Roy Tang

My country:

• Friday afternoon the president sighed the controversial “Anti-terror law” that vastly expands police powers, allows people to be arrested without warrants on mere suspicion of terrorism etc. Interesting timing, right after China applies a new anti-terror low to Hong Kong (and rightly gets castigated for it by countries all over the world) and also right after the PNP (who promise not to abuse their newfound powers) are under criticism for killing some soldiers in a misencounter and tampering with the crime scene to cover it up. Many are afraid of the chilling impact on freedom of speech, but I like to think that I will be as complain-y as I used to be. I am privileged to be able to do that, so might as well keep going.
• Congressmen tightening the screws on ABS-CBN during the franchise hearings reminds me that: given how complicated the various laws and statutes are, anyone with an agenda who wants to harass you can always find some obscure laws or regulations that you allegedly violated. That is not to say we shouldn’t follow such regulations, but given when one randomly keeps digging up new issues, it becomes obvious that there is a vendetta at work.
• I often ruminate about what I can do to help the state of my country today. Or maybe even the state of the world? I used to think being a good citizen and making good voting choices was enough, but it’s not. The systems are rigged to perpetuate inequality, exploitation, and bad people in power. I read somewhere recently that one should imagine the path towards the future he wishes to claim and take the steps to make it happen, but I don’t think my imagination is up to the task at the moment.

My stuff:

• This week’s pandemic notes.
• A fair bit of consulting work for this coming week, might be busy.
• I have already deactivated Facebook. If I would be honest, I still find myself sometimes instinctively thinking about checking the Facebook feed. Hopefully, it’s an instinct that gets weaned away with time.
• Gaming:
  • I am like 90% through the FF7R hard mode run, but I’m currently stuck at a certain point trying to beat the so-called “hardest fight in the game”. Hopefully I can finish it this week.
  • Divinity OS2 inched along slightly as well
  • Saturday gaming group picked up a new board game on Steam, it’s Blood Rage, about vikings trying to earn glory for Ragnarok. A bit more violent than Scythe, lots more fighting.
  • MTG: I did six twitch streams/yt episodes of M21 drafting, here’s a playlist.
• Quiz:
  • Able to play a couple more online quiz nights this week, but still didn’t do well lol.
• Watching lately:
  • Some new movies on Netflix lately. Decided to watch Mission Impossible Fallout. I’m not sure if I ever watched Rogue Nation though.
• Side projects:
  • Need to plan out the next set of updates for the trivia thing, but I might be too busy in the coming weeks.
  • I changed the fonts on this blog. Again. Someday I’ll probably try Comic Sans just for the heck of it.
• Again: I should probably write more.

Recent links:

• This list of websites that spark joy is great, have some new sites to browse!
• A walk back through the history of web trends and standards: dark ages of the web. As someone commented on Mastodon though: “dark ages for development, golden age for content.”