I hope he'll answer himself, but I think that I'm not crossing any lines by saying he seemed fine and enjoying some good time while being busy with work.

I got to play chess against both wasoxygen and weewooweewoo, and can't overstate how much I enjoyed those matches and my opponents.

Switching from Debian to FreeBSD on my older laptop went smoothly. In two weeks since installation, there were no problems to speak of, but I'll wait with any big decisions or judgements for a few months. There's not much point in saying anything one way or another on a fresh system.

My fuckoff-triple-major schedule somehow manages to not look like a stress-test! It also seems like I got on a right foot with some of the students at the chemistry department, which is a nice change of pace for me. It's hard not to enjoy this state of things.

My older brother beat his potentially-fatal tumour, he is alive and well.

I'm no longer on speaking terms with my parents who moved out to Germany.

My love for chess got reignited after five years of burnout.

Advanced from dumbass student to a dumbass grad student, so there's that.

Two unmentioned problems, though both admittedly outside of the scope of the video, would be ones arising from a single-species forest (lack of diversity and likely phasing out of currently inhabiting it species unadapted to new biome) and the possible introduction of large-scale drag on trade winds.

I'm being assigned an undergraduate physics student to mentor this year and can't seem to find a good way to wiggle myself out of the obligation without it looking bad. It's supposed to be only two hours a week or so, but between feeling burned out on people and having a lot of other stuff on my plate, it's hard to feel much enthusiasm about it.

It's hard to disagree on any of the points he made and I regret that I can't provide more insightful opinion despite being – to my knowledge – the sole Hubski user who lives in Poland. I'll try to add more via edits but I'm not sure if I have anything worthwhile to say.

Given what I’ve learned over my lifetime I would, first, urge future generations of Europeans to remember my generation as we really were, not as they may wish us to have been. We had all the same vices and weaknesses as today’s young people do: most of us were neither heroes nor monsters.

The core thought behind Durants in a single paragraph. I can think of at least six teachers from my past who would benefit from pondering it from time to time.

It can help, but chess positions are relatively easy and games allow you time to think about the static state between discrete intervals of progress. Even if it's only a few seconds, you have the luxury of pondering an unchanging situation. My skills definitely don't translate well to Starcraft.

AFAIK chess engines only keep references of last moves to avoid falling into logical loops leading to "tie by 3 move repetition" and track how long has it been since the last exchange occurred (it's an automatic tie if it was more than 50 IIRC). Other than that, I can't see any need or benefit coming from knowing last moves. At least in AI. Humans can exploit and be exploited by silly mind games, tendencies or reputation.

I think that I experience something similar while playing chess, but only now made the connection. Every few moves I'll make an effort to try and forget my previous calculations and attempt to see the situation as if it was the first time it happened. The difference is remarkable. Instead of seeing it as a frame in the connected streams of thought, it emerges as a solitary challenge without any background, reference frame or context.

I managed to wean myself of off coffee.

Tomorrow is my last day of working as a nightshift cashier. Good riddance, can't wait for the uni to start.

My main campaign puts a lot of emphasis on good storytelling and fun gameplay, as opposed to for example a more harsh rule-bound game.

Same. I enjoy both styles but can satiate my sporadic rules-heavy cravings by launching one of the harder roguelikes.

It's not just a practical gift

I get that. And in case I said or implied something to the contrary: it is a great, thoughtful gift.

Though, speaking from experience, DM Manual is principally useful for D&D whereas books like Trap Compendium can be easily refitted for most other games, not exclusively the fantasy/high magic ones. If you are unlikely to change the system anytime soon, then it's a moot point. Otherwise… that's part of what I meant by the 'gift that keeps on giving' remark.

Either way, all in the name of fun.

I also gifted him the DM Manual for his birthday - no self-respecting DM is without one.

It's a great gift but YMMV. It was invaluable for me at the beginning, can't recall using it more than once per adventure (~ 4-5 sessions) once I got a handle on it. Even that was mainly to get a quick estimation of appropriate CR if I didn't have a good encounter at hand and put good game flow over a tailored enemy selection.

Now, the Trap Compendium is the gift that keeps on giving. ;)