“Notebook Sketch XLIV-47”
The Grafted Blade Greatsword from Elden Ring
Finally managed to record another episode of the podcast. Enjoy!
→ The Private Citizen 113: Lex Draconis
In Germany, telling someone on the internet that you will hurt and injure them if they visit you at home is apparently a valid defence for actually hitting them now.
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:
I’m pretty behind on my podcast The Private Citizen. I’ve actually missed two releases now. This is mostly due to a trip to Hanover for work-related reasons in the last week of March and many work commitments I could not postpone coming down to deadlines in the previous week. On top of that, I have to admit, I also used the dropping of almost all of the SARS-CoV-2-related restrictions to finally spend some time with friends and at parties and such. I promise I will give my best to start catching up in the coming week. I do have some work commitments, but it should be more manageable. I already have a lot of interesting topics lined up for the show and can’t wait to record some episodes!
The current episode of my podcast The Private Citizen looks at Russia’s war goal in Ukraine.
→ The Private Citizen 112: What Does Putin Want?
What are Putin’s war goals in Ukraine? What is the Russian military trying to achieve? And how is it going?
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:
It’s pretty hard to find reliable information on the war in Ukraine that’s not based solely on the propaganda of one of the parties involved. It’s even harder to find a map of the current situation on the ground that’s clearly laid out. Because of this, I’ve done my best to produce such a map, based on the most reliable third party information I could cobble together.
NATO Expansion and Putin’s War in Ukraine
The Russian attack on Ukraine is a direct response to NATO’s post-Cold War strategy of undoing the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.
Last week’s episode of The Private Citizen deals with Facebook finally showing its true colours when it comes to fighting hate speech.
→ The Private Citizen 111: Peak Hypocrisy
Facebook just made a mockery of the fight against hate speech by admitting that it’s okay if you call for the murder of people the political mainstream doesn’t like. It’s only hate speech if you want to murder the wrong people. What the actual fuck.
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:
Some Thoughts on Elden Ring
What it feels like to play this game if you’ve never even touched a From Software game before.
Lots of people seem excited about me announcing to play Elden Ring, now that my PC can run it. I have never played a Souls-type game before, know nothing about the game and generally hate hard video games. So it should be an absolute disaster.
If you want to tune in, I’m planning to start playing at around 18:00 CET today on Twitch. See you in chat?
I recorded another Private Citizen episode on the whole Drachenlord situation. I think it’s an important topic that might have significant consequences for people’s civil rights. Especially because mainstream journalism continues to get the story wrong.
→ The Private Citizen 110: Drachenlord on Tour
German YouTuber Drachenlord has sold his infamous Drachenschanze and is travelling in a pickup truck around Germany. Meanwhile, well-meaning people, who have no idea what’s actually going on, think he’s being bullied.
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:
Grim Deep Manuscript Finished
The first big step to publishing my novel is done: I’ve finished the manuscript.
A New Era of Foreign Policy
Our collective reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown a distinct lack of understanding of the realities involved in international politics.
I’m back with The Private Citizen! Last night, I released a new episode focused on, what else, the Russian war in Ukraine.
→ The Private Citizen 109: Agitprop Ahoy!
The war in Ukraine has been raging for eight years, largely ignored by the West. It is not new. Neither are the policy blunders by NATO and the EU that have led to the current full-scale invasion. Putin is to blame for the war, but the West has created the situation that enabled Putin to wage it.
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:
What happened in Ukraine last week was an obvious consequence of The West’s ambitions and goals in the last thirty years. It is also a direct consequence of Obama’s and Merkel’s disastrous foreign policy. This should have been obvious to anyone who knows the first thing about foreign policy and history. A war has been fought in Ukraine for eight years now, anyone who was surprised about WAR IN EUROPE last week hasn’t been paying attention. The people who wrote those headlines and the politicians who claimed something “unthinkable” or “unforeseen” just happened are idiots and should be fired immediately.
The West forced regime change in Ukraine in 2014, the Russians responded, both sides escalated again and again over the last few years and now Russia invaded. This is a tragedy. It is a failure of diplomacy that is as much the fault of Vladimir Putin as it is the fault of us in Germany and the US who elected warmongers and people who know more about gender policy than they know about foreign policy.
Ted Galen Carpenter wrote a great opinion piece in 1945, which was also republished in The Guardian, and which explains exactly what went wrong very concisely:
→ Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s myopia and arrogance.
Quarantation
We had a good run. But after about two and a half years without an infection with SARS-CoV-2, it seems our time has come now. I will update this post regularly to tell the story of how our household fares in the war with the viral menace.
Twenty Years
I really don’t know the secret to a long-lasting, harmonious relationship. All I can do is tell you what I’ve learned in twenty years of everyday happiness.
Please be aware that I won’t be posting much on this blog in February. I’m taking the month off to try and finish my novel to do justice to the grant I have received from the German government for this goal. This is something I’m going to call Grim February.
You will find updates about how I am doing with this on the Grim Deep blog and my author account on Twitter.
Here you go. I’ve just released the last episode of The Private Citizen in a while. I’m going to take a month off now. I’ll be back with more episodes in March.
→ The Private Citizen 108: The Biggest Security Vulnerability of All Time
Log4Shell, a vulnerability in the Java application logging framework Log4J has been called the worst security vulnerability ever. Is that just the usual hype, though? Or why haven’t we seen the forecast large scale exploitation of this bug? Is there something more sinister at play here?
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: