The list #2

What I've been reading, watching, and listening to recently

Sep 23, 2024

I wish I were in this place (Iceland) watching this thing (the Northern Lights). But right now, it’s multiple screens’ lights for me. (Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash)

Lí-hó (‘hello’ in Taiwanese), and welcome to Semi-Online #20.

I haven’t done a content rundown since this one way back in 2022 (an eon in online years!). So I figured I should share what I’m into these days.

Enjoy reading/watching/listening!

Read

Another September 21 has come and gone. For most, it’s just an Earth, Wind & Fire thing. For Filipinos, it marked the 52nd anniversary of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of Martial Law - and another day of being ruled over by his Junior and his greedy minions.

The Philippine Star’s “31 Years of Amnesia: Stories on the Myths that Made Marcos” collection should be made required reading every year alongside all the fact-checked literature on Martial Law and the bloody Marcos regime. And as mentioned in my previous list, you can always check out the Martial Law Museum and the Martial Law Library.

On a lighter note, I remember this excellent Esquire Philippines story every September 21 too. It’s about Gemma Nemenzo and Irwin Ver, two Filipinos on opposing sides of the Marcos Sr.-era political divide, and how they became life partners in the US post-exile/migration.

Over the past few months, I’ve kept an eye on Filipino authors who publish their books for free or sell their digital work at reasonable prices:

Marguerite de Leon - the author of People in Panic - has made her second short-story collection, Lies All Lies, free for download. Get it here. I loved it, and finished reading it in one weekend.
Danton Remoto is selling two of his ebooks:
- How to Read and Write Better (writing creative nonfiction and generating content), ₱399 for Filipino readers and US$10 for overseas readers
- Write the Story that Only You Can Write (writing short stories and novels for the global marketplace, ₱499 for Philippine readers and US$20 for overseas readers
Siege Malvar has also put up his Writing Under Siege primer module on Gumroad for free.

If you know of more Filipino writers making their work free to read, selling their ebooks, and/or making creative writing guides, please let me know! 💗

In this vv rare edition of KC’s Freelancing Stories:

I wrote freelance for a company named Megateam in the early ‘10s, partly because some of my friends and fellow ex-technology journalists worked there full-time. Whenever one working writer takes an editorial job somewhere, our networks go with us. 😉

Megateam ran a blog network that included Megagogo, a blog for Western or Global North males in their 20s to 40s. My editors here were super easy to work with and were good at keeping content from becoming problematic and misogynistic (given our audience). More importantly, Megateam consistently paid me in full and on time - and deposited my cheques directly to my bank account, rare in Philippine freelancing.1

Megateam suddenly shut down in early 2012. My friends/colleagues were instantly unemployed, and I lost a client. The global headlines were all about Kim Dotcom and his cohorts’ arrests in New Zealand in connection with the Megaupload case, but little attention was paid to the little-known Philippine office dragged down with it. Only one blogger talked about it, or at least I can find only one (semi-accurate) article about it in 2024: Abe Olandres of YugaTech.

All this backstory is for me to say that Dotcom is finally being extradited to the US to stand trial. I hate that many good people lost their jobs here because of others’ actions elsewhere, so I’ll watch this case closely. It’s 12 years late, but it’s justice nonetheless.

And it’s funny and appalling to me today that I, a former journalist, never made the (indirect) connection between Megateam and Megaupload until the day of the New Zealand raid…

I’m a longtime lurker in the Grilled Cheese subreddit, and I was there for all of the 365 days Pavel Konko (u/pkonko37) showed us his delicious sandwiches. The whole thing got so big, The Washington Post wrote about it on Pavel’s last day.

The joy we get from two toasted pieces of bread with melted cheese in between is clear and crosses human-made borders. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, and we don’t always need tomato soup.

For those clueless about budots or why Gen Z influencers on socials suddenly began dancing to it in the most low-energy and Whitewash-y way possible, read the following articles:

SPOT.ph’s brief budots explainer from last month. That TikTok embed of Hank Green trying to do it is hilarious to me
A more thorough 2023 NME profile on budots’ roots in Davao’s slums, its image rehab via DJ Love, and its rise in the global music scene
More features on CNN, NBC News, and Bandwagon.

There’s a documentary too; I somehow missed it when it was still being shown. And since NME mentioned Manila Community Radio and Boiler Room’s budots showcase, here it is:

I never thought that the annoying sound blared out from public transport and parties would become a global hit. But stranger stuff has happened in this world 🤷

Back to long reads.

This excellent report from July 2024 went way under the radar, so I’m reposting it here: “A deadly dream: How the Philippines fails its migrant fishers” on The Philippine Star’s NewsX platform.

The unspoken agreement between Filipino workers and their government promises that in return for the Philippines' citizens funneling money back into the national economy through work abroad, the government will ensure Filipinos laboring overseas are working under safe conditions compliant with Philippine labor law. The Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) is supposed to oversee this labor system, acting as a check on what academic experts and advocates say can be a complex and hazy business. But the government’s side of that promise is often lacking, allowing for an industry that thrives on bureaucratic entanglement and leaves workers in danger of falling through the cracks, subject to grave labor rights abuses—and where the DMW has repeatedly missed warning signs.

TL;DR: We send our sailors out to work and leave them to their own devices on the high seas until they die from willful neglect. “Ang mamatay ng dahil sa’yo,” indeed. 🤬

Considering that the DMW recently held a job fair for seafarers while promising ‘safety’ from illegal recruitment and human trafficking + President Marcos Jr. (🤮) signed the Magna Carta of Filipino Seafarers just hours ago, this NewsX article is a strong reminder of the consequences of empty words and ceremonial bullshit.

And we haven’t even gotten to the whole West Philippine Sea dumbfuckery yet…

ProPublica is always reliable for US-centric investigative journalism. Among its recent (or re-amplified) articles that stayed on my mind long after publication:

“I Don’t Want to Die”: Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network - The story of Ravi Coutinho and how US insurance providers could care less about its clients
“How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe” - Yep, we’re all made of stardust and 3M-created chemicals
From 2015, but still highly relevant because people worldwide still love doubting and blaming rape survivors: “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”
“Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia” - a.k.a. Why I have zero plans of going back to the United States any time soon, or for the rest of my life.

I hope the Philippines (and/or Southeast Asian news outlets) makes its version of ProPublica. But the time, logistics, and financials of having journalists from multiple dwindling newsrooms collaborating on big stories are staggering, for sure. Not to mention the inevitable attempts on journalists’ lives…

This WIRED profile of Josh Johnson (stand-up comedian and The Daily Show correspondent and scribe) is a good read for fans old and new. And this should be in the ‘Watch’ section, but I’ll put it here instead - he releases entire stand-up routines every week on his YouTube channel (with no repeating or stolen jokes or skits!) and is currently on tour in the US while still working for The Daily Show.

Talk about making a hard-earned living.

From July 2024: “How Kamala Harris Took Command of the Democratic Party in 48 Hours” on The New York Times. Jesus Christ. The efficiency. 👏👏👏

Also, from The New York Times Magazine, June 2024: “He Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.” Possible alternate title: A guy too familiar with the digital world goes offline to see the real thing(s).

Enjoy reality, bud. Nothing compares to it. 💗

If you’re like me and feel bombarded by shock and countless headlines about the ongoing mass-rape trial in France, here’s a good explainer from Vox. ABC News Australia also chimes in.

P.S.: I want the names and faces of all of Gisele Pelicot’s 51 rapists to be made public. All of them. Not just the husband/main rapist. Everyone.

Watch

Netflix

I binge-watched 3 Body Problem a few weeks after Netflix released its first season. I loved it, although there were some deviations from the original book series (which I’ve heard is also problematic in many ways, so I’m not even sure if I should read it). And that scene in the fifth episode is pure nightmare fuel. If you haven’t seen this series, now’s the time to do so.

I’ve also started watching Terminator Zero. I’m midway through, and I like it. About time we got out of the Connors’ POV and into another story in another part of the world.

I’ve also said before that the stories post-Judgment Day (particularly Genisys and Dark Fate) were bad. But now I think all the Terminator movies had great concepts and plotlines, but were executed badly.

Disney+

Agatha All Along is the MCU show we never asked for, but it’s doing surprisingly well so far. I’m hoping the succeeding episodes don’t succumb to the standard Marvel third-act CGI fights and last-minute expositions 🤞

I’m also lining up Child Star on my queue, though I’m not yet ready for the horror stories from my youth’s Disney stars.

The other titles I’m playing catch-up on: No One Will Save You, We Feed People (especially if you’re curious about what Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen are doing in Gaza and elsewhere), and The Bear.

HBO Go

The Penguin just premiered! Though I think I need to see The Batman first…

I’m also about to see earlier hits: The Sympathizer (TV series), Atsuko Okatsuka: The Intruder (stand-up comedy special), and Renfield (film).

Listen

I think of Spotify’s Daylist as the hyperspeed version of its Discover Weekly and automated stations and mixes. It changes thrice daily and lines up 50 songs based on your listening history (a.k.a. ‘vibes’). But unlike Discover Weekly, I can’t automatically archive my Daylists via IFTTT for later listening. Once it changes, that prior playlist’s gone. It’s fun and infuriating.

I’m getting a kick out of the AI-generated Daylist titles, though. It’s like reading a Lazada or Shopee listing 🤦‍♀️ Today, mine reads “dreamy indie afternoon”, a fairly decent label. But there are more unhinged titles out there. “Coastal grandmother cocktail hour night,” anyone? Or “Divorced dad rock saturday?”

Here’s the only Daylist I liked from beginning to end - and the only one I managed to share on my socials, so Spotify archived it for me:

I’ve also been listening to older albums like Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and Banks’ 2014 debut album Goddess.

Lastly: For big fans of ‘90s boybands and American pop music, I just found out Lance Bass (of *NSYNC) has a podcast aptly called Frosted Tips.

Any content recommendations? Let me know what you like! I’m starting to see the same things on my feeds; I want variety from real human beings, not overeager algorithms. 😊