It is now Throw Short People month. Three months remain in the year. Time continues to be stretchy. Maybe that's why today's weeknotes are a day late, or maybe I was just busy?

The World

• PH/Covid: Covid cases are still in a plateau or a slight rise. I must admit that I haven't been paying close attention the past week though.

• PH, surprisingly "controversial": This past weekend the PCSO lotto rolled an interesting number combination: 9-18-27-36-45-54. People were also surprised when the PCSO announced that 433 people had won and would be splitting the jackpot. A senator wants this "controversy" investigated! Sure, it's not like the country doesn't have any other problems!

• PH: In a bid to halt the rise of spam text messages, Globe Telecom has decided to block all SMS that includes links. Unless they put http in mixed case apparently.

• Ukraine: Putin announced that Russia is annexing several occupied Ukraine regions that went through the motions of a "referendum". Also basically threatened the liberal world order, or the West, or something. Many countries declare that they will not recognize the annexations. Our own DFA is yet to issue any statement, AFAIK. Shortly after Putin's announcements, the Ukrainian forces kicked the Russians out of a strategically important city in one of the "annexed" regions. I justly want Ukraine to win this war, but every setback Putin experiences teeters us dangerously closer to nuclear war.

• In entertainment that interests me:

  • Deadpool 3 was announced for 2024, with Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine!
  • Something else that seemed a lot less likely: Community movie announced for Peacock! Jeff McHale accidentally tagged the wrong Gillian lol. Hashtag six seasons and a movie.
  • Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Official Trailer - YouTube:
  • Magic stuff: First Brothers War previews dropped last week, though this is still the pre-beat. Looks great, and if I was still spending money on Magic and if I played Commander I might even be excited for the Transformers crossover!

My Week

• It's been a busy week for me actually. I had medical stuff to do (routine tests and doctor's appointments), and family errands to run (mostly accompanying older people to their tests and doctor's appointments), and some relatives were visiting from overseas, so we had meetups and were regaled with stories from faraway places like Houston, Canada and Australia.

• Also, trivia team managed to win an in-person quiz night last week! We'd been attending this particular host's quizzes for a long while and his crowd was always challenging competition, so it was nice to hold our own against them on his first quiz back since the pandemic.

• This past weekend I participated in Ludum Dare 51! A full blog post is probably coming in a day or so, but you can go ahead and play my submission at https://hungryroy.itch.io/10-second-pizza-delivery (It might be a bit hard)

• Gaming:

  • Managed to hit Master rank in Eternal last month!
  • Did one final Magic Arena quick draft stream for DMU, at least managed to end with a 7. Will probably try again when alchemy drafts come around.
  • Still playing SMT5 and Paradise Killer, though a bit less this week due to busyness. I really should get these games done!
  • Still trying to rank up in Street Fighter V. I got into Super Silver again early this past week, but then crashed back down. Week's record was a mediocre 28-28.

Media Diet

• Harley Quinn S3

  • Happy that this didn't get canned as a result of the Warner-Discovery merger/brouhaha. Surprisingly the best animated Batman series in a long while (despite being more of a comedy and not being centered on Batman). Even managed to sneak a few good BTAS references in this season. No notes.

• 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

  • I have mentioned I've been watching episodes of this show a lot during the past few weeks. I believe I have now seen every single episode. or at least the ones available on Youtube. (There is a playlist.) It makes for pretty good background watching since I can just tune out the nonsense parts and maybe focus on it when something really funny comes up, and I happen to enjoy the anagrams and number-solving portions as well. My enjoyment of British comedy shows has come far since The IT Crowd.

Some Links of Interest

• Noahpinion: A concrete vision of the liberal democratic future: IDK what the liberal democratic future eventually looks like, but I really don't want my country to drift towards the Chinese techno-totalitarianism model

• Pluralistic: 29 Sep 2022 Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject: Doctorow and Matt Mullenweg on Tumblr's history with adult content and an overview of the modern day gatekeepers controlling our platforms (who somehow manage to exempt Reddit and Twitter)

• Google is shutting down Stadia in January 2023 - The Verge: This comes as a surprise to no one. I'm actually a bit worried because Google bought Fitbit in 2019, which means it's only a couple of years away from hitting the average lifespan of Google products lol

• Google search “discussions and forums” highlights the results you really want - The Verge: I don't really use Google search much anymore, but I wasn't surprised to learn that apparently people often append "reddit" to their queries to avoid the poor quality results

• Neil Gaiman on Kindness:

  "We set our own standards. I tend to err, where I can, on the side of softness, kindness and forgiveness, because I’d like to live in a softer, kinder and more forgiving world."

• 1977: Sylvester Stallone on making ROCKY | BBC Archive

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

And some interesting stuff from Twitter:

• Very long set of threads about the the various revisions Tolkien made to LOTR. The initial draft was a far, far cry from the finak outcome!

This coming week:

• Family stuff: We are expecting a new niece/granddaughter in the family later this week!
• I still want to participate in some events like Inktober and Hacktoberfest, have to figure out how to get into those. (Although not yet sure if I'll follow Inktober itself or some other drawing prompt list... apparently the guy who started it is a bit problematic.)
• I think the new MCU one-shot special Werewolf by Night comes out this week, but I'm not really that interested as I'm not familiar with the source material. And I still haven't even started with Andor lol. I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.
• Alchemy drop for DMU on Magic Arena is scheduled for later this week.