Top ten July 2019

It’s been a while. It has. Here’s a little stab at starting this whole thing up again.

1. Istanbul – I love this city like a Turk hates his family and loves cats. The chaos, the sea, the flashpoint coming together of every emotion and continents in one heaving pile of concrete and tea.

2. Raki – I hate anise seed flavour more than just about anything, except when its in this delightful, introspective liquor of the Eastern mediterranean. It always leaves my feet swollen, but its beautiful, mellow, long and drawn like a sunset over the Bosphorus or the death of my career

2. Mountains – I moved my family to Slovenia just so we could be near them and its better than any screen or booze you could come up with

3. Alvaro Enrigue – “Sudden Death” is nothing short of phenomenal and his only other book in English is a collection of short stories I would have given my left ball to be able to write.

4. Interactive comedy – I have no idea what this is, and even less of an idea of what it will be, but hang on tight, its coming somehow.

5. AI as a design tool – We’re still in the awkward 8th grade phase of AI as a tool, much like using coding programs to create “art” resulted in lots of digital spirographs (If you don’t know what this is, its fine, I’m not even going to explain it because it date me way too much) but I think there’s the potential with tools like Runway to let us do something interesting without the math PhD as a prerequisite.

6. The floundering of mixed reality – Talk about awkward bets, mixed reality is still hanging on but I’m still hopeful even in its race to the bottom

7. The Anthropocene Reviewed – Utterly gorgeous writing, with a flair for disappointment in humanity and pragmatism that only someone from Cleveland could appreciate. I would say its beautiful, but this proves how shit of a writer I am compared to John Green.

8. Two Minutes to Late Night – the world’s only heavy metal-themed talk show. Yet another thing I have fantasises while twisting and turning in bed of having not done.

9. Peanut butter

10. Craig Mod – His voice can make climate change seem like its seriously okay and he makes me want to make out with everything he puts out on the internet