Six Things I Love

It’s June, so we’ve hit the halfway mark of 2025. In the spirit of reflection and review¹ I’d like to share six things I’ve experienced this year that I love.

WhatWillMakes - How I Built a Mechanical Calculator#

This video came out in December of 2024, but I only discovered it this year. This video was made specifically for me. Will not only creates a mechanical calculator primarily out of wood, but also offers a historical analysis of the calculator itself. He analyzes the socioeconomic conditions that led thinkers like Leibniz to commission skilled craftspeople to actually build the machine and embeds his own experiencing designing and building the calculator within that.

I was absolutely floored after watching this and can not help gushing about it. It’s so cool. This video is truly a breath of fresh air and I think about it all the time.

Ethel Cain - Perverts#

I was looking through RYM’s top charts of 2025 earlier this year and this album kept popping up. I gave it a shot and boy am I glad I did. It mixes elements of ambient drone, pop, and noise while exploring the concept of perversion. I listened to this while I was playing through Citizen Sleeper and I felt they connected together beautifully.

Battle Brothers#

Battle Brothers is an absolutely brutal tactics and role playing game. Think Mount and Blade meets Final Fantasy Tactics meets Darkest Dungeon.

There’s an overworld like Mount and Blade where you can travel between towns, explore, trigger events, and get into battles. Recruiting units with certain traits can give you more options in events which I enjoy. It adds another level of decision making when recruiting.

Battles themselves are turn-based on a hexagonal grid map. Outside of just health, however, your units also have Resolve which is their ability to resist panic and fear. Much like Darkest Dungeon, you can lose control units in stressful circumstances. Units that suffer tramautic experiences can be permanently altered.

I am a glutton for games that make me lose over and over again.² I’m about 100 hours of gameplay in and I’m still on easy mode.

Masala Apple Turnover#

I went through a phase earlier this year where I kept making a rough puff a la Stella Parks. We had some apples leftover from so I decided to use the linked recipe to make apple turnovers! However, my partner generally dislikes the cinnamon apple flavor profile so I created a masala version using turmeric, cloves, cardamom, cumin, and coriander instead. It was a hit!

Arkady Martine - Teixcalaan Series#

You should read A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. The first book set a high bar and the second one managed to fly past it. One of the central questions in this series is “how wide is the concept of you?” This ranges from the Stationers who have generations of memories implanted into their brains to the Teixcalaan empire which doesn’t distinguish between itself and the concept of “the world”. I won’t spoil anything, but A Desolation Called Peace extends this even further by introducing a tertiary entity with it’s own concept of “you”.

There’s too much to talk about these books in a post like this. So really you should just read it if you’re at all interested in speculative fiction.

The Rehearsal: Season 2#

If you haven’t seen the first season of The Rehearsal or any of Nathan for You, I would recommend starting there first.³ Season 2 of the The Rehearsal feels like the apotheosis of the character of Nathan Fielder. This show is definitely not for everyone.

Season 1 felt like taking Nathan for You to the limits of absurdity that HBO would fund with a premise founded on extracting entertainment from the participants. Season 2, however, starts to point inwards to Nathan. The show blurs the lines between sincerity and bit simultaneously blurring the character of Nathan with the actual person himself.

As an aside, as the absurdity of the season progresses, I couldn’t help but think of The Rehearsal as a job creator for artists. They got to use the deep pockets of HBO to fund hiring all of those actors, building elaborate sets, creating and operating puppets, absurd makeup and prosthetics, and even stilt walkers at one point.