Some people use horoscopes or magic balls or dice to decide on something they don’t want to decide themselves. I have been relying on "probability" in the sense of using the first picker wheel google has suggested. For years.

Today I used my spider-tingling autistic pattern recognition curse talent to decide on something very scary and important. The default set of outcomes is 4 on this website, look what happens:

See the pattern? If we started on the specific field in the even cases, we land on exactly the same cases.

I tired the odd numbers, the opposite happens - start with no, end on yes and vice versa.

To sort-of quote my new favourite mini-series "The Other Bennet" on BBC: happiness is in our own hands.

I do have a funny feeling some evil rules of combinatorics are at play, but this is not my part of math, I am more of an Analysis girlie, so the mystery remains mysterious.

Sounds a bit dramatic.

Yesterday I had to go into town to take care of some papers. For context - I recently left my 9 to 5, so there is plenty of time to eat oneself with future prospects or with the lack of those. I took the opportunity to visit Modulor -  a famous art supply shop in Berlin - to buy some paper for letters. After finding the right size and colour there was nothing to stop me from wandering around and looking at nice things. In the “Textbook” section there lay the last copy of a book on graphic novels - an old passion of mine. I took it, looked through it, put it back, went around other tables, got back, took it again, looked at the price, put it back, went to the markers’ wall, got back, took it for the last time and went to the cash desk. 

Today I have been flipping through the pages, looking at some french BD online (there is a post coming in a couple of months about two of those) and thinking, how cool is it to be able to tell stories visually. My head has been bursting with ideas since I quit antidepressants couple of months ago. Long story short, I have started googling the courses on illustration. Found one. Started one. The last several hours I have been researching the material necessary for the plot. 

My head is fuzzy. Heartbeat elevated. I smoke one rolled cigarette after another. Go back to the internet to learn more about graphic novels. My room is in mess of papers and books I have adjacent to the theme. More books ordered. Following advice from the course, moodboard is saved online. 

I have been drawing sporadically since childhood, mostly cartoonish character. Never learnt the anatomy or perspective or light. I have zero pencils at home, only a tablet with Procreate. Can my idea potentially be monetised? Don’t think so. Is there a way to actually draw something, tell a huge story and find the audience? Don’t really care. What I have realised, is that I want to study graphic novels academically. For the last five years it was clear, that I’ll have to get back to university one day, but I wanted to find something meaningful, not like the last time, when the acceptance in the uni was the most important factor (after 4 wasted years I have lost my English and cannot for the love of God call myself a proper linguist, we did nothing of this science there). I have already found the right program and was just thinking about what it is I really want to explore. Turns out, the visit yesterday solved this problem. I know what I want to study academically now. Not in the bachelor years, of course, however, who knows. But as a proper nerd, I cannot allow myself to go for the theory alone. I would love to first try the practical aspect to understand what one has to look for, how these works are created. Get the hands dirty, so to speak.

Looking at the watch, it is time to drink some herbal tea and go to sleep, if this is manageable in such an animated state. 

P.S. I am still reading "The History of Christianity", but as the classical planning fallacy demands, the thematic quarter will be longer than expected. Still infuriatingly interesting topic!

*Huge amount of thanks goes to Olly who featured my post about media in his blog <3*

There are many people who have stable and healthy relationship with tracking their data. I am not one of them.

And exactly the tracking lies in the heart of both Goodreads (to be honest, in any comparable application/website) and smartwatches. They allow one to look back on personal performances be it number of pages read or hours slept. This drove me mad.

I had been using Garmin for years solely for sleep&sport stuff, like steps done, km ridden, calories burnt, stages of sleep. The more sport I did, the more anxiety I got from all this data. There was even no need to compare the stats with other people, my own numbers had made me feel quite inadequate. The anecdote goes, that once you wake up in a good mood and then look at your watch, that aggressively says your sleep was garbage, you believe it. At least, I did. And this small thing could ruin the whole day. And it did it way too often.

The same goes for Goodreads. Pressure to read more, and now due to gamification and challenges to read specific books, can quickly spiral one down. I generally dislike social media, but the one with embedded competition is a nightmare. The quality of books made way for the quantity and this is a known problem. People want to hit their reading goal, tis natural. At one point it is highly likely that it becomes the sole purpose, though. You read to complete or compete and not to enjoy. 

Data in general can be abused for flexing. There are no tangible metrics for things like humour and kindness, but there are numbers of watts while pedalling or how many book you can finish in a month. This gives feeling of accomplishment and worthiness, while we all forget that the numbers give us only the part of the part of the part of the jumbled puzzle. There are instances where a good Garmin is necessary for serious training, or a reading statistics helping to maintain personal archive. These things are not inherently bad but neither are they good. These are tools. 

One of the problems of our society’s that tools change their role and become ubiquitous. I bet you cannot imagine, how people used to live without smartphones. Or how they rode bikes without GPS. Or how they stayed fit without knowing HRV. I asked myself these questions and got some funny insight - sometimes we invent problems to sell solutions. Is it really nice to have a gimmick on your wrist that bullies you to move? Yes, but the trade in is losing the ability to hear one’s own body. Does having a proof of reading 100 books/year elevate your social status? On the platform itself and social media probably yes as well. But is boosting your ego constantly seriously makes your life better? After being stuck in this situation, my answer is no, those are not long-term benefits. 

Do I suggest that you ditch your Garmin for a Casio as I did it? Nope 🙃

Is the aim of the article to make you delete your Goodreads account? Again, nope 🙈

But I wish that more people could genuinely ask themselves, why they use this or that thing. What does it bring? And if one notices stress and rising anxiety, that they could pinpoint the stuff that sips the fun out of life. For me it was all kind of stats. The only number I am a slave to is my salary, and it is more than enough in this timeline.

Late to the party, but I have just catch up with the second trailer for the upcoming myth adaptation and it looks like they have decided to h&m everything. Visually bland; casting with their American accents is, I do beg you pardon, generic; the snippets of writing in the trailer sounds more like a ChatGPT trying too hard. If you have recently (in the last 10-15 years) been to H&M or any fast fashion shop or website, you might have noticed many shades of beige and grey with façons being copy-pasted across market.

Original Odyssey is fun. Odyssey is adventure. Odyssey is gods being gods and humans being humans, and sometimes gods being like humans, too. If you have never read Homer, I highly recommend the audiobook by Stephen Fry, he did it justice. His whole quadrilogy did Ancient Greece justice. In comparison, I doubt that Nolan will include the part where Odysseus had to wear a dress of a princess. The audacity of the probability of skipping it, but I just don’t have the faith anymore. Heroes in dresses and the long faces do not go hand in hand, unfortunately.

Don’t know about you, but I would like to see colour, passion, remarkable characters instead of another reincarnation of Game of Thrones in its last-seasons-dying-agony. Sometimes art is not about pretentiousness, like the more serious something is, the more credibility it deserves. NO. Bronze Age was distinct - just go and check any suitable museum’s archive. Homer‘s (or whoever actually did it) story will live on, while this movie will be forgotten by the end of summer.

Rant over, thank you for your time!

There is a small lifehack to use in my library: twice a week or so, they massively add new books. First came first served principle. Otherwise, it’ll take weeks to get some of those books, if not months. So, I diligently look through the “newest added” section. Today those 3 were added and I have downloaded them on my Pocketbook. If you look at the screenshot, in pinkish red are the prices for Kindle (I didn’t check kobo store or ebooks.com, but it can’t be very far apart). 56,45€. The library card is 10€ per year.

Yeah, no conclusions needed here 🥸

p.s. 99 ways has been on my wish list for a while, so I am glad even more

(note: I did not watch the launch live, time difference is too big)

Can’t believe it has finally happened. How many times was the launch postponed. How many decades have we talked about it being even necessary and possible. Amazing.

I wish the astronauts a safe journey there and back again!