Media highlights 2024 (Jan to June)

Published 30 June 2024

Back to writing

Contents (click to toggle)

2,098 words • 11 min read

Music, books, and writing I enjoyed from the first half of 2024. Previous lists:

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 (written reviews also live here).

Infrastructure: The Book of Everything for the Industrial Landscape — Brian Hayes(sidenote: Steamships, steam trains, trams, mills, mines, and smokestacks are charming to us now. But the lego bricks of the modern industrial world are ugly (and to that extent more unpopular) by consensus. I wonder how much generalised “aversion to industry” is a kind of aesthetic aversion. If so, the sights of industry feel less ugly to me now; now I know some things about how they work and why they look that way. I am very happy this book exists.
)
Modern Principles of Economics (sidenote: I realised recently that all the books about econ I’d read were more like commentaries on the field of economics. Actually working through micro 101 was very rewarding and I should have read this book much earlier. The MRU videos are also corny and great.)
Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen
Proof and the Art of Mathematics — Joel David Hamkins
Pieces of the Action — Vannevar Bush(sidenote: )
The Timeless Way of Building — Christopher Alexander
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet — Hannah Ritchie
Understanding Japan: A Cultural History and The Rise of Modern Japan — Mark Ravina
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity — Steve Silberman
Great Masters: Beethoven - His Life and Music — Robert Greenberg
Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion — Bill Messenger(sidenote: Some nice etymology here. “Jazz” itself is a serious puzzle; “one of the most sought-after word origins in modern American English”. “Gism”, later “jasm” was a piece of mid-19th c. slang for “verve, energy”. When the French brought perfumery to New Orleans, they brought oil of jasmine, where to where a perfume would be to “jass it up”. Or did it come from baseball journalism, where it meant “enthusiasm, “fighting spirit”?)
Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over The Edge — Ed Regis
Law 101: Everything You Need to Know about the American Legal System — Jay Feinman
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma — Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar
Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World — Nick Bostrom
Anarchy, State, and Utopia — Robert Nozick
The Fabric of Reality — David Deutsch
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? — Zach and Kelly Weinersmith
Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

Music

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

New

Vegyn - The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions (2024)
Tainy - DATA (2023)
The Smile - Wall of Eyes (2024)
Iglooghost - Tidal Memory Exo (2024)
Charli XCX - Brat (2024)
Adrianne Lenker - Bright Future (2024) (especially Vampire Empire)
Lana Del Rey - Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd (2023)
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - Les Jardins Mystiques Vol. 1 (2023)
Four Tet — Under The K Bridge - Brooklyn, NY 5th May 2024

Jazz

Booker Little - Out Front (1961)
Johnny Dyani - Witchdoctor’s Son (1978) (especially Magwaza)
زياد الرحباني Ziad Rahbani - Houdou nisbi (1985)
Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus & Max Roach - Money Jungle (1963)
Alice Coltrane - The Carnegie Hall Concert (1971)
Portico Quartet - Isla (2009)

Electronic

Once again this is going to be 90% Nicolás Jaar(sidenote: I think this guy is a genius. Just off the charts prolific and interesting (his solo sets, but also his projects Darkside and Against All Logic).)
- BBC Essential Mix (2012)(sidenote: Start with this magical eclectic mixtape. Made when he was 22(!))
- Nymphs (2016)
- ‘Transition’ Boiler Room set (2017)
- april16.19.00GMT stream (2019)
- Fly, Sub Club - Glasgow 15.11.2015
Four Tet ‪@TheLotRadio‬ 12-01-2023

Orchestral / classical

Vladimir Ashkenazy - 4 Ballades; 4 Scherzi (Chopin piano pieces) (2000)
Glenn Gould - Glenn Gould Plays Bach Vol. 3 (2015)
Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives (1992)(sidenote: Per Tyler Cowen’s recommendation in this excellent podcast episode where he DJs for Rick Rubin.)
Six Brandenburg Concertos, No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049 and No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050 (Rinaldo Alessandrini, Concerto Italiano)
András Schiff performs Mozart’s Piano Sonatas (1995)
Africa Express - Africa Express Presents… Terry Riley’s In C Mali (2014)(sidenote: ) (Spotify link)

Hip hop

billy woods & Kenny Segal - Maps (2023)
Omid - Modern Persian Speech Sounds (2013)

Folk

Elizabeth Cotten - Folksongs and Instrumentals With Guitar (1958)
Mississippi John Hurt - Today! (1966)(sidenote: Start with this recording of MJH playing a sweet version of Lonesome Valley. His first recordings flopped and he only saw success when he was found at age 70 by a music writer. All his popular recordings are from age 70 to his death at 73.)
Tia Blake - Folksongs & Ballads (1971)
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine (2011)

Films and videos

The Curse (2023)(sidenote: As far as I can tell this is something entirely new in popular TV — a kind of unrelenting cringe horror for which I have no reference points and which has zero obvious mainstream appeal. Yet more than anything I watched this year, The Curse stayed with me. It got inside my dreams.)
The Miracle Sudoku(sidenote: A gentle-mannered retired investment banker narrates himself solving a sudoku, and it is completely captivating.)
Norm Talks Space
The Search for the Longest Infinite Chess Game
Conan O’Brien is a once-in-a-generation entertainer and will be remembered as such — a different league from his cohort of late-night talk show hosts. Here he is doing the ‘Hot Ones’ interview and performing Twenty Flight Rock with Jack White
Reverse Turing Test Experiment with AIs

Words on the internet

I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory — Virginia Hefferman
My techno-optimism — Vitalik Buterin
The Great Inflection? A Debate About AI and Explosive Growth-Asterisk — Matt Clancy and Tamay Besiroglu for Asterisk
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce — Tom Wolfe
How We Built the Internet — Anna-Sofia Lesiv
The days are long but the decades are short — Sam Altman
Beware Cultural Drift — Robin Hanson
Hate is the New Sex — John Michael Greer
The origins of the steam engine — Anton Howes and Matt Brown
From TED To PERNOCTATED, Scrabble’s Best Player Knows No Limits — Stefan Fatsis

Please let me know if you picked something up from this list which you enjoyed!

Back to writing