Awesome finds - November/December 2024

For the first time, there will be very little tech stuff in this newsletter - I've had so much on my plate at work and at home over the past two months that I just haven't bothered to open any newsletters or listen to my favourite tech podcasts. But I've been reading a lot and listening to a bunch of new music before the end of the year, so here it is.

Books

Crudo by Olivia Laing: There have been a lot of books lately that haven't touched me in any way, good or bad. This one is quite... the opposite at least - at first I hated it with a passion and honestly even thought of putting it down, but then I somehow... started to understand the main character and got used to the writing style, which is quite remarkable, and it somehow clicked. I can't say I loved it, but it's definitely the most unusual and memorable book I've read last year.

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet: tbh that's another weird one. But totally gripping - the children's POV and mental processes in absolutely bizarre circumstances are presented to you in such a vivid way that you practically feel how their every happiness and misfortune creeps under your skin as well. It may be a little too fantastical at times, but it is still completely believable, in human behaviour sense.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut: I started listening to this book while running in Central Park on Sunday (i.e. a lot of people running towards you, not the best place for thinking), and got overwhelmed pretty quickly - the density of facts and connections and ideas thrown at you right at the beginning is insane, I felt like I wanted to slow the WORLD down to understand at least something. But that is a very peculiar description of the lives of scientists and their sacrifices, madnesses and passions on the way to achieving something, and that something is not always something that can be achieved.

Music

• GNX by Kendrick Lamar: boy this is good stuff. I kind of skimmed it at first (seeing Jack Antonoff as a producer was personally a big bummer) but it really grew on me, it is just impossible not to love those beats. It kind of reminded me of how iconic the whole King K's discography is, been listening to on repeat ever since.

• My Head Is Not My Friend by The Wombats: The Wombats are getting older and it shows, but I kinda love it that way. Murph's lyrics are still on point and that's probably the best thing about this EP, but we'll see what's in the new album.

• Yes by Pompeya: man, it feels weird listening to Pompeya in 2024(5), considering that they wrote the best album in 2011, which still sounds incredibly modern and oh so good, and have been on a slow decline since Foursome (2012) saw the world. But this song is actually... good? Not the Pompeya I loved so dearly, but alllso not the boring mess they've been recording for the last 8 years or so.

• Limbo by IGNACY: polish James Blake has finally released his second album, but it feels like a debut because it is literally two different universes. This album, even though well polished and produced, is an uncanny valley for me because it's not even freaking funny like BOY WHY DID YOU JUST COPY JAMES BLAKE IT IS NOT EVEN DISCREET! sure, I miss early JB too, but this is... this is too much...

• Invincible by Tom Misch: Tom Misch is absolutely lo-ve-ly as always, and this song was like love at first sight, at the first musical note or whatever. BUT after sitting on it for a while, I finally realised why I love it THAT much: it's the kind of vibe and feel that I was expecting (and actually craving) from HONNE, which they unfortunately failed to deliver last year (and I'm seriously gutted about that).

• Mountain Out Of A Molehill by Villagers: a solid Villagers track, a fairy-taley folky indie ballad. Some bands (or should I say artists? idk really) are refreshingly stable in the niche they've carved out for themselves over the years, and that's fair enough for the sweet chap called Conor J O'Brien (most Irish name ever).

Random facts from podcasts

🐎 In chariot racing, the winner was actually the owner of the horses that came first, not the person riding. So this was the only (and obviously a loophole) way for women to compete – The Ancient Olympics by Short History Of...

🧠 There's a "Jennifer Aniston neuron", aka "grandmother cell": a neuron that's activated when a person sees, hears or somehow visualises a particular person, concept or thing that they care about - Neurony i pamięć by Radio Naukowe [PL]

📅 New-ish ECMAScript's dates handling global object Temporal is so damn heavy that some older devices are unable to properly run JS with its support - 433 by Web Standards [RU]

🇮🇹 "I think that every man have two fatherlands: one his own, and the other - Italy" is a cool Henryk Sienkiewicz quote from "On the sunny shore" (Na jasnym brzegu) - RP475: Henryk Sienkiewicz [PL].

But there're at least two (one, two) other versions of the same phrase, where the only difference is the country: France and Syria.

Facts from everywhere

⚡ JavaScript is 5 times more energy efficient than TypeScript, 7.6 times faster, and uses about the same amount of memory - Ranking Programming Languages by Energy Efficiency

🇨🇳 Tokio University's graduate admissions page used a dirty but nifty HTML trick to prevent Chinese students from applying: they embedded a Tiananmen Square-related keyword to the page, effectivelly preventing it from loading from China.

The student-led paper for Tokyo University says a graduate program used an HTML trick to prevent mainland Chinese students from applying, sneaking "Tiananmen Square" into its HTML code to stop the page from loading in mainland China. More details below. pic.twitter.com/yUg0e0grel

— Unseen Japan (@UnseenJapanSite) December 8, 2024

🤬 Spotify may have been infiltrating your beloved playlists with AI-generated shit for at least a year. Of course, not to pay musicians.

And, to finish this edition, this diva:

Excited for the new year, hope it started well for you! 🚀