The ChangeLog – August 2025
If you meet me on the street and ask me out of the blue, "How was this August?" then, for the first time, I will respond without hesitation: it was sweet. I don't know if it was objectively the best month of the year, but I have a good memory of it, and that's what ultimately matters.
I had two weeks of vacation, and I spent one of those in my family's mountain house. There weren't a lot of fancy activities, but I spent all that time recharging in the most literal sense. I could feel the energy of nature flowing through me. I slept, I walked and hiked, and I read (a lot, as you will see).
When I came back, it was a bit hard, but I can feel some of that energy lingering inside me. I have been more focused, I have had more rhythm in my activities, and I also found a bit of agency in my life again. I now have the confidence that I can change something about my life. I hadn't had that in a long time. Sure, I know the metaphor of the arrow: I can only aim and shoot the arrow at the target, but after that the arrow is not under my control. A sudden movement of the target or a blast of wind can make the arrow miss the goal. But it doesn't matter: now, at least, I feel I can try to shoot that arrow. I hadn't had that feeling in a long time.
It is a small, fleeting sensation, but I will enjoy it while I can.
Housekeeping
Some of this renewed creative energy trickled down to the blog as well. I have two pieces of news:
First, I made a new section of the blog called bytes. It is a pun on "bite-sized" and "byte," and it is designed for very short, extemporary articles. I hope this will make me publish more because I can publish something I have in mind that is not "big enough" for a proper article.
Second, I published an article on my daily review system that is inspired by chess reviews.
Everything else looks fine. I am changing things at home a bit. I need change, even if minimal.
And, by the way, do you think I should do some shorter "weekly notes" as a more frequent housekeeping? I am not sure I could maintain a weekly schedule, to be honest, but I'd like to have something much lighter than The Changelog—maybe just small comments about my week. I'll think about that.
Reading
The summer vacation is the perfect period for reading. Then I spent a week in the mountains and chugged books like they were potato chips. The result is that in August I read six books. It is nothing compared to the ferocious readers I know, but—given this year's average—it is a nice both. Also, most of these books are 400–500 pages long. But let's not waste time.
Indian Classical Philosophy by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Garnieri. As any blog aficionado knows, I am slowly going over the History of Philosophy Without Any Gap book series. This time, I completed the book on classical Indian philosophy. Once again it is a must-read if you are interested in philosophy.
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood. I like when writers write about writing. This one is a nice collection of "lessons" and reflections about the art of the written word. No lesson by itself is mind-blowing, but when I read something that makes me think, "Damn, I wish I could write with such style!" I am always happy and inspired.
The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. Those are books one and two of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. I have to say that they are complex and somewhat alienating. Because I have already read many Chinese books, I can say that part of that "exotic feeling" comes from the prose, which is very Chinese. But there are other aspects that kept me from really entering the book. There is a patina of "fakeness" that I cannot shake. Nevertheless, they are very interesting and challenging. I'll let you know when I read the third and final one.
Dungeon Crawler Carl and Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman. Those are my first books in the litRPG genre, the sci-fi/fantasy subgenre that mixes RPG and videogame aspects in the story. The idea of this series is quite simple: an alien race destroys the Earth and transforms it into a dungeon-crawler game where the human survivors need to reach the lower levels. It is silly, it is fun, it is entertaining, and it is interesting. I love it. Luckily for me, there are seven books (so far) in the series. I have many more things to read! Did I tell you that the best character is a talking cat?
Watchlist
Tampopo (1985)
This is the best episode of Kitchen Nightmares I have ever watched.
On a more serious note, it is a weird film. In essence, Tampopo (literally "dandelion") is a "spaghetti western" that revolves around food and ramen. That's why it proclaimed itself to be the first "ramen western." The story is simple: a truck driver ends up in a ramen place at night and gets caught in a fight. The morning after, he wakes up in the restaurant and decides to help the young woman improve her ramen and her struggling eatery.
In addition to this, the film is interspersed with satirical sketches, all of which also focus on the role of food in life. Some of them are completely crazy, like the old woman squeezing food in a supermarket or the dying woman rising from her deathbed to cook one last meal for the family before dying. Others are borderline erotic and disgusting, like the scene between the man in the white shirt and his lady using food for sex (and the famous scene of the egg yolk passed from mouth to mouth).
In any case, it is the kind of weird Japanese movie I love. Maybe not right away, but they get stuck in my brain like a noodle in a thick ramen broth.
Mississipi Burning (1988)
I got this movie suggested while discussing the unspeakable but, unfortunately, usual violence of Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. There is a link between that and lynching and systematic violence in segregationist America.
This movie is partially based on the real story of the killing of three Summer of Freedom activists in 1964 while they were trying to facilitate voter registration among the Black community. It follows the investigations of two FBI agents from the beginning up to the very mellow convictions.
It is a beautiful movie, but it is not an easy watch. Be assured that it will make your blood boil more than once, from start to finish. But the even more enraging aspect is knowing that in 1989—the year after this movie came out—Mississippi senators refused to vote on a nonbinding resolution honoring the three killed men. I mean, what the fuck?
The Return (2024)
I took a bit of a tangent last month by exploring Odyssey-themed movies. I did that as preparation for next year's Christopher Nolan The Odyssey, but also because I like mythology and Homer, and I know very few movies about those (especially from the "kolossal" era of the '50s).
It happens that there was a very recent one called The Return, directed by Uberto Pasolini, that — and this is the most interesting part — focuses entirely on the return of Odysseus/Ulysses to Ithaca. Forget Circe, Nausicaa, Polyphemus, and the rest of the journey: this is just the final part.
The movie forgoes the mythological and "fantastic" elements of the Odyssey and tells a human story. It also hints that the reason Ulysses took so long to come back was that he was ashamed of the man he became during the war. In doing so, it erases all the supernatural parts of the myth.
Unfortunately, the movie is quite slow, and some parts are a bit silly. But there are some magnificent shots, and Ralph Fiennes does a superb job in it.
All the rest
As usual, here it is all the rest of what I watched in August.
Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Star Trek Beyond (2016). I went for a rewatch of the Kelvin-timeline trilogy. The first one is still my favorite of the three.
Breakdown (1997). Kurt Russell goes on a trip with his wife. The car breaks, and the wife disappears. It starts as a horror movie, but then becomes "just" action. I should not have watched this before my trip.
Wayne's World (1992). I don't think it ever gained traction here in Italy, and at this point I think it hasn't aged very well.
Better Man (2024). The idea of representing Robbie Williams with a monkey is what saved this otherwise average music biopic.
The Firm (1993). I guess lovers of legal technicalities will acclaim this movie. Unfortunately, I am not one of them, so, for me, it is just fine.
Working Girl (1988). A fun rom-com with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. It is nicely and overtly ’80s.
Ulisse (1954). One of the classics of the genre. Clips from this Italian movie were used everywhere in educational TV shows. It felt like I had already seen it.
On the TV series front, we watched the first half of the second season of Wednesday and I am near the end of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (and I am loving almost every single episode so far).
Music
I didn't listen to a lot of new and interesting music this month. I fell back on classical music, and I stuck with it for the most part. My top artist of the month is Gioacchino Rossini, followed by Bach and Steve Reich.
That said, I had an intense week of symphonic rock, so I can recommend two albums that, by sheer coincidence, are both by Ukrainian bands.
The first one is OMNI by Karfagen, a group founded in 1997 in Kharkiv by prog-rock veteran keyboardist Antony Kalugin.
The second one is more obscure; it is called Відрада (Vidrada) by Обійми Дощу (Obiymy Doschu). It is another very beautiful album, but it is more complicated than OMNI: the Karfagen sing in English while, as you can imagine, Obiymy Doschu sing in Ukrainian. Fortunately, I had help in translating the lyrics. :D
Gaming
Slow month for gaming. I bought UFO 50 and Glyphica, but I played them for no more than a couple of hours. But hey, we got the Silksong release date for September! So you already know what I will talk about next month!
Conclusions
As you know, September is my "new year." After the pain and relaxation (in varying proportions) of summer, it is time to start again. I am glad that I reached this personal new year with a good stride.
The year 2025 felt uncomfortably fast, probably because, for the most part, I have been very out of sync with the world and with myself. But things go on, and the last thing I want is to look back and see all the things I could have done if only I weren't such an idiot.
All this to say that 2025 still has four months to go, and I want to try to make the best of them.
See you next month!