I’ve been catching up on a lot of Wakanda-related reading over the past week. This one from The New Yorker makes a series of great points:
“There is a fundamental dissonance in the term “African-American,” two feuding ancestries conjoined by a hyphen. That dissonance—a hyphen standing in for the brutal history that intervened between Africa and America—is the subject of “Black Panther,” Ryan Coogler’s brilliant first installment of the story of Marvel Comics’ landmark black character.”
”Coogler told Marvel upfront that his version of the story would remain true to those political elements. It is shot through with the sense of longing and romance common to the way that people of a diaspora envision their distant homeland.”
This last part above is something I can identify with, and something that I have found with manychildren and grandchildren of immigrants too!#
The article goes on…
”Wakanda is no more or less imaginary than the Africa conjured by Hume or Trevor-Roper, or the one canonized in such Hollywood offerings as “Tarzan.” It is a redemptive counter-mythology.”
”The film is not about world domination by an alien invasion or a mad cabal of villains but about the implications of a version of Western domination that has been with us so long that it has become as ambient as the air.”
The really good point that the author makes is that while Wakanda is a fictional place, so is the western idea and portrayal of the African continent and its countries, cultures, and inhabitants.
”Marvel has made a great many entertaining movies in the past decade, but Ryan Coogler has made a profound one.”
Taking a step back, it is incredibly wild that a mainstream superhero blockbuster has so much conversation around it. It’s really a sign of the incredible talent displayed by Ryan Coogler, and his team of writers and actors to be able to give so much depth to the first Blockbuster of 2018!
Another thoughtful piece on Black Panther over at The Atlantic:
> Black Panther is a love letter to people of African descent all over the world.
Analyzing the tragedy of Erik Killmonger, the film’s main antagonist:
> The part of Killmonger that makes him a supervillain is not the part of him that is African.
Indeed the fact that this character has so much interesting backstory, and a complex logic that is the result of his environment makes Killmonger the most interesting villain I’ve seen in a blockbuster since The Joker in Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008.
> Killmonger’s ascension and death is the event that catalyzes Wakanda’s redemption from its greatest failure, and his death ensures that unlike Loki, Thanos, the Red Skull, or any other of Marvel’s endless stable of world-conquering despots, the pathos of his tragic end cannot be infinitely repeated as farce. His death not only matters, it is also why he matters more than all the rest of them.
While his logic made sense, once he got in power, Killmonger’s motivation and reasoning shifted to a more cruel and one. However, his legacy in this fictional world is real and will have an impact on the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Like I mentioned previously, it’s no small feat to offer such a complex work from a mainstream blockbuster that will eventually make all the money. Thank you Mr Coogler!
I’ve been catching up on a lot of Wakanda-related reading over the past week. This one from The New Yorker makes a series of great points:
> “There is a fundamental dissonance in the term “African-American,” two feuding ancestries conjoined by a hyphen. That dissonance—a hyphen standing in for the brutal history that intervened between Africa and America—is the subject of “Black Panther,” Ryan Coogler’s brilliant first installment of the story of Marvel Comics’ landmark black character.”
> ”Coogler told Marvel upfront that his version of the story would remain true to those political elements. It is shot through with the sense of longing and romance common to the way that people of a diaspora envision their distant homeland.”
This last part above is something I can identify with, and something that I have found with manychildren and grandchildren of immigrants too!#
The article goes on…
> ”Wakanda is no more or less imaginary than the Africa conjured by Hume or Trevor-Roper, or the one canonized in such Hollywood offerings as “Tarzan.” It is a redemptive counter-mythology.”
> ”The film is not about world domination by an alien invasion or a mad cabal of villains but about the implications of a version of Western domination that has been with us so long that it has become as ambient as the air.”
The really good point that the author makes is that while Wakanda is a fictional place, so is the western idea and portrayal of the African continent and its countries, cultures, and inhabitants.
> ”Marvel has made a great many entertaining movies in the past decade, but Ryan Coogler has made a profound one.”
Taking a step back, it is incredibly wild that a mainstream superhero blockbuster has so much conversation around it. It’s really a sign of the incredible talent displayed by Ryan Coogler, and his team of writers and actors to be able to give so much depth to the first Blockbuster of 2018!
2017 was another stellar year for Bandcamp, with double digit growth in every aspect of the business. (…)
Meanwhile, standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money in 2017, and industry-wide record sales continued to decline. (…)
Allowing the distribution of an entire art form to be controlled by so few has troubling implications, and those continued to play out in 2017.
> 2017 was another stellar year for Bandcamp, with double digit growth in every aspect of the business. (…)
> Meanwhile, standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money in 2017, and industry-wide record sales continued to decline. (…)
> Allowing the distribution of an entire art form to be controlled by so few has troubling implications, and those continued to play out in 2017.
Data privacy is not like a consumer good, where you click “I accept” and all is well. Data privacy is more like air quality or safe drinking water, a public good that cannot be effectively regulated by trusting in the wisdom of millions of individual choices. A more collective response is needed.
This week’s data/privacy debacle has to do with Strava’s heat map. To sum it up quickly: Strava is a really good app to track your workouts, runs, and bike rides. However, they published a heat map of their users' activities around the world, which also showed suspected military bases in war zones around the world. We’re talking American bases in the Middle East, but there seems to be rumoured bases of other countries, like Russia, the UK, France, and more.
To me this highlights growing concerns that the Indie Web and Tech community has tried to voice for years: the collection of data by corporations offering a free service. And the lack of knowledge that the users may have about where their data is going and how it’s being used.
If you're not paying for it, you're the product
A few years ago, I was an employee for a small app development studio. Working there opened my eyes on the reality that unfortunately, most people would rather get an app for free, subsidised by ads and relinquishing a little bit of their data and privacy rather than paying the $0.99 - $1.99 - $2.99 barrier of entry.
What started as a worrying trend became the norm, and soon, it became evident that mobile ecosystems were turning into a hard market for independent software businesses.
But this behavior has turned into a bigger issue where we tend to refuse paying for digital products —unless they’re Netflix or Spotify. And in both cases, we’ve seen examples of these companies using the data for uncomfortable ads.
On the individual level, I think we’re too eager to get a service — and yes, feel free to blame marketing — prior to understanding the consequences a free product can have with our data. On the other hand, it’d be nice to start seeing corporations be more vocal about the data they collect and the reasons as to why they’re collecting it. I’d love to see an “opt-out by default” mentality where companies use a simple onboarding process to explain what they do with it.
And, as a consumer, I’d love to get a way to use current free services for a fee if it meant getting rid of ads and keeping my data safe. Even at a symbolic $1.5 - 2/month, Facebook would make more money than it does selling ads:
In Q3 2016, it was reported that the average revenue per user was $4.01 — or just over $1/user/month. With a growing community of over 2 Billion users, this would be an easy way to offer an alternative for the users who want and can afford this change.
Even I’m still sceptical, I really hope that the Strava heatmap fiasco will bring a more positive outcome on the data-collection debate. Privacy is important, and it’s not quite dead yet, so let’s try to preserve it, and ourselves, as much as we can.
“If you go to New York and want to meet a big company such as Budweiser you are just one of a thousand firms pitching to them, whereas if you got to Tokyo and seek a meeting with Nissan you might be the only Irish company and one of only a handful from Europe knocking at their door”
My friend Eamonn is in Dublin this evening and I’m well excited to catch-up. Ahead of his talk, he’s had a chat with the Irish Time about the potential of going towards Asia instead of Silicon Valley.
Aside from work and prospecting for new clients, possibly jobs too, this week has revolved around a lot of walking in the different neighborhoods of the city centre, searching for and viewing apartments…
This was hands-down the best meal/dinner I’ve had and it happened out of curiosity!
• • •
We struggled to find a place in Vienna that wasn’t fully booked tonight and then I remembered this place we stumbled upon close to our hotel. They were able to book us a table for the four of us, Shana, my parents and myself.
• • •
We sat down to discover that almost everything is made in premise, from baking their own bread to pickling their own vegetables. Everything is done to minimize the distance between the ingredients to the plate on the table. And they offered an intriguing “surprise menu” where you allow the chef and his team to cook dishes for you, over four courses and one amuse-bouche.
• • •
From the carrot amuse-bouche, the freshly smoked fish, the pumpkin consommé, the veal, all the way to the dessert pumpkin delicacy and ice-cream, everything tasted delicious, blending subtly with the wine and its sides of vegetables and fresh seeds.
• • •
Everything has been perfect in ways we couldn’t have imagined and we’re living Vienna on a very-high note!
There won’t be an internet where you can watch shows on Hulu then jump over to Gmail — you’ll watch Facebook TV and send Facebook Messages. Services that look and act like something distinct but are sadly part of a homogenized whole will also be available; Instagram and WhatsApp do this already. There you will be delivered ads according to your interests, interests predicated on the content you view, content promoted by bots and agents of a corrupt government and its many corporate and civilian allies. It will be a win-win for everyone but you.
I really loved this article from Longreads over the weekend. A thrilling piece of non-fiction writing about the rise of bitcoin and an ongoing investigation about the maybe-but-probably-not creator of Bitcoin.
PS: In case you've not heard of it before, Longreads is an online publication that non only pulls interesting long-form articles from the internet, but they also work on their own articles. You should check them out and consider supporting them to help them fight the good fight.
The goal of #MeToo, as Milano’s friend told her, was simply to give people a sense of “the magnitude of the problem.”
Over the last day, I’ve seen the MeToo status pop up, without an explanation. But after seeing it multiple times from some of my female friends, I understood quickly what this was about. In the last 24h, the status has been tweeted 500 thousand times already. Think of the gravity of the situation.
Cameron Kunzelman for Polygon has a great opinion piece this week about one of my favorite video games: Final Fantasy IX.
Final Fantasy 9 shows us the closest thing to a fantasy weapon of mass destruction that exists in video games.
I really appreciate the thoughts that went into this piece, especially given the current news and the constant will-they-won’t-they regarding our nuclear overlords.
If you’ve not had the chance to play through this wonderful Shakespearian experience, it’s available on PS4, iOS, and on Steam — which means you really have no excuse!
[≠] Final Fantasy 9 teaches us about war and how times have changed
It's hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since New York Times photographer Damon Winter used Hipstamatic to create an award-winning photo for a cover story about the war in Afghanistan. It's even harder to believe that the app is still downloadable in close to its original form. It still takes three seconds to "print" your photo to a Polaroid-esque frame that loads in the bottom corner.
As someone who’s been using Hipstamatic on and off over the past few years, I’m yet to find a camera app with the same unpredictable feel!
After a month in Vietnam, I switched things up with a short week in Singapore. I had a blast there: discovering a story, culture, and people that are mixed, welcoming, and have a truly unique place in the world!
Over on Remotive1 this week, we were introduced to Pilotfish, and its founder Joseph. They’re a social enterprise tackling issues related to Mental Health for Remote Workers.
With the continuing rise of remote workers or location independent workers, there’s a lot of things to navigate through, especially for first timers. It’s not easy to go from a social open office environment where you get to see your coworkers in person every day of the week, to working alone at home (or even in a coworking space where you might not know people around you.)
Pilotfish has the potential to tackle this issue before mental health becomes a real widely developed problem for remote workers, in the same way that employees of big corporations can too often battle against stress and related workplace-related issues.
They’re tackling this issue before it becomes a real problem, from day one, and that’s something that we should all applaud and support.
On a more personal note, I was lucky enough, in my last full-time employee position, to be part of a team where we started testing out remote working once or twice a week.
It was a great way to “dip my toes in the water” and start learning about the discipline required, and the communication needed, to make it work. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, and I made many mistakes along the way. But this led to me being in the position that I am today, lucky enough not only to work remotely full-time but also do it as a freelancer, while traveling around the world.
For my last weekend in Bali, I wanted to explore the infamous peninsula. I met up with my driver, Ketut, the same driver that showed me around the previous Saturday.
Bali Peninsula
Nusa Dua / Water Blow
We started the day by driving down to Nusa Dua / “Water Blow”, which is a beautiful natural beach area with patches of grass around. It’s surrounded by luxury resorts, however, local Balinese and Indonesian families still go there to relax over the weekend. It’s reminiscent of some of Juan Les Pins, Cannes, and other well-off beach towns along the French Riviera, in a way.
After the luxury area, we went down to Pandawa beach, a long beach nestled under beautiful cliffs, which gives it kind of a hidden feel.
We didn’t stay long, but the drive and the scenery were worth it. Seeing this makes me understand why people say that Bali is an ideal surfing spot —and I don’t even surf!
We stopped along the way to get a coffee (kopi), which gave me an opportunity to have my second ever cup of kopi luwak: the infamous Balinese coffee ranked as the best in the world.
It’s a truly unique process: the Lusaka is this little animal, a cross between a ferret and a little fox. It picks and eats the best coffee cherries, generally arabica. Later on, it poops it out, and the villagers collect the beans, remove the envelope, clean them in boiling water, roast the beans, and ground them — it sounds kind of weird, but the nutrients that envelop the beans give them a special flavor that adds to the quality of the coffee as a whole.
By the time they serve the coffee, it is a delicate, strong, and pure aroma!
In addition to this delicious cup, the workers at the roasters also get you to taste different varieties of local teas and coffees, including —but not limited to— coconut coffee, ginseng coffee, white and red ginger tea, lemon tea, lemongrass tea, mangosteen tea (my favorite), and a bunch of others!
Uluwatu
After the coffee stop, we headed down to the Temple of Uluwatu — infamous for being a beautiful and large temple on top of a cliff, overlooking the Indian Ocean. This was absolutely breathtaking, and I couldn’t quite help myself but shout wow! at each different side and areas of the temple!
After the temple, we switched it up for a bit: my driver, Ketut, offered to go to his brother’s, have lunch there, and spend the afternoon, before going to see a local football game with his family. I jumped on the occasion.
We drove about an hour north/east, to the small town of Sanur, and I got to meet his dad (65 years old), his brother (45 yo), his brother’s wife, and a few of their friends, kids, nephews…
They offered the local Nasi Goreng —fried rice with egg, chicken, and spices— a few cups of coffee, and we even got to play with one of the local Balinese kites —flying at 50 meters above in the sky—, play some guitar, and grab some home-made snacks.
All in all, it was very kind of them to welcome me in their home and allow me to join them, experiencing a side of local Balinese life that no tour guide could have booked on my behalf.
Finally, the day ended at the football game. For the price of 35,000 Indonesian Rupiahs, or about 1.7€, we got through the main supporter entrance and saw Bali United FC, the best team in Indonesia, play and win 5-1 over the team of Lampongan (a city based on the main island of Indonesia).
Coming from Europe, the level feels like a National second or third division down from the main professional team back home, and it certainly was frustrating to see players hesitate to shoot towards the goal, on a 1-on-1 against the keeper. But it was very good fun, and I loved the feeling of respect and unity that I experienced.
Another thing to note was that prior to the start of the game, it started raining pretty hard, so we got drenched almost instantly as soon as we got to our stands in the stadium. That being said, with a nice 20+ degree weather, we were nowhere close to catching a cold and, if anything, this allowed us to cool down a bit.
Managed to convince the girlfriend to see it at the theater next week (on bean bags) and I couldn’t be more excited!
It joins The Shining and Carrie as the best of the Stephen King horror adaptations — films that understand that King’s novels are never about surface-level scares, but about the countless ways in which individual small-time acts of evil coalesce into terrifying systems of violence
After spending an incredible week with my girlfriend, I've spent 3 weeks alone in Saigon, getting back to work, and exploring local spots with my Airbnb host Cong.
There’s only one thing I like about this report: a James Bond wedding! It raises so many questions I never though to ask. What does a man who constantly wears a tuxedo end up wearing to his own wedding—a fancier tuxedo? Would his best man be Felix Leiter or Q? Would Adele perform at the reception? Would he risk damaging his Aston Martin DB5 by tying a bunch of tin cans to the back?
