Some Horror Book Recommendations for this Halloween

The spooky month of October is here, made extra spooky by the fact that this entire year has been a long fucking nightmare. With that said, what better way to cope than by reading about poor bastards that have it worse than us.

So, here is a list of some of my favourite horror books of all time. I’m sure everyone and their pet Labrador has read Dracula, Frankenstein, At the Mountains of Madness, and all the other famous ones at this point, so I’ll try to avoid those. I’m also going to try to avoid talking about the actual plot for the sake of preserving the tension.

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Best Free Apps to Enhance your Lock-down Period

1. Cronometer

cronometer

Cronometer is a calorie tracking app that enables you to log how many calories you consume and burn throughout the day. The best part of the app is that it lets you track your micronutrient intake even in the free version. So, along with your macro intake, you can see the breakdown of your vitamin and mineral intake.

As many of us are completely stuck at home during the lockdown, I think it is very important to track your diet habits.  Numerous research has found a correlation between Vitamin D deficiency with an increased risk of mortality from Coronavirus. While this might just be a correlation, it doesn’t hurt to track and ensure that you are getting enough of the vitamin.

Some people, me included, might not be too keen on tracking your food habits each and every day but you can just use the app intermittently to ensure that your staple diet is not deficient in anything.

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Getting into the Fate Series for Fun and Profit [UPDATED]

Unlimited Blade Works

(Okay, the profit part is a lie but hey, if a weird story about a crazy guy who really hates chairs can lead to one of the biggest media franchises in the world then anything is possible)

Usually, the first thing people know about the Fate series, is that there is a lot of it. The second thing is probably the female King Arthur with more alternate versions than there are Fate spinoffs but we’ll get to it later.

Fate has a reputation for being hard to get into, and it’s not completely unfounded. Between the nonsense titles, different routes within one work, multiple adaptations, and a ton of spin-offs that may or may not have anything to do with the main series, it’s easy to get lost.

Fortunately, it’s easier to get into the series than the memes might suggest. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘easy’ exactly, but its no Kingdom Hearts.

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Hold Me Like A Mother Would – The Before Trilogy Then & Now

It has been 26 years since Before Sunrise was first released. I remember watching the movie for the first time around the early 2000s and it has been my favorite romance movie since then. The last time I had watched all three movies in the trilogy was back in 2014. The lock-down seemed like a great time to go back and revisit the trilogy and I have found that with time, my feelings and opinions about the movies have radically changed.

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Westworld S03E06 – Decoherence

Quantum decoherence is the loss of quantum coherence. Decoherence can be viewed as the loss of information from a system into the environment since every system is loosely coupled with the energetic state of its surroundings. So this episode is grappling with the theme of literal loss/ removal of data and the metaphorical loss of our sense of self. This has been by far my favourite episode of the series. Continue reading “Westworld S03E06 – Decoherence” →

Movies to Watch During the Lock-down

Movies and television shows are the ultimate forms of escapism that people have a habit of using all the time almost in an unhealthy way. I am guilty of this charge as well. But who among us hasn’t binge-watched 5 seasons of a show that we don’t even like that much just to get our minds off things that are going wrong in our life.

While there can be a tendency to bring this into an unhealthy level, at a smaller dose, using movies for escapism might not be such a bad thing. Especially in the global crisis that we are all going through. A lot of us are in a position where we are under lock-down and unlike the essential workers who are admirably fighting this thing at the forefront, the most our contribution might amount to is just staying in.

With the lock-down comes the feeling of boredom but also the feeling of anxiety related to being able to watch the whole situation unfold but not being able to make an impact on that situation. In these tough times, diving into the world of a great movie can be a great short-term escape from the current problem.

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Best Books to Escape into During the Lockdown

We are suffering from a global pandemic and while we all have the urge to refresh the news site to continue being updated on the latest news related to Covid-19, using a book to escape the situation for a while might be a good idea.

While escapist literature does not have a good reputation, escapism is not necessarily a bad thing. By escaping from the reality for a little while, we also ourselves to rest and then rejoin the world in a better shape than how we originally started. As C S Lewis eloquently put it, “The only people who hate escapism are jailers.”

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Revisiting Harry: Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 1 (Dumbledore Parties for 12 Hours Straight)

Now that I’ve been confined to my home by the current state of things, I think there’s no better time to revisit my childhood. A specific part of my childhood to be exact, as well as the childhood of millions of others around the world; the Harry Potter series. Even if you are Patrick Star and live under a rock, under the sea, there’s zero chance that you don’t know this absolute juggernaut of a series. My plan here is basically to go through the series and try and see if the revelation that wizards used to shit themselves has ruined Hogwarts for me.

Speaking of shitting oneself, I’ll haven’t really been keeping track of Rowling’s tweets or the bits of canon that were added through Pottermore so the discussions will be limited to the Book Canon. Putting the quality of the additional bits of worldbuilding aside, this is more about taking another look at the series that I experienced as a kid and not about the series in its current state. Without further ado, let’s get right into Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (not the Sorcerer’s Stone, which is dumb)

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