Links from the past weeks

  • I went down a Tsai Ming-liang rabbit hole, and found this guide to his movies. The page is awesome.


  • I was watching The 8 Show and learned the term “limousine liberal”. It is not new but I have not heard of it before. It calls out the hypocrisy of liberals of upper classes, who are insulated from the consequences of the programs/ principles they are peddling.


  • When something hits Coffeezilla’s radar, you know it is gonna be good fun. This AI company’s latest product was also called “barely reviewable” by Marques Brownlee, and while I was skeptical of the advancements, the videos by MKBHD and Coffeezilla made me pay a little more attention.



  • The pigeon problem in my neighbourhood has finally come too close for my liking. I had to look up homemade bird repellants.



  • This Atlantic piece, titled The Carry-On-Baggage Bubble Is About to Pop, came to my attention as I was pondering having carry-on only when I travel within the US. (I have little to no faith that the American domestic flight system would always work out in my favour. With the traffic involved, it is only a matter of time before one becomes part of the statistics pertaining to lost or delayed luggage.)


    That said, it might well be true that if everyone just checked in their luggage, the flight experience would be much enhanced.



  • Shows like this are sometimes a little hard to watch because of the cringe-inducing characters, but for the sheer train-wreck potential, I spend some time watching Super Rich in Korea. Yong is from Singapore and claims to be top 1% of Singapore’s rich (which isn’t that rich so maybe he was aiming for accuracy, good job). He is so awkward that you begin to feel for him.


    Yes, I suppose only a certain type would agree to go on a TV show, and well, the man did get a piece on Singapore’s broadsheet focused entirely on him.


    PS. In the next month, Yong gets another piece focused on him. He might have done better for himself if he had chosen to not engage the journalist for this second piece.



📖 The Measure

“Can you tell what this one means?” Nina pointed to another sticker. Maura studied the yellow paper under Nina’s finger. Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi. Her forehead scrunched, her brain searching for the words. “If forever doesn’t exist,” she said, “we’ll invent it ourselves.”

―
Nikki Erlick
The Measure

//

This is a very captivating thought experiment disguised as a science fiction novel. I gobbled it up very quickly on a flight. The story begins with everyone waking up one day to find a box at their doorstep, and inside that box is a piece of string. The length of the string corresponds to how long you will live.

If you have a short string, do you give up? Take all the risks you want before you are gone? Consider euthanasia to avoid a nasty accident taking your life? Should your leaders declare the length of their strings? What if you and your life partner have markedly different lengths… The writer explores many, many different scenarios and they can be intimate, horrifying, banal… I didn’t have much expectations in terms of writing but I found that the story moves along well, and much as the topic is morbid, the book is overall leaning towards optimism. It would perhaps be more appreciated by those who like reading philosophy.

//

“The beginning and the end may have been chosen for us, the string already spun, but the middle has always been left undetermined, to be woven and shaped by us.”