So how was July? I wanted to say productive, really, since I was able to write a number of articles, mostly my reviews on the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race:

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I also started taking a number of classes in Coursera (Astronomy, Code Yourself! An Introduction to Programming, Introduction to Philosophy) because… why not? The certificates are a plus.

What’s more, I launched my Youtube channel and populated it with content. Editing videos is more difficult than the actual recording, I tell you.

Cracking the Sitcom Code (The Atlantic)

A friend from From Everyst recommended this article to me and I found it to be interesting. In any literary material I read, I tend to be structuralist – more often archetypal that I see tropes everywhere- so this sitcom code is more than welcome. I can’t deny that examining each episode of The Big Bang Theory according to this code has popped into my mind but 12 seasons with 22-23 episodes can be overwhelming.

The people who imagine disasters (BBC)

Behavioural analysis is important when planning for a crisis. 

– Chris Baraniuk

The article highlights the importance of data gathered from observation of patterns in decision making and disaster prevention. It’s is definitely easier, cheaper and more efficient to avoid a huge problem rather than to solve it. However, our society has been trained to be optimistic and “what will be will be” has become a ubiquitous adage.

Voyager: Inside the world’s greatest space mission (BBC)

Subscribing to NASA, reading Stephen Hawking’s books, and taking astronomy classes don’t make one an astronaut but these activities help one understand even just the smallest percentage of explored and studied complex universe and the world of astronomy.

As an enthusiast, I already knew that space exploration costs more than a billion dollars and that some environmentalists point out that such amount of money, granted that budget is also being taken from taxes, could be used for more environmental cleanup projects and that’s a strong case. However, apart from the fact that budget is also allotted for environmental cleanups in accordance to laws, the amount of information uncovered through space missions, particularly when they are successful, is priceless.

Take for example, what Voyager explorations sent back to earth included geysers, active volcanoes, iced-encased moons, huge craters, new ring formation– information which would have taken more years to be studied and proven with the current limitations of ground-based telescopes.

Until now, the twin explorers, with the technology from two decades ago, continue to send information of waht

The adjective “beautiful” does not justify how marvelous what out there is.

It couldn’t get more romantic than that.

What the mysterious boredom divide teaches us (BBC)

Quo usque eadem

There are, apparently, five types of boredom: calibrating, reactive, searching, indifferent, apathetic. It’s either I handle boredom pretty well or I don’t so I always come up with things I can put my mind on.

Is This the End of Writing in Cafés? (LitHub)

Emily Temple explores the various benefits of having a creative space where a writer can focus on work and how many writers took advantage of cafes as their offices or receiving spaces for meetings, and as sources of writing material. Due to the pandemic and the best measure against it, social distancing, people, writers some of them) just don’t frequent cafes any longer.

I, myself, was enticed by the idea and benefits of writing in cafes. In fact, I made a novel about one, To be Continued (which hopefully I’ll be able to continue since I now have so much free time). Having experienced telecommuting, I agree with Emily when she writes, “I  can  imagine taking the risk if that was truly the place where I wrote best, or if the ritual of going out was the only thing that would get the work done.” You see, not every writer becomes prolific when they write in cafes just as not every writer who has his/her personal space at home can actually write. It all boils down to one’s discipline of keying in one word-or character- after the other.

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That wraps up my list of articles worth reading. By the way, I have just realized I can add ‘Martian’ to my description now.