Roy Tang

This is 2021 week 3. Or week 2. Two and a half? How do calendars work?

The world:

• relatively calm compared to the chaos of the previous week. However in the US, a storm may be brewing over Biden’s inauguration next week
• locally: still a lot of confusion/inconsistencies around the vaccination plan. Or at least some senators think so. Meanwhile, we are close to breaching 500k cases.

Links of interest:

• I’ve been reading a lot about personal note taking recently, in a bid to find ways to improve my own systems. I skimmed this book from like 2004ish: How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think, which is like a super paper-heavy system. Probably totally impractical (for me at least), but some ideas there worth considering. The modern day equivalent would be something like the Zettelkasten method, something I’ve also been considering.
• I read this Substack post about culture being stuck in the mid-2000s, presumably because the Internet became mainstream and people started forming a hivemind around what was popular, and creators responded accordingly by creating more of the same stuff. I think there’s still some space for fringe tastes out there, but it is true that pop culture has seemed monolothic recently. What hits me most from the article is the phasing out of rock n roll in favor of hip hop, because a more diverse crowd favors it. I’m not really a hip hop person.
• Cory Doctorow blogs about his daily linkblogging process to celebrate 20 years of blogging. This reminded me that during my recent blog-hopping I also ran across Ann Althouse’s blog, which has been posting daily for 17 years without breaking the streak! I kind of wish I could be that prolific.
• I learned that the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, often held up as an example of frivolous ambulance-chasing lawsuits, was much more complicated than that. The woman was hospitalized for more than a week and had to have skin grafts, and McDonald’s refused to settle for more than $800, which wouldn’t have even covered medical expenses, leading to the huge jury award.
• Tom Critchlow asks why we can’t write code in our browsers?
• Daniel B. Markham argues that platforms might be turning us into idiots.
• I enjoyed this (kinda old) story about a guy who hacked a TV game show.
• Not a big fan of Tiktok, but I admit I have been enjoying some of the sea shanty performances coming out of it. Example one, example two.
• PH stuff: A trailer came out for Voltes V Legacy, which will be airing on GMA. I don’t have high expectations, but the animation seemed decent enough.

My stuff:

• Daily sketches in the sketchbook album. I used to crosspost them all to instagram pretty consistently, but now I only do it when I feel like it. Been thinking of getting off instagram anyway, but that’s something for another time.
• Watching:
  • I finished Spectacular Spider-Man on Netflix. I liked it, even if it was a kids’ show. Too bad it was cut off abruptly due to licensing issues
  • I also started (re-?) watching Attack on Titan, from season 1, as the final season has been getting some hype. Anime is hard to background-watch though (due to subs), so this might take a while.
  • Watched my first two movies of the year: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.
  • First two eps of WandaVision are in! It’s so weird. I’m looking forward to seeing how things unfold. Series runs until March, I feel like I should do one of my spoiler-free reviews when it’s done (haven’t done any of those in a while) but it feels weird to do it for a show that drops weekly.
• Gaming:
  • I finished Fire Emblem Three Houses! Will probably kick off the 2nd run sometime this week.
  • MTG: Kaldheim preview season in progress. I am fairly excited for the new set to come in, because I’m looking forward to draft, the limited environment looks exciting.
  • I feel like I should be starting one of the many Steam RPGs on my backlog.
• Books: Been reading Katie Mack’s “End of Everything”, I’m around 2/3rds in, so hopefully I can finish it and at least get 1 book in this month lol.
• Health: My muscle pains in the left upper arm are still there, although they’ve tapered off a bit, I think because I’ve been applying warm compresses twice a day for most of the week. Hopefully it will be gone by next week.

Looking forward to this coming week:

• Biden inauguration (chaos?!?)
• Sometime this week, I will probably put on pants for the first time since March.