World End Economica is a 3-part visual novel available on Steam.

Episode 1

The story takes place a few decades in the future on the 25-year old Lunar City, the first and so far only city on the moon. Old enough that our teenage hero Hal was born there and has lived all his life. Lunar City is a place with very light government and no financial laws so that buying, selling, investing stocks is what people do to get rich and that's what Hal does.

Becoming an investment wizard is Hal's obsession but to win an elite contest he has to team up with Hagana, teen mathematician who was brought to the Moon to be a slave but escaped and kind of hates all men. They combine her mathematical skills and Hal's knowledge to create a program (well don't do the coding themselves) that can analyze and predict the stock market, at least well enough to give Hal and edge. As success looms the two get closer but Hal is planning on leaving after the contest and he's not really considering taking Hagana with him...

Episode 2

After the disaster of four years ago a crippled Hal is recruited by Eleanor, a minor nobility on Earth who owns an investment fund in Lunar City and wants Hal to join her team. But she has a secret dream to take down Avalon, the hot new energy company whose rapid rise included cause her family's business to go bankrupt and be bought out by Avalon...

Episode 3

After the Avalon business Hal has been hailed as the Hero of the Lunar Surface and still works for Eleanor, who moved back to Earth. The hot new financial product is ABS which is investing in loans and more specifically mostly home loans. Since there is little land in Lunar City and a growing population home prices have always gone up rapidly so people are willing to take out ruinous loans to buy a home since they can sell it for more later. It makes ABS a mathematically can't miss investment which Hal thinks is too good to be true...


Each episode is about 10 hours and feels like a novella-sized story. The main plot elements are all financial and what I like is that they go over financial concepts throughout. Episode 1 focuses on the stock market and investing in company stocks. I forgot what Episode 2 focused on -- maybe the peril when a company owns both the product (electricity generation) and the market platform (a system where buyers bid for electricity). Episode 3 is about how you can create these synthetic financial products and there's a similarity to housing market bubbles and crashes.

Other than the financial aspects the story is not that great. It's mostly dialog so it moves slowly. In 10 hours I can read a 288-page BattleTech paperback. Here it feels more like a novella (60-90 pages) so three episodes may be 200 pages total. It does have a lot of static art though for the most part you could have only a few pieces of art and do almost as well. There is also background music is actually fairly varied and not bad. From the main menu you can go to the songs and play the music tracks by themselves, electronica and synth.

The novel is $35 on Steam. I got it on Humble Bundle as part of an $18 Sekai Project bundle. Although ultimately an interesting story it wasn't really engrossing so only worth buying as part of a bundle. Not only that, even it were free is it worth spending 30 hours reading this and it's probably yes but barely. Maybe part of the problem is that other than Hal none of the other characters are detailed at all (and even Hal not really all that much as he's not introspective), so it's hard to care for one outcome or the other in each episode.

Arrival (2016) [/] I think this is my third watching Arrival. And even after listening to Ty & That Guy's episode doing a deep dive the movie is still a little confusing. I read a bit more of the Wikipedia entry and I guess if you come in knowing that the "flashbacks" are actually "flashforwards" it should make more sense but it is something I keep forgetting until right at the end of the movie. Anyway, I think when I first watched Arrival it was a [+] but repeated watchings doesn't make it better.

Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table OVA (2026) [-] On Netflix this is a new 90-minute "12th" episode. In game 44 Yuki (Suzie Yeung) and other players are put on a deserted island with an unknown objective though it quickly becomes apparent that one player is a killer committing one murder a night... The art for this one is often done like watercolors which makes it a bit surreal. I was confused about some characters as Yuki has met them before (and they also talk about old characters). As I think about it the series is rather confusing as many things are not told to viewers directly. Reading the Wikipedia episode summaries helps a lot. Anyway, watching this OVA a few months after the series I found it fairly confusing.

Furistas Cat Cafe+ (2024) [/] Just what it says: you run a cat cafe. Aquire cats with different personalities. When customers come in try to assign the appropriate cat to them. Customers might also buy treats and toys. Purchase furniture, cat stuff, and decorative items and place them in your cafe to make a pleasing environment. It's a fairly relaxed game with no apparent challenge.

Whole Foods Fruit Tart [/] 9-inch Tart for $30. I haven't had it for at least a couple of years and maybe because of that it's not quite as delicious as I remember. I loved the vanilla pudding base and the really hard pie crust. The fruit part still seems the same but the bottom a little less good -- the crust is still thick but not as solid as I remember. Still good but no longer the sole reason I'd go to Whole Foods (I also wanted dried split peas but apparently they don't sell that anymore).

Sold Out on You is a South Korean comedic romance series running 12 hour-long episodes.

Dam Ye-jin (Chae Woo-bin) is the star host at a home shopping television network. To secure a lucrative luxury cosmetics contract with L'Étoile she has to convince irascible cosmetics supplier Matthew Lee (Ahn Hyo-seop) to sell his special white mushrooms to L'Étoile. And to do that she's willing to become friends with everyone in Lee's village so that they'll help her convince him. Although at first Matthew sees Ye-jin as a rude, mercenary type he comes to see her kindness and generosity which opens the door to attraction...

Complications:

Eric Seo (Kim Bum, supporting role in Tale of the Nine Tailed, 2020), Executive Director of L'Étoile is really using this opportunity to get closer to Ye-jin because they met once before and he immediately fell in love with her. But she stood him up because of an emergency which cratered her career for a few years occurred.

Song Myeong-hwa (Woo Hee-jin, who played the mom/mom-type of the female lead in Doom at Your Service, 2021, and My Demon, 2023) is a famous actress who had to retire after she and Ye-jin did a shopping show that sold what turned out to be dangerously defective cosmetics. She's also Ye-jin's mom but it's a secret kept from the rest of the world and Myeong-hwa treats her daughter rather coldly, causing Ye-jin a lot of stress.

It's a nice and typical romantic series with light drama. Not deep but I was engrossed and powered through it watching the last four episodes one night instead of sleeping.

Monday (yesterday) I went to Whole Foods about 1510 after I got my vaccinations. Parked underground like I usually do although the parking lot had empty spaces and wasn't crowded with cars looking for parking. Also the store itself wasn't crowded.

Fruit Tart 9in ($30) - I used to love the Whole Foods Fruit Tarts. Maybe I'm misremembering but not quite as good as they used to be though still much better than Safeway's version.

Semifreddi's Sourdough Baguette ($3.80) - I guess I picked the wrong one. It toasted fine and I ate 3/4ths of it that day. The next day by evening even though it was still in the closed bag it was getting fairly stale but toasted ok. I feel Trader Joe's has a better baguette at $2.50 or so.

El Trigal Manchego, Aged 6 months ($22/lb or $9.46 for 6.88 oz) - Trader Joe's version I think is $16/lb aged 12 months but El Trigal is a solid cheese and tastes really good while TJ's is fine not great.

I looked for dried split peas but they don't seem to sell that anymore. They have other dried cereals and nuts and seeds you can buy in bulk.

I looked for Jyoti canned Indian food but they don't sell that anymore either (though they sell a bunch of Tasty Bites Indian food). Too bad because I love Jyoti Delhi Saag.

I kind of looked for nice Tagliatelle nests pasta but I didn't find any at all. I didn't bother looking for the bread I used to buy since they got rid of it before I stopped going to Whole Foods.

I guess this shopping trip leaves me thinking Whole Foods is a bit mid and I still prefer Trader Joe's.

Ready, Set, Love (2024) [/] Thai drama-romance of six hour-long episodes. In an alternate future where there are almost no male births and almost no men in Thailand a popular multi-day reality game show is used to choose who gets to marry a man (marriage between women seems the norm). Day (Belle Kemisara Paladesh) is one of the five lottery winners randomly chosen, with the other 45 contestants chosen based on family wealth and education.

As she competes in the games she meets Son (Blue Pongtiwat Tangwancharoen), one of the five male contestants (the guys play too though they can't be eliminated). He dislikes the contest and all the women especially Day. But then he realizes that she has a necklace with half a coin and he has the other half which he got from a girl who saved him when he ran away from home as a kid. Now he wants to win Day's heart though Day just wants to survive and win because the winners also get to live on The Farm, the island of rich families where you get free health insurance which her sister needs.

Of course it turns out the game is rigged and the odds are against Day. But she has her plucky spirit, help from Son, and is the fan favorite so the show's producer keeps saving her to get higher ratings... Lilly Ladapa Thongkham (supporting role in Harmony Secret, 2025) plays Day's "rival" contestant whose powerful family wants her to marry Son.

The sets, locations, and cast are pretty. Games were cool with lots of props and could believably be actual games in this type of show. But the story was average and so were the feels.


Temple Run: Legends (2024) [/] An Apple Arcade exclusive version of the endless runner Temple Run franchise. This is more story mode with levels so you don't endlessly and can play different characters. Not really my genre but seems quite polished.

Sambal Ebi Waringin [+] Indonesian dried shrimp chili. Made in Medan, Indonesia. "High-quality dried shrimp (ebi), crispy potatoes, fried shallots, peanuts, and bird's eye chilies." Kind of pricey because it's imported. A small bag lasts me a couple of days. I guess you're supposed to eat it with rice but I just eat it plain since mom does the same.

Girl Rules is a Thai GL (girl love/lesbian) romance series running 12 hour-long episodes.

There are three romance plot lines. Primarily it's Prim (Namtan Tipnaree Weerawatnodom) and Bambi (Film Rachanun Mahawan). Prim is a video director and co-owner of a small video production house. Bambi has just returned from overseas and is somewhat of the spoiled heiress who hasn't found what she wants to do in life. But what Bambi knows is that she wants to get back with Prim who is wary because Bambi ended their relationship by abruptly disappearing for five years.

Then there is freelance stylist Gorya (Love Pattranite Limpatiyakorn) and famous fashion model/influencer Shasha (Milk Pansa Vosbein). Shasha is immediately attracted to Gorya though in the beginning Gorya is chasing after Prim. The difficulty here is that Gorya is unsure of Shasha's commitment because Shasha is a party girl that sleeps around.

The last pairing is between Prim's co-founder Min (View Benyapa Jeenprasom) and freelance photographer Praew (Mim Rattanawadee Wongthong). Min is straight with an abusive boyfriend who she breaks up with early on. Praew chases Min and protects her from her ex-boyfriend. But does Min actually want to try a lesbian relationship?

As with other GL series I've seen this one has nice sets, pretty cast, relatively low conflict storylines. It did take maybe more than half the series before I started rooting for Prim and Bambi because the latter is fairly annoying and conniving whilst Prim just kind of ignores all that because she's still in love with Bambi. Still it does turn around and all the storylines end well.

Overall a nice series.

Chatterino is a Twitch chat client which has a macOS version (along with Windows, Linux, and BSD) that I've been using. It can monitor multiple channels, I think each with a separate login user if you want.

I mostly use it for chat history -- I set it to keep 10k lines per chat which I can then search fairly easily, unlike Twitch UI which only keeps a couple of hundred lines and has no built-in search so you have use browser search. I keep Chatterino running all the time so it can record chats even when I'm not around. Also you can have it log chats to a text file (which I just discovered as I was writing this review) though it loses a bit compared to using the UI to read old chats.

Some nice things:

• Supports various Twitch emote extensions like BetterTTV and 7TV -- I forgot that I also use this since I don't have those extensions installed so I can check what the emote is without looking it up in BetterTTV/7TV.
• You can see deleted messages -- useful where I'm not a mod to see if a user was particularly offensive in another chat in which case I might ban him in the chats I mod.
• Beeps when my name is mentioned. Not sure Twitch does it and I have it off or it doesn't do it at all. A little useful in case someone is trying to get my attention as I'm not always reading chat.
• Can do mod timeouts and bans from Chatterino. But although it has its own notes facility it doesn't integrate with Twitch mod notes so would guess Chatterino notes are for me only. And in general I find Twitch mod view much more useful than trying to mod with Chatterino.

I guess, besides lack of mod tools, the biggest drawback for me is the rather ugly UI.

It's free software. Open Source -- MIT License which looks to be as unrestrictive as BSD License.

Queen Woo (2024) [/] Korean drama running eight 50-minute episodes on Paramount+. After the death of the King, Queen Woo Hee (Jeon Jong-seo, Ballerina, 2023) must choose one of his brothers for levirate marriage in order to remain Queen and save herself and her family (and in a levirate marriage the new husband gets everything the old husband had so Kingship that bypasses the council of five major families).

Most of the series takes place overnight as she and her small escort travel to the Third Prince, Go Bal-gi (Lee Soo-hyuk), who turns out to be much more brutal than she knew, then to another prince and back to the castle just in time offend everyone and then prepare for war with the Third Prince and his allies. Meanwhile we also get stuff back at the palace as Prime Minister Eul Pa-so (Kim Mu-yeol) tries to find who poisoned the King. And we have flashbacks, each a minute or a few minutes, of Woo Hee's life with the Prince she married who later became King.

The series ends as the Queen and her army charge out to fight which is rather ambiguous ending I guess, though there is a scene early in the series where Woo Hee is on the battlefield and defeats the last enemy general (who I don't remember who it was) and a brief recap is seen before the last battle so I guess they're trying to indicate she already won.

I've never seen a Korean series with nudity and this one had at least one brief glimpse of nudity (and sometimes more than a glimpse) in the first half and maybe one more time in episode 7. Also lots of women getting killed -- I guess lots of men getting killed two but most of the men are armed whereas most of the women are not (but the Queen's escort is mostly women warriors which is cool and they mostly die).

Overall it was interesting series and I liked that each episode we only get a couple of hours or so through the night, which is dramatic but doesn't seem to make sense as then every place is too close together. The ending was disappointing even if they did a previous flash reveal that Queen Woo won the battle. It just feels disappointing to build it up and then cut to credits.


Food Truck Pup+ (2024) [-] You are a dog running a crepe food truck. Advertise your business, buy/gather ingredients, make your crepes, serve the customers, collect money, go to the bathroom (to pee and bathe), go to sleep, clean the food truck. With 8 bit graphics and iPhone-sized screen so a bit hard to maneuver. I found this game to have way too many elements especially once a bunch of customers show up.

Goya Black Beans [/] Lots of water but the beans weren't like broken up and mushy like for WinCo Black Beans. Tastes fine though I think Trader Joe's is preferrable.

Filing for Love is a South Korean romance-drama set in modern-day Seoul and running 12 hour-long episodes.

At one of the bigger conglomerates Noh Ki-jun (Gong Myung, Love Untangled, 2025) is a handsome fast-track assistant manager at Haemu Group's Audit Department. Unfortunately he makes a bad impression on new Head of Audit Joo In-ah (Shin Hye-sun -- See You in My 19th Life, 2023; Welcom to Samdal-ri, 2023) who already has a reputation for being a shark. Ki-jun is transferred from audit team 1, which handles embezzlement and executive malfeasance, to audit team 3, which handles moral codes, mostly sexual misconduct and office affairs.

As the perceived problem employee In-ah makes sure he gets the worst assignments but she also often accompanies him to supervise and also shows him how to be dedicated even with unglamorous assignments. Naturally Ki-jun starts to see In-ah in a different light, as someone honest and fearless in her duty and he starts to develop feelings for In-ah, though it's harder to tell what she thinks of him beneath her gruff exterior. Eventually though they do start getting romantically involved even though it's against company policy and the very misbehaviors their audit team is supposed to investigate.

To complicate matters Vice Chariman Jeon Jae-yeol (Kim Jae-wook -- Her Private Life, 2019; Melo Movie, supporting role, 2025), who is unhappily married, wants to rekindle a romance with In-ah that they almost had before he was married. On the other hand she feels nothing romantically for him any more but her personal loyalty and old promise to protect him does it make it seem like there's something going on between the two. Which makes Jae-yeol's secretary Park Ah-jung (Hong Hwa-yeon) quite jealous as she's long been attracted to her boss and has pretty much told him so but he keeps their relationship strictly professional...

Overall a pretty good series with a fair amount of humor.

Queens at War is the fourth historical book by Alison Weir about England's Medieval Queens. This one spans 1403 to 1485, from Joan of Navarre (Queen to Henry IV) to Elizabeth Widville (Queen to Edward IV) and Anne Neville (Queen to Richard III). The Hundred Years' War ends in the middle. The War of the Roses starts just after the Hundred Years' War and ends a couple of years after this book ends.

The writing style is readable and just a tad of fictional supposition. Weir uses a lot of sources but I guess Queens did not write much or have works commissioned for them so the accounts are from contemporary historians and writers and often there are conflicting accounts because people in these times were not afraid to bald-face lie and rumor monger. Although the printing press was invented halfway through this period apparently no newspapers yet. Weir often points out contradictions in the various accounts and makes deductions based on believability -- who stood to gain from this statement or does it make sense someone would say or do something that is against their benefit?

The closest to the Queens' point of view sometimes are letters. There's a lot made of accounting records: what was bought and where, living expenses which then point to where royalty moved around, recordings of gifts given and received also places people. Taking all this Weir often paints life of the Queen and the people around here and makes conjectures. Weir also writes fiction novels, many (all?) centered on English queens.

I did not expect to find this book interesting but combine a good writing style with lots of research to bring out these queens to life (another thing is that history tends to focus on kings unless the queen is particularly infamous). Overall a great big book that's an interesting and informative read (I'll add that Weir does provide overviews so readers have more context but a good grounding in English history of this time would have been nice to have before I read this book).