Happy New Year!

Yes, I know, it’s late.

No, I didn’t have a hangover. It’s just that we spent a lot of time together. Turns out that keeps me from the computer.

©Shivia, all rights reserved

We had a very quiet New Year’s Eve with good food (more come Tummy Thursday), Dinner for One (and Dinner for Brot), a German New Year’s Eve tradition, and some socially distanced cheers with the neighbours outdoors. The little one got told to put on shoes, and she complied in the most adolescent way possible:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

I have also been very nasty to Mr: I told him exactly what I want for my birthday and then I refused to order it myself because seriously, he can’t rely on me always doing the internet shopping. Turns out, he’s a big boy and can actually do it if there’s no wife to dump it on. At least I hope so. I’ll see when my birthday comes around…

Speaking of gifts: This is what Mr got for Christmas*:

I definitely love Rüdügür (the cleaning robot. The aardvark is called Schnuffelchen and greatly enjoys her ride). I tell him to start cleaning when I go to bed and in the morning it’s clean. Though he also forces us to be tidier: no more “just put it on the floor”, no more cluttering the kitchen table, because the chairs need to go up there.

So, I hope you all had a nice and relaxed end and start of the year, and that 2021 will have us all vaccinated and out and about again.

*No, we don’t do that “beggar yourself for Christmas” thing. At the end of the year we’ll look into our finances, see what the Christmas bonus was, see what larger items we want/need and then call it Christmas gifts. One year Mr got a new fridge and I got a power drill.

TNET 43: Chess Anyone?

I did not know that there was an Online Olympiad for People with Disabilities, but I think it is a good idea.

The chess community has a long and unpleasant history of sexism and elitism, so it is good to see that the problems are being recognized by the current top chess brass and some progress towards the sport being more inclusive is being made.

I have learned to play chess at the age of five before I learned to read. I have always thought that I am no good at it because I was mostly playing with my father and my brother, neither of whom I could defeat with any reasonable frequency. I still could not beat my brother well into my thirties. That did discourage me a lot, especially since my brother – who was a competitive player, albeit not a top one – remarked often “OOH, you are starting with Italian today”. This always irritated me because I was never able to remember the names of beginnings, except those where the name was logically bound to the position on the board (like King’s Gambit, Four Knights). My memory does not work that way, rote memorization was always nigh impossible for me.

Anyhoo, in the spring of this year, I have created an account on www.chess.com and I started to play regularly. And since online gaming does match people with opponents of approximately the same strength, I am not losing all the time. And I have found out two things. First – I am definitively not at a competitive level, no surprise there. Second – I have Dunning-Kruegered myself, I am not as bad as I thought – I am in the top quintile, so I could probably win four out of five matches with random casual players.

If anyone is interested in chess and would like to play, let me know.

Open thread, talk whatever you want, but assholery is not allowed.

Previous thread.

If You Need a Gun, You Are Not Free

I peeked into the Trumpverse a bit and what I saw was unsurprising, but it surprised me anyway. I did not go to Breitbart or some similar far-right downright fascist propaganda sites. I just went to a YouTube channel that I had a reason to believe will have a high percentage of Trumpists in its following and I looked at comments under the only one video about recent politics the channel is hosting. I did not linger for too long, I did not even watch the whole video, just a few minutes and a few comments sufficed. This tiny window into the mind of a regular trumpist was informative, although I do not know what can be done with that information if anything.

From where I stand, Trumpism is just a new flavor of fascism. It is about the government controlling people, dictating what they can and cannot do with their private lives, in their private homes, sometimes even with their own bodies.

From where at least some Trumpists stay, the opposite is superficially true. They think that Biden is a socialist and that he is going to try and control them and take their personal freedoms. Their position with regard to him is the same as the position of leftists is in regard to Trump. And they despair and fear for their future after Biden’s win just as leftists despaired and feared for their future four years ago.

The problem seems not to be whether one values freedom, but what one considers to be freedom. Due to the main focus of the site I was visiting, there was a strong bias towards one uniquely American thing – guns, guns, guns. They see the right to own guns as the most important freedom one of them all, and they think that by having guns they are safeguarding all their other freedoms against a potential governmental overreach.

Which is, of course, bullshit. In modern times any uprising in which the government’s armed forces do not join in with the people is doomed to fail. Rifles, handguns, and knives are no match for tanks, rockets, and drones. But they really, really believe their fantasy that the right to have guns keeps them free and that is why they are/were voting for Trump and Republicans. They fear Biden is going to confiscate their guns and thus, by proxy, take away all their freedoms.

I do not believe these people can be reasoned with, but it seems to me they are overlooking one important aspect. If they need a gun to feel safe from an imminent governmental overreach, then they already are not free. Not only are they shackled by an unreasonable fear of something they would be powerless to oppose if it happened anyway, but they also keep the whole society in shackles of another fear – of random mass shootings, of armed militias going berserk, of random gun accidents. And if their fear of governmental overreach necessitating armed opposition were justified, then the government is already completely dysfunctional.

I lived my whole life in a society without guns, and a third of that life in a totalitarian regime. Fear of random stranger shooting up a school or a workplace never was on my radar, indeed I did not even know such things exist on the scale they do in the USA well into my thirties. And when the totalitarian regime fell, it was not because people took arms and stormed the whatever, it fell because the armed forces refused to shoot unarmed citizens and/or the top brass were hesitant to give such orders (personal anecdotes and historian descriptions vary). Having more guns in that situation would not make a difference except turning the Velvet Revolution into a Scarlet Revolution. I am not saying that armed revolutions are not sometimes necessary, or that they neer worked, but I am saying they do not work as these people imagine them.

But as far as I could see, the gut-wrenching fear and despair at Biden win were genuine. They really think that socialism means the state is going to get them, shackle them, and ruin their country. They really, honestly believe that Republicans and Trump were and are doing a good job, for them personally and for the American people as a whole.

Guns and abortins, these two issues are the only ones that matter to them. And only Republicans give them what they want.

And I am at a loss how to mend divides soo deeply entrenched in society. How do you snap someone out of a whole life of propaganda?

TNET 40: The Power of the Pentatonic Scale

I find this video absolutely fascinating. I have no idea what a pentatonic scale is and how it differs from the other scales that are there out there. I tried to read up on it and, as it is usual with music, I comprehended none of it. And no, do not try and explain this to me, it is a waste of time (despite rq’s and consciousness razor’s best efforts in the past, I still have no clue what bar and meter are).

But even so, I was able to hum this melody along, I understood what the next tone in the scale should be on an instinctive level and that simple melody has proven to be a real earworm, I could not get rid of it for days.

Open thread, talk whatevers, just don’t be an a*hole about it.

Previous thread.

A Lawyer Talks About Lafayette Square Gassing

I have never seen LegalEagle lose his cool on camera, although I did not watch all his videos.

I have also never expected to live through a deadly pandemic and USA coming apart at the seams at the same time.

Life is full of surprises. To all our USA readers – please stay safe. Our hearts are with you, although we cannot do anything to help.

Teacher’s Corner: School’s out for Corona

Sing to “School’s out for Summer”.

The ministry of education has finally acted and from Monday on, all schools and daycares are closed. Which is good and necessary. You want to know why schools need to be closed? Here’s an easy example: the primary school next to our school has two suspected cases. They share a schoolyard. One kid is the younger sibling of one of our 7th graders, the other one is the kid of one of our colleagues. Which means that if they are confirmed I may have to go into quarantine. That means no leaving the house. At all. No, not even taking out the trash. It has to be stored inside until we’re declared clear. You aren’t even allowed to put out money for the delivery service, that is considered contagious. Friends and family would have to put food on our doorstep. Oh, and no outdoor crafting.

Not closing schools would mean the kids could spread it, even undetected. I could pass it to my kids, who go to school in a different county. The cycle starts again. Of course this also brings a hell lot of problems for parents of younger kids. I already offered to take in a friend’s kids (should I be declared clear).

What I’m really salty about is how all this happened. Closing schools has been discussed for weeks. We could have had weeks to prepare. But last night the government still said that schools will stay open in order to “ensure quality education”. This morning, the news already reported that we’re being closed down, but until 10 o’clock or so we had no official information. Then we were told to prepare material for the kids, with 40-50% of them already missing. We do have an online platform, but it hasn’t been introduced properly and not all kids have the access codes now. We can only hope that they share the code among each other. I expect phone lines running hot.

On Monday we’ll have a meeting where we hopefully get some instructions. These are not holidays and of course we’re expected to do something for our money. What we can do will be seen.

Those news brought on another run on the supermarkets. Thankfully I only needed food for the weekend. OK, I admit, I stocked up on fish fingers, chocolate and coffee. Well, and crafting supplies have been ordered…

Welcome to Pandemia

As we’re all fretting and worrying, here’s the thread to do so.

I’m currently somewhere between annoyed and worried about other people. The neighbouring region in France was declared an outbreak area yesterday. Of course the kids have come to school in Germany all the time including today and we have quite a couple of kids who live in France (it’s 500m from school, many people take advantage of the lower French taxes until they notice that they also get lower French social pay…). As of tomorrow kids and teacher who live in France can no longer come to school for two weeks.

Actually we’re all just waiting for schools to be closed down completely, but we’re also asking ourselves what our politicians have been doing. Because it’s not like these scenarios  were unpredictable. Any somewhat competent administration should have discussed “what if”, decided on triggers and measures and therefore have their plans ready. Instead what we get are reactions which take precious time. Not to mention that we tend to get our information from the media, not the ministry of education.

Well, at least you should get some resin project pictures.

Personally I just told both my parents and my in laws that we’ll keep our distance. I’m not worried about me, Mr. or the kids, as we’re not risk groups, but very much worried about my mum and my father in law who probably check all the boxes on people with high fatality rates. Of course my mum thought I was overreacting…

So, share your woes, fret and complain, be annoyed with the powers that be.

A Memory Braid for Caine

From Avalus,

I do have something to share, but it requires a bit of a back story. In June 2018 (has it really been that long?), Caine posted about hair braiding styles. (https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2018/06/14/sure-macrame-your-hair-why-not/) 

I commented that I have a friend who likes to play with my hair, and I would post pictures of her handiwork.
Sadly, due to several sicknesses, we did not get together until earlier this week again for her birthday. And of course, she did something cool with my hair, which I now want to share.

I do feel very sad that I could not make good on my promise for Caine.

Have a good holiday season, stay safe and Fuck Cancer!

©Avalus, all rights reserved

©Avalus, all rights reserved

TNET 36 – Narwhal the puppy

No video today because I’m honouring the YouTube walkout. You can read more about that at (Pharyngula), (Stderr), (Great American Satan) or at one of FTB’s newest blogs, (Impossible Me).

In the meantime, here is an adorable puppy named Narwhal who was abandoned and is currently being cared for by Mac’s Mission, an animal rescue in Missouri. There is no shortage of people who would like to adopt him, but the rescue wants to make sure he’s fit and healthy before letting him go to a forever family. The tail doesn’t wag and is not of any health concern.

The usual rules apply – don’t be an asshole.

Link to previous TNET 35