Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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Weeknotes 2020-05-31

It seems difficult to write about stuff today, when the world seems like it is on fire.

For historical context, for the past few days the USA, presumably a first-world nation, has been in the grip of massive protests and riots and police brutality following the murder of a black man by four police officers was captured on video and went viral. Basically, many states are responding to protests against police brutality with… police brutality. Bold move Cotton. I’m not an American, but this resonates with me a lot because to see this kind of thing happening in a country that purports to champion human rights, how much worse can it be in a country like ours or a dictatorship like China where they don’t even give lip service to the concept? (Spoiler: we already know police brutality and EJKs are a thing in my country.) I give my support to those protesting, and hope they achieve the reforms their country needs.

One would question why I (and maybe the world) focuses so much on what happens in the USA, given that violence and brutality happen in a lot of other countries too. The main difference is that the USA is presumably a superpower and provide some semblance of leadership to democratic countries. The USA needs to shape up, they’re making democracy look bad.

It’s weird watching a hegemony fall apart in real time to weight of its own excesses. It’s like they’re trying to hard to make Deep Space Nine’s 2020s prediction come true.

Edit: I should also highlight in this space that this past week China rammed its National Security Law through Hong Kong, bypassing the HK legislature and essentially ending HK’s autonomy through one country, two systems. I’ve been to Hong Kong multiples times and know and have worked with people there, so this one hits a lot closer to home.

My stuff:

  • This week’s quarantine notes.
  • Weather slightly cooling off, with more thunderstorms happening in the afternoons.
  • Sleep schedule completely out of whack again.
  • Gaming: Moved along my Divity OS2 game. A friend got me some Steam keys for the older Jackbox Party Packs, so I have more access to games to play. I tried streaming via Twitch, but seems difficult due to streaming delay.
  • Quiz: We didn’t really do too well in the quiz nights this week.
  • We have uploaded some gaming videos to our trivia team’s Youtube channel, check it out!
  • Watching lately:
    • watched Zombieland: Double Tap. My friends and I really enjoyed the first movie when it came out ten years ago. This one was fun, but pretty much more of the same
    • caught up with Legends of Tomorrow in anticipation of their season finale this coming week. I have to say I had low expectations but once again Legends may be the best of the Arrowverse shows this season. I really enjoyed the penultimate episode where they had parodies of other shows.
  • Site updates: Nothing to announce!
  • I do have some social media related thing to announce, maybe tomorrow.

Recent Links of Interest:

  • Rediscovering the small web. Great post here, and I like the term “small web” to describe what I’ve been missing on the internet lately.

Slim pickings this week apparently. Been distracted by other things.

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