What's Up
What's up. What's going on. What am I doing, reading, interesting stuff to share that I don't feel like making a separate page for. I don't expect myself to keep this super regularly updated or fully comprehensive of my activity - but it's a place to put stuff that I find noteworthy.
July 2026
- Doings
- Starting to learn some Greek in preparation for a short trip coming up.
- Articles
- Netflix character requirements: "have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along". This came up for me because of a really bad line in the S2 Netflix adaptation of Avatar Last Airbender, where a character did exactly that (Youtuber Drew Gooden agrees in his analysis here - also highlights everything else wrong with the Netflix adaptation, and it resonates.). Reading that this kind of bad writing is being "required" is so sad to me. Haven't read this full article.
- Music
- Been loving the album "Waves" by Bitter Ruin. Love the male+female vocals+harmonies. It's especially nice when the male+female vocals alternate in a song. Their voices are lovely. Highlighted songs so far are "Tom Thumb", "Ticker Don't Tock", "Leather for Hell", "Stampede". Regarding genre: wikipedia says "experimental pop", Rate Your Music says "dark cabaret, acoustic rock, indie folk".
- TV
- I've been rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender (the original series) right after having watched S2 of the Netflix adaptation (which, especially after rewatching S2 of the original (which itself is fantastic of course), my opinion has gotten lower and lower of). One particular episode in S3 inspired this note: Dostoevsky as Last Airbender. I'm also excited to watch the new movie which is being officially released later in the month (I have refused out of principle to watch the leaked version). And of course took this as a reminder to update my list of dreaming skills to work on with element bending (which has been one of my dream interests since I first got into lucid dreaming).
- Books
- Finally finished War and Peace (perhaps poetically, finished it on the same day as finishing my rewatch of The Last Airbender (which certainly, as a show, covers topics of war and of peace.)). Happy I finished it; definitely ready+excited to move on to other books. (I've been interleaving book-club books between chunks of War and Peace. But still just excited to move on.)
- Starting to read The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Movies
- Saw The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan). Fantastic film.