Nicolas WardMedia — April 2026
Taking the entire week off for a Spring Break staycation supported a lot more reading and movie watching than we can typically fit in!
Reading
We finished Mattimeo and went straight into Mariel. It’s weird going from the big Philomel hardcover (which I upgraded some of these to) to the Bantam trade paperback!
Peak this could have been a blog post. I like Cory’s writing generally, and agree with him on a lot, but this as a book wandered too much… and a lot of his thinking about regulation was thrown out the window by Trump’s reëlection. He probably had a publication deadline but I think the book needed to be reworked quite a bit in that context.
Unsurprisingly the part that resonated with me the most was tech worker power. I’m also particular worried about how Apple starts to enshittify, as someone big on their ecosystem and with a long history with their platforms.
Newitz’s novella came highly recommended from our book club, which is why I had put it on hold at the library a while back. It’s a quick afternoon read, and you can see why it got blurbed by Wells and Chambers, whose sci-fi novellas I also enjoy a lot.
I really wanted to know more about the world, but loved this cozy little story of sentient robots dealing with queerness and personhood in a near future San Francisco. The line about “antique HTML” also got me good.
As Andrle pointed out, my shirt matched the book as I was readingKid selected this graphic novel when we were at the Central Library. He started sharing some interesting anecdotes from it so I read it quickly too. Overall it has some interesting trivia, and they did a good job of highlighting women developers, especially in the early days of video games where they’re usually left out of the history.
Unfortunately I found the flow a bit random and confusing; some of this may have been the translation from French but they jumped around a lot. Maybe I just want a chronological review? Their selections for game revolutions also seemed a little weird. I did like hearing about early French only consoles I knew nothing about. The art is fun throughout.
I’m sure I’ve read some of Jordan‘s writing at Kotaku or The Escapist or elsewhere in the past. I really like his style, and it’s clear we’re close to the same gamer generation. Boiling games down to one release per year is an interesting way to compress 45 years of history! (The book goes up through 2023.) It does a good job digging into the impact and influence of the games they picked.
The art is a lot of fun, and a clever way to avoid needing to license specific images and characters while nodding towards them. The print on dark pages was sometimes harder to read, though. The asides with other writers gave voice to some other opinions and covered some of the games I would have picked instead for a given year!
Maybe I need to make my own list… I guess I’m on a nostalgia kick in my 40s. 😆 I think I’ve played 26 on the list, although not always near time of release, and a few more if you count by series. Obviously dominated by the ’90s, my peak play time.
Why Japan Has Such Good Railways
A longer market history on how the rail network was built out post-war and comparisons to the sad state of trains in the US.
The People do not Yearn for Automation
I think Nilay really captures well the popular backlash against products and people in tech (me and my peers!) who may be suffering from “software brain”:
So what is software brain? The simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code. Like I said, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our lives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies have been built around maintaining those databases and providing access to them.
Playing
Over Spring Break kid talked us into the latest Just Dance installment. The 2020 edition was a staple of our isolation activity. This one is mostly more of the same and a pretty good workout even on the simpler dances. I think they upped their game on video quality? I of course immediately pulled something in my right shoulder on “Abracadabra”.
As we discovered there’s a bit of a mess when it comes to Ubisoft accounts now, even if you don’t subscribe to get more songs, which will be a longer write up once I get it sorted.
Watching
Over Spring Break we rewatched the prequel trilogy (which I maintain is pretty good Star Wars, despite its issues), and fit in some other rewatches (Elio!) and new films.
I have one anti-recommendation for Practical Magic, which I never saw in the ’90s but Andrle wanted to rewatch in preparation for the upcoming sequel. It falls down badly for me because it’s trying to be three movies at once: a cutesy small town witch family girl power story, a paranormal romance, and a borderline horror movie, all mushed together with extremely jarring cross-plot cuts.
I mostly liked this one for being a novel speculative fiction story with good retro production design. One of the main plot elements was a little obvious the way they set things up but still enjoyable.
I got a little hung up on the systems of the afterlife; I know it was all supposed to be a metaphor cutting across belief systems but they introduced a bit too many rules for me to not wonder why.
Introducing another ’90s classic to the family. Andrle had never seen it, and almost surprisingly kid really loved it, even asking for “more movies like this”. I’m sure some of that is tween wanting access to slightly more grown up fare.
Still, despite the terrible Russian accents, there’s a reason this movie holds up; it has very well paced tension building especially as the final act comes together. The ILM effects are also pretty impressive for the era (helped by access to real military equipment for some of the filming).
I was a big Tom Clancy reader as a teen (read the then first 8 Jack Ryan novels, plus a few others) and this kind of espionage/military thriller has always appealed.
I also had no idea that John McTiernan blew up his career.
I read the book last year in anticipation of this coming out, and it’s a really great film adaptation. They cut and simplified in the right places, and made the character of Eva Stratt much more compelling.
The closest comparison for me would probably be Jurassic Park; as with Clancy I read a lot of Crichton but at times it goes a little deep on the science (as Weir did with PHM) and so the pacing drags in the book at points; the movie in both cases nails that and I think becomes pretty iconic and influential for that.
In terms of filmmaking the spaceships felt real in an impressive way, and the blend of modern CG and traditional puppetry really worked for Rocky. Seems I’ve liked everything I’ve seen that Lord and Miller have been involved in (LEGO, Spider-Man, and now this).
The Emperor Protects
Yes, it’s a Warhammer 40k parody musical. As far as I can tell this is real performances. I’ve never played the game but have a fair bit of adjacency to it in nerd circles. I definitely didn’t fall into a wiki hole skimming the timeline of the galaxy recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NORGNnWlQ
The Next Gen Enterprise Set
I was obsessed with the technical manual as a kid as TNG was wrapping up, so this kind of production background info that I didn’t get a lot of pre-internet is quite enjoyable. Knowing the show so well over many rewatches it’s wild how they made a few rooms and hallways look like a complete ship! I also didn’t realize the set was repurposed for Voyager in 1994, but it makes sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmVW24CSkr0
Listening
For whatever reason encountered more new music this month than I have in a while. Probably too many podcasts.
Raye — This Music May Contain Hope
This album is from a few months ago but it entered into heavy circulation in our house. I had heard the single “Where the Hell is My Husband”, which has a great hook, but this whole album has really grabbed us. It’s a concept album for sure (right down to the stage musical crescendo and end credits in the last track) and a lovely exploration of genres I don’t often listen to.
Like it says in the tin, it is a hopeful pump up sort of album. This is particularly true of “Life Boat”. I think my favorites are the lyrical play in “The WhatsApp Shakespeare” and the interpolation of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in “Winter Woman”. Plus there’s some epic Hans Zimmer in “Click Clack Symphony”. Highly, highly recommend.
Like the title says, it’s a collaboration between NIN and Boys Noize. A neat reimagining of some classic tracks. I think my favorite was “Copy of A” although I need to give it a few more listens. (Thanks Matt for the recommendation!)
Death Cab for Cutie — Riptides
The lead single from their upcoming album I Built You a Tower is pretty good. Since we turned our child into a bit of a Death Cab fan, and in what is sure to be a continued pattern, they discovered the new release first and shared it with the rest of the family excitedly.
Moby — Future Quiet
I liked this chill very classic ’90s Moby sound (including the reimagining of “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die”). Worth a listen if you’re looking for something fairly ambient.
Upgrade — The Origin of Apple
Jason and Myke put together a really great audio story on Apple’s early days for the 50th Anniversary celebration. Some really interesting history as well as one of those really well-produced podcast episodes. (As they later noted, this was their riff on the style of The Rest is History.)
Darknet Diaries — SuperBox
It is wild to me that these almost MLM distributed magic streaming boxes are so widespread, and how dangerous it is to put these on your home network. I think it should also be, like Napster was, a wake up call to rights holders to make their content more easily available to more people with simple and affordable subscriptions instead of the extreme rise in costs we’ve seen coming off of Peak Streaming.
#1990s #apple #history #movies #music #musicals #starTrek #videoGames #warhammer
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