TOP/UPDATES/FOUR PILLARS/CINEMA+TV/GAMES/MANGA+ANIME/MUSIC/WRITINGS/FAQ/LINKS
TOP/UPDATES/FOUR PILLARS/CINEMA+TV/GAMES/MANGA+ANIME/MUSIC/WRITINGS/FAQ/LINKS
Are you using newsboat, newsraft, or some other RSS reader to help you make better use of your time spent checking your favorite sites? If not, you really should be. I can't recommend them enough. But recommending them without having my own RSS feed reeked of hypocrisy. Time to fix that:
PLOP THIS BAD BOY IN YOUR FAVORITE RSS READER
Still testing it for bugs and everything. I'm new to this technology. But you can help me! And I can help you save time by not f5-ing on my page every single day to check when updates happen.
In other news, I've applied to join a PeerTube instance which I hope to upload my videos to soon. Still waiting for moderator approval. I can then hopefully embed them on the site here. I do eventually want to have text versions of my major philosophy lectures on the site, but I have come to understand that they will be much easier to grasp in a video form. So if I can have both in one place that would be awesome. One day I want to actually make a subdomain of my site into my own PeerTube instance to become even more self-hosted, but I tried and hit critical snags even just installing the dependencies. It's how becoming a power user goes: Try to do 3 things on my computer, fail at 2 of them, then put them at the end of my to-do list to come back to later!
Where have I been the past few days? Working on a video version of the lecture on Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā that I wrote a while back. I eventually want to set up a PeerTube instance of my own to host this video and others. I will be busy with that for a while now that I have this video lecture completed. I also feel as though I can finally do some real good work on a revision of certain FOUR PILLARS points, as I have these five lectures on early/late Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Nāgārjuna complete. With those, most of the complex ideas that my worldview is based on are taken care of. Although maybe it won't truly be complete until I can do some work on Shintou, Confucianism, and Daoism. But this feels like a good time to start working on personal writing.
Right now I need to work on PeerTube configuration. I have a lot of stuff to learn so it might take some time. But it really would be ideal for me to have all my videos truly self-hosted. You never know what's going to happen to any site, especially one as sensitive to market pressures as YouTube. For all purposes, text is superior to videos in this sense, as it is easier to copy and archive. For that reason, I eventually wish to make text versions of the other big lectures, although it will be a daunting task. But I do think it's important to keep these videos around. Sad as it is to admit, the most effective way to spread any ideas is by appealing to whatever is easiest, and most people find it easier to watch a video than to read. You just have to prod them away from their comfort zone little by little.
Today I was walking home from a grocery store which is about a 10 minute walk from my house. I was carrying two somewhat heavy grocery bags in my hands. I made an effort to walk there and carry them back rather than driving as a way to get some more exercise in and help my dieting so I can lose weight (I'm still hovering at around 90 kg unfortunately so I'm trying to be more serious about it). It wasn't that bad, of course.
When I was a few blocks from my house, an older gentleman was getting out of his car. His back was pretty arched over even if he didn't look that withered or wrinkly. He asked me how far I was going and offered to drive me there since I had these heavy-looking bags. I thanked him gracioulsy but explained my plan to increase my steps in the day. I was touched by that gesture of niceness in any case.
It's worth it to remember these small gestures of kindness when you feel like the world is a cruel and scary place, as it's easy to these days.
I've been playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne online since 2021 or so. It's still one of my easiest go-to games when I need something that I can just blow off steam with. When I don't know what to play, I play a few rounds of Warcraft III. I keep a log where I chart the matchup and map of games that I win as well. Of course, I often forget to record some of these so it might be an imperfect record, but I can glean something about what my strongest and weakest matchups are and which maps I would choose if I ever played a tournament (LMAO I say that as someone with like sub-800 MMR). Anyway, no one will find this info interesting but me but here it is:
Best Matchups:
Night Elf vs. Human - 103
Night Elf vs. Orc - 67
Night Elf vs. Night Elf - 46
Night Elf vs. Undead - 43
No surprise that Night Elf claims the top four spots. And I'm not surprised that Human is my best matchup here either. When Human starts with a hero like Archmage, Mana Burn is a killer. In general I just feel like I have a decent feeling for that matchup. The rest are about what I expect, but I'm surprised Orc is the second to be honest. I remember struggling for ages to learn to defend my base against Blademaster harass. But I do feel as though I've managed to get past that purgatory. Let's continue:
Orc vs. Undead - 24
Human vs. Human - 16
Human vs. Orc - 15
Orc vs. Orc - 14
Orc vs. Human - 13
Human vs. Night Elf - 12
Orc vs. Night Elf - 12
Undead vs. Human - 11
Human vs. Undead - 10
Undead vs. Orc - 8
Undead vs. Night Elf - 8
Undead vs. Undead - 5
Also no major surprises here. It confirms more or less how I felt about myself: I'm far and away best with Night Elf, then Human and Orc I'm about tied with, and my worst race by far is Undead. Undead feels much more demanding than the others early on in terms of having a perfect build order and not losing units. Everything just feels weak as hell! But I do like Undead a lot at the same time. It might be worth it to try to just match-make as Undead for a while to try to learn the quirks of the race, feel more on my feet, get an intuitive sense of game time, etc. But it's not like I'm too worried about it either. I pretty much always play early Crypt Fiends with Death Knight into Lich into Dark Ranger or Pit Lord, so maybe learning Ghouls would pay off.
Top 10 Maps:
Last Refuge - 56
Concealed Hill - 48
Tidehunters - 43
Northern Isles - 38
Echo Isles - 31
Springtime - 28
Hammerfall - 27
Terenas Stand - 27
Shallow Grave - 24
Autumn Leaves - 20
I pretty much only play 1v1 maps, so no Turtle Rock or Twisted Meadows. Though maybe it's time to try these again. For the longest time I didn't touch them just because knowing exactly where the opponent spawns was a big help when I was first beginning and had to learn a lot about controlling my scouts. But now I see no reason why I couldn't handle them. As for the maps, there's nothing too surprising here. Whenever I think of what map if my favorite, my answer is always Tidehunters. I dunno, something about it just feels very intuitive and easily understandable. I of course love the appearance of Northern Isles most, and it's also a quite fun map. The only one here that really surprises me is Echo Isles, as I always feel like that map is a bitch and a half and that I suck at it. But the stats say otherwise I suppose.
Anyway, Warcraft III is great! If you were turned off because of the fucking-over it got with Reforged, I can't blame you. But if you have an old copy or don't mind making a bit of a deal with the devil and giving some money to Activision-Blizzard, you should download W3Champions and try. I like RTS games in general, but I have trouble making the time to play any other because Warcraft III is just too damn good... I keep telling myself I'll try to learn to play StarCraft: Brood War one of these days but realistically I'll probably just keep watching it as an e-sport and never stop playing Warcraft III, sad as it is to admit...
I finished writing a lot of words for a thorough commentary on Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (HERE), which I'm very glad to finally finish. However, I do think these philosophy lectures are best in some sort of video form. I'm working on recording audio and making slides for a video version which should hopefully be finished by the end of the month. After that, I don't see myself doing anything like this for quite some time. It feels like every time I finish one of these, I swear it's the last one I'll make, but it never really is. In about six months I'm always energized enough to do another. But I really don't know any thinkers as well as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Nāgārjuna. Maybe a big lecture about the Confucian tradition would be the only other candidate that I have a decent background in.
In any case, I look forward to finishing this lecture so I can focus on some more important logistics work: moving my videos to a PeerTube instance and integrating it with this site in order to be less dependent on YouTube. I won't be deleting anything from YouTube, of course, but I don't want to use it any more than I have to. The truth is that I really just suck at working at more than one project at a time. Before making another lecture from scratch, I would like to make text versions of the four major ones on my YouTube channel (the two Wittgenstein ones and two Heidegger ones). But I fear it might not be as simple as expected. There are some really good speech-to-text AIs for YouTube channels these days which might make things easier, but with the case of the Heidegger one at least I feel like the pictures add a lot.
I've become quite a fan of RSS feeds and have successfully set up Newsboat on my Arch Linux laptop. I love having everything I care about in one place and being able to quickly check what has updated and what hasn't. It saves me a lot of time checking random bullshit and just generally wasting time online that could be spent doing more productive things. Even watching anime or playing video games seems like a better use of my time in a lot of instances. However, there are still many sites I hold in high value that do not have working RSS feeds that I can find. Of course, mine is one of these. I really do want to get a working RSS feed for my site, but there's a lot on the inside that I don't understand about how it works. Well, RSS-Bridge seems like a good option I suppose.
Not much else to say, really. Life often feels cruel and scary. But sharing the wisdom of pilosophers with others is something that I feel gives me meaning and purpose at the very least. I hope others can get out of Nāgārjuna what I do. I go back and forth about whether to talk about issues in the world which I feel great grief and anxiety over or whether to keep this site as a place which is peaceful and tranquil like a shrine of my own. I also feel like the teaching of philosophy is my best way of advocating for what I think matters, in some sense or another.