Rama Duwaji, a New York-based animator and artist with roots in Damascus, does an almost-monthly Instagram post, often 12-15 images deep, captioned: ‘things I saw in <name of month> that make me want to make art’. The post will typically capture works formally labeled as art or craft, such as displayed in museums or galleries, and mostly include ceramics, textile, paper, sculpture, and animation-based works. Duwaji herself is an animator and ceramicist. The posts also include quiet everyday encounters with beauty, like a relief sculpture on a building Duwaji passed, or a wrought iron railing.

I love these posts not only because they are lush and generous, but because they are so effortlessly intimate. They are a rare glimpse into a specific kind of interiority: how an artist observes the world and finds beauty, inspiration, and joy in it. By virtue of being Zohran Mamdani’s partner, any kind of online revelation can be a liability, but by identifying art and beauty in the world, she is actually taking attention away from herself. And also because as someone who appears [satisfyingly, imho] aloof, she finds a way to reach out and share herself on her own terms.

My letter today is inspired by Duwaji’s generosity. Here are the things that make me want to continue to be a scholar, an educator, a creative cultural practitioner, and a writer. Because, sometimes, the world feels shitty, uninspiring, and hopeless. The five things here, some by friends, are distinctive in that they’re great combinations of research, artistry, humour, culture, and the digital (except the Henderson book). They’re creative and thoughtful and just for those reasons, inspiring.

1 -The V&A’s acquisition of the first YouTube video. I was instantly charmed by this story of what exactly it means to ‘collect’ an artefact that has never been anything but digital, and the complexities of this process. For instance, the V&A acquired the original front-end code, the video file itslf (the first ever Youtube video was ‘Me at the zoo’ by and featuring co-founder Jawed Karim), and advertisements for that period, December 2006-January 2007; however, to install and run that video in its original format - Flash - that is no longer supported by contemporary browsers. The V&A team had to use an open source ‘Flash emulator’ called Ruffle. Amidst all breathless and fairly boring (atm, to me) AI news (which is, really, business news, not really news about technology per se), stories about digital infrastructure, loss, continuity, and preservation have a real charm about them. These are stories of digital media in as as culture (Two of my friends, Natalie and Carmem, are part of this acquisitions team!)

2- Another story about a friend. Music producer, artist, filmmaker, and economist, Rana Ghose, has been documenting a music phenomenon from rural Bengal: Dek Bass. The Observer and Resident Advisor have covered Rana’s work curating the work of Dek Bass’s foremost DJ, Khobir. I’ve never heard Dek Bass but I have a very nice memory of Rana at sunset on Morjim beach describing his discovery of Khobir and Dek Bass. It seems to to have changed his life (Rana’s; maybe Khobir’s too). Dek Bass is music that is so violent, it hurts you. It’s extreme bass, and loud. People pass out. Why listen, if that is indeed what’s happening? Famously, Rana, has documented the legendary Charanjit Singh who predated Acid House by half a decade. There’s also documentation supported by Google Arts & Culture. If you have never heard 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat, then, well, I feel sorry for you. Go now and listen to it. All music streamers have it.

3- Portraits of Population: A beautiful interactive archive by Diagram Chasing of 700 hand-drawn charts and graphics from Indian census reports from 1971 and 1981. What really sticks out for me is that these illustrations and graphcis were hand-drawn. By the time the 1991 census came around, automation was already changing how data was being visualised. I’m also from the 1970s, so the aesthetic of many of these illustrations is familiar.

4 - The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary (2013) by Caspar Henderson. I got this for my birthday a few weeks ago. Inspired, obviously, by Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, a book I love, Henderson’s book is natural history done right: funny, and not skimping on the technical details, and written engagingly for a non-expert reader fascinated by the science of nonhuman worlds.

5- Muskism: A Guide to the Perplexed (2026) By Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff. I am halfway through this book, and I highly recommend it. The screenshots below emphasise that this is not a book about Musk, although some of his early history is in it, rather it is about the sociopolitical and economic forces that make someone like Musk possible. It’s also a great history of the internet and technology futures/pasts.

And because I’m still Japanmaxxing, here is one of 50gazillion pictures of food and food-related things I took in Japan. Scrolling through my photos from that trip continues to make me happy.