One of the major factors to the continued mainstream relevance of combat sports is its perceived usefulness in real world physical conflicts. You can’t say the same for basketball, football, baseball, and so on (but perhaps volleyball has some crossover). However, things do get silly when you start theorycrafting about which style is best for real fighting. Gordon Ryan, the best grappler in the world right now, did just that with boxing. (more…)
Near the 2023 Holiday Season, I finally decided to pull the trigger and get a 3D printer. I would obtain an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro to enter the nerd-filled world of 3D printing. I had been putting together a workshop in the other room in my place as an act of taking more control of my life as a grown-ass man, and it has been looking good so far (if I stop being lazy and clean up). Do note that such additional capability also comes with additional costs, responsibilities, and space restrictions. Let’s get into 3D printing, which I’ll be preoccupied with in 2024. (more…)
That’s my conclusion after Naoya Inoue’s eventual destruction of Marlon Tapales, who had a pretty solid game plan that was giving him trouble. Tapales found a way to nullify the Japanese champion’s vaunted right hand, but the ninth round then saw Inoue solve the problem by throwing it harder and more often. The tenth then saw him become sure of that solution and blasted through Tapales’ guard like a wrecking ball going through a condemned building. (more…)
I’ll keep this short since there’s not much analysis to be had here. It’s just a short note on the current predicament of Colby Covington, the one-time interim UFC Welterweight Champion and now three-time title challenger. He lost all three title shots, and he’ll not likely get a fourth at the age of 35. How he carried himself and insulted his opponent Leon Edwards before the fight, handled his decision loss to the champion, and how fans reacted to his apparent lack of self-awareness is a case study for anyone looking to use antagonism for their own public image. (more…)
Whenever you have disposable cash in this day and age, you’ll likely find yourself browsing online stores on your phone at 2AM out of boredom. You’re looking for something that can momentarily spark your soul and give you something to look forward to in the meantime. When the package arrives, you get excited and unbox the thing; maybe you even record it on video for posterity. Perhaps you end up being disappointed because it didn’t live up to your expectations. But sometimes, your impulsive purchase ends up opening a whole new door in your life. The latter was what happened to me when I bought a cassette tape player on a whim. (more…)
Perhaps writing about this story on this blog doesn’t really do anything, but I wanted to make sense of this incredible series of events for myself. I previously wrote about my opinions on AI, seeing it as a solution to corruption and bureaucracy in government and business. But now, with the conclusion of this failed coup d’etat attempt in OpenAI, it looks like it’s no longer about the advancement of technology and humanity first and foremost. Smartphones are now a ubiquitous commodity and cryptocurrency is becoming more and more synonymous with fraud, so artificial intelligence is now the hottest ticket to billions in the 2020s. (more…)
My anime of the year for 2023 is Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. I don’t watch much anime these days, but I had been looking out for this anime adaptation of one of the best manga I’ve read in recent years. Not only does it have a compelling premise, but it also has lots of juicy ideas in it. The writing of Kanehito Yamada and the animation of Madhouse combined make for one of the best anime series for even non-weebs. For my first post on this show, I’d like to talk about a specific episode that briefly gets into an important martial arts concept. (more…)
No, seriously. Before you turn away and call me a loon or a bigot, do take note that I’m Chinese who was raised on this stuff. I grew up with this hodge-podge compendium of beliefs and superstitions that forms this syncretic religion. However, what I experienced may be a distilled version of it since we live in the Philippines. Our take on it may not be similar to that of Taiwan and mainland China, but I know enough to make connections with other things that may be like it. I also know enough about Warhammer 40,000 to write about wild green men in space. This has to be the most deranged blog post I’ll ever write in 2023, so let’s go for a ride. (more…)
If you have a life and don’t have time to give time to such a long-ass documentary on nerd shit, then it’s completely understandable. You don’t need to whine about it like this dweeb on my blog post on fighting game controls. It’s not like you’re violating the Geneva Convention for not doing as I say. But if you do care about nerd shit like me, then you should watch the result of two whole years of work by Fredrik Knudsen, who is known online for his Down the Rabbit Hole documentary series. It’s six hours long, so you’ll have to either hunker down or watch in multiple sittings. If you’re curious about EVE Online, it’s worth watching because it digs insanely deep. (more…)
On 2 November 2023, almost a year after the collapse of what used to be the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, its founder was found guilty on all seven charges against him, which include wire fraud and money laundering. I previously mentioned Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX in a blog post last March where I talked about the fall of two US banks due to losses brought on by the fall of the fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange. Most may consider the story complete, and life shall go on. This is a tale about pride, greed, lust, and the ruin those things bring. (more…)
I’ve been binging on recent videos by Dan Olson from his Folding Ideas channel on YouTube and previously wrote about his video on WallStreetBets. After finishing that blog post, I watched this video on World of Warcraft, which didn’t seem as serious as a 2.5 hour documentary on a cult of gambling addicts playing the US stock market. However, I then saw a Reddit comment that piqued my interest so much that I had to write something about it. While it’s somewhat related to the video, this is less about toxic neckbeards yelling at strangers for being bad at playing WoW and more about different kinds of gamers and what they gravitate to. (more…)
When beginners start learning about fundamentals in martial arts, they’re told what armchair coaches on social media tend to parrot. After all, seemingly esoteric knowledge for beginners and casuals is surface level information to longtime martial artists. Those tidbits on why you should keep your feet planted and turn your hip as you punch or kick are mostly true, although not the complete truth. The power does indeed come from the ground and from the hips, but not really. Knowing the whole truth can help practitioners take their punching power to the next level. (more…)
