sangsara.net

Tag: Television

  • Week 8.24

    Week 8.24

    We spent the last three days of our road trip in Auckland, returning the car to a desolate parking garage and then ordering an Uber from the side of the road with our luggage. When we got in, the driver confirmed “So you’re checking in to the Hilton? Not impressed with the parking lot?” which was low-key one of the best jokes that week.

    I already mentioned eating many burgers, but from our brief tour of restaurants across the North Island, it really seemed like New Zealand cuisine is made up of steaks, brisket, pork belly, oysters, fish and chips, and lamb chops. The renowned local beef is as amazing as you’d expect. As a tourist, this is nothing to complain about, but I’m certain I’d find the narrow range a little tiring if I lived there.

    There are local beers and many craft beers, but Heineken is held in strangely high regard; maybe a result of its relatively high price as an imported product. In Singapore, I’d say it’s on the second rung from the bottom above Tiger and Carlsberg for many people, a slightly better lager for not much more money. Anyway, the wine game is so strong it’s a wonder anyone drinks beer there (we did, though).

    I think Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films put New Zealand on the map more than anything else in the past century, but we passed on visiting the Hobbiton film set as neither of us are really fans — I sometimes explain that I hate fantasy settings because there’s no electricity and it’s just filthy people sitting around fires — but it wouldn’t be right to go all the way to NZ and not at least touch that iconic surface.

    So we booked a Weta Workshop tour in Auckland, which turned out to be part-theme park, part-showcase and gift shop. They’ve structured an experience around three fictional films their team supposedly worked on but didn’t get released, which provides a narrative device to show off their craft in conceptual world building, model making, special effects make up, and cinematography. It is not dissimilar to making a video game! You come up with the setting, the rules of the world, character designs, then get sculpting.

    Did you know? Weta worked on the Ghost in the Shell live-action film, making Scarlett Johansson’s silicone suit and other cyborg designs.

    Another highlight of our time there was a “Maori cultural experience” at the Auckland Museum and War Memorial, in which photos were allowed but discouraged, and so I don’t have any to share. There are several opportunities for tourists to see and engage with Maori culture, but when we looked at Tripadvisor reviews, it seemed like some are really commercialized dog and pony shows amounting to little more than cosplay theater, and we weren’t really keen on that.

    In contrast, the museum’s program is a 30-minute demonstration and explanation of some select rituals (which we would call “songs” or “dances”, but are really social instruments for building community, passing down knowledge, and so on) by a talented group of Maori people who apparently manage to hold day jobs in science and education on top of this. On top of preserving their ways, a focus of this experience was showing people from other cultures how easily histories like theirs are colonized and reduced. For example, clapping was not encouraged, because it turns their sharing into a performance, and simply because they don’t clap in their culture. I gave myself points for feeling icky about all the people fresh off their cruise ships clapping at the start, way before they were informed of this.

    I promised to share the AI-assisted itinerary of our trip, so here it is.

    The route we planned in Apple Freeform

    Day 1: Auckland to Wellington

    • Arrive in Auckland and catch a domestic flight to Wellington.
    • Evening in Wellington: Walk along the waterfront, find some dinner.

    Day 2: Wellington

    • Visit Te Papa Tongarewa Museum for an insight into New Zealand’s history and culture.
    • Take the cable car to the Botanic Garden for city views.
    • Evening: Explore Cuba Street for its vibrant nightlife and culinary scene.
    • What we really did: Had cocktails at Elixir and dinner near the hotel.

    Day 3: Wellington to Martinborough (1.5 hour drive)

    Day 4: Martinborough to Havelock (3 hours drive)

    • Breakfast at one of the cafes in town
    • Depart Martinborough, taking State Highway 2.
    • Stop in the town of Masterton and visit the Awatoi art and history museum (this was an unplanned stop after we saw a billboard by the highway)
    • Stop at Pukaha National Wildlife Centre.
    • Dinner in Havelock North: there are some nice restaurants in the town center
    • Stay in Havelock North

    Day 5: Havelock and Napier

    • Walk/hike in Te Mata Park and drive to the peak.
    • Head into Napier for lunch at a vineyard: We had bookings for lunch and a tour at Church Road Winery.
    • Local seafood dinner in Napier (as mentioned last week, we chanced upon the annual Art Deco Festival).

    Day 6: Napier to Rotorua (3 hours drive)

    • Depart Napier for Rotorua
    • Stop in Taupo for lunch by the lake
    • Parasailing over Lake Taupo in the mid-afternoon -_-
    • Stop at Huka Falls
    • Continue to Rotorua (another hour, so you’ll arrive in the early evening)

    Day 7: Rotorua to Auckland (3 hour drive)

    • Drive to Whangamata
    • Stop at The Cider Factorie along the way for lunch (this was an unplanned stop but was great)
    • Stop at Hunua Falls
    • Arrive in Auckland in the evening, return car
    • Dinner along Princes Wharf

    Day 8: Auckland

    • Visit Weta Workshop for a tour
    • Go up the Sky Tower for panoramic city views (we got a combo Weta + Sky Tower ticket online)
    • Lose some money in the Sky City casino
    • Beer, wine, dinner

    Day 9: Auckland

    • Visit the Auckland War Memorial Museum for Maori and Pacific Islander artifacts. The Maori Cultural Experience (twice a day, book ahead) is highly recommended.
    • Shopping downtown
      OR
    • Full day: Take a ferry to Waiheke Island for more vineyards, beaches, and hiking trails.

    Day 10: Depart

    ===

    As always, returning to Singapore’s heat after a little time in a temperate climate was brutal. It’s one of the main reasons I would entertain the idea of moving away or owning a second property somewhere. It’s often said that a little sunshine and walking does wonders for your mood and helps people with depression, and I really did feel a lot less weight on me coming back with a watch tan after 10 days, but this weather is not made for walking. And so I expect this feeling will fade with the tan.

    Since coming back, we finished Season 7 of Below Deck, and I’ve just gone totally off Captain Lee and Kate now, formerly the least-bad people in that toxic stew of management hell/training that I’ve recommended people watch the show for in the past. We’ve now started on Below Deck Down Under, and the Australian captain there is a breath of fresh air. Where Captain Lee stayed in his bridge oblivious to the crew’s troubles with bullying and insubordination, this one is hands-on, leads by example, and even joins them for dinner (but wisely not clubbing) on the first night out. You already know he sees what’s going on, who doesn’t pull their weight, and knows how to address it. To top it all off, he’s hot and the interior girls can’t stop looking at him.

  • Week 6.24

    Week 6.24

    It was Chinese New Year week and it’s not been the same for several years, partly because of Covid and because many key relations have simply gotten old. My uncles and aunties, for decades only known to me by honorary titles describing their places in the family hierarchy, are getting ill, weak, and unwilling to leave their homes or receive visitors. Several years ago I started to ask what their actual names were, because I grew up literally calling them names that translated to second son of third uncle, or eldest paternal uncle; I’ve often wondered why Chinese culture has mechanisms that foster emotional distance between children and adults, a tradition that feels increasingly out of touch with today’s world. But that’s how it goes.

    I remember the typical CNY reunion dinner for many years as something to get through with gritted teeth and withheld snarky jokes, and if you’d told me then that I would look back now on those as the good times, I would have despaired. Now they appear as charmingly awkward and well-meaning attempts to bond, by people I might never get to wish a happy new year to again. I always thought the idea of an annual reunion made more sense against the backdrop of a vast country like China, but now that it’s hard to connect for all sorts of reasons even across our tiny one, I see the real terrain is time and memory, and so many relationships die starving in those fields. That’s how it goes too.

    ===

    One of our friends lost his dad this week. He was by all accounts the kind of guy you call a ‘real character’. He went from a corporate career to a becoming writer in retirement, putting out three books in the last decade or so. Because we didn’t have any reunion dinner commitments at the usual time, we were able to attend his funeral wake and share in some lovely stories from the family. They managed the joke that this terrible timing right in the middle of festivities was the last prank he’d play on them. I learnt he had a regular blog, which he kept going even after suffering health setbacks — that’s dedication. Every week I wonder what I’m going to say here and always think the streak’s about to end.

    Even the funeral was remarkable for the fact that he planned it all himself, leaving behind detailed instructions on what he wanted, to the point of getting his own headshot taken and sealed in an envelope which his family only opened after he was gone, so they wouldn’t have to fuss over this stuff at the worst time — that’s love. It got me thinking that everyone should prepare their own playlists and slideshows too. I might get started on it this year. Don’t be surprised if you come to my funeral and hear that Chinese AI dub of Van Morrison on repeat.

    ===

    Other activity:

    • I’ve started on a new book and only read two short chapters but I already know this is something special. It’s People Collide by Isle McElroy.
    • We are back watching Below Deck and I’m still sure that this is one of the best management trainings you can get for your time. Every single season is full of unnecessary crew drama because people don’t communicate expectations, don’t provide clear feedback, and allow emotional reactions to escalate. I get that it’s not easy, and I’m not sure I do it so well myself, but the lines between action and consequence are so clear here; they’re literally edited together for entertainment. Another lesson: everyone is flawed. The people you root for because they’re usually sensible? Sometimes they fuck up! Working relationships are rarely black and white.
    • Kanye West finally released Vultures two months its initial release date, with a new cover and possibly a different tracklist. I haven’t heard it yet. But once again, Apple Music has not recommended me music I’m interested in, although I’m quasi-certain it will be featured somewhere in the app in the next few days. Right now the Singapore ‘Browse’ page is full of Chinese New Year related music that I definitely do not care about.
    • After working too hard and not getting enough rest, Kim’s sort of fallen ill now, with me feeling a milder version of it. The timing could not be worse: we’re off on holiday soon, the kind where sneezing and aching and feeling weak might derail a complex itinerary.
    • Speaking of which, I used ChatGPT to help plan this vacation, and I’ve taken those instructions and made a custom GPT called AI-tinerary which might help you if you’re going someplace new and want to create a multi-day schedule of things to do. It can work off your individual interests and transport modes, as well as answer other travel-related questions you may have. At some point I’ll be able to make it plot your route on a map (if you ask it now, it’ll generate some wacky DALL•E map drawing that you should absolutely NOT follow).
    • You should know by next weekend whether these AI-generated plans worked out, or if we tried to stay in towns that don’t actually exist.
  • 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.
  • Week 3.24

    Week 3.24

    I have come down from last week’s AI overpositivity and retaken control of this week’s update. I don’t know what came over me, especially when it’s so easy to see the issues that this current gen AI fever,this onslaught of enshittification, has yet to unleash. We’re poisoning a well, or maybe an orchard, that many people have spent decades building and many more depend on even if they don’t know it. I had two conversations on Monday, one about the disadvantageous state of jobs for 20-somethings and another about the Apple Vision Pro, and found myself in both of them articulating a deep pessimism that I haven’t been able to shake. Even if you buy into accelerationism, there’s clearly a risk of multi-decade spoilage here that future generations will hate us for.

    On Apple Vision (which is what I think the overall product family is called), I mentioned to Brian that I’ve been seeing a lot of Meta’s Quest 3 TV advertising whenever I tune into programs on the UK’s Channel 4, and how they’ve gone from selling immersive VR experiences with the Quest 2 to AR use cases like learning to play the piano — the same territory that Apple’s staking out. And how it won’t be very long before the Android equivalents of the Vision Pro will gain market share, on account of being several times more affordable, but hoovering up eye movement data revealing customers’ intents, attention, and probably physiological info because none of these other manufacturers will take pains to deny developers access like Apple does. We’ve seen these playbooks before.

    Brian and I have also previously discussed the ability of conversational AI products to deeply profile their users, not just by knowing what you want to know about, but how you think, react, speak, and write — what kind of person you are. A conversational interface with generative AI, trained on large amounts of data, is nothing short of a profiling machine that sees you at a behavioral and psychological level. Combine that with knowledge about what draws your eyes and sets your heart racing, and an ad-supported AR headset with built-in AI assistant is a nightmare product that will inevitably be a hit at $499.

    Thinking of the battles that ethically minded designers will have to fight and probably lose, deep in organizations intent on deploying AR/VR dopamine and AI-powered enterprise doodads without question, is what makes me tired these days.

    Later in the week, Jose shared this update on the Fujitsu postal service software debacle in the UK, a case of irresponsibly deployed technology that literally ruined and ended human lives. And that’s just the legacy stuff without any newfangled AI.

    ===

    • I’m finding the first Slow Horses book to be less enjoyable than I expected, mostly because it feels like I’m just rewatching the first season of the Apple TV+ show, nothing less and nothing more. I sort of expected more side story or entertainment than was possible to film, but it’s a rather straightforward procedural. The TV series might be the rare adaptation that’s on par with its source material, in which case I won’t read the rest after this one and will wait to watch Gary Oldman fart his way through them instead.
    • The second season of Reacher fell into the sequel trap, going for more action, more teamwork, more humor, more repeated catchphrases (this did NOT work), and losing something of its charm in the process. They decided to portray him as a sort of humorless Arnie-type killing machine who doesn’t understand normal people’s thoughts, and that doesn’t seem right to me based on his characterization as an astute detective/observer of human nature in the books. I was also hoping they’d go the Slow Horses route and just make the books in order, but they instead jumped to the 11th novel, Bad Blood and Trouble, for this season. Reading this interview with showrunner Nick Santora though, I got the feeling that making Reacher indefinitely is not something anyone on the team takes for granted, so why not go for broke while the Amazon money is flowing? Still, the thrill of seeing Reacher with his team is a payoff that has to be earned, and it’s not the same if you haven’t seen him wandering America solo for ten seasons beforehand.
    • We’ve started season 3 of True Detective, and I’m really liking some of the things they do with blending the recollections of an old man fighting a fading mind, with the disorientation and terror of his present life; they are literally blended and linked with match cuts and unifying objects — in one flashback a full moon disappears above the detective, and we come back to the present to see a fill light has gone out during the interview, and he’s shaken out of his memories.
    • I’m new to the music of Claud, but their superb album Supermodel would have made one of my lists in 2023.
    • I fired up Lightroom to see what new features they’ve added, and there was a new Denoise tool that seems to use AI to generate missing detail — fine, it’s unavoidable — and AI-powered preset recommendations. With one click, I applied a dramatic preset to an old RAW file which made it extremely noisy, and with another click removed all of it and landed on an incredibly sharp and clean image. I’m a little sad about how hard it is for small indies to compete with Adobe on this stuff. Photomator has an ML-based auto enhance feature that really doesn’t work well, often overexposing and making white balance look worse, whereas the Auto button in Lightroom makes improvements 90% of the time.
  • Week 2.24

    Week 2.24

    This post was partly written by my blog assistant GPT from notes I gave, and partly transcribed by a Whisper-powered dictation app I’m testing, so it’s just dripping with that AI filth (but the human did edit).

    I’ll probably remember this week for feeling like the future finally arrived, thanks to three long-awaited developments taking up headlines.

    1. Apple Vision Pro – The Dawn of Spatial Computing

    • The Apple Vision Pro got its pre-order and launch dates. Sadly, it’s US-only for now, leaving me and many others on the sidelines. It promises to usher in a world where computing isn’t confined to screens and devices, but blends seamlessly with our physical spaces. Along with AI, we may see a new era of interface and interaction design land sooner than expected, alongside new levels of realism and intelligence I don’t think anyone is ready for. But as a sure sign that this early adopter is growing old, I’m feeling surprisingly wary of and unready for such a transition.

    2. A Milestone for Bitcoin: Spot ETFs approved in the US

    • In a historic move, the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs and they began trading on Thursday with a record-breaking amount of volume. Although against the original ethos of decentralization, this is still a big deal which legitimizes the cryptocurrency for audiences who want some exposure but can’t self-custody for some reason. After a decade of anticipation, this decision bridges the digital world with traditional finance, making a fully digital asset accessible through familiar investment channels.

    3. OpenAI GPT Store Finally Launches: A New Playground for AI Enthusiasts

    • As someone who’s been creating custom GPTs with ChatGPT, the launch of the OpenAI GPT Store is particularly interesting. Originally scheduled for last November, it finally went live but hasn’t set my feeds on fire just yet. To make things worse, the promised revenue sharing model won’t start until later, and again, only in the US at first. Still, this could be the App Store for a fast-evolving space. I’ve already seen a few advanced applications on the front page and will be keeping an eye on it.

    These advancements in computing, finance, and AI aren’t just incremental steps; they’re giant leaps in their respective fields. The Apple Vision Pro is set to literally put technology everywhere, the Bitcoin ETFs are proof that a “digital gold” can be taken as seriously as the real thing, and the OpenAI GPT Store shows how generative AI can let anyone become a “developer”. It’s like watching history being made in real-time.

    By the way, I made a fun new GPT called How We Got Here.

    ===

    So I’m watching this show, True Detective, which you may remember from like 10 years ago. The first season starred Matthew McConaughey and it was a huge hit for HBO that I liked a lot.

    But then when the second season came out, before I could get started, a lot of reviews came out calling it like the worst show ever. And even though Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell were in it, it just wasn’t a hit the way the first one was. So I never got around to watching it.

    And here we are years later and Season FOUR is about to come out today with Jodie Foster and a whole new showrunner/director/writer involved and it’s getting a lot of buzz. People are excited for it.

    That’s when I realized that there was a Season Three, like I didn’t even know that it existed. So now I’m spending my weekend binging seasons two and three to get ready for four.

    Now this is not strictly necessary because every season is a completely new story with its own set of characters, but I just feel like the need to be complete about my True Detective experience.

    If you’re wondering how I have the time for this, it’s because Kim is again away on business, which also means that I can’t watch this week’s episode of Reacher. So I guess we’re going to watch the final two episodes back-to-back next weekend. I can’t believe it’s already over — reading the rest of the books will have to tide me over until next year.

  • Week 51.23

    Week 51.23

    Merry Christmas! Let’s talk about music this week.

    I received the Beats Studio Pro headphones as an early present, in the Sandstone color, only 22 weeks after I wrote about how I thought they were set to be a fantastic update to the aged/obsolete/frankly embarrassing Beats Studio3 Wireless model. In that post, I said I would not be buying them for myself on account of having enough headphones. No promises have been broken, and I can confirm that they sound really good and are comfortable even with my big head. If you’ve found others like the B&O H95 or B&W PX7 too small to fully enclose the bottom of your earlobes, these may do the trick.

    I often try to convince myself that a pair of AirPods Pro should suffice for my/anyone’s needs, that a pocketable pair of smart, well-engineered buds are more than enough. Who needs HomePods or other home speakers, over-ear headphones, soundbars, etc.? But just as you can feel the bass from a towering set of speakers in your chest, a pair of big drivers blasting air into your ears do feel something different.

    Since I had the week off, I spent hours testing them out, thinking about what music I enjoyed the most this year. I sometimes do an annual wrap-up playlist with all my favorites, in lieu of making playlists throughout the year like I should. But this year I’ve made three: BLixTapes 1, 2, and 3, so I’ll see if I feel like it next week.

    In the meantime, I think I’ll name some personal “winners”!

    2023 sangsara.net music awards

    Best comeback: Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz)

    Please note these are personal picks, and I’m not saying Albarn disappeared, but for a long time I’d written him off completely — a remnant of the 90s and mid 00s who still puts out funny tuneless projects every few years that I play through once then delete from my library. When that time came around again with this year’s The Ballad of Darren and ‌Cracker Island from his Blur and Gorillaz bands respectively, I played the albums and was stunned. Did he get his mojo back?! The jams get your feet tapping, the lyrics are somewhere between conceptual backstory and dadaist poetry as usual, and the pretty moments are so pretty they just pop into my head some mornings as I brush my teeth.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Everything But The Girl, Fuse: How often do you hear from a band after 24 years of hanging up the name, and the new stuff is up there with their best work? Sure, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt kept busy with other projects but I never expected them to release new music together. This coming out of the pandemic was one of its silver linings.
    • Bob Dylan, Shadow Kingdom: Revisiting one’s old material with the benefit of age and experience made Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now (2000) a revelation for me when it came out, and while I still don’t know Dylan’s work well enough after all these years to appreciate every nuance of these new versions, I’m planning to put in the work.

    Best reissue: Jesse Malin — The Fine Art of Self Destruction

    The 20th Anniversary Edition of this seminal album sadly took on a different meaning a couple of months after it was released. Jesse Malin suffered a freak “spinal stroke” in New York and became paralyzed from the waist down (an update in December revealed an unfortunate lack of progress, with him now seeking stem cell treatments in Argentina). The Fine Art was somehow a formative album for me, although I had no reason to identify with its East Coast bohemian city life vignettes. I suppose it’s universal the same way Springsteen is. This new edition includes 2022 versions of key songs, and although Malin’s voice is virtually unchanged, you can hear the years on his shoulders in these slower, introspective readings.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Portishead, Roseland NYC Live 25: This came out of nowhere, a remastered 25th anniversary edition of an insanely historic performance, and now with three tracks that were previously only in the film. I remember buying it on VCDs (remember those?) from the local HMV. If only they’d remixed it in Spatial Audio… I would die to experience this like a real concert.
    • R.E.M., Up (25th Anniversary Edition): I already mentioned this one in Week 45.23. As I noticed these last two albums with 25th anniversaries, I thought “huh, 1998 sure was a special year”. And thanks to Apple Music showing other playlists where a song is included, I discovered this one: At Home With Jack Antonoff, which is entirely dedicated to the magical moment that was 1998. Check it, The Smashing Pumpkins put out Adore, Neutral Milk Hotel made In The Airplane Over The Sea, and Natalie Imbruglia sang Torn?! What was in the air?
    • Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition): I actually wrote a couple of sentences about this album when it came out in 2013 and accidentally found the post while searching for a more recent mention. Still a masterpiece, now in Spatial Audio.
    • Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (Drumless Edition): And this crazy rerelease idea. As I said a few weeks ago, who the hell would have thought making a version without the drum tracks would result in such a wholly new experience?

    Best single line:

    Thank God I’m fly!
    — TGIF, XG

    Best bars:

    I’m down to click out you hoes and make a crime scene
    I click the trigger on the stick like a high beam
    Man, I was Bentley wheel whippin’ when I was nineteen
    She call my number, leave her hangin’, she got dry-cleaned
    She got a Android, her messages is lime green
    I search one name, and end up seein’ twenty tings
    Nadine, Christine, Justine, Kathleen, Charlene, Pauline, Claudine
    Man, I pack ‘em in this phone like some sardines.
    — First Person Shooter, Drake feat. J. Cole

    Best new (to me) artist: yeule

    I racked my brain trying to think of another Singaporean-born artist who has achieved critical acclaim overseas singing in English (we have quite a few who make it in Mandopop, in Taiwan and so on), but couldn’t think of another besides yeule, a London-based non-binary 25ish self-taught musician who studied fashion but also paints and streams and has a way with theatrical makeup. Their latest album, softscars, got an 8.5 from Pitchfork, and the last one got 8.3. That’s a hometown hero medallion as far as I’m concerned, and for the record I really like these records. There are interviews online that suggest a tumultuous childhood, and looking at how they’re covered in tattoos and generally act and look like someone who would give an Asian parent a coronary, I can imagine the difficulties faced growing up here were potent inputs for artistry. They also have an extremely-online underground idol type of presence, with a community distributed across platforms — I’d never joined a musician’s Discord server before this one, but why isn’t more of a thing?

    One of the things I realized this year was how the ways we as fans connect with artists we love have crossed a line, and the tools and channels we use seem to be encouraging the development of parasocial relationships. This is something that maybe evolved from Asian pop and idols, e.g. handshake events, but I believe is going to become very mainstream from here.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Kassa Overall: A super talented drummer who performs a funky modern mashup of hip-hop and jazz. An indie Anderson .Pakk? Btw I discovered the Seattle radio station KEXP while looking for yeule’s performances, and discovered a wealth of great music on their YouTube channel, as well as a ton of new bands to look into. Fortunately, Kassa Overall also played a set for KEXP and it’s — to use a term Scott Forstall once tried to make happen — absolutely blow away. And that logo with his name on all the band’s hoodies!
    • Samara Joy: Another jazzy discovery from late in the year, and possessor of an incredible vocal instrument you need to hear. Here’s her album Linger Awhile on Verve Records.

    Best album: XG — New DNA

    I waited months for the New DNA mini-album. I watched hours and hours of “documentary footage” on YouTube, following the members as they struggled through five years of frankly brutal and manipulative training under their manager Simon’s direction. I learnt all seven of their names. I watched each new single and video drop, and then watched reaction videos. I watched fancams and BTS specials (but drew the line at braving a heatstroke at their Formula 1 concert here). From the moment I first heard them in February, I knew they were different. They’ve doubled their following on YouTube since (currently with 2.41M subscribers), but I think they’re still being slept on. J-Pop groups are never this polished, and K-Pop ones are never this accessible. With every song in English and a style that effortlessly unites hip-hop, electronic, and 90s R&B, these girls deserve to be massive in 2024. I wish New DNA contained all their previously released singles, which would have made a beefier release and maybe helped them break out, but I suspect that’s just the millennial in me talking. Everyone knows nobody listens to whole albums anymore, which makes this category very sad.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Sufjan Stevens, Javelin: It was close, I wanted to call this the album of the year. Deeply moving, and kinda makes up for not having any new music from Joanna Newsom.
    • Kevin Abstract, Blanket: I never listened to Brockhampton, of which Abstract is a member, and I don’t remember his previous album ARIZONA BABY doing anything for me. But Blanket is something else. Like yeule’s softscars, it draws on 90s alt-rock to create a new sound that goes beyond labels.
    • boygenius, the record: I miss the days when we had more supergroups.
    • Vagabon, Sorry I Haven’t Called: I really need to play this more often. It’s a soulful, elastic collection of ingenious songs and the opener, Can I Talk My Shit?, is one of my favorites of the year.

    ===

    Other media activity:

    • I finished reading The Paris Apartment and gave it two stars on Goodreads. Please don’t.
    • We binged the Dead Ringers TV miniseries on Amazon Prime Video. Wow. Rachel Weisz does that incredible thing actors do when they’re bored of playing one character and want to play a set of twins. You literally forget they’re not two people. Also the bloodiest show of the year, not for the squeamish.
    • Slow Horses is back, and we’re nearly done with Season 3. It’s still very very good, and even better than the last season. I’ve only just discovered they’re based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, of which there are eight, so that’s my 2024 reading challenge sorted.
  • Week 49.23

    Week 49.23

    As usual, I find myself in disbelief that another year is nearing its end. My Goodreads Reading Challenge count stands at 11 out of 12, and I’m halfway through a book right now, so I guess I’ll just make it before New Year’s. Which, incidentally, I’ll now be spending overseas thanks to some last minute plans. I’ll say where and post some photos after I’m back.

    On reflection, it’s a bit of a shame that almost all the books I’ve read this year were just 3-star affairs. It’s like I’ve held back from tackling the big names on my reading list, choosing lighter and more inconsequential fare. In some ways, this has been a calmly chaotic year, with instability in the wider world putting everyone on edge, and that may have influenced my need for soothing, low-stakes entertainment. I saw a mention somewhere that the self-care industry is “sedating women”, making them focus on trying to fix something in themselves instead of fixing the problems out there. I can relate.

    The holiday overeating has begun (although I may have forgotten to stop after last year), which I think is linked to a feeling of letting go and treating yourself in the evenings as work slows down (or seems less important) at this time of the year. We ended up eating out a fair few times, and as I write this I’m looking forward to another trip to Maji Curry this evening.

    It’s not just fat cushioning my bones — while at Tokyu Hands this week (now simply called Hands), I saw a $75 wavy seat cushion and decided I had to have it for all the sitting around I do when working from home. Does it do anything for me? I don’t really know! But I’m treating myself. And then on the weekend we wandered into some kind of fancy organic bedding store and walked out with a pair of new pillows. Kim unfortunately may have chosen the wrong height/density for her sleeping style, but after one night I can cautiously report that mine cradles my noggin just fine.

    ===

    Where’s the usual AI garbage, Brandon? I can hear you thinking it! Well okay, so Peishan mentioned she’d made a new zine, which reminded me of a project idea I’d written down and filed away. It was to make a zine on the subject of “Breakfast”, but using only AI-generated words and images.

    If you’re thinking that sounds like a pretty mediocre zine, then you understand the challenge here. We’re now at a point where generative AI’s infinite supply threatens to drive down the perceived value of all but the best; content vs. art. So I’d like to see if my human labor of directing an AI worker to deliver above-average quality and packaging its output as a coherent product, can create something worth looking at. The only way to find out is to make it! And now that we can do custom GPTs, I decided to start by making one that acts like a diverse team of writers and artists, with a range of different styles, which can then be applied to a zine on any topic you like.

    I’m still testing it out, but so far I’ve gotten a handful of articles. And in doing so, I’ve realized that I know nearly nothing about print layouts or how to design an attractive zine. I’ve read my share of mags, of course, but without effectively taking in their details. I’m making it with Pages on my Mac, and using its “Free Layout Mode” has been the best approach I’ve found. It’s sort of like a digital version of making a physical zine: I’m moving chunks of text and cut-out imagery around on A4 canvases; almost like scrapbooking. I just need more fonts and more imagination and more time.

    ===

    • I listened to no new music this week.
    • I didn’t turn my Switch on once.
    • I haven’t seen any films.
    • We did start Season 2 of Bosch Legacy though, and that’s still as great as ever. Not just the modern noir vibes and great jazz soundtrack. It’s a show that respects its audience and their time, without overelaborating on plot points or explaining every term or acronym that comes up. We’re already on episode 7 of 10, and I’ll be sad when it’s over. Thankfully a third season has been confirmed!

    (This week’s featured image was taken while walking around Tiong Bahru, edited with a Ricoh GR Positive Film effect simulation preset I made.)

  • Week 47.23

    Week 47.23

    Oof, this was a tiring week. Navigating change, physically recovering from a vaccine’s side effects, and having conversations about Christmas gifts, that shit will wear a blogger out. Helping me navigate all this was my astrology GPT, Co—Sign, who would tell me how to deal with challenging situations and to trust in my own nature, even if some decisions felt like bad ideas by other people’s standards.

    Of course, the week started off with more twists in the OpenAI management saga, which seems to have ended now with Sam and Greg back at the company, not at Microsoft, and the formation of a new board underway. This pleases me because OpenAI was a company/brand with significant momentum and destroying value of that sort for no good reason doesn’t sit well with me (this may or may not be a reference to something else happening in my life). I’m glad I won’t have to port my collection of GPTs to another product like Poe or whatever.

    I used Gen AI to bone up on Silicon Valley mind viruses like EA (effective altruism) and e/acc (effective accelerationism), which I’d kinda grokked in passing but not spent any time specifically reading up on. I have to say I feel myself falling in the accelerationist camp — given current world events, we’re not exactly proving ourselves a worthy species, so we may as well hasten our demise or salvation in every aspect from the upheaval of labor to economic principles. Incidentally bitcoin hit a new high for the year this week, going over $38,000 for a brief period.

    I’ve buried the lede, but AI voice recognition and synthesis technology has enabled my favorite gag of the year: this Chinese dubbing of Van Morrison performing Caravan with The Band. It’s sublime; a French chef’s French kiss. It caught me in a moment of weakness and I couldn’t watch the whole thing through because I was dying of laughter. Van shouting “turn your radio up” in Mandarin will live rent free in my head from this week forth. This video is so precious to me I’ve saved a copy on personal cloud storage just in case the tweet goes down.

    ===

    I was excited to hear that the Muji store in Plaza Singapura had reopened after an extensive renovation, now twice its original size and the largest in South-East Asia. We went down on the weekend to take a look, and it had things normally seen only in Japan: plants, bicycles, an embroidery service, renovation services, a wider range of furnishings, frozen food, and regional specialty goods (including $350 silk scarves). Not your average Muji! In fact, it’s billed as a “Global Flagship Store”, and I hope their gamble pays off and Singaporeans vote for more of this with their wallets.

    ===

    • Up to episode 4 of Pluto on Netflix now and it’s really the best anime series of the year for me. Just on those late 90s cybernoir SF mystery vibes. This is what the Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex reboots should have been like.
    • Also up to episode 4 of Blue Eye Samurai and I’ll admit it’s gotten better. More complexity, somewhat interesting stakes, but the CG anime look with fake low-fps stuttering is getting a little annoying. If I had a modern TV I might actually turn on motion smoothing just to make it a more authentic experience.
    • I tried real hard to avoid buying a 4K HDR TV during the Black Friday sales and succeeded. Gotta save up funds for the dark days ahead.
    • Speaking of premonitions, we saw episode 2 of Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV+ (mild spoiler alert) and let me tell you, my cinematic Spidey sense tingled and I called the event that happens at the end of the episode minutes before it happened. I’m usually quite bad at anticipating TV twists, but something about the atmosphere and pacing and shots just told me what was coming.
    • We also saw the first two episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+ and were left impressed. It’s the new series involving Godzilla and other monsters that either belong to Toho or Warner Bros now? Really, the monster custody is unclear to me. But halfway through, as new characters were being introduced in flashbacks, Kim assumed an Asian woman was the mother of a younger Asian woman we’d already seen. And I said, “maybe it’s just an unrelated Asian woman”, to which she laughed, “there are never unrelated Asians”. Which I took to mean in American shows, not the real world, and sadly she’s right.
    • Many people have been raving about Andre 3000’s new instrumental album with flutes, New Blue Sun, and I’ve tried to get into it, I have. But it’s literally put me to sleep a couple of times, so I’m assuming it’s just not for me.

    (This week’s Featured Image is a Dall•E representation of a Chinese Van Morrison impersonator performing in a Muji store.)