August 2026 media
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Genshin Impact version 7.0: The initial goal in Genshin’s story was to visit each of the world’s seven nations; with this patch, we’ve arrived at the seventh. There is no chance that the game will end anytime soon given its continued success, but it does feel as though the story is reaching a climax. Perhaps this version, or the next, will resemble Destiny 2’s The Final Shape in retrospect: a satisfying enough narrative conclusion to provide an offramp for long-time players.
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Hobonichi Techo 2027 Preview Forest: I’ve filled out a page of a Hobonichi planner every day for more than a decade now, and watching the new crop of covers and accessories roll in is still one of my favorite August traditions. Despite the increasing push towards big-name brand crossovers—this year features Hello Kitty, One Piece, and Moomin, among others—they’ve so far managed to evade the cynicism I feel towards similar trends in, say, Magic: The Gathering or Fortnite.
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Arsenic and Old Lace: Working through more classics! Luckily filling in gaps in the film canon is not as terrifying a prospect as with a longer-form medium like video games, even if those gaps are numerous. The only Capra I’d seen before now was It’s a Wonderful Life so I don’t have enough context for any far-reaching claims, but this was a good one. Cary Grant’s hapless overwhelm was great, but it was Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the Brewster sisters who really killed it, so to speak.