Some great things in 2024

in no particular order

Jamie XX

His new album, In Waves, is fantastic. Watching Jamie XX’s set at Clockenflap in Hong Kong was among my highlights of the year.

Concerning signs The Browser Company is losing interest in their main product and chasing AI hype, but it remains head and shoulders above competing browsers. Sidebar navigation, video picture-in-picture, tab launcher, quick link copying, popover links have all changed how I expect to use a browser.

Halide: Process Zero

Turns out the iPhone 15 Pro can take incredible photos, if you strip out almost all of Apple’s image processing and handle the edits yourself. Process Zero, introduced in update to the Halide camera app this year, allows you to do that, and release was timed perfectly just as new iOS lockscreen customization options allowed you to swap it out for the camera shortcut.

The Achilles Trap, Steve Coll

A history of the Iraq-U.S. relationship leading up to the 2003 invasion and Saddam Hussein’s downfall. Incredibly sourced and revelatory, made me realize I had very little grasp on a period of history I felt like I had lived through.

Taiwan’s East Coast

We went to Hualien at the start of the year, and it was gorgeous. Beautiful sea views and Taroko Gorge is stunning. We visited before the recent earthquake, but from what I hear from colleagues who covered that, things were up and running within days, let alone months later.

Vegan food in Tokyo

Japan’s capital used to be a place where vegetarian food was relatively hard to find, outside a few select restaurants, now the options are endless, while the standard and quantity of vegan places and vegan dishes on offer has improved tremendously. They even have vegan fruit sando.

Not wearing noise-cancelling headphones all the time

As someone who religiously cut myself off from the world at any opportunity for years, I really didn’t want this New Yorker article to be correct, but it is. Going on walks without headphones in (or with them set to transparent mode) has really changed how I interact with my neighbourhood, nature, etc. I notice more things, I stop to chat to people on the street, I’m generally more present and invigorated by my environment. Noise cancelling is incredible for certain things (namely airplanes) but don’t fall into the trap of using it everywhere.

Some other good things:

The Chinese edition of Speak Not won “Best Translated Work of the Year” (technically in 2023, but I collected it in 2024)
I filed a new chapter for the upcoming Spanish edition of Speak Not, to be published by Alianza Editorial in 2025
I wrote about Taiwan’s outlying islands, Myanmar border towns, and fighting malaria in the Philippines (and a bunch of other stuff)
These two live DJ sets on YouTube — from Jersey and Minna-no-Kimochi — have been on hard repeat all year. On that point, I also recommend paying for YouTube Premium (and switching from Spotify to the included YouTube Music) and getting a proper soundbar for your TV if you use it for playing music like we do.
Balatro is the best game to play on your phone and also acts as a form of gambling vaccination by making you realize you would absolutely get suckered into wasting all your money if given the chance.