A coworker and I discussed options on an authentication scheme to use. We needed to make a decision. My knee-jerk response was to ask our boss what he wanted to do. That’s when everything came into focus. Our boss was the COO, his focus is not on the level of one decision for one app. Even then, he wouldn’t know the details of the options as we did. We were the adults. We were the best judges here. In my early thirties I realize that when I log into my bank app, that security wasn’t implemented by some grizzled expert. It was put in place by some thirty-something or younger person that also was following his boss’ incomplete vision.

Being critical of anything Final Fantasy VII is a spicy take, but I get little joy out of playing the 2020 Remake. This is something leagues of kids my age clamored for as far back as 2000 when the PlayStation 2 launched. Sony and Square consistently teased for decades. Now it’s here. I bought a PlayStation 4 just to play it. And I find I convince myself to keep playing through it. On the one hand, it’s stunning to see locations I didn’t realize were so memorable, through a new lens. Exciting to see what tweaks are made to the engrained story beats. And on the other, I feel taxed and anxious the entire time.

One Monday morning in August, a press release announced that Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion would collaborate on a song. This piqued my interest. Two of hip-hops brightest personalities on the same track, can’t lose. A couple of times later that week, I’d poke around to check if the track dropped. The following Friday, the song and video dropped. I dropped what I was doing. I’ll get to the song and accompanying video shortly, but as the video wrapped, I slowly realized I had been anticipating the song all week. And it was worth the wait.

Isn’t it wild to think that Valentine’s 2020 was the last holiday we got to celebrate in the "traditional" way? Easter was the first holiday eaten by COVID. Countless birthdays, including my own, spun — and it’s easy to imagine that we’ll all get at least one birthday COVID’d. A bunch of "flag" holidays, that I don’t think anyone was excited for anyway, swept under the rug. All of Summer is gone and now we’re looking down the barrel of the holiday season, pandemic style. Christmas will suck, New Year’s will suck. But Halloween — Halloween is going to be dope.