On this New Year’s Eve we are watching the 紅白 highlights on YouTube and making snide comments, as is the ancient Japanese tradition 🙃 アケオメ everyone!! 🎊
2024
Best of 2024
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Favourite photo of the year: The Nintendo World train in Osaka through cherry blossoms. Taken during April’s Micro.Blog photo challenge What a year. 😫 Closed down a company. Pulled all roots out of Japan and moved to a new city in Canada. Began settling down. Kids in a new school. Started a consultancy. Engaged with local community. Reconnected with old friends and family. Deepened my intellectual development. Found new paths to explore.Pre-ordered a number of books for next year, so my reading is pretty much decided for the first few months. I use Bookshop.org and Libro.fm and have both set to attribute sales to Mosaic Books, my old independent bookstore in Kelowna. Don’t live there anymore but still give what support I can 📚❤️
Last meditation 🧘 of the year. I missed 3 days this year, but got a good long streak in the end.
📚 Loaded up on some 2025 books from here heatmap.news/culture/2…
℅ @heatmap.news @HeatmapNews@flipboard.com
#books #climate #climatecrisis
Today was mochi 🍡 pounding for the New Year 🎍at Nikkei Center, then popped over to Aberdeen Centre for a shop and a snack🧋 and then to Tsujiri for a matcha parfait 🍵 Pretty full day! 😋
Taiwan Trip Report pt 4: Inconclusion
Sunday, December 29, 2024
Now that we are at the end of the year, and I have this arbitrary deadline looming, I thought I’d better finish off my series on travelling to Taiwan. Taiwan was extremely stimulating, and I have been promising to write my conclusions after doing a series of posts. At the same time I held off for fear of putting my foot in my mouth (this post might actually accomplish that 😅), so, rather than conclusive statements or “insights”, maybe I will conclude with some questions, lines of inquiry that you or I or whoever is next travelling to Taiwan to take with them.Just had one of those epic brainstorming sessions in the bathtub! 🛁 Filled my dive slate with basically a manifesto. 📜 Going into 2025 with a plan! 💪
Back from a delicious meal at Afghan Kitchen. We’ve been spoiled this Xmas. On the Eve we had homemade bison stew 🦬 🍲 and crab+prawn 🦀 🍤 Mac & Cheese. On the Day we had some top notch Chinese 🥡 This is why we came to Vancouver.
Afternoon at the Urban Safari
Notes from Germany
Friday, December 27, 2024
I didn’t notice it in Frankfurt, but maybe that was because it was such a sunny day and after the 10 hour flight from Vancouver I was a bit jetlagged. Happy people enjoying the warm rays, walk the river under the watchful eyes of the statue of Karl de Grosse (aka Charlemagne), King of the Franks in the 9th century. Whether it was the weather, jetlag, or the cute little historical towncenter of Römerberg, I didn’t notice it.Started reading: The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie 📚
My Coffee Advent Calendar Experience
Thursday, December 26, 2024
For the past couple of years, some of my Fission comrades would get an Advent Calendar from Revolver Coffee in downtown Vancouver. Revolver is a pretty famous specialty coffee shop around these parts. Each year they gather together some interesting beans, package them up in little baggies, and ship them out as a mystery box. Now that we are back in Canada, this is year the first time I got to participate with the daily tasting with my friends.Wednesday, December 25, 2024 →
Watched Sicario for Xmas day today. Not sure why but a re-watch had been building for a while. I guess I was visited by a lonely ghost of Medellín 🎥
Had a very busy year, so just binged the latest #DoctorWho in prep for Xmas special. Finally completely fell in love with Ncuti Gatwa in Rogue 💗 Happy to interleave with Flashcasts from my friends at the @incomparable@zeppelin.flights 🎙
Xmas lights along the shore at White Rock, BC 📸
Last day of school before the winter break! 🎉
Amazing review from @brainvsbook.bsky.social
This series is like if Silent Spring and Das Kapital had a baby and raised it in a pulp SF novel from the sixties, but then sent it to shojo manga finishing school.
Want!
brainvsbook.wordpress.com/2024/12/1…
Listen to @uncannyjapan.bsky.social talk about how to make salt and the Salt God in Japan. Take a look at this shiogama 塩釜 at Jūrin-ji temple, built southwest of Kyoto in 850 and home to the famous poet Ariwarano Narihira.
See the full album here: flic.kr/s/aHsmMUh…
Shannon Falls, just south of Squamish on the way to Whistler. 3rd highest waterfall in BC
I just got burned 🔥 🔥 🔥 by my 12 year old: “You ain’t got no rizz! The only thing you pull is push doors!” 🚑 🚑🚑
Just found out one of my favourite authors Pankaj Mishra has a new book coming out in Feb: The World After Gaza. Instant pre-order. 💸
His essay on Gaza in the LRB from earlier this year is magisterial. 🎓
Up to Day 8 on my #RevolverCoffee Advent Calendar. Been some fun ones in here so far. ☕
Reminded of Ibn Khaldun’s writing on solidarity and mutualism. That was in the 14th C. Asabiyyah is an important word to add to our political lexicon in this century too.
I read Limitarianism earlier this year, which I recommend. This visualization adds to her argument: eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-w…
H/t to @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
Finished The Talented Mr. Ripley 📚
The interiority is remarkable. I wonder how people in 1955 took this book!? It must have blown minds and caused a controversy of some sort: witch hunt/book-banning/congressional hearings? The travel was super real too, she must’ve lived in Italy. 🤔
Was just doing the math: in a few weeks is the anniversary when I left home and secretly went to Japan as an 18 year old. (There is a whole story there!) Anyways, I am now a year older than my father at that time. Wow! THIS is how young he was! 🤯
From Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social
both the neoliberal consensus and the Palo Alto consensus have collapsed, leading the political economies of Washington DC and Silicon Valley to move in very different directions.
Day 2 of #RevolverCoffeeAdvent and I really like this one! No spoilers, but it is from one of my favourite regions. ☕️
Smooth flight over the Rocky Mountains 🏔️
