There’s one game I find myself getting back to every few years, over and over again, and that’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It’s also a popular topic of discussion, inspiration and reminiscence among friends of mine - a shared experience to touch upon every now and then, each having their own favorite parts of it. It definitly has achieve a sort of cult-status, but what exactly makes it such an enduring classic? And is it really better than its sequels? This is what I’d like to explore in this blogpost.
This blogpost is a list about my search for digital alternatives that are more open, more respectful and more private than the ones I and a lot of other people have been using until now, often for free. It’s an attempt to claim back ownership of my virtual self.
Why did I do this? These last few years I’ve started to shift away from trusting the big data corporations such as Google and Facebook. I’m suspicious about the free services these companies offer us. Not only are they invasive of our privacy, they also profit of the enormous amount of data that we generate for them. This way these companies have a huge impact on our consumption, on our ideas, on our relations, on our society and democracy. They are also not held accountable for anything and sooner or later the repercussions will catch up with us - if they haven’t already.
Humankind is a best-seller in the Netherlands and Flanders, where it’s called ‘De meeste mensen deugen’ (literally most people are good), written by Rutger Bregman. It’s quite voluminous and claims to justify a radically different image of humanity. It has been hailed as a masterpiece of optimism in the press and quite a few people in my milieu have praised it too. This made me somewhat sceptical about it. Unjustified, so it turned out. I was positively surprised by the book. It’s a flame, a flicker in these dark times that we, a hope that society can be bettered.
The corona crisis that is sweeping the planet has been going on for almost four months; Belgium has been in ‘lockdown’ for around a month. What are some (small) things I have learned and observed by now? A few notes and a dose of optimism…
It’s the newest fantasy television series to hit the mainstream, this time produced by Netflix. It doesn’t have the pretense or ambition to be a Game of Thrones style epic and holds up well all on its own.
The Lighthouse is Robert Eggers' newest film, after the 18th century psychological horror masterpiece movie The VVitch. This film too is a meticulously put together work of art, with a fabulous dual cast of Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson (trivia: this is the first time I saw a movie with Pattinson), bombastic dialogues, great visuals and the best Lovecraftian atmosphere I’ve seen in a long time.
Since I’m getting sterilized soon, I thought I’d write about my “childfree wish” and my vision on the ethics and philosophical justifications of (not) having children.
Can you trust a paranoid schizophrenic to tell a real ghost story?
Published in 2012, this weird gothic horror story by the Irish-born American writer Caitlín R. Kiernan is a psychological labyrinth that starts of slow, but completely mesmerizes you by the time you get to the really weird stuff, somewhere halfway in. Kiernan manages to vividly and convincingly sketch the inner life of someone with a mental illness, without any prejudice.