Updates 4/17/22

Today was a rather hectic day. First I had SMT's SUMO for about 8 hours (which was pretty fun, I thought the individual general problems were well made/difficult, but the power round really threw me off. It had a huge amount of context like definitions and theorems before each problem. The whole thing felt more like a college math class' semester PSET than competition math problems). Then I had a party, which was interesting. We played ping pong, Caprisun pong with dares (which I was involved in like 3, what are the odds?), some board game (I think it was like strategrams), and then paranoia.

In crime and Punishment, I'm now on chapter 6. I think I'm going to reread chapter 5 tomorrow, as it was so packed with activity. I think Porfiry knows Rodya to be guilty, but just enojys the thrill of getting him to crack under pressure and the psychological torment Porfiry is causing Rodya. Porfiry's interest in Rodya's philosophy on crime and obvious dislike of it makes it seem like Porfiry is playing this game to assert his correctness of opinion with respect to the philosophy. The thing that makes it so much better is Rodya's inability to grasp the concept that Porfiry is playing with him and wants to continue to play. It really shows his ego as it seems like he just can't accept the idea of losing (which here is a mental loss: Rodya doesn't want to think that anyone is more intelligent than him and keeps pushing Porfiry to stop intellectually owning him). The entire chapter really shows this well too. It is very reminiscent of Death Note.