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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • It was “The Avatar” in a German translation. I read it twice or so at that time - and it’s many years since, so I have only a dim recollection of all the details, but a lot of politics, and (if I don’t mix it up now) questionable physics regarding light speed and mass, a lot of sex and some weird gaelic inspired poetry.

    Maybe I’ll find a copy one day again, to have a new look with my now old eyes and different woldview.

    From what I’ve seen on goodreads or so I had a bit of misfortune as The Avatar isn’t known as his best work. But beggars can’t be choosers, at that time I got my sci fi fix by browsing the one bookstand with scifi in the central station’s bookstore next to my bus stop home after school… they threw me out once or twice “This is for buying books, not for reading”



  • One tip when you have kids: If all the accounts are set up correctly as family accounts you can control playtime right in the settings. The PS will then log out the kids after (say) one hour of play automatically.

    Using the PSN website you can grant an extension day by day. When my son had done his homework before playing I would regularly grant another hour. “Can I play more? - Have you done your homework? - Yes - No problem”

    In the long run that conditioned him to do his stuff before playing. (And I did trust him, when he said he was finished with his work)

    When you have kids it’s really worth finding out how to set that up. And it saved us sooooo many “turn it off now” discussions.


  • When my life turned upside down and a lot of shit happened I got interested in Stoicism to the point I even read a bit of Seneca.

    I never felt it as a way to be emotionless or a way to hide or suppress emotions , but rather as a way to just accept my them and “yeah, I see and acknowledge I feel like crap, no need to go crazy about it” (in my situation). It brought an understanding to me that not everything that happens is about me personally and I stop fighting what I can’t change to put my focus where I can have an influence.

    Warning: this is not a definition of stoicism, but what I took away from it for myself.


  • So Germany didn’t have dictator oppression in the 30s and 40s? You think we didn’t have propaganda and we didn’t just kill people for another opinion? And we had access to outside information?

    I’m talking about a moral duty to oppose, to inform yourself in spite of all that. And I know it is not easy. We Germans failed that miserably.

    The plabook Putin is playing, we’ve been through it and it is was what lead to WW2.


  • No, not all Russians are evil and deserve to die. But closing your eyes and playing oblivious to what’s happening out there, just believing the state propaganda and living in a position “oh it’s just the bad leader” is not a morally OK position.

    If there is a dictator in your country you have some moral duty to find out at least a bit about the truth.

    How do I know?

    I’m German.

    My grandparent’s generation was the one that actively closed their eyes, that actively looked away, that everything that happend was someone else’s problem. They were the Generation that arranged themselves, that did good business as long as it wasn’t them that were deported, killed or fought at in the war.

    This is not a position that is morally OK, but this is what I see of a lot of Russians. Not all, but a lot.