Weeknotes: November 10th - November 16th 2025
Disclaimer: This is a new format for the weekly report (now titled Weeknotes) and it is best viewed through the link (rather than email). It should be mentioned that these notes are always a snapshot of the week itself and lack the fullness of life - as is the case with any personal blogging.
āØ Happenings
- While I got my bike back from the shop with newly-installed winter tires and fenders, there seemed to be something off mechanically. The following day, I noticed that the belt kept coming of, so I took it to a nearby mechanic and he fixed it right up. I am really excited to be able to use a bicycle over the winter!
- I tried using my watercolours and oil pastels this week. It went well enough, but I want to get into the routine of working with them more regularly.
- For Remembrance Day, Taylor, Uncle Dan, and I went down to Central Memorial Park (as per tradition) for their ceremony. With the absence of snow and the hovering surveillance drone, it felt quite odd this year ā very short too. Afterwards, we went to Alumni on 17th Ave for sandwiches.
- On Saturday morning, Alida and I went on a bike ride down to Carburn Park. Her tire went flat though, so she has to take the train back. After the bike ride, I went to Norley's Authentic Colombian Street Food for sancocho, espresso, and tres leches cake.
- With even more AI slop filling up my feeds, I decided to transfer from Mozilla Firefox (which I have used since the late 2000s) over to Vivaldi as my internet browser, then signed up for Kagi as my default search engine. The former of the two has a built-in RSS feed and I have excited to try it out to make following personal blogs easier. Additionally, I have recently been having more challenges with my PC freezing and shutting down randomly. I decided to spend Sunday morning on removing old files, uninstalling programs, and cleaning the PC itself (which was caked in dust - holy shit).
š Reading
- How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler - Finished Reading
I only had a couple chapters left and they went in the direction I anticipated (the author's further exploration of their queer identity), but they tied that exploration into two very cool sea creatures; immortal jellyfish and cuttlefish.
- The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker - Started Reading
I picked up this book last week and figured it would be appropriate to read with the holiday season picking up. The author uses this book to discuss gatherings as a social concept, as well as how to responsibly plan and host them. Her primary goal is to leave the reader with the impression that gatherings should have a sincere purpose, that the hosts should demonstrate a "generous authority", and that rules exist for a reason (and can act as a counterweight to the exclusionary nature of etiquette). Very interesting read and does challenge my laissez-faire impulses with hosting.
š® Playing
- Victoria 3
This week, I have been playing through a few runs of Victoria 3 with the "Gates of the Bosporus" and "Better Politics" mods installed. I specifically did a run of Wallachia to form an independent Romania (which was difficult enough to do with the Great Powers holding my nascent nationalist movement from emerging) and a run of Austria to keep my multiethnic empire from imploding (the trick is democracy).
- Arc Raiders
I have been having a fucking blast with this extraction shooter throughout the week, so much so that I have been struggling to cut myself off before bedtime rolls around. Thanks Uncle Dan for the early birthday gift!
šµ Listening
- "There She Goes" by The La's (Song):
I don't know what it is about this song, but even since This Is England 90' opened with this song, I come back to this jangle pop song every several months and have it on constant replay. It brings me so much joy.
š Links
An article discussing the ghastly spread of "synthetic music" on streaming platforms. Most disturbingly, people are not able to tell if music is produced by clankers or not. "Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries and found that 97% could not distinguish between AI-generated music and human-written music." But of course, when art is valued for its commercial value (rather than as a means of genuine creative expression), Spotify and Apple Music will plunge popular music in whatever direction will devalue creative workers and their labour.
Priya Parker references this mid-2010s essay in The Art of Gathering. It details the author's exhaustion with the dating culture of that era and how ennobling chillness was viewed for that moment. Her opposition is born out of chill being "the opposite of something else too: warmth. And kindness, and earnestness, and vulnerability. And we need just enough of those things to occasionally do something so remarkably unchill as fall in love." David Foster Wallace would be proud!
š· Photos
