So true Brandon, so true. Now video games are my thing.

I remember when surfing the web or escaping into cyberspace was a break from real life. It was a place where I could go to relax and escape the worries of my regular life. Now, it seems every time I log on, I find something new to stress about, something else to be pissed off about, and I just don’t know how much more of this I can take. I guess things have come full circle, now I go offline to escape real life and relax, as the internet has truly become the place where I hate to be.

🔗

I am sorry if I am about to ruin your finale.

But where do those two think they’re going?
Their freedom is only in their heads.
It can’t exist outside that place, outside someone else’s control.
Ending the second season like that floored me.

How do you wait another year?


Severance Season 2 has been bittersweet, slow, incomprehensible for long stretches. I’d call it a transitional season, like the last one of The Bear.
Waiting for better times.

This one. I bought it (context for those of you that missed it).

I hate being late. I hate when people are late. I find it a profound form of disrespect.

I get really annoyed when I’m standing at the doorstep, ready to leave, and my wife, for whatever reason, delays our departure. Or when we’re given a specific meeting time and discover that the person we’re waiting for—even just for a cocktail and dinner—is half an hour late and only bothers to let us know a few minutes before the agreed time.

This past weekend, both things happened. We were the last to arrive at a birthday party on Saturday, and yesterday some friends of ours were 30 minutes late.

I wondered where all this irritation came from, especially since, on both occasions, no one seemed to pay much attention to us or make a big deal out of it.

The best answer I came up with is that it’s naturally a cultural thing. Milan and its working life are chaotic, fast-paced, always with every second accounted for. Los Angeles, if anything, is the complete opposite. Although the two cities share traffic, life here is much more relaxed—it’s almost normal to have some accumulated delay in appointments or social gatherings.

Now that I think about it, every time we’ve gone out—unless it was for a show where we had to be there at a specific time—we’ve always been the first to arrive with friends and acquaintances, and more often than not, they’ve been the ones running late.

I probably need to work on myself a bit more and stop getting annoyed about this, since it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to others.

📺 I’m missing the last episode to finish the second season of Severance. After 9 episodes, I can’t really say what actually happened in these past few weeks. I feel like, beyond delving into the personal stories of a few characters, little substance has been added to the fabulous first season.

We’ll wait until March 20, but I’m not holding high expectations. It’s a shame, I really like the show itself, but I was hoping for something a bit spicier.

🪶 I lingered perhaps a bit too long on this post by VonGiorno. Since I started writing in English a few months ago, I’ve decided not to stop. I’m not sure it’s the same motivations driving me to do it—I don’t want to be read more for the sake of numbers. I want to be read more to weave new, interesting connections. To discover perspectives that are new and different from mine and discuss them if necessary. (P.S. my email is always open).

🗣️ My absence from social media, as I’ve already mentioned, continues. I’ve completely stopped posting anything about my private life or updates of any kind. I still use X for work, and for a few weeks now, with decent success, I’ve been limiting myself to talking only about gaming noticing a huge spike in conversations and followers (not that I mind about the latter). I’ve probably always used these platforms the wrong way.

🎶 This week I bought tickets for two very different concerts. The first is the Death Stranding in Concert tour. They’ll perform the soundtracks from both the first chapter and the second one, set to release in June this year. A great incentive for me to finally finish Master Kojima’s first work, which I’ve left simmering for far too long. The second concert is Volbeat in November. I’m excited because Los Angeles is the perfect place for these kinds of experiences.

From today on the blog has a new small feature, whenever you'll see a ✱ on the title, you'll know that this is an external link pointing to a landing page which is not living on this website, so click it and read through the whole thing.

I was considering to implement this little change from the moment I was planning to use my blog more and more to post small bites of content that I won't publish anywhere else but here.

I wanted to start with this one post from Joan, since it's on point with what I just said:

Personal websites matter - now, more than ever - because we can see, clearly, with our own eyes, what happens when a handful of companies control and own the medium and the message. It gets silenced, suppressed, and subtly reshaped without us. We get caught up in echo chambers, divided from each other, and force-fed content at the lowest common denominator.

Update: For my RSS people (and here too!) at the end of the post a 🔗 will appear with the permalink of my landing page!

🔗

Do you know that saying about how man only uses a small percentage of his intellectual faculties? 

Lately, I’ve found myself reflecting on how it’s the same thing with our smartphones that cost hundreds of dollars (sometimes even thousands). The average user exploits only a small portion of their computational capabilities—or rather, exploits a small portion of what they could potentially do. 

Among the various features of my iPhone that I’ve always paid little attention to is the one called Profiles. And although my attempt to distance myself from social media as much as possible is progressing, knowing that those apps are just a thumb’s reach away doesn’t help my brain resist the urge to check news and various updates. 

I decided that to slow down at the end of the day, completely abandon the phone, and only reach for it in emergencies, I needed a drastic and clear action. And so I did. Now, as soon as my iPhone geolocates to home, it automatically activates the “Personal” profile, and what appears before my eyes is this: the bare essentials.

It’s remarkable what we take for granted our phones can do and simply forget to use. Why? Because the narrative that now accompanies technology has to be about doing more, being more productive, instead of amazing us and serving to help us slow down, reclaim our spaces, or conquer new ones. 

Do you use different profiles? Let me know here, and if you’d like to support the blog, you can do so here.

I like to start each year by keeping track of the albums I listen to every week. It’s a little tradition of mine that I’ve been carrying on for a while. Usually, the designated place to collect them would have been social networks.

This year, I’ve decided to create a dedicated playlist to manage everything. As soon as a released album suits my taste, it’ll be added there: 2025 Best Albums. I’ve done the same for the singles I’m enjoying the most: 2025 Best Songs.

Save them if you’re interested, I will be working on those all year long.

Btw how do you organize your songs?

In the last few weeks, I’ve tried to stay as far away as possible from any kind of social network. I’ve focused on eFootball, interacted with various communities related to the game, and haven’t had any inspired spark to post here on the blog.

I’ve decided to give space only to what excites me and fuels my passion, and to write here only when I feel like it. This is my dimension now.

I’ve also barely opened Feedly to read updates from my favorite bloggers. I did it today after almost two weeks and stumbled upon something interesting on the blog of Louie:

So perhaps the answer to Luka’s question is that I mitigate the pressure of always being pleasant online by providing much more about me on my own website

The key part of the previous sentence is this: “pressure of always being pleasant online.” I’ve stopped doing that and stopped having to follow the dictates of engagement. So if you see me posting little or nothing in the coming days, you’ll know why, it’s just a period of creative fatigue where all my energy is being sucked up by gaming.

I don't even have a title for this post and that's ok.

Last week I posted on Threads that I would have stopped using that account. I uninstalled the app everywhere. I did the same with Mastodon and Bluesky. I stopped posting photos on Instagram and I will just use foto from now on, which seems a very good and promising-algo-free alternative. 

Unfortunately X will be the only one I have to be in, the gaming community is still there, or at least the one I need to work with. 
Now, it’s too soon to tell you what and how I feel. So far, the most common answer I am giving to myself: I haven’t missed anything.

Also, I am already coming from a situation where my usage of Social Networks was very limited, so I don’t feel that much of a difference. Not just yet. But the trend I’m noticing makes me feel I am not the only one. I was inspired by this post by skoobz: 

I'm tired of algorithms. I'm tired of doom scrolling. I don't mind text messaging most of the time, but it doesn't replace human connection

It opened me up to some essential reflections, for example:

• Do I have the strength to avoid checking my social media accounts every few hours?
• Do I have the strength to not feel compelled to post every photo taken with my phone?
• Does it help me, improve me as a person, change the constant need to appear on platforms whose sole purpose is to profit from our content?
• What I receive back from this platforms?

The answers to those questions were pretty obvious. That’s why I find way more compelling to discover more blogs, reach out to more people via email (something I did already twice these past days) and try to establish new relationships with people I don’t know but that have the will and time to go deep instead of being superficial. 

Therefore I leave you here the easiest ways to reach out to me: 

• email me here
• reach me out on Signal
• reach me out on Discord

We are going to talk a lot about tech, gaming, blogging and music and whatever interests you the most. 

Don’t be shy!