The Weekly Praegustator (1 - 7 June '26)

This week I consumed 12 manga, 17 anime, 1 film, 7 TV shows, 20 articles, and 1 podcast.

1 June

Anime/ Liar Game Episode 9 (7/10)

Anime/ Witch Hat Atelier Episode 10 (7/10)

TV/ Bad Thoughts: S02E02 (5/10)

TV/ Euphoria: S03E08 (6/10)

TV/ From: S04E06 (6/10)

Article/ Books are subjectivity-merging devices, not efficient information transfer devices (7/10)

Article/ Do you know your default shape? (7/10)

"When people rhetorically ask, “why does everyone like Taylor Swift so much,” or, “why do people fall for conspiracy theories,” they are often displaying incuriosity about the shapes of others."

Article/ My Experience Not Getting (Fully) Paid by an Art Gallery (5/10)

Article/ Your intuition knows something you do not yet (7/10)

2 June

Manga/ Blue Lock Chapter 348 (5/10)

Manga/ Gachiakuta Chapter 168 (8/10)

Manga/ Shangri La Frontier Chapter 267 (7/10)

Manga/ Wind Breaker Japan Chapter 218 (7/10)

Anime/ Eren the Southpaw Ep. 9 (5/10)

Anime/ Marriagetoxin Episode 9 (7/10)

Article/ AI Dark Output: The Visible Cost of Invisible Output (8/10)

Article/ Trees are mostly made of air and a generalizable lesson for AI safety (6/10)

Article/ Utopia is a particular restaurant in Brooklyn (7/10)

3 June

Manga/ Tongari Boushi No Atelier Chapter 97 (7/10)

Anime/ Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 4 Episode 9 (7/10)

4 June

Manga/ Onepunch Man Chapter 232 (6/10)

Anime/ The Warrior Princess and the Barbaric King Episode 9 (7/10)

Article/ Exploiting My OnlyFans Girlfriend - Worst Boyfriend Ever (6/10)

5 June

Anime/ SNOWBALL EARTH Ep. 10 (6/10)

Anime/ That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 4 Ep. 81 (7/10)

Anime/ The Drops of God Ep. 9 (8/10)

Anime/ The Ramparts of Ice: Ep. 10 (6/10)

TV/ Dutton Ranch: S01E05 (7/10)

Article/ An app can be a home-cooked meal (9/10)

This piece is so ahead of its time. This was written in 2020. I especially like the analogy on how "learn to code" can be substituted with "learn to cook". "Many people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more afforably." Coding changed from something marketable and useful to get a job to, now anyone can "learn to code" to create their personal software for whatever they might need. It takes a fraction of the time and needs no coding know-how to get up and running. In our current timeline we have agents who can write this kind of personal software for us on a whim. For example I wanted to log my media consumption and publish it to my website, so I had codex whip up an extension where It takes the URL, title, type and date of the media I'm consuming. I then rate it and if I feel like it write a little note about it. I'm using this extension right now as I'm typing this. I then have it tally up all my media consumption for the week and when I hit "publish to website" it automatically publishes this tally to my website with all the relevant information. Personal software and little projects will be even more relevant as the friction between idea and end product gap narrows with the help of AI. I love technology!

Article/ Kötünün Yükselişi (8/10)

Article/ Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously - Naval's Archive (8/10)

Article/ Logits as a new monitor for evaluation awareness (7/10)

New interesting way to monitor eval. awareness without relying on verbalization.

Article/ Models finding software vulnerabilities is not the primary source of cybersecurity risk (5/10)

Article/ What are the real problems of continual learning? (7/10)

6 June

Anime/ Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring Ep. 11 (8/10)

Anime/ Akane-banashi Ep. 10 (9/10)

Anime/ Ascendance of a Bookworm: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke Ep. 9 (7/10)

Anime/ Daemons of the Shadow Realm Ep. 10 (8/10)

Anime/ MAO Ep. 10 (7/10)

Article/ Arthur Aron's 36 Questions to Fall in Love

As mentioned in the NYT article.

Article/ everything is a win when the goal is to experience (8/10)

"everything is a win when the goal is to experience. not to collect. not to prove. not to impress. just to feel the full spectrum. to let life stain you a little." "to miss people without turning the missing into a personal flaw." - this sentence hit me hard because I constantly do this.

Article/ Guardian Angels: LLM Personalization for Productivity and Security · Gwern.net (9/10)

Excellent writing from Gwern on the concept of Guardian Angel AI's and a good tally of the current limitations of LLMs in various areas.

Article/ How to walk through walls - by Henrik Karlsson (7/10)

Article/ The Token Bill Cometh Due: My Official AI Prediction (6/10)

Article/ To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This - The New York Times (7/10)

Podcast/ Thousands Apply. 10 Get In. Dave Fontenot’s HF0 Explained. (7/10)

7 June

Manga/ Akane-banashi chapter 209 (7/10)

Manga/ Blue Box chapter 245 (7/10)

Manga/ Ichi the Witch chapter 85 (8/10)

Manga/ Sakamoto Days chapter 262 (7/10)

Manga/ Someone Hertz chapter 36 (8/10)

Manga/ SPY x FAMILY chapter 136 (6/10)

Anime/ NIPPON SANGOKU: S01E10 (9/10)

Anime/ One Piece Ep. 1165 (6/10)

Film/ Lolita (1962) (6/10)

Lolita is probably Kubrick's most weakest work. What I found quite puzzling with this movie was the fact that Humbert's relationship with Lolita was only alluded to and never shown. His inner thoughts are only revealed once or twice throughout the movie. His pedophilia more often than not comes off as an unexplained affection although you can feel the creepiness. It is quite disturbing. The book on the other hand gives much more emphasis on Humbert's inner world and fixation on Lolita. The movie misses the mark on several fronts although the casting was not bad.

TV/ Bad Thoughts: S02E02 - 05 (7/10)

Some of the sketches are very funny. The one about slavery, not letting the woman in the car were hilarious. There are misses of course but I'd expect that from a sketch show. I honestly enjoy this more than Tom's stand up.

TV/ From: S04E07 (7/10)

TV/ Spider-Noir: Ep. 04 - 08 (7/10)

The first couple of episodes were uninteresting but it picked up halfway through and got better. I love Nicolas Cage antics and his weirdness. Only he can pull off shit like this without looking cringe. It wasn't a bad watch.