My Favourite Things of 2024

That time of the year again, where I list some of my favourite things I enjoyed in 2024. In no particular order. Enjoy!

Disco Elysium

I finished it around January, but I haven’t stopped thinking about the game. Arguably a top 5 game I’ve ever played. On its surface, it’s an adventure RPG where an addict cop wrestles with his many selves in his head while trying to solve a murder.

But, as you keep playing, it becomes so much richer as the world-building reveals an intensely interesting world, mixing musings about communism, neo-liberalism, feudalism, racism, addiction, love, religion, revolution, redemption, and duty. Beneath its dystopian grimdark-ness there’s a hidden magical and mystical feeling to it, that’s all the more made beautiful by its poignant ending.

I’m sad that the development studio splintered, but it looks we’re getting a host of spiritual successors soon from it ashes!

Sea Power - Disco Elysium OST

One of the reasons Disco Elysium is amazing is its soundtrack by the band, Sea Power.

I’ve had this album on repeat as I’ve been writing my second novel this year. When it’s on, I feel I can tap into the complexities of societal change alongside deeply personal life stories.

Factorio

I can’t remember the last time any piece of media kept me so nerdsniped that I stayed awake past my usual bedtime. As a systems enjoyer, it’s catnip. There’s always one more thing to add, build, improve, fix, and re-design. Recommended if you enjoy systems design in any capacity.

I’m just glad that I got the Switch version because the expansion pack isn’t available yet. 😅

Perfect Days

An ode to peace. I enjoyed how meditative this film was.

Washed Out - Notes from a Quiet Life

Washed Out is one of my favourite musicians. But, I generally tilted towards his earlier work (like Life of Leisure EP or Within and Without). This new album however is amazing throughout. It feels more mature as the focus in his lyrics point to the same.

It could be that I also got older and enjoying a similar journey.

Open your eyes and let it in
'Cause life passes by so fast
Nobody knows where it ends
Or what might happen then

There's no warning signs
All is lost in a moment's time

If you just slow down
And focus on what's here right now, you'll find
It's a wondrous life each moment you're around, ah

Sometimes, we try way too hard
Wind up our lives so tight

There's no warning signs
All is lost in a moment's time

If you just slow down
And focus on what's here right now, you'll find
It's a wondrous life each moment you're around, ah
It's a wondrous life

Fokofpolisiekar - Dans deur die Donker

Excuse me as I share my sentiment in Afrikaans about this album.

Alhoewel FPK timeless treffers het, Dans Deur Die Donker, as ‘n album, is die mees volledig vir my. Ek geniet al die liedjies op die ene! Dit gee my ook genot om te sien hoe ‘n musiekgroep van hulle beste musiek kan maak 11 jaar later in hulle loopbaan. Vars, maar tog ook quintessential FPK. Het vir my lekker heimwee gegee terwyl ek oorsee was. Ek hoop hulle hou aan musiek maak voordat ons almal eendag platteland toe gaan.

Bear McCary ft. Rufus Wainwright - Old Tom Bombadil

One of the things I enjoy a lot about Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy is Howard Shore’s soundtrack. Iconic and moving. The stand-out joy from Rings of Power S2 this year wasn’t necessarily the show, but this specific track. It’s so gentle, playful, and warm.

As one commenter puts it aptly:

“It feels like I miss a place that I've never been”

Berlioz - Joycelyn’s Dance

Speak of gently, playful, and warm. Berlioz’s Joycelyn’s Dance is one of my favourite songs of 2024.

It fits so many moments: from just sitting and watching a sunset in Cape Town with a whiskey, to being in a cafe with Paris with good friends, to travelling on a train and watching the German countryside whizz by.

Nathan Fielder

Went on a Nathan Fielder binge this year, watching all of Nathan For You and The Curse. While his work in pushing people through fourth walls can sometimes seem disrespectful, most of it remains deeply engaging and interesting. It’s metamodern media in its prime, self-aware and sincere at the same time. Not taking itself seriously, but also leaving you with moments of insight and connection. His work always seems to acknowledge the viewer and draws you into his story, whether it’s scripted or unscripted. It makes you as the viewer in a sense, complicit in his world.

My favourite episode is “Smoker’s Allowed”, circumventing rules for smoking inside by making the bar itself a “stage”, because you’re allowed to smoke indoors if it’s a part of a theatrical production. Here’s a snippet. Watch the rest when you can.

Barcelona

Had the joy of visiting Barcelona this year. In part, I wanted to see a city-in-change where it’s busy revamping its city blocks away from cars and to people.

I wrote about it here:

Being in an old city while it’s rapidly changing was special. I hope more cities prioritise people over cars.

Democracy

More than half the world voted this year, including me, voting abroad in the South African elections. It was the year of the backlash, where no matter the political ideology, incumbents took a beating. From Labour kicking out Tories, ANC losing its majority in South Africa, to BJP losing majority in India, and GOP beating the Dems (😢). Seems like one of the only noticeable incumbents that gained support was Mexico and MORENA’s Claudia Sheinbaum.

Here’s hoping that democracries stay their course.

Slay The Spire

Went on a good roguelike binge earlier this year, playing Slay The Spire, Dead Cells, and Balatro. My favourite however was Slay The Spire!

Night Tapes - Drifting

One of my favourite songs of the year. Enjoy!

Vandalizing the Rothko on Pennies

2024 has brought forth fun, new, onchain art projects like Miragenesi’s One, World Sculpture Garden exhibition, or Post Mortem World, but my favourite is probably the exchange between Takens Theorem and Yigit Duman. It contains homage, onchain art, playful engagement with the medium, and a performance of sorts.

Fantasy?

One interesting theme I’ve seen mentioned in different ways this year, is how there’s an expectation in some modern media to over-explain. Things can’t be left uncertain, vast, and mystical. One such video touched upon Rings of Power not feeling like fantasy because it insists on explaining itself.

And then another about world’s not desperate to explain itself:

It’s been something that’s been with me for most of the year, especially when I also read Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore (where Murakami famously does not explain his magical realism in his books).

I think there’s on one side an inevitability to this when mega IP continues to exploit/frack every corner of it, but I think it’s also something that fandoms have been craving because people enjoy theorising on sub-reddits and thus they crave a conclusion to their excessive theorising. I don’t know if it’s healthy. I think pendulum should swing a bit back.

Houthaven

Houthaven in Amsterdam feels to me like a great example of how you reconcile keeping character of a place with appropriate and necessary urban development. To not just gentrify with cookie-cutter 5-over-1s that look the same in every damn city in the world.

Recreate eras of architecture as homage alongside diverse options of lifestyle while not shying away from necessary modern amenities and infrastructure.

Hope to visit it one day when I’m back in AMS.

Running a Sub 2hr Half Marathon

In September, I achieved the goal I started with when I started running again in early 2023. Finally running a sub 2hr half-marathon at 1:59:01. Wasn’t sure whether I was going to achieve it due to difficulties in training two months prior, but my existing fitness helped me push it over the line!

The best part was, 2kms before the end, when I knew I was going to make it, I broke away from the 2hr pacers and played Peter Schilling’s Coming Home in my airpods. I was flying!

Pachinko S1

While I still have to finish Pachinko S2, I seriously enjoyed Pachinko S1. I think, any emigrant who has left their home, will resonate with these stories. You’ll relate to your past, present, and future in different ways in different times and show captures this push and pull.

LLMs

While I don’t currently use LLMs in my creative work, I’ve enjoyed using LLMs as a middle-ground between an assistant and the web. ChatGPT and Claude (which I both use in different ways) understands intent where a search engine, doesn’t. So, I can discuss with it, ask questions about something I want to research. And then, when I have the right language and understanding, I use Google to follow up and corroborate the sources. In that sense, the hallucinations are okay, because you’re still spending less time on understanding something versus if you had to do it through an expert or searching it yourself. The latter is often a struggle because 1) search engines have become too insistent on surfacing information for the lowest common denominator, 2) you don’t always know exactly what the right words and phrases are to use, and 3) it’s really allergic to surfacing niche sites.

Liveship Traders

When I was in high-school I read a bit of the Liveship Traders fantasy series from Robin Hobb, but stopped halfway through Mad Ship. A good friend recommended I re-read it, so I did and then finished the entire trilogy this year. Come for the talking ships, pirates, and dramatic politics, and stay for the questions surrounding memory, the past, identity, and who we can become.

Love

Lastly. Sometimes, life won’t go the way you wish it to go, and that includes the love you wished to share with the people around you. In my personal life and extended family, there’s been grief and loss this year. But, there’s deep gratefulness in the love that existed. It’s only when it’s gone, as is cliche, that you realize how fortunate you were that it existed at all. That makes the love that’s still around all the more special. Cherish it.

Here’s to 2025, more amazing things to enjoy, and to many more beautiful sunsets. :)

See you next week for the yearly Scenes with Simon retrospective of the newsletter.

Much love,

Simon