Rynling R&D

This is what made me happy last month (better late than never):

With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun (on Crunchyroll here) is a 24-episode anime from 2020 in which every episode is exactly one minute long. The anime is exactly what it says on the label, which is a cute slice-of-life comedy about pets. It’s a great way to turn off your brain and relax.

Paranoia Agent (on Crunchyroll here) is a twelve-episode anime produced by the legendary Satoshi Kon. It originally aired in 2004, and it’s got an edgy obsession with urban psychological horror that was popular at the time. The quality of the episodes is somewhat uneven, and there are aspects of the writing that come off as slightly silly here in 2026, but I still consider it a miracle that this anime exists. And the opening theme song is super catchy.

Yokohama Station SF (on Amazon here) is a three-volume seinen manga about a postapocalyptic future in which a train station has expanded to cover the entirety of Japan’s main island. The uncanny architecture and liminal spaces are fantastic, and I also love the worldbuilding and character stories.

The Historian (on Amazon here) is a 700-page monster of a gothic novel originally published in 2005, and it’s about three generations of an academic lineage traveling through Europe in order to hunt down Dracula. This is the third time I’ve read this book, and every page still feels like a masterpiece.

How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed (on Amazon here) is a short essay collection from 1993 about the author’s career as a journalist in Yugoslavia. A lot of what The Historian is actually about is Communism in Eastern Europe (particularly Hungary and Bulgaria), and reading the novel made me nostalgic for Slavenka Drakulić (the journalist)’s writing, which is in fact as entertaining as I remember.

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Not much to report this week. At the moment I’m doing my best to look at the news only in small increments, and only according to a schedule I set for myself. To help keep myself sane, I’m thinking of picking up Final Fantasy XVI, maybe?

ETA: Because I was paying attention to other world events yesterday, I missed the big Pokémon announcement, which is that there's an upcoming new game called Winds and Waves whose fire-type starter pokémon is a Pomeranian named Pombon, and oh!!!!!!!! I am so in love ❤️

Good Boy
https://longneckturtle.itch.io/good-boy

Good Boy is an adaptation of a super creepy urban legend that takes about three or four minutes to play. You take on the role of a young man preparing to turn in for the night, and you can explore and interact with everything in his one-room apartment. For good measure, you can pet the dog playing with a tennis ball on his bed as many times as you like before going to sleep.

In the middle of the night, the man wakes up to a strange scratching at the door that doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Rest assured that nothing bad happens to the dog, but the man might not be so lucky. I’m familiar with the story this game is based on, but the ending still managed to get me. Very nicely done.

It snowed on Sunday night all through Monday morning, so I got a nice snow day. I took the dogs to a nearby dog park that someone made out of an abandoned lot (bless), and I think they enjoyed themselves. My camera isn't great, but I managed to get a fun photo of the Pomeranian.

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The theme of this week was executive function disorder. I tried every trick in my ADHD arsenal to overcome it, but alas. The only thing that will fix me is the end of this horrible winter.

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I don’t have much to report this week, just that I’m getting GRR Martin vibes from how long this winter has lasted. I’m tired all the time, and I’m currently at a place where I consider it a win if I can write literally one sentence a day on any given project. This is frustrating, but what can you do. Anyway here’s a photo of my dog sleeping:

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While doing research on plague doctors, I recently found an old self-published book (this one here) whose author essentially drove around Germany while spending the night at various castles and taking amateur photos. The writing isn't great to begin with, and the book is filled with typos and formatting errors.

But honestly, I think that's charming. This one goth nerd's weird labor of love is worth an infinite number of AI-generated books with perfect grammar and stylistic organization. And let me tell you. Amazon sure is gloated with an infinite number of AI-generated books these days, many of which are travel guides filled with what I can only assume is hallucinated misinformation. I'm now starting to see AI-generated writing appear in academic articles as well, and I'm not feeling great about it.

As someone with ADHD who's been bullied for being "lazy" about my writing, I have to admit that this is actually kind of validating. Like sure, my work might have an occasional typo or mistaken homophone or awkward bit of phrasing, but at least you can be sure it was written by a human.

First Image of Charlie Day in 'Kill Me'
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1qvzecq/first_image_of_charlie_day_in_kill_me_jimmy_wakes/

Jimmy wakes up after attempting suicide, or at least that's what it looks like. Together with Margot, the 911 operator, they set out on a mission to solve the mystery: did someone try to kill him or is the specter of depression haunting him?

I am mainly here for the top comment:
Weird way to film Luigi’s Mansion but I’ll keep an open mind.

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Philadelphia city services completely ceased functioning during the snowstorm two weekends ago, so I spent most of my daylight free time this week shoveling snow and breaking up ice patches. I have nothing but love for my neighbors, but I kind of want to [redacted] City Hall at the moment. All this manual labor does make me feel like a lumberjack, though.

To briefly return to the topic of "pro-psychotic" discourse, I want to add that it's entirely possible to handle these neurotypes compassionately + responsibly and still tell amazing stories about Lovecraftian sanity slippage.

Night in the Woods is a really, really good example.

Also, a short graphic novel I recently read and very much appreciated is Where Black Stars Shine, which is a super fun reworking of "The King in Yellow," a nineteenth-century short story (famous in Lovecraft circles) about a play that induces madness in anyone who watches a performance or even reads the script.

I feel like, if you present an actually realistic depiction of schizophrenia, it can add an incredible layer of nuance (and poetic beauty) to the broader theme of "madness." In any case, it's always cool when people feel comfortable telling stories about their own experiences with the full range of artistic tools at their disposal.