Media Highlights 2022 (January to June)

Cultural signalling, round two!

This is me listing things I enjoyed reading / hearing / watching from the first half of 2022. Here are my highlights for all of 2021.

Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me know if you find something from this list that you end up enjoying.

Books

I keep track of what I read on Goodreads.

The books I’d most recommend to my imagined modal reader are The most important century and Talent.

• Joan Didion — Slouching Towards Bethlehem
• Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross — Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World(sidenote: Interview question ideas: What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales? What browser tabs do you currently have open? How hard do you work? What mainstream belief do you think is correct? How ambitious are you? What’s a conspiracy theory you’re into? What is your most irrational belief?)
• Adam Hochschild — Bury the Chains(sidenote: A good one for exploring the ‘Abolition was surprisingly contingent’ thesis. Entirely gripping.)
• Holden Karnofsky — The ‘most important century’ blog post series(sidenote: What does it say that maybe the most compelling case for AI-centric longtermism was written by the co-CEO of a multi-billion dollar philanthropic funder in his spare time? I remember reading this on a flight and despite feeling like I had my head in much of this stuff, I felt like I walked off that plane into a considerably weirder world.)
• Gregory Aldrete — History Of The Ancient World: A Global Perspective
• David Reich — Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
• Brian Blomerth — Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day
• Thomas Hager — The Alchemy of Air
• Bill Gates — How to Prevent the Next Pandemic
• Ben Buchanan — The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI(sidenote: Cynical reading: this book considers impacts of AI just before it gets truly transformative! Still good however, and fire is an appealing metaphor.)
• Vaclav Smil — Energy and Civilization: A History(sidenote: Did you know that a normal human metabolic rate is about 80W, and the average person generates around 100W over a normal working day? That this is roughly the power required for an incandescent lightbulb? That per capita energy use in the US — the amount of energy each person relies on — is on the order of 10,000 kWh per year, which is equivalent to around 10 humans working 24/7? And that the world is becoming steadily less energy intensive, measured by energy consumption per unit of GDP?)
• Daniel Ellsberg — The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
• Carl Sagan — Cosmos (and the show of the same name)(sidenote: Man, those opening lines: “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be…” I found this (unironically, sincerely) moving and I wish there were more efforts at such ambitious writing and filmmaking today. Grand in scope, scientifically literate, authentic, poetic.)
• Adam Fisher — Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley

Music

I log most things on rateyourmusic.com. I also have a Spotify with some playlists.

The albums I’d most recommend to my imagined modal reader are Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, Kiwanuka, Curtis, and 98.12.28 男達の別れ (98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare).

• 高木正勝 / Masakatsu Takagi - かがやき (Kagayaki) (2014)
• Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka (2019)
• Phish - The Clifford Ball (2022) and Amsterdam (2015)(sidenote: I finally took the plunge, and dozens of hours of Phish later I can proudly say that I get it. To the point where I booked a show only to realise (the day before) I’d booked it for the wrong month. Good songs: Weekapaug Groove 04/03/98, Bathtub Gin 7/15/98, Stash 7/02/97, Slave To The Traffic Light 17/08/96)
• 輕描淡寫 / Understatement - 小圈子 (2018)
• The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (2007)
• Tortoise - TNT (1998)
• Tom Waits - Closing Time (1973)
• Chineke! Orchestra / Max Richter / Elena Urioste - The New Four Seasons: Vivaldi Recomposed (2022)
• Arvo Pärt - Tabula rasa (1984)
• Various Artists - The Very Best of Éthiopiques: Hypnotic Grooves From the Legendary Series (2007) (sidenote: It’s on YouTube!)
• Kikagaku Moyo - Masana Temples (2018)
• 高木正勝 / Masakatsu Takagi - Marginalia III (2021)
• Spiritualized Electric Mainline - Pure Phase (1995)
• Rocketship - Garden of Delights (1998)
• Outer Space - Akashic Record (Events 1986-1990) (2012)
• Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop (1998)
• Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (2022) (sidenote: So wonderful; album of the year to date. “That’s my grandma!”)
• Lil Ugly Mane - Volcanic Bird Enemy and the Voiced Concern (2021)
• Darkside - Psychic Live July 17 2014 (2014 / 2020)
• Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) and Brighten the Corners (1997)
• Beach House - Once Twice Melody (2021)
• Tim Maia - Racional vol. 1 (1975) (sidenote: Thank you Gavin Leech for the recommendation!)
• Andreas Vollenweider - Quiet Places (2020)
• Wilco - A Ghost Is Born (2004)
• Burial + Four Tet - Nova (2012)
• John Coltrane - Giant Steps (1960)
• Luomo - Vocalcity (2000)
• Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman (1969)
• Charli XCX - Pop 2 (2017)
• Ashra - New Age of Earth (1977)
• Geotic - Mend (2010) and Various / Singles (2014)
• Pharoah Sanders - Wisdom Through Music (1973)
• Mydreamfever - Rough and Beautiful Place (2022)
• Fleet Foxes - A Very Lonely Solstice (2021)
• Djrum - Portrait With Firewood (2018)
• Do Make Say Think - Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead (2000)
• The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas (2002)
• Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There (2022)
• Donald Byrd - Ethiopian Knights (1972)
• The Lester Young - Teddy Wilson Quartet - Pres and Teddy (1959)
• Curtis Mayfield - Curtis (1970)
• Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life (1976)
• Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis (1969)
• Nina Simone - I Put a Spell on You (1965) and Pastel Blues (1965)
• Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul (1968) and Spirit in the Dark (1970) (sidenote: I realised I hadn’t properly listened to any of these soul albums and of course they’re all amazing.)
• Grateful Dead - Red Rocks - 7/8/78 (2016)
• Black Dog Productions - Bytes (1993)
• The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention (2022)
• Lilien Rosarian - Every Flower in My Garden (2022)
• Art Blakey - Ritual (1959)
• Fishmans - 98.12.28 男達の別れ (98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare) (1999)(sidenote: I can’t think of useful comparisons, but this is so captivating and delightful and otherworldly. In particular listen to ‘Long Season’; the last song of the last show they performed together. I like how after the song ends, the room just hangs in a kind of stunned silence for a good 10 seconds before applause.)

Other things

Podcasts, films, TV, videos, shorter writing.

If you’re interested in using your career to work on very important problems, you should listen to the 80,000 Hours Podcast if you don’t already.

• Beneath the Surface(sidenote: New self-recommending podcast from Stripe Press. “In each episode of Beneath the Surface, we explore some of the most complicated challenges facing our world, and talk to the people who are rolling up their sleeves to build solutions.”)
• Threads (1984)(sidenote: Thoroughly unentertaining, but incredibly affecting. Recommended, but very much not recommended.)
• We Are As Gods (2020)
• Conversations with Tyler — Stewart Brand on Starting Things and Staying Curious (Ep. 142)
• 80,000 Hours Podcast — Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good
• Evie Cottrell — Seven ways to become unstoppably agentic
• Étienne Fortier-Dubois — Guided by the Beauty of One’s Philosophies
• Kurzgesagt — The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future
• Disneyland — Our Friend the Atom (1957)
• OBF — Why Tokyo Is Insanely Well Designed
• Liv Boeree and Toby Ord — The Edges of the Universe(sidenote: Here’s my attempt at a summary.)
• Michael Nielsen — Notes on Effective Altruism
• Maxwell Tabbarock — How Many People Are In The Invisible Graveyard?
• 3Blue1Brown — Alice, Bob, and the average shadow of a cube