I love the opening line in Thomas Bernhard's Woodcutters:

While everyone was waiting for the actor, who had promised to join the dinner party in the Gentzgasse after the premiere of The Wild Duck, I observed the Auersbergers carefully from the same wing chair I had sat in nearly every day during the fifties, reflecting that it had been a grave mistake to accept their invitation.

In German:

Während alle auf den Schauspieler warteten, der ihnen versprochen hatte, nach der Aufführung der Wildente gegen halbzwölf zu ihrem Abendessen in die Gentzgasse zu kommen, beobachtete ich die Eheleute Auersberger genau von jenem Ohrensessel aus, in welchem ich in den frühen Fünfzigerjahren beinahe täglich gesessen war und dachte, dass es ein gravierender Fehler gewesen ist, die Einladung der Auersberger anzunehmen.

I have a quite simple system for my simple finances. When my cash runs out, I get around 200€ from an ATM. Then I look up when my last withdrawal was. If it was under two months, I'll be more frugal until next time. No receipts or calculations. So I only use cash and have 50€ to 150€ on me with some more at home. I'm not even sure how to use a card to buy something. :-)

There is also this neat comic: Rat Park.

I use http://www.passwordstore.org/ - security is outsourced to gpg (and that is the most important point), uses directories/plain files for storing instead of a database and has already some plugins and scripts for browsers, wms, etc.

Add me (also 'xash') on OGS and we can play some games once you get comfortable with the rules. :-)

I played Go on and (mostly) off for some years, but I never left the beginner realm. Then I found Go Quest, where you can have matches of 3-6 minutes on a 9x9 board. I started to play daily in early summer and had the goal to lift my ELO from 1500 to 1600 on this site before university started again. That's the difference of being on place 9500 or 6500 on the sites ranking list. And I did it last week, just in time! Comparative ratings are difficult to translate to words, but I'll just call me a weak intermediate player on a 9x9 Go board.

Plain physicalism and determinism are so well accepted, it is boring. So I want you to take a look at Panpsychism: souls are/the soul is everywhere. The variation I like the most is called Panexperimantalism: every physical particle has a soul part. If the physical particles form a connection, the mind-dust of single souls merge to a bigger soul, more capable of feeling, more conscious and more of the other things a soul can do. So the soul of a person would be like dust before the person is born, would emerge inside the mother and would grow with the age. Also, stones, houses and trees would have a soul, but their souls may or may not be smaller than ours. And an answer with this theory to OP's question could be: „Yes, as everything has a free will.“

German here. Born and still living in Hamburg, the city most famous for its red-light district. I'm very glad to see the Außenalster on my way to university:

As of

Edit: of course I talk about the time before all of this happened.

If anyone wants to learn about the historical background to the fundamentals of modern mathematics (last ~100 years) I can only second the recommendation on reading the well made comic Logicomix. Believe me, the story is really interesting.

You could even build a messenger with it.

A good friend of many years just said „I don't like Turks”, following with common racist justifications. I was shocked. I tried to convince her that „most Turks cause trouble" is just plain racism. With the current situation here in Germany in mind, that we discussed beforehand, I wasn't quite friendly. She quickly felt offended about my accusations and left me confused about her, the friendship and how to approach this topic in the future.

Also: the better motherfucking website.