• Dictator's son and habitual liar Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr officially took over as the president of this country last weekend, a living testament to the power of propaganda and short memories. I did not pay attention to the festivities. In fact, I try not to pay attention to news about him at all; though I am paying attention to cabinet appointees and I must note that we still don't have a health secretary! The pandemic is still a thing!
• Covid19 cases are still on a slight uptick over here, though the number of daily cases at the end of the month didn't hit the "1000 cases in NCR" predictions I was seeing a few weeks ago. And hospitalization rates are still pretty low, so that's a good sign. Hopefully the surge doesn't get much worse and ends soon.

Links of Interest

Managed to sneak some stray links out of the link factory today:

• Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come! - Conservancy Blog - Software Freedom Conservancy: I'm interested to see how far this movement gets and what alternatives arise for those of us that aren't using github for useful open source projects and can't afford to pay for or self-host alternatives (I mostly use it for personal projects)

• Am I on the IndieWeb Yet? | Miriam Eric Suzanne:

• You, a Million Times · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer: Who should you be writing for?

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

My Week

• Got my last batch of errands done! Hopefully July will end up to be a less hectic month overall.
• Had to do a bit of unplanned work on this site's backend this past week, mostly because I suddenly realized I didn't have an easy way to reply to a comment that came in via webmention (and the reply should send a webmention as well!).
• At some point, I had to walk some 3km home in the rain (I had an umbrella) while wearing my sandals. I regularly walk that distance, but try to avoid doing so in the rain because it feels so perilous. I have to walk slowly and be careful (because streets over here will randomly have holes or dips) and wearing sandals meant I had to be careful with slippery surfaces. I was carrying a small shopping bag with some groceries too! So exhausting.
• Trivia: Trivia team attended our first in-person quiz night since the pandemic began! I will admit I was nervous about the gathering since there is a slight covid uptick, but it's been a few days and I still haven't developed any symptoms, so it's probably cool?
• Gaming: I completed Triangle Strategy! Regular Eternal and Arena daily grinding continues. Probably taking a couple days off before I resume any single-player games. After this week's trip, I might already activate PC game pass (there was a Grab promo to get 3 free months!) as well.

Media Diet

Managed to watch a bunch of movies this week!

• 12 Monkeys (1995)

  • This was so good. Excellent performance by Brad Pitt. Very bleak though.

• RRR (2022)

  • I think this is the first Indian film I have ever seen. A number of people independently recommended it so I decided to give it a shot. I had no idea what to expect and I was blown away. It's an insanely epic tale taking place in colonial India, about two practically superhuman locals who clash with each other and with the British colonizers. I only found out later that the two main characters are based on real-life Indian revolutionaries who opposed British rule. The film's (fictional) plot asks what if they had met during their younger days. Since it's an Indian movie, there is as expected some amount of singing and dancing (including a dance-off!) but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well those segments complement and advance the narrative (as opposed to the random song-and-dance numbers in the old Pinoy action movies.) I wish the local industry could afford to create movies that are this good.

• The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)

  • Decent popcorn movie. Ryan Reynolds and SLJ have excellent chemistry.

• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

  • Pretty good and very meta comedy that kind of becomes a generic action film in the third act. A good number of laugh-out-loud moments.

• No Country for Old Men (2007)

  • Not a good movie to be multitasking with. Dialogue is sparse, so you need to pay attention and focus on the action. Kind of a slow burn though. Javier Bardem is excellent and his character is terrifyingly ruthless. This is only the second Coen brothers film I've seen; the first one was Fargo, and I can definitely see the same style bleeding across the two films.

• Superman and Lois season 2

  • The whole Ally Alston / Parasite thing was ridiculous, and the conclusion even more so, but the season had some good moments. Clark needs to treat Jon Kent better. This series not taking place in Arrowverse confirmed, which annoyed a lot of die-hard fans. Probably a bit worse than season 1, if only because the villain and their plans were a lot less coherent.

• The Flash season 8

  • Ugh, so much handwavy sci-fi BS. I probably should give up on this series; they ran out of non-Thawne ideas ages ago! The next season is already going to be the last one though, so I will probably tolerate it a bit more.

• Ongoing TV Status

  • Caught up: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Orville season 3, Ms Marvel, The Boys season 3

This coming week:

• I will be out of town for most of the week, not sure how much of my usual nonsense I'll be able to indulge in. Next week's weeknotes will most likely be on Monday.