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First off a Happy 2021 ✨ We are only a few days in but I hope your new year has been off to a good start. To be honest, mine isn’t great so far. I’ve been a bit sick since the last week of December. I’m slowly recovering but still feeling a bit of the aftermath.
I spend most of my time with my family. Watching movies, finishing series, having nice dinners, and playing a ton of board games.
At the end of the year, I do a Feedbin and Social Media ‘hiatus’. So I haven’t bookmarked a ton of interesting links but I’m going to use that reserved space (and the rest of this newsletter) for a long media-diet since I read, watched, and played a ton over the Holidays. Let’s go!
↪ Games:
- Played Death Stranding by Hideo Kojima. I would summarise the first part and last part as very good. In-between felt a bit sluggish since it’s quite a long game. Nonetheless a great story.
- Had the same with the second game I played, The Last of Us 2. Great story, but the middle part (about 10 hours into the game) felt a bit ‘more of the same’. Maybe it was me but I also found the end of the story a bit underwhelming.
- On to a couple of board games! Apart from playing ‘Sjoelen’ which is a Dutch tradition to play during New Year’s Eve I also played both games from The Oatmeal; Exploding Kittens and their follow-up Throw Throw Burrito. Quick to learn and fun to play with the whole family.
↪ Books:
- I was gifted this fantastic book from James Hoffman: The World Atlas of Coffee. It’s no secret that I like coffee and I’m trying to learn more about coffee making details.The third part of the book goes into bean origins, something I know very little about.
- Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. A good book that expands on his Essay from 2013.
- I’m a bit fed up with ‘productivity’ books since most of them aren’t that good. The Pomodoro Technique and Eat that frog which I both read are not that good. A wake-up call to read ‘better’ books.
- And last but not least a Dutch book by Tech Journalist Daniel Verlaan called ‘Ik Weet Je Wachtwoord’. You should follow him on Twitter for great tech (mainly security and privacy) tips.
↪ Series:
- Finished both seasons of Succession about the hard world of media and entertainment. Very good, especially the second season.
- Watched Tales from the Loop. It was meh. A bit too slow from a storytelling point of view. But it was sci-fi and I can’t abandon sci-fi series.
- I have a new iPhone SE and you get 1 year of free Apple TV when you purchase a new Apple device. It was a good excuse to watch Ted Lasso. I don’t watch a ton of comedy but this is probably my favourite comedy series to date.
- Since I was already on Apple TV I also started with The Morning Show. Still need to watch the last couple of episodes but very good so far.
↪ Movies:
- I have a confession to make. I never really watched all the Star Wars movies. And since I wanted to watch The Mandolarian I made a pledge to myself that I would watch them all. I started in chronological order (official Disney timeline, not in order of release date) including Rogue One and Solo. I’m currently at The Empire Strikes Back so that’s 7 out of 11.
- While having that Disney+ subscription I gave Soul a try and wow. My favourite Pixar movie is still Up but Soul receives a good second place.
That’s it! There are a couple of small shorts and bad movies I didn’t include in this list but I would consider this to be my creme da le creme.
The first new(s)letter of this year is a fact. Expect the next one in a couple of weeks or so! 👋
– Danny