Digestif #23: January 5th
Living forever, watching AppleTV+, the best tech of last year, the real Adrian Dittmann, and my big crypto piece
Quick Thoughts
Vegas: It's January 1st 2025. A man parks his Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump Tower in Las Vegas, setting off a homemade suicide bomb made out of fireworks. His surname reads as "LifeIsBurger." Happy New Year, welcome to 2025, we live in fiction.
New Orleans: Related to this; I would highly recommend the episode of The Daily, by the New York Times, on the New Orleans terrorist attack. Heartbreaking and shows their audio team at their best. (On a less serious matter, their episode on the evolution of the UFC and ‘cage-match politics’, is also fantastic)
Apple TV+: Apple TV+ is free to watch this weekend, so, if you want to binge-watch, there are a lot of great shows to try! The best are Severance, Masters of the Air, Slow Horses, Prehistoric Planet, Silo, and Home. I would also recommend Bad Monkey, Hijack, Shrinking, and Ted Lasso (not that you need me to) for good-enough comfort TV. I have also heard great things about Bad Sisters, though I haven't seen it myself. Don't watch Sugar. In original films, I would point you toward Blitz, Fly Me To The Moon, Greyhound, Killers of the Flowermoon, and Tetris. Ghosted, The Family Plan, and Spirited are light fun. The Instigator is forgettable. Luck is horrendous.
Unfair Twitter attention: There was a wonderful edit video of the best films and TV of 2024, and it went somewhat viral on Twitter, getting 60K likes on its repost. The tragedy is that the maker of this video, Velmor Film, received none of this attention, and his original video, at the time of writing, has just over 200 views. Give it a watch; it's more than worth your time.
Goodbye to a colleague: My fellow Spectator colleague, Amber Duke, is leaving The Spectator to return to The Daily Caller as their senior editor. She's a talented journalist and a lovely person — with great taste in country music — so definitely follow her work there.
Not Musk: The Spectator's biggest story of the week was from Jacqueline Sweet who confirmed my suspicions that Adrian Dittmann is not Elon Musk. He is... a guy named Adrian Dittmann who got clout off the confusion.
Podcast: Ben Domenech had me on his Fox show to chat about the best and worst films and TV shows of the year. It was good fun, and expect more convos between Ben and I in the future.
Live forever or die trying: I watched the new Netflix documentary on Bryan Johnson, the longevity-obsessed former tech entrepreneur plowing millions into scientifically questionable ways to reduce his aging. I’ve watched a lot of stuff from him and have mixed feelings about the man; but this documentary showed sides of him I had never seen, and was well-balanced, giving time for his critics. I recommend a watch, and I’ll definitely write about Johnson in the future.
My health metrics for the week: 5.5 hours of weight-training across 5 sessions; walked 30K~ steps; didn't do VR as still waiting for Meta's update; down 1.4kg and 1.0% body fat. (Last year was about going from ‘fat’ to ‘not as fat,’ but this year, my goal is to half my body fat, drop a lot of weight, and get in top shape, ultimately writing an article about it.)
New Pieces
“It’s filled with people who believe in a future because they’re betting on it, or who have realized it’s easier to get rich selling a dream than actually building it; or who just want you to buy that dream so they can rob you.
Satoshi isn’t the avatar of modern crypto. It’s SBF”
My biggest piece out is my big piece on crypto, The Coin Toss, which I've been writing for more than a year and is finally out online and in the January edition of the magazine. I'm proud of how this turned out, and all the work I put into it, so give it a read.
In The Spectator we had our annual list of the best films, TV shows, and albums of the year (where I wrote about The Hitman, English Teacher and Mr & Mrs Smith, and Kendrick Lamar's GNX, respectively); my piece on the (under covered) issue with Meta's Quest headsets, where a Christmas update bricked many of them; and my list of the best tech products I tried last year.
Give a read if you're interested, but the items were:
Noise-cancelling/Bluetooth headphones/earbuds: Bose's QuietComfort Ultra earbuds and headphones
Wired headphones: Austrian Audio Hi-X65
Smartphone: Google Pixel 9 Pro (along with Nothing Phone 2a for best budget phone, and OnePlus Open for best folding phone)
Wearable: Oura Ring & Meta RayBan Transparent Edition
AI Assistant: Claude
App: Kagi Search Engine
Camera: CampSnap
Home Appliance: xBloom Studio Coffee Machine
Video Game: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
YouTube video: Summoning Salt's The History of Tetris World Records (as also recommended in my best YouTube videos of the year list)
Best product: Remarkable Paper Pro
Christmas Movies
Over the holiday season, my partner and I watched:
The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992): tied for best Christmas movie of all time, alongside It's a Wonderful Life. Everything worked in Jimmy Stewart's favor for him to deliver the greatest performance in a Christmas movie, but Michael Cain comes in at the number 2 slot despite everything working against him. There is no reason for him to deliver an intense, Shakespearean performance in a Muppets movie (which he did because he needed the money), but boy, are we blessed that he did. Beyond his incredible acting, the puppetry is fantastic, the songs are catchy, and they take enough lines directly from the book to remind you how excellent a writer Dickins was.
Happiest Season (2020): it should be a modern classic Christmas movie, and we’ll be watching it almost every year. It’s funny, charming, well-written, and has an excellent cast, particularly Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, and Aubrey Plaza. Almost all the jokes land, the drama feels real and earned without being overly intense, and there's this clever element of code-switching. A wonderful picture, and I like it even more every time I watch it.
The Bishop’s Wife (1947): a beautiful Cary Grant film, which is just as good the second time. Touching, optimistic, and quaint in a way that few modern films are (and also religious in a way that no modern mainstream movie would be).
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024): not up to the standards of the original outing of Feathers McGraw, but short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome, and it has more than enough charm to fill the hour-fifteen runtime. If you're partial to silly British wordplay (as I am) it'll earn your smile.
Angels in America: Millenium Approaches (2017): Not a Christmas movie, nor even a movie, but something we've been putting off watching for ages because each part is three hours long; but I finally watched Part 1 of Angels in America, which my partner long (correctly) assumed I would love. Funny and tragic, beautifully written, and anchored by killer performances from Andrew Garfield, James McArdle, and Nathan Lane. Highly recommend renting it from National Theatre.
From the Substack
Immigration Is, and Isn't, the Problem
Hello! This is one of my quick blog posts sharing some unpolished thoughts and ideas. I think this is relatively thoughtful and sound; but if you have contrary argume…
In case you missed it, this was a quick article I wrote earlier in the week in response to all the hubbub about immigration. I think it’s quite good? Give it a read.
And that’s me for now! If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like me to write about, or questions answered, leave a comment or shoot me a message at randerson@thespectator.com.
See you next week!
[EDIT NOTE: thank you to my partner for flagging my typos, I have fixed them now]