Monthly Roundup: May 2026

02 Jun, 2026

What I Did

• At long last, I'm employed.
• Added a /status page to the blog. I'll update whenever I remember.
• Took steps to getting a new pair of glasses. The new ones will last IJN.
• Got some physical books, none of which has been cracked open. Yet.

What I Read

• The Baby Is Mine, Oyinkan Braithwaite: This reads like Solomon and the Case of the Questionable Maternity. Haven't finished but it's an interesting read.

• Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro: Don't have much to say about it since I haven't finished. I like what I've read so far though.

What I Played

• Mythmatch: Match-3 town-building game set on Ithaca during the early days of the Trojan War. The story follows Artemis' quest to become the Goddess of the Hunt, along with her side quests in the mortal realm. The story tends to tilt towards blandness with how politically correct (or aware?) it aims to be. Genuinely an addictive game, and it has cute children and a moon-goddess' cow. What more do you want?

What I Listened To

• uValo (feat. Dlala Thukzin), JAZZWRLD, Thukuthela, & Babalwa M.
  • Maybe it's something about Dlala Thukzin. I love this song. Legit spent one hour looping it over and over again. I do my best not to play songs I love too many times in a day so I don't get fatigue down the line, but it's hard. This song doesn't even feel like it's six minutes long!

• Another Day, SEHB - Can't believe I didn't like this initially. It's such a calming song.

• 24 Hours, Stormzy and Odeal

  • Samples Egypt's In The Morning, and I love how the influence is very clear but the results are quite different.

• Who Will You Follow, Evanescence

  • Heralding Evanescence's sixth album Sanctuary and their first release since 2021, Who Will You Follow does a great job of re-introducing Evanescence. Honestly I had no idea they were still releasing music. I'll be looking forward to the album that'll be released in June.
    • I feel like I hear Spiritbox in this song. Maybe Evanescence influenced Spiritbox?

• Zavier, Fetty Wap

  • Fetty Wap is out of prison and has a new album. Happy for him.
  • I don't know how to feel about this. I was expecting a trap album, but this isn't one. It's not bad, but it's not changing my life—love White Roses though, didn't expect a doo-wop song. 6/10.
  • Standouts: Right Back To You, White Roses, N LUV, Spot Back

What I Watched

• Wanted: Watched this when I was a child, and now I realize we shouldn't have been watching it at all. Anyway, wholly unrealistic but fun movie about a guy who turns out to be the Chosen One of an assassin order.

• Wicked: For Good: The two movies should have been one really long one, IMO. I liked this better than the first one becuase it didn't feel like a two-hour long movie. Discovered I'd heard For Good used as a sample, and now I know its true origins. I much preferred the songs from this movie, especially No Good Deed and For Good. Parts of the story don't make sense, especially with regard to Dorothy's companions and the original Oz story.

• Hunter x Hunter

• Bleach

• YouTuber elle literacy asks the question 'was Scream Queens ever actually...good?' I'd like to defend that show's honour but there's nothing to defend. It was entertaining but stupid. I also like her other video on the rise and fall of Glossier.

• If you didn't know how horrid¹ Nigerian prisons are, I Said What I Said's guest George tells his story in How To Survive A Nigerian Prison. It reminds me of Arthur Judah Angel's book on the same topic, I REFUSED TO DIE: A True Life Story of Divine Intervention on Death Row, which I read years ago. I'll see about digitising the book for myself, because I really need to read it again. Nigeria needs an overdue overhaul.

Interesting Links

• Actually, People Love to Work Hard

• Crosshare Crosswords is a site for all types of crosswords, regular and cryptics. The crosswords are sourced from the community and every day there's a 5 by 5 crossword featured. It's very USA-centric and pop-culture centric, but it's not a sin to look up something if you don't know it. This is how I learned that the inventor of the sewing machine was Elias Howe.

• How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart: This is not an accurate title because the only people affected were the girls involved. I'm not sure the boy involved got any reasonable punishment (reasonable, a word which here means the author will be satisfied if the perpetrator gets the same level of humiliation the girls got, not necessarily through the same methods). This is why I'm partially against AI, because there are too many human beings (mostly of the male persuasion) who do evil things like this and get away with it because there are no laws to punish this behaviour.

• Four Possibly Useful References might be useful to someone out there.

• It's 2026 and women are still asked to teach others to think a little bit and not be a prick: I'd like to know if men in female-dominated fields ever have the same issue. Highly unlikely, but as I am making an assumption, I could be wrong. Do people not have home training, or was that only targeted towards the girl child?

Other Stuff I'd Like to Share

• Kaidoku has free Sudoku puzzles you can print and play, or play on your phone/tablet/computer as a PDF or an app.

• You can save the contents of any page as Markdown with Defuddle.md

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