foggies

july media log

2026-08-18T07:20:15Z

you know, i could've sworn i kept a longer list somewhere but i can't find it

what is the functional difference between me straight-up media journaling by hand versus me writing these entries that literally not a single human soul reads? clickable links i suppose. for posterity.

books

spent: a comic novel by alison bechdel — 4/5
a satire on old-wealthy-people queer culture set in the tail end of the pandemic. sitcom-sharp, incredible artistic details, so satirical that it's serious that it's satirical. never thought i'd read a graphic novel plot B about three semi-retirees getting into polyamory, but i should have expected nothing less from The alison bechdel. i shall purchase this book one day

television

severance season 2 — 3.5/5
i didn't like it as much as the first season but not for the reason you'd think. the first season is intriguing but in large swaths it is style over substance. my hot take is that there is nothing wrong with style over substance in today's bar-in-hell media landscape. it's when a show introduces too many complex stories while attempting to maintain their style (which takes so much time away from the plot!!!) that the cracks form. many bottle episodes i didn't really like. adam scott's outie got so nasty at the end - i am lowkey rooting AGAINST you, evil mark scout! as an original daisy johnson megafan who literally watched aos season 3 in live time as each episode aired, i am overjoyed to see dichen lachman play a supporting character in her billionth scifi tv series

girls season 3? - 4/5
i stopped watching this when my brother left my new city to go home, but while he was here, hbo girls was so fun. so ahead of its time, though if it were made today all of the creators would be crucified by the end of the pilot episode. i had many interesting thoughts in posterity about how twenty-something women in the early 2010s (at least as portrayed in this show) were moderately accountable about their lives and how, in some ways, the culture shifted and people are no longer striving to be personally responsible for the same things. idk call me a boomer call me a bootlicker and traitor to my generation. a generation. you know what i mean

movies

i'm moving away from just linking my letterboxd. i am irritated by the idea of pasting verbatim the word vomit i write on that website onto this log, which i'm pretending adheres to some minimal curatorical standard. so i'm just going to leave the ratings.
in july, i saw:
the odyssey — 4/5
hadestown proshot - 5/5
wolfs - 3/5
avatar aang: the last airbender - 3/5

podcast episodes

i swear i listened to so many more eps that were very interesting but i don't know where that list went. in addition to the episodes recommended in the previous post:
planet money:
- what makes a toy go viral — an interview with the guy behind the dumpling squishy toys at five below, which have taken middle schools all around the world by storm

comments

july reading list

2026-07-14T08:16:37Z

hello to my zero readers <3333 welcome back! welcome back, me. or should i say... dr. me........

personal life updates: i graduated from hell, moved two thousand miles, and am in a brand-new city with brand-new friends (?) and not enough of a system to keep in touch with my old friends. new program is awesome and coresidents have been very kind. back in the freaking CADAVER LAB which i am not thrilled about (but respect x10000000, as always, to the donors). getting used to the doctor moniker... it's all very new to me...

i feel like the original purpose of this dreamwidth was to try to switch to more long-form media consumption. while i haven't quit short-form media (can i blame 2026 for this one or do i literally have a digital addiction that is creating holes in my brain), in the past two years i've become an even bigger podcast journalism consumer.

because dreamwidth has a truly terrible post-saving interface, i will be publishing and editing each post for the whole month, so stay tuned (again to my BLANK AUDIENCE OF NOBODY) for updates!!!

PODCASTS:

The Journal: "How Polymarket Made Fake Bets Go Viral" — a look into accounts on social media promoting fake earnings from a fake website pretending to be polymarket. clip farming is generally done in asia by teenagers who are earning very little money.
Planet Money: "There's no business like dough business" — why are there multiple wetzel's pretzels in the same mall or transit terminal within walking distance of each other? they interview the guy who owns all three locations at one of brooklyn's biggest transit hubs. turns out the same person has to own all the stores in any one location, and turns out he makes more money here because he can centralize all the food preparation to the largest store that has a kitchen, while the other two locations get the food sent downstairs for much cheaper. attention economy, impulse purchases.
The Daily: "What's So Epic About 'The Odyssey'? Everything" — an interview about the odyssey, in the context of the upcoming movie, with emily wilson, the first woman to translate the original text, and madeline miller, the author of circe and the song of achilles
Search Engine: "Why doesn't anyone come to my parties?" — a woman keeps trying to host parties but all her normie friends decline. pj vogt interviews her friends and family to figure out why everyone thinks she's weird. her brother in particular LAYS INTO HER it's INSANE podcast material

ARTICLES:

Marketing Brew: "Clip it good: How marketers are making experiences worth clipping" — related article to The Journal Polymarket episode

TO READ

https://www.ft.com/content/402955aa-21fa-42d5-b1d7-f79e7f19a617?syn-25a6b1a6=1

it has always been a dream of mine to force people i know to consume media that i enjoy

comments

the pitt s2e12

2026-04-14T04:45:06Z

oops

- dana robby arguing scene is the emmy scene i'm pretty sure
- whitaker santos scene really really fun it's like lifted from ten years of found family tumblr dynamics
- santos is the realest character of the season for me actually i've really come around
- javadi probably second #d4moment
- you know i'm on pitttwt but i still don't agree with how hard young people on twitter are dunking on this season. this kind of tension and build-up is gold + the plotlines are thought through so thoroughly and i think people keep criticizing characters for being biased as if the writers didn't intentionally write them like that i don't know something something decline in media literacy... dude i don't care i am all in on this show
- i know i literally just criticized the show like two posts back which is an opinion i still stand behind but i think we all just need to ride the season out
- JOHN SHEN IS BACK BABY! literally right as joy kwon leaves ugh can we really only have one east asian at a time

i don't know i feel like mental health wise i'm pretty much in the same state as those guys in the pitt

comments

the pitt s2e10

2026-03-13T03:31:22Z

oops i skipped recording episode 9 guess we'll never know what i thought. i did laugh out loud at least three times. shawn hatosy director LOL that's four times

- does emma know this emergency room well enough to restock the crash carts at this point... it's like hour ten
- why is mohan talking about asking abbot for a letter right now on this day...
- oh my god they weren't kidding about ogilvie holding a bag of limbs
- whitaker is like a totally different character than season 1 i kind of like it
- THE HAND PROSTHESIS EWWWW
- i'm mohaning HARD right now
- nvm not that hard yet
- LMFAOOOOO her not-girlfriend is flirting with her respawned workplace enemy santos is having the worst day of her life
- THE ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON ENTRANCE HAHAH
- "what?" my group leader core
- "i'm doing everything right, it's just everything around me that's fucked up" me core
- okay patrick ball i see the vision
- damn santos if looks could kill
- oh my melissa...
- ANOTHER MENTION OF THE LANGDON WIFE BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO what is the entire point why are they so weirdly fanservicey in some places (ILLOGICAL) and so adamantly not in others (NATURAL PROGRESSION)
- holy shit real yuri

DENTAL SCHOOL IS SHIT THINGS ARE GOING VERY POORLY. THAT'S THE UPDATE

comments

the pitt s2e8

2026-03-02T03:11:52Z

- the craziest part of this whole thing is that they just have all the forms ready
- THAT is a FAX MACHINE
- there was one thing that i wanted to do as a dental student under supervision that's probably not going to happen and it was to give a trigger point injection. it's okay i will do CE in a few more years. i need a tp injection myself, maybe should get it at my school while i still can
- OGILVIE LMFAO i can't even hate him because he is kind of the stand-in for a regular person in this show
- mohan's face card
- also mohan's face
- mohan's character has kind of changed since the first season. i think she treats people with kid gloves on a little too hard
- they're intentionally making abbot do the pinky finger down the throat thing right. i know you. you nasty writers
- camerawork here reminds me of some of the pittfest scenes where everybody was out in the open
- i have been enjoying this extended bit about the rape kit. i'm sure their intentions are to educate and to encourage more women to take the kit, and i'm really truly so glad #wokeshow
- another oral injury???
- gerran howell is actually so mouse boy cute :3
- getting curious about the history of medical devices. wish i had someone i could talk to who works in this field, like a friend or cousin or something. oh wait
- another oral thing wow they should employ a dentist in the OR or something. not that i could repair a tongue lac. hey why don't i know how to repair a tongue lac
- i feel like every kingdon fic on ao3 (pour one out) has cassie being langdon's AA sponsor or something. i genuinely think at least one scriptwriter read the most-kudos'ed pitt fics and felt inspired. don't know how i feel about any of that, feels like an invasion of an unspoken covenant but hey it's 2026 and the internet is still, at the moment, public
- OHHHHH THE OGILVIE HAND MOTION
- NIKOLSKY SIGN MENTIONED
- wait teehee dr. ellis that was kind of hot
- is this the end of abbot's feature this season then? goodbye shawn hatosy your twitter presence was fun for like three weeks
- GERIATRICS???? GET OUTTA THERE LOL also "there are a lot of openings. it might be your best shot" is sooooooooooooo. oh my god that would make me spin tf out

dental school graduation updates. i am kind of past the point of crashing out. things are going. slowly but finally going. had about four weeks of real instability there. i hope my group leader sees that i've been making a lot of effort to give away my phase ii cases and treats me nicely because of it. lots of things to do, many many things to do. i think i will always live a bit regretfully but maybe that's just because there isn't enough time in the day. but maybe that's an excuse as well

boots!

comments

the pitt s2e7

2026-02-20T23:44:15Z

i'll be honest daddy's about to kill himself

i'm back to liveblogging fuck the gym i guess

- half of this show is just ways that the writers think the system could be improved it's Very funny
- ELLIS IS BACK
- finally the iPad guy
- why can't they type on somebody's phone
- notice how javadi pronounces al-hashimi's name properly and notice how others do not
- the automated call system is SO real
- ABBOT?
- no but this trauma case is incredibly cool
- melissa i love you !
- supriya is genuinely not a great actor but it’s not like regular medical residents know how to deliver news properly either
- i really really enjoy mel king and i think she really deserves to hear that she’s amazing :)
- the first time anyone’s left the floor all day and it’s them in the silent elevator yay i like how the pitt uses noise AND LANGDON DOESNT START SPEAKING UNTIL THE HELICOPTER NOISES ARE LOUD
- this is SO FUNNY LMFAO
- ugh what an amazing depiction of how tedious and traumatic it must be to get through a rape kit collection
- “he is hemodynamically stable 🫤” i love you mel
- is this the first whitaker scene heyyy
- UNBELIEVABLE.
- shawn hatosy is funny looking
- oh my god guys what the fuck
- huge fucking crush on santos
- YES BROADWAY LEAD ISA BRIONES SINGING
- A LITTLE BLOATED you guys are funny
- WHAT IS THIS GUYS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON why did they write this episode this way. i had to pause. should i take a walk to trader joe’s

yeah

school is going WORSE THAN EVER BEFORE i need a miracle

guys i can’t even handle being a dental student im like spectacularly and publicly going through it and i think my friends and i would all benefit if i just shut the hell up and took it

comments

the pitt s2e6

2026-02-14T08:27:55Z

was not able to liveblog this one because i was at the gym

highlights:
- extraordinary episode. i thought maybe it was shot differently: lots of pov shots of characters looking at each other across the clinic through windows, moving shots with a gurney, chasing dana and emma as they worked around louie's body on the bed. bookending the episode with louie's death and debrief cast rather a reflective tone over a relatively drama-free (and trauma-free) plot. instead, the stories were centered around how healthcare workers deal with empathy. from al-hashimi insisting that the incarcerated man be allowed to remain to get better care, to princess apologizing for the way that santos totally dismissed the deaf patient without even saying goodbye, to dana asking perlah to take a few minutes to process louie's death, to their placing louie's hand outside of the blanket to be held, you see how many of these characters genuinely try their hardest to act with compassion in spite of the system that limits their ability to do so. will the incarcerated man live a changed life in prison after he leaves the hospital? will this bring louie back? no, but they still count. this is one of the best points that the pitt makes over and over, implicitly and explicitly.
- this is obviously a nurse-centric episode, which is a pretty creative way to divide up what would otherwise have been a contiguous and tonally homogenous season. i REALLY like how much teaching was done by the nurses to doctors and how much they were able to demonstrate their skills. i especially liked how ogilvie started kissing up to donnie — like, okay yeah actually game recognizes game and it's nice that he's not quite alex karev-ing his way through this ED. it's funny that ogilvie is known as tall whitaker when his default operating mode is all santos, zero whitaker. never see that comparison being discussed in fan spaces. (why is that?) (don't answer)
- at this point in the season, i must remark that it seems like the bigger emotional arcs involving our returning cast members do seem centered around the white male characters, especially robby and langdon (and whitaker to a slightly lesser extent). robby wants a sabbatical and langdon wants atonement; these motivations drive every interaction and conversation about them. meanwhile, the other beloved docs get one-dimensional arcs that explain only their specific mood for this specific day. santos is behind on her charting: that's why she's crabby. mel is nervous about her deposition: that's why she's distracted. mohan's going through some mommy drama: that's why her phone keeps going off (why is this even a recurring thing). javadi has a tiktok and is turning 21 soon? cassie wants to get back out there?? now, i may have grown up in 2010s tumblr, but i am not 16 anymore and no longer believe that the value of a show like this lies in the quantification of shoehorned diversity plot points. these characters are obviously three-dimensional and are written/portrayed in alignment with the first season. i wouldn't bring this up if these women actors (esp supriya, shabana, and isa) weren't constantly pushed into interviews and award shows to talk about how the pitt is the pinnacle of representation. if santos is such a wealth of personality and growth, why has she been whining about charts for four whole hours? can mohan please pick up another call from her mom? ?????
- there is a shocking lack of kingdon. i can't believe i just said that. there is a shocking lack of MEL, actually, who shows up per episode with three lines and isn't even really seen doing things in the background. who is she even treating right now other than the prison guy??? we were strung along for six episodes picking apart langdon's ringless hand, his not bringing up his wife while discussing his sons, only to have the still-married bomb dropped. bro i'm not expecting the writer's room to lean into fanservice and get mel and langdon married by the end of this season, but less mel feels really antithetical to the fandom hype. there is a legion of tiktok editors out there waiting to deploy edits that would get 1.5 million likes if mel and langdon so much as walked past each other. what are they doing?
- at least garsantos are confirmed. THANK GOD. in 2026 i will: read more pitt yuri on ao3
- rip louie i really liked you
- don't get me wrong. i still really really like the pitt

dental school updates:
- i've been going through it
- like really really going through it. like some things really really suck right now
- then i had an epiphany inside the shower as i dropped the sample size of an ouai body scrub that i've been trying to use up before i leave. these things will come. i move out of this city in three months (oh god). it's all getting done whether i like it or not. truly. what is the rush. why then do i feel like i am choking every time i open my school's ugly $1 million door?

see ya a little over a week from now

comments

the pitt s2e5

2026-02-07T06:04:00Z

i'm late

- mel hitting whitaker's stethoscope and causing him ear pain is SO FUNNY
- omg more dental/oral maxillofacial stuff yay
- i think there is a small part of me that wishes i were becoming an oral surgeon (but most of me is glad i'm not)
- mohan turning on kwon is so crazy i love you samira mohan
- i am irritated with joy kwon because she is santos but not lovable
- dana's look when she says "i really don't think i needed to know that" WOOF
- why did they not wear a mask when dealing with an unhoused coughing woman
- okay wait i suddenly remembered that kingdon exists WHY ARE THE SCRIPT WRITERS NOT LEANING INTO THIS the mel langdon in the breakroom moment was one of the highlights of last season
- i'm so glad they're leaning into this fourth day of residency thing this is too funny i can't wait for this to be me in just a few short months (!!)
- this show is becoming sitcomy in a way that is not necessarily pleasant — langdon/donny bros being bros, santos getting interrupted over and over...
- why do they keep regurgitating stats like "70% of hospitals in urban settings are exposed to TB and wind up on meds" i promise you real doctors do not know these stats
- DO PEOPLE NOT WEAR MASKS FOR A DISIMPACTION WHAT THE FUCK
- is that not theft
- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA omfs
- ludwig's angina?

scout's dental school graduation updates:
- incredibly frustrating monday, tuesday, wednesday — eight possible slots of patient care and only managed to schedule one
- i wish more people were willing to come in for thursday night clinic
- steady progress on my denture case even though i keep having to redo a couple of steps, but all it costs is my time and not the patient's so for the time being i am okay with that
- treatment planned an overdenture for next year's class — say thank you scout for saving your ass. even though last year's seniors screwed US over re: overdentures like guys what was that
- long-time patient might possibly come back to the school. unclear what will happen next in terms of his treatment tbh
- ugh i miss last year's seniors so bad
- opened a whole new can of worms re: a patient i referred to endo today. who knows what will happen in the next two weeks. you can follow along right here
- ALSO FUCK THE FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT HOLY INCOMPETENCE!!!!!!!!!

comments

feb media log

2026-02-02T20:52:52Z

good february everybody

books:

artemis by andy weir — 3/5
nerd virgin who has never had a female friend before tries to write a book about a hot girl who owns her sexuality. at least he was kind of woke about it. i didn't think the worldbuilding made nearly as much sense as the martian... there is NO WAY there aren't more rules in a lunar colony where everybody could die if the air stopped working. idk there's a reason they're making a movie out of project hail mary instead of artemis. but it was not bad

a court of mist and fury by sarah j maas — 2/5
this book is like if a human wrote AI slop. it has some of the most confusing fantasy worldbuilding i’ve ever seen, essential plot elements revealed only through a second-time close read, character motivations with no development, consistency, or follow-through, and just… (appreciate my homage to her egregious ellipsis overuse) garbage. the macguffin is given to the main characters via a deux ex machina set-up, and then the one-dimensional character (described only with a color) who gives them this book is immediately fridged. the "twist" ending and set-up for the next novel hinge on a super anticlimactic tell-not-show reveal of what should have been a very romantic and pivotal moment that readers would've enjoyed. the power levels between these characters is extremely inconsistent — feyre’s own powers come out of absolutely nowhere and don’t make any sense at all. important things appear and disappear out of nowhere (much like AI), and the writing is SO concept-laden that it makes no fucking sense! why does feyre pause in the middle of fight sequences to come to realizations about how velaris is her home and rhysand is her mate? dude fucking get to it… i can forgive the universe and the tropes. i cannot forgive the very poor writing. why this book series is beloved is beyond me!!! it is BAD!!!!!!!

podcasts:

the strata seasons nine and ten — 3.5/5
i really really love emma sherr-ziarko's voice-acting (even though she seems to be typecast sometimes) and i was delighted to meet her hard-boiled alt-minkowski character here. i SO enjoyed the build-up from seasons five through eight — a kind of longform multi-season story that is not usually told in the audio drama i listen to — but i must agree with the redditors on r/audiodrama: the strata loses steam after it. i'm currently on season eleven and have no reason to stop listening, but i'd said the same about midnight burger after the clementine season and guess where we are? totally stalled. not very interested in the three sisters at all. curious to see if the strata continues to put rust in unlikely ganglord-busting situations where he and his ancient big metal head miraculously escape (mostly) in one piece. but i do love independently-produced audio drama, and the strata pretty much represents the best of it. good work mark r healy i appreciate you a lot

tv:

THE PITT IS BACK and i liveblog it right here every single thursday night yippee

in other news i've become a fan of formula one. i'm not sure how that happened. obviously i am getting into it through an rpf lens.

here is a first-month-fan summary:

drivers i like: piastri, russell, albon
ships that feel compelling: galex, geoscar, carlando, carcar
things with bad vibes: russtappen, lestappen, verstappen

and also i made a new tumblr

will i ever finish my interview travelogue on my irl substack? only time will tell

comments

the pitt s2e4

2026-01-30T05:20:45Z

yayyy... another week til graduation... and i am nowhere near graduating...

- elysia roorbach's shirt fits so well on her (i could never pull that off) (blonde girl envy)
- THEY'RE TAKING AWAY MY GAY WHITAKER????????????????
- i really feel like santos has potential to be robby's new langdon-y protege
- santos and whitaker need a spinoff
- STOP THE HUCKLEROBBY AGENDA STOP IT STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP HALTTTTTTTT
- okay the people of twitter have been complaining about how this season is not as good as the previous season and i've narrowed it down to one single reason. not enough mel. who was so literally the heart of the show last year. 15 whole seconds of mel and santos wowee
- pnc bank lol okay
- it's funny living in a different part of pennsylvania while watching this show
- only $200,000 of student debt and you get to work in the ER shhh
- stefanie when neil:
- also i TOTALLY called a BFE
- i think fiona dourif outacts the rest of the ensemble cast but no surprises there
- fun fact about me i hate looking at foot xrays i hate the foot bones they creep me out
- MCKAYYYYYYYYYYYYY GET IT OH MY GOD IS IT REALLY THAT EASY
- wait if the whole side of his face is numb then does that mean perlah is authorized to give IAN blocks
- dude more hucklerobby... quit it i'm like the biggest hucklerobby anti (/lh)
- mel king you are a DELIGHT
- i don't really understand why santos is crashing out like this it genuinely seems out of character
- you already know what i think about mohan but javadi on the other hand is so extremely believable it's actually kind of crazy
- oh victoria
- santos stop being a dick
- santos what is your fucking problem
- hmmm

what will i have done in another seven days. now that's food for thought. everybody check here for scout's graduation updates

comments

the pitt s2e3

2026-01-24T20:46:11Z

aaaand we're back but delayed because i had to take a nausea break

- dana's "use the system" to the unhoused man vs javadi saying almost the exact same thing to the possibly unhoused woman with kids last season, to absolute opposite effects... you love to see it (i hate to see it because it makes me feel self-conscious about being like javadi)
- IS dad gonna show up? they keep bringing this question up but it feels quite obvious to me that dad IS going to show up and present the turning point of that story
- ough the shot following robby peeling back the motorcyclist's scalp...
- i JUST noticed joy's septum ring lmao the women in this show keep getting gayer and gayer
- if i were in the ER i too would flirt with mckay yes ma'am
- whitaker is about to lose another patient isn't he
- how come brain tumor guy is lucid now but wasn't before
- robby explaining each part of the CT so succinctly ugh now that's patient communication
- THE DAD! and as usual the pitt fandom was right
- robby doing the debridement on the jewish lady himself is kind of cute
- noooooo fuck oh my god asian lady
- i like the way supriya delivers her lines she seems very self-conscious that she is an actor
- do actual men who are fathers get together and discuss fatherhood like this bc they should
- whoop

comments

the pitt s2e2

2026-01-16T03:31:08Z

- you gotta wonder what’s happened that’s made santos this pt advocate in robby’s mind… oh my santos i have much to learn from you
- garcia losing patience with al-hashimi ooooh you love to see it
- IS THAT ELYSIA ROORBACH?????????, ball’s actual girlfriend who might be younger than him by about 11 years,,,,
- how does a cast cutter work
- also why the fuck would you not wear PPE or at least eye protection when cutting casts
- santos and javadi funny as hell for making fun of the nun (but i would do the same) and mohan is funnier for being nice to the nun (but i would do the same)
- supriya acting with her eyes is kinda funny ugh supriya ganesh if you were a med student which is your alternate universe and if i were a med student which is my alternate universe then i would die. for you. we could’ve been in the gay club together supriya
- bro no fucking way
- okay EM*N lmfao
- javadi and whitaker friendship is very good for me
- javadi’s mannerisms are actually so crazy to me. now that i am in my final semester of training i just. see. so much more. oh my god. she’s SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- that little fight scene with the other med student… irritating but i wish we had more of you
- fake penis extremely funny
- mel santos besties actually :)
- when the pitt turns into a stats machine it makes me giggle heeheehee liberal show

comments

the pitt s2e1

2026-01-09T02:54:10Z

friends!!! welcome to the pitt

- whitaker and javadi :) my babies :)
- guys july 4 means it’s the fourth day of samira’s fourth year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- samira does NOT give a shit about the garcia whitaker drama
- MOHAN I AM SO SO SO SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! goat. goat of all time.
- absolutely delighted by the shots of the wounds through the safety goggles rahhhhhh
- guys i was never really a kingdon shipper the way some of you were but i am afraid that the kingdon hype is going to ruin the vibe……… which was SUBTLE. to begin with. rah come on guys
- SAMIRA SPEAKING TAMIL I LOVE YOU I LVSDFDLSKFJLDSKJF I LOVE:E YOU
- “back in jersey” oh my fucking god hahahahahahaha. oh my god samira is so me
- side note why is the east asian girl so annoying already
- WHITAKER CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!! guys i’m super here for the javadi/whitaker friendship + also i’m curious because doesn’t she still live with her parents here in pittsburgh lmfao
- guys i have four confirmed patients tomorrow this is kind of hyping me up
- THE ONLY THING ON MY BINGO BOARD WAS A DENTAL THING and the right call for these guys to make is to call the GPR resident. i think he’s getting an odontogenic infection that’s spreading systemically
- why are they writing in real hucklerobby please stop engaging with fanon i beg you
- bro’s got ascites how do they make an ascites prosthetic like that
- OKAY I FIGURED BUT WELCOME TO DAY FOUR OF RESIDENCY WHITAKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg guys that’s gonna be me this july 4th :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D (student doctor who made a child throw up this morning)
- oh my god mel
- this confused patient that mckay is seeing… why am i getting flashbacks to my urgent care week
- SAMIRA MOHAN SMILING AT A BABY I AM IN LOVE WITH YOUUUUUUUU

comments

dec media log

2026-01-07T02:38:37Z

good morning 2026!!!!

books:

a court of thorns and roses by sarah j. maas — 1.5/5
you ever read a book where people are written like the author has never met a real person before. or existed in a world and been interested in describing the details of how it works. that’s this book. i'm reading it because my friends are reading it. they asked me yesterday how i liked the first book. i must have made a face and they laughed at me. i don't understand why. typical scout response, i guess. 1.5 stars because i was slightly interested at the end. also the amarantha riddle was the single worst riddle i have ever read ever. guess i'm continuing on

movies:

i usually don't include specific movie reviews because i log them on letterboxd but i will start linking the longer ones i write. i write something about every single film i watch btw. because i am annoying or because i have thoughts i am not sure
wake up dead man

friends i fear i may be getting into f1. check with me in a month maybe this is just a phase

comments

nov media log

2025-12-17T05:36:51Z

books:

five-star stranger by kat tang — 4/5
i am still not sure what this story was about. interesting premise, except it assumes that we live in a world where these types of hires are normal — but if they are normal, then why wouldn't anyone suspect him? unclear why most of the characters existed here or what purpose they served to the growth of the narrator. did the narrator change? or grow? or only become more tortured in the exact same way he's been tortured his whole life? don't want to spoil the ending but there's honestly not much to spoil, because he just becomes more and more of the same person. nice writing style though, i did enjoy reading

podcasts:

the strata — 4.5/5
now on season nine. season eight was FANTASTIC

comments

sept media log

2025-10-15T04:52:55Z

i have never been so overwhelmed in my life

books:

your utopia by bora chung — 3.5/5
my favorite story was "the end of the voyage," which is about a group of people sent up to space to quarantine from a disease that makes reasonable people with no symptoms or warning signs randomly eat other people around them.

podcasts:

the strata — 4/5
i love cyberpunk + the anthology seasons are really fun except in s4 i did not like the alien turn of the plot

steven deserved a non-white girlfriend

i'm sorry this is all i can muster. all of the busyness i have experienced since april/may was all to train me to handle the next month, where it seems like every step i take will become a career-defining moment. i need to lock in. i have been locking in. i am extremely locked in and we just have to hope it is enough. i am the one thing in life i can control. i am inimitable i am an original. also i think i have a nic addiction. see you in december.

comments

july/august media log

2025-09-03T03:59:03Z

hello september!!!!

i had a fun july and august. here are some things that happened:

stayed with friends in four cities across the US, three of which i'd never really visited before
slept in four mattress/pillow combos and still couldn't get rid of neck and back ache, so i fear a visit to the physical therapist will be necessary as soon as my new health insurance is up and running (i forgot to register until past the deadline)
lowkey developed a totally situational new clinic crush on (once again) the only wasian man in the entire group. the last guy was engaged. this guy is like two years younger than me. #totalcougarmoment
had literally the worst two weeks i'd ever had in clinic. incidents included having a clinical disagreement with faculty that led to a patient's restoration breaking the second he started eating that night, the same patient suddenly needing a root canal on a different tooth, not being able to numb The Same Patient on another different tooth and having to pull an extremely unconventional move to temporize an open tooth using a method we usually only use on pediatric patients, sending my patient to the emergency room due to their INSANE blood pressure, losing my partial denture case i've been working on for 13 months because they decided to get literally the only insurance plan our school doesn't accept, literally all of my crowns falling through all at the same time, probably having to find a new portfolio case due to sheer complexity. writing that down made me kind of stressed wow. WHATEVER.
went home and accomplished absolutely nothing of academic value. happy to report that all my friends seem to be alive and well, and some of them have wedding dates now!!! fourth annual lily scout meet-up finished (salute)
submitted all of my residency applications!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

books (all read in august):

i need you to read this by jessa maxwell — 2/5
woman with zero qualifications gets top advice column writing job at newspaper firm after her predecessor was murdered, then solves the murder with two late-middle-aged randos she picked up from a diner. reading this, i was reminded of the trailer for the film argyle (i only watched the trailer). i think i have read a great deal of good (fan)fiction where they really really trim the fat, where literally every detail matters because someone is trying to stick to a word count of exactly 5,000, and now irrelevant dialogue really bothers me. i'm sure this is ironic if you have heard me speak in real life

lies and weddings by kevin kwan — 3/5
(spoilers) realized a quarter of the way through that this is a point-for-point copy of the original crazy rich asians. if there's any one thing i didn't like about the CRA trilogy, it's that rachel turns out to also secretly be a descendant of some billionaire. the exact same thing happens to the non-rich girl-next-door here too, on an even grander scale, and unfortunately this makes up the entire climax of the story. i thought the book series was supposed to satirize the lifestyles of the ultra-rich and make fun of how money makes them lose their humanity etc etc etc, but if the only thing that legitimizes the status of the angelic mary sue regular-person stand-in character in the crazy rich world is that they are secretly a billionaire's bastard child who stands to inherit more money than five generations my family will ever see... then i don't think the message gets through... also the two most irredeemable billionspilled characters in LAW do not go through any personal growth whatsoever (one of them is lowkey forgiven through the undeserved acquisition of like a hundred million dollars; one of them straight-up dies). doesn't matter though #britishhongkongmentioned 100000/10

podcasts:

the cipher by bbc sounds — 2.5/5
intriguing podcast, but i felt that the final three episodes went WAY over the pacing and development of the first seven episodes. great voice acting, but secret societies? aliens? robots? the impending alien-robot war??? they lost the plot man idk it didn't stick the landing at all. fantastic production quality though

television:

the summer i turned pretty — 3/5
i watch this show with/for vibs and psalm and i think it's pretty amazing that we get to watch together even though we are across the continent :) i love the female gaze i love yearning for three years i love messiness!!!!!!! i think belly is too immature for conrad and conrad is too stunted for belly! i feel bad for jeremiah because all he has done is act in an age-appropriate slightly douchey manner! and i HATE laurel's acting whew

the pitt — 5/5
I CANNOT STOP WATCHING THIS SHOW. this is the most i have ever enjoyed watching a medical drama! i love love love love the stunningly well-developed and realistic characters, the depiction of how quickly personal and professional gossip is spread around in the clinic and how everybody knows everything about everyone, the rapid introduction and satisfying resolutions of a whole lot of plot points, the way they don't shy away from showing not only "acceptable" bloody medical procedures (eg. intubation, putting someone on ECMO) but also the more "private" ones (eg. miscarrying into underwear, vaginal delivery of a baby), and especially the depiction of non-romantic, respectful, near-codependent trauma-bonded collegial relationships. the diversity in this show is also unlike anything else i've ever seen; for example, i don't recall ever seeing three brown women in a room all by themselves talking about something that doesn't have to do with their culture (never have i ever could never. sorry mindy i still love you.)

also, if you know me irl, you have heard me complain 8923849238x about how my DENTAL school curriculum leans too hard on medical didactics and not hard enough on applicable dental techniques. while i still stand by this opinion (because why am i learning denture occlusion on the fly while assisting prosth residents, why am i prepping a post space unsupervised on a real person's tooth when it's the second time i've ever used a gates-glidden ever in my whole life, etc etc etc), i am astonished to find myself understanding 70% of what they're doing on this show even before they explain it in laymen's terms. ESPECIALLY the pharm stuff (shout-out my unnamed pharm professor who apparently has 4300 citations on his work). i am learning how to better communicate with my patients, my colleagues, and my instructors by watching these guys do it. i am watching a simulation of very real procedures that i'd only read about in the real-life medical clearances i do for my real-life patients. i am not going to be an emergency care provider, not even training to be a medical doctor, but i am listening and learning and applying. this show found me at a low point in my training (see clinic calamities above), but i think i feel inspired to be better. LOCK IN SCOUT! YOU CAN DO IT!!!

letterboxd (i really really liked kpop demon hunters)

up next for me (irl): more board exams, more complicated patients, possible residency interviews???????

thanks for reading, feel free to drop me a line, whoa have you seen a mirror because you look great today, have a wonderful week, etc etc

comments

jun media log

2025-07-07T04:11:24Z

guys i passed the national board exam!!

books:

sunrise on the reaping by suzanne collins — 4/5 i mostly liked this!! i think this is my second-favorite in the saga after catching fire. haymitch is a more fun protagonist to cheer on than katniss, that's for sure. the raven allusions were a little heavy-handed at the end, and i have trouble believing that a 16-year-old miner bootlegger kid would memorize an edgar allan poe poem and cite it daily, but sure. off to reread five places cinna comes from by aimmyarrowshigh and cry the exact same tears i cried when i was 13

i also saw the great gatsby on broadway and had quite a lot to say about it. i'm not sure why i am not condensing these blogs into one, but i think part of me is holding out hope that someday i will return to fic writing (lmfao) and will not want my irls who have my music review substack to know that i am doing this LOL

not many new letterboxd updates. currently listening to season 4 of midnight burger. i hope everyone is having a great summer :-]

comments

apr/may 2025 media log

2025-06-09T16:18:05Z

books:

the snap by elizabeth staple — 1.5/5
this book is so mid-budget lifetime movie. non-linear storytelling doesn't work if you (1) could predict what was going to happen from literally the first page of the book and (2) have the reveal come way too late and (3) make it two levels of disconnect from the central mystery of the book. they tried for a presumed innocent-type ending but it didn't work because the reader does not gaf about the dead coach or the suspects. i also had so much trouble keeping track of all the characters, simply because there are way too many irrelevant ones. the thread of all the high-up sportswomen being connected was... all a coincidence?? what was the point? i understand that women who work this high up in professional sports must have quite an interesting story to tell re: what must be an astronomical amount of misogyny they face. this book does not tell that story.

olive days by jessica elisheva emerson — 4/5
what a gorgeous book. such beautiful, methodical depictions of chores and routines and the thankless loads of work and the mind-numbing discipline it must take to do all of it. this book is not about love, and if you go in hoping to find some kind of love story and hoping to get to root for the adulterers falling in love, you're not going to find it. this book is really about the ramifications of the ambiguously SA-ish scene that happens in the first few chapters and how it utterly destabilizes the protagonist's worldview. if there was a moral of the story, i did not understand it. but it was so nicely hyperlexic and soothing to read

love can't feed you by cherry lou sy — 2.5/5
strong start. surely not an unusual story in life but an unusual story to get to read — i think the kinds of second-gen asian americans who tell the tales of our family's american journeys like to put on a face. it was one thing and then it got messy and then it turned into many stories. i guess that's real life, too, but when a novel takes a turn halfway through and all the main characters end up scattered and/or falling out of the MC's life, then there is no plot anymore. i read the ending quarter of the book like four times to try to figure out what i missed. but i must not be very smart

the missing half by ashley flowers — 2/5
i was tempted to score this lower, but for a few days i actually couldn't put this book down. so, as in my music reviews, +1 for forward motion. i lowkey started thinking this was going to end up a happy WLW love story. the ending is the MOSTTT deus ex machina thing ever... flipping back, i can see where they attempted foreshadowing... unfortunately, the writing was NOT strong enough for that to be effective...

piglet by lottie hazell — 4/5
i suppose i have developed a penchant for (1) fiction involving many many food depictions and (2) women who crash tf out. i consume (ha) a lot of food writing/content and cringe at so much of it for the tacky descriptions of food. hazell possesses a gift for making food sound prized, delicious, nauseating when she wants it to be. i get the story in a way that only someone with a former ED does, so yeah it really spoke to me. i think the ending could have been prevented if she'd had literally anyone to talk to in the week leading up to her wedding, but i guess that was the whole point. i'm still confused how she got together with her fiance in the first place; not something the book explains. good read

letterboxd

standout podcast eps:

"buried dead" from the nosleep podcast s22e19:
classic nosleep!!!!

comments

mar 2025 media log

2025-04-16T05:44:25Z

accidentally deleted TWO better-written drafts because i still don't know how to use dreamwidth... gen z problems (i'm not gen z). i'm so tired. i consumed more media in march but you can see that nothing else has stuck with me. i accidentally got into mid-2010s captain america film dynamics again

books:

the expatriates by janice y. k. lee — 4/5
this is a good argument for why i should watch more shows first before consuming the book, because the book is almost always better. maybe it's because i know hong kong, but i thought that this book set up such a gorgeous, muted, old, claustrophobic atmosphere of this city that even the most beautiful ultra-2020s-tinted establishing still shot couldn't do. these characters are much better when you can understand why they're so intent on behaving insufferably and setting back their own lives. about the social (socioeconomic) commentary of the expat in hong kong: stunningly accurate, as far as i can tell. i have half a lived experience. not really. (an expat of, not an expat in.)
i think the tv series markets itself a little more like a mystery, not that anything is solved in the end. on the contrary, the book is very clear from the beginning that it is about grief, responsibility and lack thereof, women's suffocation. how to reconcile the grievous, heinous acts you committed in the past with the person you think you are now.
one of my moots used to say, "let's just all live." the end of this book delivered this message very well.

music:

favorite new song: hot by le sserafim
favorite new album: fe304: forward by nmixx (what else!!!)

letterboxd

currently:

the snap by elizabeth staple
olive days by jessica elisheva emerson
my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh
long bright river (tv series)

i do sadly have to take mock board exams and then real board exams in quick succession over the next couple of months, so maybe you won't hear from me! but maybe you will! writing about myself on the internet to nobody in particular: my favorite vice!

comments

feb 2025 media log

2025-03-13T04:36:13Z

short month! happy to report that while i could not quit short-form media cold turkey (especially because i Must be on instagram for a handful of reasons), i believe i have reduced the amount of time i spend on that app and on social media in general. negative reinforcement (ie. an app limit) doesn't work on me because i will do anything i can to bypass things that don't make sense, but it turns out that positive reinforcement (replacing mindless media consumption with #thoughts and #feelings) actually kind of will. also february got super super super busy all of a sudden so i spent my spare time sleeping. and crashing out about captain america

books

note: i guess i'll only be writing about books that i've finished, though i am in the middle of a couple other books. maybe in the march log then

exciting times by naoise dolan — 4/5

people kept saying it was sally-rooney-esque, and i do see where they're coming from, but i think this is like... sally rooney stripped. string quartet arrangement of a symphony. the ideas are similar but the writing and the focus on detail and the emotional ramifications aren't quite the same. i found this irish young woman's ideas of hong kong to be quite accurate, especially bc she talks about her job interacting with hk kids (funnily, the only authentic primary identity i ever had in hk). it's a love story — it's actually two love stories — but at no point did i feel like i was in love. i love sally rooney because she makes me feel insane.
then again perhaps i was influenced by the atrocious large font size in the hardcover 🥸

television

the expats — 3/5

more hong kong media! (1) do i miss home or (2) is this escapism or (3) is this me searching for literally anything that makes me feel like i have some intrinsic special experience even though now it’s kinda learned and therefore kinda phony
didn't not like this. i didn't really buy nicole kidman's character, and pretty much every protagonist here is selfish and unlikeable in unrealistic ways, but maybe this show is trying to expose something... like... what happens to you when you live in hong kong too long i guess...
visually GORGEOUS!!!!!! but also boring and unrelatable in illogical ways that make Me feel like the villain for not empathizing enough. i had lots of thoughts like: oh god iiiiiiii would never be this terrible. maybe that’s the point maybe im meant to examine my own moral superiority bc i am a rubbernecker to these characters’ various casual tragedies
tbh i didn’t finish this series and i am not going to

movies

captain america brave new world rant (1k+ words)
letterboxd

comments

jan 2025 media log

2025-02-18T20:36:26Z

hello. i have decided to give dreamwidth a try again. i was thinking that one immediate change i could make to my life that would have major improvements and zero drawbacks would be to massively roll back my consumption of short-form media and exchange it for any thoughts from anywhere at all that are more than two ideas deep and forty-five seconds long. if self-reflection is the goal (though it may simply be poorly-disguised narcissism), then wouldn't it be easier to read through my thoughts in long-form?

i am, at my core, a logger. life-long, obsessive, hoarder-like. starting from middle school through the end of college, i timestamped my handwritten journal entries, and if i took a pause in writing, i would timestamp the time that i started writing again. my high school tumblr reblogs were militantly tagged by fandom, ship, and character. i used to handwrite lists of every single movie, television season, and book i consumed, manually sorted into lists for class and for fun. last september, i started logging every single patient encounter i had in school, what happened and what i did and what i learned. still haven't missed a single patient, and don't intend to until i graduate. the previous sentences are literally a meta-log of what i used to log. i'm getting sick of single-genre media-logging platform. no more letterboxd, no more goodreads, no more imdb...!! the great unification of the things i consume seriously will happen on dreamwidth!

genuinely, i am a shittier writer today than i was at 15 years old. it 100% has to do with the fact that the most frequent long-form "writing" i do is when i write patient encounter notes in my school's EHR. this is searingly humiliating to admit. i can't even blame anyone for this. how can i be so, so much worse at expressing myself today when it is literally my job to learn how to communicate clearly an almost-expert in my field.

i don't think it is possible for me to do a complete digital detox. i don't think i've lived a single day without looking at my phone since i got the lg optimus slider in seventh grade and discovered you could read ao3 on its funky little native browser. i don't have a desire to completely separate myself from consuming content, only to redirect it. being fed random content deemed entertaining to people of my age/gender/racial demographic that i forget about as soon as i close the app: horrible! choosing to follow certain topics of interest where posts and chatter are contributory to my engagement with said topic: surely better.........

final thought: obviously i still can't quite kick internet validation and narcissism, but i'm also over humiliating myself in front of my irl colleagues. the happy middle-ground is clearly another blog-type thing that about three people are going to read. it's literally fine this is for #me

actual media log, (mostly) jan 2025:

books

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid — 2/5

sadly, i really don't think this book lived up to the hype. the entire novel is so tell-not-show, a principle of creative writing we were meant to kick by the fifth grade. i mean, i understand that it's supposed to be memoir-style, but she really beats it into the reader that evelyn is telling this story at 80 years old with decades of emotional detachment from the events we're meant to care about. evelyn's life outside of her multiple platonic husbands is so incredibly simple — how does she not have more friends, more enemies, more complicated workplace relationships? author seems not to understand that the average reader who picks up a book about golden-age hollywood drama is probably quite nosy about it all. book is as if someone had the task of writing a novel strictly off the facts of a "personal life" wikipedia page section, no extra research or embellishment allowed.

the one interesting husband relationship was the one with harry cameron. guess i've never rly thought about whether one would develop strong partner feelings towards their beard if they had a biological child together but were dating someone else. never even crossed my mind

total garbage: how we can fix our waste and heal our world

this one was really fun!! i am a layman and a somewhat lapsed environmentalist from my college days (hello environmental biology bachelor's degree that i never used for even one day), and this book gave me ideas for and validated a lot of the current unconventional choices i make in decreasing personal waste. i retained a surprising amount of information about induction stoves but almost none about clothing waste. also realized through the course of my reading that maybe my interest in sustainability isn't as self-driven as i thought — the place where i grew up, the city where i went to college, and the city where i live now were all brought up pretty explicitly in the examples of places that are reducing certain types of waste. not that i can find many peers irl who are interested in more sustainable practices within our extremely high-waste field. idk. my colleagues don't get it but this book really really does. i love individual sustainability; just need to get a little bit better at it

television

squid game season 2 — 3/5

started watching this with my friends, pirated a few episodes on my own (living a blissful netflix-free existence), and didn't finish the last couple. i thought it was super unrealistic that people could watch other people get executed and know that they could die next and still vote to keep playing, then felt a bit contrite for not empathizing hard enough with whatever dire life situations they must be in to feel this kind of life-or-death desperation, which felt both fun ironic (not empathizing with people who don't empathize, haha) and stupid ironic (worrying about if i'm worried enough about people who are taking action to take my rights and opportunities away; am i too much of an internet liberal). i will probably finish this season. i wish park sunghoon weren't a fucking scumbag. stan jo yuri

the morning show season 1

i love you reese witherspoon. mark duplass's character reminds me a lot of my clinic group leader

podcast

i listen to probably more podcast minutes than music per day, but it's never occurred to me to a podcast round-up before! here are some that i sort of keep up with:

news:

journaltainment:

audio fiction:

movies

my letterboxd

see you in the next one!

comments