Some random thoughtful/funny bits I collected over the years, and some pure entertainment
Table of contents
Humor
My life sucks (but the Simpsons make it even more right).
English:
- Geek joke about the way English speakers are censored
- "hear" + "t" ≠ "heart". A 1-minute video for those whose pears speak English (and other languages with poor phonemic orthography)
Technology
My favorite episodes of xkcd, a webcomic of sarcasm, geekness and language:
- Citogenesis
- Code Lifespan
- Dependency
- Exploits of a Mom
- Sandboxing Cycle
- Standards
- Star Ratings
- Sustainability
- Uncanceled Units (explained)
Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming, a non-recent but all too timeless masterpiece about coding... and coders
Apple unveils single-use Macbook with zero ports (warning: includes clickbait)
Daisy, the artificially unintelligent granny outsmarting scammers
Plug and Play
Microsoft's infamous Windows 98 USB demonstration BSoD (link to YouTube)
Plug and Play is not dead. If you're nostalgic about Y2K-era PC stickers, here's my own sticker about its evolution, which lives on in every PC running Windows:
Quotes
Twilight of the Idols (1888), Maxims and Arrows, 7 (Wie? ist der Mensch nur ein Fehlgriff Gottes? Oder Gott nur ein Fehlgriff des Menschen?)
A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and The State of War, mid 1750s
Development
Tough Question
Computers Are Hard: building software with David Heinemeier Hansson
Wojtek Borowicz: You have also spoken in less than favorable terms about other trends that have emerged in software development, like microservices and serverless or Test-Driven Development. Are there any trends in software engineering that you actually find appealing?
David Heinemeier Hansson: That’s a tough question. It’s much easier to pick out all the shit that I don’t like.
Science and technology
Science
Geek
Software
Nationalism, hate and war
How could I take up arms without hatred; and how could I hate without youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when I was twenty years old, I should certainly not have been the last. […]
To write military songs and sit in my room! That, for sooth, was my duty! To have written them in the bivouac, while the outposts of the enemy’s horses are heard neighing in the night, would have been well enough! […] But I am no warlike nature, and have no warlike sense; war-songs would have been a mask which would have fitted my face badly. I have never affected anything in poetry. I have never uttered anything which I have not experienced and which has not urged me to production. I have composed love-songs when I loved! How could I write songs of hate without hating? And, between ourselves, I did not hate the French; although I thanked God when we were rid of them. How could I, to whom culture and barbarism alone are of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, and to which I owe so much of my own culture. Altogether, national hatred is a peculiar thing, and you will always find it strongest at the lowest stage of culture.
From Conversations of Goethe (1830), translated from Gespräche mit Goethe
Full source: Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, 1875, p. 456
Games
My favorite games
Board
- Catan, turn-based strategy game. A little complex for a board game, but fairly short play times
Computer
- The "4X" Civilization game series (by Sid Meier). These turn-based management games featuring a steep learning curve leave little room to chance and are true tests for one's strategic and tactical skills. Having played all versions from the first to the sixth, I have seen the series evolve enormously, becoming multiplayer, more realistic and less and less focused on military conflicts, but in return more and more complex. I particularly enjoyed Civilization II and its spiritual sequel Alpha Centauri, high-quality, and more reasonably complex. These highly addictive games require great focus and feature extremely long play times, in particular when playing with friends. Thankfully, games are highly configurable and numerous difficulty levels are offered. Except for regular players, only the easiest levels are reasonable.
- Neverball. A very simple game which develops little more than dexterity, but an application which is free, multilingual and multi-platform, of high quality, not addictive at all and which requires no learning, without any violence. I eventually completed it back in the time where Mehdi's levels were the last, but I wouldn't dare trying to repeat the exploit with all the new levels added since!
Nature
According to conventional wisdom, each human is unique, but Homo sapiens is also unique. While none of that is false, individual unicity is not unique to our species, as we can tell listening to elephants. As Charles Darwin wrote, humans and animals only differ in degree, not kind.
Earth itself can already be astonishing, but I am amazed by the limitless beauty and complexity of wildlife. I am constantly fascinated by documentaries like Planet Earth.
To choose just a couple of many videos which I am grateful to have seen:
- the famous walk of a buffalo herd at Kruger national park (Battle at Kruger). The 8 minutes sequence is available, but not recommended to those sensitive to violence (and YouTube advertisements).
- Vanilla the chimpanzee discovering the outside. Freedom is―like everything―something appreciated by those who lack it.
- Humpback whales' attempt to stop killer whale attack
And of course, there's what we turned wildlife into:
- from the funny, like this highly domesticated but skilled Siamese cat eager to drink a hot beverage (link to YouTube)
- to this moving short story about an orphan chimpanzee: Dorothy's rescue and death.1
Psychology
If you've ever felt urged to squeeze (and/or "eat") your pet, you're far from alone. Cute aggression was even the topic of the 5-minute TED-Ed video lesson Why do you want to squeeze cute things?.
Poetry
The Solitary Chimney (political satire)