Inbetweeners 43- Xalatra Questline Part 4- The Maw

Now that Bruce was inhabited by a lich/one of the most devout followers of Vecna, the group was free to proceed deeper underneath Sigil. It was here that things start to get... weird.

My notion of Sigil as existing outside of normal Euclidean geometry gets tricky to fully explain and develop a system for... so many times it came down to vibes for narrative flavor. But here we are getting close to one of the main engines that allows Sigil to function as it does—The Maw.

Sigil is constantly being reformed and remade. New city blocks are added, destroyed, or changed. No one knows exactly the scale of this, outside of the Lady of Pain of course. Different academics and scholars try to track it, but no one even knows how large the city is. Any map of the city is instantly made worthless, and the mere act of trying to map it is futile as the map itself will warp before your very eyes. This means that there are entire sections of the city that someone studying its layout may be unaware of. They could only know about half the city, or 10%, or 2%. Some hypothesize that the city is infinite and exists across all dimensions. While this is a more extreme hypothesis... no one knows for sure. But suffice to say, Sigil is in a constant state of flux.

As the players delved deeper underneath the city, they saw all the ways in which things were remade. The Gutworks had basic recycling, akin to how things are reprocessed in the real world, albeit with some magical/steampunk/body horror elements. Once they reached the Reconfiguring Channel, what they say was more akin to the Construct in the Matrix. Here entire city sections can be rapidly formed or dissolved. But, even this isn't large enough in scale for the Lady's needs. Sometimes entire versions of the city, timelines, etc must be recycled. And the Maw is the singular nexus of this recycling. The Maw doesn't just break down materials. It digests and reprocesses reality itself. Souls, time, identity, meaning... it all breaks down. And this is where Xalatra was headed.

Xalatra was powerful and intelligent enough to recognize her Far Realm afflication. She always knew it was a risk, but she thought it was a risk she could mitigate and address. However, like all intellectuals that study the Far Realm for too long, she underestimated its unending ability to corrupt. Whatever had taken ahold of her was too strong for traditional magical means to eliminate. Even Gods did not like addressing the Far Realm, and when they did it was usually through blunt means... burn out the outsiders. She needed something precise, something that could burn out the Far Realm corruption while keeping her intact. That is why she headed down this way and that is where the players followed.

Down beneath the Substructure Warrens the players encountered layer after layer of infrastructure. The lower they got, reality started to bleed together. Not only did the physical nature of their surroundings start to break down. But their memories started to be absorbed. Domilia reverted to the mind of a seven year old, having everything past that consumed. Thogg lost the ability to speak, and had to communicate with animal noises. The other players managed to resist the effects. They finally reached Xalatra. She had created a pocket dimension using glyphs that protected from the effects of the Maw. It resembled a classroom, tying in to her academic background. The feat she accomplished here should not be understated. The Maw breaks down everything... like a black hole, and she was able to get dangerous close and survive through her expert mastery of glyph magic. She was able to revert the afflicted characters back to their earlier forms, giving Domilia back her memories and age and Thogg back the ability to speak.

Xalatra explained that she came down here to cure her madness, to use her knowledge of glyph magic and the powers of the Maw to excise the Far Realm corruption. She succeeded, but in doing so her madness manifested as a separate creature. It now existed like a twisted clone of her, feeding on the accretion around the Maw. And, unfortunately for her, the Madness had taken all her magical ability, leaving her trapped in this classroom.

Defeating the Madness would cause the magic to revert back to the original, so she asks the players to please help her either kill or somehow neutralize her Madness. Once they do that, she will help cure their condition of traveling non-linearly.

So I left this encounter open ended to how the players wanted to deal with it. It could just be a powerful boss fight against a caster with 35 hit dice. She was a CR 20 with resistance to magic, 20th level spell slots, and a number of offensive abilities. Probably one of her most overpowered abilities is Unwilling Assimilation, which ahas the ability to deal up to 48d6 necrotic damage across six targets and heal her for that amount. The party had five players at that time, so it would be 40d6, but still that is an average damage of 140 necrotic damage if they all fail their con saves and she would heal for that amount, a little over half her hitpoint total. She had a number of reality and memory rewriting abilities along with traditional spells like Psychic Scream and Feeblemind which are always pretty devastating for a party to deal with.

Alternatively, the players could try to appeal to the rational nature still in her, particularly her desire to catalogue the cosmos. The players started by taking the combat approach, but Uzo quickly decided to abandon that. Instead, he told the group to follow his lead and take defensive positions, and he opted to drop his weapons and communicate with the madness. He absorbed several devastating magical attacks, but was healed by Domilia enough that he was able to survive until he made a breakthrough. He convinced the Madness that it had to jump into the Maw, thus ending it and returning Xalatra's magic to her.

From here, Xalatra covered the players with magical glyphs and instructed them to jump into the Maw. While this would normally be an absolute form of suicide, she assured them that these glyphs would allow their individual consciousnesses to reform, but with the issue of how they travel outside of Sigil corrected. The group did this, and trigger a sort of 2001 a Space Oddyssey ending acid trip sequence as they melted and reformed. This wasn't the first time they died though, so no biggie.

In the aftermath the players had a new ally, Xalatra, and they were able to travel normally outside of Sigil. This meant that they would be able to continue the Lady of Pain's work. Also... they didn't have to deal with the inconvenience of only being able to move through the network of rooms that had most certainly been catalogued and was now actively monitored by the Protectors of the Weave.

Most interestingly was Xalatra's new position. Almost all sentient beings were vanishingly insigificant to the Lady of Pain... but Xalatra caught her attention. The industry she showed seeking out the Maw to address her corruption, her ability to survive and triumph in the situation, plus her knowledge of the planes and how they worked put her a step above her contemporaries. The Lady of Pain decided that Xalatra could be of use to her, and offered her a position that few mortals ever achieved... become a mouthpiece for the Lady. Xalatra accepted almost immediately, her ultimate goal is knowledge and the Lady has potentially more than any other being in existence, save maybe Primus. This level of unfettered access was... beyond the pale.

What this meant logistically for the players going forward was that they rarely met with the Lady of Pain directly. Instead now, if they needed to communicate with her or receive instructions, it would be through Xalatra. This came with a number of benefits. First and foremost, the group avoided the... pain associated with looking upon or hearing the Lady of Pain, which tended to open up cuts across their body. Secondly, the Lady of Pain did not tolerate her attention being wasted, and in such was pretty sparing with directly interacting with mortals. Xalatra though, as a mouthpiece, is far more willing to directly communicate with the players and could determine on her own if their queries or concerns were worthy of the Lady's time. She would remain an important NPC for the remainder of the campaign (which is, as the time of writing this, in its final stages).

In terms of direct servants of the Lady of Pain at the level of Xalatra, the only other mortals who had reached this level were the Renegade (one of the Interloper's first “participants”) and his power has reached a level where he really isn't mortal. More on him later. Also the Spider Lady develops an association with the Lady but she is a four dimensional being from the Far Realm so that doesn't' really count. Lastly, in the later stages of the campaign, Hexana, member of the Resplendent Six (who will be introduced in a post soon) ends up serving her as well. And thus the Xalatra questline ends. In future posts we will have:

-The Resplendent Six (the premier hero group in this universe) -Zane and Mammon strike back -The Return to the Torment -Freeing the Interloper... and much much more

Too bad the programmers couldn't teach it to write a proper Haiku. Most people are going to say, “Why does it matter?” It matters because it is the perfect example of everything wrong with AI. I find it extremely annoying and outright depressing that Google couldn't get that one little thing right.

It's also a perfect example of everything wrong with our society right now. To be such a big event, it's also disrespectful as fuck. Do your bloody homework!

If they can't be bothered to get something so small correct, (and let's face it, they probably don't even realize it) what else are they confidently congratulating themselves for that is fundamentally incorrect?

The nightmares will be fun tonight. 🙄

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

In Summary: * This has been another quiet Sunday spent at home, with both me and the wife making little discoveries as we continue unpacking and organizing, finding favorite things. That's been fun.

Very much into the night meds and night prayers part of the evening now, I'm looking forward to an earlier bedtime tonight. Tomorrow is Monday and I'll want to be up early fixing coffee, etc. It'll be good to be back in the regular Monday through Friday routine.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 218.15 lbs. * bp= no readings taken today

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 04:30 – snacking on m&m chocolate candies * 08:25 – ½ pb&j sandwich * 09:30 – garden salad * 10:05 – cheesecake * 13:30 – pork and vegetable stew, white rice, ice cream

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 03:00 – wake * 05:25 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:45 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, take daily meds, unpack, organize, and nap * 10:00 – listening to Countdown to Kickoff on the Pittsburgh Steelers Audio Network * 12:00 – listening to the radio call of the Steelers / Browns game broadcast over Pittsburgh's 102.5 DVE FM * 15:08 – and the Steelers win, 27 to 6. * 15:25 – now listening to the KC Chiefs vs the Denver Broncos.

Chess: * 11:30 – moved in all pending CC games

I wanted to write this blog post earlier in October but got hung up with work last month. For some reason, work has been crazy lately. So Ed Zitron, Paul from Paul's Hardware, Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus and others beat me to this topic, and Vex, a YouTuber, does a great job explaining it too. Just as I was finishing this, Brennan published I Am Relentless and Undaunted. Go read it. It's worth your time.

So I don't have to make this a long post, sorry, just kidding, it will be very long. I have to get this off my chest and vent. I believe there's a conspiracy here, and it deserves some attention.

I'm putting on my tinfoil hat for this one.

I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but come on. How can you look at what's happening and not think these shortages and high component prices are being deliberately created? At the heart of it, I believe, is Nvidia and its bottom line. As we've learned from Ed Zitron and Business Insider's reporting, Amazon is sitting on warehouses full of GPUs, and by extension, I suspect there's memory and storage equipment sitting around too. Why? Because some of these data centers aren't ready, and others don't have enough electrical power to operate the equipment. Microsoft has acknowledged similar problems and has pulled back from some planned data center projects. So why are these companies buying billions of dollars in GPUs that could be outdated by the time they're installed?

I have a theory.

I believe Nvidia and major memory manufacturers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron may be pressuring companies to take delivery of equipment long before their data centers are ready. Ed Zitron makes the same case, calling it channel stuffing.^[1] They're also prioritizing enterprise AI hardware and leaving consumers fighting over whatever manufacturing capacity is left. I suspect something similar is happening with storage manufacturers like Western Digital, Toshiba, and Seagate.

Look at Micron. After nearly 30 years, it discontinued its Crucial consumer memory and storage business in February 2026. Not because consumers stopped buying RAM and SSDs, but because it wanted to concentrate on larger, more profitable customers.^[2] These companies are making deliberate production decisions, and they know the consequences. Consumers are left paying considerably more for RAM, storage, and graphics cards. Apparently, if you want to upgrade your computer, you might have to sell a kidney to afford it. Meanwhile, these enterprise customers can afford to buy the whole body. And we're supposed to believe there's nothing the manufacturers can do about it. Wink, wink.

If a data center isn't coming online for another two years, why does it need billions of dollars in equipment sitting in warehouses today? Why not schedule deliveries six to nine months before it's ready, or even a year if necessary? I understand semiconductor manufacturing is complicated, but surely these companies can plan for enterprise demand while maintaining reasonable consumer production.

Instead, we're watching this enormous circle of financing, hardware purchases, and advance commitments. Nvidia is also investing in AI companies and helping finance infrastructure that will purchase its own products. Are these enterprise customers being told to take delivery now or risk losing their place in line? We're not forcing anybody to buy anything. We're just making sure you'll have the hardware when you eventually need it. Wink, wink.

And before anyone tells me these companies would never manipulate a market, let's remember some history. Remember Archer Daniels Midland, better known as ADM? In the 1990s, ADM and competing manufacturers were caught secretly fixing prices and dividing up sales of lysine, an additive used in animal feed. ADM pleaded guilty and paid a $100 million criminal fine covering both lysine and a separate citric acid conspiracy. An insider working with the FBI helped expose what was happening.^[3] Samsung and Hynix, now SK Hynix, have already pleaded guilty to fixing DRAM prices. Samsung paid a $300 million criminal fine, and Hynix paid $185 million. Executives also went to prison.^[4] So we're supposed to forget that history and accept that today's shortages are entirely unavoidable? Maybe these companies are making independent decisions. Maybe everything is perfectly legal. But I suspect some learned quite a bit from their previous encounters with antitrust regulators.

Nvidia isn't stopping with GPUs. It invested $5 billion in Intel, entered into partnerships across the industry, and has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, one of the biggest platforms for distributing open AI models. The U.S. Justice Department is already asking questions about that deal.^[5] Nvidia says Hugging Face will remain open to competing hardware. I hope that's true, but I have to wonder how much of the AI industry Nvidia intends to influence. Now look at consumer graphics cards. Nvidia already dominates the market, AMD has pulled back from competing at the very high end, and Intel is putting considerable attention into professional AI graphics hardware. Maybe all this is just a coincidence, but consumers are certainly getting fewer choices at the high end, both price-wise and hardware-wise, with the rumored end of the RTX 5090, which Nvidia denies. And it's not just the 5090. The RTX 5080, which launched at $999, now has listings for $2,000 or more, and Nvidia's own store has quietly pulled it too.^[6] Even Intel's Arc Pro B70, originally priced under $1,000, has appeared at prices exceeding $2,000.^[7] AMD cards haven't escaped the increases either.^[8] These price increases are happening at every rung of the ladder. How is the average consumer supposed to afford this stuff anymore?

I wonder whether we're slowly being pushed toward a future where ordinary consumers aren't expected to own powerful computers anymore. Instead, we're expected to rent computing power from somebody else's data center. Just when I thought this couldn't get any more ridiculous, Sam Altman of OpenAI said something recently that really bothered me. During an interview on the Cheeky Pint podcast, Altman argued that it's “quite terrible” for people to have so much of the world's limited DRAM in personal computers, supposedly being used only 5% of the time. He believes cloud data centers can make better use of that memory.^[9] Really, Sam? Paul from Paul's Hardware had the perfect answer in a recent video: “I feel the same way about Sam's bank account. He's not using all that money all the time, so it should definitely be reallocated to people who will make better use of it.” I heard that and almost fell over laughing, because it's a very apt comparison. Gamers Nexus covered the same interview in its latest HW News episode, and Steve Burke summed it up: “Sam is saying the quiet part out loud.”

The CEO of one of the largest AI companies, whose industry is buying enormous amounts of memory and hardware, suggesting that consumers having RAM in their own computers is an inefficient use of resources. Apparently, it's perfectly fine for billions of dollars in GPUs to sit in warehouses waiting for electricity, but heaven forbid I have 32 or 64 GB of RAM in my own computer that isn't being used every second of the day. What arrogance. My computer belongs to me. I bought it with my own money, and I should be able to use it whenever and however I want. The attitude behind his comments shows an utter lack of understanding of ordinary people. It's a Marie Antoinette, “let them eat cake” moment.

Want to run powerful AI? Subscribe to a cloud service. Want to play games? There's GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and other services. Why sell consumers powerful hardware when companies can sell it to enterprise customers and charge consumers for ongoing access? In other words, a subscription. Or as Brennan put it, we “will be compelled to rent and lease and borrow.” And look, everybody has agreements with everybody else, so obviously we're encouraging competition. Wink, wink.

Even Apple, with its enormous balance sheet and once-great ability to dictate terms to suppliers, is having problems with rising memory and storage costs.^[10] And Samsung? It competes directly with Apple in smartphones and makes many of the components that go into them. You would think Samsung would have a tremendous advantage right now. But it's chasing the same enterprise AI money, even as higher component costs hurt its own consumer products.^[11]

Apparently, even Macs aren't safe from this AI buying frenzy. According to The Information, OpenAI has purchased tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios for AI workloads, while Anthropic is reportedly renting Mac minis through Amazon. These are computers meant for consumers, independent developers, and small businesses.^[12]

So now even the computers people could use as alternatives to Nvidia hardware are being purchased in enormous quantities by AI companies. They're all riding this cash cow for everything it's worth. But what happens when the AI financial bubble finally bursts?

Let me make something clear. I don't believe AI itself is going to collapse. I believe demand will continue growing, whether that's local AI or cloud and frontier AI, because AI is useful technology. What I think will collapse is the financial house of cards being built around it. Eventually, Wall Street and private investors are going to demand returns that justify the billions, no trillions at this point being spent on GPUs, memory, storage, and data centers. Some companies won't be able to meet their obligations. Others may be acquired, restructured, or go bankrupt.

And what happens to all that expensive enterprise hardware when the spending slows down or data centers start replacing equipment? I hope consumers get to buy it for pennies on the dollar. If manufacturers want to concentrate on HBM and enterprise hardware, maybe we consumers should learn how to adapt that equipment for our own needs. I'm not talking about removing HBM chips and sticking them into ordinary motherboards. I'm talking about buying retired enterprise GPUs with their memory already attached and adapting them for personal use. Some have 80 GB, 192 GB, or more of high-bandwidth memory. Imagine what we could do with that for local AI. Sure, some will need special cooling, adapters, power supplies, and software support. But people are already figuring this stuff out. Look at what Lon Seidman did with this Tesla V100. Maybe equipment these companies consider obsolete will be perfectly good for the rest of us. And maybe we can stop buying so much new hardware directly from the companies that pushed us aside. Because brand loyalty used to mean something to me. I had it for years. But seeing how these companies treat ordinary consumers is changing my thinking.

Look at Microsoft. After years of complaints about Windows 11, it's finally emphasizing performance, reliability, and improving the user experience. Meanwhile, Linux has become a more practical alternative for gamers, and Macs are attracting people frustrated with Windows. I can't prove this caused Microsoft's changes, but I'd certainly think twice about taking consumers for granted when they have alternatives if I were Microsoft.^[13]

And that's something Nvidia, Samsung, Micron, AMD, Intel, and the others ought to consider. Consumers helped build these companies. They shouldn't assume we'll automatically come back when the enterprise money slows down. Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I think AI is great technology, and I want to see it succeed. I actually like OpenAI and what it has made available to ordinary people. That doesn't mean I agree with everything its leadership says or does, especially Altman's comments about RAM.

But I also believe the AI industry has some wrongs to make right. A tremendous amount of copyrighted material has been used to train AI systems, often without the creators' knowledge or permission. You can't simply tell an AI model to unlearn it, but the companies that used people's work without permission should compensate them.

And the same goes for hardware manufacturers. They're making production decisions that are creating or worsening scarcity for ordinary consumers, then expecting us to accept the resulting prices as though nothing could have been done differently. When the financial bubble eventually bursts, I hope we consumers remember who treated us as valued customers and who decided we weren't profitable enough to matter anymore.

Maybe my tinfoil hat is getting a little tight.

But I don't think I'm imagining the consequences of what's happening right in front of us. This is all one big circle of money, financing, hardware, and companies making deals with one another. I'm not against AI. I'm not against companies making money. But I am against consumers being pushed aside while these companies chase profits that may not be sustainable.

The technology isn't the problem. The way the industry is financing it, controlling it, and treating the rest of us is.

And that circle needs to be broken.

---

Sources

1. Ed Zitron, Where's Your Ed At, October 20, 2026: AI Had Better Work Out.

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2. Micron announces its exit from the Crucial consumer business, December 3, 2025.

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3. U.S. Department of Justice, ADM criminal antitrust case, October 15, 1996.

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4. U.S. Department of Justice: Samsung DRAM price-fixing case and Hynix DRAM price-fixing case.

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5. CNBC, October 28, 2026: DOJ questions Nvidia's $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal.

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6. Tom's Hardware, October 30, 2026: Nvidia store quietly pulls the RTX 5080 following RTX 5090 removal. Also Gamers Nexus's coverage.

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7. VideoCardz, October 2026: Intel Arc Pro B70 prices more than double in US, now listed for up to $2,400.

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8. TechPowerUp, October 30, 2026: AMD reportedly plans another Radeon GPU and GDDR6 kit price hike for November.

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9. Tom's Hardware, October 30, 2026: Sam Altman on consumer RAM. Also The Verge's reporting.

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10. MacRumors, September 17, 2026: Apple reportedly accepts even higher RAM and storage prices in 2027.

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11. CNET, October 1, 2026: Samsung raises prices by $100 on most Galaxy S26 phones.

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12. Yahoo Tech, August 31, 2026: Blame AI companies for Mac mini and Mac Studio shortage, reporting The Information's story.

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13. Microsoft, October 15, 2026: What's new in Windows 11.

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#hardware #opinion #technology

A man returns from a trip to the future remembering just one small (but disturbing) thing about his adventure.

---

Under 1-minute read.

Before Williams went into the future he bought a camera and a tape recording-machine and learned shorthand. That night, when all was ready, we made coffee and put out brandy and glasses against his return.

“Good-bye,” I said. “Don’t stay too long.”

“I won’t,” he answered.

I watched him carefully, and he hardly flickered. He must have made a perfect landing on the very second he had taken off from.

He seemed not a day older; we had expected he might spend several years away.

“Well?”

“Well,” said he, “let’s have some coffee.”

I poured it out, hardly able to contain my impatience. As I gave it to him I said again, “Well?”

“Well, the thing is, I can’t remember.

“Can’t remember? Not a thing?”

He thought for a moment and answered sadly, “Not a thing.”

“But your notes? The camera? The recording-machine?”

The notebook was empty, the indicator of the camera rested at “1” where we had set it, the tape was not even loaded into the recording-machine.

“But good heavens,” I protested, “why? How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?”

“I can remember only one thing.”

“What was that?”

“I was shown everything, and I was given the choice whether I should remember it or not after I got back.”

“And you chose not to? But what an extraordinary thing to—”

“Isn’t it?” he said. “One can’t help wondering why.”

Image: Kate Jewell (CC BY-SA 2.0)

#hiltonyoung

Publicat la 17 noiembrie 2017

Dollar Bill Blues, în interpretarea lui Townes Van Zandt, și atmosfera aparent calmă din Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie), în ciuda acțiunii tensionate, mă atrag ca un magnet. Le regăsesc adesea în recomandările YouTube, la secțiunea Listen Again.

Mai demult, mi se întâmpla același lucru cu Extreme Ways (Moby), după ce văzusem The Bourne Identity. Numai că acolo lucrurile se desfășoară într-un ritm cu totul diferit. Acțiunea are viteză, nu glumă! Cel puțin în comparație cu dramele pe care obișnuiesc să le urmăresc.

Together We Will Live Forever, Death Is the Road to Awe, Stay With Me și Xibalba, toate compuse de Clint Mansell pentru coloana sonoră a filmului The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky), m-au condus către un comentariu interesant de pe YouTube.

Autorul lui ne îndemna să nu ne mai îngrijorăm atât pentru viitor și să nu rămânem ancorați în trecut. Să trăim ziua de astăzi, pentru că ea este singura care contează cu adevărat.

Mi-am amintit de un pasaj din Seize the Day, romanul lui Saul Bellow, în care Dr. Tamkin vorbește despre trecut, viitor și importanța prezentului. Ideea este aproape aceeași: trecutul nu ne mai poate ajuta, viitorul ne aduce neliniști, iar singurul moment pe care îl putem trăi cu adevărat este prezentul. Here and now. Seize the day.

Acesta este momentul prezent. Trecutul nu ne folosește la nimic. Viitorul e plin de neliniște. Numai prezentul este real – clipa. Trăiește-ți clipa.


Comentariul făcea trimitere la Kabbalah și la o interesantă teorie despre dualitatea spațio-temporală.

Despre dualitate aș putea spune câte ceva, cel puțin dintr-o perspectivă științifică. Despre Kabbalah, însă, nu știu aproape nimic. Cel puțin deocamdată.

Now I am listening to Together We Will Live Forever.

1. Before, After, Alone by Emma Newman (Planetfall #4.5) by Emma Newman, 161p: This is a short stories collection from the Planetfall series. The stories dive a bit deeper into some characters, giving us some snippets of what they've been up to after events in the books, or within the book’s timeline. But the story that stayed with me the most was “Albert and the Kraken” which doesn't have any of the book’s characters in it.

2. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, 259p: I enjoyed the found family dynamic in this one and the updated fairy tale vibes. There were some interesting bits, like the scene with the Toothdancer and also Agnes, the fairy Godmother, was great. The challenges in the story were not that hard, and that made the plot very predictable. But overall, it was a fun read, it feels like a cozy spooky read.

3. Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3) by Elizabeth Hoyt, 393p: I did not like this book. The whole plot with the orphan baby and Silence being caught in this forced proximity situation with the pirate hero Mickey O'Connor did not work for me at all. I guess I didn't expect it to have so many sad backstories, from both Mickey and Silence. There is murder and drama and a bit of mystery. I kept reading because I wanted to know who was the Ghost of St Giles, which is revealed at the end. Not sure I will continue the series.

4. Red Team Blues (The Martin Hench Novels #1) by Cory Doctorow, 216p: This was my first fiction book from Cory Doctorow, and I enjoyed it! I struggled a bit with the whole cryptocurrency techno jargon, but I think I got the overall concept. I liked the older main character, Martin Hench, who is a forensic accountant with expertise in money laundering and he knows all the Silicon Valley dirty secrets. I think it was a great techno-thriller that got me out of my comfort zone. I was not ready for a gruesome murder scene in the story, but that did not scared me away. I want to read to the next in the series.

5. How to Focus (Mindfulness Essentials) by Thích Nhất Hạnh, 130p: This book works best with previous knowledge about Buddhism mindfulness. It has super short chapters presenting concepts of meditation and concentration, but it does not take too much time explaining these concepts. There are nice nuggets of wisdom that made me smile. It was nice as a refresher of mindfulness and concentration techniques, but it might be hard to follow without previous knowledge.

#readinglist #books #reading

Titel: Veel te moe

Ik ben veel te moe om nog te schrijven. En nog tevreden moe ook, vandaag. Een zalige zonzusdag gehad. De vriend van mijn lieftallige zus had me via mijn zus een prachtige cd cadeau gedaan met pianomuziek van Valentin Barray. K heb hem een kaartje geschreven ter bedanking. Mijn zus en ik lachten ons net nog een deuk. Het was een heel gezellige namiddag. Mijn verslaving en drang tot nog een pil zijn verdwenen als sneeuw voor de zon. Nu begint de vermoeidheid er door te komen na een nacht zonder slaap.

Titel: Veel te moe

Ik ben veel te moe om nog te schrijven. En nog tevreden moe ook, vandaag. Een zalige zonzusdag gehad. De vriend van mijn lieftallige zus had me via mijn zus een prachtige cd cadeau gedaan met pianomuziek van Valentin Barray. K heb hem een kaartje geschreven ter bedanking. Mijn zus en ik lachten ons net nog een deuk. Het was een heel gezellige namiddag. Mijn verslaving en drang tot nog een pil zijn verdwenen als sneeuw voor de zon. Nu begint de vermoeidheid er door te komen na een nacht zonder slaap.

Je passe la grande majorité de mon temps à travailler. Je ne suis plus sur les réseaux, je ne regarde plus les nouvelles. Je suis, en quelque sorte, hors du monde.

Je ne me compare qu’à moi-même. Je ne vois le monde qu’à travers le prisme que je construis. Je suis en dehors de la horde et même si à première vue cela peut sembler effrayant, cela a ses bienfaits.

À quel moment la solitude devient-elle une souffrance ? La limite n’est pas très claire pour moi.

Lorsque notre vie est en accord avec nos valeurs ? Quand nous arrivons à voir le ciel plutôt que la fange ? Quand notre pourquoi dépasse notre personne ?

J’ai l’opportunité d’avoir un impact sur 24 enfants. Tous les ans. C’est une responsabilité et un honneur incroyable quand on prend un peu de recul.

C’est peut-être ça : vivre en accord avec son moi profond.

Je n’y suis pas encore. Mais j’y travaille.

The sound of healing

The sun was already high when I crested that last ridge, my Groundcover boots scuffed with dust, lungs drinking the thin, rare air of the Highveld. I had come up here to outwalk something I could not name, tightness in the chest, noise in the head, the low hum of a life that had begun to feel borrowed. Then I heard it: water rushing over rocks.

Not the polite murmur of a garden fountain, but real water, quick, bright, alive, roaring its way down a narrow gully in the hillside. I followed the sound like a child seeking treasure and found the stream: no wider than a jeep track, yet fierce with purpose, sliding over granite boulders that had been polished over aeons of water wear, flashing sparks of silver where the light struck.

I knelt. The moment the water touched my ears everything else stopped.

The sound folded time the way wind folds grass. Suddenly I was young again, barefoot on Oakvilla farm in the Natal midlands, following the little streams that spilled off the Inyosi River after rain. Those streams were my secret kingdoms. I knew every pool where the Platanna frogs floated. I knew the places where Leonorus grew thick along the banks, with its orange claws of flower, and how, if you brushed past, the sunbirds would explode out of them in a whirr of emerald and crimson, dancing drunk on nectar.

I would lie on my stomach for hours, chin on my folded arms, watching tadpoles flick like black commas through the transparent water. The stream never hurried, yet it never waited. It simply carried everything downstream: sticks, leaves, worries, time.

Now, decades later, the same music played in a different key. I eased myself down onto a flat rock still warm from the morning sun and let the water have me. Each note of it rinsed something loose, deadlines, arguments, the dull ache of roads not taken—and sent it spinning away over the rocks and stones. The tightness in my chest loosened its fingers one by one. My shoulder pains dissipated. My breath slowed until it matched the rhythm of the stream: in, over, out, gone.

A kingfisher, beautiful, but there it was, flitted across the water, a streak of impossible colour, and for one heartbeat the years collapsed entirely. I was both the boy and the man, both the child lying spellbound on a Midland farm and the tired adult sitting on a rock in distant hills, and neither of us had anywhere else to be.

The water kept talking, soft and relentless, washing the dust from my soul the way it washed silt from the hill. When I finally stood, the light had shifted and the shadows were longer, but I carried no weight at all. Only the bright, running sound of the stream inside me, carrying me forward the way it always had, light, clean, and free.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Religious Apartheid | Separation & segmentation

In the valleys of Kranskop, where the mist clings to the hills like unspoken regrets, my family’s story with kwaSizabantu, or KSB, as it’s known, unfolds like a wound that never quite heals. It began not with the mission’s polished facade of revival and redemption, but with the brutal blade of shunning, a practice so ingrained in KSB’s doctrine that it severs bloodlines as easily as one might clip a withered branch. Shunning isn’t mere disapproval; it’s excommunication from the soul, a deliberate isolation enforced under the banner of purity and obedience to God. It a religious Apartheid, a disgraceful and unholy separation. To leave, to question, to simply choose a different path is to invite the silence of the forsaken. And in our family, it struck first at the heart of my father, Mastelek mkulu.

The ripples of Bible House, a fervent evangelical group led by the charismatic Anton Engelbrecht, reached and touched our home. My father’s siblings, drawn by promises of spiritual fire and communal living, threw their lot in with the movement, which would later morph into the sprawling KwaSizabantu Mission under the iron guidance of Erlo Stegen. Bible House preached instant obedience, confession of sins in excruciating detail, and a hierarchy where leaders spoke as the voice of the divine. But for those who resisted, like my father, the cost was exile. Overnight, he became a ghost in his own bloodline. Phone calls went unanswered; visits were met with locked doors and averted eyes. “It’s for your soul” they said. “You’re choosing the world over Jesus.” He didn’t join, not out of rebellion, but because his faith was quieter, less armored in absolutes. My mom and him raised us with something sorely lacking at KSB, integrity and true strength in faith. Faith was never blind obedience.

A decade passed before reconciliation came, bittersweet and incomplete. Bible House dissolved into KSB, as Erlo Stegen consolidated power on a 140-hectare farmstead bought for the cause using ill gotten gains. My father was extended an olive branch as his family reconciled, leaving Bible House but not joining KSB. He was the prodigal. But you see, he had been right all along. By then, KSB had grown into a self-sustaining empire: schools, farms, even a bottled water brand called aQuellé, drawn from the mission’s own springs and marketed as “purity in every drop.” It had ballooned into a network of control, where obedience wasn’t optional, it was the air you breathed.

The shunning didn’t fade with time; it calcified. I saw it devour my cousin Karen, a girl I’d known growing up. Married to Albu van Eerden, both deep in KSB’s fold, she turned inward to embrace the devil by shunning her own children. Tabitha, her daughter, bright, questioning Tabitha, who dared to seek a life beyond the mission’s walls, was cut off without ceremony. No birthday calls, no hospital visits during illness, just the void. Karen’s other children fared no better; one by one, they were deemed worldly, their imagined sins confessed by their mother publicly before the congregation. And then the wall went up. What drives a mother to this? To stare into the eyes of her flesh and blood and see only a threat to her salvation? It’s not a love of Jesus, its the twisted teachings of KSB, a love that demands you “die to self,” even if it means burying the living. Witnesses before South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) have described it as systemic: families torn asunder, weddings boycotted, children orphaned by decree. One ex-member recalled parents refusing to attend their child’s marriage because it defied the mission’s courtship bans, no dating, no autonomy, just arranged unions blessed by the elders. In KSB, love is conditional, doled out like rations in a siege.

At the helm of this machine stood the Stegen brothers: Erlo, the founder, a missionary whose fake Zulu revival birthed the mission, and Friedl, his quieter but no less commanding sibling, who preached “instant obedience” from pulpits echoing with the ghosts of German pietism. Their rule was absolute, laced with secrecy that one critic, their own brother Manfred, likened to “Nazi-style” control, decisions shrouded, dissent crushed. Manfred, once a pillar, grew disillusioned, peeling back the layers of abuse: forced confessions that veered into voyeurism, underpaid labor on mission farms, and a doctrine that policed thoughts as fiercely as actions. For his candor, he was shunned, barred from the community he helped build, his warnings dismissed as betrayal. Even Friedl, in his nineties and confined to a wheelchair, wasn’t spared the blade. Accused of straying from the “Way,” he was isolated by the very obedience he once demanded, wheeled away from fellowship like yesterday’s sermon. The irony was poetic, almost karmic.

Karma, in our family’s telling, runs deeper still. Friedl’s wealth, stemmed from a betrayal that scarred another lineage: the Witthofs, a vulnerable German family whose patriarch’s will he assisted in executing. The widow, grieving and isolated, trusted him implicitly. But Friedl, with executor powers unchecked, transferred their fertile farms into his own name, a brazen heist that funneled resources into his own and Erlo’s growing empire. It echoed an earlier theft: Bible House’s coffers, siphoned by Hogart Joosten in the movement’s chaotic infancy, providing the seed money for KSB’s expansion. These weren’t footnotes in revival history; they were the foundation stones, built on wool pulled over grieving eyes. Friedl’s late-life shunning? To us, it was the universe’s quiet accounting, a reminder that no throne of piety stands forever.

Today, as scandals swirl, allegations of sexual assault, child labour, and cultic control probed by commissions and ignored by corrupt police, KSB soldiers on, its aQuellé bottles gleaming on shelves despite attempts at boycotts. The mission’s defenders cling to a narrative of salvation, but I see the cost: fractured families, silenced voices, a society where “helping people” means breaking them first. To those who still quench their thirst with aQuellé, who tithe to this golden calf, take a hard look. Is this the obedience Jesus craved, or the cage we build when faith turns feral? My father’s reconciliation with his family taught me grace is possible, but only if we see the shadows. Shunning isn’t divine; it’s the cult’s cruelest chain. And in breaking it, we reclaim not just our families, but our souls and humanity.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Tailgating

Growing up in a family with ties to the cult of kwaSizabantu (KSB), I found myself dragged into some truly peculiar social obligations. My cousins on my dad Mastelek’s side were die-hard devotees of KSB—where “Reverend” Erlo Stegen reigned supreme as the spiritual patriarch. He wasn’t just a preaching bible puncher; he was the architect of lives, dictating everything from daily routines to eternal destinies. And when it came to matrimony, Erlo’s word was law. These weren’t your typical love stories blooming from stolen glances or whirlwind romances. No, sir—these unions were meticulously arranged under his watchful eye, with a strict code that forbade any premarital “shenanigans,” as my dad would euphemistically put it. Courtship was a controlled affair: supervised interactions, no physical contact beyond a chaste handshake, and certainly no funny business that might sully the purity of the occasion. It was all about divine alignment, or so they claimed.

My parents, bless their skeptical souls, weren’t exactly enthusiastic participants in this fervor. They accepted the wedding invitations more out of morbid curiosity than genuine familial duty—a chance to peek behind the curtain of this ultra-strict world without committing to its doctrines. “Need to see what they are up to,” my dad would quip under his breath. And when these events coincided with my holidays, I’d inevitably tag along, wondering what fresh oddity awaited.

I remember one wedding in particular, when I was already knee-deep in my university days at Maties, feeling worlds away from the rigid piety on display. The ceremony was held at Claridges, that elegant old Bible House venue where these austere KSB affairs occurred. We sat through the vows, a sea of somber faces nodding in approval as the couple pledged their lives under Erlo’s orchestrated blessing. No frills, no flair—just scripture, hymns, and a palpable sense of enforced holiness.

After the “I dos,” the congregation filed into the adjoining hall for the reception. That’s when my dad, ever the opportunist, leaned over and muttered, “Come on, son, help me check the tires on the car.” I shot him a puzzled look—our tires were fine—but I followed anyway, leaving Mom to scout out our table for the impending meal. Now, these KSB weddings were bone-dry affairs; alcohol was taboo, a sinful indulgence that had no place amid the godly gathering. Lemonade, tea and maybe some grape juice were the strongest libations on offer.

We slipped out to the parking lot, and Dad popped the boot of our car. He peeled back the mat covering the spare wheel, revealing his hidden stash: a bottle of fine Scotch whisky and a couple of tumblers tucked away like contraband. “Just a quick toast to survival,” he winked, pouring us each a generous tot. There we stood, tailgating in the shadow of the venue, sipping the amber liquid and chuckling about the irony of it all—the puritans inside preaching temperance while we savored our secret rebellion.

Refreshed and a tad warmer, we rejoined the festivities for the main course. Mom eyed us suspiciously, her knowing glance saying she’d pieced it together without a word. The meal dragged on with speeches extolling Erlo’s wisdom and the couple’s virtuous path. But after the plates were cleared, Dad nudged me again: “Think we should double-check those tires, just to be sure.” I nodded, playing along, but then Mom piped up, “I’m coming with you this time.” I was gobsmacked—Mom, the picture of propriety, joining our covert operation?

Back at the car, the plot thickened. Dad hadn’t just planned for us; he’d smuggled a bottle of sweet Hanepoot wine especially for her. We poured another round—Scotch for us, wine for Mom—and there we were, the three of us, laughing quietly in the boot’s glow, toasting to our little family insurgency. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy amid the starchiness. We returned just in time for dessert, our spirits lifted far beyond what any sermon could achieve.

Looking back, we were undoubtedly the happiest attendees at those weddings. While the KSB faithful celebrated their arranged bliss with hymns and handshakes, our family found our own brand of merriment in those parking lot interludes. Erlo Stegen is turning in his grave.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Today's Game of Choice.

Unless I'm called away, I intend to follow the (5-2) Cleveland Browns vs the (5-2) Pittsburgh Steelers NFL game, with its scheduled start time of Noon Central Time. Go Steelers!

And the adventure continues.

My Life as Julius Caesar

It’s strange how some affinities feel less like admiration and more like recognition. Julius Caesar has lived inside me since I was a boy in that old and dusty Oakville farmhouse, long before I had words for past lives or soul memory. I must have been seven or eight when I first saw him, not in a history book, but as a flickering image projected on the bare dining-room wall. An old reel-to-reel projector had been rigged up, and there he was: Caesar, played by Rex Harrison, commanding the screen while the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, gazed at him with a fire that burned straight through the grainy film and into my chest.

In that moment I didn’t think, “What a great leader.” I thought, “That’s me.” Not in some infantile way. It was deeper, spiritual. I knew the weight of the laurel wreath before I knew what laurel even was. I felt the Nile breeze on my face though I had never left Natal.

And to this day I still have dreams about this.

I am always in a red tunic, the dye still bright, the gold-threaded hem brushing against bronze. The segmented Roman armour, lorica segmentata, fits as though it was forged for my body yesterday. In one hand a gladius, perfectly balanced, almost weightless until it meets resistance, then suddenly alive, singing. The battles change: sometimes the forests of Gaul, mist curling between the oaks; sometimes the dust and blood of Pharsalus; once, memorably, the deck of a trireme off Actium, though history says I wasn’t there. Doesn’t matter. I’m there now.

I fight with a clarity I have never known while awake. Every parry is instinctive, every thrust economical and final. There is no fear, only purpose. Men fall, but I do not gloat; I simply move to the next threat, the next moment that must be shaped. Often I wake shouting in Latin, my voice hoarse, heart racing, sheets twisted. Yet the feeling is never distress. It is triumph, clean and ancient. I reach for my phone to check the time and its always the eleventh hour, and I smile in the dark. The sword skills I wield in dreams still seem to protect me in waking life. Debts get paid. Doors open. Enemies, seen and unseen, keep their distance.

Now, older, I understand there is richer meaning beneath the spectacle.

To dream repeatedly of being a great conqueror, especially one who was both adored & assassinated, is rarely about simple ego. The psyche chooses its symbols with precision. Caesar represents the part of the soul that refuses to accept imposed limits, the part that says, “If the world will not bend, I will cross the Rubicon and make it bend.” The red tunic is Mars, the god of war but also raw life-force. The sword is discrimination, the ability to cut through illusion, to separate what serves from what destroys. To dream of wielding it masterfully, without hesitation or wound, is the unconscious announcing: You have the power to shape your fate. You have done it before. You are doing it now.

And Cleopatra, ah, she is there too, sometimes watching from a marble balcony, sometimes fighting beside me with a dagger. She is the other half of the archetype: the feminine wisdom that knows power is not only force alone, but seduction, strategy, the long game. When Caesar & Cleopatra appear together in the soul’s theatre, they are saying: Integrate. Marry the general and the queen within you. Rule with both the sword and the serpent.

These dreams are not escapism. They are remembrance. They are confirmation that the same fire that burned in a Roman on the Ides of March still burns in this man in a quiet Douglasdale suburb, tempered now by time but no less fierce. Every time I wake with the taste of iron in my mouth and the echo of battle in my ears, I am reminded: I came back to finish what was started. The conquest is no longer of provinces, but of fear, of mediocrity, of every small voice that says stay small.

I was Julius Caesar once.

I crossed the river.

I still am.

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