“Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting” — Gimli

“Alas for us all! Such is the way of it: to find and lose. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Glóin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise.” — Legolas

― J.R.R. Tolkien, “Farewell to Lórien”

Some things I noticed 08/18/2020:
  1. How does a torpedo fire?
  2. People are being bred to be world leaders” ??
  3. Greek government expelled more than 1,000 refugees, sailing them to the edge of territorial waters and then abandoning them in life rafts.
  4. The Filipino Science Hub is an online platform that promotes STEM culture among elementary and high school students
  5. Why [have] those who obtained an education, ‘the smart ones,’ sided [with] the colonizers in insulting the capabilities of Filipinos?
    • “Bakit mas mahalaga sa iyo ang pagtingin ng mananakop sa atin? Eh ano ba kung mababa ang tingin nila sa atin?”
  6. The team used CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to knock out a gene in squid embryos, which eliminated pigmentation in the eye and in skin cells
  7. Watch Netflix Through a Filmmaker’s Lens
  8. an attacker can append a malicious JAR to a MSI file signed by a trusted software developer
  9. きまぐれクック Kimagure Cook
  10. i’m a lapper” ?

Some things I noticed 07/17/2020:
  1. “Suppression is the instrument of totalitarian dictatorships. We don’t talk of that sort of thing in a free country. We simply take a democratic decision not to publish.” — Yes Minister, Season 2 Episode 4, The Greasy Pole
  2. My first, instant thought was how incredible it would be to make a sculpture of her, in that instant
  3. It’s a plastic straw that’s stuck on that turtle’s nose. We found him again about two years later, he was enjoying his life.
  4. The eastern ice sheet lies mostly on high ground, , relatively stable; most of West Antarctica lies below sea level. Thwaites collapse is inevitable.
  5. European court overruled a 2016 decision that ordered Apple to pay $14.9 billion in unpaid taxes to Ireland
    • “This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it”
  6. We detected a coordinated social engineering attack by target[ing] some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.
  7. Mas magagaling pa ang senador ng Pilipinas kesa sa Senador nila. Bakit ba sila nakikialam, pakialaman nila iyong bansa nila
  8. A Scanner Darkly – Original Theatrical Trailer
  9. 10-year time-lapse of the sun released by NASA
  10. a robot to cut hair with scissors

Some things I noticed 05/20/2020:
  1. Will happen, happening happened
  2. I had to live with the fact now that I had an opportunity to do a 9 G maneuver in an F-16, and I tapped out.
  3. Meanwhile, the insecurely attached will hone in on the d word and project accordingly. ?
  4. They’d frequently talk in the podcast about being broke girls in their 20s, which is relatable” ?
  5. Bob Iger steps down as Disney chief, replaced by theme parks head Bob Chapek
  6. Disney’s head of streaming Kevin Mayer join’s Zhang Yiming’s ByteDance as TikTok chief
  7. Open source software exemplifies dialectics really well
  8. “Is Romanian a romance language?” “Da!” ?
  9. Dividing the Middle East – The Great Loot
  10. What is a coronavirus?

Some things I noticed 04/29/2020:
  1. “Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua”— the more difficult reading is preferable to the easier one
  2. Elementary, my dear Watson. (or colloq. “No sh*t, Sherlock.”)
  3. ‘Tis folly to look solely at facticity and not transcendence. First steps never firm.
  4. This is one of those fundamental protocol pieces that you need to start building terahertz networks.
  5. you don’t actually need to have a particularly competent or functional government to do terrible things
  6. Could have been better argued if both took turns gathering thoughts, but alas, social media is a mud pit (easily distracted by aliens).
  7. “I know it’s hard, but when you’re done with it, you’re gonna be the one who did it
  8. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.
  9. 素晴らしいです。ファンになりました。
  10. Hintayan ng Langit
  11. Inang Wika

Doorstop

Day 13.

There was a rock picked up from shore. Two to three fistfuls in size, brownish, irregular pyramid, of grit typical of sea stones. It was nothing special.

But then because it was around, there were times when it proved useful. It had its duty as paper weight. It’s now used as a doorstop. Those two things. Some traces of candle wax, so that, too. Still nothing special.

Sure there were times when it was nothing more than what it is, a piece of rock, collecting dust, somewhere. It disappeared for a long while once, unnoticed. And then on some cleaning day, it showed up, surprising everyone.

Toy Story was the first full-length film Pixar made. They were selling rendering software. The movie was to demo the ability to build worlds using only computers, new at the time.

Value arises from the proximity and interactions of instances of existence. That which has been around for long, has a great probability of being around for much longer. Where there is none to confer value, there is no value.

Someone gave me a pen as a gift once. And then I lost the pen. So I bought the exact same copy. Erasing the fact that it’s not the same pen was impossible.

No other piece of rock like the one I picked up as a kid exists. And yet it’s still just a piece of rock. Enough for today.

Some things I noticed 03/02/2020:
  1. Don’t read it just leave it.
  2. History repeats itself humorously.
  3. Taliban is plural for students.
  4. No description other than poetry could possibly be timeless.”
  5. United Launch Alliance Rocket Factory Tour
  6. chic Covid-19 awareness music from Vietnam MOH [engsub]
  7. meanwhile, in some open field