Lists (sporadically updated)

A Series of Narcissistic, Exhibitionistic Lists (satisfying my tendencies for anal retention) 

Caveat to this series of lists: I have not demarcated genres within my lists of films, books and television shows. This has both pros and cons, as many things do! Simple, three-tier format reflects personal aesthetic preference as follows: whilst comparison is something that everyone engages in, and is an inherent part of aesthetic discourse, I dislike fine-grained comparison (I prefer, for example, Ebert's four-star movie-ranking scheme to the conventional five-star scheme). Whilst this post is indeed periodically, or should I say non-periodically, updated (in fact, the caveat in which this sentence sits used to consist entirely in its first sentence until I added the other sentences this evening, 19/03/2019), I think that some films, and possibly some books, would shift around in my judgment on current re- viewing/reading.

Films I like:

Rank 1:
1917 (2019) (dir. Sam Mendes) (pretty damn good)

As It Is In Heaven (2004) (dir. Kay Pollack) (at the age of 9 (or so), I found this profoundly, profoundly moving)
Apollo 13 (1995) dir. Ron Howard
A Serious Man (2009) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
Audition (1999) (dir. Takashi Miike) (this is quite simply a masterpiece. A movie with multiple interpretations, blending dream, reality, fantasy in a way I have not encountered before or since (similar to Mulholland Drive, but with a greater interpretational ambiguity/complexity)
Badlands (1973) (dir. Terrence Malick)

Barton Fink (1991) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) (my favourite film, I think)

The Big Lebowski (1998) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) (best dialogue of any film I have ever seen)
Blade Runner 2049 (2016) (dir. Dennis Villeneuve) ([update in 2019: can't think why I put this is rank 1, because I don't remember much liking it... ])
Captain Fantastic (2016) (dir. Matt Ross) (really enjoyed this movie but somewhat ambivalent about its position here in rank 1. Mortensen's acting is superb. I think that being a hippie like Mortensen's character and living in the Tasmanian wilderness or something with a highly intelligent hippie woman with whom I am in love represents a kind of life I would like to have)

Charlie’s Country (2014) (dir. Rolf de Heer) (extremely powerful work)

Dr Strangelove (1964) (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Full Metal Jacket (1987) (dir. Stanley Kubrick) (cleverest and best anti-war film I have seen)
The Hunter (2011) (dir. Daniel Nettheim)

The Imitation Game (2014) (dir. Morten Tyldum) (apparently this was completely historically inaccurate but, not knowing this, I really enjoyed it at the time)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) (dir. Robert Hamer) (very funny movie)
The Lighthouse (2020) (dir. Robert Eggers) (just brilliant)

Lincoln (2012) (dir. Steven Spielberg)
Lion (2017) (dir. Garth Davis) (cried almost unceasingly throughout)

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) (dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farys) (the second time I saw this, several years after the first time I saw it, I had tears of cathartic joy streaming down my face at the end (the soundtrack, which I own, is superb also))
The Meaning Of Life (1983) (Monty Python) (by far the best Monty Python film)
The Name of the Rose (1986) (dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud)

Requiem for the American Dream (2015) (dir. Kelly Nyks, Peter Hutchison, Jared Scott)(best Chomsky documentary)
Rise of Skywalker (2019) (dir. J.J. Abrams) (this may be my most controversial opinion yet... no sophisticated reasons for my love of this movie; I just found it really fun and really moving alternately. Really, really enjoyed it. Don't care about changes to Star Wars universe rules and didn't let contrived plot bother me.)

Snowden (2016) (dir. Oliver Stone)
Sweet Country (2018) (dir. Warwick Thompson) (not sure about rank 1)
Tampopo (1985) (dir. Juzo Itami)
Taxi Driver (1974) (dir. Martin Scorsese)

Touching The Void (2003) (dir. Kevin McDonald)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) (dir. David Lynch) (I know the critics hated this at the time, but I found it incredibly enthralling (because of the total, dadaist bizarreness (the inclusion of cutting-room-floor stuff, the moments of total incoherence, the occasionally nonsensical dialogue) and really powerful, a much better experience than Blue Velvet (the only other Lych film I've seen, which I wasn't moved by at all and didn't like))

Wall-E (2008) (dir. Andrew Stanton)

12 Years A Slave (2014) (dir. Steve McQueen)(I found this profoundly moving)
Zazie dans le metro (1960) (dir. Louis Malle)
Rank 2:

Amelie (2001) (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Annie Hall (1977) (dir. Woody Allen)

Apocalypse Now (1979) (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The Austin Powers movies
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) (dir. Coen brothers) (great until last chapter, which was confusing and anti-climactic)

The Big Short (2015) (dir. Adam McKay)
Bananas (1971) (dir. Woody Allen) (this was literally the first Woody Allen film I have ever seen, and I only saw it a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of a resident of Charles St Forest Lodge (a flat opposite my new lodgings as a post-nest organism))
Being John Malkovich (1999) (dir. Spike Jonze) (also saw this courtesy of above's movie trove (a merely 'virtual' collection acquired disreputably, unfortunately))

Black Swan (2011) (dir. Darren Aronofsky) (I remember liking this just for the nice symbolism)
Blood Diamond (2006) (dir. Edward Zwick)

Born On The Fourth Of July (1989) (dir. Oliver Stone) (probably would like this less now)

Bowling for Columbine (2002) (dir. Michael Moore)

Burn After Reading (2008) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Castle (1997) (dir. Rob Sitch)
Children of Men (2006) (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)
Contagion (2011) (dir. Steven Soderbergh)

Deliverance (1972) (dir. John Boorman)
Donnie Darko (2001) (dir. Richard Kelly)

Et Maintenant, On Va Où? (2011) (dir. Nadine Labaki)

Fargo (1996) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

Finding Nemo (2003) (dir. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich)
The Florida Project (2017) (dir. Sean Baker) (very good movie except I had an issue with the ending)
The Force Awakens (2015) (dir. J.J. Abrams)
Get Out (2017) (dir. Jordan Peele) (pretty funny)
Good Boys (2019) (dir. Gene Stupnitsky) (borderline Rank 3, but pretty damn convincing and relatable portrait of the sadness of leaving childhood, and childhood attachments, behind)

Gravity (2013) (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)
Green Book (2018) (dir. Peter Farrelly)

Grizzly Man (2005) (dir. Werner Herzog)
Hidden Figures (2016) (dir. Theodore Melfi)

Hot Fuzz (2007) (dir. Edgar Wright)

Interstellar (2014) (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Jaws (1975) (dir. Steven Spielberg)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) (dir. Guy Ritchie)
Lost Highway (1997) (dir. David Lynch) (a complex movie with an extraordinarily confusing final act... brilliant visuals and music)
Mad Max (1979) (dir. George Miller)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) (dir. George Miller)
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2016) (dir. Matthew Brown)

The Martian (2015) (dir. Ridley Scott)

Monsters Inc (2001) (dir. Pete Docter)

Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975) (dir. Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam)

No Country For Old Men (2007) (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
Normandie Nue (2018) (dir. Philippe le Guay)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) (dir. Milos Forman)
The Pianist (2002) (dir. Roman Polanski)
Platoon (1986) (dir. Oliver Stone)

Pride (2014) (dir. Matthew Warchus)
Rogue One (2016) (dir. Gareth Edwards)
Saving Private Ryan (because beach scene) (1998) (dir. Stephen Spielberg)

Shaun Of The Dead (2004) (dir. Edgar Wright)

Shrek (2001) (dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson)
The Last Emperor of China (1987) (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Last Jedi (2017) (dir. Rian Johnson)

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) (dir. Jonathan Demme)

Team America: World Police (don’t agree with Gary Johnson’s speech at the end: pro-aggression, pro-Imperialist propaganda, and totally false (Matt Parker and Trey Stone are stupid, unreflective “Libertarians”)) (2004) (dir. Trey Parker and Matt Stone)
Ten Canoes (2006) (dir. Rolf de Heer)

Up (2009) (dir. Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) (dir. Dan Gilroy)

Les Visiteurs (1993) (dir. Jean-Marie Poire)

Rank 3:
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) (dir. Bruce Beresford) 
Apocalypto (2006) (dir. Mel Gibson) (liked this despite its complete ahistoricality and its elements of crudeness)
Arrival (2016) (dir. Dennis Villeneuve)
The Black Balloon (2008) (dir. Elissa Down)

The Departed (2006) (dir. Martin Scorsese)

Despicable Me (2010) (dir. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud)
The Elephant Man (1980) (dir. David Lynch) (not easy to watch, and not exactly glad I watched it, but a good movie)
Ghost in the Shell (2017) (dir. Rupert Sanders)
Hail Caesar (2016) (dir. Coen brothers)
Her (2015) by Spike Jonze
Invictus (2009) (dir. Clint Eastwood)
Knives Out (2019) (dir. Rian Johnson) (solid entertainment)
Sorry to Bother You (2018) (dir. Boots Riley)
Sorry We Missed You (2019) (dir. Ken Loach) (better, though very different from, the film directly above it on this list, and possibly deserving Rank 2, but it is somewhat witty to place them adjacently)
Step Brothers (2008) (dir. Adam McKay) (in my opinion, this is the best Ferrell movie... I think the reason is that his improv style is very stupid and unsophisticated -- works perfectly for this movie)
This Is England  (2006) (dir. Shane Meadows)
Train to Busan (2016) (dir. Yeon Sang-ho) (a visually stunning and exciting zombie horror movie; predictable in some ways but still a good ride)
The Twelve Monkeys (1995) (dir. Terry Gilliam) (Gilliam plays with our sense of reality in a ham-fisted way (the most plausible interpretation given the clues presented and knowledge of everyday reality eventually becomes, unambiguously and decisively, the wrong interpretation, even though this leaves many things seeming profoundly odd/unexplained), but the plot is overall very enjoyable and the representation of time-travel is logical, in contrast to, say, Looper)
Vivarium (2019) (dir. Lorcan Finnegan) (extremely hard to watch -- too brutal -- but definitely a 'good movie' in its execution of this brutality)

Books I like:

Rank 1: 
Ages of Discord (2016) by Peter Turchin (wonderful!)
The Better Angels of our Nature (2011) by Steven Pinker (certainly don’t agree with everything in this book, however)
Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees (2018) by Thor Hanson (top read on bees... who knew that flowers as we know them co-evolved with bees, and bees only originated in the late Cretaceous (that is to say, dinosaurs didn't exist around flowers as we know them)?)

Catch 22 (1961) by Joseph Heller (really liked this when I was 14)
Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond (an absurdly wonderful book)
Dancing with Strangers (2003) by Inga Clendinnen (Clendinnen's imaginative empathy is a wonder to behold, in this highly engaging short work)
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber (since I found out that it has lots of shitty scholarship, it no longer has Rank 1 in my mind, but I'm keeping it here for posterity or some shit)

Debunking Economics (Second Edition, 2011) by Steve Keen
Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce (didn't love every story, but some I loved)
Every Thing Must Go (2006) by James Ladyman and Don Ross (used to be in Rank 2 but I read it for a second time after doing philosophy of biology and now I'm much more of a true believer)

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011) by Satyajit Das (never quite finished - but is a really superb book, dense with information and vibrant storytelling, and scintillatingly written)
A Farwell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic (2017) by Peter Wadhams (gonna post extracts from this soon)
Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution (2001) by Ray Jackendoff (what a book! Amazing)
The Future Eaters (1994) by Tim Flannery
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) by John Maynard Keynes
Globalisation and its Discontents (2001) by Joseph Stiglitz
The Greens (1996) by Bob Brown and Peter Singer
Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift (read about half of this when I was 13; slowly finishing as of 6/02/17 (British/Australia date representation) (though gets very boring after Liliput and Brobdingnag))
Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond

Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
Hiroshima (1946) by John Hersey

In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Basis of Religion (2001) by Scott Atran
Kill All Normies (2017) by Angela Nagle (worth reading! ... although her Baffler article, "The New Man of 4 Chan" had most of these ideas already)
Killing the Host: How Debt and Financial Parasites Destroy the Global Economy (2015) by Michael Hudson

The Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories (1964) by Anton Chekhov

The Language Instinct (1994) by Steven Pinker
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2001) by various authors
The Lizard Eaters (1964) by Douglas Lockwood (enjoyed a huge amount in - was it 2009? - when I picked it up at some touristy bookstore near Uluru)
Mathematics, Science and Epistemology: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (1978) by Imre Lakatos, ed. John Worrall and Gregory Currie
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville (I finished this and really loved it. Very clever and deep book.)

Oblivion (2004) by David Foster Wallace
Other Minds (2017) by Peter Godfrey-Smith (who is a very good philosopher and a very lucid writer!)
The Price of Inequality (2011) by Joseph Stiglitz

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce

The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies (2017) by Geoffrey West (I enjoyed this book a lot overall. Demonstrates the power of the a priori and importance of developing abstract theory in all disciplines of human scholarship, although of course I think plenty of stuff in the book, particularly the later parts, is on pretty shaky ground.)

The Science of Language (2012) (Dialogues between James McGilvray and Noam Chomsky on linguistics, philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, politics, philosophy of rhetoric, irrationality)
The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time (2014) by Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Smolin's third of this epic is far more concise, far less repetitive and far more incisive)

A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) by Bill Bryson (first read in year 7)

Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Daniel Kahneman
Throwin Way Leg (1999) by Tim Flannery

The Turning (2005) by Tim Winton
Van Diemen's Land (2009) by James Boyce (really excellent history book; well-researched, entertaining, sharp arguments)
War and Peace and War (2005) by Peter Turchin
What is this thing called science? (1978/1999) by A.F. Chalmers
Where Song Began (2014) by Tim Low (hugely interesting and excellent, learnt a lot)
White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
The Wizard and the Prophet (2018) by Charles Mann (a really brilliant book which has had a big impact on my thinking (roused me from a dogmatic pessimistic slumber), even if it suffers from a kind of simplistic overapplication of the titular dichotomy in the middle chapters (the categorisation works best, imho, as a Platonic thing, i.e. not everyone has to fall into one group or the other (Mann himself, e.g., is presumably neither Wizard nor Prophet), but it sometimes seems like Mann slides away from this))
Who Rules the World? (2016) by Noam Chomsky
Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018) by David Reich (an information-packed book which taught me a vast amount)
Rank 2:
A Banquet of Consequences (2015) by Satyajit Das

The Blank Slate (2002) by Steven Pinker

Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy

The Captain Underpants series (my childhood self would have ticked this one)
Can we avoid another financial crisis? (2017) by Steve Keen (very short - shorter than two, maybe three of the essays I have posted on this blog. Still worth buying)

Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
Chomsky and his Critics (2003) ed. Louise M. Anthony and Norbert Hornstein

Cooper’s Creek (1963) by Alan Moorehead

Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (never finished, much as I never finished Oliver Twist or Great Expectations)

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (my 13-year-old self would have ticked this one)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) by Edward Gibbon (never finished the condensed one-volume edition I was reading)
Down Under (2001) by Bill Bryson
The Essential Chomsky (1999) 

Farenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
The Hidden Life of Trees (2016) by Peter Wohlleben

A History of Western Philosophy (1945) by Bertrand Russell (haven’t quite finished)

How the Mind Works (1997) by Steven Pinker

The Horrible Histories series (my childhood self would have ticked this one)

If This is a Man (1947) by Primo Levi

Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace (would probably like this less now; at time, loved bits, found other parts really tedious (e.g. everything involving Marathe and, in fact, everything involving the Quebecois terrorists generally))
Innate (2018) by Kevin Mitchell (generally very important and sound systems dynamics perspective on the developmental process, interesting thoughts about noise and good argument that heaps of shit is innate without being genetic. Rest of book sorta generic psych stuff that's a bit more dodgy and got a little tedious)
Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009) by Robert Skidelsky
Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott (the first book I ever read on economics)
The Kraken Wakes (1953) by John Wyndham (read because of my friend S.M., to whom I am immensely grateful (for this recommendation and loan, and other things))
Manufacturing Consent (1988) by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (only read pdf online, and only perfunctorily)
Mr Stuart's Track (2006) by John Bailey
My Country: Stories, Essays and Speeches (2019) by David Marr (an essay collection covering more than four decades of writing by one of my favourite journalists. It's long but, honestly, could be a lot longer. For me, I actually enjoyed the personal, biographical essays/excerpts (mostly residing at the front of the book) more than anything else, although it's also very much worth re-reading his writing on Howard. Reason not top rank is that some of the pieces included are kind of boring and feel irrelevant -- it's not wall-to-wall gold.)
Europe: A Natural History (2018) by Tim Flannery (another excellent Flannery book (but not a Flannery classic, I feel) packed full of information covering a very wide range of scientific fields, tracing the ecological history of Europe from the late Cretaceous to the present along with amusing tales about the scientists who uncovered the major insights)
On the Plurality of Worlds (1989) by David Kellogg Lewis

On What Matters vols 1 and 2 (2011) by Derek Parfit (don’t think this book is entirely wrong either, unlike most philosophers)
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) by Karl Popper (only skimread this book (using an online pdf) and used CTRL-f a lot, but what I found was great)

The Pale King (2011) by David Foster Wallace
Reasons and Persons (1984) by Derek Parfit

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into the Human Mind (2007) by Steven Pinker
Super-Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance (2003, second edition; first edition, 1975) by Michael Hudson
Talking to the Enemy (2011) by Scott Atran
Ultrasociety: How 10000 Years of War made Humans the Greatest Cooperators (2015) by Peter Turchin
Who Stole Feminism? (1994) by Christina Hoff Sommers (though I don't approve of anything she has done since)
Why only us? (2015) by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky
Rank 3:
Cloudstreet (1991) by Tim Winton
Falter (2019) by Bill McKibben (sort of lacks rigour; a lot of pretty rank speculation... I hadn't read a McKibben book before this -- from what I had read of his previously, I thought it would be better than this... not to say it's bad)
Galileo's Middle Finger (2016) by Alice Dreger
Naturalism Without Mirrors (2011) by Huw Price (too vague far too often)
The Sceptical Feminist (1980) by Janet Radcliffe Richards
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) by Nick Bostrom
Truth (2005) by Simon Blackburn (not useful to me in the least)
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (2015) by David Graeber (some lapidary stuff plus plenty of fanaticism and shitty arguments)

TV Shows I like:

Rank 1:
Black Mirror (2011, 2013, 2016)
Blue Planet II  (2017) (just fucking superlative!)
Breaking Bad (2008-2013) (as of March 16 2018, just started watching this last week (maybe the end of the week before) via US Netflix via NordVPN. More than half-way through the second season now. The first season was perhaps the best TV I have ever seen. I agree with H.'s assessment of the show that I remember from 5 years ago, when he was watching it: "Impeccable".)
The Flight of the Conchords  (2007, 2009) ((have watched both seasons from start to finish probably seven times or more)

Friday Night Dinner (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016) (“Martin” is incredibly similar to my own dad, and “Jim” is such a brilliant character)

The Gogs (1994)

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010)

Jeeves and Wooster (1990-93)
Review with Myles Barlow (2008, 2010)

Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell (2012-)

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! (2007-10) (season 1 is the worst season (but still has some superb episodes), 4 is particularly brilliant)

Tim and Eric Nite Live (2007-08) (some really stellar episodes, eg election special and Valentine’s special)
Walking with Beasts (2001) (watched this about a million times when I was a kid)

Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) (watched this about a million times when I was a kid)

Wonders of the Universe (2011) (Brian Cox)

Wonders of Life (2013) (Brian Cox)

The Young Ones (1982-84)
Rank 2:

Blackadder (1983, 1986, 1987, 1989)

Black Books (2000-04)

The Chaser’s War on Everything (2006-09)
Downton Abbey (2010-15)

The Fast Show (1994-97)
Hard Quiz (2016)

Little Britain (2003-06)

(First 11 seasons of) South Park (1997-2007)
The Thick of It (2005, 2007, 2009, 2012)
Rank 3:
Adventure Time (2010-) (had this recommended to me as a 16 year old. Never watched a single episode until a few days ago (March 2019). Enjoyed the first few episodes of the first season.)
The IT Crowd (2006, 2007, 2008, 2010)
Newstopia (2007-08)
Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation (2009-12)

Musicians, Composers and bands I like:
Rank 1:
Anton Bruckner
Antonin Dvorak
Arvo Part

Augie March (Strange Bird is their best album by a significant margin)

Beirut

Dimitri Shostakovich

Fela Kuti
Gustav Holst

Porcupine Tree (a really wonderful prog band (though I almost exclusively listen to just three of the albums in their extensive discography, In Absentia, Deadwing and Fear of a Blank Planet (these albums all have Gavin Harrison as drummer (an out-of-this-world musician), and showcase Steven Wilson's electric guitar range and atmospheric composition at its finest (unfortunately, Wilson’s lyrics are uniformly terrible))))

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky

Radiohead (obviously)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (my favourite composer (sends me into convulsions) (as you can see, I really like the Russian Romantics))

The Shins (best indie-rock band (Chutes Too Narrow is a masterpiece of the genre))

Sufjan Stevens (I adore The Age of Adz, Illinois and Michigan, and I think Carrie and Lowell is a terrific album also)

Yann Tiersen

XTC (first got into XTC when I was 5, through my dad)
Rank 2:
Alexander Borodin

Andrew Bird
Aphex Twin

Arcade Fire (Funeral is the best album by a significant margin)

The Beach Boys (/Brian Wilson (Smile is a brilliant album))
The Beatles

Bjork

Brian Eno (I like Another Green World best – not that interested in the ambient stuff for which he is most famous)
Camille Saint-Saens
The Cat Empire
Cesaria Evora
The Clash

Crowded House
Dan Kelly
David Bowie (70s stuff and Blackstar)
Devotchka (only Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack)
Elvis Costello

Felix Mendelssohn
Frank Ticheli
Gustav Mahler

Hector Berlioz
Igor Stravinsky
James Carter (amazingly expressive and cool jazz found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_d0I97ZNl0&t=2s)

Jimi Hendrix

Jean Sibelius

Johannes Brahms

Johann Sebastian Bach
Josh Pyke

King Crimson
Kraftwerk

Led Zeppelin

Ludwig van Beethoven
Maurice Ravel

Max Richter

Mighty Sparrow
Miles Davis
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Paul Kelly

Percy Grainger (for Horkstow Grange)

Pink Floyd

Richard Strauss

Sergei Prokofiev
Steven Wilson

The Smiths

Tame Impala 

Tom Waits
Wilco
Yello
Rank 3:
Blur
Boy and Bear                                                      

Broken Bells
Cloud Control
Doves
Fleet Foxes
Goldfrapp
Gotye (favourite song is "State of the Art")
Kate Bush
Madness
Mental as Anything
Modest Mouse
Modest Mussorgsky
Of Montreal

Pixies

R.E.M
Sigur Ros
Something for Kate
*Speaking in early 2018, I've become super into watching Jazz concerts on Youtube since a few months ago, but it's a bit odd adding people like James Morrison, Dave Brubeck, Bobby Militello, Troy Roberts, Wynton Marsalis, Olivier Franc, Chris Potter or whoever else to this list.. Too many performers

Activities I like:

Being in a sublime environment, eg in one of Australia’s hundreds of excellent National Parks (higher pleasure)

Having an intimate conversation with someone (mostly higher pleasure)

Listening to really good music (extremely rich version of base pleasure, especially if it’s Rachmaninoff)

Writing something that I believe to be of value (higher pleasure)

Engaging in good banter with others (base pleasure)

Watching a good film (usually a mixture of higher and base pleasures)

Reading a good book (sometimes only a higher pleasure, sometimes both)

*Special Bonus List*

Unpopular opinions of mine:
I don’t like the films of Quentin Tarantino (vulgar, garish, corrosive to the soul and intellect)

I don’t like Seinfeld (seems little better than other American sitcoms which I also don’t like (singled it out because it’s so often singled out for praise by slightly intellectual or indie types))

I have listened to a fair amount of rap and not appreciated or enjoyed any of it (one reason is that I have a very low threshold for misogyny)

I have a Theological revulsion to porn (cross through sentence on 19/03/2019, at age of 22 and 1 month. Because.... just because)

**Speaking as 20/almost 21 -year-old, I somewhat cringe to read the following** I have very little interest in travel (I can find beauty anywhere, eg my backyard). I also hate Paris. **I still practise Stoic reasoning about happiness and I still try to 'see beauty everywhere' (I mean, the family-home backyard is actually really beautiful, 'objectively'), but I think the sentiment expressed here is extreme (and I was being edgy about Paris because I had a deeply miserable time there on French exchange). Not that long ago, I told this girl who I was interested in that I "used to have the really edgy view" that travel was pointless, and she didn't understand that I had changed my mind, which frustrated me, because it made me seem weird (weird in the way nobody wants to be weird) and very different from her, someone who had travelled a lot. I actually am extremely keen to visit more places around the world, as most people are!**

While I am (evidently) an avid listener of classical music, I find Mozart staid and boring (I generally prefer Romantic shit in any case (even Beethoven, who bridges the gap between Classical and Romantic, is too unadventurous for me)).

**Speaking as 20/almost 21 -year-old, I somewhat cringe to read the following** I don’t like looking at paintings or sculptures, and have never enjoyed a single art gallery experience in my life (contemporary art is, of course, particularly bad; I absolutely loathed MONA in Hobart (I see beauty in the everyday world (including urban landscapes), and in National Parks, and I therefore don’t really see the point of art galleries (and I happily concede that I sound like a philistine, but I simply don’t know how to ‘appreciate’ visual art without spiralling into highly self-conscious recursive thought vortexes about the fact that I am in a highly contrived situation trying to make myself appreciate a bit of canvas on a white wall surrounded by other people looking serious and thoughtful, and that’s inherently ridiculous etc)).  **I can, I think, avoid descending into those silly "thought vortexes" now...I try at least. Certainly, though, I would still much prefer to spend money on a camping trip than art gallery tickets.**

**Speaking as 20/almost 21 -year-old, I somewhat cringe to read the following** I think expensive restaurants are pretentious shams and I believe that, if you have a clear-eyed maximally unpretentious attitude, you can recognise that hearty, home-cooked meals are actually better (intrinsically more satisfying) than the deconstructed, ‘subtle’, ‘complex’ fare you get at $200-a-head venues. **I was never that confident about this even when I wrote it; I have had both good and bad experiences at real fancy places.**

I’m not a cognitivist or non-cognitivist about ethics (my position is unnameable). **Silly parenthetical comment, but first part is true. I think ethical judgments within the context of formal moral reasoning in philosophy definitely are truth-apt (if they are treated as truth-apt and we have some kind of framework of evaluation, clearly they are!), but I think perhaps that an expressivist or Speech Act analysis may make more sense for everyday discourse**

I’m a scientific naturalist who dislikes scientism (mainly scientistic attitudes towards philosophy).

My politics are very unusual. Roughly characterisable as ‘far left’ (I hate all politicians and I hate the economic establishment and all major economic bodies, I distrust all ‘concentrations of power’, and I believe the world is radically unjust), however I do also have a somewhat tragic view of human nature (more Hobbesian than Rousseauian), don’t like Identity Politics, don’t like Postmodernism, don’t like most far leftists, don’t think we could do without a police force, support nuclear **much more ambivalent now, with increased understanding of difficulty of safe waste disposal**, recognise the powerful dynamism of capitalism, think the idea of a proletarian revolution is totally harebrained etc. For a few months now, I have called myself a Post-Keynesian Moral Anarchist, which is a completely novel term with an intricate meaning that no-one on earth understands but me. **The most significant development in my politics after the time at which this was last updated is that I have decided that my major political preoccupation is ecology and the environment. I am desperately concerned with declining arable land and water shortages (as the population grows on a planet saturated with pesticides and other pollutants, with fertile areas plagued by problems such as salinisation, erosion, overgrazing and insect decline, and more extreme weather due to climate change potentially leading to major crop loss and general upheaval), I am deeply concerned with other effects of pollution on human and animal health, and I am strongly committed to protecting areas of awesome natural beauty, and precious ecosystems, across the world. To me, protecting the environment subsumes all other political concerns - and I see this almost as a rational requirement for a consequentialist in the midst of climate breakdown. The shit is beginning to hit the fan.**