The Zeitgeist Beast

There is something lurking inside the endless pipeworks.

It's called 4chan, and it has associates, but this beast has recently been able to keep me intrigued. It took me a long while before I finally understood the principle and privileges of the Zeitgeist Beast known as 4chan. Now I am a regular lurker there, constantly fascinated by it.

Inspired originally by a Japanese twin site, this image board features almost no rules, anything goes, the hardest jokes I have heard inside the pipeworks and the most interesting debates, questions and threads, if you can filter the trolls, garbage, kikes and the rest of the degenerates.

4chan's culture constantly changes, like a zeitgeist, and it has many rival sites who boycot each other, such as Reddit, 9gag, Encyclopedia Dramatica. All those are interesting as well, but this beast overthrows them with regards to content, reputation and more.

It takes a certain "level" of JRPG standards before you can handle or even understand what this insane board is all about. Nothing is sacred, everything gets insulted, many regulars there have confessed that it has worsened their lives.

But as long as you take 4chan with a grain of salt and a lot of scepticism, you too can enjoy all of the loveful and hateful content to be found, be it on my favorite boards of politically incorrect(/pol/ AKA Path of Light), video games(/v/ AKA Vidya), random(/b/), international(/int/) or any other undiscovered boards when speaking personally.(Aside from the adult content).

Just don't take it seriously, or do take it seriously. If you are offended, you probably are too close minded or bigoted. Right now, 4chan seems to tolerate freedom in general, but who knows what the future will bring for this beast!? If it gets shut down, it's ideals will surely live on anonymously in another form.

Captain Phillips

Iron strong thriller, one of the most intense films I have ever seen and the best performance by Tom Hanks since years as well as great acting by the main Somali leader. With powerful music drilling through the countless intense moments, Captain Phillips is a chilling countdown with edgy negotiations and situations full of risks.

Captain Phillips's job is to bring over an American cargo ship from Oman to Kenya together with his crew. Alongside the way, they get attacked and hijacked by Somali pirates who want to have their own fortune.

Constant thrills and the pacing made up for a memorable and authentic filmed ride. The plot is simple, but the cinematography is superb, especially when you consider how long the camera is filming inside a small lifeboat.

The ending is a HUGE emotional conclusion and my body warmed up from all the excitement. Captain Phillips's emotional release was delivered exceptionally in such a short time after experiencing one tight moment after another. This is easily my favorite movie from 2013.

And Barkhad Abdi will definitely be recognized not only for his amazing first time acting, but for his great communication towards Tom Hanks too, making golden lines such as "No problem Irish, everything gonna be ok" and "No tricks, no tricks!"

Rating: 8.5

The Wolf of Wall Street

Rise and fall movies tend to buildup from success and happiness to despair and tragedy. Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is a prime example about mobsters working their way up into the criminal hierarchy and bringing in the goods big time.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the same story, only it's told from a financial perception and it's easily more corrupt than the former. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers another phenomenal main role in this black comedy as Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker based on a true story.

Somehow learning the rules of the game and handling everything like a true salesman, manager, entrepreneur and more, Jordan continues to grow in the first half until he's got his own company called Stratton Oakmont.

Together with his business partner and best friend Donnie Azoff he runs this show alongside former marijuana dealers, financial fortune seekers and family members. Letting his company work using fraud cases and selling lies, Jordan becomes rich with his friends and colleagues and the free market's capital heaven has arrived.

As Jordan learned early on in the film from a former colleague at his first stockbroker job that you need to adopt a lifestyle of sex and drugs in order to succeed with the numbers, he adopts that to his whole crew and together they have the wildest parties with countless amounts of crazy drugs overdoses, gangbangs and to a lesser extent alcohol.

Scorsese uses some recognizable elements from Goodfellas here as well, such as dropping the fuck bombs, the rise and fall premise, black comedy and tons of abnormal situations. Well, maybe not that last one, as The Wolf of Wall Street is easily a very diversive entertaining movie.

Admittedly, I was jealous of the portrayed success at some point. The movie was also so ludicrous and over the top that it reminded me of the irony how capitalism works and that Wall Street is the biggest corrupted joke ever created.

Being somehow thankful, the fall part was devilish to experience, but also laughable especially because of DiCaprio's overdose scene where he heavily struggles to get back to his luxury car and drive home. The second half was a mixture of criminal drama and a lot of good jokes thrown in.

The Wolf of Wall Street is most of all a huge entertaining movie that is sure to leave an impression for movie goers, and Scorsese has created another milestone in his long career as director. The same goes for Leonardo. Man, that guy sure has grown up since Titanic.

Rating: 8.0

Geopolitical Positioning

I already spoke briefly about geopolitical positioning in my North Korea blogpost, where I explained the conundrum situation on the Korean penisula according to my research and opinion. Today, let's talk a bit more about political geography.

These whole ideas of nationalism, patriotism and even culturism have created a very interesting world with abnormal differences between many countries. Recently, Multiculturalism seems to be happening most of all in Europe, specifically Western Europe.

Of course, in ancient times, it was normal at one point to conquer and plunder geographical locations most of all during conflicts and wars. Now that almost every spot on Earth in inhabited politically except for examples such as Western Sahara and Antarctica, geopolitical positioning seems to have lessened.

Well, maybe at first sight. Territorial disputes are still relevant every day. Take a look at the current developments over at the decades old Israel and Palestinian conflict whereas Israel is building new homes at the Palestinian Territories.

Or the recent dissolvements of Kosovo and South Sudan from Serbia and Sudan. The former resulted into the creation of the Ground Safety demilitarized zone while the latter's foreign relations still seem to be frantic and unstable.

There are several other demilitarized zones out there in the world, but even so, they don't really replace the constant wars that are raging on when speaking of geopolitical positioning. Wars are the main reason these shifts happen.

Some countries have a beautiful shape when looking at their established borders, like France. Others just have a weird form to behold, like Gambia. In any case, borders are changing for better or worse, slowly or hastily.

In my preferred ideal world, we would no longer have borders, but instead unite as Earthlings against common enemies, such as natural disasters. Of course, this proposed transition will most likely never happen, or it would take centuries or longer depending on how much we all agree globally.

Cultures and mixing them is an entirely different matter and more difficult to unite, hence why borders exist in the first place. It's not that easy after all to accomplish my preference. In any case, I will observe with interest how geopolitical positioning will occur any next time.

SteamWorld Dig

Nice indie attempt at combining the Super Metroid formula with something akin to Dungeon Keeper's strategic exploration aspect, but once I had seen the core gameplay of SteamWorld Dig, it fell out flatter than expected.

Hailed as one of the best indies of last year, digging and pickaxing into the underground sections was interesting while you collect natural resources for artificial benefits at the surface, where a steampunk western setting is established and the inhabitants like to talk about an Old World.

Having explained what is required from you, I felt eventually hindered by the backtracking as well as being unable to dig my way back up if it was too high to reach with my tools, or I needed to use a special move that would ony damage the earth mildly and consume lots of water required.

I understand it's a necessary hinderness, but it wasn't to my liking. SteamWorld Dig's got charm, but these hickups I discovered alongside the short length of the game made me regret swallowing up the hype it received and reminds me of Gone Home as well for both are unexpected dissapointments in the long term.

Perhaps these indie games labeled as GOTY's aren't meant for everyone, especially seasoned and hardened veteran gamers. Still, I'm glad that I am giving these titles atleast a try. I like giving new chances.

Rating: 7.1

Pondering about Life Elsewhere

Isn't it amazing that we can imagine humans living their lives elsewhere on this pale blue dot? With prejudices or not, the gift of imagination might truly be the most wonderful thing when speaking of actual changes, even more than the current available knowledge.

In your presumably busy life, have you ever thought about how a Tibetan monk is living at the Himalaya's? Or what about a Papuan of a specific tribe still living with primitive tools, ignorant of modern times?

I'm sure you subconciously do this more than you think, because many people read the news each day, and try to place their thoughts inside the events that are happening in the world. From simple thoughts such as a suicidal bomber to complex thoughts such as a politician's way of thinking.

Not just humans, but we often wonder what animals are thinking about as well, such as monkeys and their familiar nature of behaving like us. Or dolphins who are remarkable when it comes to teamwork and communication.

And then there is the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Even though it hasn't been proven yet, recent discoveries in the last century including Hubble's theory and his namesake space telescope's images have shown that the universe is larger than we could ever comprehend before.

Add to the knowledge that there are currently hundreds of billions of visible galaxies drifting in space, with each of them having hundreds of billions of stars, and hundreds of billions of planets, and next to that, I recently read in an science article that there are about 8000 planets currently known who have the same living conditions such as water and oxygen like Earth.

Add all that, and then you could darefully think that we aren't alone in this expanding universe...on the contrary, it's one of few subjects I can positively believe in. It's just that for various reasons including distance, we haven't made contact yet.

It would be egoistic to think we are all alone in this expanding cosmos. Not anymore after what has been discovered already and continues to get discovered daily in cosmology, as extraordinary things continue to happen in outer space.

History, morality, philosophy, biology, religion and other major topics would completely change upon alien contact, whether it is merely a micro intelligent being or majorly. In fact, everything would change. And I personally cannot wait for that to happen, as I hope to see it happen in my lifetime.