My Log page is a chronological list of various types of content I've consumed from all over the internet. This one catalogs links for the year 2025.
Log pages for previous years,
Last edited: 1 year, 2 months ago
May 2025
📺 Videos
Inside the Most Prepared Country on Earth, Johnny Harris - Johnny Harris has another wonderfully captured border related video this time relating to Finland. He takes part in a Finnish military exercise with NATO and gets to uncover the collective spirit of this Arctic nation. Super high quality journalism and a great insight into Finland.
I Tried All The AI Video Services So You Don't Have To, ThePrimeagen - A 1h15m video but hilarious throughout if you're interested in the current state of AI video generation. Twitch chat prompts him to generate videos of everything from Neovim, anime waifus, soy latte developers and mayonaise out of all things. Some of the videos being generated are shockingly good - no AI smearing around, great lighting, sounds that match what's happening in the scene. Google knocked it out of the park with Veo and it's leagues ahead of what AI video creation used to be before this.
I was also quite interested in Prime's home-grown terminal tool that samples chat's responses and (I'm assuming) uses an LLM to summarize and pick a prompt for him to use. That seems like such a fun AI use-case.
📚 Books
Words of Radiance - Stormlight Archive Book #2. This book was a joy to read from start to finish considering that most of the major characters and their motivations were introduced in the previous book. There's many twists and turns and moments where you're left wondering how the plot will turn out. The ending is fantastic.
Edgedancer, Ars Arcanum - Currently reading through this novella which happens right after the events of Words of Radiance.
Oathbringer - Started the Stormlight Archive book #3.
📰 Articles
Make Something Heavy, Anu Atluru - I lke the characterization of “light” vs “heavy” for the things we produce. How the tangible feeling of weight in the (physical or virtual) stuff we make can hold value. And how the internet is incentivized and filled with hollow, lightweight, throwaway content.
The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet—powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production.
It doesn’t care what you create, only that you keep creating. Make more. Make faster. Make lighter. (Make slop if you have to.) Make something that can be consumed in a breath and discarded just as quickly.
Take the high road: the man who visited every country in the world – without boarding a plane, Rachel Dixon
Who Cares?, Dan Sinker
AI is, of course, at the center of this moment. It's a mediocrity machine by default, attempting to bend everything it touches toward a mathematical average.
...
In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care. In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.
Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art, Ted Chiang - Well written and insightful article on how AI isn't really competing with humans in terms of creative expression. Also talks about the consequences of extensively using AI as a shortcut to avoid any real thinking.
Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
Apr 2025
📺 Videos
Giving a Small Sandwich Shop a BIG Rebrand...For Free, SuprOrdinary - This was probably the most creatively inspiring video I've watched in a long while. The premise starts off with a talented designer's attempt to escape a 9-5 job. In order to give back to the community, he decides to do a free brand re-design for a local restaurant. The shots, cuts and hilarious random bits like his cycling "expedition" to the restaurant were all a joy to watch. You can see a lot of love and care to each scene and there's always an interesting angle in which he presents it. The cute doggo shots were an awesome bonus too. Instantly subscribed and waiting for his next video to drop.
I hate my phone so I got rid of it, Eddy Burback
Everybody wants to waste your time, Drew Gooden
📚 Books
Finished reading The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive Book #1). The start of the book was a bit of a drag where the main characters, locations and history of Roshar is started to be fleshed out. A lot of things were confusing for me at the time and I'm glad I stuck through. It's past about two-thirds of the book where I could understand the characters better and wrap my head around the larger story. And believe me, this is a very, very expansive fantasy saga.
Feb - Mar 2025
📚 Books
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson - Finally finished reading the first book of the Stormlight Archive. The pace only started picking up after half the book was done setting up the characters, locations and world-building. But it does set up quite well for reading the rest of the series and gets you invested in quite a number of characters. Kaladin, the easy to root for underdog, Dalinar, the strong warrior questioning war and morality and Shallan, who's eager to learn and travel but also bound by her responsibilities for her family.
Also came across this beautifully detailed site roshar.17thshard.com that allows you to go back and forth in Roshar's history and even filter by book so you don't accidentally spoil something from one of the later books.
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese - I picked this audiobook up considering that it's set in 1900s Kerala. The narrator is the author himself and does a fantastic job performing different intonations for the characters in the book. The story is rich in detail about early Keralite cuisine, religion and tradition. There's mystery, drama and tragedy and each character is well explored and interesting to learn more about. I'm only about a quarter of the way through this one and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.
🎮 Games
The only gaming I'm doing these days is on my phone with Brawl Stars. I've been playing it on and off for the past couple of years and recently, I've been enjoying climbing the ranks on the competitive "Ranked" mode. You play various "Brawlers" each of which have distinct attacks and there's a wide variety of game modes from Gem Grab to Brawl Ball.
I'm not particularly proud of how much time cumulatively I've spent on the game so far but I do enjoy the occasional grind and competitive gameplay. I might end up dropping this again for another couple of months once I feel like I've been playing way too much.
Jan 2025
🎶 Music
Had a lot of psytrance on repeat this month. Especially these 2 tracks,
- Galactic Symphony - Mandragora
- Snow Crystal - Babalos
Not sure why I fell into a high bpm trippy music phase but I'll enjoy it till the point I eventually get bored.
📚 Books
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson - Picked up the first book in The Stormlight Archive series, since Mistborn was probably one of the best fantasy books I've read. It definitely doesn't pick up the pace as quickly as Mistborn book #1 did and there's a lot of shifting perspectives and historical lore that the reader is unaware about. But I'm hopeful that the story expands out and I get hooked on the characters.
📺 Videos
A Stone Only Rolls Downhill, OK Go - The first time I saw this (yes, I did end up watching this multiple times before writing about it here) I was smiling and completely mesmerized with what OK Go did in their latest music video. I've seen a couple of OK Go videos over the years and you always expect something over the top, involving a crazy amount of effort to pull off and this was no exception. The catchiness of the song itself, the way the phones keep increasing and the visual artistry of it all leaves you wanting to watch this another time. Highly, highly recommend watching this one if not anything else. What a video to start the year off with.
Fear of Dark, Jacob Geller - I haven't seen any earlier documentary style works of Jacob like this one outside of his regular gaming related videos. I enjoy the way he talks and the atmosphere he sets for the video. How we breaks up a certain story that he's talking about and brings it up again after narrating another incident, weaving together a larger story.
Yi Peng Sky Lantern Festival 2024 | Chiang Mai 🇹🇭, Ronnie & Bartie - Another R&B entry, don't think I'll ever tire of their beautiful travel vlogs. Thailand is definitely going into the bucket list and I'd love to experience this festival sometime.
📰 Articles
What if you're already on top of things?, Oliver Burkeman - Another of Oliver's writing that really resonated with me. The idea of paying back a "productivity debt" is something that plagues me on many work days. It's scary how novel it feels to not have to earn a day where I feel good about myself by being extremely productive and getting a lot of shit done.
What if you worked on the basis that you began each day at zero balance, so that everything you accomplished – every task you got done, every tiny thing you did to address the world's troubles, or the needs of your household – put you ever further into the black? What if – and personally I find this thought almost unthinkable in is radicalism, but still, here goes – what if there's nothing you ever have to do to earn your spot on the planet? What if everything you actually get around to doing, on any given day, is in some important sense surplus to minimum requirements?
Reflecting on Life, Armin Ronacher - Another great find from Thorsten Ball's Register Spill newsletter. Some quotes that resonated with me deeply from the article
Other than sleeping, work is what you spent the most time with for a significant portion of your life. If that is not fulfilling[,] a core pillar of what can provide happiness is not supporting you.
I deeply believe this to be true. Although it's okay if you don't enjoy your work and only use it as a way to earn your livelihood and you find fulfillment through other activities, it doesn't hurt to try and find and look out for a career path that can give you a sense of joy.
Life isn't about sampling everything; it’s about making deliberate choices and committing to the ones that matter. (...) While it's true that choosing from limited options might not always lead to the “best” possible outcome, the time and effort you invest in your chosen path can often outweigh the hypothetical gains of a different choice.
The section Dare to Commit is a fundamental idea which I've previously discovered in David Perrel's essay on Hugging the X-Axis. Sticking to one path and following it to completion has richer rewards that trying out a shallow buffet of options.
The Date to Marry section is one where his experience and views in a long distance relationship are quite similar to my own feelings on the topic. The value of committing deeply to the relationship, dating to find someone to spend a lifetime with and the benefits of showing vulnerability.