How people in the 1970s imagined the 21st century:

What we actually got (the video was removed in the meantime, it was about two men wearing monster masks, playing a “game” where they whacked each other on the head with neoprene sticks):

I was thinking about a manga comic book I’ve been reading. What makes it incredibly unrealistic isn’t the fact that it takes place in a fantasy world with demons, half-humans, monsters and magic. No, that’s just something you accept and go on.

The part that makes it unrealistic is the fact that the multiple main characters are reasonable, kind, respectful, compassionate people with pure emotions and thoughts, who are genuinely trying to do good things for everybody.

You’d sooner see unicorns and giant spiders here on Earth than such people. 🙂

Just to let you know why there are no new articles; I, for all intents and purposes, was so done with the kinds of crap that I read from various news sources, that I took an open-ended vacation from it and started reading litRPG and manga, as an equivalent of putting fingers in my ears and chanting “la la la I can’t hear you la la la”.

Basically, people lie, people hate, people create limitations for others with the goal of completely eliminating all freedoms, and I decided I’m done. What needs to happen is that God needs to type shutdown -h now into the root terminal, and in the meantime, I cannot even describe how done I am with this shit.

The Russian MOD reported two instances of destroying Ukrainian warehouses filled with depleted Uranium ammo and cruise missiles within a week. I would expect this to produce significant local contamination, and some of it might spread if a fire lifts the particles high enough into the atmosphere. I have been more-less consistently perceiving a 10% elevated radiation over natural background since this started, which makes me believe that more of this has been going on than officially reported, but the increase is still minuscule and wouldn’t be worthy of mention were it not the case that depleted Uranium is a low-radioactivity material, which means it would take quite a lot of it to make an impression in the gamma spectrum, but it’s quite toxic as a heavy metal. Also, if it’s detectable in Croatia, the concentration on the source has to be much worse, and since Ukraine is a major exporter of food, having soil contaminated by heavy metal particles that will eventually find their way to our food supply can’t be good. This is not something that is an immediate concern, as it will manifest itself in the following years, but nevertheless it’s a thing to consider.

There’s also that other thing I’m rather hesitant to mention because it might not be relevant to others at all, but still. Yesterday I was doing a budget calculation for October – a standard thing I always do, basically put together all the standard expenses, planned purchases, safety margins and so on, subtract from the expected income and if something is left over, buy gold. Well, what’s unusual is that I felt great unease and a feeling one would have when they’re out of money for something and no way of getting it in time, when I set normal, “peacetime” safety margins. When I increased them by the EUR value of one ounce of gold, the feeling changed to that of comfortably dealing with the situation and having no issues. The weird part of this is that I should not be having this kind of financial issues even if I miscalculated the budget and something unexpected did come up – it’s a matter of calling my precious metals dealer, and selling him a gold coin or two, and I would have the money on my account that or the following day. The situation where I’m out of money, I need it badly and instantly, and can’t get it anywhere, that’s not realistic unless something major is going on – a communications breakdown, nobody is working including the bullion dealer, I have to rely on what I have in Euros, in cash and on bank accounts, and I need more money than usual to do something, and quickly. The weird combination of factors required for me to get such a feeling is what prompts me to report it. It might be nothing, but I’m still obeying it diligently – I increased the safety margin by EUR value of one ounce of gold for the month of October, and I now have that comfortable feeling I associate with having acted appropriately and everything being fine. I would recommend postponing any extravagant spending you might have planned for other times, increasing your safety margins and not stretching yourself in any way, just as a precaution.

I’ll tell you a story about self-confidence.

When I was 20 and in driving school, I thought it would help to boost my confidence by giving myself suggestions such as “I’m going to do great”, “I’m going to succeed” and so on, before the driving test. As you can imagine, I messed up the test and failed.

This was quite a shock to me, in a sense that I really took the time to think about what happened and learn the lessons. The next time I took the test, I focused on doing every particular thing right, and nothing else. As a result, I passed the test and got my driving license.

This coloured my thinking about self-confidence, and, now that I think of it, about ego, to this day. Basically, if you want to do anything properly, there is no place for you in the process. Thoughts about success or failure are mere ego-musings and are irrelevant. What matters is to see what the situation requires and do it to the best of your abilities. Everything else contributes to failure.

The only self-confidence that matters is a result of having done many difficult and possibly dangerous things over the course of your life; you succeeded at some, failed at others, and you have a healthy attitude towards things – basically, you’re going to try very hard and be completely focused on it, but you know that either success or failure are not really up to you, at the end of it. To be very proud of your successes leaves you vulnerable to feeling humiliated by your failures, and I see little use for either.