{"id":1472,"date":"2020-11-01T19:03:05","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T01:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2020-11-01T19:03:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T01:03:05","slug":"weeknote-for-11-1-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2020\/11\/01\/weeknote-for-11-1-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknote for 11\/1\/2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"playht-iframe-wrapper\" style=\"max-height: 210px !important;\">\n\t<iframe\n\tscrolling=\"no\"\n\tclass=\"playht-iframe-player\"\n\tid=\"playht-iframe-player\"\n\theight=\"90px\"\n\twidth=\"100%\"\n\tframeborder=\"0\"\n\tstyle=\"max-height: 90px; height: 90px !important;\"\n\tsrc=\"https:\/\/play.ht\/embed\/?article_url=https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1472&voice=en-GB-Wavenet-B&appId=9W3P762tsiZ6wAx&trans_id=-ML5TdE2wW25BOXhmBM3\"\n\tdata-voice=\"en-GB-Wavenet-B\"\n\tarticle-url=\"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1472\"\n\tdata-appId=\"9W3P762tsiZ6wAx\"\n\tallowfullscreen=\"\">\n\t<\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Christmas labels<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Still working on it.<\/strong> Even though I didn&#8217;t finish last week, I was pleased with my progress compared to some other weeks, given how much I&#8217;ve struggled to do anything productive lately. As usual I&#8217;m hopeful that I can finish in the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The next project will be miscellaneous life maintenance.<\/strong> The current Thinkulum project month of November starts on the same day as the calendar month. Unfortunately the next actual project won&#8217;t start till I&#8217;m done with the Christmas labels. When that happens, my next project will be catching up on some life maintenance. Getting my life more organized should improve my mood and motivation.<\/p>\n<h2>Fiction<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><strong>To continue October&#8217;s cosmic horror theme, I started listening to <em>The Outside<\/em> by Ada Hoffmann.<\/strong> I found it a while back from a Reddit thread on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/printSF\/comments\/exnbgc\/any_science_fiction_that_could_be_considered\/\">stories that are reminiscent of H. R. Giger<\/a>. I was slowed down by other listening I did last week, but I&#8217;ll finish it in the next week or two, and I&#8217;ll say more about it then.<\/p>\n<h2>Video games<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><strong>Friday night I started playing <em>Call of Cthulhu<\/em>.<\/strong> My impression so far is I wouldn&#8217;t give the dialogue system any awards for logic, but the game has some nice atmosphere. It&#8217;s also pretty easy, which is just my speed right now, since I&#8217;m very uninvested in games. It&#8217;s not a terribly long game, but to go with this post&#8217;s theme of October bleeding into November, it&#8217;ll take me a while to finish it.<\/p>\n<h2>Politics<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n<p><strong>To stay grounded as the election comes up, I&#8217;m listening to some political podcasts.<\/strong> Last week I learned that my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.palmerreport.com\/\">guilty pleasure political blog<\/a> is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2017\/07\/liberal-fever-swamps\/530736\/\">even less reputable<\/a> than I thought (though I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s as bad as the criticisms suggest), so I&#8217;m shifting my focus to mainstream sources. Here&#8217;s a helpful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adfontesmedia.com\/gallery\/\">chart from Ad Fontes Media<\/a> you may have seen floating around, and here&#8217;s another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allsides.com\/media-bias\/media-bias-ratings\">chart plus a searchable database<\/a> from AllSides. I don&#8217;t know how many I&#8217;ll listen to regularly after election season recedes, but here&#8217;s what I have now if you want to follow along. Some of them I picked up from the Ad Fontes chart, and some I encountered randomly on social media. I&#8217;ve grouped them roughly by bias.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Left:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/the-daily\">The Daily<\/a><\/em> (<em>New York Times<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/podcasts\/intercepted\/\"><em>Intercepted<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(<em>The Intercept<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/kpfa.org\/program\/letters-and-politics\/\">Letters and Politics<\/a><\/em> (KPFA) &#8211; Left, I think?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/podcasts\/510310\/npr-politics-podcast\"><em>The NPR Politics Podcast<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/openargs.com\">Opening Arguments<\/a><\/em> &#8211; Left, I think?<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/crooked.com\/podcast-series\/pod-save-america\/\">Pod Save America<\/a><\/em> (Crooked Media)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/shows\/new-yorker-political-scene\">Politics and More<\/a><\/em> (<em>The New Yorker<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/podcasts\/post-reports\">Post Reports<\/a><\/em> (<em>Washington Post<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/\">The Ticket<\/a><\/em> (<em>The Atlantic<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/podcasts\/trumpcast\">Trumpcast<\/a><\/em> (<em>Slate<\/em>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Center:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/theargument\">The Argument<\/a><\/em> (<em>New York Times<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/tag\/politics-podcast\/\">FiveThirtyEight Politics<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Right:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/podcast.thedispatch.com\">The Dispatch Podcast<\/a><\/em> &#8211; I picked this one up from an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2020\/01\/dispatch-tries-sell-real-news-right\/605860\/\"><em>Atlantic<\/em> profile<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Honorable mentions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These are less focused on US politics, but I listened to some good episodes from them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Politics Weekly<\/em> (<em>The Guardian<\/em>): &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/audio\/2020\/oct\/30\/are-the-signs-really-pointing-to-a-joe-biden-win-politics-weekly-extra-podcast\">Are the signs really pointing to a Biden win?<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><em>More or Less: Behind the Stats<\/em> (BBC): &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p08wqd9b\">US election: facts or fiction<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><em>Fresh Air<\/em> (NPR): &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/programs\/fresh-air\/2020\/10\/28\/928650969\/fresh-air-for-oct-28-2020-the-pro-trump-militia-group-preparing-for-civil-war?showDate=2020-10-28\">The Pro-Trump Militia Group Preparing For Civil War<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas labels \ud83d\ude10 Still working on it. Even though I didn&#8217;t finish last week, I was pleased with my progress compared to some other weeks, given how much I&#8217;ve struggled to do anything productive lately. As usual I&#8217;m hopeful that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2020\/11\/01\/weeknote-for-11-1-2020\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,186,118,188,109,167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas-labels","category-fiction","category-podcasts","category-politics","category-video-games","category-weeknotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}