LUX has got me learning Spanish, the racist toothpaste half the world hasn’t heard of, and a big week for hip-hop.

Bangkok Sushiro verdict is in (plus an even better spot). Also: Predator: Badlands with an immersive challenge thrown in, Rosamund Pike’s accent mastery, and ROSALÍA’s astounding LUX.

Vertigo struck again (pray for my upcoming flight). Also: solo dining booths are cozy actually, Anbernic’s DS clone disappoints, and Apple TV’s Pluribus raises the bar insanely high.

Doctor visits for me and my iPad (turns out it ages better than I do). Also: spectacular sodium consumption, impulse-buying MagSafe accessories, and how the Vision Pro beats IMAX for watching Avatar.

Week 43.25: My first vertigo episode (turns out lots of people quietly deal with this), vibe-coding Claude apps, watching Twitch with my MIL (while praying no anime figures appear), and Apple’s plan to make you buy all the things.

RIP D’Angelo, “I, Robot” as a prescient guide to AI safety, why we can’t talk honestly about suicide, and throwing museum tantrums like a child.

Got the health all-clear, watched crypto implode, saw Tron in all its neon glory, and figured out what Amazon Prime Day is really doing to us.

Week 40.25: Health checks, couples therapy with Nintendo, blind boxes, extinct media, and a few good books.

Dyson betrayed me. Puzzle Quest returned. Shake Shack nearly killed me. Rewatched Cloud Atlas and cringed. A week of breakdowns, fixes, and mixed feelings.

New sounds (AirPods Pro 3), new sights (iPhone 17 Pro Max), old ghosts (Ghost in the Shell), future visions (SG60), and a little Bertolucci in between.

Week 37.25: iPhone week delivered one of Apple’s best lineups in years. Thoughts on the Air vs Pro pivot, family stories, and Singapore Design Week is back. Pro Max in Silver, btw.

Week 36.25: Switched telcos, finished Cloud Atlas, revisited Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, invented a podcast from the apocalypse, and Apple Music’s “Classic Hip-Hop” station reminded me: we’re the classics now.

We lost a grand aunt at the close of last week, and attended her funeral and cremation on Tuesday. It got me thinking about qing ming, which is a day in early April (I had to look this up) where Chinese families traditionally visit their ancestors’ graves and do some neatening up. I have vague memories of being dragged along to do this as a kid, and even being allowed by my parents to skip school for it.

Week 34.25: Looking back to see what’s changed. From fish and chips, to Cloud Atlas, the Explore POV app, and my mixtape series.

I had some ice cream at last, but no beers yet. Maybe I’ll stretch this sobriety a little longer. Alcohol is, after all, just a poison worth doing socially but not so much alone. But man, this illness. Being sick for three consecutive weeks was not on my bingo card for the year. I should say illnesses, because we saw a doctor early in the week and she said (and these are the words every INTJ raised on WebMD loves to hear), “

I was 95% recovered last week. But I must have come into contact with a new virus on the plane because I got sick again, and spent this week in an ever-evolving state of misery. At first it was just mild chills and fatigue, then came a pretty congested cough, blocked sinuses, and conjunctivitis. The cough is the worst part because it keeps me up at night, and according to my sleep stats, I’ve gotten zero deep sleep on some nights, which makes recovery that much harder.

Checking in now from the first row of a Boeing Dreamliner — a plane that has probably been in the news recently for the wrong reasons. But if you’re reading this post, it means we made it back safely. There was a moment early in the week where we were telling our Melbourne-based friends about last year’s trip to New Zealand and for some reason we both blanked on some key details and took awhile to align on what exactly happened.

In Melbourne at the moment, getting some relief from the heat of summer which seems to be getting worse with every year for no reason anyone can see at all! There’s no plan, just chilling at cafes, bars, and hanging with some friends for a few days. Our friends in the city have built an incredible home for their three kids, rabbits, chickens, and visiting mothers-in-law.

It was a low-key week after those few days in Bangkok. There’s more travel lined up soon, so I figure it’s no bad thing to enjoy the quiet while I can. We had someone come by to look at a house issue that’s been worrying me, but the prognosis was that it’s not a big problem for now, and they’ll do some proactive repairs in the meantime.

It’s getting hot down here, and reluctant as I am to use air-conditioning during the day while just sitting indoors, I’ve had to have it on in short spurts to bring the temperature down at times. Depending on the fates, I might be off to Bangkok again next week, where the heat’s reportedly even more brutal. Let’s see. It was Apple Music’s 10th anniversary, and they’re…

Apple’s Pursuit of Beats May Foretell a Shift By BEN SISARIO, nytimes.com If Apple makes a major marketing push for Beats’s subscription model — or, even better, if Apple integrates Beats into its …

I mentioned last week that I had an idea for a new project. Jinxed it! It turned out to be neither fun nor easy, so it’s dead now. Instead, I’m sort of revisiting older territory and picking up where I left off with some drawing a few years back. I know there are quite a few of us who like starting projects but struggle to follow through — I see you, fellow millennial domain hoarders.

Lots of reading this week, but not the traditional sort. I decided it was time to cross Emio: The Smiling Man off my Nintendo Switch backlog — that would be the murder mystery sorta-visual novel published by Nintendo (developed by Mages) last year. It’s the third installment in the ‘Famicom Detective Club’ series that laid dormant for decades (the clue’s in the name; they were made for the original Famicom aka the Japanese NES) until remakes of the first two games were released in 2021.

My Switch 2 finally arrived on Monday, praise be. It turned out to be an imported European unit, so it has the right kind of power plugs, but the included download code for Mario Kart World would only work with an EU eShop account. It didn’t take long to make one, but it’s yet another needless fragmentation of my digital footprint.