Jorge Luis Borges, "Mutations"
"I saw in a hall an arrow pointing the way and I thought that this inoffensive symbol had once been a thing of iron, an inescapable and fatal projectile that pierced the flesh of men and of lions and clouded the sun at Thermopolae and gave Harald Sigurdarson six feet of English earth forever.
Some days later someone showed me a photograph of a Magyar horseman. A coiled lasso circled the breast of his mount. I learned that the lasso, which once whipped through the air and brought down the bulls of the prairie, was now nothing more than a haughty trapping of Sunday harness.
In the west cemetery I saw a runic cross, chiseled in red marble. The arms curved as they widened out, and a circle encompassed them. That limited, circumscribed cross represented the other one, the free-armed cross, which in its turn represents the gallows where a god suffered, the “vile machine” railed at by Lucian of Samosata.
Cross, lasso, and arrow–former tools of man, debased or exalted now to the status of symbols. Why should I marvel at them, when there is not a single thing on earth that oblivion does not erase or memory change, and when no one knows into what images he himself will be transmuted by the future."
My wish to play Go more and my aversion to playing 1v1 games with randos are dueling in my head
Playing with K is good but he's very early on the learning curve, and there's only so much 'getting kicked around the board' he's up for (which is understandable)
Thankfully AI is good enough that my tablet will handily beat me for the forseeable future
I should do that more
However the Wing Diver no longer has plasma jets for pigtails which burn bright pink whenever she uses her jetpack, which is criminal
https://store.steampowered.com/app/226840/Age_of_Wonders_III
Age of Wonders III is free (to keep) on Steam atm!
I highly recommend AoW3; It's a good blend of 4X empire-biffing and Heroes of Might and Magic style wandering-heroes/tactical battle shenanigans, and probably our favourite 4X to date.
Belatedly realising that physical fatigue is as much a reason why I never manage to finish Godel Escher Bach as mental fatigue
That book is *big*
Does anyone know of a good e-ink (or otherwise non-backlit) ebook reader that's either open or easily jailbroken?
Like, a Kindle without all the digital bondage those come with
(..Or "How old a Kindle should I look for and how hard would it be to hack open", alternatively)
Lightweight is also a big plus, as my wrists/arms aren't great for holding stuff up for long periods
Reading 'The Constant Gardener' for a bit of uplifting Le Carre sparkles (sarcasm)
It's.. Fine? About what we expected.
We like Le Carre a lot, and there's still a lot of his stuff we haven't read. Prettymuch anything that came after Smiley's People is still on the todo list, tbh- And I think we only watched the (very good) BBC miniseries for that.
But definitely not an author to marathon in terms of tone/content
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re: Overwatch League Newbie Thoughts
But these are overall minor gripes? Like (as someone who plays OW enough to recognise the abilities despite the above) it's free TV that's good to put on in the background, so it's probably gonna take a regular place in my browser, and be the first esport thing to hold my attention.
re: Overwatch League Newbie Thoughts
I can see why people say they find the OWL too visually confusing; Every ability and character is brightly painted in the same team-colour, so unless you know all the abilities by heart it can just be
"Green explosion on top of a green explosion, inside a green bubble, while a white explosion happens in the bubble to 2 green figures, who are glowing green."
I get colouring things for each team but they really don't need to take it that far, they could just accent it rather than dumping a bucket of [Team Colour] over everything
This is a graffiti-free zone.
Vandals will be ~PASTELBAT~