Notices by Victor Gijsbers (victorgijsbers@mastodon.gamedev.place)

In high school I read a spy novel, probably short and possibly bad, about a guy who gets mistaken for the greatest spy in the world. Not only do the bad guys capture him, but then their boss is like: "I know you have studied all weapons, and I have really been looking forward to finally duel someone who is proficient with the two handed axe." And then he gets rescued, but the rescuer assumes that *he* can fly a helicopter. Does this ring any bells?

@HauntedOwlbear Okay! 🙂

@HauntedOwlbear Maybe giving voting advice isn't entirely in the spirit of the competition? (I agree with the recommendation to play this game, of course!)

@aaribaud This is A Boy Named Sue, except with more barbarians.

When I was on holiday in France, my daughter had a nasty fall with a big head wound. Six medics arrived, she was taken to the hospital a 30 minute drive away, got several tests and scans (luckily, everything was fine), saw several doctors, and got nine stitches.

Today, the bill arrived in the post. It was 19 euros and 61 cents.

I've been slow to accept the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, in part because genocide -- like murder -- requires intention. And that's just hard to believe!

Well, it's this kind of news article that makes me rethink my position. If elements within the Israeli defense forces are actively sabotaging humanitarian aid to Gaza, literal food sent to starving people, then genocidal intentions would seem to be the only explanation for such behaviour.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/israeli-soldiers-and-police-tipping-off-groups-that-attack-gaza-aid-trucks

Five minutes into recording a video about knowledge in which I was using the example "Lagos is the capital of Nigeria" as something I knew, I suddenly realised that Lagos is not the capital of Nigeria.

Restart.

The kids were guessing the ingredients of my stroganoff sauce.

Thinking about salt, I gave them a hint: "It's very small, you can't see it, but it's present in almost all food."

Said the 7yo: "Microplastics!"

The willingness of others to engage in massive violence and cruelty can make our own attempts at kindness seem so impotent and pointless.

That that is not so, that even the smallest human gestures are of supreme importance, that in some sense they redeem the world, that is the faith we need.

It's not an easy faith, but there is no alternative.

@anarchopunk_girl Haha, okay, possibly I need to reconsider... (It's anyway not something I can tackle very soon, I've got to read a bunch of other philosophy books for projects I'm working on.)

@anarchopunk_girl I have a really lovely little old hardback edition of Stirner's book, but it'll take some courage to tackle 429 pages in tiny German Fraktur. 😅

@anarchopunk_girl This is a possibly naive question, because I have not read Stirner. (This is Stirner, right?) I get the claim that there is no command to love. But the last sentence gets pretty close to endorsing a universality of love not as a commandment, but as an ontological fact. If I love universally, and if love involves identity, then the universe is, in some sense, universal love; reality is love. Pretty platonic, and it's unclear where the ego has gone. How should I see this?

It turns out that some big servers (Google/Microsoft) have *silently* been blocking some of my emails because they didn't like the certification of my friend's mail server. Ok. WHICH of the people who didn't mail me back over the past few months just didn't want to talk to me, and which didn't get the email? 🙈 This is truly vexing.