WTF really?!!😲😕🤯 was my first thought, but it turned out to be one hilarious Spotify mashup about upcoming concerts near Munich and not some sort of Bavarian-Cabaret-Black-Metal comedy collab I first thought about. Why not, really. Thats what happens when you move to Bavaria and try to familiarize oneself with the local scene (and dialect 🙂
You are.
This profound thought occurred to me as I went to bed the other day falling into this weird mixture of reality and dream, with nonsensical endings progressively taking over the sensible thoughts with the rational brain slowly but surely sidelined on the autobahn into the dreamworld. This funny experience picked up after Corona and I am not entirely sure its a good thing. But it generates interesting ideas.
The logic though, is sound and simple. The concept of universe, after all, is, and will ever be, connected to the concept of “observable” universe, since what cannot be “observed” in that astronomical sense is indistinguishable from non-existing. For all intents and purposes, what is outside of observability zone does not exist for us. At same time, we have no indication that outside of that zone there is indeed nothing; it is possible that the universe continues endlessly. A hypothetical humanoid colony 10 billion light years from ours will be at the center of their own “observable” universe, and it will be different from ours. Both are thus at the center of their own respective universes. In that sense, we are special – and we are not, at the same time 🙂
OMG I have again clicked on a random Netflix tab and, believe it or not, fell in love with the series and the main heroine within the first 5 minutes. The visuals , the sound, the acting, the script and the humor – all pretty perfect for my middle-age taste. I also can improve my Bokmål since the messaging subtitles are weirdly either absent or incomplete. I readily forgive a few clichés that have become a tad overused for amazing chemistry and this really smooth, easy-on-the-eye production. I also love Norsk accent and way of expression, what can I say.
Ive always suspected that women are, in essence, quantum objects because the principles of quantum mechanics apply to them pretty well. A couple of recent events show a strong support for my hypothesis.
Superposition Principle for Women:
A quantum woman can be in several (mental) states at the same time if unperturbed by external observation. One can never know. However, if she notices the said external observation, the system might collapse into a definite state which is often anger.
A direct approach to observation (“How are you feeling?”) may result in counter-intuitive encouragement of even more observation (“Can’t you see!?”).
Quantization of Opinions:
All opinions voiced by a quantum woman’s partner can be only of discrete kinds (“You either agree with me, or you don’t”) with nothing in between, not a nuance, not the slightest deviation from total and absolute agreement. Equally a judgement pronounced may fall into quantized buckets which are often “very good” and “very bad”.
Quantum Clothing Entanglement:
All quantum women act the same, independently from each other, regardless of the distance, connection and relation between them. On one sunny day in April I noticed that ALL women outside suddenly wore white shorts as if orchestrated by some higher being (or TikTok). The next day I went out to see only long jeans throughout.
NB: Ha! I should be careful positing my serious theories about quantum mechanics and women! What if I decide to run for the U.S. president ?! Oh that might get me in trouble!
So this year we decided not to go to Norway for the most part of our yearly vacation. We moved near to mountains, anyway, and it all was pretty costly, we thought, and we bought a couple of things that were long on our agenda, like a trampoline for the kids (which, by the way, has turned out to be an exceptional value “per hour of child’s time engaged”. In general, I thought recently while munching on my dinner, the price to engage a child in some activity, however meaningful, seems to be around 10€ per hour. This is what we have been paying a baby-sitter some years ago, but also lots of other things fall roughly in that region: climbing/trampoline hall costs 8-12€ on average per hour, LEGO [cost of a set divided by the number of hours it takes for a child to assemble it less number of hours for parents to repair a wrongly built, usually a dozen steps behind, model], bike park incl cable car [needs a bike though]. Even a big 4.95€ Aldi lasagne takes about half an hour to eat.
There are probably some outliers from that rule, with some of those probably having costs that are hidden. A child can play Fortnite for what seems like forever, on a free tier, but what kind of opportunity cost is that?
Anyways, coming back to the trampoline, and ending this lengthy digress, it was pretty expensive but by now I reckon it already falls in the 10€ region, having been bought just a couple of months back, and without any costly maintenance , hopefully the cost per hour will be get to 1-2€ until they grow out of that thing too).
Another unexpected, and in some way sad, reason for our “staycation” this year is that our children grow, and so does their willingness to bicker about the tiniest details with everyone, especially with siblings, asserting their dominance in the subjects they usually have only the slightest idea about; and while we adults want to loose some of the social baggage accumulated over the year, a growing child is interested exactly in the opposite and prefers to pontificate about the latest shoe trends in their school, and what do neighborhood kids wear (Air Force VS Jordans, for gods sake) instead of enjoying being together in the nature. An idyllic day spent in the long and quiet Norwegian summer glow, alone on a mountainous plateau with children frolicking in the stream, blissfully picnicking in the low northern sun – this may be forever in the past. Our toddlers are growing up, after all, and it will never be as it has been with them then.
But there are still moments of unity and bliss as it has been once; its just harder to synchronize between four of us now that there are two “opinionated baboons”, as I sometimes lovingly call them, in addition to adults 🙂
On one of the good days, after a great hike, the topic of “religion” came up during the dinner and we talked about how it appeared, and what might have been the reasons for that in the first place. As an non-Church goer, my views on that are far from mysticism, and so I dug up the old copy of “Leap of Faith” which we all then thoroughly enjoyed 😀 I was literally rolling on the floor laughing about 15 years ago as I watched it first time.
This time, however, I actually understood the story, which turned out to be more tragic, deeper and smarter, that I had in my memory, just again demonstrating to me how slow poke I am [I watched one of my faviorite films, “Hero”, exactly three times until now, enjoying it thoroughly every single time, but fully understanding the story only on the third run.. Or may be I didn’t? Only 4th view will tell.]
I expected to have a horrible jetlag flying over from Europe, as I’ve always had, but it never came.
I used to feel slightly retarded for a couple of days at least, then slowly regaining my wits just as I had to fly back home, but not this time.
This time I was on the same level throughout 😀
(I hope it doesnt mean that.. )
I felt great despite eating all the food there was on offer, not sleeping much and in general disregarding most of the advice they usually give to get used to a new time zone as fast as possible. I even woke up voluntarily at 5am almost the whole week throughout, and did sports, which is.. pretty unheard of.
It must be the air.
A week later I came back to Germany and the normality ensued quickly.
Yesterday my 12yo casually suggested that we bike to the nearest hill; it was raining almost continuously the last couple of days, giving me real Norway vibes, but just that afternoon it was supposed to be dry for a few hours. OK I said wearily, lets go but don’t go fast because your papa is old and tired.
I didn’t really mean that of course; expecting – as always – to have a fairly easy ride.
Now, I am exercising, still, fairly regularly, and compared to an average ~40year old I consider myself to be in a good shape.
I should rethink that now. Catching up for the most part was not very pleasant; I did found my rhythm literally at the very last ascent and waited for the child, breathing hard and drenched in sweat.
“So thats about it” I thought, “One more year and it will become tricky”.
This week I flied over to SF for a one-week get-together. I almost forgot how flying is, really, but it was way more relaxing than I thought. The security in Munich was a bit funny. As I waited in line, a uniformed, blonde girl in her twenties winked me up, introduced herself as security officer and started to ask very detailed questions about what I do for the living. That dialog started off a bit like a first-level job interview with a realitvely fresh HR colleague doing some sanity checks on ones resume, but then it veered off unexpectedly.
“But what exactly do you do? What kind of software are you working on, precisely?” she asked.
Well, this question often elicits a surprisingly inadequate response from me. What is this exactly that I do? Is this what I should be doing? Why am I doing this at all? Why not am I doing something else? Why am I here in the first place? This internal monologue invariably kicks off and takes valuable seconds away from the short window of opportunity to give a coherent, timely answer without veering into morose retard territory.
“Ok, off you go”, she said with some tiredness in her eyes and winked me through,
Anyways, the 12h flight passed through without any major incident.
I watched two good films and one really great one.
We were having a Sunday trip to a city called Wasserburg. Along the gravel footpath that was hugging the loop of the mighty river lied some funny-looking stones that caught my attention. I was having a good time, actually, before that. And in a way, I thought later, it was kind of superfluous. The river gives quite similar message.
Its hard to say what makes this “game” so scary.
I had some challenges grasping the rewind concept (playing on PC with the mouse) so I got to The One rather late, during a Two of Everything scene where she (it) swooshed in full black&white size on screen and scared the shit out of me since I wasn’t really expecting anything after so many attempts.
The layered and complex story seems to be impenetrable at the beginning, but as you progress, the pieces fall nicely into place – for a deeply sad, tragic story of the immortal spirit caught (willingly) in the violent fire of humanity.
Its one of those very rare situations where sound, cinematography, story and acting all fit together for an exceptionally charismatic and (scarily) memorable experience. I always had this tinge of a feeling that VCR rewind was a bit uncanny, a bit unsettling to look at, but telling to “rewind this tape slowly and you might see something strange” puts for quite a different quality of creepiness to that.
Funnily, to explain what this .. game.. is about and to do it a credit it deserves by that explanation is almost impossible. I tried to enthusiastically explain it to a few friends but I think they thought both myself and the game don’t make any sense.
There were so many clips worth rewatching just for their own sake, I dont remember which one I liked best. But one is clear: the actress playing Marissa Marcel is simply phenomenal and I should keep an eye on all her future works. To be fair, just as everyone else from the Immortality team.