Reside: Auckland or Barcelona, as long as I can make a living there and be in solid with a like-minded group of locals.

Vacation: Lago Atitlán or Lombok & the Gilis. I’ve never been to an island in Oceania, so Indonesia is as close as I’ve experienced. Atitlán is tough to beat as it’s in reach to Xela, Chichi, and the much more touristy Antigua. Plus volcano hikes, kayaks, and lots of yoga spots. Good food, great people, and low cost. I wish only two things: more power to the Campesinos (particularly solar power and less cow dung heating), and fewer military-types on their gap-year.

Party: Seoul, as nostalgia. Or, if I had an unlimited budget, a Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague loop. I’m old. I deserve parties at whichever impact level I choose on that day.

Read these a few years back; they’re still a monumental achievement. I can’t buy chicken at a grocery store without thinking about the engineered chickens she describes.

I read a lot of great books this year. But, my shortlist goes to one author: Omar El Akkad.

One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This (2025) and American War (2017) were both revelations.

P.S.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020) by Rashid Khalidi. An absolutely vital history in its address of Occupied Palestine, the State of Israel, and the world’s interactions with them. In much the same way Tony Judt deepened my perspective of Europe with Postwar, and Davids Wengrow and Graeber pushed my understandings with The Dawn of Everything, Khalidi weaves family history with world events to lend a sorely lost dimension to a vilified people.

Upvote for Fanon. I read Wretched of the Earth as my first book of '25, and A Dying Colonialism late in '24. If you haven’t already, I’d definitely recommend The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s only novel and his 2024 pseudomemoir The Message.

I only remember it as fun. I don’t remember the quality, the plot, the characters, the setting, or the execution. I think I was trying to get into someone else’s pants. Maybe that’s the fun I remember.

I’ve also never felt a need for a rewatch or sequels.

Ok, noted. No to Now You See Me.

I think I only know the Barenaked Ladies version.

Any man who wants to know how to talk to a woman, should pay close attention to Neil meeting Edie.

Heat remains in my top 5 movie experiences, 30 years after I first saw it.

Supporting the Guy Ritchie films, for sure. Those should be right up OP’s alley.

Had tried to remember Wrath of Man with earlier as well.

We had different musical upbringings:

“So much on my mind that I can’t recline, Blastin’ holes in the night 'til she bled sunshine”

~ Respiration, Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar

Up the alley of Oceans movies:

• Now You See Me

• Ronin

• The Thomas Crown Affair (1995)

• Mission: Impossible octilogy (skip M:I-2, srsly)

• The Town

• Hell or High Water

• 3:10 to Yuma (either one)

• Assault on Precinct 13 (either one)

• 21 Bridges

• Baby Driver

Not as flashy as those you mentioned, but real thinkers, and excellent crime films:

• The Spanish Prisoner with Campbell Scott, Steve Martin, Ricky Jay

• A Simple Plan with Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton

• Wind River with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen

• No Country for Old Men by the Coens with Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones

• Fargo by the Coens with Frances McDormand

• Drive with Ryan Gosling

• Cop Land with Sylvester Stallone

• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

• Glengarry Glen Ross with 5 of the greatest actors of 20th century Hollywood. (TW: Spacey)

Used as insult by Uhura in first J.J. Abrams Star Trek (2009) film.

Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2004

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

My review in the bad place:

This is one of those rare books that changes what I think a book can be.

A beautiful meditation on the human condition as coupled to the — so-called — “Overwatch Effect.” It took me a while to catch the rhythm of the book, but once I was in, I was in.

I’m not going to pretend that I understand your culture, I don’t. But I can understand the “child of immigrants” position in the world that we share. I just started a LOT longer ago.

And I won’t belabour the point. I’ll sum up.

They moved here because of what THEY wanted. They also want you to be eternally grateful and follow their example. Except, you are a person, too. So, if they can’t see how glorious you can be, they can either watch you struggle with cognitive dissonance induced depression forever or they can let you grow, explore and find what you’re great at.

For the record, I needed a clean break from my dad to be able to rebuild my life. He was the role in my life that was toxic in the same way you describe your mom. That was in 2005. Incidentally, part of my story also had me leave North America for over a decade. I spent some time in Korea and China while I was away.

Value is a loaded term here.

If, as I assume, she means “economic” value — in a twisted, Judeo-Christian, colonialist, capitalist, explotative system — then, sure, value is assigned to money and only the top 0.001% of earners “have value”. Bully to the 99.999% of people on Earth who spend their lives delivering that value to the top. I hazard the guess your mom is one of those people.

Also, loaded into that term, if she has among her moral values those the western, chauvinistic, Biblical moral set, I might be inclined to question whether she lives up to her own values of charity, humility, and acceptance.

What everyone has is an “intrinsic” value; a unique set of experiences and gifts that has never existed before in the universe and never will again. We are here to delight in each other’s presence and potential. This doesn’t do much for the bottom line… until it does.

Collaboration on shared goals, building sustainable practices, and ensuring plenty for all are among humanity’s highest intrinsic, economic, and moral functions. Previously, I said that the values system your mom probably considers correct is twisted; that’s because in this system the highest functions are immense power, immediate profit, and absolute exploitation. These are ignored or invisible to most.

Your mom’s blindness and/or ignorance is what makes her tragically wrong.

I didn’t know that’s what this was called. It is one carol that doesn’t bother me no matter how many times it’s played.

We all die alone. Unless you’re the pilot.

Working retail for a decade-plus did it all in for me. 100 cumulative weeks of Christmas carols, decorations, impatience, childish adults, stress, and readjusting merchandising just so we could be told that we missed targets, underperformed, and failed at loss prevention.

So, I quit. I also quit X-mas. I celebrated on beaches for a few years. That was great. In deserts for a few as well. But, alas, I have returned to the rugged white north and the big-box spectacle. I have children who get a “normal” Christmas. The elf is on a shelf.

As for dying alone, I choose life. It’s the part we experience. I have a partner and a family, true. More on this later. But, I don’t plan on being parked in a nursing home as a drooling, vegetative, sieve-brained, line-item expense; or some mega-corp, health-sector, big-pharm farm animal. Milowda na animal.

When I can no-longer read and write and wipe my own bum — or when the pain, despair, and attendant paperwork for living threatens to overwhelm my desire to continue — I’ll want no part of this life anymore.

I’m an introvert. My kids mourn my partner going to a yoga class more than they’ll ever mourn my passing. My wife would be pissed it wasn’t put in the shared calendar. I’ve not got roots anywhere anymore, so my funeral will be sparsely attended. My close friends, I see once a year. My sibs would attend. But, that’s essentially it. None of my colleagues from previous schools. None of my students. None of the people I met in travels. None of my old schoolmates. All those ties are gone.

What’s left? Not much. So be it. Today, I’m alive. Today, I can learn, create, and leave messages in bottles. Today, I can respond to you and say the time, place and circumstance of your death tells nothing about you. The times, places, and decisions of your life — from a single room to the infinite vacuum — only partially tell your story. You, being here, tell the rest.

Got you. And this list.

No, I was checking whether you thought it was the ✝️-ians who were annoyed. Like, who the “their” was in your question:

Do you feel like that lessens [✝️-ians] annoyance about it? (I assume the ✝️-ians are annoyed be virtually everything non-traditional at this point)

Or

Do you feel like that lessens [the Greeks] annoyance about it? (I didn’t know the Greeks would be annoyed about it. But, hey, you live you learn.)

Or

Do you feel like that lessens [the English] annoyance about it? (I assume the English would be annoyed because of the aforementioned laziness in spelling)

Hating on 1950s X-mas carols.

The Tomandandy version from the Rules of Attraction.