The hot weather is consuming me. We had a heat wave in early June, and it never stopped. Some other parts of Italy had brief moments of rain or mild evenings. Here, summer has hit us nonstop ever since. And it is not going to stop.

Summer is the moment when there is more dissonance between the kind of man I think myself to be and the kind of man I can actually be. Summer crushes me: I sleep badly, I wake up early, and I am constantly tired. The only way to survive is to jump from air-conditioned place to air-conditioned place. The net effect is that I go outside less, I am less energetic, I find it harder to focus, and the only activity I can honestly do is read in bed.

And, while I wait for the summer to subside, the list of things I want to do grows and, with it, my frustration. Still, it is possible to frame this differently. First, by accepting that reality is what it is. I cannot control the weather, so it is useless to freak out about it. Second, I can take this as a test: I need to make the best of the situation.

This issue of The ChangeLog is less dense because of this. I did fewer things, but I hope I put more intentionality into them. As I said at the end of last month, I wanted to watch July’s sunsets. Maybe I didn’t watch as many as I wanted, but I counted the colors of the few I managed to watch.

In any case, July is over. Let’s start the usual roundup with the three books I read: two non-fiction and the best fiction of the year.

Housekeeping

I wrote a small article explaining the skill I use to automate syncing Letterboxd and my Obsidian vault. I have another coding article on the doorstep, but it will be probably released on early August.

Reading

• Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. The highest rated book I read this year. I got to this by looking for something with Dark Souls vibes and I was not disappointed. Between Two Fires is a medieval-horror book set in France during the Black Plague. It follows the story of a knight and a girl through a demon-ridden France full of deeply unsettling and Dark Souls-like images (like when a statue of Virgin Mary commits a carnage holding the decomposed body of a baby). So, you are warned that it can be a disturbing read. But the best thing, is that it is wonderfully written. It is one of those books where I stop mid-chapter and think “goddammit, I wish I was able to write like this.” Amazing.
• How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic by Massimo Pigliucci. Unfortunately, this year I am not reading a lot of philosophy. I think it is because I read a lot of it last year and I wanted to “digest it and takes notes on it” before I read more. It will not happen, probably. We always fall into an ideal version of ourselves that is able to read a lot and keep organized notes on everything and, why not, also publish a lot of articles on that. Anyway, I had this book in pre-order since last year because Massimo Pigliucci is one of my spiritual masters. I was not disappointed. It is a very good reflection on the work and life of Cicero. Greatly recommended if you are into these things.
• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi. I wanted to read a quick third book this month, and I stumbled into a recommendation in a Youtube video. I think the author has a very nice style and the prose is funny and entertaining. The problem is that the content is the most uninteresting list of “advice” I read in years. Everything is a generic organization tip followed by “do that if you find it helpful.” I mean, sure. I don’t need a book for that (you never need a book for that, in general, but you know…). I think the author has a podcast, and I guess you can get everything and in a better way from the podcast.

Watchlist

Project Hail Mary (2026)

I read the book in December 2021, just before I even started The ChangeLog. It was, and still is, one of the favorite books I read in this decade. For a while, I was really annoying to talk to, because I always brought this up. I also gifted it on every occasion. When the movie was announced I was scared, as you are when your favorite book or game gets transposed into a Hollywoodian product. The story is not hard to transpose into a movie, but it had some tricky elements to adapt, and who knows what may happen.

Luckily, the movie is great. I think it is a common opinion that it is a beautiful movie, and the transposition was really good. I am a bit sad that they moved too fast on all the scientific, nerdy things that are some of the best parts of the book (imho), but I know why they did that, and it was the right call. That’s why this is loved by science nerds and the general public alike.

This also confirms a pattern: Ryan Gosling is still the actor with the highest rating on my Letterboxd profile. He consistently starred in the movies I’ve rated +4 stars (La La Land is the only outlier, but my score is the outlier; I don’t know why everybody loved that… thing). Am I a Ryan Gosling fan?

By the way, if you liked the movie, you should read the book.

Manhunter (1986)

Manhunter is a fascinating movie. Directed by Michael Mann, it is the adaptation of Red Dragon, the book you may know as “the one before” The Silence of the Lambs. You may also recognize William Petersen (better known for being Gil Grissom in the original C.S.I. show) playing the role of FBI profiler Will Graham.

It is a very good thriller with a style I would define as full-power ’80s. Maybe it’s the terseness, the bombastic soundtrack, or the visual style. At the time of release, it got mixed reviews. The critics were puzzled by Mann’s 1980s trademark overuse of pastel colors, art-deco architecture and glass brick (I am quoting Wikipedia here). Recent critics, though, reevaluated it, praising in particular the aesthetic and mesmerizing aspects that confused the contemporary viewer. Today, I cannot say that it has achieved classic status, but it won a spot in my monthly recap. Surely it means something!

Anyway, the only thing that left me puzzled is the resolution. (SPOILER ahead; skip to the next section if you care)

It felt too fast and weird. I mean, why does Will jump through the window without a plan and get instantaneously stabbed and knocked out? What was that? Then there’s a frantic, weird action scene with overdone effects, and the killer gets shot by Will, who finally remembers he has a gun. I don’t know. That’s the only part I would change.

All The Rest

• The Skin Game (1931). I am watching all Alfred Hitchcock movies from the 1930s to the ’70s. The first bunch, though, are a mess. This one, for instance, is a real snoozer.
• Big Trouble in Little China (1986). This kind of random shit is very well done and, in many ways, it is something that makes the ’80s productions so nostalgic and charming. But it remains a lot of random shit nevertheless.
• Rich and Strange (1931). A Hitchcock romcom. There are a couple of scenes that are worthy of a later Hitchcock, but the rest is pretty uninteresting and forgettable.
• Number Seventeen (1932). Here we are starting to see something, but it is very confusing as every character keeps claiming to be other characters.
• Waltzes from Vienna (1934). Final Hitchcock movie for this month. A historical piece and a love story set in the mid-1800s, it tells the ups and downs of Strauss Jr., torn between a woman, music, and his father. Still meh.
• The Odyssey (2026). Yes! I went to the movie theater! It is a great take on a classical mythological text. I liked it! But there are already too many words written about this.
• Good Fortune (2025). A comedy with Keanu Reeves playing the role of a guardian angel who makes a big mess. It is fun. Not exceptional, but worth a watch.
• Masters of the Universe (2026). The movie stops being interesting the moment Adam comes back to Eternia. Then it becomes a generic, messy fantasy epic. And this happens after 40 minutes in a 141-minute-long movie. They should have been bolder and less embarrassed by the source material.

On the series front, I am starting to gain some momentum. Gioia made me watch Derry Girls, which I always postponed because it felt like a commitment; instead they are just 19 episodes. Who knows what I was thinking. A funny wee series, indeed.

We also watched the fifth and last season of The Bear. After three episodes that could have been one, it ended up being a fine season. The ending, though, was anticlimactic. Not in the actual events, but in the way they were portrayed. I will avoid spoilers.

Music

2026 is not shaping up as a memorable year for music. I have some favorite albums of mine, as I showed in the previous ChangeLogs, but I am talking in a more generic way. So far, there is no album that collectively unites us. This happens less and less the more we are squeezed into algorithm-shaped boxes tailored to ourselves.

Still, something survived. A couple of summers ago we had BRAT. Last year we were all obsessed with the soundtrack of KPop Demon Hunters. But other than summer phenomena, we also had some albums that were clear contenders for the Album of the Year.

This year, instead, I don’t see anything like that. The closest one is probably Boards of Canada’s Inferno and even that one only carries a pallid resemblance to what I am talking about.

July has been probably even worse. I spent it trying to find good 2026 albums, and I ended up listening to 20 different albums without loving any of them. Therefore, even this month, you will just get a void, ranty Music section.

Gaming

My gaming life is still pretty stale. I am looking at a new game, but if I pull the trigger, we will talk about it in the next session.

Still, I don’t want to leave this section empty; therefore this month I will drop a list of my favorite free puzzle games you can find online (other than Wordle and Connections).

• Puzzmo. This is a wonderful website with daily word games and puzzles. If there is a website I check all morning, it is this one. To experience it in full, you need to subscribe. But there is a good selection of free games! (Moreover, because it stores data in ATProto, I was able to create my pretty little dashboard in my blog).
• Four Corners. Similar to the New York Times’ Connections, but the four categories are arranged on a square and there are shared words on the four corners.
• 4x3. Another Connections-inspired game, made by Hank Green. Find four categories of words, but one word is shared among all categories.
• Smush. And yet another Hank Green game. This time, you have nine letters and you need to find as many words as possible. There are some extra rules, like a spicy letter, that you always have to use the central letter, and that each letter can be used a limited number of times. It is fun even for me, since I suck at word games.
• Nonogame. This is fresh (released on July 27th, just in time for this). If you like nonograms and/or picross, this website just offers daily nonograms.
• Hashi. Just in time before the end of July, Giacomo Cavalieri (my Gleam-dealer of choice) published a daily Hashiwokakero logic game (made in Gleam, of course). I played only two days, but I had to include it.

I think that’s all for today. They will consume way too much of your morning already. We don’t need any more of them. For now.

Other Interesting Things

For July’s Interesting Things I don’t have a lot of articles (I have been a bit away from internet discourse). So I will take the chance to recommend a great YouTube channel: Dami Lee. In theory, it is a channel about architecture, but it is much more than that. I found it while she was doing a series on the architecture of The Lord of the Rings and stayed for all the rest. Every video is well researched and a pleasure to watch.

Conclusions

And with this, July is over. August will start with my two weeks of vacation, a period that I will try to use to break the monotony of this summer. I have no plans: I need to save money for the wedding, so we will stay at home. Still, vacation is a state of mind, not a place. So who knows.

I hope you are spending your summer forging amazing memories. My memories, instead, will be a topic for next month.

See you in 31 days!