Tin cậu Huy vừa lìa trần khiến tôi sửng sốt. Tuy đã lâu lắm không có dịp gặp cậu, tôi vẫn nhớ mãi những lời nói hài hước của cậu làm cho mọi người xung quanh bật cười. Những tháng ngày bên cậu tuy ngắn ngủi nhưng tôi vẫn ấn tượng mãi một người cậu tuy xa mà gần. Tôi khâm phục tánh tình thẳng thắng và bẩm chất chân thật của cậu. Tôi ngưỡng mộ sự hiếu thảo của cậu đối với cha mẹ. Và tôi kính nể tình cảm cậu dành cho vợ con và gia đình.

Kỷ niệm gia đình hợp mặt mấy mươi năm trước cứ ngỡ như ngày hôm qua. Tôi vẫn nhớ mãi những phút giây cùng cậu bắt cua, câu cá, và vui đùa trên biển. Được nghe cậu văng tục với những người bạn Việt ở tiệm sửa xe thật đã tai. Đã lâu lắm tôi không được nghe những lời tục tĩu như lúc còn ở Việt Nam.

Thế mà giờ đây cậu đã đột ngột ra đi ở tuổi 64 vì ung thư máu. Nhìn đi nhìn lại, ung thư đã cướp đi cuộc đời của cậu và những người thân của tôi. Tương lai tôi cũng sẽ không thoát khỏi nó. Nghĩ đến thấy cuộc đời này quá mong manh. Xin cầu nguyện cho linh hồn của cậu được giải thoát.

Scientific American have never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history—until now. From the editors:

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September.

On masking, they writes:

[I]f almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances.

Trump supporters don’t believe in science, but I hope independent voters aren’t so ignorant about science.

Jessica Hische has kicked off an amazing campaign to help elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The posters are inspiring. I couldn’t decide which one to place on my website; therefore, I made my own using David Jonathan Ross’s Fit. Feel free to use it to spread the message. Here’s the PNG version. If you are inspired to create your own, however, you can download the template to get started. Let’s rise up, show up, unite, and vote the motherfucker out.

The forth iteration of this blog returns to an ad-free design. The ad experiment was fun, but didn’t quite work out as I hope it would. I didn’t think it would work out because I always wanted to change up the design of this blog. With ads, I might be stuck with one design for a while. As a result, I wanted to get back to just making this site a personal blog like it always has been.

A few months ago, I also reduced the footer. I moved all the footer stuff to the info page. The bottom of the blog is now much lighter. I like that. Scrolling on a mobile device is less exhausting.

Of course, the redesign comes with new set of typefaces. Body copy is set in Harriet. UI elements are set in Alright. Both typefaces designed by Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh for Okay Type.

Il Cho’s #Alive dials up the pandemic to the horror level. The virus turns humans into violent, blood-sucking zombies. Once infected, the zombies would look for more humans to attack and spread. This virus makes COVID-19 seems much milder. With COVID-19, you can wear mask and stay home peacefully. It’s a comic relief for quarantining.

Cuối tuần Lễ Độc Lập vừa qua được bà xã ông anh vợ đãi món lẩu dê. Cả gia đình bên vợ đều ăn nhưng không mấy hảo món này nên còn dư rất nhiều và thế là tống hết cho tôi. Cả tuần nay, ngày nào tôi cũng thưởng thức món mì gói lẩu dê và uống một loan saké. Ăn vẫn thấy ngon và không thấy ngán. Chỉ khổ cái là ăn thịt dê thì nhiều mà không được thả dê gì cả.

In Yoko Ogawa’s dark, dystopian island, objects disappeared one by one and having memory was a crime. Anyone who had any memory would be interrogated and arrested by the Memory Police and no one knew where they took them. Anything that brought memory must be destroyed. Books were burned. Calendars were vanished. Eventually anything that had form must be gone. It’s a remarkably bleak and chilling read. I often have a difficult time following a work of nonfiction, but I could read this book the whole way through without being lost thanks to Ogawa’s superb storytelling and Stephen Snyder’s outstanding translation. Like the only survival in the book, the story will remain in my memory for a long time.

Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties is a coming-of-age film that has been mistaken for underage sexualization due to Netflix’s botched promotion. It is uncomfortable to watch eleven-year-old girls dancing erotically in their skimpy outfit, but that is the point Doucouré tries to make.

Amy (Fathia Youssouf), an eleven-year-old Senegalese, has the responsibility of looking after her two younger brothers and she must obey the Muslim tradition. Her father is about to marry a second wife and his first wife and kids must welcome them back into their house with a wedding celebration. Amy rebels her family by joining the dance group. She befriends Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni) who is the group’s leader with the resemblance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Because her parents always busy working at the restaurant, Angelica is left on her own and she is troublesome.

It is about immigrant children growing up in housing apartments. With lack of support from teachers and guidance from parents, they get their influence from the pop culture. It is an eye-opening film that reminds me of Larry Clark’s Kids in the 90s. I hope that Netfilx is not going to pull it.

Of course he knew about the seriousness of the pandemic. He is just too incompetent to do anything about it. He doesn’t give a fuck that people died from the coronavirus. It is what it is.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are too weak and too scared to hold him accountable. His supporters don’t see anything wrong with their God. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.

Four more years and he will have more control of the country. With his power, he can make the presses, the dissidents, and the scientists disappear. He can shoot somebody without losing his voters.

I don’t know how people can vote for him. Maybe they just want to see democracy burn down to the ground? Maybe they want to live under a totalitarian system of government?

An excellent piece from Ibram X. Kendi for The Atlantic. Kendi writes:

White male supremacy has granted the president the power to accost women and “grab ’em by the pussy”; the power to “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters; the power to call the first female major-party nominee for president “such a nasty woman” on live television and still win more white women’s votes than she did; the power to say the first Black president was not born in the United States and still have Black men say at his convention that he is “not racist.” White male supremacy has allowed the president to have a foreign power intercede in a presidential election on his behalf, to call neo-Nazis “very fine people,” to urge his supporters to vote twice, to build a monument of lies, to obstruct justice while freeing friends and punishing foes, to describe Americans who died at war as “suckers” and “losers,” and to look away as hundreds of thousands of American COVID-19 victims’ bodies pile up at cemeteries—and not face any consequences.

Kendi concludes:

Those who embrace Trumpism demand, like police officers, qualified immunity for their racism and sexism. When they hear “Me too,” when they hear “Impeach him,” when they hear “Black lives matter,” when they hear “No justice, no peace”—they hear the sounds of violent attacks on their supremacy, they envision their property burning, they see their America under attack. In their minds, slavery did not end.

Scary time in America, particularly for Black Americans.