After the previous update by Barry Crist effectively saying “suck it up, losers”, Chef have announced that they would not be renewing their contract with ICE and CBP. More importantly though, it sounds as though they’ll be bringing a moral element to their business decisions from now on. This can only be a good thing.
Five Books »
Ever since the death of The Oyster Review, I’ve been pretty suck for a good source of book recommendations. The Algorithm is good at many things but recommending things that depend on personal tastes and interests is not one of them. Five Books seems like it might be a good replacement though1. It bypasses The Algorithm and asks real live human experts to recommend, as the name implies, five books on a given topic. For example, 5 Sci-Fi books on the future of Europe, or 5 books on The Art of Living.
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Come to think of it, could Five Books actually be related to The Oyster Review? “five books” was one of their original features too. ↩︎
Come to the Edge
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And he pushed,
And they flew.– Christopher Logue
In Praise of Food Dad, Nigel Slater »
Ruby Tandoh gets it. Nigel Slater’s Real Food completely changed my relationship to cooking and I have a special place in my heart for his writing.
How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content
Okay look, this video kind of goes a little “maybe the real books we read were the friends we made along the way” at the end, but it’s got a wonderful (if slightly obvious/well-trod) set of central messages: make time for more reading and you’ll read more; there’s no “canon”, just read widely; enjoy it.
But the thing that really blew my mind was how these enormous, gorgeous book stores are thriving in the 21st Century. Ateneo Gran Splendid was only opened in the year 2000. And the thing I noticed was how they aren’t just places to buy books - they have cafes and bars and patisseries to help you enjoy your time in the space, not just get in and get out as fast as you can.
5 Star Phonies »
In the past few years, I’ve basically given up trusting Amazon reviews. If I’m in the market to buy something, I’ll look for reviews by actual people I trust. thewirecutter hasn’t been 100% successful for me1, but it’s still a lot better than trusting Amazon.
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a few people in my office bought their top recommendation for exercise headphones and we saw 100% failure rate within a couple of uses, and saw plenty of people in the comments section reporting the same thing. ↩︎
How Animators Created the Spider-Verse
There are so many great things in this video. My favourite is the tiny detail about how the characters are animated on every second frame (animated on 2s), and how they used this in the forest scene where Miles and Peter are swinging through the trees but they’re both animated on different 2s to indicate how their personalities aren’t in sync yet.
Norway's Underwater Restaurant »
Instant addition to my bucket list - an underwater restaurant that could double as the lair of a Bond villain:
“If the weather is bad, it’s very rough. It’s a great experience, and to sit here and be safe, allowing the nature so close into you. It’s a very romantic and nice experience.”
(Although can you imagine how sick you’d be if you booked this restaurant and didn’t get a table right by the window?)
Carly Rae Jepsen Rpg »
A higher number means you’re better at LASERS (technology; science; cold rationality; calm, precise action; mechanisms). A low number means you’re better at FEELINGS (intuition; diplomacy; seduction; wild, passionate action; convincing).
This sounds perfect. I can’t wait to try it out.
Best Games I Played in 2018
Previously: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
It’s probably obvious but still worth mentioning that this entire list is based on an extremely incomplete sampling. I had very little free time in 2018, so I had to be ruthless with the games I played. For example, I slowly made my way through 2017’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins somewhere around the middle of the year. And I loved it so much. It probably would have been in my list of favourite games of 2017. But am I in a hurry to drop another 60 hours on Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey now? Am I fuck.
Anyway, here we go.
Minit
My son – my second child – was born in March, which meant that my free time in 2018 was more precious than ever before. Thank fuck, then, for a game like Minit, which respects the player’s time. I was able to dip in and play this in tiny drops.
Florence
It’s pretty rare to see a video game even try to tackle the subject of interpersonal relationships, and it’s even rarer to see one incorporate the subject into the mechanics of the game.
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker
Is this a bit of a cheat because it’s a remaster of an old game? I don’t care. I played through this all over again on the Switch and I loved it all over again.
Red Dead Redemption 2
This is everything I wanted from a sequel to one of my favourite games of all time: a giant cowboy sandbox, with sliiiightly wonky controls that make everything just that little bit more interesting.
Marvel’s Spider-Man
For a while there towards the end of the year, this game was very much my happy place. It still is. When I want to relax and shut out the world for a while, I’ll fire up Spider-Man and just swing around the city. Maybe not coincidentally, this is the first game on the PS4 that I’ve platinumed.
Gorogoa
I still don’t understand how a human mind could have created something like this.
Return of the Obra Dinn
When I was 12 or 13, I got a Panasonic 3DO for Christmas along with a copy of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel. And while the 3DO isn’t the best console in the world and this Sherlock Holmes game is definitely not the best game in the world, they both have a really special place in my heart. When I think back to my time spent playing that game and the way it had my dumb little 12-year old brain cracking its mysteries, I’m reminded of all the things around the game. Like I remember that Christmas being the last one where everyone I knew and loved was happy. Like, genuinely, sincerely happy. And so it’s a very warm game for me.
It’s a strange comparison, I know, but Return of the Obra Dinn gave me those same feelings and the whole time I was playing it, I was brought right back to that Christmas, on that couch in my Ma’s front room. Which is pretty spectacular when you consider it’s basically just a giant logic puzzle
Tetris Effect
Every year, it feels like there’s one game that stands out for me because of the way it helps me tackle whatever anxiety or depression or other emotional issues I might be going through at the time. This year, it’s Tetris Effect. A real joy of a game that will be unfairly overlooked because it’s “just Tetris”.
Subnautica
With games like Minecraft, the most entertaining and the most magical part of the game is the first few minutes, when you’re first getting set up and exploring and struggling to survive. Subnautica somehow managed to sustain this feeling for hours.