Surreally Steph

1. Balthazar - Bunker

2. Miguel - Simple Things

3. The Chainsmokers - Roses

4. Tame Impala - Disciples

5. Jamie XX - Loud Places

6. Future - Where Ya At (ft. Drake)

7. Lower Dens - Ondine

8. Feder - Goodbye (ft. Lyse)

9. Casey Veggies - Tied Up (ft. Dej Loaf)

10. Lord Huron - Fool For Love

11. Foals - Birch Tree

12. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Sunday Candy

Both have mounting death tolls and have cost the US (and some of its allies) trillions of dollars, while remaining exercises in futility, but they have a lot more in common.

WAR ON DRUGS

1. Uncontained, escalating threat: In the US, Mexican drug cartel violence is no longer just seen in towns at the Texan border and has since spread all the way to quiet, rural areas in states like Oregon and Minnesota. Reports say that they've now infiltrated over 1,000 cities all across the US, emboldening them to even start muscling into Asian markets.

2. Members: Mostly poor, disenfranchised youth who have no better opportunities.

3. Effective tactics for recruiting 'talent': Cartels brazenly hang banners from bridges and signs over the busiest roads offering recruits a good salary, medical care, loans and life insurance.

4. They hire them young: Like this 14-year-old who was a narco hitman.

5. Persuasive marketing: Cartels produce movies glorifying their trade. Then there's narcocorrido, Mexico's answer to gangster rap.

6. Grisly propaganda: Beheading captives on video.

7. Not a friend to media: Chilling and unsettling to see that there is an entire Wikipedia page on journalists killed in Mexico - and it looks as if the list of victims is updated on a monthly basis.

8. Players may change, but the threat will never be neutralised: Power will shift, cartels will be infiltrated and dismantled, kingpins will be toppled and jailed - but as Pablo Escobar can attest from the grave, no one is indispensable in this trade and there'll always be more players waiting to fill the vacuum.

9. There'll always be a market for what they peddle: About 20 million Americans like getting high. When there's demand, there'll be supply.

10. No shortage of foot solders who live and die for them: Understandable in a largely impoverished country where the minimum wage is US$5 a day.

11. Elusive leaders who are as slippery as fuck: "El Chapo" Guzman remains a fugitive after escaping from prison for the second time in July.

12. It's a morally complex war: See the recent movies, Black Mass and Sicario. Also, zero tolerance to drugs in America means a disproportionate number of black people are going to jail and staying there, impacting their families and communities.

13. But there is hope: If countries like Mexico steered more spending towards education instead and reduced gaping income disparities, there would be less and less incentive for youths to get into the drug trade. Sure, that's a fairly optimistic view considering the lucrative profits to be made but this is an occupation where the life expectancy is like 26 and job hazards include finding your wife's head in a box. Secondly, drug legalisation. If and when marijuana is made legal, that's bad business for the cartels and will effectively wipe out one of their big revenue streams.

WAR ON TERROR

1. Uncontained, escalating threat: We all know about recent events. ISIS (ISIL, IS, Daesh, League of Asshole Pieces of Shit, whatever you want to call them) has gone from what was perceived as a thorn in the side of the Middle East to a sucker punch in the global gut.

2. Members: Mostly poor, disenfranchised youth who have no better opportunities.

3. Effective tactics for recruiting 'talent': By investing in an unexpectedly personal touch (they groom the young and impressionable the same way pedophiles do) and a well-oiled social media machine, enabling them to lure an unprecedented number of recruits outside the Middle East.

4. They hire them young: It's not just angry, young men in their ranks - they've also radicalised a number of fresh-faced teenage girls from middle-class backgrounds.

5. Persuasive marketing: Slick videos glamourising life in the Islamic State and a social media strategy lifted off the playbook of consumer brands targeted at youth - like the inexplicable #catsofjihad meme.

6. Grisly propaganda: Beheading captives on video.

7. Not a friend to media: American journalist James Foley was the first reporter to be beheaded by ISIS on camera and many more continue to be abducted and killed.

8. Players may change but the threat will never be neutralised: From the ashes of al Qaeda rose ISIS. Intelligence officials may have known about them for some time already but for the rest of us, they were a relatively obscure threat. But like cults, terror groups can quickly gain support and momentum while remaining somewhat under the radar.

9. There'll always be a market for what they peddle: The idealogy and sense of purpose and identity they sell in a region with staggering youth unemployment and formerly oppressive regimes can appeal to many.

10. No shortage of foot soldiers who live and die for them: Jihadists believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

11. Elusive leaders who are as slippery as fuck: Though he is believed to have been killed in a US airstrike earlier this year, the leader of ISIS is allegedly still alive, which is hard to verify when he hasn't been seen in public since declaring his authority last year.

12. It's a morally complex war: It's clear that ISIS are the bad guys and they need to be eradicated. But this monster was created by the West in the first place, largely due to their historical meddling in the region for self-serving interests.

Because isn’t real life an ad campaign you can art direct?

Instagram Life: Perfectly poached eggs on a bed of greens. #eatclean Real Life: Eating peanut butter straight out of the jar. #noneedtoclean

Instagram Life: Wing of a plane surrounded by fluffy white clouds. #travelingagain Real Life: Falling asleep with your headphones on, in an economy class seat that can only be reclined by like 4 inches, while drooling on your own shoulder.

Instagram Life: Artfully tousled hair, impossibly fresh-faced selfie (thank you, Amaro filter!) #iwokeuplikethis Real Life: Eye gunk, weird lines on your face from squishing it into a pillow for way too many hours after the sun has risen. #iwokeuplikethisandscaredtheshitoutofmyboyfriend

Instagram Life: Long, lean, tanned #hotdoglegs while sipping pina coladas on the beach. #trulyblessed Real Life: Sand down your backside. Figuring out which filter makes it look like your legs are cellulite-free. So over just lying on the beach that you're checking your newsfeed to see what all your friends are doing and getting very weird tan lines by constantly holding your phone up over your face. #trulybored

Instagram Life: Doing a headstand in front of a colorful mural. #yogi #streetart Real Life: A homeless bum just pissed in front of that mural. #downwardspiraldog

Ain't Them Bodies Saints was one of the most beautiful movies I saw last year.

I’ve met some exceptional people dogs on my travels.

Top to bottom:

1) In Tokyo, I came across this guy who was wearing matching outfits with his dog. In any other country, that would seem goofy, weird or even a little sad. But because this is Japan, he and his dog made it look totally cool and nonchalant. Like, Oh yeah, we just happened to put on the same outfit today. No big deal. You can tell that dog knows he’s fly as hell. 

2) Regular people tie their dog to a tree when they pop into a store. But in Shanghai, classy people leave their pooch on an upholstered chair in the middle of the sidewalk. 

3) While we were hiking to Machu Picchu, the world’s cutest mutt ever followed us along the trail from campsite to campsite, feeding off our scraps and utterly stealing all our hearts.

I saw Interstellar and like most people on this planet, I thought it was spellbinding, gloriously imagined and deeply thought-provoking. And I also cried a tidal wave of tears.

I love Christopher Nolan's movies - not just because they're so cool and slick, and always contain a Big Idea envisioned in cinematically epic style. But almost all of them have as its central theme: time and the slippery nature of it. 

In Memento, the protagonist's amnesiac condition rendered the passage of time irrelevant as he was doomed to be a prisoner of the present. What is the future to someone who can no longer build memories? In Inception, much is said about dream time and its relation to real time. Cobb and his wife spend 50 years in dream limbo, constructing a world based on their shared memories and seemingly growing old together but when they awake to the real world, only three hours have passed. 

The exploration of time in Interstellar is especially poignant to me because I think about relativity not just in the abstract context of physics, but as an implication of the human nature of subjectivity. Our individual perception affects the way we view the passing of time and time itself colours our memories of the past. The days feel protracted in our immortal youth and yet in retrospect, our childhood seems to have been over in the blink of an eye.

It's like when I think about the time I took this photo in Peru. We were hiking to Machu Picchu and one morning, we were awakened out of our camping tents by our guide at an irrationally early hour to see the sunrise. It was supposed to be spectacular given that we were in the mountains at an elevation of over 12,000 feet. But as I was impatiently standing there in the dark, anxiously rubbing my palms together to keep them warm, breath misting in the chilly morning air, it felt like an agonizingly long wait, almost as if the sun had to be roused from its slumber too.

Finally, the golden orb peeked out between the mountains, silhouetting them and then illuminating the snow-capped Andes peaks as it ascended to its rightful place in the sky.

And that long wait in the cold I thought I could not endure has become but a nanosecond in the warm glow of hindsight, a fleeting memory, a transient moment suspended in my mind as this single snapshot. 

You say we'll go where nobody knows, with guns hidden under our petticoat. 

- Chocolate by The 1975

Stars, hide your fires / Let not light see my black and deep desires.

- Macbeth, William Shakespeare

The one-year-old son of one of my best friends is just learning how to walk - although a more accurate word would probably be stagger, as in 'Jesus Christ, he walks like a staggering drunk.' He seems truly delighted by his newfound ability to propel himself forward, no matter how wobbly and unsteady his gait. Sometimes he careens into a sharp corner or a table leg but it's never enough to deter him from taking those fearless steps into independent mobility.

Oh, children in perpetual danger and incidental sunshine.

- E.E. Cummings

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

- Elie Wiesel

"We are preaching hope, standing on the bones of the past."

- John Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda

It's funny how street art has gradually evolved from an underground movement to a mainstream art form to a legit business. You can now buy prints of Banksy's work or Shepard Fairey's line of Obey clothing based on his iconic graphics, or even see commissioned pieces at galleries these days.

I'm not saying they're sellouts because I think they're capitalizing on - not betraying - their roots and ideology for commercial success. (For definition of sellout, refer to Liz Phair's fourth album...)

Still, I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to buy one of their prints or murals. Street art is all about context - it can only be understood and appreciated in the environment that it's in. It's about turning a corner on the street only to be confronted by the gaping jaws of a fucking badass shark or stumbling across a cheerful mural of Skittles-colored fantasy creatures in the middle of a wretched industrial area.

Plus, it makes it so much easier to identify buildings/locations and give directions. "Turn right when you see the shark, pass what looks like a crow trapped in an iguana and then you'll see it across the street next to the giant flowers with faces." 

- From Dr. Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

"My kid could do that." I've heard that said a lot about Jackson Pollock's canvases of squiggles and splashes. And though this photo features the work of the four-year-old next door, I have a feeling that if Damien Hirst initialed these steps and put them on the market, it would sell for a truckload of Benjamins.

If you watch Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop and My Kid Could Paint That, then you'll start to cynically wonder whether most modern artists are just pretentious frauds who are putting the 'con' in contemporary art. Are artists like Hirst overrated or is he a genius for being able to merge art and commerce in the style of Warhol? As most of his artworks are pre-fabricated by a crew of people on his payroll, one can't even be completely sure he's capable of drawing a better stick figure than my neighbor's kid. 

The general consensus seems to be that the more easily replicated an artwork is, the less its intrinsic value. But I love Cy Twombly whose $12 million dollar painting looks like childish scribbles on a chalkboard; and Mark Rothko whose painting (that fetched a record price of $75 million at Sotheby's!) features deceptively simple rectangular blocks of color, and not much else. Yeah, it's true that anyone could've done those paintings in the same way a computer could plausibly write a novel. It would be a grammatically correct novel to be sure, but that wouldn't necessarily make it a good one to read.

When you walk through any museum, you can see how art has evolved pretty much at the same pace as technology through the ages. With the advent of photography, the boundaries for artistic interpretation dissolved as art's function was no longer just to reproduce real life with accuracy. But it's also opened up the floodgates for a ton of bad conceptual art. Meaning: "I can't draw or make anything, but I have this great idea of putting half-eaten apples on the floor to convey the fragility of human existence and the brevity of life." (Maybe I should be an artist? Or at least a con artist?) Is Hirst's diamond-studded skull a mere publicity stunt or is it a genuine piece of art that creatively explores themes of mortality? I'm no art critic, so who knows?

The subjective nature of art itself makes it polarizing and ambiguous, yet strangely democratic. That's the best thing about it. Everyone can make art while everyone else is entitled to their own opinion about it.