Well… not much, really, but some at least.
When it comes to my reading habits, I am trying to eat through my reading backlog. I have at least two dozen light novel volumes that I haven’t read yet after buying them. Every night before I sleep, I made it a point recently to try and read through a chapter of the book I started reading from. Currently, it’s the Volume 1 of “Haunted Bookstore” by Shinobumaru. I am at least in Chapter 3.
This way at least, I can start polishing off the number of unread books in my bookshelf so that by Christmastime, I can bring home in my luggage the volumes that I think I won’t miss. I have a LOT of them now anyway.
I do love me some books. And I have a lot of them back home in the Philippines as well. I might look into buying a new bookshelf in the IKEA back home as well.
Speaking of “home”… next year my plan is to invest a bit and look for a reputable agent to help me acquire my own condominium unit. That is a year goal I really want to achieve. Preferably near Bgy Commonwealth. My room back home is nice but I knew within a few years it’ll be packed. So preemptively, I should start procuring my own house to live in so I can put in my stuff.
A landed house would be nice as well, but my problem there is upkeep and security. I do not l trust any of my provincial relatives to “babysit” a house. Upkeep would mean routine cleaning of the front lawn, outside paint, roof maintenance, electrical stuff, so on and so forth. As I am overseas, that would be difficult to maintain. At least with a condominium unit, I can set it up so that I just pay all the bills as auto-debit, install a secure door and sturdy lock, secure windows, that’s it. Not much need to “do” things, the unit is protected from the elements, no worry for flooding if it’s a high floor unit, plus the unit will be more secure with the condominium security guards.
At least, that’s the main goal. A long-term investment. Secondary goal is to attend more blind date events. That is something for my own growth.
The 11.11 and Black Friday sales are coming in very soon. Do I have anything to buy? Yes.
I talked with my sister in Hawaii to buy for me a replica of WWE’s World Heavyweight Championship belt and a few WWE shirts as well, after I send her the money to buy. That’s the only expense I will make for Black Friday. It’s already hefty anyway. The plan for me is to hang that and the WWE Championship belt I already have onto the wall near my bed. Decoration, yes. Expensive decor, too.
For the 11.11, I plan to buy a new 4TB external storage drive. That’s the main plan. My current one’s down to 600GB left and I have to start splitting some of the content already. I also plan to buy early some of the Christmas gifts I plan to give out. Like simple chocolates. For my only niece, I might look into one of those fancy toys later.
Also, I want to try out a new protein powder. I finished off the last of my Dymatize 5LB last month, and my Orgain 2LB a few days ago. I did have some Optimum Nutrition double choco to use, but I find the Dymatize and Orgain types really clung well to my morning oats and made it pleasantly goopy, while ON’s whey protein just sadly didn’t do the same. Flavor-wise also lacking too. I’d have to do research by the 10th to see what I might go for.
I also want to see if there’s any 11.11 promo for a new sports smartwatch. This one is optional but I’m interested. My Apple Watch has served me well for so many years but I am already noticing the battery performance starting to wane a bit, and the watch’s paint starting to get scruffed. Maybe I’d try Google’s or Samsung’s, only if they’re compatible with an iPhone.
I decided to take a more aggressive hiatus from social media a few days ago. Probably only Facebook remains, but it’s going to be more an obligatory friends-and-family thing and not for personal leisure. After all, they’re there. That’s where they wish me and my family “happy holidays”, so no choice. Would appreciate it more if they will do it via videocall, but hey, take what is available.
For Reddit… suffice to say it has become the de facto echo chamber for many American Democrats ever since the big E bought their previous echo chamber. Nope, their majority’s echo chamber is definitely not Bluesky. That’s just a more focused echo chamber, full of people that will “cancel” you for saying the wrong thing. Think of Gab, but blue instead of red, that’s basically what Bluesky is. It’s literally in their name too. But Reddit has clearly shifted the same way X/Twitter shifted, only in different directions.
I’ve seen previously political-free sections and pages on Reddit became more and more one-sided, and after their country’s elections, it seems these blue people (and clearly same with their mods) become irrationally angry and looking to lash out at anyone and everyone, so it was in my best interests to avoid the site for now. They can make merry over there if they want, IDGAF anymore. Just annoying people trying to annoy other people who just want to… you know, make /r/pics be actually just pictures and not political meat-whacking.
If it isn’t clear yet, I’m very much centrist by default since 2008. I am a free voter. I never voted wholesale for a party, I voted for the candidates I liked based on their platform and agenda. I do not want to be “labeled” as for any party anymore. I do generally prefer to vote based on what I believe in, not what other people believe in.
For X/Twitter… I am also taking the same long hiatus for now. Just long enough for this shit over there at good ol’ USA to be sorted out and at least a month after the new old guy is sworn in. Because I think the current feed algorithm got badly whacked by the deluge of posts from both sides of their tribal shit. Before their election, many many weeks ago when I accessed it, my For You feed was clean and nice, pristine even. Gaming news, cute animal videos, artwork, movie articles, that’s all I saw. I accessed it recently just to post a blog link, the feed was hopelessly jacked. Full of Americans crying because Kamala Harris lost and they think they’re in some perceived danger or something, and also full of Americans rejoicing at how they now regain something they think they lost because Donald Trump won.
I’m sorry but until this For You feed at X gets stable again, I’m out. I blocked about a hundred accounts that day as well but they kept appearing like bad mushrooms. Both sides are too annoying and unmanageable for now. As someone not even residing there, I wish good luck for the people over there. Have fun or something. Your Democrats are full of massively delusional pearl-clutching overly-sensitive snobs and your Republicans are full of unrestrained self-righteous assholes. Your country rightfully deserved what you (mostly) voted for. But generally, I still like X for now. No ads seen by me yet! That alone made it way more appealing to me than Facebook.
For how long? 3 months. I’ll check back in those places again in a once-a-month manner by February 2025. Hopefully the blues at Reddit have mostly calmed down and the feed at X gets to be normal again.
I’ll just have to make do with just CNA and Al-Jazeera as my means of daily news.
Just for fun – you know who really, really loved that Donald Trump won? The US news industry. Specifically, their major news media’s executives, owners and investors. While their late night hosts are sobbing and their talking heads doing massive cope takes on air, their network bosses were probably booking their Maldives vacations in advance and buying expensive gifts for the holidays. I remember the Trump thing was such a huge business for them in 2016-21, so much so that CNN thought they could ride that wave long after the orange turd by launching CNN+… and well, grand opening, grand closing. But the prospect of another Trump flaming dumpster administration is obviously great news for the US news industry’s sagging fortunes. Another run of the “this is an apple” and “democracy dies in darkness” needless posturing again. Ain’t that two jolly shits for us in the rest of the world to see again – the orange man and the US media.
I did see a Facebook post from one of my US-based friends that asked, “why did Twitter become right-wing?”, as if it was some kind of plea to information she didn’t really know the answer to. I replied to her, “it’s because before Elon came along, it was mostly left-wing” and left it at that. I wanted her to realize the full answer on her own.
That’s part of what happened. Old Twitter’s admins were all clearly blue. I also agree it was run relatively well. Multiple world leaders have an account, it’s used in many countries, it’s very much one of the “Facebook alternatives” that managed to survive. People clearly liked it. But like the US drone “accidents” and exporting their sugar and fat-laden food everywhere, people were also willing to overlook or brush aside dangerous flaws if they got mostly what they wanted. Flaws like downvoting, depromoting, deplatforming and cancelling many people, mostly Republicans, making them feel unwelcome and unheard. That’s why many other sites popped up like Gab, Gettr and Truth Social came. If they didn’t feel that way, those sites won’t even exist. To be fair as well, it’s the same problem with leftists and Bluesky. They felt uncomfortable with Twitter, they fled to Bluesky. Horseshoe theory applies here – they may be on the opposite ends, but they acted exactly the same way.
I think the greatest breaking point for Old Twitter, overall, was when they permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account after the January 6 thing. His was the only single Republican account on Twitter that the admins could not dare do anything about as, well, he was the President, until that disgraceful incident happened and they decided to finally hit a banhammer on a prominent world leader. I agree that the Twitter admins believed they did the right thing, but in the long run it did way more damage than good, because while a half of their country implicitly approved it, the other half likely saw it as censorship. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Republicans left the site – well, not most of them, but generally they tuned out and started going to other places… like private Discord servers, forums, that weird Truth Social echo chamber, and maybe Rumble and Kick. And when Elon bought the entire platform and started dismantling the guardrails that the previous admins put up, they came back in. That’s generally the thing.
It’s not that Twitter suddenly became right-wing, it’s that the right-wing people that previously either left en masse or were deboosted started coming back in droves and the left-wing people who got very used to the curated-garden 5-star golden-glove valet treatment they always got from Old Blue Twitter did not know how to handle it. They did not know how to, for crying out loud, “co-exist” or have a rational discussion online with people of differing viewpoints anymore. They could not even be bothered with using the Block and Mute features. That’s what’s happening.
The online Democrats over there did not want to deal with people that did not share their viewpoints and political standing, and that’s a big part of why some people think X/Twitter became “right-wing”. And like my US-based friend, that’s a problem for them all over there to figure out on their own. If they figure that one out, good. Well, if they also figure out the external bot/troll farm machinery living in all their social media that is meddling in their society, better.
In the end, for me, X/Twitter isn’t an echo chamber anymore, and that’s ultimately a good thing, they can have it as a melting pot of people again. Sure, there’s nutjobs and nitwits and conspiracy peddlers and grifters on their site, lots of them. Same with Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok, every platform hosts some amount of filth. But I think the point is that it’s like that Pirates of the Carribean meme with Johnny Depp:
And that is the important thing to consider too, especially for people fleeing to their preferred echo chambers. People need to know some things are bad or unsavory. People have to know that shit exists. People should know how to deal with it in a mature way. People should learn to utilize their own provided means to deal with it, not expect the platform to magically do it for them en masse. People should learn how to co-exist with people they generally don’t like. It’s like going to school for the first time and you encounter an asshole for the first time as well. You didn’t like him, but at least you learned what an asshole is and start to learn how to deal with them, and in some situations, co-exist with them. Eventually you realize some things end up like the real world does – shit happens, deal with it, make a decision, live with your decisions. Not whine on an echo chamber why things end up the way you didn’t like and expect the platform to curate and make the decisions for you.
And oh yeah, the upcoming run. I’ll have to start with running on the treadmill again at 8K peak pace, see if I can finish 5K under 50 minutes.
I tried it this morning, I did a brief 30-minute flat treadmill run to see how far I can go, I managed 3.43km on a peak of 8kph running speed – I alternated between 6kph and 8kph with a 2-minute 4kph warmup on the start and a 2-minute 4kph cooldown on the 28-minute part.
Hopefully I can get my running legs again.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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