Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • games

    i'm not much of a gamer but here's where i'll track my gaming explorations :) newest at the top!

  • palo santo

    Smudging the house this morning. Using palo santo, it feels different this time.

    A few years back, we were preparing for a workshop. A mediation, yoga and then dance workshop, where we hired a local band, composed of 2 didgeredoo and a drum. The drummer had brought his kid. No one was taking care of the kid as the guests were already coming in.

  • cobwed brush

    Strange day yesterday.

    Flat tire, again. Kind of lost my wallet, but not really. Drove in town to get my tires changed.

    Browsed around for tattoo books, but ended up buying a book about Wicca and another weird symbols, modern mandala, based on Cabal, Tarot, Astronomy and making magic squares. A technique to draw shapes imbued with magic powers.

  • Emotionally unavailable.

    It's how I describe my state right now. I wish I wasn't. It reminds me of when I was going through a burn out.

    My mind was fine, my emotions were okay, my body was not too bad, but my nervous system was fried. It was a strange realization back then. A burn out wasn't a storm of emotions and a broken mental state, a burn out happened in the background, while I was trying to keep everything else afloat, my nervous system gave up.

  • Have you ever encountered a bear in real life?

    Have you ever encountered a bear in real life?

    I’m in NorCal, and while bears sometimes wander down from the hills to poke around neighborhoods (and snack on the occasional backyard pet), I’ve only seen them at the zoo or on the news.

• Politics and World Events

  • They lost the war

    On germany's delusion about not having lost the war

    Here's a theory I came up with recently while explaining some of our history to my younger brother:

    In the collective mind of germany, they actually won WWII.

    I know this sounds ludacris but hear me out.

    What is at the core of germany's national pride? Apart from the usual "we have the best industry and football and cars", the biggest thing germany carries on its flag is its pride in overcoming fascism. In having learned from the nazi holocaust.

    It is reflected in the first paragraph of the german constitution, in our nazi holocaust memorials, in our state's unconditional support for Israel.

• Technology and Free Software

  • The New Westworld

    Westworld is a science-fiction film (1973) and TV series (2016-2022) that is based on the premise of a theme-park populated by AI robots role-playing the setting of the American "West".

    It's been ten years since I've seen the show (and I only watched the first season), so I can't remember the details well. However, I wanted to reflect a bit on the central premise, and how we are moving toward a real-life Westworld.

    The American West, as depicted through the Western genre, was a period of settler expansion marked by blurred lines between "civilisation" and "nature". "Civilisation" in this case means laws, practices, administration, institutions. "Nature" is the wilderness, freedom, the open land, baser instincts. The "Cowboy" stands midway between the two, capable of transgressing the law (or taking the law into their own hands), but ultimately with the aim of protecting and serving the community. The cowboy is never fully settled; the classic Western image is of the cowboy riding off into the sunset after successfully removing the threat from the burgeoning civilisation and ensuring its future success.