Sam Archer
-
Kendrick Lamar: Ranked!
Cultural barometer, lyrical innovator, genre elevator. Compton-born Kendrick is, without question, the greatest rapper of all time. Over the past fifteen years, each successive album release has broken new ground. His music has influenced me deeply, soundtracking much of my… Continue reading
-
Podcasts I love, and a pledge to write daily
Podcasts are an extraordinary medium. In listening to interesting people talk to interesting people, we are given privileged access to private conversations teeming with compelling ideas. There are some qualifiers to this, however. In line with this, how do I… Continue reading
-
What Is Windsor Like?
The title is a question I have been asked occasionally, and one I’ve pondered far more frequently. It is a peculiarly beautiful and beautifully peculiar place to live. This town, home to Legoland, countless monarchs, Eton College, and some more… Continue reading
-
Table Tennis as Magic
What do Jesus and table tennis have in common? They both start by saying “Love All”. … Last night was the last I’ll ever spend in the house where I spent my entire childhood. My brothers and I have left… Continue reading
-
The Brutalist: A monumental, time immemorial masterwork
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist traces thirty years in the life of László Toth, a Jewish-Hungarian architect who emerges from the Holocaust to forge a new life in America. While Toth’s architecture embraces brutalism, Corbet’s film stands as the aesthetic opposite… Continue reading
-
Atomic Habits: A Tier List
Choose life. Choose daily ice baths. Choose lion’s mane, creatine, vitamin D and magnesium supplements. Choose meditation and breathwork. Choose learning a new language by being pestered by a fucking owl. Choose vegan, keto, gluten-free, carnivore, fruitarian. Choose pissing it… Continue reading
-
Death Be to Short-Form Content
It is apt that we call algorithmically tailored social media pages a feed. For they make of us pigs: insatiably, mindlessly and choicelessly devouring whatever our overlords hurl into our troughs. … Algorithmically driven short form content has recently come… Continue reading
-
AI Safety, Corporate Governance, and Legitimation
“The road to AGI should be a giant power struggle.” Sam Altman (2024), CEO and Board Member of OpenAI … In September 2023 I returned to Durham University and enrolled in the Business School’s Management (MSc) programme. The year following… Continue reading
-
My Life in 100 Films
Cinema reaches beyond mere entertainment. It is an expresser, a communicator, a time capsule, a voice, a memory box, a guru, a language, and the provider of myriad frames through which we view life. Like the age-old question as to… Continue reading
-
The Bookshelf in September: Ultra-Violence, Ultra-Unprocessed Food, and Rational Spirituality
Welcome back, dear friends, to what is now the fourth edition of The Bookshelf. I had somehow not saved the original completed draft of this month’s review and lost it. Scraping the outer echelons of belatedness, I almost couldn’t find… Continue reading
The Eye of an Archer 