A quote:
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” - Eckhart Tolle
The world:
- We are one week into the current NCR ECQ lockdown. Covid19 and the Delta variant continue to rampage through the country; the DOH reported 14k+ new cases today, the 2nd highest daily rate since the pandemic started, the positive testing rate staying above 20% for more than a week (signaling not enough testing - WHO recommended rate is 5%). The hospitals are starting to fill up again. Rumors are already circulating that the lockdown might be extended; businesses have pre-emptively said no, but what are we going to do if the cases just keep going up?
- The US is completing their withdrawal from Afghanistan this month, and the Taliban has rapidly made advances, capturing and now they are poised to take Kabul. Yet another failed American war?
Links of interest:
- Divergent association task. I did relatively well I guess. One of my friends suggested we take all the words we chose and put them in a Codenames pool.
- Nestflix is a website that presents a faux Netflix-like service except it lists out fictional movies and TV shows that were featured in actual movies and TV shows
- The case for optimism. It’s been difficult to stay optimistic with everything happening in the world, but we need to remind ourselves to still remain optimistic to help us find a way forward. Somewhat related: here’s a twitter thread about climate despair.
Visit the Links page for more links of interest.
From the archives, this week in history:
- 2015: I crashed out of GP London
- 2014: RIP Robin Williams
- 1965: Singapore was established.
My stuff:
- I celebrated my forty-third last week! “Celebrated” might be a bit of a stretch, since we are still in a pandemic, and the day was largely uneventful.
- Early this week, the Metro Manila mayors decided to ban outdoor exercise during the ECQ lockdown. So I haven’t been able to do my usual outdoors walking. It’s actually not likely that anyone accosts me for outdoors exercise as long as its within the confines of my subdivision, but I like to pretend that I’m following the law, even if the law is ridiculous.
- Still sketching; I am once again behind on the weekends, as it happens. Here’s a sketch of Gandalf. It’s not particularly good, but it turned out looking a lot more than Ian McKellen than I thought it would:
- Watching:
- Movies: This week’s movies: Skyfall, Jumanji and Police Story
- TV: Parks and Recreation rewatch is up to season 6. I found the first episode of What If to be a bit underwhelming. Final season of Brooklyn Nine Nine has started, and I know they had to address all the policing issues of the past couple of years, but the first two episodes felt a bit heavy handed.
- Gaming:
- No Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) this week, instead I played through four cases of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I’m enjoying the game, and I am getting a lot of screenshots for the eventual review.
- Daily fighting games ongoing on weeknights: both Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter V. I’ve already earned enough fight money in SFV to unlock Akira (the only season 5 DLC character I want to get) when she releases later this week.
- Magic Arena: I was looking forward to the release of Jumpstart Historic Horizons this week, but that has been delayed most likely for software development reasons (which I of course understand completely!). They’re giving us some free drafts as compensation, so that’s something. I also tried playing Standard for a while, but Winota mirrors are so boring, so I decided to explore the Standard 2022 queue. Still not doing well, but at least it’s more varied. I like the idea of Standard 2022, it’s kind of like Block Constructed, which deserved better.
- Regular Saturday group played some Root and Blood Rage again, as usual. I think I won’t be logging this moving forward until we pick up new games.
- Reading: Still comics again this week. Comics are books, but I should also start looking up for new traditional books to read.
- No quiz night this past week, just the usual NY Times crosswords and spelling bee with the trivia team. I also started doing the Newsday crossword online, which are the same ones I’ve been doing in the daily newspaper, having them online is more convenient.
This coming week:
- Aug 16 Akira releases on SFV! Oro releases too, I guess.
- Aug 18 Free demo of Tales of Arise is coming out!
See Also