ was heard just before the power cut out in one section of the home. It turned out a wall-connected USB charging hub had burnt out, fortunately without damaging anything. It was a Lencent brand 65W GaN thing that I bought off Amazon Prime last October, with a 4.6-star rating. I was complacent to attribute trust based on its Amazon profile rather than my own knowledge — I’d never heard of Lencent and haven’t since — and won’t be making that mistake again. It’s only slightly more reputable Chinese brands from here on out!

    FWIW I’ve had mixed experiences with Anker, but they’re probably the best/safest from a brand equity perspective. I’ve also seen a lot of people using Ugreen products. I have a charger and a couple of cables from them, but their website has typos like you’d find in a phishing email.

    Our old pre-COVID system was WiFi 5, and we had nearly 30 internet-enabled devices on it, which I think might have contributed to recent connectivity issues. I have bored Kim to tears with explanations and theories all week, so I’ll spare you. In short, I spent $400 I hadn’t budgeted for to upgrade us to a WiFi 6E mesh that claims to have self-learning AI and support for 200 devices. The app is miles better than our old Netgear Orbi’s, letting you configure nearly everything from your phone — it’s bizarro world over at TP-Link because the web-based admin panel has nearly no settings. Anyway, we’re future ready and could move up to 2Gbps internet when our current contract expires.

    ===

    • 🎮 I’m still checking into Zenless Zone Zero daily to claim log-in rewards and farm materials. I’m observing that this routine is actually a barrier to getting more stuck into proper games. Devious.
    • 🎮 Nevertheless, started on a charming and well-written visual novel about the afterlife called Ghostpia: Season 1, on the Nintendo Switch. I saw launch ads for it during our last trip to Japan and bought the global release late last year, but I’m only starting it now. I think it’s pronounced Ghost-o-pia in Japan, and the name implies “ghost town”, like the Latin topos for place, as in utopia. It’s the rare visual novel that doesn’t ever feel like it’s wasting time or insulting your intelligence.
    • 📺 Started watching Sunny, Apple TV+’s new show starring Rashida Jones and a robot that kinda looks like a Pepper 2.0. It’s an A24 production, set in a surreal other-universe Japan that feels like a variant of the world in Severance. Such an odd vibe, which I suppose adds to the “nothing is what it seems” mystery here. She’s an American expat whose Japanese engineer husband and son supposedly died in an accident, leaving her an advanced AI robot to figure things out with.
    • 📺 Absolutely thrilled that Jinny’s Kitchen has returned for a second season on Amazon Prime Video, sending Korean celebrities to run a restaurant in Iceland this time. Like before, each episode is essentially a two-hour movie, and there’s something about this formula that makes even the most mundane moments (restocking a fridge, taking orders, dicing vegetables) so watchable. Other reality shows can only dream of including this much detail on a weekly basis without losing an audience.
    • 🎬 Saw In the Realm of the Senses (1976) on MUBI despite warnings from Nic not to watch it. Is it uncomfortably, unbelievably graphic? Yes. It’s also a very powerful and competently made film based on a bananas true story. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Heroes of the East (1978) next, a classic Shaw Brothers kungfu flick by Lau Kar-Leung starring Gordon Liu, both in top form. It’s actually a cross-cultural martial arts romcom, with action scenes so good I don’t think we know how to do them anymore. One of the best I’ve seen, up there with Dirty Ho (1979). 4.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Friends and Strangers (2021), a very enjoyable indie Australian film. Gorgeous photography, care evident in every shot. The story meanders and discharges detail wherever it feels like it, leaving so much off screen, and the result is “dreamy”? Aside from the Australian identity crises, I was surprised it felt a bit like Singapore, where everyone knows someone you know, and nobody has figured out what life’s about. I much preferred the first half with Emma Diaz in it; the second felt like a portrait of bumbling male incompetence that no one needs to see more of, really. 4 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) and wasn’t as disappointed as I expected to be! It took a little warming up to, but Eddie Murphy looks like he’s having fun again and that’s enough for me. 3 stars.
    • 🎬 If you’re in the mood for a mellow drama shot entirely on an actual luxury cruise ship on an actual voyage, Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk (2020) has got you. Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Candice Bergen! Oh it’s about a writer trying to write a sequel to her best work, and catching up with two old friends she hasn’t seen in decades. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 I also really enjoyed Upgraded (2024), an Amazon Prime Video original romcom about the art world starring Camila Mendes, Marisa Tomei, and Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Anthony Head). It’s derivative AND fun! 3.5 stars.
    • 🎧 Tons of new music this week but I haven’t had time to hear Eminem, Cigarettes After Sex, Tori Amos, or Travis yet. I’ve heard Griff’s debut album, Vertigo (polished pop from Sigrid’s side of the aisle), and Clairo’s Charm (a lush, beautiful vintage sound).
  • Week 27.24

    Week 27.24

    This Fourth of July, I eagerly awaited the launch of Zenless Zone Zero, the new action-gacha-anime game from the Singapore-based, Chinese-owned developer HoYoverse (also known as MiHoYo).

    Gamespot’s review noted that their smash hit Genshin Impact has grown too large as an open-world game to be effectively played on mobile, and is now best on consoles and PC. Their last game Honkai Star Rail was more mobile friendly in comparison, since it’s a turn-based combat game (yawn), and ZZZ comes in somewhere in between.

    It’s got fast-paced dodge and counter gameplay with a sizeable cast of playable characters — most of them needing to be ‘won’ through awful gacha mechanics that will bankrupt weak-willed fans (not me, I hope) — interspersed with pretty animated cutscenes, comic panels, talking head visual novel-style dialogue, Sokoban puzzles, and a charming town where you can shop, do fetch quests, and engage in all that RPG-lite fun.

    If I sound a bit skeptical, it’s because I think this could have been a great paid game instead of a cynical free-to-play profit machine. I’m actually having a great time with it so far, mostly playing on the PS5. Just on the basis of its modern (read: non-fantasy) theme and setting alone, I think I’ve finally found a live-service game I can get into. It’s extremely polished, mindless fun designed to please a certain kind of millennial nerd: the city of New Eridu celebrates film buffs (your character runs a video rental store), ramen lovers, gamers, hackers, and its whole vibe is techno-stylish yet cozy. Right now, you mainly do battle in a few repetitive environments, but if this game is half as successful as HoYoverse’s other titles, they’ll probably add a lot more over the next couple of years.

    The Fourth also brought the surprise release of Kendrick Lamar’s music video for Not Like Us, and the wait was worth it. What a victory lap, as if Drake’s grave wasn’t already bottoming out all the way to the earth’s core. It’s packed with visual jokes and callbacks to Drake’s lines/lies, memes, and other moments from this historic battle. Do they still give out MTV video music awards? Surely not, but if they did, this should win some. It should be Song of the Year at the Grammys.

    ===

    This week with Vision Pro

    Last week, I said that I’d gotten too narrow a light seal for my Apple Vision Pro and was due down at the store to swap it for a better fit. It’s been a minute since I visited Apple Orchard Road, and the space still looked as great as on its first day seven years ago. They’ve set the store up with a dedicated Vision Pro seated demo area, using the new curved couches and white demo tables as documented by Michael Steebler, Apple Retail historian extraordinaire.

    Since I don’t intend to move mine around much, I decided against the official Apple travel case (S$299), and found a great deal on the Spigen Klasden Pouch. It was somehow just S$62 on Amazon with free next-day Prime delivery. That’s a lot less than the $119 USD retail price on Spigen’s own site. I used that to bring my unit down for my appointment, and in the middle of my conversation with the specialist, a man interrupted to ask where I got my case! I looked at the Apple employee beside me and said, “Erm, I don’t think I can answer that within the Apple Store, but you should consider the official case; it’s a fine product!” 🤡 I need to stay in their good graces; I’ll be visiting again next week when I accompany my dad for his 30-minute demo.

    Over the weekend, I got one more Vision Pro accessory delivered, hopefully the last chunk of change I’ll need to spend on this thing: the ANNAPRO A1 Comfort Head Strap that I’ve seen several people on Twitter promoting. It’s meant to be used with the Solo Knit Band and fits over the “audio straps” on either side of the unit, creating a second load-bearing point on your forehead (as opposed to the Dual Loop Strap which sits at the top of your head). I’ve found that this removes almost all pressure from around your eyes and cheeks, as advertised, transferring it to your forehead instead. This isn’t a magic solution for the Vision Pro’s weight but it may be preferable for many people. After all, it’s a proven design similar to that of the PSVR headset. I’m gonna use it as my default for awhile and see how it goes.

    An app recommendation: I discovered that Longplay, which I’ve been using as a living room music controller on an old iPad, has been updated for visionOS. On top of using it as a music player in a window, you can enter an immersive mode that surrounds with a giant wall of your album covers to choose from. The screenshot above is blurry outside the focal point because of the Vision Pro’s foveated rendering, but rest assured when you’re using it, everything you look at is sharp and you never notice blurriness in your peripheral view.

    ===

    Media activity

    • I did a quick playthrough of Love On Leave on the Nintendo Switch, having bought it on sale a few months back. It’s a slightly ecchi visual novel that I only wanted because of its premise: a burned-out salaryman quits his job in the city and decides to take a two-week vacation in the countryside town where he spent some time as a child. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the inn he wanted to stay at is closed for the summer, so he has to live with three sisters who were his childhood friends instead. The eldest’s a momma type, the second is a tsundere martial arts type, and the youngest is a spoilt gamer/streamer college student. I spent most of my time fishing and farming.
    • We watched Lulu Wang’s miniseries, Expats, on Amazon Prime Video. It’s headlined by Nicole Kidman, based on a novel, and set in Hong Kong on the eve of the 2014 protests. I thought Wang did a fantastic job with The Farewell (2019), leaving the right amount of things said/unsaid for emotional impact, but this TV effort is a little clumsier. Still, overall worth seeing at just six episodes — the penultimate one is a film unto itself at 1hr 40mins, and spends time with the Filipino domestic workers who are only background characters up to that point. The show’s description tells you that it’s about three expat women (one white, one brown, one yellow) connected by a tragedy, and it’s so easy to forget that their helpers are technically expats too. 3 stars.
    • Rewatched Gravity (2013) in 3D with the Apple Vision Pro after buying it on sale for just $7 USD, and it was even better than I remembered it being a decade ago. And it was remarkable then; a miracle film with so much implied complexity that one can’t imagine how it was made. Yet, the movement is so simple and pure, the whole film is essentially a single continuous scene. Like Mad Max Fury Road, it doesn’t build or boil, it just goes hard from the start and doesn’t let up. 5 stars.
    • Saw This Much I Know to Be True (2022) on MUBI. It’s a concert film (but in a studio) + documentary about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, working through their newer material — 2019’s Ghosteen and 2021’s CARNAGE — during the pandemic. A lot of it deals with the death of his son in 2015, and showcases Cave’s working relationship with Warren Ellis, who looks like an insane homeless math professor who wears nice suits and expensive watches. I especially liked one part where he describes them in the studio as producing loads of horrible stuff with occasional transcendent moments, “but they’re just snippets in an ocean of bullshit”. A perfect description of the creative process. 4 stars.
    • Saw Irma Vep (1996) on MUBI. Weird, funny, enchanting. I don’t think I’d ever seen young Maggie Cheung in a film before this, certainly not speaking English, and it’s something else. She’s magnetic, unbelievably apart from the world. You can feel it when she comes in frame for the first time; suddenly everyone else is a normal person and she’s clearly the movie star she’s supposed to be playing (herself). 4.5 stars.
    • While logging the above on Letterboxd, I discovered that Olivier Assayas made a TV sequel/reboot of Irma Vep in 2022, also titled Irma Vep. It stars Alicia Vikander and is apparently an unflinching assessment of his own failed marriage to Cheung after the original movie, and revisits its themes in the light of our current day disdain for cinema. But I could be wrong. It’s on my list to watch soon.
    • On Sunday we managed to see a hat trick of recent LGBTQ-themed movies!
    • It started with Challengers (2024): The ending is on some anime finishing move shit, you see it a mile away and they drew it out a little too long. Apart from that, this is the tennis romance drama the world has been needing. It’s also shot so so beautifully. 4.5 stars.
    • Then Love Lies Bleeding (2024): Damn, this movie does what it wants. Unfortunately half the time it wants to be a frustrating oversexual drama set in small town hell (you could set a Reacher novel here), but the other half is a beautiful drugged out fantasy I don’t really get but must respect. 3.5 stars.
    • The last one was All Of Us Strangers (2023), a film that Hideo Kojima raved about on Twitter, and after seeing it, I know why: it touches on two of his favorite themes. I won’t say the second one because it’s a spoiler, but the first is men’s butts. Those aside, the core of the film is a really interesting, beautiful narrative device for exploring loss and lost time, one I don’t think I’ve encountered before, handled softly and naturally with great performances (from one guy that looks like Harry Potter and another who looks like The Incredible Hulk, pre-transformation), and it really makes it worthwhile. 4 stars.
  • Week 26.24

    Week 26.24

    The week seemed to slip by with not too much to show for it until Friday, as I waited for the delivery of my Apple Vision Pro. I watched a couple of films, subscribed to the New York Times again, and made some plans for a personal creative project.

    In the meantime, I also made some memes for Instagram.

    I also resumed wearing contact lenses daily after years of relying on glasses, because I didn’t want the Zeiss lens inserts for Vison Pro. It will take a little adjustment; I definitely don’t miss the end-of-day dryness and irritation.

    Okay, so!

    The unboxing experience for this high-end device is suitably premium, despite being made from predominantly recyclable paper materials. You lift the cover — it releases with the usual deliberate, satisfying motion — and there it is, positioned as if on display in a museum, supported by a molded rest. All the accessories are neatly organized in a compartment underneath. There is an indulgent amount of unused space in this box; no squashing of the Vision Pro into egg carton cutouts like with some Sony products!

    A nice Quick Start book instead of the leaflet you get with iPhones

    Side note: I think I may have gotten measured for the wrong size of light seal (21W) as the sides feel narrower and less comfortable than 33W for me. I have an appointment at the Apple Store next week to hopefully get it swapped.

    First encounters

    I’ve already mentioned the magical and immersive experience of using it. Knowing that, it was still a shock when I ran the pre-installed Encounter Dinosaurs app (directed by Jon Favreau) for the first time.

    Some U.S. reviewers reported actually feeling the virtual butterfly land on their outstretched fingers at the start of the experience, to which I thought, “no way”. And yet when it happened to me, I swear I felt four distinct little pricks on my skin as its little legs shifted. That unfortunately primed me to feel what happened next even more acutely. The dinosaurs appeared on screen, with a fluidity and resolution that was greater than I expected, making the PS5 look like “video games”. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say they were lifelike.

    You are warned at the start that the animals can “see you” and will react to your actions. As the largest dinosaur stepped out of its frame and stalked towards me, towered over my seated body, then stared me in the face while exhaling through its nostrils, I felt my body go into a fight-or-flight mode. No joke. I started to sweat. I avoided making eye contact, and turned my head away hoping it would back off. The presence you feel is unbelievably tangible, and I know I will NOT be attempting any horror games in the future.

    Art of the future

    A much calmer experience I can recommend is Museas, which is a completely free journey through art history made by a single person (Miguel Garcia Gonzalez, who calls himself “a supply chain professional by day and spatial computing engineer by night”). You can see landmark artworks at phenomenal scale right in your home, or in “immersive environments”. These suddenly float your body in massive virtual spaces, surrounded by complementary imagery, with the original artwork in front of you. Think of them as frames, just 360º ones. For example, when viewing Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, you see a florid Japanese garden scene all around, while a narrator explains the artwork.

    I suspect they’ve used generative AI to create these descriptions of the artworks’ history and meaning, the voice that reads them (it sounds to me like the actor Jared Harris, who plays Hari Seldon in Foundation), as well as the 360º immersive scenes. If so, the technology has clearly allowed a single person to achieve something that feels professional beyond their means. The voice is natural and doesn’t feel off to me at all. The immersive environments aren’t perfect, but they’re for your peripheral vision — you’re meant to focus on the original art. The wall text is accurate as far as I can tell. Was this labor that could have paid the salaries of a few more people? In theory, but it’s more likely this project wouldn’t have gotten made at all without AI.

    When I think about you I shush myself

    Apart from these new experiences that weren’t possible before, I think the primary application of the Vision Pro for me will be a personal cinema hall. I sat down with the Theater app to watch Adam Lisagor’s 3D recording of John Gruber interviewing Apple executives Joz, Craig, and J.G. at WWDC (regular 2D recording here), and for nearly two hours I was immersed and focused in its virtual space, surrounded by faintly illuminated empty seats and aisles. I felt notifications come in on my wrist, my phone was across the room, and I ignored all of it the same way I would watching a film in a real theater.

    I think the Vision Pro is the antidote to the iPhone that some thought the Apple Watch would be. Turns out the answer to destroyed attention spans, multi-screening, and screen addiction wasn’t to make it easier to leave your phone in your pocket by redirecting things to a watch, it was the skeuomorphic recreation of a giant screen in a dark room. I think this is the ideal way to watch Important Films. And as nice as our new TV is, I don’t think it compares in visceral terms. Tradeoff: focus and immersion vs. comfort and the ability to drink beverages.

    Media activity

    • Finished watching Constellations starring Noomi Rapace on Apple TV+. Mild spoiler: I complained on Threads about the way it handled a plot device thusly: “Sci-fi shows where science-literate people find themselves trapped in parallel universes, and literally don’t know the words “parallel universe” to explain to other people what’s happening, please gtfo”
    • Season 3 of The Bear is out this weekend and like most people (I did a poll on Instagram), we’re getting through it. That first episode? Wow, really special television.
    • Saw Aloners (2021), a film that tackles modern nowhere lives built around go-nowhere jobs, where even if you meet people worth connecting with, your social muscles may already have atrophied too far. Starts strong but doesn’t land the character development at the end for me. Also: is this a chaotic opposite world version of Perfect Days? I said on Letterboxd: “Say less” is the unofficial motto of Korean arthouse cinema. 3/5 stars.
    • Saw Zero Fucks Given (2021). It follows a young woman escaping grief and complexity by going headfirst into the soul-sucking worker bee life of a budget airline attendant, taking each day as it comes, never looking a day ahead as much as she can help it. Lovely work, and Adele Exarchopoulos is a talent. 3.5 stars.
    • Saw Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Oast Lives (2010) through MUBI’s visionOS app, and I chose to watch it on the dark side of the moon. It was incredible to look up and see stars, look around and see a desolate rocky surface, and then at a giant floating screen ahead of me. The movie was also strange, unreal, and disorienting like being on the moon — it won a Palme d’Or when it came out, cynically I think because a Thai film like this was exotique. I enjoyed its atmosphere and ideas a lot, just not the stilted acting. 3.5 stars.
    • I don’t know where else to mention that I fulfilled a personal goal by minting a McDonalds Singapore NFT after Jose alerted me (with two hours to spare) that they were releasing a new Chicken McNuggets series. Their first release last year was of Grimace, and holders enjoy a stream of special perks. Interestingly, they are ‘soulbound’ NFTs, meaning they cannot be sold or transferred from the initial wallet that received them. Don’t ask me why McDonald’s Singapore is doing this (I doubt they do either), but I want it and I got it.
    • I’ve been long Camila Cabello since 2019 when I called her “possibly the most competent pop star and the new Rihanna”, but I have to admit I was nervous about her new album C,XOXO after recent racism accusations and piggybacking on Charli XCX’s party girl image and Brat aesthetic on social media. Thankfully, I’m on my third listen and it’s an enjoyable record apart from Drake appearing on two tracks (putting on his Jamaican accent, for chrissakes). She’s a big Drake defender, but even if she wanted to cut him after recent events, the album is only 32 minutes long and wouldn’t have survived it.
  • Week 25.24

    Week 25.24

    Monday was Hari Raya Haji, a public holiday, and we took an early walk along the nearby ‘park connector’, which I guess is the local government term for “paths beside rivers and canals linking the city’s green spaces”. I must admit, I prefer evening walks over morning ones.

    Mornings are best spent slowly booting up with a hot cup of tea and maybe exploring some new music. Although I started drinking black tea as a way to save money and smooth out the coffee jitters, it’s become my preferred drink throughout the day. Seinfeld’s new set includes a bit where he dismisses tea as weak and tasteless (“I hate it!”), claiming coffee is the only drink that understands “they’re trying to kill me out there!” Inspired by the insight, I tried reintroducing coffee into my routine: one cup in the morning, followed by tea for the rest of the day. It didn’t take. I didn’t need it! Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe life doesn’t feel so painful right now. #blessed.

    One more thing about saving money to establish that I am trying, before we get to the next part where I might appear to not be: Kim found out that the restaurants under the Little Farms grocery brand offer wine at prices that seem like misprints in the menu. They’re essentially sold at the same retail prices you’ll find in the store. So we had a nice Malbec from Australia’s Gill Estate along with our dinner for S$35. That’s S$35 for the BOTTLE, not a glass. I think we’re going to be eating there a lot. (For comparison, I think the cheapest ones here typically start around S$60).

    I actually made this

    I pre-ordered an Apple Vision Pro for launch day. I wish I could call it a casual treat but it’s a fairly large purchase; certainly the most I’ve spent on a single computer in my adult life, and probably equivalent in inflation-adjusted terms to the 33mhz 386-DX my parents bought us in the late 80s. This thing probably has a trillion times the processing power of that PC, not to mention 30x the display resolution, in each eye. It’s amazing the difference three decades makes!

    I’ll save further thoughts for when I get it, but right now I’m planning to use it primarily as a personal theater, perhaps as a larger display for my Mac, and am very excited to try new spatial applications and games as they come out. So many of the things coming to visionOS 2 feel like essential launch features that I may even install the beta.

    If you’re looking to justify one to yourself, feel free to copy my notes.

    1. It’s the first VR/XR headset I’ll be owning, and Apple’s entry into the category is a sign that it’s nearly ready for mainstream adoption. This is probably the moment to start paying attention to new experience possibilities, new interaction conventions, and new consequences for behavior and preferences. Any later might be too late.
    2. These early days of a new platform are the most exciting. Hopefully, we’ll see creators trying out new ideas and innovating in the app space. If Apple made cheaper development units available to select indie studios, this might be helped along. Maybe they are?
    3. The unconfirmed cheaper and lighter model is rumored to be targeting a late-2025 release, and a second-generation Pro model perhaps a year after. That’s at least 18 months where this will have no competition. And if waiting means missing out on two years of watching this potential revolution unfold, then it’s clear to me I don’t want to.
    4. I’ve got the time on my hands now to make plentiful use of it.
    5. As a paying subscriber to all Apple services currently available in my country, I’d be leaving value on the table if I DIDN’T have access to all the exclusive Apple Vision content that’s coming. There are spatially enabled games in Apple Arcade, and Immersive Video features on Apple TV+. It’s not a stretch that Apple Music might add 3D video content in the future. I know it was Amazon Music that hosted Kendrick’s ‘Pop Out’ live event this week, but imagine being in the front row for something like that on a pay-per-view livestream!
    6. I had the opportunity to see a little of Alicia Keys’ Rehearsal Room feature for Apple Vision and it sold me. Maybe people who’ve dabbled in VR for awhile won’t find it as impressive as I did, but the feeling of her presence five feet away was magical. Just like with the Nintendo 3DS, it’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

    Speaking of Alicia Keys, I came across the cast recording for Hell’s Kitchen, a new Broadway musical she’s created, loosely based on her life. It features many of her hits and has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards this year. All that, and yet the album on Apple Music was how I found out about it. Now I wish I could painlessly fly to New York to see it. And while actually being there would be best, I’d love a world where I could buy or rent a front-row seat recording with a double-tap of my fingers in Vision Pro.

    Check out these videos of the cast performing the reimagined versions of No One and If I Ain’t Got You.

    ===

    Media Activity:

    • I signed up for MUBI at last, so the quality and/or pretentiousness of my film viewing is about to go up. If you’d like a free 30-day membership, please use my referral link.
    • I started posting post-film impressions on Threads throughout the week as I go, but don’t worry, I’m pasting and expanding on them here on my own platform.
    • Saw Baby Assassins (2021) because Hideo Kojima raved about the movie series in a tweet, and I found it a fun take on the ol’ high school assassin girls trope; more about their friendship and trying to cope with adult life than the (well-executed) fighting. 4/5 stars.
    • I then saw Baby Assassins 2 Babies (2023) the next day and it was a perfect sequel. The best thing it does is develop the girls’ relationship with more unserious conversational set pieces that feel like Quentin Tarantino took a course in Japanese comedy. Can’t wait for the third one out this year. 4/5 stars.
    • Saw The First Slam Dunk (2022), which is an animated film based on the long-running series. I’ve only seen the first episode of the original anime on Netflix, and it looked like it was made in the early 90s. This film takes the quality bar up a million times with some of the best 3D CG anime I’ve seen. 3.5/5 stars.
    • Saw Tom Cruise’s The Mummy (2017), thinking that his star power would make it okay despite the negative things I’ve heard. It started quite strong but was so so bad. 1.5/5 stars.
    • Saw The Breakfast Club (1985) all the way through for the first time and enjoyed it! It clearly influenced many other films, memes, and popular culture’s depictions of that entire retro/80s-era of American high school life. 4/5 stars.
    • Caught The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) on its last day on MUBI, which is a real shame because more people should see it. Hardly wasting a single frame of its gorgeous, luminous 100-min runtime, this immersive drama set in 1950s Vietnam is simply a masterpiece. Yes, there’s workplace harassment and ant cruelty, but that attitude is why they don’t make them like this anymore! 4.5/5 stars.
    • We are enjoying Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+, where Jake Gyllenhaal plays the kind of creepy protagonist you don’t know whether to trust that he does so well.
    • My song of the week has to be the Lorde remix of Charli XCX’s girl, so confusing. It’s amazing to hear them communicating through a song, and Ella’s verse is probably the most vulnerable from a superstar in recent memory; in a league of its own compared to ahem generic confessional love songs by some people.
  • Week 24.24

    Week 24.24

    ✅ Saw Seinfeld live

    His 2024 tour had just one Asian stop, here, before heading to several Australian cities. We decided to splurge on S$300 tickets late last year for the one-night-only show on June 14. After all, when are you ever going to see Jerry Seinfeld again? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list opportunity.

    And he was pretty good! I can’t believe he’s 70 and still working the circuit. Although the face says he’s aged, the material suggests he’s still the same unserious, childish complainer we love. Some bits on modern subjects like AI and smartphone addiction screamed ‘boomer!’, but his timeless takes on marriage, the lack of innovation at the Sun-Maid Raisin Company, and putting old dish sponges out of their misery, were solid gold.

    ===

    I attended an inspiring memorial service for my uncle, who passed away a few weeks ago. It was a large and well-attended affair, on account of him having been a prominent member of the local medical community.

    Relatives are usually these distant figures we only see during Chinese New Year reunions. But under the surface, there’s a lifetime of stories we never hear, and it’s a pity. If not for the history lesson and stories that his son shared, I would never have known about how he was born in China 90 years ago, arrived in Singapore at the age of 10, suffered tragedy at the hands of the Japanese, and became an award-winning multihyphenate equally accomplished in matters of art and science. That generation really was built different; the risks they took seem unreal when compared to our modern lives (but tbh they couldn’t handle a zillion social notifications destroying their mental health either).

    ===

    It was WWDC week and while I don’t have to comment on Apple stuff, I kinda always do, so let’s keep traditions alive. They unveiled a slew of software features coming to every platform, and I was most excited to see that Journal, Notes, and Freeform are still being improved and haven’t become forgotten hobbies. As a word-centric computer user, they’re the ones I rely on most — the Math Notes demo on iPad was super cool but I couldn’t begin to use it.

    I’m not convinced the Photos app redesign was necessary or an improvement for most users. Its single-page design seems like a conceptual simplification that might add more complexity in real-life use. I haven’t lived with it yet, so I hope I’m wrong.

    I’m convinced Messages will continue to absorb all popular chat features until it eventually catches up to where Telegram was about four years ago. And that’s all it needs to do, really.

    They announced that Apple Vision Pro will finally be sold outside the US, with Singapore as one of the first countries to get it, alongside Japan and China. Wow, that’s a hell of an upgrade to our starting lineup position. Back in Week 5, I correctly predicted that the global rollout would start in June, but I also said that the product would see annual updates — the consensus on tech Twitter now is that there won’t be a new model until 2026. Which… makes me think that I could get one after all? Getting two years of use out of a S$5,500 device is a lot more palatable than getting just one. Once you add the cost of AppleCare+ (S$749), a travel case (S$299), and prescription inserts/contact lenses though. Hmm.

    On Apple Intelligence: I was happy to see them begin by laying out their design principles (we do this on a lot of my projects, but they are rarely communicated to the public), which are critical for this particularly suspicious and misunderstood technology, for which Apple needs to differentiate their approach and model. Some, like Google, already have access to your data but can’t be trusted not to monetize it with ad targeting. Others, like OpenAI, may only have what data you choose to share but can’t be trusted not to train their models on it. Apple is unique in that it doesn’t seem to want to do either.

    Finally, we’re getting a smarter Siri that’s an actual agent, i.e. able to string together various tasks in pursuit of a goal, and take action on behalf of users. So much for the Rabbit and all that bullshit. Doing as much locally as possible is the only responsible way to do AI agents. And Apple’s private cloud compute solution, which looks to be yet another privacy engineering breakthrough, is probably the second-best way.

    The image generation stuff was probably the most contentious part. I’ve seen upset takes from artists but no one can put this stuff back in the bottle. The only way to stop AI art is a full-scale public revolt, and that requires everyone getting a good look at it first. It’s the four packs of cigarettes your dad forces you to smoke after he catches you sneaking one. When we’re all tired of seeing gross AI styles, human-created art might be appropriately valued.

    But I don’t think Apple is on this exact mission, so I was surprised at the examples they chose to showcase. The Genmoji of a surfing dinosaur looked terribly similar to Meta’s own AI chat stickers in style and quality (cheap). But being able to create Genmojis and illustration-style images for documents all across the OS, for free, is no doubt a big deal. I think many people will generate their first AI images with Apple Intelligence.

    ===

    Media activity:

    • I just finished R.F. Kuang’s Babel and loved every page. If you’re into university-set adventures, deep dives into language and literature, the aftershocks of British colonialism, and tales of the Chinese diaspora, this one’s for you. I had no idea that she also wrote Yellowface, which I’ve heard many people rave about. Props to Kuang, she gets a lot more out of being Chinese than me. 5/5 stars.
    • Bought Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name for S$31 on PlayStation’s summer sale, and immediately started playing it. I thought I’d had enough of this series for awhile, but I’m six hours in and having so much more fun than in the preceding game. Part of it is even set in the same Yokohama map as Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but running around here is so much better without the annoying turn-based combat. Recommended if you like absurd storylines played with the straightest of faces.
    • Started watching Constellations on Apple TV+, which has sadly been canceled after one season. The first two episodes lean into a space horror vibe which had me seriously tense, but it’s lightened up a bit now in episode three. Recommended for fans of Noomi Rapace, Dead Space, sci-fi mysteries.
    • Watched A Quiet Place Part II and was let down because I remember enjoying the first one, but this sequel is a much lesser use of mostly the same ingredients. Plus that annoying post-apocalyptic trope about how the human survivors are worse than the monsters. PUHLEASE. 1.5/5 stars.
    • Watched Hit Man on Netflix, the first Richard Linklater film I’ve caught in years. It kept me guessing (and I had a lot of wrong guesses where it was heading), and has a lot of fun with the concept. Glen Powell is going to be a huge star, isn’t he? 4/5 stars.
    • Alex Garland’s Civil War was like most of his films: plenty to look at, not much to say. It shows what a civil war in the US might look like, but doesn’t care to fill anything in, mirroring the photojournalists it follows. Early on, Kirsten Dunst says “we just shoot the pictures, others can ask why”, or something to that effect. Well, isn’t that convenient for you, Alex Garland. 2.5/5 stars.
    • Discovered the band Fantastic Cat after seeing a vertical video somewhere of them inviting Adam Duritz of Counting Crows to be on their new song. It may have been a clip of the video for the song, actually. Following that I checked out Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat and really enjoy its pre-my-birth country rock sound. A quick internet search revealed that they’re a supergroup of four singer-songwriters that I unfortunately have never heard of.
    • Am listening to Charli XCX’s very popular new album, BRAT, and it might be her best work yet. I’m also listening to A.G. Cook’s new Britpop album and since he produced half of her album, it can get confusing.
    • Have also been following the drama of Taylor Swift allegedly releasing numerous editions of her albums on the eve of other female artists’ album releases to block them from the top spot on charts. She apparently tried it with Billie Eilish’s album, and now she’s done it to Charli with a UK-only release of two new editions of The Tortured Poets Department, each with different demos or live versions tacked on. She’s free to defend the throne but there are apparently 34 different versions of that album out now. Even The Guardian has weighed in and declared Charli the winner on artistic grounds. This releasing of multiple variants to milk fans feels gross to me. Back in my day, musicians just released one version of an album (okay, plus maybe a Japan-only one with bonus tracks) and it had to fend for itself on the charts for years!
  • Week 19.24

    Week 19.24

    I’ve been sick for days, probably a bug I picked up coming back from Hong Kong. There were quite a few coughing people in the airport and on the plane. It started with a sore throat, moved to a crushing headache and tiredness, and is now in the final stage (I hope) with a phlegmy cough.

    The ongoing headaches are the worst part, making it hard to do anything that involves looking at screens, so I’ve had to listen to podcasts to pass time outside of trying to sleep, which incidentally has been one fever dream after another soundtracked by the latest Kendrick Lamar songs. I dreamt of eating fried rice at New Ho King. My brain won’t shut up and keeps playing the BBL Drizzy refrain on repeat.

    I surprisingly made it through a three-hour episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast talking about the new iPads, which I would normally never have the patience for. I think I learnt just one new thing: the 256GB version of the iPad Pro has only a single RAM bank, resulting in slower performance compared to the other models. Three hours is pushing it for me, I think an hour is an ideal length for a regular podcast. But I’m really impressed they’ve kept the show going for so long. Editing it weekly must be a bitch.

    I also mostly enjoyed an episode of a show I’d never heard before, Normal Gossip, which tells/stretches out banal real-life stories submitted by listeners. It was an episode about “the joy of being a hater” which obviously spoke to me. And in the spirit of hating, I need to say that I find the host annoyingly chirpy and fake, but she was offset by the dour and acerbic guest she happened to have this week. At times the storytelling and incredulous laughing of the listener felt a bit like Reply All, which I used to enjoy when I listened to podcasts more.

    A better thing I brought home from Hong Kong was a brand new PS5 of the Slim variety! When the original PS5 came out, I was disgusted by its form factor and massive footprint. It was more like a PC that went under your desk than a console that sat on your, er, TV console. So I’ve been waiting patiently for years with my PS4 Pro (barely touching it in favor of the Switch tbh), for the inevitable slimmer and smaller edition to be announced. Which happened earlier this year.

    It retails for about S$650 here on average, so I hadn’t rushed out to get one given my deep Switch backlog — a whole other platform of games wasn’t exactly urgent. But on our last morning in Causeway Bay, we stopped by the Times Square mall and found that they go for about S$520 in Hong Kong. Wtf?! It was an instabuy followed by a brisk walk back to the hotel to repack our luggage.

    Our new Sony TV automatically detects the PS5 and configures itself to work with it, which is nice! It also supports all the fancy stuff like 120hz variable refresh rate, but the games I’ve got to play first are kinda last-gen ones that have been ported with some PS5 support: Lost Judgment and Like A Dragon 7, both from the series formerly known as Yakuza in the West.

    The best feature of the PS5 so far? Incredibly quick loading times, nearly instantaneous, such that moving from one area to another in Lost Judgment doesn’t break the immersion like it would when I played it on PS4. With a single “Resume” command from the system’s Home Screen, you can even cold start up a game, load the last save, and get back to it in under 10 seconds. Compare this to last-gen consoles where you’d have to do all that manually, waiting, pressing buttons, and waiting some more — probably for up to a minute.

    You can tell the Panadol has shut my headache down now because I’m rambling far more than I thought I would. This was supposed to be a quick two-paragraph update! See you next time.

  • Week 15.24

    Week 15.24

    It was Hari Raya Puasa here on Wednesday, which, along with the city’s oppressively hot and humid weather, left those of us who don’t celebrate the holiday feeling somewhat unsatisfied upon returning to work on Thursday. More than one person slipped and called it a Monday, or asked how the weekend was. So instead of a four-day workweek, it felt like two weeks in one.

    Perhaps the depressed mood was justified. Earlier in the week, tragedy struck a colleague who lost their father to a heart attack — a feeling all too familiar within our team as the same thing happened to another young designer just over a year ago. And you may recall just 9 weeks ago, another friend lost their dad too. At the same time, my thoughts have been occupied by a family friend, virtually family, currently recovering from surgery with an as-yet-unquantified cancer running loose in her body.

    I’m tired, but feeling better about the recent decision to make room for more important things than my current work. I came across this poem about mortality that captures the suddenness of loss and how we take everything for granted: If You Knew, by Ellen Bass. I was also reminded of this Zen concept that a glass always exists in two states, whole and broken, while reading responses to a tweet asking for “sentences that will change your life immediately upon reading”.

    Hitting the books

    Speaking of reading, I picked up Isle McElroy’s People Collide again after months of sipping its beautiful phrases through a tiny time straw, finishing it quickly. It’s the best thing I’ve read in many months; a profound questioning of what it means to be a particular person in a specific body, and how much of you makes up who you are to everyone else. At its core it’s a Freaky Friday body swap story. I don’t know if it’s because McElroy is trans that these perspectives and insights are so tangible, but I felt them. Even though the story didn’t go where I wanted at all, I gave it five stars on Goodreads because the final page is a triumph. I had to fight back tears of admiration while reading it on the bus.

    Right after that, the book train was rolling again and I read After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle, which had some inside stories and gossip I’d not heard before, and an interest in how Jony Ive “neglected” his design leadership role in the later years, a story I’ve been interested in hearing. Still, it’s one of those non-fiction narratives that dramatizes and assumes a lot about what its subjects did and felt at key moments, things nobody can know for certain.

    Here it comes, the AI part

    Meanwhile, the Apple Design Team alums who decamped to Humane launched their first product, the “Ai Pin”, to largely middling reviews from tech outlets like The Verge. Quick recap: this is a camera-equipped, voice-enabled wearable you attach to your clothing, letting you access a generative AI assistant so you can ask general questions and take various actions without getting your phone out. In theory.

    Most of its faults seem to stem from issues intrinsic to OpenAI’s GPT models and online services, on which the Pin is completely dependent. It’s a bit tragic for Humane’s clearly talented startup team. I’m inclined to see the hardware as beautiful and an engineering accomplishment, and what parts of the user experience they could customize with the laser projector and prompt design are probably pretty good, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Pin’s brains are borrowed. A company with financial independence and the ability to make its own hardware, software, and AI services would have a better chance. Hmm… is there anyone like that?

    Meanwhile, a new AI music generation tool called Udio launched in public beta this week and I spent some time with it. I’ve only played with AI models that do text, images, and video, but never audio. It’s currently free while in beta and lets you make a generous amount of samples, so there’s no reason not to take a look.

    Basically you describe the song you want with a text prompt, and it spits out a 33-second clip. From there, you can remix or extend the clip by adding more 33-second chunks. It generates everything from the melodies to the lyrics (you can provide some if you want), including all instruments and voices you hear. Is it any good? It’s very impressive, although not every song is a banger yet. Listening to hip-hop instrumentals featured on the home page, I thought to ask for a couple of conscious rap songs and they came out well, with convincing sounding vocals. I then asked it to write a jazzy number about blogging on a weekly basis and you can judge for yourself if the future is here.

    At present, I see this as a fun toy for the not-so-musically inclined like myself, and as an inspiration faucet for amateur songwriters who work faster with a starting point. So, pretty much like what ChatGPT is for everything else. And like ChatGPT, I can see a future where this threatens human livelihoods by being good enough, at the very least disrupting the background music industry.

    Comfort sounds

    One musical suite that stands as a symbol of human ingenuity’s irreplaceability, though, is what I’ve been playing in the background on my HomePods all week while reading and writing: the soundtrack to Animal Crossing New Horizons. Because Nintendo hasn’t made the official tracks available for streaming, I’ve been playing this fantastic album of jazz piano covers by Shin Giwon Piano on Apple Music. It takes me right back to those quiet, cozy house-bound days of the pandemic. Could an AI ever take the place of composers like Kazumi Totaka? I remain hopeful that they won’t.

    Maggie Rogers released her third album, Don’t Forget Me. I put it on for a walk around the neighborhood on Saturday evening and found it’s the kind of country-inflected folk rock album I tend to love. One song in particular, If Now Was Then, triggered my musical pattern recognition and I realized a significant bit sounds very much like the part in Counting Crows’ Sullivan Street where Adam Duritz goes “I’m almost drowning in her sea”. It’s a lovely bit of borrowing that I enjoyed; putting copyright aside, experiencing a nostalgic callback to another song inside a new song is always cool. It’s one of the best things about hip-hop! But why is it okay when a human does it but not when it’s generative AI? I guess we’re back to Buddhism: Everything hangs on intention.

    ===

    Miscellanea

    • I watched more Jujutsu Kaisen despite not being really blown away by it. Mostly I’ve been keen to see the full scene of a clip I saw posted on Twitter, where the fight animation looked more kinetic and inventive than you’d normally expect. I decided that it must have come from Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie, because movies have bigger budgets and the animation in season 1 looked nothing like it. And I had to finish season 1 in order to watch and understand the movie.
    • Well, I saw the movie and it was alright, but it didn’t have that fight scene. So where is it?? That got me watching more episodes of the TV anime, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a jump in quality like this between two seasons of a show. It seems a new director came on board (maybe more money too), and suddenly the art is cleaner, the camera angles are more striking and unconventional, and everything else went up a notch. I guess I’m watching another 20+ episodes of this then.
    • I finished Netflix’s eight-episode adaptation of Three Body Problem. I’m not invested enough to say I’d definitely watch a second season, assuming they pick it up at all.
    • On that topic, Utada Hikaru released a greatest hits compilation called Science Fiction, with three “new” songs, and 23 other classics either re-recorded, remixed, and/or remastered in Dolby Atmos. I don’t really know these songs in that I have no idea what many are actually about, but I’ve heard them so much over the last 25 years, I probably know them more deeply than most.
  • Week 5.24

    Week 5.24

    Vision Pro and AirPods Max hypotheses

    Apple Vision Pro is out in the wild, and I’ve gone on the expected rollercoaster — from “of course I’ll get one, but only when it’s officially released here”, to “nah I think I’ll wait till the second iteration”, to the usual FOMO and wanting one as soon as possible.

    But it might not be such a terrible idea to wait for the second iteration, if one believes that it’ll come some time in the middle of 2025. Why then? I looked at how quickly second-generation products were released in Apple’s recent history, and it ranged from 11 months (iPad) to a year and five months (Apple Watch). I think a 12-month release cycle is plausible, and putting out new ones at WWDC makes sense as they’ll want to emphasize the visionOS platform for developers.

    Which might then suggest the global Vision Pro rollout this year will start in June. So international early adopters will be putting down at least $3,500 to use it for a year before they need to upgrade. And we know that selling a first generation AVP on the pre-owned market is 1) a tough job, if the second generation irons out obvious wrinkles, and 2) not something early adopters want to do anyway, given the sentimental value of keeping your ‘first spatial computing device’.

    While we’re out here predicting future releases, I think I’ve cracked why the supply chain analysts believe an AirPods Max update is coming this year with USB-C and new colors, but without an upgrade to the H2 chips (currently only found in the AirPods Pro) which enable Conversation Awareness and Adaptive Audio modes. The reaction to this rumor has generally been: “that would be a lame update to the AirPods Max after four years”, but okay what if it’s not an update? What if it’s a new variant model?

    Specifically, it could be the lower-cost, lower-weight “sport” model with different materials and/or a swappable headband that was rumored to be “coming soon” back when the AirPods Max first released. Everyone assumed it would be released a year after, but because it’s been so long, we’ve forgotten that was even supposed to be a product. A cheaper non-Max/Pro headphone model without the latest features would make the same sort of sense as the iPhone 5c, which had all the features of its premium predecessor — but funner. Then the real AirPods Max update can come in 2025, and honestly, if you’re making them well, five years between headphones is the right cadence.

    Electric toothbrushes

    It’s been about two weeks since I started using an electric toothbrush again, and the difference in efficacy and convenience is so notable that I don’t know why I stopped when my last one broke during Covid. There are so many essentially disposable models on the market now in the S$20–30 price range that I didn’t see how the S$200+ models justified themselves. Bluetooth app connectivity? It seemed ludicrous.

    To my untrained eyes, there were two basic designs: an elongated brush head that vibrates (this is the dominant kind), and a small circular head that rotates back and forth. I used an Oral-B one of the latter sort for a little while once but it hurt my gums and I ended up throwing it out. I decided to give it another go with an Oral-B Pro 2 model, but with an “ultrathin” head with gentler bristles this time, and haven’t had any problems. It cost me about S$75, presumably on account of having a rechargeable battery and dock, and I was beginning to think I should have just gone for the Pro 1 model that runs on AA batteries and costs S$30.

    But of course it’s not that simple. After more research, I discovered there are actually three categories of motorized tooth cleaning devices: electric, sonic, and ultrasonic. The Pro 1 has fewer vibrations per second than the Pro 2, but both probably still fall into the electric class, which is to say they clean with brush movements only, and don’t produce sonic vibrations that interact with fluids and help to knock plaque right off your teeth. Oral-B now has a range of toothbrushes called iO that combine an oscillating head with sonic vibrations, 3D teeth tracking AI (no, really), and you guessed it, they cost S$300–400.

    ===

    Media updates

    • I’ve never been into Grimes’s music because the few songs/videos I’ve encountered were awful, and of course her association with Elon Musk is a major turnoff. But I saw a tweet saying her breakthrough album “Visions” was turning 10 years old, with words to the effect of it being so great that the rest of her career was doomed to never top it — so of course I had to check it out. I’m pleased to report that it’s actually pretty good, maybe even great. For an electronic album, I didn’t expect it to sound so influenced by R&B? This whole separating the art from the artist thing is pretty wild.
    • That whole album was recorded in Garageband, and while I’m no musical talent, I wrangled it this weekend to finally clean up and join up the bootleg recording I made with my iPhone’s Voice Memos app back in Chiang Mai in December. It was 50 mins out of an hour-long solo piano set played by Joshua Lebofsky, amidst cafe noises of steam wands, fridges slamming shut, and people chatting. It starts super strong, with him singing an uncommon medley of Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World and Lionel Richie’s Easy. I’m very happy to finally have it in my music library, ready to be revisited at any time.
    • I had a cab driver one night this week who sang along to songs on the radio. He was no great singer, but I loved the joy of it. The station miraculously queued up three great songs in a row — the aforementioned Tears For Fears song, followed by Sheryl Crow’s cover of The First Cut is the Deepest, and Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight — which I remarked upon, and we got to talking. He told me he was really into Tears For Fears back in the day, and that they asked Phil Collins to play drums on their song Woman in Chains, wanting some of that magic touch. I promised him I’d listen to it again over the weekend, and I did.
    • It was decided (in my brain) that Easy might be my favorite song, and so I programmed our HomePods to play it throughout the entire apartment every Sunday morning at 10:00 AM as long as someone is home.
    • I was glad to hear from Michael that he loved the Slow Horses TV show, and binged three years’ worth (just 18 episodes, really) in a week. He also discovered that the theme song isn’t some Rolling Stones deep cut they licensed, but an actual new Mick Jagger song commissioned for the series!? I finally finished reading the first book but found the experience such a close retreading of the first season that I’ve decided not to read any more of them. It would just be like rewatching the existing seasons and spoiling the ones to come.
    • We got a chance to go and see the new Apple TV+ film Argylle at its local premiere. It’s an action-comedy about spies directed by Matthew Vaughn, who also directed other action-comedies about spies such as the Kingsmen series. This one primarily stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, and Henry Cavill, and is a fun enough time that I can recommend it. One thing that surprised me: the “new” Beatles song Now and Then features heavily throughout the film, with its melody forming a major recurring theme. I looked it up and they had the song for over a year before it came out and had to keep it a secret. Check out the symphonic version with a choir on the soundtrack.
    • Amazon Prime Video has put out all eight episodes of their new action-comedy series about spies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine playing reimagined Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie roles. We’ve seen two so far and it’s going very well.