June is almost upon us, hopefully bringing some respite from the scorching summer heat.
This year feels like it’s passing by very quickly.
A quote
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. – Martha Graham, quoted by Agnes DeMille
The world:
- Belarus earned the ire of non-authoritarian states anywhere when they diverted a plane to arrest an opposition journalist. Belarus is ruled by president Lukashenko, who has held the office since it was created in 1994 (!), and critics have said he is turning Belarus into the North Korea of Europe. My only experience with Belarus before was that I used to work with a company that had a remote dev team in Minsk, during which I was surprised by how third-world their consulting rates were, compared to the rest of Europe. Now that I know they’re ruled by a tin-pot dictator, I’m no longer surprised.
- Tech: Google is going to remove unlimited photo storage by June 1. After reading this, I decided to also clean up some large files from my Google Drive, since the disk quota is now going to be shared across Photos, Drive and GMail.
- I don’t have any covid19 updates today. Cases are starting to tick up again though now that restrictions have been loosened.
Links of interest:
- Ursula K. LeGuin rants about technology
- Pretty sure already read this when it came out last year, but I don’t think I’ve shared it yet: The Guardian article about quizzing subculture
- 99 bits of unsolicited advice
- Blake Emal has compiled a thread of women to follow on Twitter. A lot of these seem to be marketing people, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but I’ll go through the list when I have time, maybe there’ll be some nice surprises.
- Native English speakers are the world’s worst communicators.
From the archives, this week in history:
- 2017: Donald Trump plays with a weird orb
- 2013: Overly sensitive PH officials call out Dan Brown for calling Manila ‘gates of hell’
- 2012: Philippine Chief Justice Corona impeached
- 2011: Modern format introduced to MTG
- 2010: I started using DuckDuckGo!
- 2006: X-Men III: The Last Stand
- 2005: Revenge of the Sith
My stuff:
- The DIY fix for my fitbit strap didn’t even last an entire week! I ordered a new one as soon as it broke last Friday. The package arrived today! And… I accidentally ordered a small size when I needed a large lol. I can still use it by pairing with the unbroken half of my old strap, but still, pretty dumb of me. =/
- Still sketching, although I’m starting to have trouble keeping up, I was a couple of days behind for most of the week yesterday. I liked this one I did of a kid on a giant chessboard, but playing around with the perspective guide on Procreate really made the final sketch weird:
- Watching:
- Movies: None this week sadly. Need to watch more movies this coming week.
- Gaming:
- Still playing a bunch of Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4 (probably only halfway through the main game content) and Root with the regular Saturday group.
- Been losing a bunch on Street Fighter V so I’m taking a break. Been thinking of getting into a different fighting game, preferably one with a more active playerbase so I don’t have to spend an hour trying to find more than one opponent. Coincidentally, Guilty Gear Strive comes out in June! We’ll see.
- Reading: I finished a couple of Hercule Poirot books recently. Not yet sure what I’m reading next.
- If you’re following my twitter triviabot, I’m planning to reset the scores and start a new season at the end of month (i.e. tomorrow)
This coming week:
- my parents are getting their second vaccine dose this week!
Edit: Oops, originally published this post with some links pointing to localhost. Maybe I should have some post-processing to automatically remove those!
See Also