#111: Neopets crime rings
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Werty: Just a quick round up of my life since we last met:
Work has been getting busier. (I work in strategic planning/futures.) Now that the immediate fire-fighting re: COVID-19 has relented, folks are starting to reflect on the longer-term implications. What worked well in this crisis? What do we need to build for the next one?
I watched the Disney+ release of Hamilton. (Didn’t watch Hamilton live before, listened to the soundtrack on Spotify but didn’t get into it.) It was a great musical, I get the hype, I put the soundtrack on repeat for a couple of days. But I also feel that the show really didn’t age well in some ways. It’s a product of a bygone age (by which I mean the Obama era), like LOL stanning Founding Fathers and look, we casted POC in almost all the lead roles to Make a Point! Immigrants! We get the job done! That Obama-era optimism of a post-racial America, before, you know, today where nobody’s really sure what to believe in anymore. Hamilton feels so incredibly dated, but it’s not about how much time has elapsed (3-4 years is a drop in the historiographical ocean). Instead, in this 3-4 years and especially in the last 9 months, we have all experienced accelerated ageing on an emotional and spiritual level - now more cynical, jaded and tired.
I watched Tenet in cinemas. Did not like it. Sound mixing was bad, character development and motivation was sparse. Many moments of ‘Ok, what’s the point of this mission again?’ even though I consider myself above-average at following convoluted plots. The time-travel concept was so promising though, which just makes me feel robbed. This movie just feels like a parody of a Chris Nolan film. I grieve for what it could have been. (For example, the movie could have been PERFECTLY SYMMETRICAL but it was not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I watched Away on Netflix. It’s about a bunch of astronauts going on the first manned space mission to Mars, set in the near-future. No aliens, no ghosts, no asteroids, no murderous AIs, no murderous humans. Just plain human drama: the friendships of the crew, missing family back home, stuff on the ship malfunctioning, banter with Mission Control. A simple yet compelling story of human endeavour and triumph. If you loved the real-life stories of the Apollo missions, you’ll enjoy this.
I also started watching Borgen on Netflix. Essentially, House of Cards or The West Wing but in Danish. It’s old, from 2010. You can tell because people are still using flip phones, and TV news and newspapers are still influential. Summary: The leader of a minor political party unexpectedly finds herself becoming Denmark’s first female Prime Minister after a messy and contested general election. This stands out from American political dramas because Denmark’s parliament, the Folketing (literally the People’s Thing), is elected by proportional representation, which tends to generate coalition governments. It makes for a model of leadership and a political process that is markedly different from the ones that we are typically exposed to, in both fiction and reality (e.g. US, UK, SG). As someone who has lived in a Westminster-style system all his life, this makes for very fresh and fascinating watching.
Yuni: Hello! It’s me! Here’s what I’ve been up to:
I started taking improv classes on Sundays. What fun it has been! Those with longer memories will remember I used to be a drama club kid in high school, and it has been more than a decade since I took the stage. Getting in touch with that performer in me is so liberating — improv is a license to push the boundaries of what’s possible, a portal to any character I want to be, an escape from the everyday realities.
I celebrated a work anniversary. Folks here probably know I changed jobs last year, and what a meaningful, transformative experience it has been to work at LinkedIn. I’m grateful, especially amid this pandemic, and love learning and improving and striving every single day. Speaking of which, I also did my first ever public speaking/ webinar gig with Young Women’s Leadership Connection, a women’s career organization that I love being a part of.
We are now playing lots of Nintendo Switch on the weekends. Werty bought a Nintendo Switch a month or two ago. I wouldn’t say that I am a big gamer by any stretch (I only remember avidly playing Jump Start First Grade, Zoo Tycoon and Club Penguin in my life) so believe me when I say the Switch has been a real joy for homebodies like us. We have played Overcooked 2, Just Dance, Snipper Clips, some taiko drum game, some kind of moving game, some kind of golf game, some kind of game where you are a yarn baby tied to another yarn baby running in a big cave… Again I am NOT a big gamer. I just go with Werty’s suggestions, and usually they are awesome because he is awesome.
Browse every Ikea catalog since 1951
See also: this adorable Animal Crossing-style Ikea catalog from Taiwan
Why Japan's rail workers can't stop pointing at things
Actually have started to adopt this in my daily life!
How long before robots write Morning Assembly for us?
Future generations deserve good ancestors. Will you be one?
Humankind has colonised the future. We treat it like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk and nuclear waste – as if nobody will be there.
Something something Tenet…
Why do recipe names matter?
What do we lose when paratha is called "flaky bread," or bibimbap a "rice bowl"?
North Korean propaganda gets an upgrade
Is online advertising just a mirage?
But is any of it real? What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising? Are advertising platforms any good at manipulating us?
In this beautiful video game, you build a little town inspired by Scandinavian cities and hyper-detailed children's books
Anybody else had a book when they were young that was filled with glossy full page photos containing lots of objects arranged in a room or on a table and I think it asked you to find specific objects? The images looked so hyper-realistic to be unreal, to the point of being a bit uncomfortable and creepy to look at. But it was also very potent catnip for detail-obsessive kids. I suppose those books were my generation’s equivalent of the bizarro procedurally-generated Youtube videos that kids these days love watching where a multi-coloured Spiderman inflates Elsa with a needle or some nonsense. (That is a real thing - I just don’t want to look it up because it legitimately scares me)
A new study suggests that a successful relationship is not about the partner you choose but the relationship you build
The secret economics of a VIP party
What most people don’t realise is that the apparently spontaneous abandon of those extravagant nights is, in fact, painstakingly planned. It takes a carefully hidden, intricate economy, based on a complex brokering of beauty and status, to create an atmosphere in which people will spend $100,000 on alcohol in a single night.
The UX of Lego interface panels
The first modern paramedics were black volunteers from Pittsburgh
Moon says that Freedom House would have a police scanner on to monitor the calls and would try to get to emergency situations before the police did to make sure care was given properly. Sometimes the police would relent, but other times they would threaten the paramedics with arrest unless they backed off. Some white patients even rejected physical contact from the Black paramedics, and doctors even denied Freedom House’s help.
It’s hard to imagine that people (even policemen and doctors!) once actively rejected the concept of paramedics in the name of preserving the Natural Order of Things. It makes you wonder what would be today’s equivalent. UBI? Animal rights?
It’s also a sobering reminder of how much we are products of our time, and how we should be constantly challenging our assumptions of how the world should be. (This also reminded me of David Foster Wallace’s joke about how fish don’t know they’re in water. His entire speech is worth reading.)
Deciphering beautiful Hokusai prints (that aren't the Great Wave)
How the Buddha got his face
His image is so commonplace that you could believe it must always have existed — yet for six centuries after his death, he was never once depicted in human form.
Could COVID-19 make the child-free lifestyle more appealing?
This incredible story from a guy who ran an organised crime ring in Neopets as a kid
Never underestimate the ingenuity of kids.
Important: Song Dynasty poems about cats
How COVID-19 broke the airline pricing model
Could you be more productive if you swapped Wednesday and Saturday around?
How Caravaggio uses light and shadow
Some shits and giggles
That’s all folks! See you next week.
Werty & Yuni