Media review powered by Travel

I've spend the last two weeks traveling around the globe for work. There is a lot to talk about the trip, but today I just want to look back at some media that I've watched on the plane.

Better people manage to work or do their hobbies in an airplane, but for me long flights are a chance to catch up on movies, TV series and sometimes books. Here is what I was up to on the over 60 hours of flight I had recently:

• The Billion Dollar Code -- I think I first heard about this on Cory Doctorow's blog? It is a German mini series about the tech art project TerraVision - How it was developed in the 90ies, and how Google copied/stole most of it to make Google Earth. It was pretty good for the tech/90ies nostalgia.
• I'm a spider, so what? -- Isekai anime series recommended by a friend on Mastodon. A person dies in this world, and is reincarnated as a spider monster in a megadungeon. The first few episodes are really tongue-in-cheek, and chock-full of memes, so it is fun to watch. But when I went to look for more information about it, I learned that it has a really convoluted story, that makes me not sure how far I will be following it. The old problem of fiction trying to explain all the workings of what should just be magic. Does remind me of covic.sys, which is nice.
• That time I turned into a slime. -- Another Isekai anime series, also about someone who reincarnates as a monster. However, I bounced off this one pretty quickly, because the series takes itself too seriously.
• Amazing Attorney Woo -- A Korean drama about an attorney with autistic spectrum disorder. Recommended by a lot of people, and I really liked the first 6 or so episodes that I watched. I usually avoid K-dramas for being overly sentimental, but this one feels a bit toned down, and just the right amount for me. I also like that there is a fair amount of social discussion in the episodes, not only about neuro diversity, but also gender issues, age issues, family roles, etc.
• Everything, Everywhere, All at Once -- Hollywood movie, also recommended by a lot of people. A pretty fun, absurdist romp, that goes around back to an interesting message in the end. Maybe worth seeing it on a big screen for all the special effects. The hotdog fingers were a bit too much for me, though.
• Atlas of AI -- a book by Kate Crawford, about the hidden global costs of AI, like mining, global warming, military complex, state surveillance, etc. For the past 10 years I have been feeling uneasy about this area of research, and this book, puts all those abstract fears and news, substantiates them, and throw them back at your face. I think there is a really good argument that we should scale down on AI research, not because of any fantastic images of killer robots, but rather because of the more prosaic problems caused by humans trying to greedly extract value without looking at all the problems that they cause to other people through that path.