Week of Feb 19th, 2025

Life

I went to a wedding over the weekend and met lots of the nesting partner’s friends from school. You know how groups tend to have their own dynamics that’s quite separate from each individual person? And sometimes those groups retain those dynamics despite lots of time passing and people growing - when the group comes together, that dynamic comes back. It is fascinating to watch someone you know intimately participate in a group like this and “change back”, especially if you weren’t in their life when this group was formed.

Lichee’s gingivitis is refusing to go away. The doc says we might have to extract his teeth? More opinions are needed. I’m tired of chasing health.

Health

Had a headache (come and go) three days in a row. Oof, this one really took me out. Played badminton early in the morning regardless. It was good fun.

I’ve been taking a folic acid supplement and a mood stabiliser along with my usual arsenal of omega 3, protein, magnesium (for the joint pain), and zinc et al. for the hair. The folic acid supplement is very exciting, but I’m afraid my body will get used to it.

For the first time in my life, I had an 8-day period. This was very concerning. Thankfully I bled a small fraction of the amount I do for 5 of those 8 days, but I’m still extremely concerned and need to track if this happens again.

Learning

I’ve kept my mandarin streak up, but I don’t know that I’m getting much better, conversationally. I’m not doing more than 15 minutes a day, and most of it is on Duolingo because unfortunately my monkey brain is more concerned about staying in the pearl league than learning the language :(

I’ve spent the last four-six weeks trying to train my brain to not rely on social media for rest or break time. What I failed to account for is that I was “self-medicating” long before I had access to a computer. I’ve used books and stories as a crutch to escape crappy real life since I was 4, and it’s been much harder to train myself out of that. I failed this week. I’ve become much better at taking care of myself when I get like this - I eat and practice nominal personal hygiene now - but I have a long way to go. I also don’t blow off friends who live close to me, but I blow off everyone else! And everything else too. Does there exist a How to Break Up with your Bookshelf?

Media

Reading

  1. I read half of Chinaman: The legend of Pradeep Matthew. I can scarcely believe that the book was not, in fact, written by W.G. Karunasena. There’s a self-deprecating, vulnerable voice that the author writes with that casually dips in and out of intense cricket intricacy exposition. It’s the same kind of voice in editorial articles like this one. I’d like to write like this some day!
  2. I also read half of Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. This is not to say that I had an emotionally neglectful childhood. But we all have ways we talk to ourselves that could be better - kinder, perhaps, or more accountable. Lots of us as adults struggle with conflict resolution or owning up to mistakes made because we didn’t see it modelled the best way as children. This book is an excellent guide into styles of parenting that can exist - which leads itself to styles of coaching, self-talk, and management that can exist. This book is written in an easy-to-read, conversational style with plenty of anecdotes that illustrate what exactly the author means with the academic language described. I’m hoping to finish reading it this week.
  3. I wanted an easy, comforting read on the plane so I started rereading Dungeon Crawler Carl! 5 days later, and I’m on book 4 of the series again. Someone help me. This book is the literary equivalent of Hades - bash monsters and participate in an excellent storyline along the way. If you read this book and talk to me about it I will buy you several beverages of your choice. The audiobooks for the series are also fantastic - almost as good as my other fav audiobooks - The Locked Tomb series narrated by the inimitable Moira Quirk.
  4. I listened to half the audiobook for How to Keep House while Drowning, a book I was gifted forever ago by Meghana when I was deep in a depressed hellhole. I’m not in one right now, but I wanted a relaxing voice to listen to while I did chorescare tasks. I love how gentle this book is! While a lot of what the book says I know intuitively, knowing and internalising are two different beasts entirely. I’m going to have to listen to this one twice! And I do appreciate having the physical copy, will have to sit down to browse and mark.

Gaming

I continue to have lots of fun with Children of Morta. The story is a little… lacking, but the monster-killing is just right and the character levelling perfectly calibrated to keep me (who has very little skill and mostly button mashes) well engaged.

Around the web

Apart from the embrace-cringe Harper Bazaar article I shared earlier, I also really enjoyed reading this article on LLMOs - SEO but for making your brand appear in LLMs. Both were shared by Ankur on different groups. It makes complete sense to me that LLMOs exist and will now start to pollute the already unstable responses generated from an LLM. Instead of LLMs or google, I’ve really enjoyed using Kagi, a paid search engine that doesn’t take ad-money and downranks results from social media and sites with lots of ads. I have been finding a lot more “old” results, independent web results, and actually relevant results in the *checks notes* 81 searches I’ve done since switching. Family plans are $20/month and host 6 seats, DM me if you’d like a spot on mine!