This was a brilliant day out! The illusions themselves were varied and interesting. Everything from automata to plasma spheres to a mirror maze. The camera obscure was very interesting and was presented awesomely by the staff. I would definitely visit again.

I went here for breakfast on my trip to Edinburgh. The food was great and the staff were friendly. There was also plenty of choice for coeliacs (people who are gluten-intolerant). The choice of music (mostly rock, alternative, and grunge) that was playing was also fantastic. Would definitely visit again.

I visited this restaurant with my family on our first night in Edinburgh. We had been wandering the area for a while, searching for a restaurant that was open, not too expensive, not too busy, and that served gluten-free food. We found it at The Ship On The Shore. The staff were cheery and helpful, and there was a good selection of drinks. I had the linguine, followed by limoncello sorbet, which were exquisite. While the entire meal was a bit more expensive than we are used to, I would say that it was worth it for such an enjoyable meal.

The WiFi was not working and the beds were a bit uncomfortable, but the staff were friendly and helpful, the rooms were clean and it was, overall, pretty good for a budget hotel. The hotel is also not far from the city of Edinburgh, so breakfast and entertainment are well within reach.

You don’t know what to expect from the odd-looking wooden box which now holds pride of place in your living room. You turn it on and fumble with the controls for a while. Suddenly, the voice of an opera singer pierces the static.

It’s like magic, coming to you through the air, filling the world with possibility and wonder.

What is it like to witness the birth of an invention set to transform humanity? I was not around when radio was invented, but I did experience BBS culture and the early web of the 1990s. It was a time when millions of people were “coming online” for the very first time, without any idea of what that meant. The Internet, as David Bowie put it in 1999, was “an alien lifeform”.

The past that wasn’t

Hypnospace Outlaw is a 2019 indie game that lets you experience the birth of a surreal alternative reality version of the early web. The year is 1999. You are a community enforcer in hypnospace, a web-like network accessed through special headsets people wear during their sleeptime.

You play the game through a desktop environment that looks a bit like Windows 98, macOS and Microsoft Bob were put through a blender. It comes with a browser, an email-like messaging app, a virtual wallet, and a download manager.

You interact with the world of Hypnospace Outlaw through a desktop environment that combines the best and worst of computing around the turn of the millennium. Fortunately, downloads are a lot faster in this simulated reality. (Credit: Tendershoot. Fair use.)

Unlike the web, hypnospace is controlled by a single corporation, Merchantsoft. Its customers can create pages, which are organized into different communities like “The Cafe” and “Goodtime Valley”. On the surface, it resembles web communities like Geocities or its modern-day nonprofit successor, Neocities.

Yet, as the player, you are keenly aware that this is not the early web but an alternative history. You don’t know the rules of this world, but you are tasked with enforcing them. Soon, you receive your first assignment: to trawl hypnospace for copyright violations. Maybe this alternative reality isn’t so different after all…

Much of the gameplay is exploratory: browsing pages, downloading and trying little apps, getting rid of viruses that came with the apps you just tried, and so on. The assignments you receive guide you through the game’s larger narrative and timeline.

Rhythm of discovery

Music is everywhere in Hypnospace Outlaw. The game world is suffused with fictional bands and their creations, from the optimistic MIDI sound of the Millenium Anthem to hyper-commercial, autotuned “coolpunk”; from “Seepage” tracks that sound like Linkin Park demo tapes to the wonderful ridiculousness that is “The Chowder Man”.

The communities you interact with in the game are haplessly curated by the Merchantsoft corporation, though you’ll soon discover corners of hypnospace that have eluded its control. (Credit: Tendershoot. Fair use.)

It really does feel like you’re back in the late 1990s, building a library of MP3 files from dubious sources and trying to figure out what’s actually worth listening to when you can listen to anything.

Amidst the surrealism of it all, the game does have things to say: about commercial control over online communities, about critical thinking, and about the pure joy of free expression in a nascent medium. As I reached the end of the story, I found myself far more emotionally invested than I expected.

The Verdict

I recommend Hypnospace Outlaw without reservations; it truly is a small masterpiece of immersive storytelling. But I would suggest keeping it in your backlog until you have a few hours at your disposal and are ready to fully engage with its world.

This is not a game to rush through, but an experience to savor. As Fre3zer would put it: you gotta “chill it right”.

Primer

Panniers are a staple for carrying stuff on your bike, but sometimes you need to lock your bike and continue on foot. Standard panniers tend to have some sort of carrying straps, but they aren’t very convenient off the rack. Ortlieb Vario PS rises to the challenge by doubling as a backpack!

The review

This isn’t the only backpack pannier out there, but based on my experience and research, it’s likely one of the best. Why? First off, the build quality is good, and being Ortlieb, it’s fully waterproof. As a pannier it functions just as one would expect. It’s really the backpack side that makes things interesting. And I say side for a reason. Unlike in many other backpack panniers, the rack mounts and the backpack straps are on different sides of the bag. This gives room for properly implementing both.

The only hiccup this product runs into is in the backpack mode. There’s a plastic bottom plate, which unfortunately has a tendency to burrow into one’s lower back. Unless remedied, this can make the backpack really painful under a heavier load. Luckily the bottom plate is detachable so one can just take it out, or put some padding to it’s edge. Still, this is a rather dumb design flaw in an otherwise great bag.

The bottom plate is shown in lighter grey. Otherwise one can see that the bag is quite roomy. (Credit: Ortlieb. Fair use)

The verdict

Despite the one flaw, Vario PS is still probably the best pannier backpack out there. If you’re ever riding with just one pannier, this is a near perfect choice.

Organic maps is FOSS and uses Open Street Map data. You can download regional maps for offline usage. All the basic mapping features are there, though some more advanced ones might still be lacking at this date.

Compared to Google Maps and the like, Organic maps respects your privacy.

Compared OsmAnd — which is the de facto mobile app for OSM — Organic is faster and has a cleaner UI. OsmAnd gets quite laggy when there are a lot of maps downloaded.

The review is based on the freely available extract of El Dik, Dina; Iskander, Emad (2021). Yalla! Let’s Learn Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Verbs. ISBN 978-977-416-909-0 available here.
The approach to give all the Egyptian Arabic verbs and their forms in Arabic script seems to be more or less unusual in the sphere of Egyptian Arabic grammar books. I think it is useful though as it gives morphological information that is harder to derive from romanizations. Moreover, the words can actually be found in real life in written form, so it is useful to learn them in Arabic script. This makes it easier to recognize them in such a context. On the other hand the book uses Arabic spellings adapted to pronunciation that are not found in written texts in the wild. Maybe a combination of Arabic script and transliterations would have been a superior approach.
Sorting the verbs by frequency of their usage looks like a very good order for studying the most common verbs first.
The “Grouping of ECA verbs” (pp. XI–XIV) in the introduction is a nice overview. Unfortunately, it might evoke the impression to list all existing patterns maybe with exception. This is not the case and should have been mentioned clearly I think. Many verbs with defective, hollow or doubled roots and as such their underlying patterns exist for forms where the given list leaves those out.
Quite some smaller mistakes in the introduction (“**Form I” should instead read “*Form II”, p. XIII; I think I’ve seen more that I failed to note down) undermine the trust in the reliability of the book that might appear at more critical content harder to spot).
The price of 25 GBP is sadly quite high.
Given the mentioned drawbacks, the books still looks like a helpful resource for students aiming to improve their understanding of Egyptian Arabic verbs, especially due to the used order by frequency and the use of Arabic script despite its artificial spelling.

Imagine you find an alien spacecraft crashed in your backyard. A door has cracked open. You carefully step inside. You discover a world beyond your comprehension. Objects appear before your eyes, only to disappear into thin air. Lights flash in colors you cannot see. It will take humanity’s brightest minds years—decades—to make sense of it all.

Biology is a science attempting to comprehend something no less strange or bizarre: the evolved nano-machinery that constitutes what we call life. We give our discoveries opaque names. Ribosomes. The Golgi apparatus. Neutrophils. When those get too long, we abbreviate. MHC class I and II. ACE2. CD24.

Here lies a wondrous and endlessly fascinating world. Understanding it better could enrich our lives and help immunize us against dangerous pseudoscience. If only we were better at describing this complex, seemingly impenetrable universe inside our own bodies!

Philipp Dettmer is no stranger to making the complex comprehensible. He founded a YouTube channel called Kurzgesagt (“in a nutshell”), which publishes lovingly crafted videos on subjects like wormholes, geoengineering, and brain-eating amoebas. Thanks to brilliant animation, epic music and a dark sense of humor, every video is a treat.

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive is Dettmer’s first attempt to bring Kurzgesagt’s trademark educational approach into book form. On 341 pages, Immune sheds light on the incredibly complex macromolecular machinery that protects us against bacteria, viruses, and even snake venom and parasitic worms.

Most illustrations are more understated than the ones shown here, but this is not a book that shies away from depicting a Kiler T Cell saying “BLARGHL”. (Credit: Philipp Dettmer / Random House. Fair use.)

This is not a textbook. Nor is it the kind of pop science writing that tries to make science accessible by giving you lots of biographical detail about scientists. It’s strictly focused on the actual mechanics of the immune system, but written in a style that’s entirely Dettmer’s own. To give a small sample:

The Neutrophil is a bit of a simpler fellow. It exists to fight and to die for the collective. It is the crazy suicidal Spartan warrior of the immune system. Or if you want to stay in the animal kingdom, a chimp on coke with a bad temper and a machine gun. [p. 59]

Of course, Dettmer frequently reminds us that the immune system is not, in fact, sentient or intentional. It’s just that these kinds of analogies are too darn useful to refrain from using them. So, Dettmer talks about hot dog buns, display windows, and desert kingdoms as he helps us navigate the complex nano-scale landscape inside our bodies.

But analogies only go so far, and the book uses biological terms and plenty of straightforward illustrations. At the same time, Dettmer will often (a bit too often) emphasize that he’s still simplifying things greatly. The book is littered with entertaining footnotes that expand on the text.

Cells with two-factor authentication

The immune systems of humans and other animals don’t just have to kill invaders. They have to adapt to viruses they’ve never encountered before, detect cells that have been hijacked, calm down when a threat has been eliminated. To make matters worse, the attackers evolve rapidly!

Immune responses involve the innate immune system, a sort of standing army, and the adaptive immune system, which crafts specialized responses for novel threats. Together, they self-organize into a complex dance. Isolate the threat. Sample data. Ramp up immune responses. Kill or neutralize invaders. Detect cells that behave suspiciously. Mess with virus production.

Perhaps most fascinating is our bodies’ ability to learn and remember—to acquire immunity. At its heart is what Dettmer calls the largest library in the universe: T-cells. Wikipedia has a more understated but no less awe-inspiring description:

Each mature T cell will ultimately contain a unique T-cell receptor that reacts to a random pattern, allowing the immune system to recognize many different types of pathogens. This process is essential in developing immunity to threats that the immune system has not encountered before, since due to random variation there will always be at least one TCR to match any new pathogen.

It takes time for our adaptive immune system to find the perfect match for any given threat. But once it has done so, it switches into a kind of mass-production mode, to produce vast numbers of antibodies tailored to a specific enemy.

To avoid misfiring, cells perform complex verification dances. T-cells undergo a selection process that weeds out ones that might attack the body. And they must be matched with another cell type (B-cells) that have been activated by the same threat. Dettmer calls it a kind of two-factor authentication.

As someone working a lot with technology, I found these comparisons illuminating. Understanding the sophisticated evolved security responses of our bodies may very well inspire us to develop better ways to deal with novel threats of a more digital variety.

Knowledge as immunity

Our brain, in a way, is part of our immune response. Our decisions on what to eat and drink, what to do with our free time, how to prevent and how to treat illness—they profoundly influence our ability to stay healthy, and to get better. When we believe things that are patently false, it can literally kill us.

Dettmer spends the final sections of his book trying to convey how understanding our immune system can help us make better decisions.

He explains the remarkable accomplishment of vaccination as a way to train the body without hurting it: like a dojo where you learn to fight with weapons made of foam and paper. In contrast, parents who opt their kids out of vaccines are sending them to a “Nature Dojo”:

The philosophy of the head trainer is that kids should train with real weapons, real knives and swords, so they are better prepared for the real dangers of the world. After all, it is more natural and real life just is dangerous. From time to time, a student will get a deep cut and require stitches. And yeah, OK, there may be a lost eye and sometimes a kid may die. But it is the natural way! [p. 240]

He asks us to question dubious claims about “boosting your immunity”—reminding us of the immune system’s mind-boggling complexity and interplay of countless parts, where any actually effective intervention can have disastrous effects. He tells us to exercise (it’s obligatory in any book of this kind), and describes how stress can knock our immune system out of balance.

These final sections of the book sometimes get a bit rambling. The most muddled chapter discusses the popular misconception that hygiene has weakened our immunity against disease. Dettmer argues for preserving good hygiene while also embracing the role of nature and dirt in our lives—a reasonable argument that’s unfortunately not very coherently made.

The Verdict

With Immune, Dettmer has managed something very difficult: to write a long book almost entirely about the mind-boggling macromolecular and cellular machinery inside our bodies, without fluff, that’s entertaining to read. I would love to read similar books about subjects like epigenetics, metabolic pathways, or neurobiology!

Science books often have an incongruous approach to visual explanation. Immune is the rare exception—while it does not have as many illustrations as some readers might expect from the Kurzgesagt founder, what’s here supports the text perfectly in a consistent, pleasing style.

The latter parts of the book would have benefited from a bit more rigorous editing, but I’m glad that Dettmer’s funny and casual voice hasn’t been whittled down to science-journalism-speak.

All in all, I cannot recommend the book highly enough, and would give it a full 5 stars.

Auch wenn die Flut der Burgerläden schon länger vorbei ist öffnet doch noch ab und zu ein neuer Laden. Und diesmal hat er es in sich. Die Burger hier gehören meiner Meinung nach zu den besten, die es in Hannover gibt. Eine sehr kleine Speisekarte lasst erahnen, das es hier hohe Kompetenz in Sachen Burger und Co. geben kann. Und die Vermutung bestätigt sich. Was auf meinen Fotos (es liegt am Fotografen nicht am Burger) sehr unscheinbar aussieht ist ein sehr leckerer Burger. Frische Zutaten, reichlich verwendet und vor den Augen zubereitet. Dazu leckere, grob geschnittene Pommes und ein Getränk nach Wahl - fertig ist das Menü.

Burger und Pommes im Black Stork (Eigenes Werk. Lizenz: CC-BY-SA.)


Einzig das Ambiente vor Ort ist ein wenig ungewohnt. Der halb-offene Gastraum, wenn es denn so bezeichnet werden kann, an einer der Hauptverkehrsstraßen Hannovers ist gewöhnungsbedürftig. Im Sommer lässt es sich gut aushalten im Winter bleibt wohl nur die Mitnahme.