2022-10-09                         from the editor of ~insom
   ------------------------------------------------------------

   I have COVID (for the first time) and it sucks. I'm back
   from a work-related trip to Toronto but no one else seems to
   be sick except for me so I assume I caught it on transit
   (train from Ottawa or TTC from Union to Gladstone).

   I am not someone who wants to live in a state of fear
   forever, but as soon as masks were not strictly required on
   trains and city transit most people stopped wearing them.
   I'd really like to live in a world where things don't need
   to literally be enforced by law before people realise it's
   still a reasonable public health measure, even today.

   (I have no reasons to worry and no vulernable people in my
   personal circle so this is just an inconvenience vs.
   something more serious, luckily).

   ---

=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779coR-XPTw
 > Action Button reviews Boku no Natsuyasumi

   I'm over 5 hours into this video which is ostensibly a
   review of an obscure (in the West) Japanese video game. I've
   already cried twice. I've watched a few of these videos
   (Doom, PAC-MAN, Cyberpunk 2077) and it feels like I'm being
   indoctrinated into the nicest possible cult -- familiar
   musical cues, callbacks to earlier episodes, fourth wall
   breaking and an increasing parasocial relationship with the
   host as he shares vulnerable moments from his past.

   Anyway they're good videos, although this might not be the
   one to start with. (Start with Doom, maybe?)

   ---

   I really miss my dad right now. He's been gone 13 years and
   I've told people that when there's a big event in my
   family's life that's when I remember how much I miss him --
   I can imagine him being excited for us moving to Canada or
   proud of Jack going to university for engineering or any
   number of other things.

   But I've started thinking recently how flat that way of
   thinking is. Those are checklist items, important as they
   are. I'm so sad he doesn't get to know any of these more
   grown up versions of us. He'd love talking to my boys as
   adults and he only got to meet them as children.

   I don't expect my dad would have stayed still either, I'm
   sure he wouldn't be the same person he was at 68.

   Selfishly, I can't believe the 26-year-old version of me is
   the one my dad knew. That guy was such a putz! I'm so much
   wiser and kinder and smarter than I was then.