Basically a clickable encyclopedia for music with links to artists and spotify playlists
Pathogen Resistance - XKCD
1 min read
"Will they give up?"
"I don't know. They seem pretty determined to protect each other."
Live music from this year
1 min read
2019 went by super quickly and I kinda feel like I slept through it. But it was for sure the year I saw the most live music -
- Goldlink - O2 Academy Brixton
- Anderson Paak - Alexandra Palace
- EARTHGANG (with Innanet James as the opener) - Electric Brixton
- Tierra Whack - Village Underground
- Erykah Badu & Jhene Aiko - the O2
- The Lumineers (not my taste but a super fun concert bc of the company) - the O2
- OMD (with my dad) - Eventim Apollo Hammersmith
- Orchestral Rendition of Kanye's College Dropout - XOYO
- Orchestral Rendition of Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - XOYO
- Noname - O2 Shepherd's Bush
- Khruangbin - BST Hyde Park
- Blue Lab Beats tribute to Guru's Jazzmatazz - Jazz Cafe
- BBC Proms (Angélique Kidjo & organ concert) - Royal Albert Hall
There were also a couple concerts I missed and wish I went to:
- Bas
- Saba
- Samm Henshaw
- JID
- KAYTRANADA (sold out in literally 15 seconds)
The right way to think about companies
1 min read
Hamdi's emphasis on kindness, community, inclusion, training, enfranchisement, and people-first principles are inspiring. It feels like the only right way to think about business:
TV shows & Movies
1 min read
My list of TV shows to watch:
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
- The Simpsons
- Mr. Robot
- The Sopranos
- Twin Peaks
- Larry Sanders show
- Seasons 2-5 of The Wire
- X Files
- Search Party
- Broad City
- Portlandia
- High Maintenance
And movies:
- Kiki's Delivery Service
- Jaws
- Saving Private Ryan
- Trainspotting
- Beetlejuice
- Jurassic Park
- Other People
- Obvious Child
- Landline
- Good Times
- OJ Made in America
- When Harry Met Sally
- Broadcast News
- Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
- There Will Be Blood
- Boogie Nights
- Magnolia
- Punch Drunk Love
- The Master
- Phantom Thread
Influences
3 min read
I wanted to create a list of all the things I’ve read or seen that have made a long-lasting impression and influenced how I think. Here’s that list:
Stuff on the web:
We Also Walk Dogs (Robert A. Heinlein)
The Pitch Meeting for Animaniacs (The Toast)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter
“My first oil painting” (Anna Fusté)
“Marx predicted our current crisis and points the way out” (Yanis Varoufakis)
“The Science Behind the DEA’s Long War on Marijuana” (David Downs)
“Freedom in 704 Square Feet” (Sandy Keenan)
“The Curse of Credentialism” (James Kwak)
“If you’re so successful, why are you still working 70 hours a week?” (Laura Empson)
“Capitalism vs. Socialism” (The Onion)
“6 Broken Chips That Could Still Hold Salsa If You Just Gave Them A Chance” (Clickhole)
“Fuck It: Let’s Rank The Religions” (Clickhole)
Patrick Marleau returning to San Jose in a Toronto jersey
Hit it Back Monologue (Pete Holmes)
Songs:
Have Some Love (Childish Gambino)
Sunday Candy (Chance the Rapper)
Wait for the Moment (Vulfpeck)
Other Side Of The Game (Erykah Badu)
Examination of What (Digable Planets)
Jazz [We’ve Got] (A Tribe Called Quest)
93 ’til Infinity (Souls of Mischief)
I’m going to stop before I list every song I listen to.
Books:
The Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff)
Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)
Homeland (Cory Doctorow)
Liar’s Poker (Michael Lewis)
The Big Short (Michael Lewis)
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (Michael Lewis)
Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh)
Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
Freakonomics & SuperFreakonomics (Stpehen J. Dubner & Steven Levit)
The Mystery of Capital (Hernando De Soto)
Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman)
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein)
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics (Richard Thaler)
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
Making Comics (Scott McCloud)
If I remember to, I’ll update this as new things inspire me. What would you add to the list?
Time
1 min read
I pretty often think of the lines:
"And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run,
you missed the starting gun."
from Pink Floyd's Time and imagine a 30-year old, nostalgic me unfulfilled with how things turned out. I use this to motivate myself to make a little bit of time everyday for doing small things like reading, playing the piano, or drawing. Things that require persistent effort. To use my time well, and to make sure I don't fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
I've listened to this song probably over a hundred times. But I realised recently that even though I'm only in my 20s, it applies going back in time as well. Ten years have gotten behind me since being 11. What's more, it's not like time's up once you're 30. Or 40, or 50, or 80 (though after that the odds of time being up does dramatically increase). Health-willing, you can always push yourself to learn and do new things.
Half a page of scribbed lines is how to start.
Area student really passionate about latest tech media buzzword
2 min read
London, United Kingdom— Emphatically stating how Blockchain technology is going to disrupt the way we buy cereal, 3rd year Economics student James Wilson can’t contain his excitement for how the latest tech media buzzword is going to radically transform the world. “I haven’t been this excited since I first learned about the Internet of People” Wilson said, “Can you imagine how cool that will be?”
“Have you heard about Ethereum?” Wilson asked uninterested passersby, “Think Blockchain 2.0, but with the power to replace lawyers and bankers. Through software!” When we asked Wilson about his thoughts on recent advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence as heavily covered in publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider, he responded by saying “Dude don’t even get me started. That shit is so fucking cool!”
“I took a year out from uni to work at a FinTech / PropTech / TechDeck company, which was made even better by the tech media overstating the potential impact these kind of companies will have on society” Wilson said eagerly. At press time, Wilson was reportedly meeting with VC firms seeking investment in his new venture; a company that sells software as a service, as a service.
