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Twinkle O, Kyiv (2025)

27/08/2022

Genre is an odd thing. At times, it’s merely a sales tactic, where similar books are grouped together in a bookstore to make them easier to find. But it can also be a codified canon of literature in which authors are engaged in a decades-long conversation, bouncing themes and tropes off one another. Every now and again, a book or author will come along that really breaks away from the conversation and ignores those tropes and conventions. One recent example is Singaporean author JY Yang, who published the final installment of their genre-blending Tensorate series last month.

A genre-blending exploration of power and inequality

25/08/2022

As Ninja, the first celebrity gamer, Tyler Blevins has played Fortnite with Drake, made millions of dollars off streaming his gameplay online, and has captivated a global audience in the process. Now, Blevins has released a book that purports to help you be a better gamer — and by extension, a better human — by letting players in on what he’s learned over the course of his surprisingly long and robust career.

If you’re already a gamer, his advice can’t help you

23/08/2022

Most plot details about The Testaments (which will be published September 10th) are still under wraps, but we do know that the novel is set 15 years after the ending of the first book, and is narrated by three female characters. But presumably wherever Atwood takes the story, Hulu and MGM are interested in putting it on TV.

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments could extend the series.

21/08/2022

We already know what one of those proposals is: a prequel set thousands of years before the original show and books in the “Golden Age of Heroes,” created by Jane Goldman and series author George R.R. Martin, which shot a pilot episode earlier this summer. Back in May (just before the original show ended), Martin noted on his blog that two more of the ideas were still in play and “edging closer” to something more concrete, suggesting that “maybe some of you should pick up a copy of Fire & Blood.”

"What is dead may never die."

19/08/2022

In 2017, I moved 8,345 miles from my family — from my pink and green painted childhood bedroom in Dubai to a dorm room at USC. Overnight, my world changed. I went from my parents’ mollycoddled child to an adult that had to do their own laundry. The whiplash was heavy, and images of my old life kept echoing in my head. When I woke up to hear the birds outside my window, I half expected to hear my mom playing her Suprabhatam devotional music, loud enough to shake the floor. I’d remember late mornings in Dubai, listening to the radio after missing the school bus, sleepily ingesting the Bollywood Top 40 my parents had on in the car. After class, heading to cram school, I’d blast Mura Masa loud enough to crush my eardrums. On the way home, the bus driver, Yadav, piped Malayali songs through the school bus speakers.

Finding a community of young, weird, lost diaspora kids.

17/08/2022

The new home feed, which is rolling out now for Android users and is coming to iOS “in the near future,” actually doesn’t look that different at first glance. But up at the top of the screen are two new buttons: one for Music and one for Podcasts & Shows. Tapping one of those will take you into separate feeds. Music will show you suggestions based on what you’ve been listening to, while Podcasts & Shows will surface the latest episodes of your favorite shows plus recommendations for new ones. They’re not so much new home screens as new filters for your home screen. (I’d rather just have them be separate tabs altogether, but I’ll take what I can get.)

It’s going to get much easier to find what you want on your Spotify home screen

15/08/2022

Reaching out to Fusoxide about a defining part of my lived childhood — the ’90s were a very special but awkward teething period for mobile phones — feels like a weird dream where time makes no sense. It sends me down a YouTube rabbit hole of old Nokia ringtones until I realize that my cat hates them and isn’t afraid to tell me. As he howls in confusion at the shrill bleeps, I realize that if you yanked me back to 2002 after years of quiet, discreet phone etiquette, I would probably feel the same. And yet, my curiosity remains. With younger people interested in ringtones, how have perceptions changed about their origins, and how have ringtones lived on in modern soundscapes?

Ring, ring.

02/08/2022

A line of receipt machines mimics the sound of synths, while another electric toothbrush undulates beneath a white sheet. A typewriter clicks away in the background, accompanied by the buzzing of a body trimmer, a nail polishing device, and an epilator (which is a hair removal tool, in case you didn’t know). And even though the iron doesn’t contribute much to the overall composition, it provides the visual effects, pumping out puffs of steam to achieve a spooky vibe.

This electric toothbrush can sing.

01/08/2022

Spotify has stopped shuffling albums by default following a request from Adele, according to a report by BBC. Previously, when viewing an album on Spotify, you’d see a small shuffle icon within the larger “Play” button. This indicated that Spotify would begin playing the album’s songs in a random order, which isn’t always what users would expect (or want) it to do.

This comes days after the release of Adele’s new album, 30.

31/07/2022

The Motion Sonic device itself is a small capsule that can slot into differently shaped rubber wristbands, sort of like a Fitbit. There’s a band that attaches to your wrist for use cases like playing guitar, and another wraps around the back of your hand and is better suited to playing keys.

Sony’s been working on this thing for a while.

30/07/2022

Have you even made it as an artist if you’re not singing in a made up language for a Sims game? There’s a proud tradition of popular musicians like Carly Rae Jepsen or Janelle Monáe re-recording songs in Simlish, the in-game language of The Sims, and now, celebrated alternative artist Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner) is joining their ranks with a cover of her single “Be Sweet” for The Sims 4 Cottage Living.

Zauner’s track is summer-y and eminently danceable, and it feels just the same underneath a trailer hawking more features for The Sims 4, even with the chorus transformed to “Ya wana baleesh da voo ya wana baleeeeeeeeesh”. It’s also delightfully weird in the way all covers in “Simlish” are — I just love hearing famous musicians sing nonsense! Check out the song in English (with an X-Files inspired music video) for a better comparison.

Another artist gets folded into the life simulator.

29/07/2022

The new version atop this post is practically a full-on parody: Juvenile makes it rain vaccine cards instead of cash money, eggplant emoji are out in full force, and it sure sounds like some random dude named Scott is about to luck out. But you know all that already, because you’re already watching the video. Right? Right. My wife couldn’t stop laughing.

22 years later, Juvenile is back with a new version of his hit.

Twinkle O

27/08/2022

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