Roundup (15 July 2019)

[jaggedwolf]

Sick day, so an early post day it is.

Reading

I'm a little over halfway through A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark Tessler. I like the way he's laying out the information so far - I especially like that he doesn't get bogged down in the details of any of the wars themselves, summarizing deftly with each side's performance and the resulting territorial changes, and instead he spends pages on the tensions of various factions.

I finished the first part of Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. I read a couple of the guy's books back in high school, and got curious about what his blog was up to now. I admit it struck a chord with me, between Twitter just making me mad/sad the past few weeks and that urge to refresh all the feeds all the time. So I figured what the hell, I'd try that whole digital detox thing and ditch the unnecessary social media for 30 days (currently on day 3 \o/), including the litany of websites I waste time bouncing around. Though I've left the Twitter and Discord apps on my phone but muting everything except push notifications for DMs. My only other exception is once-weekly Dreamwidth post, hence this.

(Other things I should dismantle: Do I really need push notifications for my email? I should probably go back to checking my email once a day.)

Guess I'm hoping I spend all this free time re-learning Spanish, writing and prioritizing the gym and food - it's been going okay this first weekend. I'm also going back to a good old feed reader for the content I actually want to consume, like webcomics.

Watching

With two episodes left in the season, Gentleman Jack has been a utter and complete delight. I know they had Anne Lister's actual words to work with, but I adore everything about how they choose to frame her, the sentimental fuckboi and land-owning ass she is. Bumped up her diaries on my to-read list.

I finished Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid - squicky fanservice moments aside (which are...uncomfortable, but hey, this is why I don't watch much anime), it was a pretty cute watch. Domestic shenanigans with an office worker who suddenly gains a dragon maid and a dragon daughter <3. Thinking it'd make a good Yuletide request. (Also, perhaps the first time I've seen a fictional programmer who isn't a L33T hackerz but actually has a regular software developer job? The Python on the screens were at least syntactically accurate too.)

Theatre

I watched both What The Constitution Means To Me and In The Green over the weekend, and they both ended up being about the horror-absurdity that is being a woman in their protagonists' societies, so that was cheery. They were both pretty good though. I really liked the former - as scattershot as the one-woman performance is, it's clear how planned out it is. They also gave us all pocket constitutions towards the end of the play.

Other Things

Neocities is a thing and I made a very basic page that linked to all my other fandom preferences. Saw someone suggest it could be nice for exchange letters and that's certainly a thought.