2022 September
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I already read the first Mistborn trilogy back in 2017. Happily, Tor ebook club recently gave away the next three books in the series for free, probably as a bit of promotion since another Mistborn book is scheduled to come out this November. Alloy of Law is the first book of the so-called Wax and Wayne subseries for Mistborn, set some 300 years after the end of the first trilogy. The world and society of Scadrial is now in a kind of western / steampunk era, and the book opens with our protagonist hunting down outlaws in the fringe regions
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Maskerade is Discworld book no. 18, from the Witches subseries. Took me a couple of weeks to get through this one, on and off. It's a combination murder mystery/investigation and parody of opera-related tropes. The exploits and schemes of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are always welcome, but I would have probably appreciated this more if I was into the Phantom of the Opera. Not my favorite of the series. After this one, I only have one more physical Discworld book I haven't read. (Which implies it's time to look for some more...) Side note: I really like this particular
2022 August
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Thirty-nine years ago Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on an airport tarmac. He famously said "The Filipino is worth dying for." Not sure if he'd still consider that to be true today, as a lot of online trolls try to tear down his legacy. The World PH/Covid: Hey, our cases have started declining, with most of the days this week under 4k! It's good news, and hopefully the downtrend continues. I guess other things happened elsewhere in the world also? IDK, not really paying attention I guess. Some Links of Interest Tecnicos y Rudos, wrestling and politics - Austin Kleon: I
2022 June
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The week has been a bit busy, and I don't have a lot of time today, so these weeknotes will be a bit short. The year nears it's midpoint, and it seems like the world continues to regress. A couple of the days ago, as prophesized by an earlier leak, the US Supreme Court struck down the 50-year old Roe vs Wade precedent, clearing the way for multiple states to almost immediately ban abortions. I am neither an American nor a woman, so I do not feel I have the standing to weigh in. In fact, as someone who grew -
Another exhausting, errand-filled week for me. For some reason being human means limited amounts of time and energy to do all the things I want to do. Covid19 cases are starting to go up again in these parts, which is threatening some end-of-month plans I had. I think most people aren't paying the rise in cases any heed, but I have to be extra cautious given that I live with a couple of seniors. We'll see how it goes. Markets are crashing, crypto is crashing, no safe place to put your investments at the moment. Cash is king. Support for -
I have had a busy week; lots of errands and family activities and some stuff I don't care to talk about publicly. And for some reason I feel more exhausted than normal. Maybe just old age? Regardless, I don't have any world news or links for today, so I think I will eschew the usual format I've settled into for these weeknotes. It's good to wander off once in a while, after all. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I suspect this review will be a good chunk of this post. This is a short novella, a bit
2022 May
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A Quote A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man alone can make a difference. -- the emperor, Mulan The World PH/Politics: Elections are tomorrow! Destiny is at hand, one way or another. The Leni/Kiko campaign held their final rally / Miting De Avance last night at Ayala Avenue in Makati, with attendance estimates reaching 800,000 attendees (!!). A lot of people, especially the Leni supporters, have pre-election anxiety. I wrote about my ballot and my final pre-election words here. PH/Covid: Thankfully, cases remain low. A lot of people have been predicting we might have a surge -
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
2022 April
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Today is Easter Sunday, if you celebrate that kind of thing. It's kind of a good time to start afresh. And maybe also to remember we are already three and a half months into this year, the third of the pandemic. A Quote 'We're all just people.' Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. 'Everyone's just people.' -- Terry Pratchett in Wyrd Sisters This one felt really poignant to me for some reason. The World Putin's invasion of Ukraine is now in its 8th week. Ukraine has managed to sink a Russian warship. PH/Politics: A bunch of
2022 March
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"Why did he have to go to prison?" "We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?" "Why?" "It saves time." I had a physical copy of this book and started it maybe 2 or 3 years ago and put it down somewhere and forgot to pick it back up again until last week. (Not sure when I bought it, I didn't own it in 2016.) Luckily I had a bookmark telling me where I had stopped and was surprisingly able to pick up where I left all with only a little confusion. Finished it -
I wasn't sure what to read next so I randomly picked The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin to read, going in without knowing what it was about. It was surprisingly really good! I really enjoyed it and I burned through the book in around three sittings, which is a very fast rate for me these days. (The book wasn't very long so that helped!) The book is about a timid man who is afraid to dream because he discovers that his dreams are able to alter reality, something he does not want to be responsible for. He
2022 February
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Finished reading this recently. It's a collection of "notes to self" written by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (ca. 161-180), known for being a Stoic philosopher. The copy I had included introduction, notes and an index (total around 25% of the book) by Gregory Hays. The intro was interesting as an overview of Roman life in the time of Marcus Aurelius, though some may find it a bit dry. I picked up this book because over the years I had occasionally seen people talking about the book, Marcus Aurelius, and/or Stoicism, so I was a bit intrigued. One of the
2022 January
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Finished reading this last night. It's the first book of The Expanse series, on which the pretty good TV series is based. If you're unfamiliar, The Expanse is set a few hundred years in the future, at a time when humanity has expanded to most of the solar system. Mars is being terraformed, and there are stations set up in the asteroid belt beyond Mars and on the moons of the outer planets. The primary conflicts in the series revolve around the two major powers Earth and Mars and the people of the outer planets, collectively called The Belt, who -
Decided to kick off the year's reading with a short one: The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. This was her first published novel and also the first appearance of famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot! I was able to finish the book in one sitting, something I haven't done in a while! I've only read two other Poirot books, and this one obviously came earlier in Christie's career. While it's still reasonably good, I found the pacing not as tight as those other two books. I guess it's mainly because those other two books took place in restricted environments
2021 December
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Finished reading this today. An entertaining enough read, basically gives a high-level overview of humanity's history, the different revolutions (cognitive, agricultural, industrial, etc) we went through and what tradeoffs each one made for society and the individual. Covers how ancient humans were subject to the whims of nature and biological limitations, how modern humans are on the cusp of overcoming those limitations and becoming gods themselves, and how we got there. Here's some stuff I highlighted: 2: The Tree of Knowledge Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens has thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the
2021 November
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When the son of the dictator announced he was running for the highest office in the country, I decided to add this book to this year's reading list. The reason was to be better informed about what life was like during the early years of Marcos' martial law regime and in the years leading up to it. The Marcos reign was a dark chapter in our nation's history and reading about it and knowing more about it can help us fight back against the forces that want to revise that history to make themselves look better, all for the sake
2021 October
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Finally managed to finish The Three-Body Problem this week, despite the recent challenges. It's a very... interesting novel at the very least. CHaracterization isn't super strong, it's one of those novels where the focus is on the world building and how it affects society and humanity at large. It's nice to have a decent sci-fi story that isn't so American centric though. The story revolves around two main characters: Ye Wenjie, a Cultural Revolution-era astrophysicist who was able to secretly establish contact with an extreterrestrial civilization called Trisolaris, and Wang Miao, a modern day applied physicist, working in nanotech, who
2021 September
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This is the second Le Guin piece I've read, following the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. This one is a full-length novel, though not particularly long. It took me about a week and a half to get through, reading a chapter or two a day. The book covers the attempts of Genly Ai, an envoy from the Ekumen, an alliance of spacefaring human worlds, who has come to the brutally cold planet of Winter to invite the residents to join the Ekumen. The residents of Winter, though human, are unique among all other known human species,
2021 August
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Well, comic strip collections, collecting the kind that comes out in daily newspapers, not the Marvel or DC stuff that comes out monthly. (Click photos to view full-size) Early this year, someone gave me a stack of them. I decided to go through them about a month ago after the last book I read, taking up my regular book reading slot. These aren't even the most well-known ones like Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert or Foxtrot, most of these I hadn't heard of before. I don't think they've ever been syndicated to newspapers here; if I hadn't gotten them for free,
2021 July
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Some stuff I've watched lately. Spoilers for Gunpowder Milkshake and MotU: Revelation are marked. Casino Royale (2006) Bond film no. 21, and the first for Daniel Craig. The final era in this James Bond run, looking forward to it. Casino Royale is new to me, but I've seen two of Craig's Bond films, so I have an idea of what to expect: a more serious and much less campy James Bond, grim and determined. The tone here is much closer to Dalton's two films than any of the other runs. Since it's kind of a reboot, it takes place early