https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/opinion/trump-autocracy-democracy-report.html

TOC * The World * My Week * Media Diet * Reading * Watching * Gaming * Walking and Health and the Weather * Links of Interest * Other Site Updates * Looking Forward This entry coming in late because I had a busy weekend! ### The World * USPol: The US supreme court has rejected Trump's reciprocal tariffs! He was so mad! * PHPol: Sara Duterte announces her candidacy for 2028, way too early, kicking speculation/discussion of opposition slates into gear. ### My Week * Trivia team attended a quiz night last Tuesday! * Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. * I did a bunch of recovery work on some old hard drives this past week. On Feb. 18, 2026, 7:49 p.m. I wrote: > Today in trying to dig up the past: > > Found an old 1TB SATA hard drive in storage that was probably from 2 PCs ago (pre-2015), and I was excited! What treasures I might be able to find in there! But I needed an enclosure for it, so I ordered one and it arrived after a few days, and to my disappointment the drive was empty and the Disks program says it is "likely to fail soon" D: Sad. > > [19:51] > > I also found two 40gb IDE hard drives, which are most likely from two PCs I bought in 2003, and of course I also wanted to see what was there. I already had an IDE enclosure so I was able to check immediately, but these couldn't even be read sadly. > > But I was able to recover some files from a 160gb hard drive we used from around 2009-2014, but it looks like things I've already archived before, although I'm happy to dig into it to check * The extended fam had an overnight getaway this past weekend to celebrate late Feb birthdays, so I was out of the house for most of the weekend and was very tired by the time we got back. Always fun and chaotic for all of us to get together. * Did a bunch of work on site backend updates and fixes. * On the blog: Nothing extra this past week. ### Media Diet #### Reading * Ongoing: Hogfather (Discworld #20). Progressing has stalled. * Comics: Still trying to catch up (or keep up?). * Feed reader backlog: Feed reader is at 120 unread items as of this writing. Backlog continues to grow, not helped by me ignoring it completely over the weekend. #### Watching * Ongoing: **Fallout S2** , **High Potential S2** , **The Pitt S2** , **The Simpsons S37** (I had forgotten I started this already!), **Wonder Man** (only around halfway through) * Movies: No new movies this week. Haven't watched a lot since the start of the year! #### Gaming * Regular ongoing live-service games: * **Magic Arena** : Second ECL quick draft cycle is coming up, but the new set is also due in like 10 days, the schedule is super tight. * **Eternal Card Game** : Just regular grinding etc. * **Street Fighter 6** : Got Honda to gold! * Single-player games: * Ongoing: **Spider-Man 2** (PS5). This is the first of two PS5 games I managed to borrow while I have one temporarily. (Saves me from buying it on Steam!) * I have also been randomly putzing around with some other fighting games this past week, most notably **Injustice 2**. ### Walking and Health and the Weather For the past week (Sunday to Saturday), Google Fit tells me I walked 64,855 steps! It is starting to get quite hot again. ### Links of Interest A while back I stopped doing this section because there was some duplication involved with the linkblog, but I kind of missed it. So I implemented a custom tag (it's my webapp I can do what I want) that just me embed recent link entries without having to duplicate them in different files, so now it is back! * links 🔗 The Good Old Hyperlink - Discard Pile > "I like it because it encourages the idea that writing should have context, should refer to outside ideas, and should give people credit where credit is due. Without having to interrupt your thought, you can give the reader a chance to jump away to something that provides extra context for what you’re saying." Wed, Feb. 18, 2026, 8:20 a.m. / #web * links 🔗 Keep Android Open Android will become a locked-down platform in 193d 2h 40m 46s Thu, Feb. 19, 2026, 9:19 p.m. / #android * links 🔗 Unsung heroes: Flickr's URLs scheme Fri, Feb. 20, 2026, 1:34 p.m. / #web ### Other Site Updates * new quiznights collections entry ### Looking Forward * A bit of a busy week coming up with some medical errands for both Patient #1 and #2 and some end of month stuff as well. * New Scrubs season coming up!! I could use more medical shows since The Pitt only gives me one ep per week.

Covering all things internet shitfuckery + Philippine political/government shitfuckery from autistic lens