One of my irrational fears that hasn’t gone away with growing older is that of going to the dentist. I’ve put it off over and over, and was pretty sure I’d make it last year but didn’t. I’ve done my best to handle things at home, even flossing daily which they always say you should do but I’m convinced no one actually does. This week I finally made an appointment to go, and it wasn’t as bad as I feared. They did find a cavity that needs patching up, but the appointment for that is only in a couple of months.
One thing that felt off was a recommendation that I get a certain procedure done — not only because I’d like to avoid pain wherever possible, but because it was prescribed before they’d even looked in my mouth. I’d only just said that it was my first visit in a while, and they said ‘okay you should get this done’.
Because it’s 2026, I uploaded my x-rays to Gemini 3 Pro for a second opinion. It analyzed the scans confidently (but of course) and told me the same things, but in even greater detail. It did not think the procedure was necessary, and gave me clarifying questions to ask the dentist next time. When it comes to a nervous person like me, it provided a better experience than a human dentist could because it was available to answer my many more follow-up questions, at all hours. This longer “consultation” made me feel better, although I’m well aware that taking medical advice from a machine that just says things isn’t the smartest move. But I know people do and will because it’s really easy, and so once again I’m saying this is really dangerous territory.
Why am I using Gemini so much, and what happened to Claude? Google decided to play dirty, I guess. They’re offering three months of their Pro AI plan (essentially Google One with 2TB of storage + access to Gemini Pro, Nano Banana Pro, and Veo) at a 90% discount. That’s about S$2.80 a month. These models are all so incredibly close in raw performance, that for someone like me who’s not using them for coding, the main differences are down to tone, character, and perhaps ethical alignment. I’m already sold on Claude for text-based work, but I thought I should spend some time getting a feel for how Gemini differs. Especially since it’s going to be at the heart of Apple’s AI features at some point this year.
Friend and former colleague Rob is back in town for Chinese New Year. I thought I’d last seen him maybe two or three years ago, but it’s actually somehow been closer to four. The quickening pace of time’s slipping through the fingers at this age is alarming. The last time he was around, I’d just printed off some stickers of my Misery Men drawings and given him one. I had just gone back to work after my brief sabbatical. We were still wearing masks indoors (as seen in the linked post’s featured photo). Is there a German word for how relationships can pause and park themselves outside of regular time, so that four years feels like so much less?
A few of us met up for craft beers and Thai food on Sunday, with the reminiscing and catching up going past midnight. Here’s a privacy-preserving photo-turned-courtroom sketch made with Gemini’s help.
Media activity
- I finished watching all 48 episodes of The Apothecary Diaries anime series on Netflix. It’s about an unusually educated girl, raised in a red light district, who gets kidnapped and sold to the imperial palace as an indentured maid where she gets to flex her skill with poisons and medicines. It’s set in a fictional country resembling China in the Tang Dynasty. Nothing about this should appeal to me, but it was one of the more enjoyable low-stakes shows I’ve seen recently.
- I still haven’t finished reading Sleeping Dogs. But I did finish playing The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case a few weeks ago but forgot to say so. As a faithful remake of a retro game, it can’t be blamed for some of the dated gameplay. The art could definitely be better though — it would be a fine game for $20, but unfortunately is priced at $44.99.
- It’s been a year since we were in Tokyo and I bought the Japanese supernatural murder mystery game Paranormasight, largely because it was set in the Ryogoku/Sumida district where our apartment was. In last week’s Nintendo Direct, a sequel was announced and so I decided it was finally time to get started on the original. It’s turned out to be quite good, with a dynamic visual presentation that goes beyond the usual VN style of talking figures in front of different backgrounds. The gameplay is constantly breaking the fourth wall as well: one challenge where you die after hearing a cursed sound is solved by going into settings and turning the volume down.
- While feeling stressed out about the dentist, I played Jusant on the PS5. It’s a beautiful, dialogue-free game where you slowly climb a massive mountain and put together what happened to the people who used to live on it. It was fairly quick to finish and now I’m curious about Cairn, another game about scaling a mountain, albeit more realistic about the physical difficulties involved. Jusant’s nameless hero is practically superhuman and his arms are way too skinny for the insane amount of climbing he has to do.
sangsara.net 
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