End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World book review

 

3/3 of recent non-fiction books read in a "fighting TINA" subcategory, or "there ARE alternatives." after Enshittification and The Anxious Generation.

The premise of the book is that history doesn't really repeat exactly. Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor present an analogy I enjoyed: thinking of history as loops, like water circling down a drain or air swirling up forming a tornado. It's still cyclical, but not identical. The context changes. Similarly, fascism will look different nowadays than a century ago. As per their title, they say today's fascism's has an apocalyptic end of times flavor.

I was reminded of a 1941 essay by George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. In the opening he writes: "One cannot see the modern world as it unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty." And shortly after: "Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp that fact and their opponents could not."

After Enshittification and The Anxious Generation, global tech CEOs and financiers appear again, as "technofascists" this time, one of the three groups they identified, alongside religious extremists and ethno-nationalists; who are giving shape to End Times Fascism. Patriotism still has a role to play, but arguably is no longer the "overwhelming strength" Orwell mentioned, not against the promise of a "general AI," a higher form of artificial consciousness, a digital god who presumably wouldn't have a nation to be patriotic about. Even in its current chatbot state, AI data centers will continue devouring resources wherever they are built.

Back to Orwell in 1941 one more time: "The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than either Communism or democratic Socialism . One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole German or Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up."

In the End Times Fascism introduction: "The most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating."

I expected I'd know about the tech side of things, and while I did, I hadn't heard of Peter Thiel's Hereticon extravaganza, from the website, a "conference for thought crime" and "a showcase and celebration of technologies and projects so ambitious they will fundamentally transform our world for the better — or destroy it."

I also learned a lot more about religious Christian extremists in the US working hand in hand with Jewish extremists in the US and in Israel raising money to speed the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, colonize the West Bank; and they hope, bring about the building of the third Temple in Jerusalem. For the Christans involved, this would herald the Book of Revelations' end times.

And just like in the two other books I recently finished, this one presents alternatives and people fighting this rising new flavor of fascism. They write about the ways people in Minnesota kept one another safe from ICE raids, Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign in New York, and had they postponed the book's release maybe they'd have mentioned progressive campaigns like Abdul El-Sayd's and James Talarico's during the US midterm elections, or the presidential elections Lula won in Brazil.

There is hope, thankfully, and how much more coming depends on how more people standing up: "while the various strains of fascists build bunkers for the few, ours are survival networks grounded in the principle that every one of us, without exception, deserves to live and thrive. They are bound by a belief that keeping one another safe when the inevitable shocks arrive is a sacred duty."

Clearly I agree with the book and the importance of fighting for the world we share and live in, and one another's right to live and thrive. I suppose I'm the main audience, though this can be a good read for people looking for hope, or for people not convinced fascism is making a comeback.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness - book review

If you ask, I'd tell you I grew up glued to a screen but it's a massive exaggeration compared with the first generations to grow up with personal screens. What I meant is that I'd quietly get up around 5 or 6am at the age of 5, turn the living room TV on, and sit right in front of it.

When I finally read the best-selling The Anxious Generation, I figured it was about the negative consequences of near constant screen and social media usage for children and teens. I didn't realize the other half of the book is about the importance of play, a topic near and dear to my heart.

Social psychologist, professor and best-selling author Jonathan Haidt opens the book with a space analogy: no parent would sign up to send their children to be first on a dangerous trip to Mars, yet he says that's exactly what has been done with personal screens and social media, in that a whole generation were handed devices with little to no idea of the consequences their usage would have. The result is a huge increase in feelings of anxiety and depression among children and teens correlated with their usage of personal smartphones and social media (and pornography, and online multiplayer video games that liberally borrow design principles from gambling).

He makes a distinction between phone-based and play-based childhoods throughout the book. He also tracks back some of the effects to children and teens having less in-person play time with mixed-age peers, less autonomy and agency; more time with parents, studying, or having structured activities:

"evolution didn't just lengthen childhood to make learning possible. It also installed three strong motivations to do things that make learning easy and likely: motivations for free play, attunement, and social learning. In the days of play-based childhood, the norm was that when school let out, children were out playing with each other, unsupervised, in ways that let them satisfy these motives."

While it is natural to be protective of our children, he says: "We are misallocating our protective efforts. We should be giving children more of the practice they need in the real world and delaying their entry into the online world, where the benefits are fewer and the guardrails nearly non-existent."

I just wrote a review of Cory Doctorow's Enshittification book, and ironically wrote that maybe the largest tech companies in the world might not have the best interest of their users in mind. This books is more of that, from a different angle. Thankfully the book also includes what we can do now to change things for the better, while being honest about the inherent challenges to collective action.

I loved the whole book, and particularly enjoyed an unexpected chapter about awe and natural beauty. "I told my students to listen to the podcast and then take a walk, slowly, anywhere outside, during which they must not take out their phones. The written reflections they turned in for that week's homework were among the most beautiful I've seen in my 30 years as a professor."

Enshittification 💩 book review

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

I have the first Kindle Paperwhite from 2012, and I still read with it. It is slow but I enjoy it, it worked. Amazon announced they were discontinuing support for these old devices in May 2026. No more support, no more Kindle store either. I can still use but it cannot be updated, and it's best left on Airplane mode, in case it tries to connect and gets bricked altogether in the process (the term to mean a digital device is no longer functional, which can happen on purpose). Suffice to say I did not purchase another Kindle, even though they offered me a time limited discount to buy a new one.

Ebooks on your Kindle are not yours, you pay to license them from Amazon, who still owns the digital product. You may have noticed your social media feeds are full of AI slop, irrelevant ads, and people you've never heard from rather than the friends, family, people, and media outlets you actually wanted to follow.

If you've ever had an inkling that perhaps these global tech empires and the richest people in the world heading them might not actually have everyone else's best interests in mind, and that maybe we should do something about it, you may well enjoy Cory Doctorow's Enshittification 💩 as much as I did.

The term, first coined by the author and digital rights activist in 2022, became so popular that it was selected word of the year 2023 by the American Dialect Society, and then was turned into a fully fledged book in 2025 and won the Locus award for non-fiction in 2026.

Enshittification describes the course taken by tech companies in the development of their products and services:

"First platforms are good to their users. Then, they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the values for themselves. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit"

Most of the book goes into detailed case studies showing how this devolution process applies to several of the largest tech businesses. You can read one of them about Amazon in a piece in The Guardian to give you a sense of the book. The content is serious with the occasional fun and sarcastic edge in the writing. The second half of the book is what is being done and what can be done about these issues; there is hope. He points to the swings the previous head of the FTC Lina Khan took against monopolies in the US during the Biden administration, and ways in which digital gig workers are organizing themselves around the world to push back against algorithms doing their best to pay them as little as possible.

Towards the end he contextualises other issues in the world, from poverty to climate change:

"But for all that the internet is far less important to these other fights, it is nevertheless extremely relevant to these struggles. The internet is the terrain upon which these fights will be waged"

In the age of AI, data centres are quickly being built everywhere, consuming enormous amounts of resources. It was a campaign topic for the US Midterms elections. Open AI recently launched their advertising platform for ChatGPT, typically the beginning of enshittification for users. It would be easy to see only doom and gloom, though I join Cory Doctorow in his belief that there are alternatives to make tech and the internet better and more open for everyone. 

League of Legends quarter-finals @ 2026 eSports World Cup in Paris

 

There's another World Cup going on after FIFA is over, and this one is closer and more accessible in terms of pricing. I was going to blend this with the FIFA World Cup post I published yesterday, but then figured it would take longer, so they're separate though I'll probably refer to a couple of points from yesterday's post.

I'm interested in everything to do with play and games, as well as passionate subcultures, so when I heard the eSports World Cup was suddenly relocating from Saudi Arabia (I believe it was created there, and Qiddiya – city of play – branding appears all around) to Paris, I had to take a look at what was going on.

From what I hear, one of the particularities of the event is that it features many of the most played competitive games, from first person shooters (FPS), to fighting games, MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, like League of Legends), even ones published by competitors that don't tend to appear in the same event – and chess; to promote chess.com one might presume (Magnus Carlsen will be playing, and it's streaming live for free from 11th to 15th August).

The €20 ticket price also made it fairly easy to choose going. It is actually many competitive gaming events over the course of six weeks, which also made me wonder who they called and how much it might have cost them to suddenly relocate the event to the largest event hall in Paris for a whole six weeks, even though French people take holidays, I can't imagine the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles was sitting empty all summer waiting for them to call. I joked that Saudi Arabia might have thrown in some oil deal or added a couple of extra Mirage fighter jets to an order to secure the venue.

I've been slowly learning more about League of Legends, as one of the most followed competitive games, that fills stadiums, and that has become a streaming show sensation with the popular Arcane animated series on Netflix (it's excellent, and you don't need to know anything about the video game). While intimidating in terms of complexity, it seemed like a game I could follow with regards to its roots.

I played a lot of RTS (real time strategy) games way back when, even though I was never the best at them, I loved Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, Cossacks, Warcraft II, III, and Starcraft 1/2. I even got into occasionally watching competitive Starcraft 2. I understood how the game played, and appreciated the level of skill, and unbelievable actions per minute (APM) speed the top players reached.

Just for a quick summary; Warcraft III offered the ability for players to create custom maps and game rules, which people did, and one of them was an arena with two teams squaring off. That was called DOTA (Defence of the Ancients), and the 5v5 team multiplayer online battle arena was born officially with DOTA2. Then Riot Games took that recipe and made it into the sensation that League of Legends still is today. 

I had watched a couple of videos going over the main rules, the play arena / map, and roles of the five teammates. I knew there were over 170 different hero characters to choose from, each with their own specialties and special powers, which was and still is one of barriers to appreciate watching competitive gamers. The other barrier I could foresee was that I'd watched a couple of videos where the battle rages, the commentators (casters, in esports lingo) and fans are going wild, and those moments just look like a confusing colorful kaleidoscope of special effects on the screen. 

Thankfully most moments aren't like that over the course of the roughly 30 minutes play time for a round, and the eSports World Cup was set as a best of three.

The two winning teams I saw and who faced off in the semi-finals the following day are worth mentioning: 

• T1, jointly owned and operated by South Korea Telecom and Comcast Spectacor, and featuring Faker, the best player in the world and a proper celebrity in South Korea. He had many fans who had traveled from far away to cheer for him.
• Karmin Corp, the only French team in the competition, co-founded and co-owned by popular French streamer, Kamet0 (it was created as Kameto Corp). They had home team advantage, and they are known for fostering a loud and cheery army of fans, inspired by football supporter associations.

In the post I wrote yesterday about appreciating football, I mentioned that anything can happen in an exciting way, and it can probably be extended to all spectator sports, or at least to sSports and League of Legends. The other point about the enjoyment of watching people extremely skilled at something you might have tried a few times or even practice regularly, like kicking a ball or playing video games, can be enticing. 

It's often called "competence porn" as coined by screenwriter John Waters in reference to the enjoyment of watching people particularly skilled at whatever it is they do, and dramatised in TV series and movies like Moneyball, Ocean's Eleven, The Pitt, and I think competitive sports athletes as well.

When it comes to League of Legends, and any other complex sport or game, it takes knowing how it's played to really appreciate. I knew I'd be a fish out of water at the eSports World Cup and that was part of the draw for me too. I knew just enough to begin appreciating, just about enough to follow most of the game, and it made me want to learn more. Though to be honest, it also went over my head enough that I blinked a few times and my brain just stopped registering during the most heated moments of the games.

It was fun to experience the different arenas, fans cheering, fast-talking commentators (thanks to them, I was able to generally follow what was going on), and overall atmosphere. 

The sheer difference in numbers and money earned by players is impressive. The eSports World Cup boasted $70 Million in prize money across all games in the competition, and $2 Million for League of Legends. Definitely nothing to sneer at, large mounts of money. 

However, compared with just a quick average from the UK Premier League, the average pro football player will be earning about £4 Million per year, and combining the wages bill across the 20 clubs in the UK Premier League represents roughly £2.25 billion.

Still, eSports is beginning to attract large crowds who are willing to 100 Euros on team jerseys, pretty much the same high prices as other sports jerseys. While the number of fans is not as high as in football, their energy and enthusiasm from the crowd seems comparable. 

The 2026 FIFA World Cup

Yesterday was my birthday and the final of the FIFA football World Cup (or soccer). For once this year, I didn't feel super inspired to organize something to celebrate my birthday, and while I'm happy Spain won (my grandparents were Spanish), watching the game was boring enough to not feel like such a celebration.

By an interesting set of random circumstances, I'd never watched so much football in my life. 

I happened to be traveling in the US to visit my in-laws, my baby son fell ill, a heatwave, and there I was watching football with my brother in law. I started following around the end of the group stage and I kind of got hooked. I rarely follow much football aside from the World Cup but usually towards the end of the competition, and even then not necessarily every time. 

Now it's over I'm trying to remember why I became so interested in it. My younger brother was and always has been into football. It was convenient to be on the same time zone. It was too hot outside to do much at the times the games were happening (except for the players themselves if the stadium wasn't an AC covered dome). Perhaps for Americans appreciative of spectator team sports, it was an acceptable way to spend time.

Or more accurately, for some reason I started seeing what millions of other football fans see and I suppose why they follow, and spend time and often a lot of money on football (tickets and jerseys for example), even though it is also touted as the beautiful game in part because of how cheap and accessible it is for everyone, anywhere in the world. All you need is a ball, or as I've seen kids play with in Tanzania many years ago, a bunch of used plastic bags tied with strings.

On that note, there were some excellent teams representing Africa. I really enjoyed watching the Ivory Coast, Morocco, Egypt, and Cape Verde play.

I'm digressing, here is what I saw and started enjoying in football:

Anything can happen in a truly exciting way. Most of the time there are few goals, so every one of them is a big event, and they can happen until the very last second. Conversely, the opposite can also happen, sometimes there is little action, players kicking the ball back and forth and it becomes kind of boring to watch. Like the final last night.

Players are consumed athletes. Their skills with the ball are impressive and it's inspiring to watch their ball  tricks, dribbles, accelerations, kicks, headers, etc. They spend enormous amounts of efforts running up and down a big pitch, it's obviously dynamic. Sometimes it gets pretty rough, physical, and dramatic too – which can also be its own form of fun (possibly with a dash of schadenfreude).

Technically the World Cup should be, and I guess really is, a moment for patriotic nationalistic pride. I did support France. That said given I have multiple ties, I'm also happy to support Spain, the Netherlands (my father was Dutch), and the USA (where I was born). However, I've found the first two points to overtake supporting any one team most of the time. I'd be making excited noises whoever was making an interesting play towards the goal, well, because it was an interesting play. I like to watch fun football. I didn't support Paraguay much against France in the quarter-finals though. They just came across as a bunch of mean bullies.

Still, the day after France was defeated by Spain in the semi-finals, I realized I was sadder than I thought at the end of game. Most people I talked to were equally baffled. It did feel like something had happened to them to go from the competition favorites to being beaten, first in spirit during that game (maybe?) and with two goals against them. I felt deflated, and again watching England lose to Argentina the following day (I lived in England for many years, and they had a great team in this competition).

I eyed the game for the third place from afar, just checking the score, I had other plans. It seemed it was quite the event with ten goals scored, though not what I'd have hoped for France.

I turned the final game on with fairly low levels of enthusiasm. Maybe I'd already saturated on football, but I wanted to see the whole competition I now felt committed to. It was long and slow, those games can happen to, and the tough point is when you know the situation can completely change within a few seconds, the choice to keep watching or stop and miss out on the action can be a tough one. 

Maybe that's the final piece of turning someone into a football fan, the fear of missing out. That probably only works if you take the team supporting seriously, and I don't all that much. I'm happy to know I can appreciate and talk about football, and I'm equally happy to take a long break and not watch any for a long while now.

One Battle After Another movie review

 

I saw the trailer, the posters, and the wildly positive reviews from nearly all the most known movie critics. Long and short of it, I wanted to anyways, but seeing the critical reception I thought best to go to the cinema and see the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie One Battle After Another, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, as soon as possible, before I heard too much about the movie. 

The trailer was confusing to me. It seemed like some kind of gonzo revolution story with a lost and haggard looking man, Leonardo Di Caprio as the main protagonist, possibly fighting The Man, capital M. Difficult to get much else than that general vibe, though it certainly sounded intriguing to me. 

I don't particularly enjoy spoilers so this review won't contain any, I won't even go into much more of the actual storyline or events unfolding. I am pretty much as enthusiastic as most of the positive critics reviews, and recommend you watch it and make up your own mind. It's probably the best movie I've seen at the cinema this year. The one I saw before was Ari Aster's Eddington that I didn't write or post about, and funny enough while different I feel there are similarities. They both take place in mostly remote places in the United States southwest near the Mexican border, for example. There's more, but some of the landscapes are similar, at the very least. The photography is gorgeous.

One Battle After Another's vibe feels both gonzo and alternate enough that one wonders if this is meant to be a slightly different parallel universe, or a slightly secret or fictional layer to our own. Themes are similar enough to our world that I'm tempted to go with the second option, though they're arguably similar enough to maybe not matter. One way or another it mirrors struggles related to inequalities and the concentration of power and money. The movie is also frantic, with enough slow and tense scenes for the faster paced ones to shine.

Both famous and lesser known actors are fantastic. Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro play characters I feel are very anchored in their own factions and worldviews, while Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob quickly feels like a pinball being shot from one side of the board to the other with little agency of his own.

I loved it, but some might think it is a little long, an affliction of many movies these days. And the gonzo level might not be to everyone's liking. I enjoyed the chaotic ride, but without going into much detail, some might think it is a bit lacking in consistency. There is a little bit of "what did I just watch?" feeling at the end, though arguably less than for Eddington – for me at least.

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food book review

 

I invited a group of ten friends to have a big Chinese Sichuan Sunday lunch for my birthday this past summer, as a result one of my friends who had heard of this book got it as a gift for the occasion. I absolutely loved it; one of my favourite reads in a while. This is just to preface that I'm completely biased: if the title sounds even remotely interesting, you can stop now and just go buy it. Suffice to say I highly recommend reading it

Invitation to a Banquet by Fuchsia Dunlop is an expertly and lovingly cooked non-fiction book blending the author's personal experiences of eating and cooking Chinese food, with a sweeping cultural and historical account of food in China. 

I've been enchanted with the structure of the book, organised in four sections titled hearth, farm, kitchen, and table. Every chapter is like zooming in a kaleidoscope called "Chinese food," representing an essential ingredient or component to explore for the reader. Every chapter is also like a snowflake, uniquely different yet broadly following the same structure: a personal story, a time and place, a dish to illustrate the aspect being examined (may it be about rice, roasting with fire, or a mind-boggling extensive vocabulary of cooking techniques), along with historical and cultural references.

Fuchsia Dunlop's writing is as delightful as it is mouth-watering. I've had the chance of traveling in mainland China twice (and Hong Kong a couple more times) but it was already a long time ago now. Reading, I was fondly reminded of some of my best food and travel memories. I want to learn to cook more of these dishes now, and I'd love to go back, see more of China, and eat at the Dragon Well Manor restaurant one day.

The academic and professional cooking references and stories are compelling. The chapter titled "The Power of Steam" opens with the author mentioning "the Banpo village near Xi'an, one of China's most important Neolithic archeological sites." A little further she adds: "More than six thousand years ago, at the very dawn of the Chinese civilisation, people here were already using steamers to cook their food." A page later, she references a paragraph from a writer who travelled to Beijing in 1793 and who didn't seem too happy with steamed bread. I added several other books from the same author, and from the bibliography, to my reading list. 

I believe, and it is pretty much stated, that the intention is to give readers an appreciation of the richness and sophistication of Chinese food culture in all its possible forms over time. As a result, I went out to order and eat several of the dishes I was reading about, classics I love like Sichuan Mapo Tofu or Yuxiang "fish fragrant" aubergines. I prepared a quick and simple broth for lunch before writing this. I stopped at the Asian grocery shop on the way back from the gym, to add ready-made pork dumplings, pak choi (bok choy) that I quickly cut and blanched, some carrots slices I had in the fridge, topped it all with chopped scallion and a dash of sesame oil. Bon appétit!

Dennis Morris Music+Life

 Absolutely fantastic expo of Dennis Morris photos in Paris at MEP - Maison Européenne de la Photographie - allez-y si vous êtes à Paris (jusqu'au 18/5)!

Dennis Morris was 13 years old in 1973, taking photos in and around Hackney and other parts of London. He heard Bob Marley and the Wailers were going to perform at the Speakeasy Club (who weren't as widely famous at the time), so he decided to skip school and wait at the artist entrance, hoping to meet his idol.

Dennis' quote from the board at the expo: "Finally, they arrived. I went up to Bob and if I could take his picture. Bob laughed at my Cockney accent and said, 'Yeah mon, come on in.' Between songs he asked me what it was like to be a black kid in England, and I asked him about Jamaica. I felt he really took to me."

The singer was so impressed by the teen that he invited him to join them and take pictures on the tour.

"The next morning, I said goodbye to my mum like I was going to school, went to his hotel and jumped in the back of the van. Bob just turned around and said: 'Are you ready Dennis? Yeah, ready!' I replied, clicking my camera. And the adventure began."

13 years old. That's the photo there. Such an adventure! Still going on too. I also loved the photos of London's Hackney, Southall, and more in the early and mid 1970s.

New board gaming period with Scythe

 

I spend time reflecting to wrap things up at the end of every year, and then create things for the new year, like a context, motto, themes, and this year some main objectives.

I had a board game design idea a few years ago that I hadn't progressed with so it's on the list for this year (I admit it was last year too, I just didn't do anything about it then).

Anyhow, we had someone missing for our regular roleplaying game night with friends so I suggested meeting at Loufoque, a board game café I like, and trying out a quite big game. I suggested Architects of the West Kingdoms because I haven't played it, but someone else wanted to try Scythe, the game designed and published by Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games), and featuring beautiful artwork by Jakub Rozalski.

I'd played Scythe, though years ago when I was in Chicago. I also had the chance of having Jamey Stegmaier on my podcast back then, you can check the episode out here. Jamey is incredibly generous and prolific with the amount of interesting content he shares: perspectives about the board gaming industry like about how they're affected by recent tariffs, publishing advice, design focused content, and much more.

It has a few different moving parts about it, though I'd probably describe Scythe as an engine building strategy game, with wargaming elements. It looks like a wargame with it's big alternative 1920s steampunk-ish mechanical engines and hexagon tiles, but it isn't really exactly that. 

It may look intimidating, and clearly designed for a large American size table - we barely had space for drinks, though actually I love the way it's designed such that it is quite easy to grasp what you can do every turn, so tactics, and not so much analysis paralysis (well sort of, more on that in a second), and yet lots of depth and moving parts from game to game to think about strategy.

I totally lost but it was a fun game, good to test it again. I went on to play the digital version I have on Steam over the weekend, which is where the analysis paralysis kicked in for me, in front of my laptop playing 3 computer AIs (medium level difficulty) and getting absolutely beaten every time, trying to understand wider strategies to better understand the intricacies of the game.

I also played some Terraforming Mars, that I'd forgotten I had as a digital version, and then a friend invited me to join Board Game Arena, so I started playing a few more games there too. My user name is Hippowill if you want to add me as a friend and play a game some time.

I started a new notebook with design notes for my board game idea, I'm pretty clear what the theme and design goals are, but I wasn't too sure of mechanics to quickly start prototyping and playtesting. After a few new games tested and a few podcasts, talks, design book passages from my shelves, I had an idea last night for a starting point that I'm happy with. I'm not exactly ready to talk about it just yet, but I will do soon, to document the process.

I had been trying to find specific processes and/or methodologies, starting with the Board Game Design by Joe Slack (it's all right though I think you can find many free ressources online instead of this one), and Jeremy Holcomb's notes in The White Box board game design workshop (it's a useful toolbox of things).

The main thing I keep up with is rapid prototyping. I have a tendency to start things and not finish, or study and daydream rather than do. At the very least I have made more progress than in all of last year.

2025 ski season wrap!

 It's a wrap for the 2025 ski season! Ups and downs ski wise - and yes, it is a pun.

Last year ended a little slow work wise, and this year began like that too, so not tons of budget for a lot of skiing, but as usual, I couldn't help do a little more than was probably reasonable. 

First, a gorgeous warm-up day in the Pyrénées aux Angles to get our ski legs back on with my brother Morgan and a friend, Barbara, at the beginning of February. Bright blue sky, and probably too hot, just enough man-made snow to ski on, but hey that's the Pyrénées these days I suppose.

Barbara had just been on a day of backcountry ski touring with her father the day before, she skies way better than Morgan and I, plus with her mom's old skis, so she has a proper 80s ski form - quite unlike my ungainly feet apart but somehow managing to keep balanced on my skis style.

In March, I thought it would be a fine idea to book two weeks of skiing in a row after the French school holidays, figuring I'll be saving on an additional train ride back to Paris.

We went to La Rosière, above Bourg-Saint-Maurice, on the Italian border. The skiing area that I'd visited in the summer of 2018 connects with La Thuile in Italy.

Katie took lessons and I just went skiing, exploring all the resort had to offer, the snow on the Italian side was gorgeous and it snowed several days while we were there. I loved going shopping for cured meats to make our lunch sandwiches in Italy, and had coffee and gelato in the sun. 

It was quiet in both resorts, little to no queue on the lifts aside from the first in the mornings, nice runs, some sides and in between the pistes to ski some fresh snow, varied terrain and lovely tree runs on the Italian side. I definitely want to go back. 

Of course I skied pretty full on and was tired at the end of the week. As mentioned, I thought it would be a good idea to book a second week. Moreover, the second week was with the UCPA in Tignes (a sports and outdoor activities camp, it's really worth looking into) for a beginners backcountry ski touring week.

Suffice to say it didn't go as planned. According the description on their website, I thought I had the right technical skiing level, and physical fitness level. At the end of the first morning of off-piste, the instructor said we needed a chat, that he was concerned about my borderline good enough technical level, and even more concerned with my physical fitness level, or lack thereof. 

Still, I joined the group for a first small hike just out of the bounds of the skiing area that afternoon, so I at least did my first ever little backcountry ski tour. I hadn't really accounted or thought of the altitude, and that hiking on skis at 3,000 meters high is actually demanding, and underestimated how tiring skiing on variable and steep snow off the piste would be. 

Plus I was exhausted from the previous week of skiing. We had our first day in Tignes free, I'd been hearing about Tignes and Val d'Isère for years, so of course I went out for a full on day from 9am to 4pm all the way to end of Val d'Isère at the Glacier du Pisaillas, and back with no visibility in the clouds. My thighs felt like jelly before going on that hike the following day. 

Maybe I'd have done better if I was more rested, though the instructor seemed to have doubts about it. The rest of the group were really nice, though for the most part happened to be a lot more experienced in off-piste and backcountry skiing, and fitter overall - from being used to hiking in altitude several times a year, to running ultra trail marathons, to completing nordic skiing circuits in a third of the time most people did.

I felt tired, deflated, embarrassed, disappointed and angry with myself, and overall vexed. Now with a little time, it was great to do a first hike like that, and I joined the group on another off-piste session a couple of days later.  

I thought going a third time to the gym per week for the past couple of months and losing a tiny bit of weight was sufficient preparation for the ski season, and it sort of was, but not at all enough for that level of backcountry skiing. I seem to have hit a limit to my skiing enthusiasm. In past courses, I've been told a few times that my level of confidence and enthusiasm without fear made up for some of my technical skill to let me follow others who were better than me. Not this time though. I was physically spent, felt not good enough, and lost morale.

On top of that, I was told at the last minute to join another traditional ski lesson group the following day, and it was a complete opposite. The first day was so challenging I was told it wouldn't work, the next day was so easy and relaxed skiing that all the other people in that new group were grumbling about the instructor.

Given I didn't know which group I was in for the afternoon anymore, and I was upset and tired, I took the afternoon off and went to the swimming pool's wellness centre: sauna, jacuzzis, steam bath, slides, and a beautiful view of the mountains.

The rest of the week there was all right, though mixed. I tried to get over myself with limited success. I skied and enjoyed the weather, reading the Codex Alera, hung out with a really crowd of people, played a cool big board game (Kemet), so definitely some good - with a sort of background shadow of disappointment.

After the fact, as I write this, I'm happy I did it, though I guess it was an expensive lesson in humility. The instructor recommended training and practice in off-piste skiing as a next step, so I might do that, I'd been wanting to before, this just seemed to be a way to do that. That's to my point about their description as a beginners backcountry training week, I seemed to have the required level (and the lessons in the second part of the week being easy showed me I did have the level stated too, but oh well). I also told them it might be worth revising their website's description of the level required, though their customer service reply didn't seem particularly sensitive or empathic with my experience.

I'm not sure what I'll be wanting to do with the next ski season, we'll see next winter. 

Right now, I need to focus on work stuff, new business and securing new clients and projects in priority. I'd finished a client project just before going away, so I kind of came back to a nearly blank slate. Whatever I do ski-wise, it's unlikely to get any cheaper, and I'll have to finance it somehow, so first things first.

To end on a positive note, skiing with a group means I do have some of the best skiing photos of me I've ever had, so that's pretty cool to show you!