Awesome finds - February 2024

Some things I liked in February'24.

Books

Trust by Nernan Diaz: Don't read it if you're easily annoyed by self-centred people. Trust me, just don't. Otherwise a great read about how history is always rewritten by the winners, the ones who stayed alive and the ones who have the most power.

Recursion by Blake Crouch: This is my second book by Blake Crouch, and while the first left me with the feeling "this should be a short sci-fi story instead", Recursion is much more balanced and, frankly, less mundane. Even in the most extreme twists and turns, it never leaves you to figure everything out on your own, which can be a bit annoying, so I think it is a decent read for someone who enjoys sci-fi, but only from time to time.

Music

• Everything Everything's new album is a gem: not the bangers IN YE FACE like their previous album (at least its first half), but a breath of fresh air in their own league of no one else.
• Sampha, as usual, makes pretty much everyone sound better. Mellow, warm hip-hop that I love so much.
• D U A L I P A. nuff said

• A mini rollercoaster ride through the mind of Declan McKenna, taking you on a journey from boring supermarket music to the one damn thing that gets stuck in your head for days on end.
• girl in red in her new, but still honest and touching and catchy and raw and whatever awesome self.

Eventful!

Movies

The Holdovers: Such a sweet thing, I really enjoyed the warmth of this movie. Yeah it was a bit difficult at times to zoom out and not think of Dead Poets Society (especially given that I've watched it about 5 times, or more), but even with similarities, it is still a great, quite comforting movie.

Anatony of a Fall: I really liked how I felt "wow, that's good" and not much else right after watching it, but then I went back to it for a whole week, rethinking whole scenes. SPOILER ALERT, it leaves you with the same kind of "and that's it?" dissatisfaction, longing for something you don't even know what, it's absolutely fantastic. And Sandra Hüller has totally won my heart.

Sandra Hüller's defending her child scene in Anatomy of a Fall remains the best performance of 2023 to me. And she deserves more than this. pic.twitter.com/lMj5EB4K1Z

— sharon🕯️sandra hüller Oscar nominee (@iamsharonle) February 18, 2024

Tech articles

WCAG simplified: Not as great as it sounds, but I think the idea is pretty cool: WCAG accessibility standards explained in "human-friendly language" one-liners. It's definitely not enough to have any significant impact, but it's a start.

Set.prototype.[union, intersection, difference and more]: A tidy explainer of what new JS Set object methods are available in browsers near you (c) (unless you are a FireFox user, then Nightly it is).

A comprehensive guide on the hottest React trends we are excited for in 2024: A nice one to fill your bookmarks with trendy, shiny tools you'd like to use + topics you'd want to read more about. Plus, it serves as a great explanation of what happened in the React space in 2023, in case you were too busy writing code to follow React gossip (good for you, honestly) 💅.

Curiosities

This lad, who wrote a Python script to correctly identify the specific area from which the annoying and peace-disturbing agricultural air cannon was blasting day and night. Articles like this make me feel both inspired and useless as a programmer: I really, really like to build something I use myself, but it's not always the easiest task to have both the idea and the right skills/tools (and time) to make something useful. And it is nice to remember that not all of us are working on SaaS or e-commerce...

How bread revolution paved way for suffragetes: Firstly, I cannot recommend Works in Progress enough - a brilliant resource for keeping up with random research/nature/history/science topics. Secondly, this is a beautifully written piece on bread, which brightened the social life of women in the 1920s and opened up avenues for a better life for us all.

And this very beautiful painting:

See ya in April! 🫡