When I tell people that you can learn a lot while playing video games, I invariably get laughed at. But it is true. Today, for example, from a World of Warships promotion, I learned about Unsinkable Sam, a cat that reportedly survived three ship sinkings, sailing during World War II with the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy.

Sam first survived the sinking of German battleship Bismarck and got picked up by the crew of the destroyer HMS Cossack. When Cossack sank, Sam survived that too and got transferred to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. Which was of course sunk by U-81. After that, Sam spent the rest of his life ashore, which was just as well, as he’d probably expended enough of his nine lives at sea.

Sam survived the war and lived to be 14 years old. There’s even a portrait of him at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

Remember Private Internet Access and their SEO scams? Well, guess what, they are still at it! This time, they are using a shady outfit called CyberWebPros. These guys are such pros at the CyberWeb, that their website is a broken launch countdown.

One of my favourite words in the English language is the word boatswain [ˈboʊsən]. It’s one of these quintessential English words that nobody will ever pronounce right, unless they have heard a native speaker say it. I just love shit like that. It makes English interesting to learn.

After a long holiday and after travelling more than 10,000 km across Europe by bike and car, I’m back home and back at work. Today. I’m mostly doing organisational work and catching up with emails and such. But tomorrow, I’m going to ease myself back into things by streaming some Fallout 3. While travelling and being away from my computer for five weeks, I’ve developed a hankering to play that game again and I thought I might as well do that on stream.

So on Friday, 12 August from about 10:00 CEST I will be starting a Fallout 3 playthrough on Twitch.

→ Grim Deep Blog: Back on Deck

Working on transcribing the handwritten pages of the manuscript

Jonathan and I continue to have fun with our weekly Escape from Tarkov show. You can watch new episodes every Monday on YouTube.

I’ve been very busy with event jobs recently and haven’t posted on the blog as much as I would like to. Because of this, I have not kept you up to date with episodes of The Private Citizen. So here’s a list of the shows I’ve released during the last four weeks:

→ The Private Citizen 114: War and Justice

In response to some input from listeners, I feel it is necessary to explain some things about how I cover the war in Ukraine and how I feel about wars in general. Let’s talk about wars, international law and justice.

→ The Private Citizen 115: A Second Winter War?

What does the Russian war in Ukraine have in common with the Russian invasion of Finland in 1939? What is different? And what can we learn from this about how the current war is going?

→ The Private Citizen 116: The Left’s Fear of Musk

I don’t like Elon Musk. But I think him buying Twitter isn’t a bad thing. The people who do, however, are either unintentionally wrong or they are actively fighting on the side of censorship and propaganda, like the US intelligence community.

→ The Private Citizen 117: Blockchain Basics

Blockchain technology is one of the biggest buzzwords in tech in recent times. But what are blockchains and what do you need them for, really? Spoiler: Not much, actually.

If you want to get notified automatically when new episodes of The Private Citizen are released, you can subscribe to the show via a number of methods:

“Daily Doodle, 29 April 2022”