November 9th 2025 - November 16th

TV

• Dorohedoro - Excellent visuals that remind me of the grunge of Cowboy Bebop and Akira - high praise. Concept is novel and enjoyable to watch so far. Don’t know how this passed me by 5 years ago!!

Movies

• Predator: Badlands - This movie sucks. It sucks not in the fun way. I love the worlds of Alien and Predator. I feel like they are the perfect duality that mirrors my favorite movie genres - sci-fi with real props and a fully realized world and shitty unapologetic 80’s no-brain action flicks. Predator: Badlands fails to be the spiritual successor to the original films and fails to succeed Prey which somehow made the tone of Predator serious and mature without sacrificing its fun and ridiculous roots. The story of Predator: Badlands is predictable, overdone garbage. Some useless insert for a beta/incel man must overcome his prejudice to da da dum listen to a woman. Yep, wow. The fight scenes are mid, with few exceptions. The visual are beautiful and some lore drops on the Yautcha is cool, but the continuity issues, bland story, and constant contradiction of character abilities/character just kills the vibe. I adore coming back to the Alien and Predator films for how imperfect, but emblematic of the era they were made in. Predator: Badlands leaves nothing to desire and I can’t imagine ever re-watching it.

Here is my letterbox’d review: 2.5 hours to prove that empathy isn’t the answer, it’s killing your parents!

YouTube

• Mouse Brands Are Ripping Us Off - It’s been awhile since I upgraded my mouse. But, my current wireless Razer mouse is having connectivity problems (both with the battery and 2.4gHz connection) and the grip is wearing in a very uncomfortable way. So, before I bought either the MX Master Mouse (canonically the most ergonomic and best work mouse) or another Razer gaming mouse, I did a little YouTube searching and could not believe that in just the last few years the Chinese mouse clone market has completely changed the mouse game. I actually ended up buying the SuperLight 2 mouse dupe in a beautiful Rose Pink colorway! So TBD on how it all pans out, but I’m excited to have an aesthetic mouse for once.
• 9 Years of Camera Setting Knowledge in 29 Minutes - Excellent, excellent, excellent.
• Infrared photography: the best sub-£200 project! - My new favorite camera content creator! This video exposed me (ba dum tss) to a camera mod I had never thought of! I would love to do this and make something of the winter season :)

Books/Manga

• Princess Jellyfish - On omnibus volume 2 (I think it’s volumes 3-4?). The story expands and you have multiple storylines progressing in parallel. I have to say it is losing me. I really liked the omnibus volume 1 and wish the story would get back to Tsukimi and Kuronosuke.
• The Fingersmith - Man, fuck this book. I’m 200 pages in and it’s fucking me up. More on this later.

Games

• Turmoil - A surprisingly addictive oil prospecting game. Game has fun progression and a good gameplay loop that doesn’t overstay its welcome. I find myself opening up a run more than I anticipated.

Music

• Broken Window Serenade | Whiskey Myers - Damn sniffle.

News/Essays

• Inside the hard-fought campaigns to create British saints - Just, wow. If you’ve ever aspired to be canonized as a Saint, here’s how/how much it’ll cost. Spoiler alert: it’s much easier to die and hope someone else does it all for you - now isn’t that saintly.
• The Chinese College Student Who Took on Annoying Elevator Ads - A cool story about resisting ad-targeting and surveillance in China. Brought a smile to my face to see just such a canonical college student moment - maybe we share things no matter where in the world we are.
• DNSYS and KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS Launch Dnsys Z1 Exoskeleton Pro - What to say? We have video game-inspired prosthetics(?). The natural extrapolation here is Pokemon-themed dialysis treatment, maybe then it will actually be accessible.