Weekly Notes 12th April 2024
— Weekly, Consumption — 2 min read
Media Consumption
- Continued Reading Outsiders, by Howard Becker. Great book, more to follow
- Read the review for The Historian and decided it wasn't for me
- Rediscovered Burial Untrue album and listened to it approximately 20 times
- Tried in vain to work out what song Declan McKenna - Brazil reminds me of. Like a love child of Razorlight, Vampire Weekend, still bugging me
- Downloaded Andrew O'Hagan - Mayflies
- Watched Roadhouse which I went in blind to. Bonkers bonkers film. C from me. Ridiculous. Pulp at its finest, but pretty shite
- Watched the end of the Gentlemen. A-. Feel like Mr Ritchie has found his groove with this series. Daniel Ings is very fun.
- 🍿Watched Three Body Problem. Still love the underlying content, but the TV show was flat, and the acting fairly poor. A reluctant B-
Biziness, Data science & Programming
- https://blog.alexmaccaw.com/an-engineers-guide-to-stock-options/ - bookmarked for future reference
- Eric Seufert's definition of brand vs performance marketing is my go to when trying to explain things to new marketeers in tech
- https://sdk.vercel.ai/ AI Playground for comparing models
- [https://www.thediff.co/archive/palantir-on-business-cults-and-politics/](The Diff view on Palantir) including this zinger I'm stealing “Cult” is just a euphemism for “ability to pay below-market salaries and get above-average worker retention.”
- https://www.thediff.co/archive/the-duolingo-disaster-that-wasnt/ - Also learnt something here about Duolingo business model. Very interesting!
- How to send updates on your project - short and to the point https://www.spakhm.com/updates-howto
Musings & good reads
- https://interconnected.org/home/2024/04/05/driving was my favourite blog post of the week. "It does a disservice to this cognitive state to believe that it can be found only with psychedelics or meditation or whatever, whereas there are mundane apertures too"
- https://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ One of my new favourite interactive essays, going through how understanding can be aided by interactivity. Still would love to get better at making pages like this. Should probably try D3 again
Purchases
- Got into a research hole on phone gimbals and tripods. Insta360 gimbal for £130 was the one I plumped for. Peak design magsafe for a quick tripod
Other beautiful stuff
- https://scottfrasercollection.com/ made to order 50s style clothes
- https://www.giuliaboggio.xyz/fonts/bastardo-grotesk nice font innit
- Conran salad bowl