Completed Phantom Liberty by siding with Songbird all the way, because I thought it will be the most difficult. You get number of options to betray her in the process, and then you can shoot Reed dead in a cutscene. It’s a good spy thriller, and the best Cyberpunk 2077 story, but every Cyberpunk 2077 story has to be a W40K story: meaning it all has to return to status-quo.
One nice detail. If you side with Songbird, Alex survives, and she actually calls you later.
Whole Panam romance didn’t work for me. I’m not gonna analyze why, just gonna say it worked in Metro Last Light, and hell it worked in Kingdom Come, and even Wolfenstein, but not here.
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Day: August 26, 2026
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Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
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Sony Trinitron KV-M1401U
I didn’t plan to buy a CRT. They are overpriced nowadays, since everyone is into retrogaming it seems, and nobody produce them anymore, and they degrade with time. Limited supply, growing demand.
They are also very heavy and bulky, and most sellers refuse to ship them, or the shipping can be while not astronomical, quite significant.
So I noticed someone was selling Toshiba CRT in my neighborhood, which they obviously used for retrogaming. That seller disappeared, but the thought stuck with me.
First, I started looking for a similar Toshiba, or a Panasonic. Then, a wild Trinitron appeared nearby.
Now, the thing with Sony Trinitrons is that they’re supposed to be unique among CRTs. Most CRTs are curved both horizontally and vertically, like a bulb, which they are. But Trinitrons are curved only horizontally, like a cylinder. Also, most CRTs use a slot mask, which gives almost honeycomb like pattern. While Trinitrons have more of a grid like pattern.
Unexpected benefit of buying a UK CRT is that it almost always has RGB SCART port, that offers the best quality. While US CRT owners sometimes have to mod them to get one.
In any case, I found myself in the afternoon in Catford, by a row of brick houses. The guy, Elliot, has 3 CRTs, including a 21″ Sony and a Panasonic, and he seemed to be a genuine retrogamer: with a modded PS2 and a RGB cable. He even said that he calibrated the TV himself.
Carrying CRT on a bus isn’t easy, even if it’s “only” 14″. It’s the way the weight is spread, very forward. But I managed. -
Pet Sematary, Stephen King
“Rachel looked on this, his only real hobby, with a wifely indulgence that held, he supposed, some elements of contempt; even after ten years of marriage she probably thought he would grow out of it. “
I have read a lot of Stephen King as a teenager, but not Pet Sematary. I wonder what I’d think of it back in the day. Because now, to me it all looks like a discussion about death being inseparable part of life.
I find that the most interesting character is Rachel. Not because she’s likeable, but with the way she uses her kids to veil her own emotions: “he’s tired” means that she’s tired, “Ellie is now upset” means that it’s actually Rachel who’s upset. -
CaDA Master C61505W Viva Hypercar (Ferrari La Ferrari)
3rd bag, 5.5 hours, over 2 months, though, with a break of almost a month in the middle.
I wanted to finish the gear box in one go, as the gears aren’t held together by anything until fully assembled and simply fall out, so I spent more than one hour in a single sitting on it. There was one angled piece that you either need tweezers or drop it extremely precisely, because that’s the only way it gets in. I thought I’ll push through to finish the engine. But it turned out to be a literal jumble of pipes going at weird angles, and loosely connected. And on page 218 I realised I did a mistake on page 158. So I spent 20 minutes fixing it. Good times.