Hi, I’m Benedikt

I was inspired to write this by a blog post by Joel. I encourage you to go and read it. Growing up, I didn’t care much about consumption. Sure, like every little boy I enjoyed having toys to play with. I absolutely badgered my parents to buy me a console or a PC game because I loved playing with those. But I didn’t think about the monetary aspect of it all, about repairability, about value vs. cost, about sustainability, any of that. I just wanted things and the only way to get them was via my parents or other people through birthday or Christmas gifts. That was how things were and it was fine. ...

Have you ever thought or talked about “normies”? If you’re reading this, odds aren’t bad that you have. We, the technically adept (or at least not completely clueless), often use this term to talk about the kind of person who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the small web, Linux distros, infosec, blogging, the Fediverse and a gazillion of other obscure subjects. At this point in my life, I’ve come to realize that all the things I care most deeply about are nothing a “normal” person (whatever that may mean exactly) can easily relate to. I can get enthusiastic about self-hosting, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, RPGs, dungeon crawler board games, data privacy, the issues of browser monoculture, online ads, Doctor Who, the dangers of LLMs (a term to many people probably don’t know). And all of this makes me what people usually call a “nerd”, even in my non-English-speaking country. ...

tl;dr Overall good game. Story is decent, gameplay is pretty good but the game is way too repetitive. Overview I bought this because it has a very good rating on Steam and has a Steam Deck verified badge. Also, a few people recommended it to me, if I recall correctly. Gameplay The gameplay is pretty good. It’s very reminiscent of the Batman Arkham series, especially the combat, but why invent a bad system, if you can just copy a good one? The one thing that does stand out is the traversal mechanic. Moving through the city, swinging from building to building is really well done. It’s a lot of fun to do just that. Character progression is decent as well. There are three separate skill trees that you can spend skill points on and the skills you unlock make you deal more damage, unlock special skills and other stuff, standard fare but that’s fine. ...

If you’re like me, you may want to (re)watch the series “The Chosen”, a show about the life of Jesus. If you’re like me, you want to watch this on your TV but the official app is terrible. And if you’re like me, you have a Jellyfin server you could use instead, if only you had the video files available to chuck them on there. If this sounds liek a familiar issue, read on. Otherwise, you probably don’t need to bother, although this procedure can probably transferred to other instances of wanting to download videos from the internet. ...

I hate lies, I hate lying and I dislike liars. I am aware that there’s philosophical debate around the issue of whether or not lying is acceptable. There seems to be a social consensus that, to a degree, lying is acceptable and sometimes even necessary or at least advisable. I disagree. Granted, there might be situations where telling the truth might mean the death of a beloved person but for the vast majority of people this situation is contrived and unrealistic. For most of us it’s probably a matter of convenience or personal gain. Some jobs incentivise lying more than others do, I should think, but even so, you’re never compelled to lie to save yourself or others from serious harm. ...