another year gone…
Starting with the most important stuff: congrats on making it through the year and thank you for being here. I’m amazed that anyone reads this at all and am grateful for all of you who do.
2023 was a weird year for me. It was often great and often not so much, but as always, friends and good art made my life better. So here’s a giant list of the best-everything I came across in 2023 in one long post, which serves both as a shoutout to artists everywhere who made these things I liked, and as suggestions for anyone who’s looking for something to watch or read as we head into the new year.
To clarify: this is stuff I consumed in 2023, not necessarily stuff released in 2023.
Also see previous years’ favourites: 2022, 2021.
🎧songs
I always start off these annual “best of” posts with music cause it’s my favourite artform. Here are the best songs I discovered in 2023, ranked. Full playlist here. (Lowkey though the best songs of 2022 were better than this year’s.)
—
[rank]. [song] - [artist]
26. World’s Smallest Violin - AJR
25. Everyday - Weyes Blood
24. Myth - Beach House
23. Chaudhary - Mame Khan
22. Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
21. I Want to Break Free - Queen
20. The Shimmer of Sindhu - A.R. Rahman
19. Step (Remix) - Vampire Weekend, Danny Brown, Heems, Despot
18. Friday I’m In Love - The Cure
17. Heat Waves - Glass Animals
16. Richie - Allison Keeley
15. What If I Love You - Gatlin
14. Irreplacable - Beyoncé
13. Fluorescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys
12. could cry just thinking about you - Troye Sivan
11. all my ghosts - Lizzy McAlpine
10. What Up Gangsta - 50 Cent
09. Phoenix - Slaughter Beach, Dog
08. No Children - The Mountain Goats
07. Have You Ever Seen The Rain - Creedence Cleerwater Revival
06. Desperado - Raghav, Tesher
05. Mausam - Lucky Ali
04. Never See Me Again (Leaked Demo) - Kanye West
03. American Teenager - Ethel Cain
02. Dreams Tonite - Alvvays
01. Ghodey Pe Sawar - Amit Trivedi, Sireesha Bhagavatula
⚽live events
Here’s some cool stuff I got to see and do in person this year.
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India vs Sri Lanka - T20 Cricket Match
I spent my childhood watching cricket on TV but this was the first cricket match I ever saw in person (thanks AD!). I had more fun going to the stadium and enjoying the crowd’s reactions than watching the game itself. There was so much traffic it felt like a genuine trek to walk from the parking to the stands, we took dirt roads and shit. I don’t even remember who won the game.
—
Germany vs Mexico - International Football Friendly
Also my first ever football game. (Good year for live sports, huh.) Huge, huge fun. It was quite crazy to see players like Thomas Müller (and Ochoa and Rudiger), who I’ve been watching on TV for years, actually play in front of me. Great game, ended 2-2.
—
Rocky Run - 5K Marathon
This was my first ever marathon! I wasn’t prepared at all so walked most of the way, but it was still pretty fun, especially the buffet breakfast we had afterward.
—
Taylor Swift - Eras Tour Concert
An unbelievable experience, easily the best concert I’ve ever been to (thanks DM!), and the highlight of 2023.
(Fun fact: the sex-ratio at the concert was so skewed even the men’s restroom was occupied almost entirely by women.)
(Fun story: as soon as the concert ended I spent the night driving and then flying across multiple states just to make it in time for my master’s graduation ceremony on zero sleep. It was a happening weekend, to say the least.)
📃essays
A common pattern of the last few years is that most of my favourite “readings” these days are blogs and Tweets, and not books. In general I just spend more time reading things online than reading books.
I don’t know how this began, and if it’s because I myself write a blog too, but one thing I know of is that there’s just too many incredible writers online.
So these are the most memorable/poignant/mesmerizing essays I read on the internet this year.
—
best of the best (must read)
Parasite (2019) Movie Review, Philbert Dy
Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, Dwarkesh Patel
Books are subjectivity-merging devices, not efficient information transfer devices, Sasha Chapin
Hardball Questions For The Next Debate, Scott Alexander
Superlinear Returns, Paul Graham
also extraordinary
How The Last Jedi Killed Star Wars And Why That's A Good Thing, coldhealing
What the humans like is responsiveness, Sasha Chapin
Looking for Alice, Henrick Karlsson
How I Overcame Anxiety, Richard Hannania
Effort, Ava
math team, Benedict
and more incredible stuff
YouTube, the jewel of the internet, Janan Ganesh
Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice, Patrick McKenzie
The Times I've Read Haruki Murakami, coldhealing
It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive, Fredrick DeBoer
Notes on Julia, Sasha Chapin
OpenAI and the Biggest Threat in the History of Humanity, Tomas Pueyo
In Praise of Memorization, Pearl Leff
A Child’s Plaything, Toby Ord
and yet more (I promise I’m done)
How to drive a stake through your own good heart, Adam Mastroianni
How I Read, Rob Henderson
In Memoriam, Sudheer Apte
Rising to the Role, Chris Behan
What it's like to dissect a cadaver, Alok Singh
Book Review: Elon Musk, Scott Alexander
The Social Network - Album Review, Jayson Greene
Simply explained: how does GPT work?, Valentin Tolmer
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, Clay Shirky
There’s Plenty of Room at the Top, Shaurya
Happy reading!
🖼️art & 📷photography
I’ve never someone who enjoyed looking at art much, but there are some artists and photographers I discovered this year whose work stunned me.
—
Jeremy Mann (website)
Mann is an artist, photographer, sculptor, and much more. His “Cityscapes” series of paintings is truly astounding.
—
Brett Allen Johnson (website)
“Brett Allen Johnson is an American artist living in Utah, where he can be found wandering the vacant corners of the state in search of the particular sense of place seen in his paintings.”
Again, just something about Johnson’s work that I can’t look away from, albeit for very different reasons than the Mann ones.
—
Patrick Tomasso (Twitter)
Patrick is a YouTuber who occasionally Tweets offhand photos. I discovered him yesterday literally while writing this post, but found his photography to be so powerful and melancholic that I just had to add him to this list. Just look at these.
—
hyoshikwak (Instagram)
hyoshikwak is a Japanese photographer. A friend sent me one of his posts, which is just a series of outdoor photos taken somewhere in Japan, but two of those floored me, again for reasons I have no idea about. So much of what you like in photography is subconscious.
tiktok screenshots
This is a fun one. Some of these are weirdly relatable and a reminder that I haven’t had a single unique thought or experience in my life. Others are more melancholic or straight up hilarious.
—
🎥movies
A couple of months back I decided to make it a rule to watch one movie at home every weekend. Easily one of the best things I’ve done (and literally the only habit I’ve consistently ever followed lol), which has allowed me to catch up on some amazing cinema. So movie-wise this year was pretty good, though I suspect 2024 will be better.
I watched 31 new films this year. Here’s the best of ‘em, ranked.
—
[rank]. [movie title] (release year, director)
(good)
17. Suzume (2022, Makoto Shinkai)
16. In Bruges (2008, Martin McDonagh)
15. Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan)
14. Asteroid City (2023, Wes Anderson)
13. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2023, Joel Crawford)
12. Omkara (2006, Vishal Bharadwaj)
11. Gattaca (1997, Andrew Niccol)
10. Blade Runner 2049 (2017, Denis Villeneuve)
09. Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells)
09. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)
08. Cars (2006, John Lasseter)
(great)
07. Hamilton (2020, Thomas Kail)
06. Zoolander (2001, Ben Stiller)
05. 3:10 to Yuma (2007, James Mangold)
04. Vaalvi (2023, Paresh Mokashi)
(transcendent)
03. Shithouse (2020, Cooper Raiff)
02. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023, Joaquin Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers)
01. 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
📚books
I read only 8 books to completion this year, because a) I spent more time reading blogs, and b) I abandoned most books I picked up (you should try this!). Here are the good/great ones.
—
great
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
A guaranteed-to-make-you-cry-at-the-end kind of novel. One of the most mesmerizing and devastating works of fiction I’ve ever encountered.
good
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
A detailed, in-depth look into the process of making movies from one of the most prolific directors of the medium. The only downside of this book is that Lumet uses mostly about his own movies as examples (for obvious reasons), so you have to be at least a bit familiar with his work.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The worldbuilding was kinda dumb and I would’ve liked it if the novel had explored Panem’s history more, but overall this was a fun and engaging listen. Peeta is such a simp lol. Currently listening to book #2.
The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It by Will Storr
Illuminating and insightful, especially if you’re like me and not the most socially aware person in a room.
Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Midownik
Informative and illuminating. Each chapter covers one element, some missed the mark but no matter. The chapters about glass, paper, and steel were my favorites. I can’t remember the last time I learned this much from a single book.
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel
What stood out more than the contents of the book is how addictive Morgan Housel’s writing style is. I blazed through this book faster than any other, which isn’t a coincidence. Listen to this excellent podcast for more on his approach to writing.
📺tv
Here are some notable TV shows I caught this year.
—
great
Arcane (season 1)
Arcane is to TV what Spider-Verse is to movies. Just a stunning visual feat and a watershed moment for animation. But Arcane has a much more serious and involving story. This is the best Netflix original series since American Vandal, and the best TV series of the year for me. (Trailer.)
Gullak (seasons 1-3)
Very funny, wholesome, relatable, touching. My favourite Indian TV series yet. (Trailer.)
very good
John Adams (miniseries)
A miniseries about the third American President that covers pretty much his entire life. I know very little US history - actually scratch that, I know very little history itself - so this was a fun summary of the American revolution and everything. It was fun to watch history dramatized. (Here’s a cool clip of Jefferson and Hamilton arguing.)
Spaced (seasons 1-2)
An excellent show that kickstarted the careers of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, who’d go on to make one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time. Spaced was where it all began, but even without his history it’s a fantastic show that stands on its own. Very Community coded, had its own vibe and a dorky sense of humour I always love.
✒️quotes
And lastly, as always, I’ll end this with things I read or heard this year that stuck with me.
—
“...she was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other.”
- Elena Ferrante, Le Nouveau Nom
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
- opening sentence of States of Matter, written by David L. Goodstein
"Move faster. Slowness anywhere justifies slowness everywhere. 2021 instead of 2022. This week instead of next week. Today instead of tomorrow. Moving fast compounds so much more than people realize."
- Sam Altman
"Life piles up so fast that you have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections."
- Virginia Wolf
"The skill of dealing with code you didn't write, which has always been an important part of software engineering, is perhaps now even more important [due to ChatGPT], given that you won't even have written a bunch of the code that you wrote."
- Nate Meyvis
"He lay in the dark thinking of all the things he did not know about his father and he realized that the father he knew was all the father he would ever know."
- Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
"When you watch the game you don't see Busquets. But when you watch Busquets, you see the whole game."
- Vicente del Bosque on Sergio Busquets
"The things you do for themselves are the only things worth doing - because the value of all other things is merely derived."
- hypyerthesis on HN
"When I was 12 I basically decided I’d either become a YouTuber or die trying. There really wasn’t a reality in my head where I didn’t make it, just the time was the issue. I’d still be making videos at 70 years old even if no one watched them."
- James Donaldson (aka Mr. Beast)
"What’s there to be happy about? Job’s not finished. Job finished? No, I don’t think so."
- Kobe Bryant, on being asked why he looked unhappy despite the Lakers leading 2-0 in the finals
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."
- Harry Truman
"The power of words is assumed to be only in themselves, namely there where it is not."
- Bourdieu
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
– J. K. Galbraith, Letter to Kennedy, 1962
"Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why."
- Paul Graham, How You Know
"It doesn't pay to be a generalist, unfortunately, but there are some of us who can't stop being interested in everything."
- Ted Nelson
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
- Viktor Frankl
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate."
- Carl Jung
"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will."
- quote on a navy blue t-shirt I had
"By the time you have a truly impressive resume, you won't need it."
- unknown (paraphrased from memory)
"I am drowning / There is no sign of land / You are coming down with me / Hand in unlovable hand"
- The Mountain Goats, No Children
"The benefit from asking a stupid sounding question is small in most particular instances, but the compounding benefit over time is quite large and I've observed that people who are willing to ask dumb questions and think "stupid thoughts" end up understanding things much more deeply over time."
- Dan Luu
"We do what we do; not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy."
- The Programmer's Credo
"No one's ever gonna give you a trophy / For all the pain and the things you've been through / No one knows but you"
- Weyes Blood, Mirror Forever
"Health is an invisible crown that only sick people can see."
- unknown
"A life with pain is tragic. A life without pain is a disaster."
- unknown (paraphrased from memory)
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Nobody worth hero-worshipping would want you to worship them. They would want you to become heroic yourself."
- Visakan Veerasamy
"And every other star couldn't guide us / It falls upon something that's inside us"
- Kanye West, Never See Me Again
"Explore a single individual deeply enough and truths about all individuals emerge."
- Robert Caro
“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”
- Heinrich Heine
Fin.
Fantastic
Wonderful summary. I will check out the playlist. I was wondering if you have a Kindle? That way you would read a lot more books I believe as you are already preferring to consume content on your device. Just a thought.