Staircase Wit

We have been planning our wedding since October last year. It was supposed to be a church wedding, and we wanted to celebrate it with 150 of our closest family and friends. Of course the pandemic made large gatherings impossible, so we decided to postpone our church wedding until next year, and just have a civil wedding ceremony close to our original wedding date. Planning a wedding in the midst of a pandemic is truly challenging: It was risky to get a professional to do your hair and makeup, so my mom and sister did my makeup. We couldn’t book hotel rooms to use as our wedding preparations venue, so we did our wedding preps photo shoot at my fiancé-now-husband’s house (which is now our family home). It was not safe to go out to buy wedding dress and shoes, so I shopped for mine online. Our first civil wedding date (August 5) was even cancelled because Metro Manila was suddenly put under the stricter Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ). The moment MECQ was lifted, we contacte

1. "If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product." 2. Tech giants forbid their own kids from using social media. 3. "Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them." 4. The guy who invented Youtube's algorithm is now telling us to avoid watching the next video Youtube is urging you to watch. 5. Social media platforms are built to manipulate us into spending as much time in front of the screen as possible. 6. We are indeed living in a Black Mirror episode, and it's a lot scarier than most people think.

This is an intriguing and entertaining quick read, a guilty pleasure of a page-turner that is easy to finish in a few hours.  This book is about social climber Amber Patterson, who befriends the beautiful Daphne Parrish so she can steal the latter's obscenely rich husband. While this book has evil villains with no redeeming value, it is worth reading for the satisfying plot twist.