Traditionally, we see romantic relationships as exclusive things. You're either in a relationship, or you're not. You either have a boyfriend or girlfriend, are engaged or married, or not. Relationships are quite literally a binary affair: the number of romantic relationships you have is either zero or one. Having more than one is usually called 'cheating', and it's bad, very bad. However naturally this attitude may feel, it has some strange side effects. First of all, it creates anxiety around...

It's a daunting task, covering an entire album, and even moreso when the album is a classic. Angelique Kidjo's take on Talking Heads' Remain in Light taps into the afrobeat and other African influences on the original, and makes them the musical focus. And I have to say that this is quite the genius move. The adaptation into this new style sounds effortless, which of course reveals the original album's influences, but is also a testament to Kidjo's incredible musical skill. If I hadn't known abo...

It's pretty bizarre to hear music that sounds so much like the Beatles, and that simultaneously sounds so modern and refreshing. The Beatles part is unsurprising, considering that Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, is one half of the titular duo. But never have I heard a beatles-esque vocabulary used so well in a modern sound. It's a very colourful and fun experience that's not so easy to put into a box. Sure, it's psychedelic in that Beatles worship way, but it's also much more progr...

I am free. But not because of some smart re-conceptualisation of the term 'freedom' away from naturalistic determinism and towards some kind of phenomenological idea of freedom. No, I am free precisely because I am made of the same stuff that the rest of the universe is made from. I am a living part of an equally living universe. Our modern conception of 'laws of nature' as perfectly restrictive mechanical processes has itself emerged from the activity of human beings in this world. How could it...

Yesterday two important things happened in my life. I got my first COVID vaccine, and I had a talk with my to-be supervisor about my bachelor's thesis in philosophy. The shot was nothing to write home about, so I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that I was surprised by how not-unpleasant it was (I dislike needles quite strongly), and by how much my arm hurts a day later. The whole ordeal was organized super-efficiently. Or at least, I hope that it was, because the process had the cha...

A week or two ago, my smartphone broke. Unusable. My first reaction was anger and frustration. But as time went on, I got increasingly surprised by the upsides. So consider this my reflection on a brief period without my phone. First off, I find it pretty bizarre that living without a smartphone for little more than a week is even something worth writing about. That this can actually have an impact on one's life. It is a strange, ultra-recent development that we westeners seem unable to live wi...

I'll admit it, some open source programs feel like second-grade imitations of proprietary software. This is not a jab at any open source developers; I think this is mostly due to copyright laws and the sheer money that's behind the world's most popular software.However, there is open source software out there that's simply unbeatable. Here's a few of these programs.youtube-dlWebsite    https://yt-dl.orgIt is    a video downloaderPlatforms    Windows, macOS, LinuxReplaces    Freemake Video Downlo...

What a beautiful, hypnotic, crushing album. This is 4 tracks, 44 minutes of droning, pounding and at times grooving noise rock. Though 'noise rock' doesn't really cover the kaleidoscopic range that this album has. It constantly shifts before your eyes (ears?), it refuses to be pinned down, which is terrible to write about but lovely to listen to. (I refuse to list all the genres that this album pulls from. You listen and figure it out for yourself.) Percussionist and 'sound sculptor' João Pais F...

Jeez, what is there to say about this album other than that it slaps so freaking hard? Listening to this album means being crushed by riff after riff after riff, each of them heavier than the last. The production is perfectly dirty without getting muddy. The vocals are frantic and buried in the mix, as if the singer himself is struggling to overcome the gargantuan wall of guitars and bass and drums. And honestly, if anyone can find a song with better, more crushing, more groovy riffs than Funera...

Ah, the incomparable joy of finding out that an album you loved years ago is still great! The infectious joy and energy of Torche's Harmonicraft hasn't diminished at all over the years. So, I guess this is, like, poppy sludge punk? They sound like the perfect band to see live, which makes me a bit sad that I haven't. This album is also consistently good, it really doesn't let up. Every single song takes its ideas in interesting directions, and most of them are fantastic sing-along songs as well...

There's no shortage of bands that claim a combination of metal and jazz, but so very few pull it off as well as this Portugese band does. Often, metal bands playing jazzy musical segments – or even calmer passages in general – lack the nuance to make them sound good. But Névoa absolutely has the skill to pull off the dynamic changes on this record. And it's not just that they actually play both the metal and jazz parts exceptionally well. It's also how they manage to have their very own sound ...

Not often does a band that's rooted in stoner, doom and post-whatever capture my attention like this. This album is incredibly diverse, and it does everything it attempts very well. Its 'basic' sound is indeed stoner-influenced (I hear Intronaut and Baroness and Mastodon in there) but this album is a ride that goes much further than that. It has blistering passages of rage that are not only heavy, but also quite unlike anything the abovementioned bands have ever put out; it has calm, soothing se...

There's nothing quite so satisfying as musical surprises. And this album is full of them. The backbone of this album is super-nostalgic 80's powerprog, at times so cheesy it borders on homage. But this band brings in a truckload of modern influences, popping up where you least expect them. The heavy passages especially caught me off-guard, not only because they contrast so strongly with the rest of the music, but also because they turn out to fit perfectly, and are executed with great finesse. A...

If you ever feel like you're living in a ridiculous dystopian hellscape, then this album will be immensely satisfying for you. Their sarcastic takes on the state of the world are as funny as they are painful. I could describe their sound as a mix of System of a Down and avant-garde stuff like Dog Fashion Disco and Stolen Babies, but they really have their very own thing going on. They even have moments of truly heavy, un-ironicised death metal. The whole thing is pretty crazy, I guess is my poi...

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't even finish this album yet. I just really want to write about it so I don't forget how I feel. I like to think of music, especially heavy music, in terms of scratching an itch. Some music scratches a particular shallow itch really well, even violently. Some ultra-heavy music can scratch such an itch until it hurts. (I wonder how this all sounds to someone who isn't into heavy music... inviting, no?) NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM also is in the business of itch-scratching, ...

This is a vibe album, as most King Gizzard albums are. In the same way that some movies are vibe movies: your enjoyment will largely depend on the extent to which you can vibe with it. And I can vibe with K.G. They dragged out their microtonal instruments again, and they definitely experiment to get some interesting tunes out of them. This might be a sequel to their 2017 album Flying Microtonal Banana, it's definitely not a redo. The band has clearly evolved in the 3½ years (and 6 studio albums...

Damn. The pure joy of two artists that you love coming together and making something beautiful. And it's even more lovely when these two artists don't seem to fit together at all. Underworld is a legendary (but also kind of underground) electronic music group, mostly known for their song Born Slippy. The Necks is an obscure jazz band with a truly unique sound (think ambient, minimalism, improvisation). These two groups came together for a single 47-minute track that weaves these two textures t...

I want to start keeping track of music that I listen to and like, so that I don't forget. I call it "it's good" because it's good music. Yeah. I might come up with a better name later. Zeal & Ardor is notably less black metal on this short EP, but it's still impactful. At the Seams, for example, is an uncharacteristically pop-rocky tune, which makes its final black metal-tinged moments all the more impressive. The whole thing feels like a bit of a hodgepodge, but a very impassioned and rele...

This might be as good a time as any to resume this bizarre unread blog. For I've read some books that, as Kant put it, awoke me from my dogmatic slumber, and I ache for a place to put my thoughts lest I forget them.The two books are, somewhat unfortunately for this blog, both in Dutch. They are Theorie van de Kraal ("Kraal" is an enclosure for livestock) and Hints voor een diagnose. I should've probably read them in reverse order, because the former book deals with the current political climate ...

I'll be honest, I'm way too lazy to write today. But since I just opened my editor and I already started writing, there's no going back now. Technically I already achieved my goal, since I can just click "submit", but let's not be an asshole about this. What I really want, is to have my 100 writings and do some fun statistical stuff with it. Like, I wonder what word I used the most in my writings. I could make one of these word webs. I hope it won't contain any swearwords. And the most common wo...

When I was young(er), memes were, well, pretty obscure. I went to websites like Memebase and Failblog (which, by the way, still exist!), and later Encyclopedia Dramatica and, yes (I'm sorry), 4chan. All these were part of what I'll call "internet culture". Which, back then, didn't mean culture in general. There was actually a culture outside of the internet! And this internet culture, with its countless inside jokes, was, I'll be honest, for dorks. There was a very specific type of person who'd ...

I didn't write yesterday, but only because I was writing something else, something serious. And I just didn't feel like writing anything more. Oh well, why am I even making excuses for myself?Today I found out that it is illegal to cycle together on one bike in Belgium. As in: a second person sitting on the back of the bike, legs to one side. Maybe I'm ignorant, but I find this very weird. In the Netherlands, carring someone on your bike is the peak of romance. The most famous scene from the mos...

It's strange how difficult it is for me to just enjoy a day with nothing in particular to do. I really think that feeling happy is the most important thing in life, and things like work and study are just ways to achieve it. So I don't think that I have to work every single day to have a good life. But still, when I have nothing to do, I can't really enjoy myself. Even though there's always something to do, and I would really enjoy these things in other contexts. For example, I like reading (to ...

So I'm becoming a tutor. Some days ago, I saw an advertisement on my uni's website, saying that they're looking for people who can tutor middle schoolers who have trouble with certain subjects. I applied, got a call, and I have my first lesson this Tuesday. So first of all: that went really goddamn fast. But also, I had an extensive introduction today, and that really helped. I now feel like I'm actually somewhat prepared and I somewhat know what to expect. Somewhat. I already know that in teach...

It's weird, when you try to be a good person and care about stuff, the number things you can do becomes smaller and smaller. The past few years of my life have been characterized by a growing awareness of the concequences of my actions. I stopped eating meat and eventually all animal products because of their environmental and ethical implications. I don't want to be a part of an ultra-polluting, animal-torturing industry, so I decided to stop supporting it. I also try to buy food locally and in...

This is going to be a quick one. Because I want to do other stuff, and also because I once again have no clue what to write about. Surprise!You know, sometimes I just feel like I have nothing of worth to contribute. That sounds much sadder than it is. Today, for example, I just feel like working, studying, but not writing. Because there's nothing in my head that feels worthy of being written down. And I don't want to pressure myself to have valuable thoughts every day. Some days are for reflecti...

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but politics in the west is kind of a mess. And I'm not just talking about the US and the UK here, although these are two prime examples. No, but this is happening all across Europe too. It has become a worn-out cliche to say it, but I'm going to anyways: it seems that we're more polarized than ever. Or maybe the people aren't, but politics is. And it seems to me that people have stopped seeing the people with whom they disagree as simply people with diff...

Today will be another no-backspacing day. Mostly because I have no idea what to write about and I'm tired, so I can al least challenge myself to keep writing without correcting anything. Also, since I'm tired, I expect this to be incredibly messy. Let's see. So far so good.I don't really feel like once again talking about ethics or philosophy, although I'm still busy with that. I really feel like talking about some minor something. But what? It's fun to write about recognizable things, things of...

I find it difficult sometimes to balance my beliefs and being a nice person. For example, I try pretty hard to limit my usage of plastic, especially one-time-use plastics. They're the least useful and the easiest to avoid. Not using plastic bags, for instance, is incredibly easy, and it makes a real difference, because these bags are made of low-grade plastic that's (almost) impossible to recycle. So my difficulty, then, comes when other people do insist on using plastic bags. I generally try to...

It's such a shame that my best thoughts come to me when I'm meditating. You know, the one moment when you're supposed to be free from your thoughts. I was thinking about the subject for my research paper, having all kinds of good ideas for it and imagining writing them down and constructing a first paragraph for them. Then I was thinking about how it's such a shame that all my best thoughts come to me when I'm meditating. I thought that this would be a good thing to write in my daily writing. I ...

I should really start writing earlier in the day. When I postpone it to the end of the day, I not only have it on my mind for the whole day, which is annoying, but I also tend to neglect it entirely. Besides, doing routine stuff early gives me a boost for the whole rest of the day, which is nice.I recently had a naive thought. I was side-eyeing a video (I wouldn't call it watching, I was half-awake and still in bed) where feminists had a discussion with men's rights activists. It was quite heate...

Despite writing here instead of studying yesterday, my exam still went well! I didn't nail everything, but I had an answer for every question and I think I screwed up quite little. I really liked that I could use not just my knowledge from the course I was taking the exam from (ethics), but also from other courses and even from my own life! There was one particular question that I knew the answer to because I had listened to a podcast with Peter Singer a week earlier. I had no idea that subject ...

I'm writing this as I should be preparing for my exam. In less than 90 minutes I'll have my ethics exam. I don't think I'm ill-prepared though, I feel like this subject is not that difficult for me, and a lot of things are easy to remember or just make sense. It might also be easier because there's a very simple hook to the real world and, specifically, my own world, which is not always the case for philosophical subjects. In ethics, the question is usually "what should I do and why?", and I hap...

Another note written on my phone! So this one might be a bit shorter, since the phone keyboard is not the ideal tool for comfortable writing. Actually, I'm writing this from a train, I'm on my way to Brussels. It'll be the first time that I'm there! I'm really curious to see the European Parliament, visit the museum of fine arts, and see Manneken Pis and Jealenneke Pis, two statues of a peeing boy and girl respectively. About these, the boy was there first, and it's a true symbol of the city. Ev...

Good morning, world! I slept like crap last night. Sorry for my language, I guess I have to mark this blog 18+ or something, but today is the day for such language. It is how it is.For a few days, mosquitoes have been plaguing our apartment. That sounds really dramatic, I know, and it's not as bad as I'm making it seem. It's mostly that I feel plagued by them. Also, it's freaking January, they shouldn't even exist for another few months! Anyways, last night was the worst in the mosquito story. I...

Wow, I skipped an entire three days of writing. I think I've already made peace with the non-obligatory nature of this exercise. In any case, if I'm not determined to strictly write every day, I am definitely determined to continue to 100 posts. So I'll blast past 100 and continue until I actually have a hundred of these things. Right now there's so much on my mind that I don't know what I'm going to write about. That's not such a bad thing though. It's mostly my studies that occupy my thoughts....

Sometimes I'm aware throughout the whole day that I have to write and then I forget, and sometimes I don't think about it in the slightest. Yesterday I didn't think about it in the slightest. I don't feel too bad about it though. I'm doing this for myself, and there's no point in making myself feel bad about missing a day. I think. Of course routine is good and stuff. But I already have routines in meditation and yoga, and this writing is yet another thing I want to do every day. Of course I'm h...

Just today I went through some of the notes that I wrote when I was younger (not that much younger, just a few years really, I didn't mean to make it sound so dramatic). I have a tag in my notes app (where I'm writing this) called 'thoughts', and there are thoughts there that go back to 2012. Well, only one actually, and it's a mildly cringey list of my favourite albums at the time. Not so much the list itself is cringey, but rather the things I wrote next to my choices. Let's just say there's a...

It's fascinating how different my girlfriend and I write. I mean, I don't consider myself much of a writer at all, but I do write occasional movie reviews on Letterboxd (which I enjoy very much), so that's something I guess. Anyways, the way I tend to write is analytical. I pick stuff apart and try to make sense of the parts to make sense of the whole. So in a movie, I usually go for the characters, story, cinematography (camera moves and such), acting, etc. and talk about how each part fits int...

To be honest, I probably wouldn't be writing this if I didn't feel so bad about missing yesterday. I'm already in bed, and my love is (almost) asleep next to me, and all I want is to caress her face and fall asleep together. But instead I'm writing nonsense because I told myself to. Great going!So the first movie of the new year turned out to be a blast. I saw Knives Out in the cinema (a very, very crappy cinema at that) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. What I loved the most was the compassion that ...

This is one of these writing days where I have no idea what to write about. On some days, like yesterday, I enter with an idea in mind, and usually I manage to expand on it enough for a whole post. But on other days, like today, I just go in blank. Writing as therapy. I think that this is what the challenge is supposed to be. Also, I suspect that the challenge is supposed to be way less "thinky" and more creative, like with fiction and stuff, once upon a time, that kind of stuff, but that's just...

Aristotle's concept of god is fascinating. I mean, the man can be faulted for accepting slavery, or more generally just confirming the ethical notions of the time he lived in (shouldn't a philosopher be critical of the status quo?), but the way he describes god is really interesting, if you ask me.So basically, what he calls god is actually more of a principle of rationality. So it's not a person, or even something that takes the shape of a person. It's not a religious god at all, just a philoso...

When I go to Medium, it seems that the people on there can be summarizes as follows: they buy an Apple Watch, so that they can write thinkpieces about how awful its tracking is. People seem more two-faced than ever. They throw themselves in the ratrace of career-ism and commercialism, and when they realize it's making them miserable, they throw themselves into meditation or minimalism or yoga or whatever happens to be hip at the moment. (Apparently dopamine fasting is now a thing? Are people eve...

Some people think I'm a snob. More specifically, a movie snob. What I understand this to mean is that I'm picky, I'm critical of what I watch. I think about movies, I analyze them. But I also suspect that people think I'm a snob because I don't watch (or like) superhero movies, Fast and Furious, and many other popular things. I'm not sure why this triggers people, but somehow people care a lot when they find out that you don't like what they like, especially when that thing happens to be popular...

Happy new year! Fireworks used to be a very big thing for me. As in, as a teenager I spent hundreds of euros each year on fireworks, to burn through on a single day and night, on the 31st of December. I really loved it. Actually, I think that the pre-fun (voorpret, a very underrated Dutch word) was much bigger for me than the actual fun. I used to spend months looking at videos, checking out fireworks catalogues, and making lists of stuff I want. I had a blast just anticipating the last day of t...

I just read a rambly update by Brian Mimpress, and it really inspired me to keep writing these things. Okay, a bit of background. Brian Mimpress is one of the managers of a group called the AF Gang. It's an online community, really, that's built around the British punk/post-punk/hardcore-punk/whatever-punk band IDLES (yup, all caps). IDLES is probably the most wholesome and loving punk band I've ever heard, and the existence of this community only solidifies that. It's a place where fans can cha...

I had a major epiphany about love today. Okay, that sounds a bit pompous, but I do think it's a bit of a breakthrough. (Also, I'm allowing myself to backspace again.) So yesterday I wrote that philosophers shouldn't spend so much time and energy trying to figure out "what love is", because there is clearly not one universally-acceptable definition of love. Love means different things to different people, end of story. But (and this is my realization) philosophy is in essence the analysis and cla...

I'm writing at a decent time today, and not at 2 at night like a savage, which is nice. I'm going to try something new today: no backspacing. No fixing typos, no correcting grammar, nothing. So prepare for a nearly unreadable ride. Today I read 32 pages about love. It wasn't straightwforward. It was abuout 2 questions: what love is, and whether it can be justified. What love is, I still have no idea of after reading these pages. A lot of people think a lof of ldifferent things. (unrelated: I'm c...

I think that games with an element of chance are objectively worse than games without it. Bam, that's my universal truth for today. Also, Yathzee (how do you write that?) and Monopoly are terrible games. I'm on fire with my controversial opinions today. Also, I'm going to keep this short, because it's way too late and I'm tired (it's interesting how much of my writing is about being tired. hmmm). Actually, I literally just want to write random words until I've reached a satisfactory number of se...

One of the biggest pleasures in life is to wear comfortable clothes and lie under a big, heavy blanket when you're cold on the inside. I'm trying to fill these writings with universal truths, preferably at least one per post. That would end up being 100 universal truths (actually already two less, but still), which is maybe a bit much to ask of myself. Nevertheless, I think finding these truths is a good thing to strive for. And I'm convinced that heavy blankets and happiness are very closely re...

I'm tempted to once again write about tiredness. Because this is by far the sleepiest entry I've written so far. But let's not go there. Instead, let's discuss the Efteling. By the way, obligatory apologies to myself for missing another writing yesterday. I'm a terrible promise-keeper. I'm really trying, just bad at making habits. Anyways, the Efteling, for those who don't know, is the bestest theme park in the universe, and it happens to be about 20 minutes from my home town. It's an entire par...

So what even are movies? I ask myself this question because I watched Heathers yesterday, and it's the most profoundly confusing movie experience I've had in a long time. So that made me wonder what movies are in the first place. Technically, they're a series of still images projected in sequence, giving the illusion of a smooth 'video', combined with sound. But what do they do? I feel like it's not a stretch to say that movies are always about the human experience. Since they're all made by hum...

So yeah, I didn't write yesterday. I just forgot. It's really not in my system to write every day. I just got daily yoga and meditation in my system (which was difficult enough), and now another thing is, for now, difficult. I do want to continue though, I always feel quite good after writing whatever is on my mind. I don't care about the quality, I don't write with a reason other than to purge the contents of my brain. It's like a second meditation, in a way.In meditation, the idea is that you ...

When your mood is down, there's no way you feel like writing. So here I am, forcing myself to write. I guess that there's a purpose to all of it, after all, if I really felt like writing every day I wouldn't need to do this gimmicky series.What is tiredness? These kinds of questions are typical for an amateur philosopher. Just write "what is" and then a word, any word at all, and bam, you have a deep-sounding question that nobody has a good answer to. Philosophy degree finished. But seriously, w...

Second day of writing. I actually almost forgot it already. That's promising for the 100 days.Also, commercials are really terrible. TV commercials, I mean. They're always louder than the programs, which should be illegal. And if your product or service is really so good as you think it is, why would you need deceptive commercials with happy people and bad acting and misleading prices to convince people to buy your stuff? It almost feels as if us consumers need to buy more crap than we actually ...

First day writing, only 99 to go after this one. I honestly have no idea what's going to come of this. I know that mindless writing can be a good exercise for getting the creative juices flowing. But still, I'm not even sure what I need my creative juices for. I'm studying philosophy after all, nothing creative about that. It depends on how you approach it though. A lot of philosophy is so rational and principled and straight, which I find interesting but also limited somehow. It's a very mascul...