Before the format change, I used to do a weekly Stuff I’m consuming segment in this newsletter. Stuff I’m reading/watching/eating/playing etc. so I figured why not do a whole issue of the newsletter with multiple categories as an occasional thing.
Stuff I’m reading: I’ve always got a few different books going. On my phone I’ve been downloading Mickey Haller (AKA The Lincoln Lawyer) books as they become available in Libby. This means I’m. It really reading them in order but they’re mostly standalone and the continuity that does exist isn’t very important. I do really love a courtroom drama and these novels scratch that itch pretty well. I'm also making my way through Laserblasted, by Micael W Lewis, which is an audacious piece of novel-length anti-fan-fiction that tries to turn the well despised (by everyone but Leonard Maltin) science fiction film about a teen in the desert with a raygun into something actually awesome. I'm not sure he fully succeeds, but its fun to see him trying.
In the audiobook space I’ve made my way through one and a half Dungeon Crawler Carl books. This series just got picked up for a TV adaptation so if you haven’t heard of it previously you probably will soon. It’s about a guy and his ex girlfriend’s cat getting forced into a deadly stakes planet-wide reality TV show after an alien race kills almost everyone on Earth. The whole thing is formatted like a video game and they’re surprisingly funny for such a dark premise. The series has eight books so far and while I was reluctant to start I have enjoyed them. They’re not earth shattering literature but they accomplish what they set out to do very well.
I’m about half way through Kate Beaton’s graphic novel memoir Ducks about her time working in the Canadian oil sands to pay off student debt for two years. It’s a slice of life drama, but also about the alienation of being forced into life as a cog in a very big machine.
Stuff I’m eating: I made some Cincinnati style chili this week and it was a pretty wild experience. I have previously found complex recipes for making it from scratch, but for an even more authentic experience I used a packet of pre-made commercial mix. After making it (I.e. mixing the packet together with water, some tomato paste and a pound of ground beef) and simmering for an hour I topped some hotdogs with it and it took me all the way back to the two years I lived in Ohio as a grad student. Also: every time I bring this up I have to clarify that Cincinnati style chili isn’t actually chili like your thinking of other than it’s heavily spiced and contains ground beef. It’s an entirely different flavor profile, but once you accept that, it’s pretty tasty. I certainly enjoyed it.
Stuff I’m playing: The Slay the Spire 2 early access started about a month ago and I already have about 36 hours of playtime logged. Which feels about right. I’ll often play a single run before work in the morning. The first Slay The Spire game was arguably the impetus for the recent boom in rogue like deck building games, and so the possibility of a sequel was pretty exciting. Being in early access there are going to be lots of updates and changes over the next few years, but it already is quite playable and a good refinement of what the first game did well.
I got to play Netrunner in human meat space this week, which I haven’t done in a long time. It’s a very fun 2-player asymmetric game where one side is an evil corporation an the other is a hacker trying to prevent the company from having success in its goals. The game has been maintained by a group of fans after being abandoned by its original publisher. Which means it’s totally free to play. I downloaded and printed out the cards I was using this week and I can do the same for any expansions I want to try in future games.
Stuff I’m watching: I’m watching a log of TV as usual. There are so many shows. There’s The Pitt, Abbott Elementary, The Comeback, the Scrubs revival, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, Ghosts, Matlock, Taskmaster, Very Important People, Jet Lag: The Game, and Kamen Rider Zeztz. And those are just the shows currently airing. I have also discovered (10 years after stating a plex server) that my plex server has a button that will play a random episode of anything in my TV library. Which has been incredibly liberating.
For a little while I had ErsatzTV up and running, which is a very cool program that allows you to program your own TV channels with media you own, and then brows a digital channel guide like it’s the 20th century. It was a very good way to pull back on decision paralysis with only 10-15 channels to pick and no control of what was showing when I started watching, I could just toon and see what was playing. And I did that for a whole! But like TV of yore, if you didn’t started watching the second a program started you just had to go with it. Or you could go launch the episode in the plex server, but then why bother with the faux TV at all?
What I decided I really wanted was no choice at all, and with the shuffle button I get just that. I push the button, spin the metaphorical wheel and watch what plays. Now there are shows where this works better than others, anything that’s too heavily serialized could feel weird dropping into the middle of for a single random episode but this has been less of a problem for me. I think there’s two reasons, first, most TV on my server isn’t too heavily serialized. I tend to like TV shows where the creators understand and take advantage of the episode as a unit of storytelling. Second, most of the serialized show I own, I have already watched so it’s more like revisiting an old memory rather than risking spoiling some major twist. And even in those rare occasions where it’s otherwise, good TV shows tell you enough of what’s going on for you to follow them. TV used to always exist like this. You tuned in and watched that episode, if it was in syndication there wasn’t even an expectation that you had seen every single thing that had happened before, and the writers know this and dealt with it appropriately. It’s not like every episode is a bunch of exposition dumps, but if you pay attention you get what you need.
So what has popped up on plex shuffle? A bunch of great stuff!
I’ve gotten random episodes of Law & Order, Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory, recaps of which I’ll mostly skip other than to note the most heavily serialized of those is The Bog Bang Theory, but even dropping into random late season episodes was fine.
I got a mid-season 1 episode of The Sopranos, episode 11 specifically. And The Sopranos is one of those shows that revolutionized TV storytelling, with its anti-hero and long ongoing stories, but this episode was just fine by itself. Tony learns a member of his crew might be a snitch and has to deal with it. The whole episode was great, paranoid storytelling. Do I know what came before or after? No! Because I’ve never actually watched The Sopranos all the way through. But I had no trouble following the action. Good TV is good TV.
Some cartoons crossed my path and those were fun and nostalgic. I got an episode of Invader Zim where he was kidnapped by aliens even more incompetent than he was, some Ninja Turtles where they have to work with a retired superhero to fight Shredder, and an episode of the Clerks animated series which remains better than its 6 episode run would have you believe.
I watched one of the very last episodes of Smallville, season 10 episode 19 (of 21) and even three episodes from the end of the series I was able to follow along just fine. Like The Sopranos, I never finished watching Smallville but I was able to pick up seasons on DVD piecemeal over the years so I own it all now. And maybe now I’ll go watch some more!
The shuffle button also pushed me to try another show that has long been on my TBW stack, Stargate Atlantis. After a random episode where I had enough fun, I decided to go back and watch from the start. There’s someone about that 2000s era of sci-fi shows that just hits right for me. The third episode is even (sort of) an homage to the movie Apollo 13 and you know I’m not immune to moon propaganda.
Stuff I’m listening: On April 14 They Might Be Giants’ latest album The World is to Dig hits streaming services, but if you’re cool you can buy the digital download for nine bucks which comes out to fifty cents per song. A great deal. I’ve only listened through it once in its entirely, and that’s hardly enough to make a confident review. But I think I can easily say that it’s the sort of thing you are likely to enjoy if you are likely to enjoy albums by They Might Be Giants. And I do. Stuff I'm looking at: This picture of an eclipse taken during the Artemis II mission. I could stare at this for hours. Official NASA Description: art002e009301 (April 6, 2026) – Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality and extending the view far beyond what is possible from Earth. We see a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk. The science community is investigating whether this effect is due to the corona, zodiacal light, or a combination of the two. Also visible are stars, typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged. This unique vantage point provides both a striking visual and a valuable opportunity for astronauts to document their observations during humanity’s return to deep space. The faint glow of the nearside of the Moon is visible in this image, having been illuminated by light reflected off the Earth. Date Created:2026-04-06 YOU can look at the full resolution version here https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e009301~orig.jpg
