2023 January
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This past weekend was the Lunar New Year, which is only for people who live in countries that have a moon. Someone told me recently that the term "Chinese New Year" is outdated and kind of racist, so the preferred term nowadays is "Lunar New Year". That's fine I guess? I don't think Filipinos are likely to change their wording regarding this anyway. I'm also easily confused nowadays because when I was young the greeting was always "Kung Hei Fat Choy", but these days there are a lot of variants. As shared by my mom from an unknown source: Just
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Another week?!? They just keep coming! At least this past week had more pleasant weather, a lot less rain, which made my daily walks a lot easier. My medical errands failed and got delayed this week, mostly because they had trouble drawing blood from me for my regular blood tests. The person doing the draws at the nearby clinic always has trouble with my veins, but it was so bad this time that they gave up. Will try again when I accompany my mom to a bigger clinic this coming week. I have been poked with a needle so many
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(Click photos to view full-size) First weeknotes of the year! (With some change.) I have not yet decided what the format for this year's weeknotes will be, so we'll be making things up as we go along. It was a cold and rainy first week of the year making it challenging for me to maintain my daily walking habit this past week. It's not so much the rain (since I have an umbrella) but rather the weather makes me a lot lazier and more inclined to just lounge around in bed. I was therefore surprised that I still managed to
2022 December
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It's the final weeknotes of the year! At first I thought I'd do this one tomorrow (the first of January) but I also plan to publish my year-in-review thingy, so I figured I'll just get this one out right before midnight, and next year's weeknotes can start fresh as a new series with maybe a different format. The World Kind of slow final news week actually. The best thing was Greta Thunberg owning some far-right guy so hard he got arrested for sex trafficking. (May or may not really be causally related). My Week I always enjoy the lull week
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Hey, it's Christmas day! Waves at all who celebrate. And this will be my final weeknotes entry for the year! The World Eh, let's not think about the world for a bit and enjoy the season, no matter what shenanigans Elon Musk has gotten into this time. My Week The first few weeks of December were still a bit hot, but the last week or so has thankfully brought us the much-awaited hanging amihan (Northeast monsoon) which means our weather is a lot better and nippier even. Should last until late January or early Feb, this is my favorite weather -
One week before Christmas and the second-to-last weeknotes for the year! The World Science: The US announced a fusion energy breakthrough, supposedly a big step towards clean energy. Crypto: Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX has been arrested, weeks after the collapse of his crypto exchange. Twitter: Twitter dissolved their trust and safety council, then Musk banned elonjet, a bunch of critical journalists, and even links to Mastodon. Some intrepid reporter thought that the banned @joinmastodon Twitter account to Mastodon's "founder" John Mastodon, which quickly became a meme on the platform. PH: The much-criticized SIM registration law is set to take effect
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Trying to force weeknotes back into Sundays, at least for the last few entries of the year. The year ends on a Saturday though, so I'm still wondering if the Jan 1 weeknotes should be "Weeknotes 2023-01-01" or "2023 Weeknotes #1". How about "2023 Weeknotes #0", since it won't really cover the year 2023 yet? The World Still not paying too much attention to the world. It might be better overall for my mental health. Elon's Twitter seems to be going further into the right-wing conspiracy deep end based on these nonsense Twitter files exposes. The US exchanged an athlete
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Weeknotes coming in late even for a Monday; last couple of days have been busy. The World I will admit I kind of zoned out on the world this week. I think Elon was still doing his shenanigans? Like getting into a fight with Apple then almost immediately backing off? And also threatening to drop a bombshell about Hunter Biden that turned out to be a big nothingburger? It should be illegal to get into more than one shenanigan per week, but then again Elon might just ignore that law if it existed. Also apparently San Francisco authorized their cops
2022 November
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Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. A bit more than one month to go in a year! The World Protests have erupted in China, even in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, in what might be the biggest political challenge to the CCP since Tiananmen. Hopefully it doesn't end that way again though! The controversial Qatar World Cup kicked off this past week. Yesterday, some friends chastised me when I asked "Isn't the World Cup thing done yet?" Go sports! My Week Had a busy week. Lots of walking. Still feel really tired actually. I went in for a -
Getting tired of having to type the date all the time. Maybe starting next year's weeknotes I'll just number them from #1 to whatever like some other people do. The World It has certainly been a week, especially in tech. Musk's Twitter reorg continues, with all the accompanying chaos. I don't really want to recap everything, there are far better explainers out there. Hashtags like "#RIPTwitter" trended for a while following a wave of mass resignations after many refused his ultimatum to "go hardcore". Mastodon influx continues, and a lot of servers are having trouble keeping up. I have a
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The World Twitter chaos continues. Devs fired then re-hired. Features rolled out then rolled back. Mastodon userbase has grown at least 300% in the interim. US midterm elections last Tuesday, and surprisingly, Democrats managed to hold the Senate, and the House is still in play. The prophesied "red wave" did not come to pass. My Week Had a fairly good week! A bit productive even. Got to do some work on side projects. Went out for a movie. Not really a sporty guy, but on Saturday my brothers invited me to go play badminton with them. It was nice, not
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A Quote ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ The World Elon Musk's first week at Twitter has not gone well. He appears to be trying to speedrun the platform into the ground. He has haggled with celebrities over his proposed price for verification, fired half of the staff, and then complained that advertising revenue has dropped due to activists. Unlike other people, I am not yet convinced that Twitter is about to implode, but the odds are definitely not zero. My Week After the challenges of the previous week, I kind of took it easy this last week, in a
2022 October
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Monday weeknotes are here to stay apparently. A Quote On Oct. 29, 2022, 6:33 p.m. I wrote: To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life. – Viggo Mortensen The World Elon Musk has completed acquisition of Twitter (see links below for more discussion). He has immediately made a few controversial decisions. Brazil has rejected the re-election bid of the dictator Bolsonaro. A Halloween stampede
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Monday weeknotes again, very late this time because I was away most of Sunday and Monday. Was honestly tempted to just push it to tomorrow but hey, we gotta have some discipline. A Quote "We say in the grand scheme of things as if there were one. We say that's not how the world works* as if the world works." Maggie Smith, Goldenrod (via @rachelsteenblik) The World UK: Liz Truss has resigned after 44 days in office, setting a record for shortest ever term as UK PM. Rishi Sunak is taking over. PH: In a bit of schadenfreude, one of
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Apparently these weeknotes just happen on Mondays now. The World I don't have a lot to say about the world this week; a lot of it feels like more of the same. Escalation in Ukraine. China being China. Covid just keeps trucking along. Famous people saying stupid things. Etc etc. My Week Life is short, random, unfair and dumb. My week was going fine, but then Saturday evening I received bad news (about a friend) and since then the week has felt tinged with sadness. Still waiting on the eventual outcome, but at this point it is difficult to be
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These weeknotes are coming in late because as I told some friends yesterday "my tummy is being a dummy" and I was too uncomfortable to get anything done. The World William Shatner on his trip to space: "It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took
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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"
2022 September
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Bits and Pieces It is a stormy Sunday afternoon right now. Supertyphoon Karding is barrelling towards Luzon and we are currently on signal no. 4 I think. (The highest level is signal no. 5). This is coming roughly a day before the same day that Typhoon Ondoy devastated Metro Manila 13 years ago. This is the third supertyphoon to hit the country in a month, yet another indication of how the climate problems are intensifying. PH/Covid: Covid cases continue to plateau and maybe even rise a bit here in NCR, and the positivity rate is climbing. Coincidentally, Biden declared that
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Bits and Pieces PH/Covid: It looks like our downtrend is at an end, especially in NCR. Hopefully this mini-surge stays manageable. The World: Queen Elizabeth's funeral is tomorrow. The British have been waiting in a miles-long queue to view her remains (or at least the coffin I guess). The Queue has been called "a triumph of Britishness". I scanned this piece of scratch paper that had been on top of my desk for the past week or so: (Click photos to view full-size) The left half is a Superman/Batman doodle I did over the week. Sometime this past week, someone -
This week's header image was generated using DALL-E with the prompt a ultradetailed beautiful panting of a stylish woman sitting on a chair looking over a peaceful bay during sunset, by conrad roset, greg rutkowski and makoto shinkai. Bits and Pieces The big news this past week is the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch. She is succeeded by Charles III. And I think a lot of Brits discovered how many people on the internet weren't too fond of either their beloved monarch or their history of colonialism. PH/Covid: Cases seem to have plateaued, instead of continuing