Notes from the Wired
This is a website where I write articles on various topics that interest me, carving out a bit of cyberspace for myself.
You shouldn't believe anything I talk about — I use words entirely recreationally.
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- May 23, 2025Info
I have based this commentary on the original German text as published by Reclam. The translation is my own, created with the assistance of ChatGPT.
Please note that this is purely my personal interpretation of the sermon. I have no formal training in theology or medieval studies, so my reading should be taken with a grain of salt.
Read moreMarch 25, 2025A year ago, a friend of mine had the idea to visit Namibia—often referred to as the “Gems of Africa” because of its diversity of animals and biomes. I’m not entirely sure how he came up with the idea. Maybe it was due to the country’s connection to Germany during its colonial period, or perhaps some algorithmic push from the “machine gods” in his feed. Whatever the reason, he asked our friend group if we were up for joining him. Another friend said yes, but I couldn’t go because it overlapped with some exams I had to take at university. However, I promised him that next semester, I would choose modules that allowed me to have some free time, which would overlap with theirs.
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Jul. 23
The Screwtape Letters Another book by C.S. Lewis, this one is another Christian apologetic work. The book consists of a series of letters from a senior devil called Screwtape, addressed to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter. In these letters, the uncle mentors his nephew on the best ways to tempt humans and win them over to their side. It’s basically a “Guide to Being Miserable,” but with strong Christian undertones. To actually get advice from the book, you have to take all the tips Screwtape gives and invert them.Jul. 23
What is Real? You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word “real”. They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, “All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building”; here “Real” means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say “It’s all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it’s really like”: here “real” is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they know already while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness.Jul. 22
What is Courage? This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy’s motives for creating a dangerous world — a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees, as well as you do, that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point — which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity, or honesty, or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
