I obsess over things for weeks and then ignore them completely for the rest of my life. Here’s what I’ve been obsessing over for the past four weeks: Street Photography NSFW: There are some boobs about half way into this post. Daniel Arnold This dive into the Rabbit Hole began with a Vogue video about street photographer Daniel Arnold. [embed]vimeo.com/206313230[/embed] I’m a sucker for videos that are edited like this (with little illustrations over the film, choppy but easy to follow editing, and great pacing). So then I was like, “I gotta check this Daniel Arnold guy out! He seems cool!” ...

To say I wasn’t hyped for the release of Damn would be to say nothing at all. I’m not a hardcore fan of Kendrick in the way I’m not a hardcore fan of any artist or band; I love good music, but I don’t go as far as watching every single interview and reading every single thread in their subreddit*. This, though, might have been one of the few exceptions. How could it not be? When an artist comes in with an immaculately produced, lyrically rich, conceptually unique debut album then follows it up with an even deeper/better album you become a fan. It’s that or your taste is nonexistent. ...

Get an Oyster card right away. It’s £5 and you can top it up for any amount you would like (don’t be fooled by the options that are given in increments of 5 in the machine). Take buses EVERYWHERE. You can generally get from any point in the city to another with a single bus + a 10–15 minute walk. It’s like a hop-on/hop-off tour for a fraction of the cost. It’s slower than the tube, yes, but you’re on vacation. You’ve got nowhere to be. The best phone plan to get in London is the Pay-As-You-Go by Three. A sim-card will be .99p and will work with any unlocked phone (sim, micro-sim, nano-sim). An additional £20 will get you 12GB of data; £25 will get you unlimited data. The only drawback is that tethering is not allowed. Book your London Eye tickets online for a specific 30-minute timeslot. This is the best option as it is the cheapest one that will allow you to skip the queue. If being tied down to a specific time-slot isn’t your thing, just get a “Fast-lane” ticket on the spot. Avoid book stores. They are filled with amazing books and awesome souvenirs and everything seems so nice and lovely until you find yourself a day later with 10 books and doubts about whether your suitcase will weigh too much. Feed squirels in the park. It’s fun and they’re hella cute. The Pizza Hut on Lecister Square is way less crouded than the one at Oxford Circus. If you’re stupid and decided to travel with cash instead of a card, the best place to exchange money is Thomas Exchange. There are many of them downtown and in the business area, but be prepared to stand in a line anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes. When packing clothes focus on layered outfits. Shirt + Cardigan > Jumper. £50/Day is a very comfortable spending budget. You can take it down to £25 if you have breakfast at home.

Even though it only applied to several genres, “back in the day” I was the person to go to for music recommendations. Before Spotify Weekly and Apple Music’s “For You” section came about, I was adjusts letterman jacket that guy. That’s changed, and I find myself listening to the same things I was listening to 5 years ago, with just two or three new albums/singles added to the mix. However, whenever I do have the desire to go searching for some new tunes, I adhere to the same process and look in the same places. The Needledrop The all-in-one place. There’s the reviews, the trusted taste in music, and the wide range of genres. If you’re into hip-hop, indie, heavy-metal, or EDM—Anthony “Best Teeth in the Game” Fantano has got you covered. Best Discoveries via The Needledrop: Death Grips, Swans, Wire, Battles, FKA Twigs ...

Kanye West is the best argument both for and against the separation of art and artist. JK Rowling is the best argument both for and against an author’s influence on canon after the original series is officially over. This post was brought to you by this episode of The Last Podcast with Zac Little and this New Yorker cartoon. Let me know what you think in the comment section bellow. Like, comment, and subscribe for more “content”. ...

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes: Bo Burnham #3 https://overcast.fm/+HGWMiEc It’s a three hour conversation, which is about 6 times longer than the average podcast episode I listen to, but it’s such a great conversation. It’s the type of conversation that seems to cover everything, even though it’s not really focused on anything at all. But it works. It’s great. It covers all the things, all the conversational topics that I would like to talk about with someone, but I’m too self conscious about how pretentious it will all sound if I say it. This just does that unapologetically and it’s great. There are about 12 moments throughout the podcast where I had to stop and write extensive notes to myself because it gave me ideas about things that I would like to write/talk about at some point in the future. ...

I came back from my vacation in London on Saturday, slept, ate, slept again, and then on Sunday I binge watched Stranger Things. We didn’t have WiFi in our AirBNB in London, so watching something, anything at all, was going to be good, but Stranger Things was great. Now Stranger Things has a solid place in my list of “Amazing Netflix Shows” along with Master of None, Gilmore Girls, and BoJack Horseman. There are many reasons I loved the show and one of the most important ones (to me) is that it’s not like other Netflix shows. It’s planned, executed, and presented really well. First of all, it doesn’t have terrible pacing problems (looking at you, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, OITNB post season 2, Love, Flaked, etc.). The aforementioned shows seem like they take an idea, and then try to explore that idea in 25/45-minute episodes. Sometimes that makes for exciting episodes, and sometimes that makes for episodes that meander for a while and then throw in a plot twist to make you move on to the next episode. The pacing, therefore, is all over the place. Stranger Things is very much the opposite of that. It feels like the creators of the show (Matt and Ross Duffer) had a fully formed structure for the show well before the screenplay was developed. Each episode is a self-contained chapter with a clear beginning, middle, and end—a fully developed and well-written story. The same applies to the show/season as a whole. The dialog is slow when it needs to be, fast when it needs to be, and always serves a purpose. This brings me to the next thing I loved about the show—every scene has a purpose. In most Netflix shows I can always find at least 2–3 scenes per episode that I feel could have been completely removed without any detriment to the story, but not in Stranger Things. The show handles exposition really well. They create intricate interpersonal relationships between characters, reveal just the right amount of information about heroes and antiheroes at a time, and makes sure all of this contributes to the overall interest in the story. There are plenty of story elements that create dramatic irony, and knowing something the characters in the show don’t helps create just the right amount of anxiety for the audience. And where other shows abuse this and keep it going for too long, this show manages to reveal/release the tension right when you can’t bear it anymore and right before it would start to get annoying. It’s really good writing. ...

Below is a list of movies I’m really excited to see in 2016. There are many indie films and smaller releases that I’m looking forward to, but these are the big ones — these are the ones that have been on my radar for a while. Deadpool The marketing for this movie is just crazy good. I haven’t read the comic books, but I’ve seen pictures on tumblr and around the web that have introduced me to the character. I’m excited about the fact that the movie’s trailer makes it clear that Deadpool will be sarcastic as fuck, and that he will be breaking the fourth wall during the movie. I really hope this movie is everything I hope it will be and everything the trailers promise it to be. Ghostbusters Badass women fighting ghosts and kicking ass. If it’s even a quarter as exciting and awesome as Mad Max: Fury Road it’ll be on my end-of-the-year top 10 list. Captain America: Civil War I read the comic series, and although the premise in the movies is different, the tension between Captain America and Iron Man has been built up during the previous Avengers movies, and them going at it is exciting as hell. Also, there are rumours that Spider Man will make an appearance in the Civil War storyline (whether it’s in this movie or the later Avengers movie IDK, but I’m excited). Suicide Squad Nothing will beat Heath Ledger’s Joker, but from what I’ve seen, Jared Leto looks great and just the right amount of insane. The casting in this movie seems to be on point, and seeing the Justice League villains get together to be on the good side for a while seems like an awesome idea. Doctor Strange I know nothing about this character. However, when even the movie’s director himself says that the movie is weird — you know it’s going to be good. Hail, Caesar I went on a Coen Brothers binge earlier in 2015, and I’m looking forward to continuing that in 2016. ...

I don’t think I’ve read a sci-fi book since I, Robot back in Middle School, but DAMN The Martian was the perfect “Welcome Back to the Genre” book. It’s exciting, it seems like just enough fact-checking happened to make this story plausible, and it appeals to every kid who’s ever wanted to be an astronaut just so they could mess around with a bunch of cool space gadgets. The story is about Mark Watney, who gets left behind by his team during a Mars exploration mission. The next mission to mars is 4 years away, and Mark Watney needs to find a way to survive that long on 52-days worth of meals. That’s far from the only problem he has to deal with though. Other than the constant excitement and tension created by the avalanche of problems heading for Mark, the book is exciting because of Mark’s character. He’s witty, sarcastic, and just on the right side of “too much ego”. It’s clear from the book that this isn’t just an outcome of being in a stressful situation, and knowing that Mark is always like this makes it even easier to empathize with. When it comes to scientific accuracy this book holds up too. We don’t have all the technology necessary for interplanetary travel right now (hurry up, SpaceX), but it’s so close to feeling real that it seems this story could happen IRL in decade or so. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is that it doesn’t explicitly push the moral of the story. Until the last paragraph of the book, the story is just that — a story. The characters’ actions speak for themselves. I strongly recommend that you read the book before the movie comes out. It’s short and thrilling enough to be read in a week, and knowing the plot beforehand will set you up for paying attention to Ridley Scott’s directing, which is going to be unjustly criticized by everyone and their grandma. Mark my words. ...

I’ve been binge watching Mr. Robot this past weekend. It’s a great show, and even though I haven’t watched many of the other new shows that came out this summer (Sense 8, OITNB, True Detective, etc.) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that this is one of the best. The show follows Eliot, an experienced and skilled cyber-security engineer, who spends his free time being a hacker vigilante. The first episode paints him to be an autistic genius with a “controlled” morphine addiction who uses his talents and knowledge to put bad guys in jail. It’s pretty much Dexter meets IT Crowd meets Sherlock Holmes. Early on in the first episode he’s approached by Mr. Robot, a forty-something techy who is hellbent on taking down The Man, The System, the evil bank, the omnipresent conglomerate that makes cellphones and laptops, sells insurance, has it’s own bank, and generally makes the lives of the lower, and lower-middle class miserable. The company is called E Corp, but pretty much everyone refers to it as Evil Corp. We very soon find out that Evil Corp caused the death of Eliot’s father. Mr. Robot’s genius plan is to delete all of the data owned by Evil Corp, thereby freeing every inhabitant of America (and the rest of the world) from their debt. The anarchy that will ensue from that is seen as a casualty of a war worth having. ...