Silo, season three (2026) is 10 episodes continuing the post-apocalyptic dystopian story.

Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), our main protagonist, is now Mayor of Silo 18 but she's lost her memories. Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley) is now Head of IT and knows the secret that the central computer will kill everyone in Silo 18 if they go wild. Conversely Camille's husband Robert Sims (Common) although Head of Judicial Security is kind of working against her because the AI's current plan is to wipe everyone's memories and Robert doesn't want his son to forget his parents.

There's more of a resistance movement. There is a mystery murder and missing essential supplies. Camille and her security is looking for Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash), former Head of IT's Shadow who therefore knows too much to be left alive. There's a bit of a revisit to Silo 18.

About 1/3rd of this season shows the world before. Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and reporter Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) investigate a government coverup after Daniel's sister Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) is shot down while doing a fighter strike on a secret Iranian weapons facility. She is the only survivor and her PTSD treatment involves a revolutionary technique of wiping her memory and reconstructing it from the ground up.

Season two introduced multiple silos (in a panoramic shot) and Juliette went to Silo 17. Season three introduces the larger world and how the Silos were built and populated. Season three ends with Silo 18 in full revolt against the system, disabling their Silo kill-switch and discovering that it's not an AI computer but people in Silo 1 trying to control all the Silos. Juliette declares that in order to survive they must stop Silo 1 one way or another...

It's an engrossing story that keeps ramping up. I thought the modern day part was going to be boring and maybe it wasn't the best but still interesting enough with lots of background revealed. Season 4 is green-lit and declared to be the last season so good chance of a good conclusion to the series.

The Third Texas Cavalry in the Civil War is a history of a volunteer regiment that was formed and served during the American Civil War and was disbanded at the end of that war. Douglas Hale, Professor Emeritus of History at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, is the writer. He uses official records plus letters to recount their story.

It's kind of a dry narration with few maps. I guess because of the nature of cavalry actions you get a sense of the battle but not really detailed, even when the Third Texas fought dismounted. Even though he mentions individuals all the time -- this man was shot here, this trooper did a gallant action there -- it feels like he's kind of elaborating on the official accounts without making things up whole cloth.

Interestingly, since Hale had access to census information, he breaks down the unit by socio-economic status and slave holding characteristics to see if there is any conclusions to be gathered there. Not sure he concludes anything. Troopers were generally better off since they brought their own horses and leaders tended to be community leaders. There are also break downs by county.

As with other ACW unit histories I've read at the regimental level it can feel a bit sparse since most fighting is done by brigades. With the Third Texas it's the same as it was usually part of a Texas cavalry brigade so the brigade goes into action and Hale notes where the Third Texas contributed. But also since it's cavalry the regiment does do individual missions.

Overall I found the book interesting. I think the writing style is a bit dry though.

Jenny’s Wedding (2015) [+] Independent drama starring Katherine Heigl as Jenny, thirty-something professional in the Midwest where her parents and brother and sister are very white bread American and she's still in the closet. Once she finally reveals that she wants to marry her longtime "roommate" Kitty (Alexis Bledel) her parents want to be supportive but also want her to keep it a secret so as not to embarrass, which creates quite a hardship for Jenny...

Started watching this late one night and didn't stop until it ended. I've seen it several times and I love this movie. It's a bit slow, low key, and touching without trying to be a hard drama or characters actually hating lesbians.

Upcoming Summer (2021) [/] Chinese teen drama movie. Chen Chen (Zhang Zi Feng) fails an important exam and blames it on a bad breakup with boyfriend Zheng Yu Xing (Leo Wu, Amidst a Snowstorm of Love, 2024; The Long Ballad, 2021). But they've never had a relationship -- he's never at school so he was a convenient excuse. After this though Zheng starts hanging out with his "girlfriend" and they bond over their traumas: he's pining for his ex after she dumped him and she's trying to keep it together after finding out her parents divorced a year ago... I disliked that it has a bit of an ambiguous ending so not sure how it turns out for them.

Monster Train+ (2024) [/] Turn-based card mechanics tactical combat game. Concept is that it's the end of the world and you're on a train fleeing demons. You have two or three stops (and a choice of two routes) to get cards, upgrades, or resources. Then it's a fight.

The train has three floors and then the train's heart at the top. Each floor has three spaces for good guys and three spaces for bad guys. Each turn bad guys enter on the ground floor and surviving bad guys move up a floor. Then you spend resources to place units or activate powers. Then one round of automatic combat reminiscent of Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone except you don't choose targets (well, you do if you activate a magic attack) -- each unit targets the front enemy unit (unless otherwise indicated, such as for area attacks) until it's dead. If you don't have any defenders on the top floor then bad guys there hit the train's heart (which starts at 60 hp so it cant take a few turns).

Eventually the boss arrives with each boss having fairly distinct abilities. You get one turn to place units then the fight is continuous until the floor is cleared. If the boss wins he moves up and you get another turn to use cards then another continuous fight. After the fight you one card from a choice of two so you can adjust your strategy that way.

It's an ok game. Not really original mechanics. Not really much in terms of story. Somehow a game like Slay the Spire is a better experience, possibly because the fights are quicker and it ramps up slower than in Monster Train.

Amidst a Snowstorm of Love is a Chinese romance series running 30 45-minute episodes.

I think it starts out in Sweden. It's snowing heavily. Yin Guo (Zhao Jinmai, Shine on Me, 2025) and her cousin are visiting for a week, Lin Yiyang (Leo Wu, The Long Ballad, 2021) is walking in the snowstorm and sees Guo at a bar window talking on the phone and drawing on the condensation on the window and immediately falls for her. Turns out Yiyang is a friend of a friend and is there to help Guo and her cousin.

His attempts to be around her and arrange meals and such is a little clumsy but works because Guo also finds him attractive. It's a hesitant attraction as they don't declare their feelings but each silently yearns for the other. But they will get to spend more time interacting because she is a world class woman's 9-ball player (it's a billiards-type game) and he is a former Chinese national champion snookers player who retired abruptly but not due to any physical or mental issues. Yiyang will eventually return to competitions because he wants to earn money and impress Guo and her family.

There is a lot of both snookers and 9-ball action, though never really explained or shown so I still don't know how either game is played. Someone in chat said 9-ball's objective is to sink the balls in numerical order which I guess was shown though in cuts so I didn't realize that's what the players were doing. Snookers though seems to have more strategy as at some points one player was using their turn to hide the white ball so the other player couldn't win and there must be some sort of penalty if you can't hit one of your balls during your turn.

We also see competition areas and how it's setup. A tv show setup is probably not as grand as the real thing but it did make it look like it's a formal and popular game.

There is a certain lack of drama making this more of a slow and pure romance. Maybe her mom and sister don't like him because of the way he behaved in his last tournament before he retired but that is quickly resolved. Maybe he has a lingering injury but it's never to the point that it threatens his playing. Maybe there's going to be conflict when he takes over his old billiard's club and the older teachers are worried about his changes but again that never becomes a problem.

The ending also comes really fast. In the last episode he proposes then it jumps three years and both of them are happy together (and what happened about that pregnancy scare half a dozen episodes ago?). And then the end not resolving a couple of minor sub-romances that were more hinted at than delved into but still.

The love story is great. It moves slowly and it has little things and it has a lot of feels. But around that there's a rather bland story and world that doesn't seem to have much impact on their developing relationship or lives. Still, very attractive leads and lots of loving looks makes it worth watching.

EasyStore is essentially a WD Elements rebranded for Best Buy so they don't have to price match. It's USB 3 and I got transfer speeds of 120 MB/s compared to 40 MB/s with my USB 2 external drives. It's one 18 TB drive so not trying to do some internal RAID 0 to make two cheaper drives look like a big drive. Doesn't have a power button but will spin down if idle (kind of means don't leave it mounted when not in use). $400 or so new though I assume my brother bought it when it was like $200 at a steep sale (WD EasyStore 20 TB is $880 currently showing how much HD prices have gone up).

On the negative I have two and they both have this high pitch whine when the HD is spinning which make these drives impractically to leave mounted all the time but I only use them for backups so that's fine with me. It also comes with WD Discovery software, though you can also get that and more from WD's Software Downloads page but looking at that page I'd rather rely on my macOS system utilities.

Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale (2024) [-] South Korean comedy romance with some loose Cinderella elements. Shin Jae-rim (Pyo Ye-jin) is the stepdaughter to a mom with two girls but although Jae-rim thinks of herself as unwanted mom loves her and her sisters treat Jae-rim like one of them.

Jae-rim, who's had many menial jobs, finally gets the dream gig at Cheongdam Heaven, a rich playboy club run by Moon Cha-min (Lee Jun-young) who has been taught by his father that women will betray you so Cha-min is determined to treat every woman as he would a rock. Except Jae-rim is so annoying to Cha-min but they made a bet and he had to hire her.

Naturally as they interact more they start to see positive attributes in the other. Cha-min's "fiancée" Ban Dan-ah (Song Ji-woo) sees Jae-rim as a rival to remove. Dan-ah is much more into actually marrying Cha-min while he agreed for it to be a pretend engagement that lasts forever so that he doesn't have to deal with other women...

The humor is a bit more cringy than usual. There's a narrator that tries to make the whole story as a fairy tale analogue. It's a 10 episode series (each of 45 minutes so a bit shorter than usual) and the ending part came very quick. I guess the way the comedic parts were done the romantic parts didn't grab me. It is a series that does have some ok moments but way below average.


Sheriff Country s1 (2025) [/] I finished watching season 1 (episodes 7 to 20). I guess it's better than my impression after six episodes. Even though an episodic format there are subplots that last several episodes and bigger subplots that went through the whole season. Maybe a bit too reliant on 2-parters (including a 2-part crossover with the older Fire Country series which this one is a spin-off). The two-parters did have more action, shootings and explosions than typical episodes. Overall a nice series though I probably won't watch any more.

Wheel of Fortune Daily (2024) [-] A stripped down Wheel of Fortune where all you're doing is solving daily puzzles of various types. Bonus Round - where you pick three more letters and a vowel then guess the phrase. Punch Out - You can reveal up to five tiles one at a time and solve at any time. Toss Up - Each phrase is slowly revealed and solve as many phrases as you can in 30 seconds. You can also play against online players... I'm not a WoF fan.

Chasing Love is a Thai GL series running 8 1-hour episodes.

The main romance plot involves Song (Nile Chanidapa Sommitthanakul) an award-winning food scientist who attracts the attention of Piang (Namwan Natchaya Vongbut). Piang is one of the granddaughter's of the food company's owner and she's always been flighty and it turns out Piang and Song had an anonymous one-night stand a few nights ago. But Song has a trauma that keeps her from loving anyone and Piang's grandmother is not going to let her marry a commoner. Piang has a lot of work to do.

There are two other romances. Song's assistant Ploy (Fay Apisara Lertwisettheerakul) falls for Song's best friend and model Ple (Gene Ornalin Leelaburanathanakul). Meanwhile company president and Piang's sister Matmi (Gift Sirinart Sugandharat) falls for commoner Rin (Aomsin Nuttharat Papirom) so Matmi also has to face her grandmother's disapproval.

Pretty cast, nice locations, a good amount of kissing, light drama. Admittedly most of the Thai GL dramas I've seen are from Change2561 but the one or two ones from other production companies are also rather similar.

The best part may be Eed Duangjai Hathaikarn, playing Song's grandmother who is quite willing to let Song find her love and not dictate a suitable marriage, in contrast with Piang and Matmi's grandmother, played by Dao Duangdao Jarujinda.

Anyway, this is a nice series with no surprises but delivers what the audience wants.

The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal is I assume a translation and new edition of the book one-time world chess champion GM Mikhail Tal wrote in 1978.

Each chapter covers a period in his life. The beginning of the chapter is recollections and stories. Then the majority of the chapter is going over significant games with Tal's commentary. 100 games are fully covered though there are maybe a dozen or two games partially covered (e.g. here's an amusing position, showing the position and remaining moves without commentary).

The recollections and stories are done in a faux interview format where Tal is both the questioner and answerer. In the narration shows he's a happy man who loves chess and has no complaints other than his kidney troubles (he went through several surgeries and recoveries and asylum stays).

Game commentaries also show Tal's intelligence and humor. Often he mentions his state of mind at a certain point and/or the opponents state of mind or behavior. In game commentaries he tends to talk in third person and referring to the players as White and Black. For the most part I found reading the game with commentaries interesting even though I wasn't trying to recreate the game in my head (not that I can do that well since I don't play chess).

Overall more interesting to read than I expected due to Tal's lively narration.

The Long Ballad (2021) [/] Chinese historical romantic drama running 49 45-minute episodes. Princess Li Changge (Dilraba Dilmurat, supporting role in Eternal Love, 2017) goes into hiding after her family is murdered by the new Emperor who is her uncle. While plotting revenge she meets the merchant Ashile Sun (Leo Wu, currently watching him as the male lead in Amidst a Snowstorm of Love, 2024) who is actually son of the Khan whose trying to conquer the Tang.

They become friends, then enemies, and friends again and their attraction for each other grow. Li Changge ends up helping her uncle by stabilizing the Tang border with the barbarian tribes and battling Sui dynasty remnants who want to reclaim China. And through those adventures she comes to see that a stable government that supports the people is more important than revenge for her uncle's treachery.

Zhao Lusi (The Story of Pearl Girl, 2024; Hidden Love, 2023; Who Rules the World, 2021) plays a supporting character, Li Changge's childhood friend Li Leyan but also daughter of Li Changge's uncle. Li Leyan has her own adventures, getting kidnapped, freeing herself then having to live on her own until she finds someone who'll believe she's actually a Princess. She also her own romance subplot with swordsman Hao Du (Liu Yuning) who is both there to protect Li Leyan and find and kill Li Changge...

The series had some good parts but in general kind of watchable not quite engrossing. A lot of stuff happens and sometimes they never go back to revisit threads left not quite completed. I do like that, since they didn't have a huge budget, they do big battles and big set pieces as animation (more like action drawings than fully animated). It gives the series a certain style. I did watch this for Zhao Lusi so it's nice her character had a fairly substantive subplot though probably there to spell the main characters for a few episodes, as is often done in Chinese series.

I guess overall not really worth watching when there's better stuff out there, but wouldn't be a terrible mistake to watch either.

2026-09-14: Some more thoughts. I like that in the first episode Li Changge poses as a man in a martial arts team sporting event and both shows she can keep up with the boys and that she devises a winning strategy. Later when she flees she poses as a man for about half the series (with some humorous situations). She shows she can fight fairly well, beating mooks and lesser NPCs. But her forte is strategy, both military and political, and she gets to show that off several times. That was really appealing to me at the beginning but the series went from focusing on Li Changge to also giving other characters subplots so it got less interesting.

Smash Hit+ (2024) [/] Apple Arcade version of a simple mobile game. First person perspective. You glide constantly forward. Throw balls and break glass things that are in your way and cones that give you more balls. Then you encounter moving obstacles and obstacles that jump up at you. And at the end of a level the door is opened by hitting the open button(s). For everything you use balls until you run out and the game ends and if you hit something you lose balls. Neat concept and in general things come in patterns so you develop a rhythm. Has a nice soundtrack and lots of smashing glass sound effects.

EcoSMART Ant & Roach Killer [+] I don't know where I got this bug killer, possibly Whole Foods years ago. Kills ants instantly. Kills gnats instantly even though they have a separate Flying Insect Killer product. It uses various plant oil extracts that are lethal to bugs but harmless to animals and people so very safe to use (does have a bit of a plant-y smell if you use a lot). Loses effectiveness after it evaporates so not as long lasting as commercial pesticide insect killers.

On their web site it's cheaper than in stores but shipping is substantial so you end up paying a bit more but not too much for 2 sprayers.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day in a theater which does help. This is the 4th Tom Holland Spider-Man movie.

After the ending of the last movie everybody's memories of Peter Parker (Tom Holland) were erased and he decided not to reveal himself again to MJ (Zendaya) or his best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). That means at the start of this movie he's alone in a dingy apartment battling crime and that's his whole life. He keeps up with MJ and Ned via their social media posts as they go to college and four years later it's still the same crime-fighting-no-life day to day for Peter.

A new supervillain enters the scene. Someone who can jump into bodies and take over their consciousnesses. He's targeting Damage Control (introduced in the first Tom Holland Spider-Man movie), a government organization tasked with imprisoning supervillains and examining their powers and tech. Seemingly the good guys as Peter starts investigating he'll come to realize Damage Control has some authoritarian/oppressive tendencies, CIA-level they're-on-your-side-until-they're-not sort of thing.

Frank Castle aka The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) is a supporting character sort of allied with Spider-Man but more like getting in Spidey's way because of his "it's fine to kill bad guys" tendencies. Later on though they do seem to become real friends. Bruce Banner aka The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) has a cameo role though also The Hulk becomes a Spidey enemy due to the big bad. Yelena Belova aka Black Widow (Florence Pugh) has a humorous cameo providing Spidey with info and not helping otherwise because her "Avengers" don't do small scale stuff anymore.

Overall I liked Brand New Day and seemed suitably cinematic.

SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS

Turns out the main villain is not a body jumper but a mind controller, Jean Grey (Sadie Sink). And I guess this ties into the X-Men reboot coming in 2028. I did like this surprise as I was thinking of the Wild Cards Jumpers but it's just that Grey's mind control can jump from body to body but only can jump 30 meters at a time.

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.