schneefink

I went to a comedy show today with my family and it started with a line about the Banach-Tarski paradox.

I can never hear about the Banach-Tarski paradox - which has surprisingly happened a couple of times - without thinking about where I first encountered it, namely as a safeword in Harmonic Function, a McShep kinky smut fic by shaenie. It's funny (and a little awkward) every time.

(The comedian explained Banach-Tarski and then said it basically applies to problems: if you have a problem and separate it into two problems, these problems can both be as big as the original problem. Sad but true.)

My favorite thing on Tumblr for the past week or so has been the fairy vs walrus question. More accurately, the controversy about the answers to the following question (paraphrased because I am too lazy to look up the original): There's a knock on your door. What would you be more shocked to see when you open it, a fairy or a walrus?

It is very silly and not at all serious and people have many strong opinions on it and it cheers me up. Hundreds of opinions and discussion and variations and art and memes... I wanted to link some of my favorites, I reblogged some, but there are soo many more great ones in the general fairy vs walrus tag.

Today I found the fluffiest hot water bottle I have ever seen and bought it as a treat, in addition to the purple hot water bottle with a small cute penguin on it that I got as a gift from LB when I was in Moscow and that I also love a lot. It is pink and I love it and I want to just keep touching it for hours.

I'm baffled by how many "top X of 2022"/"2022 wrap-up" etc. posts I've already seen. There's still an entire month to go! Does December not count for some reason? Idk.

I had only been to one poetry slam event before, and I liked it but not enough to go to one on my own after I lost contact with the people who had invited me. But today my mom spontaneously asked me to go with her to a semi-final of the German poetry-slam championship that is currently being held in Vienna (slam22.at), and I enjoyed it a lot. My favorite two texts/performances won, which was nice. One was about an awkward neighbors-with-benefits relationship (a lesbian one, I don't think it would have worked as well if it had been a hetero relationship because of all the gendered relationship stereotypes), and the other one about an artist who adopted a secret superhero identity and goes out at night with syringes in his coat to forcibly vaccinate people: "Der Impf."

The team finale is tomorrow (I don't even know yet what the team category even looks like), and the solo finale is on Saturday. Both will be livestreamed and I hope to catch both of them.

Breakfast conversation, lightly paraphrased because memory is an illusion:
Me: "You know what was nominated for Yuletide? "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" (The Sorrows of Young Werther.)
DD: "Oh god. We had to read it in high school and for me it's like Twilight, except without vampires, for the youth of back then."
Me, cracking up: "It is! Please tell me I can quote you on that."
DD: "It is like Twilight! Just over 200 years ago, and I'm 100% sure that less people killed themselves over Twilight."
DD, a little later: "Also, nobody calls Twilight a literary masterpiece. People react differently to someone saying their favorite book is "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" or "Twilight." At least admit that you like tragic, over-indulgent threesomes! (See how impacted I was by having to read this twenty years ago? I still get worked up over it.)"
DD, a little later, after learning from Wikipedia-via-me that Napoleon was a big fan of "Werther": "Napoleon would have liked Twilight."
DD, even later, seeing the actual nomination in the tag set: "Even the title "Twilight" is cooler."

A few days ago I heard that Technoblade died. I had no idea who he was but when I learned that he was a very popular Minecraft streamer I decided to check out a few of his videos. I started with the Potato Wars: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I enjoyed them, so I watched a few others and enjoyed those too, and then I started watching his Dream SMP videos.

( ...and accidentally fell into a hole. )

I have no idea how long I'll stay interested, maybe I will have forgotten all about it next week, but for now I really look forward to watching more of Technoblade's videos. His death (at only 23) is a tragedy, fuck cancer. He would have made so many jokes about how many views and subscribers he got after his death.

Minor annoyance: after playing 50 times my win percentage at normal Worldle is 98% or 49/50, and that one time was because for some reason I tried "toady" instead of "today." Hmpf. But apart from that, my usual tactic of starting with water - music - polka no matter what is serving me very well. (I deviated from that only once, when my first try had 4 of 5 letters correct.)

I was happy with a fic I had written for fandomtrees, and then I read the letter again just in case and saw that I had managed to focus exactly on one of the DNWs *headdesk* I are smart. No-one I can re-gift it to, unfortunately... hopefully I can at least still write a drabble or something. I had plans to write more but that didn't happen.

DD convinced me to use her hair routine to see if it would make my hair more curly, and it kinda worked! I'm not used to it though and it looks funny. I don't think I'll do it again, definitely not regularly, but it was fun to try out.

DD yesterday: "We need to work on your hair. And on your character."
Me: ???
DD: "What does an undead butler dress like?"
Me: ... Oooh, you mean my character for the TTRPG we were talking about a few minutes ago xD
We're planning to play "The Wizard's Staff" from the microsetting collection "Odd Jobs" and I very much look forward to it. I'm playing an undead butler and MSZ is playing an enchanted soup tureen and we have to pretend our wizard is still alive, it'll be great.

We also watched most of season 2 of The Witcher. DD watched season 1, I didn't, but I have been reading quite a bit of Witcher fic recently (mostly by inexplicifics.) I've decided I much prefer their version to TV canon. The reason why I wanted to check it out was because I saw gifs on Tumblr from scenes with Jaskier and Yennefer, and those scenes were indeed great, but a lot of the rest of it I didn't enjoy, and the last two episodes we fast-forwarded through. I think Jaskier is the only character I actually like, especially because ( spoiler ). The ongoing genocide makes many people/factions very hard to root for.

I finished playing Katana ZERO. It took me about twice as long as is apparently average, but the combat was good enough and the story intriguing enough that I didn't mind having to try certain levels a few dozen times. I'm not going to play it again but I enjoyed it, overcoming the challenges was very satisfying. It was darker than I thought it would be, but that was my fault, I knew from the beginning that it was about a serial killer, though I didn't know about the war or had forgotten about it. Afterwards, thinking the story through, there are certain elements that are, hm, a bit thin... but the concept of Chronos is very interesting. I still think the last boss battle - not the secret one I later read about, which I didn't fight - makes no sense but whatever, it was fun.

Today is the last day of my daily posting experiment in July. I think it went well: I definitely posted many things I otherwise wouldn't have but that's not a bad thing. I even made rec posts! More posts led to more comments led to more interactions, I enjoyed that. Some days having to come up with something to post was pressure, that was annoying. On the other hand, without that pressure I wouldn't have made several posts I ended up liking, so that probably evens out.
I'm not going to continue posting daily, but I think I will set myself a goal. Three times a week, something like that.