Tried out three new Indonesian recipes tonight: Bebotok Ikan (spicy fish packets), Sayur Lodeh (vegetables in coconut milk) and tempeh in peanut sauce.
🏳️🌈 Grateful and proud to be living in such a welcoming and vibrant city! Utrecht Canal Pride 2022 ☀️
🎥 Dr. No (1962) ★★★★
The one that started them all! I had pretty low expectations, but I enjoyed it through the end actually. Bond wasn’t that macho. The set design was simply beautiful. And Dr. No, played by Joseph Wiseman, really set the stage for all Bond villains to come.
🎥 Belfast (2021) ★★★½
Beautiful cinematography, strong dialogues, but with too little character development to make it coherent and really stick with me.
Went to see this film with a friend in Slachtstraat, Utrecht’s newest, beautifully renovated (and smallest) film theatre.
📺 I never gave a 10/10 rating to a TV series episode before, but the mid-season finale of Better Call Saul deserves all the praise. ’Plan and Execution’ has the perfect combination of comedy, tragedy, suspense and thriller. Also: one of the best cliffhangers in history! ★★★★★
Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress in a ‘spiral of self-destruction’
but…
“The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity”
🎵 Since my recent purchase of a Bansuri, I like to study Indian classical music from time to time. The melodic framework of the raga is often deceptively simple, but can become pretty complex while performing. The flute music of Hariprasad Chaurasia is a perfect example of this.
Due to mounting pressure, Google announced it will eventually block third-party tracking in its Chrome browser. Sounds good, right? And it is, until you hear that their proposed alternative is to have Chrome itself track people on every site they visit…
Bartosz Ciechanowski creates interactive articles about physics, math, and engineering, and his latest one on mechanical watches is so astonishingly well made!
🗞 Another great photo-essay in the World Through a Lens series from the New York Times. This time by @craigmod, who happens to be a registered user on micro.blog. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be very active over here. I’m considering becoming a member of his special projects…
🇬🇷 Enjoying a much-needed holiday in beautiful Greece with the family! Friendly people everywhere, great food, lots of olive trees and most importantly: very pleasant weather!! 🙏
To those worrying about data ownership now Twitter just became a privately owned company, there is a pretty easy answer: own your data! Get a domain name and start blogging. Then, syndicate everything from your website to whatever social media platform you want. #TwitterTakeover
Yotam Ottolenghi is definitely one of my favourite chefs. I tried two new recipes tonight: potato gratin with coconut, chilli and lime. And Broccoli ‘two ways’ (quick-pickled raw stems, roasted florets) with chilli, cumin and basil. Amazing combination of flavours!
❤️ Adidas usa 84 sneakers.
Currently reading: In de huid van de Boeddha by Paul van der Velde 📚
🌱 Record amount of apple pies in the making 🥧
Just made my first (vegetarian) Pissaladière, a pretty simple dish of flatbread / pizza dough with caramelised onions and olives, apparently from the cuisine of Nice. Very tasty!
🎵🥾Made some beautiful field recordings of this morning’s dawn chorus. This spot is one of the last breeding grounds of the grutto (black tailed godwit), and luckily they were very boisterous today. It’s our National Bird, but unfortunately they’re also a near-threatened species…
🗞I love the World through a Lens series in the New York Times.
The Transfixing Beauty of Starling Murmurations. Great photography and beautifully written by Søren Solkær.
“That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” she said. I had to agree with her.
Finished reading: Het Achterhuis by Anne Frank 📚
🎵 Fat Freddy’s Drop - Boondigga
Love this song, one of their best songs. Still have to see them live sometime…
📺 “Better Call Saul Remains One of TV’s Best in Tense, Exhilarating Final Season”
Most critics agree that the final season is going to be great!
And so the waiting begins…
🥾 During a short walk with my daughter (while watching out for the just returned black-tailed godwit from Senegal and Guinea-Bissau!), we were treated with this beautiful view of distant rain showers on the horizon.
📺 Seinfeld - The Soup Nazi (1995) ★★★★½
Best episode of Seinfeld, period.
🎵 Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980) ★★★★
To me, Japan is one of the best New Wave bands that ever existed. Calling them a New Wave band doesn’t do them enough justice though, because of their sophisticated sound and of course David Sylvian’s great voice.
