A whole new month just crept up on us huh. I don't have anything particularly witty to say at the moment.

The World

• Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th week. No end in sight. Not sure if it's worth it to continue tracking this here since this may go on for a while.
• PH/Politics: One week remains until the elections on Monday the 9th. It's the homestretch!
  • There was some kind of Baby Marcos-aligned sortie near our house last night. I briefly considered buying a tomato.
  • I wrote a short note about my thoughts for the last two weeks of the election.
• Tech: Elon Musk has struck a deal to purchase Twitter. The internet is going crazy. Many have threatened to leave Twitter. Mastodon experienced a spike in signups. Musk is threatening many changes with a focus on "free speech". I feel like it's much ado about nothing. Maybe I'll write about it this week, if I feel like it. In case we are still short on takes.
• TV: The CW has cancelled Legends of Tomorrow D: I haven't caught up with the current (last) season yet, but apparently it ended on a cliffhanger, so they didn't even get a proper finale.

Links of Interest

• A Web Renaissance - Anil Dash

• Blog Diet: A Starter List For Your RSS Reader (Updated Spring 2022) – WARREN ELLIS LTD: Warren Ellis shares his blogroll, if you need more blogs to follow.

• The Technium: 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known: From a 70yo:

  • "Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic."

    "Making art is not selfish; it’s for the rest of us. If you don’t do your thing, you are cheating us."

    "So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone."

    "You cant reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into."

  I wish this list was numbered though.

• Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs | Brain Baking: More blogs to check out and more things to add to the ever-growing backlog of things I want to add to my own blog.

• Increasing the surface area of blogging: Some great ideas here, and making me think about some of the stuff I've wanted to do on my own site for a while.

• Bottled water monopolist admits recycling is bullshit - Pluralistic:

• Make Free Stuff | Max Böck

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

My Week

• Checked the Comelec precinct finder again earlier today, and luckily, the records for me and my mom are fine now, so it looks like I get to vote on the 9th!

• After last week's ankle sprain, I'm now able to resume my daily walking, though the ankle still experiences some discomfort when my weight lands on it. I am told it may take 1-2 weeks to clear up. Will wait for the ankle to feel better before trying to inject some jogging into the routine again.

• Some server problems over the past few days got me digging into this site's Django internals again and I think I'll end up working on some enhancements in May (most of which will probably only matter to me!)

• Gaming:

  • Tales of Vesperia (Steam): Completing this game has stretched past April now, which means I've been playing this one for over a third of the year. I did manage to finish the speed run this weekend. All that remains now is grinding out the few remaining collectibles and achievements. Not sure how much longer that will take though.
  • Eternal: Didn't hit Masters in any of the ladders this month, mostly because this month's grinding was spread out over Draft, Throne and Expedition. A new set is dropping in a week and a half, so that's something to look forward to.
  • Magic Arena: The latest set Streets of New Capenna dropped this past week! I did a couple of sealed runs to try out the limited format, but I did poorly. Hopefully I can figure the format out once I start drafting this coming week. The Arena stats email for Neon Dynasty dropped this past week as well. I missed Mythic rank again this month, although just barely.
  • Street Fighter V: Still on a bit of a losing streak, but during the last session I actually got an achievement! One of the three I was still missing for this game. One of the other missing achievements is for me to get to Gold rank, which seems to be slipping away. I'm still hoping to get there before Street Fighter VI drops next year!
  • I have quit the daily Wordle habit.

Media Diet

• Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

  • This is Discworld book 19, from the City Watch sub-series. The City Watch is turning out to be my favorite of the various Discworld subseries (though I admit I haven't really explored some of the other subseries that much). This one is more of a detective/mystery story than anything else, with Vimes and his ever-expanding and still bumbling City Watch trying to solve a series of murders in Ankh-Morpokh and also the poisoning of the city's leader. It's a reasonably good read, Pratchett is as always entertaining with his parodies.

• Russian Doll season 1

  • This is a Netflix series I've had on my list for a while, mostly because it's about time loops and I just really like time loop stories. I finally decided to get into it because the second season dropped recently. Like most time loop stories, this one takes the loops as an opportunity for character studies. The thing is, the characters here aren't really scientific in their approach, so they don't bother trying to experiment with the limits of their situation and so on. And I understand why this sort of show doesn't bother trying to provide an explanation to why the time loops happened (after all Groundhog Day, the granddaddy of such stories, didn't explain anything either), but I do wish the ending was a bit better than "Hey, you fixed your lives, everything is fine now." That being said, the show was reasonably good and Natasha Lyonne gave a great performance. The plot does a good job of exploring the human condition, commenting on everything from morality, philosophy, metaphysics and such, navigating between comedic moments and moments of great sorrow. Worth the watch. I'm not yet sure if I'd watch season 2 - the first season does wrap things up reasonably well, and it's the sort of story that can be ruined by a mediocre follow-up.

• Ongoing TV Status:

  • Caught up: Young Justice, Superman and Lois, Star Trek Picard season 2, The Flash season 8, Moon Knight, NCIS
  • Behind: Legends of Tomorrow, The Simpsons
  • Yet to start: Cobra Kai season 4,

• Currently Reading: Started Jingo by Terry Pratchett (a Discworld book). This one is an actual paper book again. These always take me more time to read.

This coming week:

• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness drops this week! Am planning to watch at a mall I haven't visited since the pandemic started, with a couple of friends who I haven't seen since the pandemic started.
• Moon Knight season finale! The series has had some mixed reactions, but I've mostly been enjoying it, and Oscar Isaac's performance in the last episode was inspired.
• New expansion for Root drops this week as well! My regular online gaming group still plays this regularly, so we're looking forward to how the expansion shakes up the game.