Notes for week of 1 January, 2024

⤳ A pretty relaxed but fun start to the new year. Work didn’t restart until Wednesday, so I had an extra 24 hours to do some sofa occupying, reading, Celebration-finishing, film watching etc.

⤳ Added a couple of things to my Media Diet page, but the absolute standout film of the year so far (!) is Godzilla Minus One which I saw at the IMAX in Waterloo on Saturday night. The cinema was packed, which was great to see, especially for a Japanese language film; but the hype around this film is not misplaced. It knocks recent Hollywood ‘blockbusters’ into the dust (not just the kaiju ones - the rest too) and manages to be inspired by Jaws while not being too derivative. I absolutely loved every second of it and can’t wait to rewatch it.

⤳ For some reason, this was the funniest thing I saw on Instagram this week:

⤳ I’m about halfway through The Future by Naomi Alderman and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a very smart and thoughtful page-turner, which I imagine is a very difficult trick to pull off.


⤳ Some interesting things I’ve read this week:

Why we’ve got ruder, by the grandfather of emotional intelligence (spoiler: social media has something to do with it).

Why Life Can’t Be Simpler - reflections on Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity which states that how simple something looks is not a reflection of how simple it is to use.

⤳ Listening to: