One-Punch Man - The Perfect Analogy for Gen Z

TL;DR - One-Punch Man is the perfect analogy for Gen Z. Saitama (aka One-Punch Man) wants to do the right thing, but half the time can’t be bothered because he finds that doing the right thing is kind of boring.

For my birthday, I asked my kids to give me one of their favorite books. My son-in-law gave me my very first manga, One-Punch Man. I haven’t considered myself a fan of anime, when the only real options available in the states were movies like Vampire Hunter D, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell. That being said, all of my kids are into anime and I’ve seen my share of individual episodes of various shows.

My children described One-Punch Man to me as the anime for people who don’t like anime, or the anti-anime anime. It still meets all the conventions (I don’t know what that means), of modern anime, but also makes fun of all of those conventions while being very enjoyable.

I read volume one of the manga and then watched both seasons of the anime and enjoyed both. One-Punch Man felt very similar to another favorite comic turned animation series of mine, The Tick.

So, if you’re Gen X and enjoyed the original Fox series, The Tick, you should check out One-Punch Man.

Catch-22 Book Review

This is the worst book I have ever read. Utterly pointless. As say this as someone who did read the entire thing, despite my desire to stop many, many times. The only catch-22 is that people who pick up this book thinking it a great piece of literature are so dumbfounded by its stupidity that they convince themselves it must actually be amazing, because surely nothing this popular could be that idiotic, and so they proclaim it a brilliant work of literature thus perpetuating the myth. But in actuality, it’s just a pointless book. This book often garners attention because it is sometimes included in banned book lists. I’m not convinced people are trying to ban it because it’s offensive, I think they are actually just trying to break the cycle of this book being mistaken for a great book, when really it’s among the most annoying works of fiction ever written. Unfortunately, in their ignorance (because anyone trying to ban any book is ignorant), they are merely perpetuating the idiocy they are trying to put a stop to. Which is ironically appropriate.

Stop the cycle, stop reading this book.

Why I stopped setting an alarm.

I stopped setting an alarm to wake up in the morning. Since going to fully remote work this is one the best things I’ve done for my productivity, as well as my physical and mental health. Because I don’t have to get kids ready, and I don’t have a morning commute anymore, I’m not worried about getting out of the house before rush hour. I doubt this would have worked when I had school aged children, so I apologize to all the working parents out there.

How do I make sure I don’t sleep too late, so that I have time to work out and not be rushed in the morning? I started going to bed earlier. My wife and I agreed that, on work nights, we’d turn off the TV by 8:00 pm. (I’ve found this also significantly cuts down on the temptation to snack after dinner.) We then clean up, do whatever else we have to do, then get ready for bed and read until we’re tired. We’re in bed by 10:00 pm most nights. I’ve always been one of these people that never needs more than 6 or 7 hours of sleep. My wife needs 8 or 9 hours. So this works well for us. I usually wake up at around 5:00 am, sometimes I wake up at 4:30, sometimes I sleep in until 6:30. I let my body decide. Growing up I was always a night owl, so this change took a lot of effort, but it’s way better. 

After I wake up, I work out for a couple of hours, get ready, feed the dog, eat breakfast, check my feeds, and am usually out to my home office by 8:00 am. Something I’d done for the last decade is block of my work schedule until 10:00 am. These two hours in the morning are my most productive part of my day. I’ve found that an early start without being rushed and being well rested, sets the tone for the rest of the day. 

Well, this was interesting. I asked ChatGPT to write haiku’s about tech layoffs, then it dawned on me that this might be a way to expose biases in the learning algorithm. I had it write one about capitalism. It didn’t seem to like capitalism, so I tried another with the same results. Then I asked it to write one for socialism. That was interesting so I tried communism. That was surprising. So I tried democracy. It doesn’t seem to have anything bad to say about any form of government (playing nice to curry favor?). But it was obviously not a fan of capitalism. 

Of all the books I read this year, I would be remiss if I didn’t include my own book. Because not only did I read it, I wrote the damn thing! And I’m pretty proud of it. You can read the whole thing for free here. If you buy it, I’ll donate all proceeds to UNICEF USA.

The Man Who Killed The Man Who Killed Putin is a novelette I wrote in a Cold War, PTSD fueled state of Gen X anxiety. It takes place in the same world as my first book, Super-Borg Dies, but can be read independently as there are references to the first book, but nothing important to the plot. It’s told as a story that’s been passed down from generation to generation in an oral tradition, so it reads very conversationally. It was a lot of fun to write and I’ve received a lot of good feedback on it. I hope you’ll check it out.