August 2019 Favorites

I’m trying out a new format: A monthly blog post, including all links, articles, videos, books, products, or other things I liked in the month.

If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

Videos

• Timelapse of the Future – A half-hour-long movie of the future of our universe to its end. Stunning visuals and fantastic music.
• Hikari – Fantastic visual epitaph for Japanese poet Hikaru-San, who took her own life after struggling with depression. The poem used in the video is Epitaph for “Poets’ Tomb” by Shuntarō Tanikawa.
• Bookstores: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content – Documentary about books, libraries and reading.
• What’s the Best Position to Sleep in? Do we even need a Pillow? – Interesting video summary on the science of sleeping.
• The Expanse Season 4 Comic-Con Trailer – The trailer for the upcoming season is fantastic. As a reader of all Expanse books, I can’t wait for the next season.
• Jordan Peterson – Political Correctness and Postmodernism – Jordan B Peterson holds a lecture about the importance of free speech.
• Why Cosmic Horror is Hard To Make – Video about why Cosmic Horror (or Lovecraftian Horror) is so hard to adapt onto the screen.
• After Life – An Answer to Nihilism – Video essay on the Netflix TV show After Life.
• This Is Water – David Foster Wallace – I rewatched the fantastic commencement speech from 2005. There is also a short film by The Glossary based on this speech which (unfortunately) needed to be removed. But you can still find it …
• DoubleSpeak, How to Lie without Lying – Nice video essay on Double Speak, the usage of euphemism and other techniques to change something without lying.
• The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty – Inspiring lecture by Jordan B Peterson about individual sovereignty.
• Nick Di Paolo – His new standup special A Breath of Fresh Air is available on YouTube for free. He also appeared on Joe Rogan’s Podcast and was interviewed by Dave Rubin.
• 2017 Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief – I started watching the ~30-hour long lecture by Jordan B Peterson at the University of Toronto about how we construct meaning.

TV Shows

• Mad Men [N] – I started rewatching this fantastic TV show. It won 5 Golden Globes and 132 other awards. Its story spans over multiple years and is so deep and stacked with so many layers of interpretation.
• Mindhunter [2] [N] – I started watching the second season of this Netflix TV show about the FBI unit that started interviewing serial killers in the 1970s to understand and solve these crimes.
• Glow [N] – A colleague recommended this funny TV show to me. It’s about a group of women who become wrestlers in Los Angeles during the 1980s.

Movies

• Annihilation [N] – I rewatched the Netflix movie because after reading Lovecraft’s The Colour out of Space, I realized that the writers have written in parts—without intention—a nice adaptation of the story.
• Thor: Ragnarok [N] – A lot of super-heroes movies are bad these days … but this one was fun.
• Dunkirk [N] – A very silent movie about the evacuation of 400,000 soldiers from Dunkirk in May 1940.
• Baby Driver [N] – After seeing the video essay of Like Stories of Old about Introversion in Baby Driver, I decided to watch this movie, I had never heard about before. A nice movie!
• Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones [N] – Very funny, political incorrect, and right to the heart of every virtue signaller and social justice warrior.

Music

• The Arrow of Time Soundtrack – Music from Time-lapse of the Future. Especially Sun Mother I hear quite often.
• Deichkind: Keine Party – I enjoyed the new song from the Hamburg Hip-Hop Band Deichkind. The music video is really funny. This dance move will prevail.

Books

• The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (Amazon) – I’m currently halfway through this book and love Lovecraft Horror.

Articles

• IndieWeb Link Sharing (Max Böck) – How to use a bookmarklet and Lambda functions to post links to your website.
• I Didn’t Say That (Jordan B Peterson) – An article about deep fakes and their problem, when used for more than fun and art. We need urgently laws to regulate the usage of voice or face of other people. Impersonators can and will use this technology to accuse people of crimes, use it for propaganda, and other bad causes.
• Two Unusual Japanese Home Designs With Unique Zoning Techniques – Nice minimal house design with a lot of photos and some videos.
• Native lazy-loading for the web – Native lazy-loading is here!
• NetNewsWire 5.0 Relaunches as an Open-Source RSS Reader for the Mac – RSS is not dead!

Stuff & Things

• MUJI Circulator Fan – I’ve replaced my 20-year-old fan with this stunning piece of art. It’s so silent you can’t even hear it on the first two levels. It kept me cool this hot month.