The Promised Neverland

Just finished The Promised Neverland and, sadly, the title is way too spot-on. It’s just 2 seasons, and starts with a truly fantastic opener and Season 1, but it totally squanders it’s potential with an obviously rushed Season 2 and ending.

I can’t recall seeing that before, where I was watching a season and thought “this really should have been two or three seasons, not one.” It doesn’t really let the later parts of the story develop. There was a promise of a good show here, but it wasn’t real.

The story follows some smart orphans who learn there’s more to their orphanage than they were led to believe. Click for spoilers…

Rather than an orphanage, they learn they are cattle on a farm. In this world, demons eat humans. The demons gain the characteristics of a human upon eating them, so the smarter and stronger they are, the better and more delicious. The farms exist to breed tasty ones.

This sort of backfires when some brilliant 10 years olds discover this and make plans to escape (and save everyone, of course). The first season ends with their escape, which is great.

Season 2 rushes through teaching you about the demon world and how this setup came to be: capitalism. One of the kids turns into Oppenheimer for a too short period, and there’s miraculously a demon girl with some special blood so demons no longer need to eat humans. That’s a problem in a capitalist society where access to food is what keeps laborers in check. The kids start a demon peasant uprising and free all the humans, and along the way we barely learn anything about the actual antagonists.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this one unless you know going in you’re going to be salty at the end.

The upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake looks incredible! But I don’t have a Switch 2 and don’t feel like buying a whole system for it. Need to figure out who might be down to loan. Maybe the library? Although any loan/borrow situation means I can’t take my sweet time beating it. 🤔

We’re down in North Carolina for a week. I was surprised at how fast we were able to make it driving — no traffic, good weather, no dog issues, only one stop. Maybe 9-10 hours? I’m not expecting such a smooth return trip. (Update: It was fine!)

My brother moved down here this summer, from NY to just outside Wilmington. My aunt lives a few hours away, and my in-laws live in Raleigh. My mom has been talking about moving down here for years, and my brother being here now I think will seal it. I give them 1-2 more years. I suppose I should plan to get used to this drive.

Mental note: don’t come in the summer 🥵

Fears Brunswick 38 “Orchid”

I added a new watch to the collection this weekend! I say “the collection” and not “my collection” because technically I bought this for my wife, but she had full knowledge that I will steal it from time to time. And it’s going to live in my watch box (she doesn’t have one). It’s our first official house watch.¹

Ain’t she puuurty? The pictures don’t do the pink mother-of-pearl dial justice. Must be seen in person, in various lighting.

I’ve mentioned it once before on this blog, but I’m part of that statistic that didn’t expect to get so into wristwatches over the pandemic. As my (modest) collection has grown, I’ve been wanting to buy my wife a quality watch for some time now. She’s got some watches, even some I’ve given her like a vintage Bulova, but I’m quite excited to have finally found something new and unique and well made that she also can’t stop staring at when she wears it.

DM Vibing: When your wife is a PC

One DM problem I’m struggling with lately is trying not to give too much away to my wife, who is a player at my table, outside the game.

This is a good problem to have — after many years of trying, she is finally having fun with D&D and it’s now another avenue for us to connect with each other. It’s great to play together! However, I’m still a new DM, and outside the game we talk about sessions. The conversation makes me want to talk about future ideas, plans, questions, etc, but obviously I can’t without spoiling the game for her.

I can find DM community elsewhere, like Reddit or my Monday night table (where I’m a player), so it’s not an unsolvable problem, but that’s not what I’m after. Only being able to talk to her about half the thing we’re doing together is always going to impact just how much of this is a thing we’re doing together…

That’s a shame.

Marvel Tokon’s Deadpool References

I haven’t talked about it much on here before, but my friends know I’m a big fan of fighting games, like the Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom series. I don’t really play them as much anymore (I was never any good), but I watch FGC tournaments often on YouTube and try to keep up with the scene.

New fighting game on the block Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls just released, from the same makers as GG Strive, and so far it looks very promising and enjoyable. But by far the most exciting part has been their treatment for Deadpool. The merc with a mouth is known for breaking the fourth wall, and the design team took that literally by having him steal tons of moves from other fighting games. This is beyond impressive:

You can tell this game (and Deadpool in particular) is a labor of love from passionate and longtime fans of the FGC. It reminds me to not forget about the power of “easter eggs” and special unexpected twists.

Deep Blue

I’m sitting at Chicago O’Hare airport waiting to board our re-booked flight home after our original flight last night was cancelled, while we were on the plane. Apparently after all the delays, the pilots had been working/flying longer than the legally allowed length of time, and they only figured that out on the tarmac. Anyway, this is as good a time as any to blog.

As I attempt to keep up with how AI is ever-changing the software industry on a daily basis in ways impossible to predict, I’ve been following and enjoying Simon Willison’s blog. Somehow I missed this new term coined earlier this year that resonates with me deeply. Paraphrasing the important bits:

We coined a new term … covering the sense of psychological ennui leading into existential dread that many software developers are feeling thanks to the encroachment of generative AI into their field of work.

We’re calling it Deep Blue.

… Spending your teenage years tinkering with computers turned out to be a very smart investment in your future. The idea that this could all be stripped away by a chatbot is deeply upsetting.

I think this is an issue which is causing genuine mental anguish for a lot of people in our community. Giving it a name makes it easier for us to have conversations about it.

I love it. It’s both accurate in terms of color theory (blue is frequently associated with feelings of ennui and sadness) and in terms of AI — Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997.

Falling Slowly

Glen Hansard died in a tragic accident yesterday. I don’t really know him, never seen Once nor his other acting roles, nor listened to much of his music. But my wife and I are big fans of cancelled-too-early The Last Man on Earth, which is a particular brand of wacky Will Forte comedy. In some later season, he and Jason Sudeikis sing Falling Slowly a toooon —

Maybe time for a third or fourth rewatch for us?

I just want to remember everything I ever saw

Inject this straight into my veins 💉🤤 —

I’ve got some friends that are huge The Menzingers fans. I don’t count myself amongst their ranks, but some of their anthems just hit right. This is speaking to me and my feels right now. I wish it were longer.

It also captures why I was so into photography for so many years — those photos were more for my memories than artistic endeavors.

Now: July 2026

Summer in NYC. It’s hot, the Knicks won the championship(!), the World Cup is underway, I turned 40, and life at the moment is a big question mark. I seem to be at a life transition point with no obvious path. Growing up I don’t think I considered past this moment in time.

We returned from our 🇯🇵 Japan trip in mid-June. It was a bit of a whirlwind vacation, typical highs and lows, but I’m already looking back fondly and forgetting the lows. I engaged in a ~~bit~~ lot of Japanese retail therapy, and have no regrets. I’ve been itching to go back for a decade, and I guess I needed to get it all out of my system. We’re already talking about the next time we go, which I suspect will be a lot more chill. The question is: Hokkaido or Okinawa?

I’ve been considering since the start of this year that I might have to look for auxiliary income after that trip was over, but now on the other side I have very little motivation to do so. I like working on Pika and it feels like momentum. We just shipped The Pika Pulse, I finally finished Tables, and I’m about to get back into Custom Embeds (🤫 if you’re seeing this on Pulse). [Edit: They’re live!]

But I did make two big life changes this month:

I vibe-coded an itinerary app for my trip to Japan, then binned it

I’m leaving for 🇯🇵 Japan on Monday, and I’m ready to admit that, as much as I want to do it more, travel stresses me out 😓 Between the planning and the booking and the packing and the FOMO and the waiting, I always get so anxious leading up to it. This can sometimes (often?) impact my enjoyment of said trip.

A month ago we contracted a friend of a friend to help with the planning. In some ways this took a burden off me, which is good, and we quickly got hotels and things booked I was procrastinating. I’m thankful. On the other hand, the constant back-and-forth and questions and itinerary creation felt even more heavy with a third party in the mix. I worry our itinerary is now too packed. I suppose I want a more laidback trip than is planned on paper? Was that his fault or mine? (Almost certainly mine.)

One of my stressors is that the deliverable from this contractor is a PDF itinerary with dates and times. It’s not editable, it’s not mobile friendly, and it’s especially irksome that page breaks land in the middle of days, rather than clean breaks (Update: this bit was fixed in the final version of the doc). It’s not going to be user-friendly when we’re there, walking about and checking in from a phone, and wanting to add to it.

DM Vibing: Beyond Lost Mines of Phandelver

My players are having a blast. They fully defeated Venomfang and liberated Thundertree, started acquired interesting and unique magic items, just saved Gundren, and are even starting to have character arcs, highs and lows, connected to their backstory. Every session I can see them anticipating the next session, and considering how they might bring some creativity to their next character choices. It’s definitely fun and motivating to me as a new DM to keep it up.

The problem is LMoP ends soon, after the next chapter. They’ll be level 5, but now highly invested in their characters and wanting to continue their arcs. How do I pull that off? Most of the written modules start at level 1.

The 2024 rewrite of LMoP smashed it together with Shattered Obelisk for levels 5-8, and after reading that I thought it sucked. There’s literally no connection between the two stories, and Obelisk is fucking weird. It doesn’t fit the vibe of this party.

You don’t have to be a hardcore fan to root for a team

I’m not a big Knicks fan, but I am a big New York fan, and it’s really easy to get swept up in the city’s energy when they’re doing so well¹. SidetalkNYC captures this beautifully.

I want New York to win, always. That’s enough for me to root for the Knicks in these playoffs! Though, OG Anunoby’s injury makes me nervous. I know enough to know he’s a quiet but pivotal piece for the team on both ends of the floor.

There’s likely a lesson in here to extrapolate this out beyond sports — it’s okay to root for someone, or some group, or some thing without having to be a lifelong fan. But I’m not here for big philosophical takes, so I won’t do that.

Let’s go Knicks.

Big 🙏 to Every Toilet in New York for taking me to Game 2 against Philly, a hard fought way-too-many-fouls grind of a win.

I’m not a fervent follower of John Goblikon, nor Randy Feltface, but I have found both of them hilarious in the past and thoroughly enjoyed this, what I suppose can be called an episode of a podcast 🤣 —

A little short film about Norm MacDonald, by Aron Fromm —

Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender

So the full movie leaked, and I watched it, and it was SOOO good, omg 🤯

Yes, I’m a huge ATLA fan, and this movie was peak Avatar — the writing, the story, the animation, the characters, the villian, the bending, everything. After The Legend of Korra left a sour note on the series for me (except for S3 and Zaheer, which was amazing, well written and acted), it honestly felt incredible to be brought back so earnestly and authentically to the original gang with a new story. More of this PLEASE.

Look, this fucking sucks for the team and the animators. I should probably feel worse for watching the leak instead of waiting. But Paramount should release it in theaters. I will go!

The shit Matt Tomasello is doing here is breaking my brain 😵‍💫 —

I Iike my iPhone Air (not love, but still worth sharing)

I was reading the article I finally get the iPhone Air by Allison Johnson for The Verge and I was reminded that I’m in the minority, both as an iPhone Air owner and as an iPhone Air enjoyer.

I’ve been rocking the iPhone Air with no case and the ultra-thin Ohsnap Snap Grip v5. This has been an awesome daily carry. I use my phone a lot, but I haven’t had any battery issues, and so far it’s been fine without a case (knock on wood).

I am occasionally annoyed at the lack of multiple cameras and the single speaker, for sure. The single speaker is especially obnoxious as I watch more YouTube on my phone than I thought I did. If those two issues were different while the weight was the same, I wouldn’t want any other phone. However, the extreme light weight for an iPhone is so nice that, for me, it outweighs those issues. Again, for me.

Before I got the Air, I had been feeling pain in my fingers. It’s unclear whether that was specifically the fault of phone use, but I had been crying for years how I wish the iPhone Mini wasn’t dead. When they announced the Air, I was on board no matter what the compromises were.

The initial shock of losing those features was, well, a shock. It took some time. But like Allison concluded in their article, the Air grows on you. I’m not so bothered by the only-one camera and speaker now. More importantly, my fingers don’t hurt!

I know it didn’t sell well, and so we’ll see what’s available and if I upgrade when new phones drop. For me it all comes down to weight.

There is one issue I’ve experienced with the Air and no other phone: it’s so thin that I’ve actually lost the phone in the couch. Not just between the cushions, but between parts of the couch that you’re not supposed to lose stuff in.

Trying the Ricoh GR IV

A photo from my Ricoh GR IV of people taking a photo with their iPhone

A Fujifilm X100 has been my camera companion for well over a decade now. I’ve owned several letter-based iterations over many years. I love its range-finder aesthetic, physical buttons, and unique OVF/EVF viewfinder. In that time, my shooting has evolved from RAWs that took years for me to get around to edit, to simply capturing lovely Fuji-colored JPEGs right from the camera. It’s truly an amazing piece of engineering that has been with me all over the world, helped me get better at shooting photos, and lives up to the hype it developed over the pandemic.

There’s just one problem: It could never beat my iPhone.

Not to say photos from the iPhone were better than the X100—they very much were not, for me. More so that the iPhone was in my pocket at all times, and the X100, even as compact as it is, wasn’t. And because it wasn’t, I only grabbed it before going on vacation, and not more regularly.

You can see this play out in my camera-only not-as-updated-anymore-and-I-need-to-do-something-with-it old photography website, where pre-2015 there’s more day-in-the-life stuff, and post-2015 it’s mostly I-left-NYC albums. And then there’s barely any albums after 2017. I suppose that’s when posting to Instagram hit a more critical mass for me, or when they added Stories, which I use much more readily than regular posts.

It’s been a few years now of going iPhone-only not just daily, but also on vacations and hikes and places I used to bring a better camera, and now there’s a new problem: While it’s in my pocket, I’m not actually taking photos with the iPhone, not to the extent I used to with a camera. And when I do take a photo, it’s kind of a shitty photo, just for the gram. I miss real photos!

Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the most confusing, esoteric stories and power systems I’ve seen in anime, but Season 3, now animated by Mappa, is truly on another level of insane. Constant 🤯 every new episode so far.