A very big thank you for taking your time to answer in such an elaborate way and giving pointers for further information. Highly appreciated!

Who else can survive for years on eating their own foot-skin? :-P

Nice, I like it very much when one can separate between personal fit and quality! :-)

For me the whole point of the book is to accept the story, while your own sense/mind tells you to not play along, which made me reflect about how much - dare I say everyone of us - plays along everyday… Besides this, I simply like Ishiguros writing style (non native English speaker here, so wonder what a native would think about it.)

Would love to get a list of books from you that you respect and like (or respect and don’t like ;-)).

Short book that hit hard:

• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Never let me go, Kazuro Ishiguro
• The last unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
• 1984, George Orwell
• Prince of Thieves, Chuck Hogan

Mandatory heads up: The writing gets better over time.

The first time I tried to read it, the writing style of the first book really turned me off.

Great pick!

So many quotes from Casablanca are part of our everyday culture… and AFAIK it is the first movie ever to feature a flashback in a flashback. Combined with the awesome cast of actors this is a masterpiece. :-)

One is not enough, and a lot of great movies where already named, still, some great movies are missing:

• Heat (Michael Mann) Every single time I see it, it is brilliant and I discover something new
• Jin Roh (The original animation movie), awesome atmosphere and only after the 2nd viewing one can really appreciate it
• Near Dark (1987) Why the hell did nobody ever produce something like this ever again?
• Miami Vice (Michael Mann), ‘Style over substance’, in a great way, although I have the shaky camera
• Seven Samurai
• Casablanca
• Strange Days
• Point Break
• XXX (Nobody understood that it was a parody back in the days :-P)
• What we do in the shadows
• Brazil
• Rocky
• Eternal Sunshine …
• The city of lost children
• Leon the professional
• Dolls
• The Killer (The original of course)
• The last unicorn
• Dark City
• The thing
• The Lost Boys
• Spirited Away
• Donnie Darko
• Rashomon
• Brother (2000)
• Parasite
• Hatsukoi (First Love)

… from the top of my mind. :-P

Ah, the usual propaganda from the fucking content mafia and the lobbyists they bought:

“The takedown of Fmovies is a testament to the power of collaboration in protecting the intellectual property rights of creators around the world,” Knapp says.

“Strengthening intellectual property rights is an important element of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership,” Knapper said

I’ll happily repeat again and again and again:

• If pirate sites offer a better user experience than your paid offerings, you don’t deserve payments at all
• The money goes mostly to some rich fucks, fucking shareholders, lawyers and bought politicians and and not to the artists/creators of the movies (with some exceptions for the really big names)
• I will very happily pay a service which is not shitty, not region locked, doesn’t annoy me with advertisement and is reasonably priced. The illegal sites are demonstrating that it is possible to sustain such an offer on advertisement alone. Don’t give me fucking bullshit that it is not possible for companies like Netflix while most of the subscription fees are going to shareholders and higher management instead into creating new content

Seriously, fuck all the politicians and governments which act against the benefit of most of their population to conspire with the content mafia.

Indeed. :-)

I still insist that the music of our generation growing up was the best time for listening to alternative/metal etc.

So much innovation, new genres were created, and so much creativity.

Today most of the music sounds like ‘more of the same’ and very formulaic to me. I am happy for any recommendation of current music in alternative/metal which is innovativ.

Thank you very much, a great recommendation!

… and yes, agreed: I am lucky I had a very good manager once, who didn’t pull the usual shit and had human integrity, but people like that are the exception not the rule.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I’ll buy it! :-)

Yes, I also saw it in every job/team/organization, and it seems very human, everyone just likes some people better than others.

The think which irks me, is that I also sometimes experienced favoritism/nepotism with totally incompetent people I had to directly work with and also several level above my pay grade. Like, if you have two competent people and chose the one you like more, I can totally understand. But if there are competent people and you chose your incompetent crony over literally everybody else, it seems self defeating in the mid/long run.

I benefited of someone with relative power taking a liking to me later in my career, and all of a sudden I was elevated into a network where things are possible which weren’t before. Still at the very bottom of the ladder, but very aware how much difference a few connections can make.

Correct, not all of my examples are about nepotism.

Thank you for your recommendations, funnily enough I don’t suffer from the political/social skills.

What I cannot wrap my head around are situations, where people through nepotism/favoritism or politics get a position where they fail, which then comes back to the people who put them there. To rephrase it a little bit: “Why not put someone who is 50% competent and 90% loyal on a position instead of someone who is 25% competent and perhaps 95% loyal”? It seems kind of obvious to have a little bit competence, and if it is only for self preservation. (Just to ‘objectify’ that: Saw higher managers which are totally incompetent (not only my opinion), have a proven track record of failing everything they touch by stupidity (like: that is not how reality works stupid) which got officially demoted after several years, hurting their sponsors. Why didn’t their sponsor demote them earlier or put them in the position in the first place?)

Wow, thanks a lot, the books look very interesting and special shout out for the Podcast, I already subscribed to the feed! :-)

• Finch - Say Hello to Sunshine
• Paledusk - Palehell
• Faith no more - King for a day, fool for a lifetime
• Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
• Philipp Glass - Glassworks
• Henryk Mikołaj Górecki - Symphony of sorrowful Songs
• Fear Factory - Obsolete
• At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command
• Boy sets fire - After The Eulogy
• Refused - The Shape of Punk to come (not a fan after their sell-out-reunion, but the album is still great)

FreeCiv is a classic and still fun. rogue and nethack are good, too.

there is no android phone that I am passionate about,

Not what you asked for:

A phone is a tool which should enable you to do stuff. Be passionate about friends, hobbies, art, not a piece of plastic.

Being forced to use iOS (work phone) and Android (Samsung, also work), both suck IMHO but Android sucks less.

My next Android will be a Pixel, as others suggested custom roms are the way to go, but even vanilla Android is more functional/open/practical for my needs than iOS.

I would never buy Apples shit with my own money: Dumped down, locked down and in the end you are renting a device from Apple to pay fees for their Appstore and Cloud offerings and vendor lock in. No thanks.

• Another vote for “Slay the Spire”, have bought it for all platforms and wasted too much of my time
• Horizon Chase Turbo is a very good arcade racer
• Danmaku Unlimited 2 and Danmaku Unlimited 3 for bullet hell shmups

Not arcade style, but Final Fantasy I-VI pixel remasters are IMHO great on phones.

No worries and thanks a lot for your suggestions/answers!

Thanks for your suggestions: Can confirm start/end bytes are wrong. Tried to open in Shotwell, GIMP, Firefox, Google Chrome w/o results.

I assume the hard drive is ok: I also have some git repositories on the drive and the checksums for git are correct. Every other file on the drive is ok, so cryptolocker malware could have only been on my phone at that time.

Because we are men/gals of culture! :-P Hadouken! ;-)