I try to give an insight in my own life and dealings with rosacea. I also try to gather information that might be useful for everyone with rosacea, especially subtype 1 with burning, flushing and skin redness. I happen to be a bit unfortunate in that I have this condition for a long time already, and unlike many others, I haven't been able to get it into remission. I know it is more uplifting to read about someone who has beaten rosacea, but I like to write about the struggles that come for those who haven't achieved this. I also blabber here about everyday life topics. 
May 24th 2019My skin has been doing OK. Still flushing and burning at certain times a day (especially in the lat afternoon and early evening, regardless of eating yes or no). Only the past two days the weather had been warming up and pollen counts were high and I was more flushed than normal. My skin feels super hot and uncomfortable then. I made a few photos (sorry for the sun glasses on but I had red eyes from allergies) and I did look more red when looking in the mirror, so it doesn't look too bad in these photos. Do look a bit puffy however. The stupid white thingies on the bridge of the sunglasses I attached myself, they are actually for blisters on the heel of your foot but every single pair of adult sun glasses slides off my nose otherwise. Need to get some better looking little thingies on them but haven't found a shop willing to do this on the cheap glasses I bring along. Oh well.. Having a friend stay over for a little while. In the past we had some issues over the heating in winter. But now its warm here so no problems. We got ourselves some cherries the other day and worked a bit in the garden of a friend. I did get flushed unfortunately, but it burned more than that it looked bad, well it did look red but not as red as I felt .. :/ Still having a silly red chin however.
Songs of the day
May 19th 2019Ahhhhhh, one of my mother and my guilty pleasures, the Eurovision song festival was on last night and... after 44 years the Netherlands finally WON it again. I had backed myself and possible disappointment by making bets on Russia, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden winning instead. Just a few tenners but with the odds being immensely in favour of the Netherlands with the bookies, it would bring up a few hundred euro's in case of a win. So a win/win situation. But I shouldn't have bothered as they won anyway. With the Eurovision song festival, European countries and a couple of non Euro ones (Australia, Israel, Russia, Azerbaijan) can join with a national song of their choice. In the past the song had to be sung in the countries own language, but that rule has been let go over time and now everyone can choose whatever language they want. Most switch to English, but countries like Italy, France and Spain mostly always sing in their native tongue, luckily. Same for many Balkan countries.
May 14th 2019Aggghh seen such a fantastic game of football the other night with my parents. We were watching the match of the century I think, it was exhilarating. In the Champions League, our own Dutch team Ajax had beaten Tottenham Hotspurs last week and are playing the return semi-final tonight. (Fingers crossed). But the OTHER semi final was a true thrill fest. Last week, Barcelona (well, Messi basically) beat Liverpool at home with 3-0. Now was the return match. Liverpool had to make 4 goals, and any good made by Barcelona at Anfield would weigh double basically, as an away made goal overrules a home made goal. So these lads came on the pitch with the heavy task to not let Messi score, ánd to have to make a string of goals themselves. Some top players were injured also, to make matters worse. Well check out how it unraveled for yourself here: due to limited file size options here I cut the summary up in 4 small videos. Here you can directly watch the whole recap video in HD.
Liverpool - Barcelona, May 7th 2019, Anfield, semi-final Champions league
Episode 5 of season 8
Hilarious, accurate recap on youtube :D Like the rest of the past seasons, this episode was yet again madness; plot holes keep stacking up. I mean, aside from all the Dany craziness and destruction, which I did like, the rest made zero sense, again.
-The Mad Queen - I personally did like her going crazy and into full destruction mode. One of my favourite former characters was Ramsey Bolton, so yeh... A friend wrote me about that: "You really hate the GOT now don't you? haha. It's like your World War One? haha. Is there a Ramsey poppy you can wear? ... remember Ramsey with pride." So anyway, a bit of deranged madness is fine. Fan girls are complaining online that she 'turned' too suddenly but she always had a mad side to her. She had grown increasingly more cocky and erratic in the past seasons, with her condescending ways and delusions of grandeur. Burning anyone who didn't bend the knee (including the Tully's), but even in the beginning she didn't bat an eyelid when burning her own brother alive with melted... what was it, gold I think. All she had to bargain with, for anything really, were those three dragons, so with only one left... well.. she was getting on edge! :D That must have triggered her inner Patrick Bateman lol. That and Jon rejecting her, realizing everyone loves Jon and no-one loves her, Jorah dead. Buuut... she always wanted to sit on the iron throne though, so by burning the whole place down, incl the poor subjects of Mad Cersei.. she kind of signed her own death warrant. It made less sense that Dany went from 'Save all the Slaves' to 'Lets burn men women and children alike, and pets, after the surrender bells have started'. When Kings Landing surrendered, why would she throw her entire legacy and chance for the throne away and burn every house in the city? If she was so "mad" then why not go for Cersei and destroy the Red Keep only? - this would be a bad move anyways due to some collateral damage but manageable and nothing on the scale of torching an entire city (1 million people?). Given her experience in power, she would not be so stupid to burn a city she was trying to save, effectively committing suicide since nobody will support her now. So was pretty illogical. But hey, since when are mad deranged mental patients always acting logically.. And then to think of all the people who named their babies Khaleesi or Daenerys hahaha. Curious if they will change the names now.
- Granted, the visuals this episode were impressive. And the dragon-Blitzkrieg.
-The battle itself was just silly. They had hundreds of overpowered scorpions on boats and around the city and now only ONE target. A dragon siege should have been impossible. They clearly made that obvious in Episode 4 where Drogon narrowly avoids getting arrowed but now, all of a sudden, the scorpions were suddenly useless, to the point where they didn't even matter. Burned in seconds. Big inconsistency in two consecutive episodes. How the heck did Rhaegal die when Drogon was able to destroy the Golden Company and the whole of Iron Fleet in a manner of seconds? Not to mention he topped it off by burning the whole of King's Landing SOLO. What's the point in build up to an epic battle when all they needed was a single dragon? What's the point of an army that enters the first 100 meters of a city and then just stands there and does nothing? And why couldn't the Night King simply destroy Winterfell in the same way with HIS dragon? You say dracarys and all the walls tumble as if they were exploding with dynamite.-The Clegane-bowl was fine. I did like the ending of Jaime and Cersei and that in good GoT tradition they showed the more rounded character arch. She was pregnant, she wanted to live, she got a bit emotional. That was believable to me and they acted it well too. Bit less convincing was how Cersei basically stood and watched the destruction from her Red Keep with the same sour look on her face as ever. Not giving orders really, not having a back up plan. They could have given her some more credit there. Thinking of it; if they had restrained her with duct tape on a stretcher, she would have done just the same as now. Nothing.
-What was the point of Jon Snow and Arya in this episode when they just enter a city to a certain point and then turn around and walk back? Of course Arya comes out without as much as a scratch, whereas Jaime and Cersei crumble in the destruction, yawn. They call that plot armour I think; protected by the plot writers haha. Great term. I mean, Arya was at Cersei's front door literally, and after having already killed a bunch of people, incl the Nights King, she is about to face her Numero Uno enemy; the one on the top of her kill list; the one she had all those faceless assassin lessons for. But the Hound tells her; 'just go home kid'. And Arya is like: 'Yeh cool. I'm at her front door but I'll just turn around.' She is there for one reason, and one reason only: because D&D wanted her there to serve as a Point of View character for the audience. You know, seeing the carnage in King's Landing through the eyes of someone who we care about. So that we actually give a shit about the burning of the city. Another plot driven character decision, and there are countless these days. Logic out the door, bye bye.
-B&B are no pur sang writers, They were GREAT at adapting the original book story to the screen, I give them that. It's easy to say: 'Yeahhh but they had the books'. But summarizing a story and bringing it on TV in a way that works, is no small feat, they have a talent for that. But that doesn't mean they can actually write their own material and be even in the same league as the master himself. What's worse, they ALTERED the original story arch that Martin thought out, set up, and worked towards. So you get very strange things now suddenly (things Martin said he would have done differently). For instance: it "didn't seem right" (yeh that's a quote) for D&D to have Jon kill the Night King. Like my friend John said: Bad decision.. The only thing that would have been right is for Jon to kill the NK. It was his war and his fight and Arya came out of nowhere to fuck it up so they could say, 'We got you! Surprise! Ha! Nobody expected that!' Yeh, nobody expected it because it's a shit ending to the NK story. Jon had a long standing history with the NK, Arya did not. Arya had a long standing story with CERSEI. She was at the top of her hit list. Buuut..... D&D also didn't feel it was right for her to kill Cersei last episode. All those years of training with the faceless assassins...
-Littlefinger was another favourite of mine. I think Martin molded him strongly on Thomas Cromwell, a fascinating figure. I read the excellent novels on him by Hillary Mantel (recommendation!), she did a fantastic job in bringing him to life and making him more than a clever schemer. A man from humble background and simple means who worked his way to the top through his intelligence. The way Martin writes himself is so realistic I think, so surprising yet.. logical. That's why his books seem like historical works in some sense. I've always been laughed at when I said that (dragons?? Fictional characters? C'mon!) but I really felt that when reading the first books and then seeing those first 4 brilliant seasons. Its interwoven so well with super believable, realistic human interactions, scheming, plotting, etc. No wonder if has so many historic links, from Greek mythology to European history to Norse mythology to the War of the roses. Its realistic enough to become very believable. Well, that is very difficult to achieve. Just picking up a pen and starting to write about dragons and fictional characters... that's not the hard part. The hard part is to bring that alive and make it seem human and giving us actual lessons about real life, and real human interaction. Millions try each year but not many can actually do that. Neither can D&D unfortunately. All these plot holes... all these tactical errors, inconsistencies, impossibilities, are all eating away at the believable universe Martin wrote. You accepted those dragons before as real because the rest of the story is so realistic. Errors are punished. No plot armour. You can actually learn from that. Now it is slung in the realm of TV action heroes. No disrespect but they go by different rules of logic. It never used to be like that with GoT.
-Bran most certainly knew about Dany's turning, because he saw the dragon shadow over King's Landing, so he knew and he didn't tell anyone. Bran is still a passive useless cripple. None of his powers are used and you know what? They might just put him on the throne next week. Lame too. I suppose he knew Jon and Arya would survive so why spoil their fun. In fact, it was probably him who warged into that horse that Arya rode off on lol. Honestly, could the writers not have squeezed him in somewhere last episode? He can warge into an animal; why didn't they warge him into Drogon the dragon? My friend John agreed: Bran - yeh, fairly useless in the series. He'll probably get some high function in the end though. It makes sense in a way for Bran to sit on the throne even, if you think about it. He knows just about everything. He is an empty shell who has the 'universal memory' or whatever in his mind. He has no personal lust for power. He doesn't have any real personal wants or needs (other than his wheelchair and someone to push him around) and he already sits all day anyway so he's perfect for the role. With a good council he could be the best King ever. Nah.......fuck all that. Jon should be King and anyone else would only be chosen because no one would have predicted it. Again..... they'll probably go with unpredictable instead of what makes sense. So I can totally see Bran getting the throne because who in their right mind would ever have predicted it?-I liked John best here: Put music at full blast! GoT is great at their portrayal of those Luftwaffe spitfires in flight. Making these monsters look alive and beautiful, well done. How bad is it that I feel most emotionally touched by the animals in this series? Ghost the direwolf being left alone without as much as a hug from Jon. And Drogon who will be all alone now, without his brothers (or master, soon).
A lot of people seem to be defending this season using strawmen that it's just anger about how the plot is going down and how it's not how they imagined it to be, and how their favourite characters are not the good guys etc. But the people I speak to are critical less about the major plot beats and more about how rushed it all seems, how bad the writing is, how the main players are suddenly acting out of character to hurry along the plot, and the Hollywood-isation and plot armour. Which I think are all valid and justified criticisms of a show that's appeal was it was the antithesis of all these things. I am disappointed that a show that had so many excellent seasons (1-4) and a couple of OK ones (5-6) has faltered so much on what could have been an epic and devastating finale because the showrunners seem to have wanted to get it all wrapped up quickly and move on. The shocks and twists don't have much of an impact without good writing and development to back them up. I mean, really.... Imagine having instead the night king erase all the living.. That would have been a way better and shocking ending than this character and plot assassination we have to endure. The decay in the quality of writing is mesmerizing. Please put GRRM on suicide watchlist because D&D just butchered his life's work.
Episode 4 of season 8: Can't help to bitch another time about Game of Thrones' last episode.. Truly the last time I hope. If GoT season 5, 6 and 7 were considered "bad" by GoT standards (according to a minority of über-fans), season 8 so far is "bad" by all T.V standards. It is also finally sinking in with the general fans that this series has gone down the sharks (no not Starks). We saw it from season 5 or at least 6 onward already; the cheesy writing, the bad plots and dialogues, but right now it is so bad that even the uncomplicated viewers cannot miss it. This episode was utterly absurd. I didn't think it could get worse than episode 3, but it actually did. So many things wrong with it.-The unexpected ambush by Euron (possibly the worst GoT character ever). If you think too long about the realism of that scenario you'll probably suffer a brain aneurysm. How could Dany not have expected this? She's in a war against a literal pirate in his waters. As if she wouldn't have seen his ships from above on Drogon. How high does she have to go before she gets a bird's eye view of the waters? If a large group of ships can see you, you can see them. But let's ignore that. I mean, are you kidding me? Dany's dragons got ambushed by a fleet of ships that they couldn't see from miles up in the air.. To make it even worse, Rhaegal gets pinpoint laser-sniped by 3 ridiculously accurate shots, then Dany's dragon Drogon matrix-morphs it's way through 20 crossbows and avoids them all whilst much closer than Rhaegal was. (?) The scorpions were impossibly accurate when the writers wanted them to be, then moments later, impossibly inaccurate. And after one dies, the other dragon suddenly became Neo from Matrix, avoiding 100 spears per second. Horrible Hollyweird nonsense. How are you gonna kill a dragon that easily, target the heart and the neck & wing with 3 Qyburn scorpions but miss the other dragon when you launch almost 30 scorpions at it? (And how come a dragons armoured skin is so weak?) Those Scorpions are cool. Except that class of weapon doesn't work like that. It is not a sniper rifle. It is not accurate in real life. First two shots are lasers. The next 15 or so miss. Why? Because it's convenient. That, or Raegal forgot his plot armor at home. Poor thing. Then; why didn't she fly Drogon behind the ships and take them out instead of attacking from the front? Why would the dragon queen attack the enemy ships head on, into the path of the crossbows when she could have gone in from behind low? The scorpions were at the front of the ships. My friend corrected me that they can in fact be turned, but that didn't happen with an electrical super fast click of the button; that took time and manpower. Either way, it's so silly. She just had to fly behind them and 'dracarys.' And after all that, Dany could easily have circled back and destroyed that fleet after it fired on her, since the guns clearly only pointed in one direction. But no... Also, how do you suddenly write-off a dragon (a dragon, ffs) in 30 seconds of screen time? Idk, maybe if we got less scenes about drunk people getting more drunk, and more build-up towards a dragon dying... I get that they wanted to even the odds and give Cersei the upper hand in the war, but find a more creative and believable way to kill off the dragon.
-Then Dany turns up to the gates at King's Landing with a skeleton army that's within firing range of Cersei's army. Dany and her army of 50 soldiers; outside the King's Landing walls which are mounted with these over-powered crossbows. Cmon... Cersei could have just killed them all right there and then at the gates. They were all in range including the dragon. Why after her other dragon just got obliterated by one these things, would she endanger the last one like that? The scene between Daenerys and Cersei in front of Kings Landing was borderline pathetic, the more I think about it. Daenerys and at the most 80 unsullied asking Cersei to surrender? It's as if an ant asks a scorpion to surrender. Why go there anyway? Just send ninjagirl to get rid of Cersei. Cersei could easily have killed Dany, her queens guard, and her last remaining dragon as they stood totally exposed beneath battlements lined with scorpions. But Cersei decides not to do so for ... no reason. Lazy writing, just like when the dothrakis were just charging at an invisible enemy like fools with no plan... they're rushing everything just to write some plots off, which makes no sense. D&D; you had 2.5 years for this.
-Then there was Bronn's scene with Tyrion and Jaime. That whole scene just does a massive disservice to the Bronn character. I mean he's still all about prestige and money and not on-board as a friend to both Tyrion and Jaime. Really? Now he trusts them to keep their promises after he threatened to kill them? Everyone is acting like the soap opera version of themselves. And then that other new thing; every part of the plot is being told through love stories. The cherry on top is Jaime and Brienne (because Jon and Dany were already cheesy). Hard to believe that George Martin would have made Brienne and Jaime Lannister lovers. When Brienne stands next to Tormunde, she towers above him, but when she stands next to Jaime, they are supposedly the same height.. while Jaime and Tormunde most definitely don't differ that much in size. How can HBO make so many mistakes? Jaime's scene with Brienne when he left turned her into a bawling mess. She's a Knight for Christ's sake and she's crying like a lovesick teenager.. Jaime sudden switching personalities was also odd and maniacal, like the rest of the episode. The writers just added it to create some last minute melodrama. How many times in your life you have seen movie/TV show character says: "I'm not drunk", and then get up and almost falling over, adding: "Maybe a little"? Ugh.... GoT unworthy tbh..
-After the war with the dead our heroes came out looking pretty good if you ask me, as much as a little scratch on Jon's cheek. 7 seasons of build up to the Night King, who gets destroyed in one episode - at the very least we could have been given an explanation about what he wanted and who he was, etc? Nope - not a single mention of him in this episode. What a waste of a build up. He and his army of the dead were completely useless. Bran's usefulness is over too. We still have the most hyped character Bran doing nothing. Other than sitting still and gazing in the distance meaningfully. You bet they make him the master of the throne in the end, totally undeservedly.-Probably the most important piece of information in the entire show, Jon's true identity, was finally revealed to his supposed sisters Arya and Sansa... Finally we get to see their big reaction to this earth-shattering news! Or did we.. Oh, no.. it cut off before we even got to see their reaction... Jon throwing a bombshell at Arya and Sansa, and suddenly the TV switches to black screen. Great way to not put any effort into showing the reaction of something this big. You let the reveal between Jon, Bran, Sansa and Arya happen off screen. That is what you do when you're incapable of coming up with something meaningful and original. You can't kill a dragon (or an entire Dothraki army) in every episode after all. So just cut it. This would have never happened in the first seasons. This was an important conversation. Good thing they swore secrecy though. Took Sansa a good 5 minutes or so to break.
-Then there was the Starbuck's cup in the show. No explanation needed. Product placement allll the way. I wouldn't be surprised if for the last episode, everybody was wearing sneakers and T-shirts, that's how bad it is. I also noticed one of the Dothraki 'corpses' breathing on the funeral pyre.
-How was Missandei kidnapped? Shooting a bunch of ships from afar is one thing, going in there looking for one particular person is another. None of those important details were shown at all. It's like the script said: "ambush, dragon dies, Missandei kidnapped. Back to Kings Landing, Missandei is in chains". I bet the real script wasn't much different.
-Jon barely looks at Ghost, the Direwolf. Who's barely bigger than a sheep nowadays. There's so much wasted potential there. Nothing compared to the King of wasted potential himself. Or was it Night King? Can't seem to remember, because he was gone in 50 or so minutes.
Guess what D&D, no one remembers how you started - everyone will remember how it ended. This show had been so superior in writing for 4 seasons and now it's just cutting corners for the sake of setting up some cool shots or dramatic takes, and it's an extreme disservice to not only the fans but also to GRRM himself. Logic is completely out the window. All the character development is completely gone. The main characters have turned into the dead - lifeless and boring. The great writing has gone and the scenes are so staged and predictable. I could go on and on, but am already repeating (and repeating..) myself. This show has, amazingly, gone from one of the greatest shows ever to truly cringe-worthy, fan fiction, "gone Hollywood" absurdism. I honestly cringe every time Danny portrays some of her newly acquired feminazi tyrant traits. They continue their Hollywood schmaltzy take on it all. It's play-by-play Hollywood mediocrity. > Step 1. Achieve important victory. > Step 2. Remember Danny has a dark side, aaaand Immediately create artificial drama because people like Jon. The plot holes are ridiculous at this point. I really have been a super fan for several years, and remember discussing with my friend John how bad we felt for people who ended up dead due to accidents or illness etc; not just because they were dead, but because they would never know who would sit on the throne in GoT eventually. Not kidding here. That's how invested we were and how enthusiastic about this show. That feeling has sunk below freezing point for me (and a bit for John too frankly, although he is a little bit milder.. Just a little bit). Next episodes battle better be good. The only one who deserves the throne is Ghost. I can only hope George R. R. Martin doesn't watch this season. He'd probably die of a heart attack if he did.
May 1st 2019Ughhhh, sorry but can't help to have a little bitchfest about Game of Thrones... Again! I've been raving about it here some years ago and explained why. But things are dire these days. So episode 3 of the last season aired this weekend and I had pretty much high hopes for this Battle of Battles. A friend wrote me afterwards that ok ok, it is not the old Game Of Thrones anymore but they are literally making it up as they go along now, as the writer of the original books, G.R.R. Martin never wrote an official ending. He didn't think it's bad by any means but yeah, it's maybe a little Hollywood in places. And he linked me to a youtube channel that has a critical voice about the series. "There's one video maker who goes into explanations and makes comments bemoaning the slip into Hollywoodian cliches that made me think of you. I liked his thoughts on why Tyrion seems to suck now and why Euron Greyjoy in the TV show is shit compared to the character in the story. Also he didn't like the way Arya popped up deus ex machina to slay the Night King who was more like a comic book villain at the end (to use his words) as in 'Is that it?' ... Which despite my love for Arya I also felt. I thought the last episode with the battle at Winterfell was good to be fair but yeah ... some things were a little too pleasing. If you know what I mean." -- Well... I do know what you mean. In fact, I've already subscribed to that channel for some years :) I'll try to not rant too much and explain it rationally then, but I don't like what GoT has turned into. I never wanted to watch GoT at all initially, fearing it would be a stereotypical crowd pleasing tale of Good versus Bad. No offense, most people I love and have high opinion of do like that genre, so it is most likely just a defect in me. But I only started watching GoT a few years after it was first on TV because my Aussie friend kept hammering on that this show was different. So I was so pleasantly surprised: great dialogues and intrigue, unpredictability and when you make errors, you pay a price; GoT-style. Just fantastic. But ever since show runners Weiss and Benioff ran out of book material, the show has gone down the sharks I think. Did a big 180 turn on itself and everything it stood for. They just can't write. They can't continue in the spirit of G.R.R. Martin. Its really annoying, as I have also invested a lot of time in following it. Back in the days I was obsessed with a TV series called 'Lost'. Really good. Until the last season! It is actually famous for what happened then, it even has its own meaning, a Lost ending. All the awesome trails that were set out over the course of that series, all the open endings, the mysterious side trails, everything that would have had to come together in the finale season.... was just trashed. Like the makers just suddenly had enough and allowed their teenage kids to write the finale. People were absolutely livid, youtube was full of videos complaining and people going out of their minds. It was bad. Same reason, people invested years of weekly free time into getting absorbed into that world, and then they were taken for a fool in the end. Now, GoT has grown from nerd niche into a huge mainstream circus. So the grey majority is happy as a clam with the good old Heroes versus Villains. But not everyone shares this feeling. I'll try to explain why based on the last episode (just skip if you can't bear this whining of mine lol):
-They are doing exactly what George Martin always said he wants to avoid in his story. Even if you'd throw a nuclear bomb on Jon and Dany & Co, they'd still get back up with as much as a scratch. Blue dragon fire crashes walls but cannot touch Jon lurking behind the tiniest of rock. Brienne and others fighting surrounded by 10+ opponents, and the camera changes position and boom, all the opponents are dead. This show was always more or less realistic, now its just Hollywood. Spectacle over substance.-Rhaegar deliberately got an annulment and married Lyanna to have another son to fulfill his prophesy. Jon was supposed to be some sort of Promised Prince; he is of Ice and Fire. All this potential and.... nah. Lets forget about it. Lets just forget about that and let him just claim the Iron Throne like the rest of them. Not for a higher purpose of saving the living or confronting a foe that's going to destroy his home. Nope, it's just a superficial pursuit of a metal chair that no one cares about anymore.
-Arya killing the Night king, who was protected by 1/10th of his army while approaching Bran... The Night king who fell 10.000 meters or so off a dragon and just stood back up. Who withstands fire. Gets clubbed by little Arya, who had to be the female hero of course as GoT has gone all woke. The night king, who had a huge backstory that we were going to find out more about.... Ahh no. Lets just make him a stereotypical non-speaking bad villain suddenly in the end, who just wanted to kill Bran. Because that makes any sense. When the night king stood in front of Bran, the first thing I wanted to listen to was his voice. Maybe it would show a little more of who he and his men used to be. What curse he was under. Use that hour plus or another episode for all I care, to explain some more of how that whole universe works. Who are the other sentient races and why did they become that way? I wanted him to be some desperate soul trapped inside this curse of undeath for a thousand years, lashing out at the world to find a way to change his fate. Which he does by pursuing Bran and using him in some way to go back in time and alter history so that he never even became the night king. But no, they just had to go world war Z. Sucked.
-And Bran is reduced to a wheelchair limp. He is the three-eyed-raven! Make him use his powers for something meaningful! Nah, that story line is cut off too. They just don't have the imagination for it.
-GoT is just rushed, anticlimactic, filled with stupid decisions and plot armour now. How can those useless defenders not shove the invaders down the walls? That's basic military pragmatism. If you have a higher point of attack you are stronger. That's why cavalry is like the tanks of the past. Then you have the superheroes fighting off hordes of opponents suddenly. Even the pesty Mormont kid couldn't just simply die. She had to be a hero. Why did the Dothraki just charge kamikaze style? Even they don't know how to fight when their numbers are lower. Then there is Arya going ninja, and why did Theon had to die so pointlessly? Why would you charge like that? Why didn't he at least wait until the guy got at least some closer? I know why, for dramatic effect. But it was illogical, and given that this show for many seasons leaned on logic and eye for en eye when you make a simple mistake, it now has gone fully 180 and we can just get up and make a cup of tea in the mean time, and then another few, because it is guaranteed that the Heroes win and the Villains lose. Yawn.
-They didn't even have the balls to kill off some realistic amount of important cast members... just the minor ones. Jaime and Brienne survived... a zombie group gore attack. I almost had hoped for some serious death toll, to keep it GoT style. Because that is what happens when humans cannot cooperate in the real world, and get slaughtered for their failures. Even Dany is still alive. Hopefully she lost all of her army and will stop being the queen of the bitch fest...So yeh... At least the dragons are cool, that's something, but I had high expectations of this battle. Cercei and her clan, whatever. I don't care. She turned from rounded 3D figure into the cut out cardboard evil queen of snow white figure now, frantically pacing her room all day looking cunning and thinking of evil plans. So I lost interest there long ago. Jaime will kill her, of course. They ruined Euron too. I love my TV psychopaths. They got Ramsey Bolton right in the past, but Euron could have been so much better. But that Night king was something else entirely, that was supposed to be the highlight of the series, something we worked towards for 7 whole TV seasons. What a waste, the makers killed that story line by turning it into a superficial darkness versus light thing. Just my opinion.., I appreciate that many viewers enjoyed it at a lot. Production was great although I could only see half of it as it was so dark. Well, I will be more mild later on no doubt. I have restarted with the books of Song of Ice and Fire. Sigh of relief compared to the tv series nowadays...
Notre DameA friend from the States wrote me about the Notre Dame fire and said that despite liking that church, he was being somewhat less than sympathetic about the entire affair. Understands the cultural and historical importance to the structure, but was quite disgusted at how swift the rich were stepping forward to fund an immediate restoration. Raising a billion dollars overnight to fix a cathedral 'when there are so many better ways to spend such resources'. Of course, I disagree. On the topic of gargoyles, he'd never actually seen one! He'd seen a limited number of grotesques, but never one that served a purpose for carrying rainwater. 'I should install some at home'. Wondered also how a building made from stone catches on fire to begin with. -- I myself was happy that so many people donated money for the rebuilding of the church (of which it is still not known or revealed whether an accident or arson perhaps caused the major fire). But I understand that people get all cynical, that money is easily given for a pile of 'bricks', while people suffer from poverty. But that is not something so straightforward that it can be solved as easy as one rebuilding project can. And rich people often donate to humanitarian crises too, without running to the newspapers over it. "Yeh but they can deduct it from their taxes..". Yeh but the money ends up in a good direction nevertheless then, doesn't it? But perhaps cynics are right, and some rich people in France finally saw a chance to do things the American way perhaps? Instead of buying themselves a museum wing with their name on it in the Guggenheim museum, or in the Harvard school buildings, they now made themselves immortal by funding such large portions of the Notre Dame. Not anonymously, of course. I doubt the French will go as far as adding name plates to the different church aisles but who knows.... maybe small and hidden somewhere :D But then again the Notre Dame has a historical worth and is deeply buried in the hearts of mostly all French people.. And Europeans too I think. Most of them. Some of them? Europe is full of old buildings that people feel deeply connection with. Perhaps it's a European thing even to be so emotionally attached to a pile of bricks. 800 years of history, revolutions, Napoleon being crowned, the end of the revolution and war being celebrated there, etc. Built by the people, by the community with bare hands and no big tools back in 1200 minus some years. She is a symbol of Paris for the Parisians, more than the Eiffel tower is. Almost considered a person, the Lady of the city she is. Here an English person tries to explain the sentiment:
And the rich seized the moment. Although I'm happy they got the costs for the reconstruction together now, it was a little bit ironic yes because that same evening French president Macron was set to hold a big national speech on TV... Announcing far reaching political measurements against the 'yellow vests', who are still going strong. They keep causing mayhem each Saturday in big cities and are especially opposed to the 1% and macron and his banker pals. So what do the 1% do? That same evening they use the opportunity to show France their importance by donating (I mean 'releasing') such vast sums of money. Macron looking smug and taking the chance to sound like napoleon himself, speaking to the nation with cheesy superlatives, calling for unity. He couldn't have 'planned' it any better way if he had been in House of Cards. And the Notre Dame cathedral went up in flames like that because the whole roof of the cathedral (so not the 2 front towers) was made from 4000-something, 800 or so year old big oak trees. Although this French former head of the Notre Dame says here that he finds it very strange how such thick sturdy wood could go into flames like that. Because it's not like you can hold a match stick next to it and those super condensed wooden ornaments combust instantly... Besides, there are always two guards in the place, night and day, to be on patrol for possible fires. Something of this scale, so short after closing time for the public, is really peculiar given all the precautions that are constantly in place there. But yeh, there was quite a bit of wood in that stone building. It was all century old wood under that roof and then inside the cathedral there was wood everywhere too. Famous medieval wooden decorations all against the walls. So that went up in the end. The stone itself was kept wet by the firefighters and survived it and even some stained glass windows (very old famous ones) survived the heat. But now the mortar between the stones of the whole structure are softened and weakened and it has no roof partially either, so IF they have bad luck and a storm and rain wash over Paris any time soon, the whole structure may still collapse... (Luckily spring has started here). They constantly check its sturdiness now and hope for heat and dry weather. Hehe, first thing my dad said after that fire broke out: "Why can't those gangsters in the Vatican not cough up some billions?? God knows they have plenty" He has a particular dislike for organized religion however, and Catholicism in particular. My mothers side of the family is religious but even as kids he forbade us to go to church masses or read the Bible.
Songs of the day
April 29th 2019All's well. My skin is not too bad at the moment. Been busy with work and not been all too social the past weeks and don't have much to tell here at the moment either I'm afraid. Did go out for some walks again lately. A friend with rosacea asked me about exercise; "At what level of flushyness are you prepared to walk? My plan was to have started walking by now because of the nightly drop in temperatures, but I am flushy all the time at night, especially my nose. I know that walking will only aggravate everything further and I can't afford to get any more damage than I have now. I just always have that burny/flushy feel and it prevents me from walking. It also really puts a downer on my motivation to walk knowing that I am going to need ICE packs for the following few hours to cool me down. Frustrating.." - So yeh I have such a dilemma all the time too.. Although I don't have nose flushing myself, but I have bright red chin flushing as a new thing the past years. But most of all the cheeks. So when it comes to deciding whether or not to go out for long walks, I have almost a rating system in my mind, depending on how much my skin burns or not, which usually coincides with what level of red it is on the eye. So with no burning (which is more like minimal burning as my skin always feels off), I usually am not flushed in the face and then I go for a walk IF the sun is down or clouded and if there is a breeze. Completely wind still days are a no-no, as I heat up so quickly all over from exercise. I also need to wear shorts and bare arms or else all the heat goes straight to the face for me. Then from a scale of 1 - 10 I'd say that I do go for a walk when my face burning and redness are in a 1-3 scale of severity. So a bit skin pinkness but no flushing is OK for me usually. Some mild burning sensation is also not a problem as the wind outside kind of acts like the ventilator at home. I try to stay on relatively flat ground, which isn't always possible but hills and mountain climbs just add flushing potential as they are more intense and generate more heat plus put more pressure on those facial blood vessels. But when I am having a medium or full strength flush, I won't go out for a walk. I just cool at home until the flush is down and then the rest of the day is useless as the flushing threshold is so low then that anything can trigger it to flush again... Usually I have spells where I go for walks; a good week with only evening after-dinner flushes for instance. Then I eat really healthy, no cheating with chocolate and such in my case, so my skin is at its least bad (I won't say 'it's best' lol) and then I can walk more often.
But there is always one week a month that is sheer misery regardless of what I do, as it coincides with hormonal peeks. Am usually too sore and flushy to go for long walks then, only short evening strolls perhaps. But as soon as my face lights up and the flushing and heat are creeping up, I go back home to relax and cool down.... So all in all I can't exercise every day, just some good days. And even then, when coming back home, I need to put a fan on right away or I get rebound flushing from the sudden stop in walking and going into the warmer house without wind any longer.... I also have bought a treadmill. I don't use it as much as I want to but it's upstairs and I can walk during the day too then, as slow or fast as I want, with a fan aimed at my face... I understand completely why any flushers will have problems with exercise.. When full work outs or power training or even long walks are flaring your rosacea up too much, perhaps consider very short strolls in the evening? Just up and down the street and then back home. And just see how long you can do that? The more you walk, the less energy it also costs and the less heat your body produces I find. Walking for a long stretch after doing jack shit all month for me is also a struggle. I feel like lead and so heavy and it takes more effort but after a while your muscles seem to get adjusted to it again and it takes less effort also? Or even walking round the house for a certain time each day perhaps. Just being active with house chores and cooling regularly in between.
I'm still watching Game of Thrones and am about to watch episode 3 of this last season now. I cringed my way through the past two episodes, as the dialogue has turned so bad once the show makers ran out of book material to rely on. Some characters were pretty much intellectually slaughtered, especially Tyrion and the late Littlefinger. So this next episode will be a battle one, at which the show makers are usually fairly good. Little dialogue expected, so it may be a good one. I still hope that the villain of the story eats all the heroes alive, but small chance... A Portuguese friend of mine wrote about it: "That last episode got really woke... REALLY FAST. That's what happens when you get rid of the main writer. I was waiting for this to happen a long time ago but they had to take Martin out so that it goes fully fledge woke fest. Have you noticed the 'weeee wimiiin' stance plus the evil white racist kids giving the blacks the stink eye suddenly? Amazing. They managed to kill this whole series as soon as they got rid of the main writer. This episode has been the worst so far with all it's strong powerful independent weeemen complaining that they rule a world of men. The woke fest begun. I believe that the whole remainder of the series will be a single battle consisting of nothing but slow/drama infused killing of the remaining cast... and I'm also hoping like you that the chief zombie kills a bunch of them! Hopefully they wont do the sequels (I bet) they were planning on doing. They may even get in some big propaganda company like Disney to pick it up and shove more PC crap down the viewers throats." I did also start with another series, which hasn't disappointed yet. It actually was my own mother who kept jabbering on about how good this Spanish TV series "Casa de Papel" (Money heist) is. The first episode was really very good I thought. No dumbing down, in fact I had to keep my 100% attention with the screen and what was unfolding. Its cool, its smart so far and the actors are nice to look at. I'm actually looking forward to watching ep 2 of it tonight. If I had to compare it with anything, for now it reminds me more of a much more modern approach to Quinten Tarantino meets The Usual Suspects, but then different and with some Ocean's eleven but then much less smooth and more edgy. But hey, I've seen episode 1 only, so they may still fuck it up further down the line of course. That same Portuguese friend wrote about it: "Yes La casa de Papel. Haven't seen it yet, but everyone says it's pretty good. I'm just afraid that this casa de papel will turn out to be some woke shit too ha ha (yeh there I go again), which as you know is really making me cringe lately with modern movies and TV-series..." I've only seen episode one of the money heist last night, but I thought that it was very good. There are two tough lead females within the group but they are cool and not spewing political correctness lessons; in fact, they are mostly silent or say very little so far, which adds to their coolness at this point. Go see it for yourself if you like this genre of TV making.
Oh and a while back I read a series of four books called the Napolitan Novels, by Elena Ferranti. About the two friends Lenu and Lila. Now one of my girlfriends with rosacea also reads the same books and luckily she loves them too. "They’re absolutely the best! I love how she writes, I love the story, and her narrating voice even reminds me of my own voice and how I think in my head lol. I think many people might say that too. She is so honest and a beautiful writer. I am dreading when I finish the last book, I want them to go on forever... :’( Did you go to Ischia on your first vacation too? How BEAUTIFUL, that’s a nice similarity with Elena in the book. Nat, do you have any pics left from that time? I’d love love love to see them. Did you go alone with friends or with family? ❤️ I couldn’t even tell you the geography of Italy or where it is but I have a lovely picture in my mind about it from reading." I went to Ischia myself in 1995. It is a small island on the coast of Naples, in the center of Italy. I had been saving money from jobs in the cleaning kitchen of a restaurant and went with a school friend, Céline. Her parents went too but they stayed in a 5 star hotel there called Punta Molino. It still exists I saw some time ago. And we stayed a bit further down the island in a little holiday cabin. 3 whole weeks and it was nice but my school friend and I did not see entirely eye to eye at some point, as we had agreed to combine culture with beach and going out in the evenings. But all she wanted to do when there was sun lounge, swim sleep and go clubbing :) Logical for a 15 year old! It was me who was the odd one out. I was a bit homesick then as I wanted to see stuff so eventually her dad went along with me to see Naples and Pompeii. I looked up some old photos of that trip for my friend and will add some here too :)
Songs of the day
Who doesn't hate parties..
April 16th 2019Bit of a sad day after that awful fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.. Everyone seems shocked in this part of the world. She is seen as the grand old dame of France, almost like a person. One of my favourite elements of the Notre dame are the gargouilles (or gargoyles); the little stone creatures placed all over it, looking down on the city from high above. I'll add some photos. There are two cats (well, cat-like creatures) too. They were historically placed there to protect the Notre Dame, that's why they look so menacingly. They are supposed to scare anyone with bad intentions away and ward off evil. Ok and some of them also help drain rain water.. I hope most of them are saved from destruction, but its not yet sure what happened to most of them. I watched most of it live on TV and it was pretty saddening to see.. I've been inside the Notre Dame so many times. To see those flames blast up so many meters high and for as long as it did was disheartening. That monument is not just important for Christians but also for the French as a whole, and probably for people all over the world. It has withstand 800+ years of history; of wars, floodings, changes of kings, regimes, the worst epidemics of mankind, two world wars. And now a simple spark of someone and something destroyed it within hours. Luckily not all of it, and luckily the outer structure is still there. It will be rebuilt. But the old materials and the authentic cathedral itself will be gone and be impossible to replace with the historic materials it was once built with. Having a modern replica is just not the same.. Guess it will be second best. I understood the call for fire extinguishing planes to drop waterbombs on it, yesterday, but that could have damaged the outer structure. Now that structure has been preserved.... luckily. Not all of the glass stained windows unfortunately, which were so famous 😞 Some made it but most in the main cathedral are gone.. Luckily the über-rich have already donated some money. And if you are interested, this video is great I think and shows not just the construction of the Notre Dame but also how Paris evolved throughout time, especially the Ile de la Cité, the heart of Paris where the Notre Dame was built from the year 1160 onwards.
It's not sure yet what sparked the inferno. The fire started very shortly after the last tourist visitors were gone out around 7 PM. But there was major reconstruction work being done on the tower (from Viollet-le-Duc which has been destroyed now), so perhaps something went wrong there. Someone smoking a cigarette sneakily, while that is actually forbidden.. Or some electricity connection that wasn't great. Or someone making sparks while using tools. Who knows. Although such operations are done at least partially by specialist and you may assume that they take very strict safety precautions, as the roof they were working on was all wood. The workers are said to have left the site over an hour before the fire started. But a 50 man strong investigation team is looking now into the cause of the fire. I hope they can find it and rule out foul play.
Song of the day
My skin has been doing fine some days and terrible on others. Very strange. On Saturday I woke up pale and finally not burning for a change, and spent a whole day in town with a friend, shopping and going in and out of places. Even spending an hour in a warm cafe. When I checked what my skin looked like in my pocket mirror, it had a normal colour. I didn't go in overdrive with my diet or anything; didn't become over-confident, instantly grabbing the nearest chocolate bar (which... has happened some times in the past I must admit). Yet, the next morning I woke up super red, flushed and on fire again. Had another social 'event' planned for that day, which was a drag with my sore red face. Its depressing how much the state of your skin (and pain levels) can interfere with everyday normal activities and moods. A friend with rosacea (also the flushing and burning subtype like me) wrote something related to this to me:
"My face has felt quite normal for the past few weeks when I wake up. My nose still stings a bit, but it is pretty much as normal as I have felt in 7 years. I had forgotten how good it feels. I found myself laughing openly and loud at something and I just felt super hyped. I realized it was because for a few days I felt normal (no constant skin burning and flaring) and like I used to feel. It was such a good feeling - I really missed it! The pain has always lurked beneath the surface of my face and I always felt like I was constantly balancing the burn."
I feel just the same. I had to travel the past week and spent quite a lot of hours in hot stuffy trains. In the past I could sit on what they call the trains balcony, outside of the heated carriages, and be sort of OK. But these days, Holland has ultra modern trains, that are stripped of fresh air vents, windows that can open, unheated balconies and such, but instead are centrally heated modern machines. It is hot everywhere you go, even in the high-tech toilets (I remember them being draught-holes of cold air.. Not that I would hang around in cold toilet cubicles, mind you!). So how do I travel with my severe rosacea? I bring a couple of things; firstly I put a small plastic water bottle in the freezer overnight. It becomes solid ice then. I put it in a special insulating cooling bag and add about 3 frozen gel packs. I also bring small hand fans but lately just can't be arsed using them as it draws so much attention from fellow travelers, which makes me feel self conscious, which spikes the flushing as well. So i leave them for 'emergencies', or something. And I just sit in a normal train carriage, a 2 seater spot instead of a 4 seater one, at the window. I use my laptop or read a book, but wrap one of my cold packs in a clean (non-perfumed washing powder) t-shirt and lean with one cheek onto the cold pack. I can doze off a bit too that way, but always make sure to wrap the gel pack up properly. They do go soft and warm quickly in a warm train, but tossing and turning the thing around does keep me cool-ish for a good hour usually. I also try not to eat before or during the train travel, as most foods and the food digestion makes me more flushy. But I always bring some food just in case, often prepacked melon pieces you can buy at the station store here (100% fruit, no preservatives added) or I bring some food from home. By the time I need to go back with the train I still have the frozen water bottle, which takes a very long time to warm up or melt. Even 12 hours into my trip, it often still has a core of ice, and the charm of it is that even the water that melted is cold enough to cool my cheeks (wrapped up in that t-shirt again). I can prevent a bad flush or mega burning of my face this way and people don't look too much at me this way (not like the constant head turning by others to locate or identify the zooming noise these hand fan make). When on the go, I also use the time in between trains, or while waiting on another train to catch, to find the windy cool spots in the station, cooling down. They are usually not hard to find when you leave the shop areas or just wait near the platforms.
I watched an intriguing documentary called Three Identical StrangersIt investigates the story of a set of triplets, who never knew of each others existence until they were 19 years old. (*Spoilers following now!). Robert goes to college for the first time in 1980; Sullivan County Community College. He is welcomed warmly by the students there. Too jovial, perhaps. They clap him on the back, hug him, girls kiss him. They say how good it is to see him back. When Robert ('Bobby') tells them this is the first time he sets food on the campus, they laugh and clap him on the back. Then a guy named Michael Domnitz knocks on his door and is stunned to see a double of his best pal Eddy. Eddy left school that summer, and wasn't returning, so Michael knew this had to be Eddy's double. He said that this guy had the same grin, the same hair, the same expressions. The similarities were uncanny. With some clarity of mind he starts interrogating Robert about his date of birth, his year of birth, his birth place, whether or not he was adopted, and they soon realize he must be Eddy's twin brother. Robert and Michael call Eddy and they rush to his house, a few hours drive. When Eddy opens the door, these two boys seemed to be looking in a mirror. They are close right away. The story and photos of the reunited boys makes the newspaper, which is when friends and relatives of a certain 'David' realize that he must be related to them also, as he looks also exactly the same. Up to the club-sized meaty hands they all share. That's when the story went from great to amazing, and the three are invited in talk shows all over the country and became celebrities. They feel instantly connected, start wrestling on the floor the moment they meet and find out there are many similarities, despite them all having grown up in different circumstances: they all smoke the same brand of cigarettes, they all have wrestled professionally, they sat and moved the same way, they finished each others sentences; same interests, same personalities, they liked the same type of foods, fancied the same type of women (older ones!). They even came up with the same ideas or thoughts, only to find out that the other had just told a friend something similar just prior.
The most interesting part was that they all three grew up in very different households. The boys are Jewish and were placed with Jewish adoptive parents. But that is about where the similarity stopped. David grew up in a blue collar family (not educated immigrants running a little neighborhood store), Eddy in a middle class family (father was a college-educated teacher) and Robert in an affluent family (a medical doctor and an attorney). Davids father was a very warm, larger than life personality, always smoking a big cigar. All three boys loved him, calling him 'bubala', because he was so loving and effectuate. He would say: "I have two more sons now". The boys were excited and started hitting the town together, buying a bachelor pad in New York together and living it up. But their parents were angry; why hadn't the adoption agency told them that their sons were part of triplets? And what had these boys been put through, unbeknownst to them? All parents recalled having dealt with inconsolable boys during their baby phase, all three would hit their head against the wall as a baby to pass out and one would hold his breath until he passed out. Now, they started to realize that these three boys had been sleeping together side by side in their cot until they were six months old; until the moment they were adopted. One relative said; 'What a terrible deprivation for them'. All three were adopted from Louise Wise Services. They catered for New Yorks social, intellectual and financial elite back in the days, dealing with Jewish babies and clients. The parents together went back to this agency, demanding answers. They were told that Yes, they had separated the boys at birth. But the reason being was said to make it easier for them to be adopted; apparently a set of triplets was too hard to place. So the splitting up was in their 'best interest'. The parents said it was rubbish, as all of them would have adopted all three, if they could. But that was the official response they received. Eddy's father then, on the way out, remembers that he forgot his umbrella and walked back in, only to see the Agency top toasting a glass of champagne among each other. "As if they had just dodged a bullet". They didn't manage to make a lawsuit of it, as the law agencies they contacted refused to charge Louise Wise Agency, as a number of their own clients were trying to adopt through them. 
The boys go back to their flashy lives, find partners, Eddy has a baby daughter. Then a New York Post journalist gets onto the case, and after investigation he stumbles onto information about a never published but nevertheless infamous psychological/ social experiment in the 1960's, separating identical twins or triplets before adoption and placing them in distinctively different social backgrounds. All these babies came from one and the same adoption service in New York City. Once the boys and their families learned about this in the paper, they were livid. And started telling about childhood memories they had, about a young man and woman coming to the house, regularly, to take tests. IQ tests, personality tests, eye hand coordination tests. Filming them while playing, while doing Rohrschach ink tests, doing other tests. The parents were told that this was general standard research to follow up on the development of 'adopted children'. After all, none of them were told that their son had twin siblings. Finding out that these test people went from brother to brother to brother, within a 100 mile radius, for years and years, without having the boys know how close by their brothers were living. So what was this study about? It was set up by Dr Peter Neubauer, an Austrian Holocaust refugee and distinguished psychiatrist in New York. Developed into Freuds ideas. There were other sets of identical twins who had undergone the same fate. Strangely enough, this long standing, intensive study was never officially published in any official Publication. Why were they concealing their test results? A friend of Peter Neubauer explains in the documentary what she knows about his aims with this study; he wanted to make a difference into children's lives; he wanted to find out how much of a child's development is nature and what is nurture. This is a classical 'dilemma' in psychology; how much of what we do, like, achieve, think, want and so forth is down to the way we were raised (so environmental, social and psychological etc influences) and how much of that is wired down deep inside us, in our genes? Dr Neubauer thought that when you split up identical twins or triplets, with the same set of genes, and you place them in radically different families, changing the nurture aspect of their lives; then we will find out the answer to this question. That is why all three boys ended up in such different adoptive families. Today the notion of this thing sounds absolutely horrific. But, his friend explained, in the 1950's and 60's people didn't think like that; it was an exciting time for research and scientific opportunities. It was a pressing question back then; how much of nature and how much of nurture makes us eventually who we are. You can imagine that if one identical twin, for instance, is dealing with alcoholic or abusive parents, whereas the other has a warm and supportive set of parents, that both kids will develop into very different adults. One may be worried, cautious, introverted, while the other could be care free and confident. But scientists needed to actually test this to be sure, and back then, apparently it was not such a big deal to split up and follow up identical sets of twins and triplets. And what this experiment showed with the three brothers, is that an astonishing part of who we become, is down to genes. Despite their very different upbringings and social backgrounds, the brothers were eerily similar in many ways. from preferences to life choices to behaviours to opinions. And another set of identical twins found - two girls - underwent the same treatment and also ended up very alike; both independently of the other were newspaper editors in their respective schools, both went to a film academy and so on. For scientists, this outcome was not what they expected, and neither what they had wanted to see. We all like to have the feeling that we are in charge of what we do and where we go in life. That we have influence over our own lives, some control. Turns out that no matter what you do, a lot of what we end up doing and choosing is already wired down and predetermined for us. And most humans don't like that :D So why weren't these results published? Dr Neubauers friend also does not know why the results weren't published, and she thinks they should, because this study was never done before, and will never be done again (most likely).The boys went into business together, opening up a New York restaurant at some point that was very popular ("Triplets"), but once Bubala, Davids father passed away, the connecting link between them died too and their different work ethics started to make tears in the friendship. Their relatives explained that when you didn't grow up together as brothers, but instead were thrown together during your young adulthood, you also never learned how to resolve conflict together. How to adapt to the other, compromise, or keep the peace. Those things are usually learnt while growing up. And they missed out on all of that. They simply never learnt how to life with each other. Bobby had enough at some point and left the business. Eddy and David felt betrayed and their relationship was negatively affected by it. Especially Eddy felt very upset, being the one brother who did not handle conflict well. He developed psychological problems, experiencing long highs and lows. Charming on the one hand but dealing with anger and darkness on the inside on the other hand. Eddy was diagnosed with manic depression and had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward. Then it turns out that the other brothers were also under psychiatric care during their teenage years. All three had been "very disturbed" as kids, dealing with a challenging and dysfunctional adolescence. Then the documentary makes a grim turn and shows a clip from an 80's talk show, where one of the boys (just after they reunited and became celebrities) is asked; 'One of you was involved in a murder, is that right?'. Robert answers and says "No, in fact I was accused of being involved in a murder. And it was me, who never met his person who was killed. It was peer pressure, friends pressuring me into covering for them, telling a story for them to the police. That pulled me right into it, but I have never hurt anyone in my life."
But then the documentary makers found the only living research assistant who worked on the study, who is still alive and is willing to talk; Dr. Lawrence Perlman. He jokes that yeh, it was tempting sometimes to joke that he had seen someone "who looks just like you!" the week prior. (Laughs...). He admits that in retrospect, it was probably ethically wrong what he did, but he was just a work aide in the whole process. He gets out some old notes he made on the triplets and reads out that one was already having aggression issues as a child, and that he noted that his respective parents were not very tuned in to his problems or able to stop it. But he left the studies after 10 months and so never heard anything about the study results..... He says that there was never a mention of mental health being studied. But that instead differences of parenting was what they were focused on. And how they affected development. The thing was of course that they needed a second adoptive kid in these new adoptive families, to actually already know what these family dynamics were like (and thus to know in which 3 different families these triplets had to be placed). But all three boys had in fact an older adoptive sister, two years older than them. Who were also all placed by Louise Wise Services. Making not only the kids lab rats, but the adoptive parents also. Comparing the three families, it turned out that Davids father (Bubala) stood out as the generous, warm guy; everything his son did was wonderful. He could do no wrong. Bobby (Roberts) father was very busy as a doctor and didn't have the same time to be with Bobby as Bubala had with David. But he was very devoted to Bobby nevertheless. Eddy's father was rather strict; he made the rules, he was the boss. He had a strict, conservative militaristic approach to life. A strict teacher. And they didn't have a great relationship. He didn't talk much about him. And Eddy always said he didn't feel he fit right in with his family. Like he wasn't in the right place. They didn't discuss problems with each other, but were a rather quiet family. Some people are just not a good fit. So depending on the families they were given, dealt with by fate (or scientists), their lives turned out differently. Yeah they liked the same things superficially and smoked the same brand of cigarettes. But deep down, they were very different; the result of nurture (over nature). We drift into the direction that our genes tell us to go, but it doesn't mean you are destined to be one person or another. Some parents gave some of the brothers more handles to deal with life than others. Eventually after this documentary, the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services allowed David and Robert to look into the sealed files, and despite having 10.000's documents it does not contain a clear conclusion on what exactly was investigated. And neither the identity of all the other twins in the study. So there are still twins out there who do not know about their other twin existing...
Song of the day
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