Awesome finds - September/October 2024

It's been a hectic few months: I was involved in a huge high-pressure project at work, went to the US for the first time, prepared for and ran my first half marathon, so keeping up with what's going on and opening my usual newsletters was the last thing on my mind, to be honest. But here are some things that have caught my attention anyway!

Articles

Exit This Page by GOV.UK Design System: I've said this before and I'll say it again, a) GOV.UK is just incredible for paying attention to all things accessibility b) accessibility is not looking after "disabled people", accessibility is looking after all people, whatever they are and whatever situation they're in. So it was not surprising, but fascinating to find this sort of a button as a feature. But 10/10, perfect, no notes.

I Got Dysentery So You Don’t Have To: A couple of years ago this was my fav thread on Twitter: basically, a man signed up for a clinical trial of a dysentery vaccine. He and the other participants had no idea what they were getting (placebo/vaccine situation + disease/control group situation), they just lived through it under the control of a group of doctors. This guy was live tweeting the whole experience, process and symptoms, which was incredibly enlightening and entertaining. Anyway, I'm so incredibly pissed that we lost it because of what Ilon Musk did, so this article is just a tiny fraction of the whole experience, but still curious to read.

I yet to produce a stool sample today. Time, o unforgiving Time, marches inexorably forward. A spectre is haunting me — the spectre of the midnight rectal swab.

— Jake (@jeeeberts) April 6, 2022

Should JavaScript Be Split Into Two Languages?: man I love JavaScript world. Always some weird stuff happening. Most used language is not a language but a superset on one (luv ya TS), most popular framework is not a framework but a library (luv ya React), and now we might have a language which is... two languages? Whatever. But why it is getting more complex every month?

Foursquare Shifts Focus Back to Swarm: Not exactly an article, but a piece of news I guess? I still use Swarm app pretty much every day, but nobody I know does either. So it was quite surprising to learn that Foursquare is actually shutting down everything else they have to focus on Swarm, when I thought it was nearing its last days. Pretty neat!

Music

• CHROMAKOPIA by Tyler, The Creator: I'm kind of sad that I didn't have enough brain capacity to listen to this album properly, but boy is it good, even if I've only scratched the surface. This is an insane mix of everything at once. I've been writing album reviews for 10 years and I still haven't found a word for that feeling when a piece of music or an album feels incredibly in place, like a proper child of a particular year and time and vibe and mood, like it's a year packaged into a musical format. CHROMAKOPIA is just that. Almost too modern.

• S P E Y S I D E by Bon Iver: acoustic Bon Iver is just unbelievably cosy. And there's no other way to put it, but yeah, his time is coming:

• Dirty Laundry by Alfie Templeman: as a matter of fact, I just saw Alfie perform this track for the first time in Brooklyn in October. It's fun and groovy and sweet, and if you don't have this kid on rotation in your Spotify or whatever, you're seriously missing out.

• Temps de Flors by Tora: when this album happened to be playing on speakers at home one evening, my husband asked me where I had found this seemingly random aussi band. No idea, to be honest. Still good though, dreamy and tender, and with that gentle balance that makes some of their songs stay with you for days without annoying you too much.

Culture things

Dr House: currently watching it for the first time, before that all I really knew about it were stereotypes about everyone having lupus. Surprisingly, it hasn't aged that badly when you remove the blatant racism and sexism (you could argue that you'd remove 80% of House's words, but that's not true). Honestly, it's just a pretty comforting dinner watch, because you don't have to think about it (True Detective) or stress about it (The Bear), everything's pretty linear and House will save the day 99% of the time. Eventually. After 8 tries. But still...

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: Quite an epic story, a whole journey to another world and culture. I kind of love family sagas, although you have to hook me with something first (like the murder, the curse, the legendary mansion, the mental illness? something like that), and in this one everything is pierced with medicine and mysterious illness. A very good read, and I cannot recommend enough listening to the audio version performed by the author himself. This year, it was nominated to the Audie Award for Narration by the Author, and it would have been well deserved.

Our Town: In NYC I had the chance to see a Broadway show - to be honest I had quite a choice as I was in NY for 11 days. I don't like musicals, so I wanted to see a play, aso this is what I've chosen, even though I had never heard of Our Town before. It turned out to be a magical experience - the story, the narrator, the set, the performers - everything was very well done and quite touching.

Bop Spotter: well that's just facinating. Don't wanna spoil what it is, go check it out, trust me! 🐦‍⬛

Impressions

Detroit: I've been a Detroit Red Wings fan for about 12 years. Obviously, you cannot get away with letting some local culture in, so I thought I knew what Detroit was! Like, there're stereotypes and there're hard truths like the one below, but what about the legacy and the history and the recent development and what not?

It turns out to be so much more. The art deco buildings are incredible, honestly; the hockeytown and lions-tigers-whatever-sports-town vibe is very real (of course, I came for an NHL game, and it felt like the whole downtown was in red that day). There are old neon signs and 1920s skyscrapers. It's just... hard to explain, but my good expectations were simultaneously confirmed and shattered in both good and bad ways. I feel like I'm still thinking about it. Detroit ❤️

Ran half-marathon: I've been running with varying degrees of consistency since 2016. But this was my first half marathon! I'm happy to have done it in 2:16 (quite decent for me), it wasn't the easiest and I was a bit sore at the end, but I didn't hate it. Would I do it again? I doubt it, to be honest - but that's mainly because I don't see the point for myself to do it? I will continue to run, long runs, short runs, whatever, just maybe stop at 10km for organised races. 🏃‍♀️

And, to finish this edition, here's the sweetest kitty:

I'm lost in time, so have a magnificent whatever day or month you're in 🍂