Posts without a picture look kind of empty, so here's one:

Random snapshot taken while I was traveling
German winters can be beautiful.

In winter, life here slows down a lot.
People stay indoors. Me too.

So I picked up Path of Exile 2 and played for a bit.
(Add me if you want to dungeon crawl)

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is known for his publicity stunts.
He recently endorsed a (controversial) German political party.

I don't want to comment on that much, but he is right: Germany has problems.
I want to comment on him "boosting" in Diablo and POE, though.

If you didn't hear: He got caught lying about his progress in a video game.
Turns out, he did not play the game, but instead had someone play for him. (boosting)
He then went live and showed off the achievements. He was so clueless about it, though, that he immediately got made fun of.

As I am playing the same game now, I have some thoughts on the matter.

Why did he lie?

Everyone seems confused, why he would lie about such a mundane thing.
There was absolutely nothing to gain for him.

I am pretty sure, that I know the reason:
He enjoys lying.

There is probably a good neurological explanation, why his brain works like that, but in simple terms:

Lying corrupts your soul.
Stop it. Now.

(Look up "Duper's delight" - It's a real thing.)

I have seen this a lot around me; I was friends with some compulsive liars.
At some point, they started lying about everything, with nothing to gain and so much to lose.
I fell into that trap a little bit myself, but at some point (shamefully late in life) I realized, how bad this is all is and quit.

Now, I have something like an allergic reaction, when I notice someone is bullshitting.
Even the smallest things; It does not matter how small and inconsequential the lie is.
I need to call it out.
Just like the liar can't help himself, I can't help me getting angry about it.

It might start out with simple lies or made up stories; Stop it before it takes hold.

One of the richest, most powerful people in the world, can't help himself lying and he did it on the level of an 8 year old. It's so pathetic.

Zuckerberg: the same.
Remember when he looked and acted like Data from Star Trek?
And now he went on Rogan's podcast and tried acting like a bro.
Which one is it? He doesn't know, either.

Dementia

I believe they don't know who they are anymore. (Or never did)

To become a good liar, you have to fully believe in your own lie.
If you can convince yourself, you can easily cheat a lie-detector test.
I've seen it. People breaking down, throwing tantrums, crying, pulling out every card they have and me staring down into their soul, through the false ego, knowing it's just a lie.

I hate it.

I am convinced that a lot of age-related dementia is just people wrecking they own brains over their whole life, fucking with the truth and then becoming older and slower, until they don't know what's real anymore.

If you have to remember all the lies you have ever told and there are just too many, you will eventually hurt your own capacity to think.

The lies will catch up to you. And it will hurt.
Until then, I hope more people wake up to it and start looking at these characters with pity.

Elon Musk is a marketing genius, nothing more.
On a technical level: He's full of shit.

That being said: I am surprised his cars actually work.
I was wrong about that in the past. I thought, they would be DOA.
Now, you wouldn't catch me dead* in one of those abomminations (they are the cars from Demolition Man), but I got to admit: They seem to work...

_{*I hope I used that expression right}