a list of things i've been obsessed with lately

I've always enjoyed snooping into other people's taste through lists that compiled favourites (temporary or in general). Cue, my most recent obsessions all in one place – this post!

PSY'S THAT THAT

My descent into Kpop and by extension Korean music was caused by my girlfriend two years-ish ago. For some reason I only got into BTS very recently. And that was the culprit of me finding this video and being completely obsessed with it. If you're not familiar with Kmusic, you might still remember PSY as the guy who wreaked havoc with Gangnam Style back in 2011. He's fairly well-known in Korea (I'm told) and for good reason! That That is an earworm. I have it on loop (I even play it in my mind when I'm not listening to it, lol). You can listen to it here.

JIN'S SUPER TUNA

Of course. Of course. This song has not made it out of my mind since I forced my girlfriend to click on the video thumbnail and she sighed in defeat. If you are a diehard Army, please look away while I type this. I was under the very wrong impression (covering my back here) that the BTS guys were still forced to play the perfect (boring) boyfriend role that is thrusted upon all boyband members in the industry. I was promptly informed that, and I quote, "they're so famous now they can do whatever they want". This video is proof of that. There's more where this screenshot came from, and the song itself is so fun I can't stop listening to it.

ANTHROPODENIAL

Exploring Jin's affection towards a tuna fish can lead to a lot of different, interesting concepts – such as, what is the way we regard non-human animals in relation to ourselves? From what I can gather (I haven't yet read the entire paper), De Waal (a Dutch researcher) wanted to respond to the numerous critiques that said he was making animals "too human" when he talked about them in his research. He posed that the opposite might be true – are we rejecting any trace of "humanity" in animals because we don't think of them as similar to us? Apparently (expectably) he's the author behind a book I had added to my reading list sometime ago, called Are we smart enough to understand how smart animals are? In this paper, he talks about the concept of anthropodenial, which I think is very interesting. Use yer JSTOR institutional license while it lasts.

RSTUDIO THEMES

I famously turned too many laptops unusable because, at 11 years old, I trusted strangers on the internet to provide beautiful Windows 7 themes, free of charge, nicely wrapped in a not suspicious .exe file. I know have a Macbook and not enough knowledge to jailbreak it and customize it to my heart's desire (and also a more acute feeling of how much money is worth), so I've resorted to customizing what little I can. This applies to my beautiful RStudio. I recently found this page by a guy named Garrick who apparently worked in the company that created RStudio itself! He does provide, free of charge, some beautiful RStudio themes so that you can stare at them while it runs your script. My personal favourites are the Rosé Pine themes (for both light and dark modes) and the Flat White theme (for light mode, my beloved).

PUMPKIN JAM

Wow. I swear, if you haven't tried it, you should. Back in January I had one of those express viruses that last no more than a day, but it rendered me effectively useless for a day and a half at least. I didn't eat anything for 24 hours. And then – at 5 in the morning – I woke up famished and made myself two toasts with abundant pumpkin jam on top in the dark. Nothing has ever tasted as delicious. There's simply something to it. Since a picture of the one I have would potentially doxx me, have this generic one I found online instead.