Various personal reflections

Introduction

This page serves as a gathering point for some texts that do not truly fit elsewhere, do not seem worth the trouble of a separate page, or otherwise might go unwritten. The reason is often (but not necessarily always) that they contain more personal reflections over some topic than most of my other writings (which still contain much such reflection), that they are reflections over some unusually personal topic, that the topic is of more personal than general interest, or similar.

As a consequence, the contents can be very varied and are likely to grow continually (whether often is yet to be seen). The variation (but not the growth) will often apply to the contents of any individual entry, not just the one entry compared to the other.

The often personal nature increases the likelihood that I include more trivial information, e.g. to make it easier for myself to draw upon such information in the future. (The exact course and book that triggered the first entry is a good example—even among readers that are interested in the main matter, these details are likely to be seen as uninteresting.)

Another page of a similarly personal and a similarly open-ended nature, but with a focus specifically on mistakes, is [1]. Some older pages are unabashedly of a similarly personal nature but were never intended as more than single entries.

Wants, multimedia, and an astronomy CD-ROM (2025-08-21)

Today, I have spent a few hours going through an almost 30-year old CD-ROM that I had left entirely unused since my long ago purchase—indeed, it was still sealed in its original plastic cover. This sent me thinking back.

The main family of observations is that what we think that we want is not always what we do want, that the wants of the now can be overtaken by tomorrow’s developments, and similar. Here, e.g., my work with the CD-ROM brings back a memory of how I once truly wanted to own a better computer for one particular reason: multimedia in the context of learning materials, encyclopedias, and the like. Imagine, e.g., going to an encyclopedia to look up an animal and being able to see how the animals moves and hear how it sounds, as opposed to just reading about the animal while watching a still image—and without having to go to a zoo or wait for the right documentary to be aired on TV. (Unremarkable today; borderline sci-fi back then.)

While I cannot pin-point the years after so long a time, we are in the teenage area, likely stretching into high school, when the early days of Windows, various CD-ROMs, and ultimately the likes of Encarta (apparently, released in 1993, when I turned 18) seemed to open new horizons and “multimedia” was the buzzword of all buzzwords. It even seemed more appealing to me than computer gaming. (Porn was not yet something associated with computers, and my first contacts with the Internet were in 1994.) But there I was, stuck with my old C64 and some limited access to school computers.

Time moved on. Beginning in 1994, I had great access to computers at college (albeit running Unix-variants), and I ultimately owned a few Windows computers of my own. Multimedia soon turned into a non-issue, however. Indeed, while I have spent enormous amounts of time on computers, often on the Internet, and often on Wikipedia, I prefer conventional formats—notably, text with the odd image for encyclopedias (much like a printed encyclopedia). Similarly, a good documentary (although they are rare these days) is perfectly fine, but I have no wish to see the TV-style combination of video and audio extended with something else (text included; yes, I might take a break from watching to look up something in Wikipedia, but the same would apply to 1980s TV and a printed encyclopedia, barring only the off-topic complication that 1980s TV could not be paused in the manner of e.g. a documentary-on-DVD). Multimedia, at least in the buzzword use, leaves me cold—and many attempts can be outright annoying or counterproductive, as when a website tries to force autoplay music, spoken messages, and/or videos on a visitor who comes to read. Ditto, e.g., when an unwarranted jump in medium takes place, as when I have a HTML page that I want to read and am suddenly met with the demand that I click a link to see a video of someone talking about the topic that I came to read about.

A later example is my wish for a video projector to make my DVD watching more enjoyable. In the early days, such were very expensive and often came with quality problems, which made me unwilling to buy at the time; however, I was determined that I would buy one once prices fell and quality rose to a sufficient degree. While the word “cheap” might not truly apply even today, the situation is sufficiently much better than, say, twenty years ago that I would have jumped at the opportunity to buy today’s products back then (at least, after inflation adjustment...). Today, however, I have no interest. A major reason is the switch from using a regular TV to using a computer screen (laptop screen, in particular), which moves the screen so much closer to my face than a TV and makes the issue of screen size (the point where a video projector could once really score) much less interesting (a smaller screen that is closer can often cover a greater angle of view than a larger screen/projection in the distance). If it comes to watching something in a hotel room or on a train, the laptop wins by a first-round knockout. A modern projector “back then” might have been a game changer for me, but today? No.

To turn back to the beginning of the text, what about that CD-ROM? Well, it came with a book that I needed for an astronomy class in college. At the immediate time, I only had convenient access to Unix computers, while the CD-ROM demanded Windows, and reading the book was enough to pass all theory requirements, so I left it at that. Later, I moved to Germany and brought neither book nor CD-ROM, until 2019 (?) when I brought back quite a few things from Sweden in one go, including a number of old textbooks. Another six years later, this book has its turn for a revisit. Of course, cf. above, I had also mostly lost interest in things multimedia and Windows with time, and I might have seen the CD-ROM mostly as a redundant cost-increaser, to the degree that I was even still aware of it. With at least some books with CD-ROMs/DVD-ROM/whatnot the presence of the disc has been a nuisance during reading (of the paper book) through its thickness and/or stiffness, forcing me to remove it—and, indeed, I appear to have originally cut away the portion of the cover upon which this CD-ROM resided. (I found both cover and CD-ROM inside the book, but no longer attached to it.)

For want of a Windows, I have now simply copied all the contents to my local hard drive, gone through what seems usable (e.g. “.mov”/QuickTime files), and ignored the rest. As to these contents, a significant portion seems to simply be still images also present in the book (but in digital form and, maybe, in higher resolution) artificially pushed into alleged video files. To boot, some of them are effectively still images, but use a video or pseudo-video function to have text labels flash on and off—something more annoying and distracting than helpful. Some, however, contain actual video content, some filmed, some animated, to e.g. display the rotation of Jupiter around its axis or the movements of some astronomical objects relative each other. (Interesting, but chances are that the online sources of 2025 could provide better material for free.) There are also files with what might be the actual text of the book—in video form. Yes, there are literally videos that seem to display a page of text for some short time, then switch to the next page, on and on. (I have not yet looked into the details of these contents, however.) This, certainly, would be multimedia done wrong, an artificial and hard-to-use conversion of text into video in a very unhelpful and unprofessional/ignorant seeming manner.

Duplantis, ancillary jumps, and greatness in athletics (2025-09-16)

The 2025 world championships in athletics are ongoing and include yesterday’s gold medal and world record by “Mondo” Duplantis. As much as he is lauded by others and as much as he viewed as a truly supreme pole vaulter, what might be the best signs of his greatness is something that I have never seen mentioned—ancillary jumps.

To first look at yesterday’s competition, the extremely ambitious choices of Emmanouil Karalis brought a very odd constellation of ancillary jumps. (Karalis was the ultimate second placer. Outside of Duplantis and Bubka, Karalis’s 2025 is a very strong candidate for best ever year in terms of jumping high, which makes his ambition less naive than it might seem. The indoor season of Lavillenie’s 2014 was truly outstanding, but he faltered during the outdoor part, maybe, because of the below mentioned injury.)

After both Duplantis and Karalis cleared 6.00, both skipped the already very ambitious 6.05 in favor of 6.10—a height that only Duplantis and Bubka have managed outdoors (Lavillenie indoors, once, in his 6.16 WR; Karalis personal best is 6.08).

Duplantis cleared in the first attempt; Karalis failed and saved his remaining two attempts to 6.15—a height that not even Bubka has reached outdoors (Bubka, 6.15, and Lavillenie, 6.16, have both done so indoors on one single occasion.)

Duplantis cleared in the first attempt, while Karalis failed in an impressively close effort. The latter proceeded to save his last attempt for 6.20. He failed and Duplantis, without jumping at 6.20, continued to 6.30 (a would be world record height). Here Duplantis saw his first (!) failures of the day, before clearing in the third attempt.

In other words, Duplantis did not just exceed Bubka’s best by 15/16/17 cm, depending on definition, but he exceeded it twice (or, again depending on definition, exceeded it once, equalled it once). He had 3 (!) jumps at or above 6.10 (significant for being 20 feet to the U.S. athletes), where no-one else has managed more than 1 in a single competition. He had 4 (!) jumps above 6.00, a height that very few have managed to clear even once, let alone 4 times, in their entire careers. From a German perspective, e.g., the famed Tim Lobinger (RIP) only managed twice, while Sweden has no other 6m jumper than Duplantis.

Another point is that the average of these 4 jumps were a ridiculous 6.13,75—after rounding, the equivalent of Bubka’s erstwhile 6.14 WR. (With, obviously, a correspondingly higher average for his top 3 and top 2 jumps.) Indeed, the average of his top 6 is above 6m and even the average of his top 7 (i.e. all the heights that he cleared) is only a little shy of 6m.

Looking at ancillary jumps more generally and outdoors, www.alltime-athletics.com currently give a grand total of 30 such jumps at 6.00 or above, including KC Lightfoot at exactly 6.00. The other 29? All Duplantis.

Indoors, he is far less dominant in this regard, with a highest non-Duplantis ancillary jump of 6.05 by Bubka and a total of 5 jumps by three other jumpers above 6.00. However, Duplantis still holds 14 out of 19 at or above 6.00, 6 of the 7 highest, and the 2 highest, including the single 20 feet (6.10) jump—a great dominance, in its own right. (As a contrast, consider how the famed Isinbayeva fares among the women^e, be it indoors or outdoors, if with the reservation that she had far less competition in the lists at the time of her retirement than today.)

Now, using any type of single-criterion comparison is a tricky businesses, and it might e.g. be that Bubka was less interested in ancillary jumps above 6m or that ancillary jumps above 6m were pointless to him in many competitions, which would skew the comparison pro-Duplantis. (This is less of an issue with e.g. the long jump.) However, the flip-side of that is that ancillary jumps are not cost free but contribute to overall tiredness as the competition progresses, implying that jumping a certain maximal height after already having a set of impressive ancillary jumps is a greater accomplishment than with a less impressive set. (Such tiredness is a reason why having that clean slate on lower heights can be very important to a prospective WR breaker.)

Reflections around coming to Germany (2025-09-23)

The 28th (!) anniversary of my arrival in Germany is approaching and I have spent some time thinking back to the time around my arrival. A few (very incomplete!) observations:

1. The summer break was pleasingly long, because the semesters of my Swedish uni (KTH) and the trimesters of the German (TU Darmstadt), where I came as an exchange student, followed different schedules and the German resumption fell well after the Swedish.

2. I arrived in a winter jacket, there already being some cold in Sweden—and found amazing-to-me temperatures for the season in Germany. At the time, I assumed that this was mostly a matter of latitude and that the difference was somewhat representative.

   It was not...

   While Germany is warmer than Sweden (when averaging over time), the temperatures of that first day and, likely, the following few days, were atypically high for Germany. Indeed, by late October, there was even a night with temperatures below freezing. (In turn, and in all fairness, atypically low for Germany.)

3. I spent some few days in a youth hostel before a dorm room was arranged over some type of student-service organization, which was not a good solution:

   Lodgings were four (?) to a room, with a lack of security, snorers and both comings and goings in the night, a “private” space that was basically limited to the bed, and generally little to do. To boot, both classes and the activities for exchange students had yet to begin. As a consequence, I spent most of the daytime just walking about town. This did have the advantage that I got a head-start on local geography, but it was not overly productive. (Fortunately, a dorm room soon followed.)

   With hindsight, a hotel room would have been a superior option, as the sum of the costs for the youth hostel, per se, and the costs for the requisite membership in the Swedish youth-hostel organization accumulated to pretty much hotel rates over the few days. (A hitch being that I did not know in advance how long it would take to arrange a dorm room. Had the stay in the hostel been longer, a hotel would soon have become more expensive.)

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   Side-note:

   By and large, I consider the Swedish and German system of students arranging their own lodgings (be it in uni/college independent dorms or elsewhere) better than the U.S. of college-assigned dorms on a limited campus. (The more so as, going by TV, a U.S. college dorm appears to be a horrifying environment for those who come to study.)

   However, in cases like exchange students, some type of pre-arrangement between the “home” and “away” uni would have been beneficial, in that the student would have known, with certainty, that a room would be available at this-and-that date.

   I also do not know why it was not possible for the student-service organization to finalize a room over my own email contacts from Sweden, and why it insisted that I show up in person in order to be assigned a room on an is-something-available basis (likely, in combination with a “we will try to set something aside for you based on your emails, but no guarantees”). It is noteworthy, however, that Germany defies the stereotypes of both punctuality and efficiency while strongly adhering to the stereotype of excessive bureaucracy (and, within e.g. bureaucracies, problems like work-to-rule as an everyday mentality; also see below).

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   Side-note:

   The use of youth hostels is (were?) often limited based on membership in one organization or other. By paying for membership in some Swedish hostel-organization, I fulfilled that criterion.

   I cannot say that I find this solution particularly good and the system seems geared more at monopoly abuse than at fair pricing—the odder, as the self-portrayal of youth hostels (and/or their organizations) seems to imply a pro bono puerorum. Something that I found greatly annoying in principle, although unimportant with an eye at my practical use, was that I had to pay a full yearly fee for a 1997 membership, as opposed to a 12-month membership, which would have allowed me to access other hostels in the first three quarters of 1998. (Alternatively, as opposed to a fee scaled for the fact that my membership only lasted for just over 3 months, because of member-hostile rules and not my own wrong doing.)

   In as far as my experiences are representative (a single stay, in a single country, 28 years ago), I would advice to only use youth hostels when traveling in a sufficiently large group that the group can take an entire room for its own. Otherwise, a cheap hotel or motel is very likely to bring better value for the money, even if somewhat more expensive. (Especially, for a group of two, when non-trivial valuables are in play, and/or quality sleep is needed.)

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4. As with the bureaucratic dorm room arrangements (cf. a side-note to the previous item), there were early warning signs of problems with German mentality, especially, when it came to customer service, bureaucracy, and a civil-servant mentality.

   A particularly noteworthy case took place when I queued for a computer account at the uni: We might have been half-a-dozen in line, and already waiting long because either the process or the single employee handling matters was slow.

   Suddenly, out of nowhere, said employee just up and left with a statement of (approximately) “I am going on my lunch break. Come back in half an hour.”, with no regard for the queuers and previous waiting time. To boot, with no previous warning that a lunch break was upcoming and despite that it must have been predictable, well in advance, to him that he would not manage the queuers before said lunch break. (And, yes, “lunch break”—not e.g. “my wife was just in a car crash and I need to rush to the hospital”.)

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   Side-note:

   Someone professional would (a) have indicated to newcomers, well before the break, that there was no point in joining the queue, and (b) worked through everyone allowed to join the queue before taking that break. (While a more professional office would have ensured continuous service through having someone else take over or, better, having more than on employee at hand throughout—the more so, as the bulge of new computer accounts at the beginning of the academic year was extremely predictable. At KTH, in stark contrast, computer accounts were created automatically for all registered students, who only needed to receive a piece of paper with a first password, find a computer, log in, and set an own password—done.)

   Had my German been better at the time, I would have insisted that he stay and do his job—and that he be fired, should he refuse to do so.

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5. Around beer and beer culture:

   One of the first days of the term, I was walking around town with a small group of other exchange students. We decided to try a German Kneipe (one of the things for which Germany is famous-to-tourists) and picked something likely looking. The resulting meal and drinks were enjoyable (including my first Kristallweizen), but, with hindsight, it is very dubious whether the establishment truly was a Kneipe, as opposed to a more general, slightly rustic looking, eatery-that-serves-beer.

   In the same group, but not necessarily on this occasion, we also briefly discussed visiting the Oktoberfest in Munich, seeing that it might be our only chance during our respective exchange-student phases, but we decided on not going due to the distance. (The topic, likely and paradoxically, was brought up by me. Better research might or might not also have shown a problem with timing, as the better part of the Oktoberfest falls in September...) I ended up staying in Germany indefinitely (as noted, the 28th anniversary is approaching), and I have yet to go. In fact, I once lived for around a year in Munich for reasons of work—and crossed the Theresienwiese (where the Oktoberfest is held) on a near daily basis, going from my apartment to the office and back. When the Oktoberfest came around, I never bothered with a visit.

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   Side-note:

   There is some overlap with the issue of wants and multimedia above and my changing take on the Oktoberfest. However, I never really had a big interest in drinking, partying, and whatnot, and the motivation behind my original interest was more of a “tourist experience” kind, combined with a perceived “now or never”. (The Oktoberfest is at least a candidate for Germany’s most famous-to-tourists.) The longer I stayed on, the less the value of a further “tourist experience” in Germany, and the faultier did the “now or never” prove. (But it is possible that I am also even less interested in drinking, partying, and whatnot, than I was back then.)

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6. A particularly amusing incident, and one demonstrating the dangers of getting details of a foreign language wrong, took place during or very shortly after an organized-fun-for-the-exchange-students visit to a museum with a focus on “Hessische Kunst” (“Hessean art”; Darmstadt is in Hesse). One of the (French?) girls misstated this to be “Hessliche Kunst”, which (while it self nonsensical) is pronounced almost exactly like “Häßliche Kunst” (“ugly art”)—giving a longer claim of “museum for ugly art”.

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   Side-note:

   Another instructive (but not particularly amusing) incident occurs to me during writing: There was an introductory “refresher” course in German held by some (native) student volunteers (who also were behind e.g. the aforementioned museum visit). At some point two of the instructors were caught in a debate whether it was “obviously” supposed to be “dank meines Vaters” (“thanks to my father”, using the genitive case) or “dank meinem Vater” (ditto, but using the dative).

   As it turns out, both versions are correct, if with the genitive pushing the dative aside over time, and none of the instructors had spotted this fact—and it is surprising what one can miss when there is no particular reason to pay attention and/or when not actively using a particular word/whatnot. For instance, I had been in Germany for well over ten years when I first noticed that that the word for Wednesday was not “Mittwoche” but only “Mittwoch”. This likely aided by the complication that “Mittwoche” is etymologically more sound in light of “Woche” (“week”) and the literal meaning/underlying intent of “mid-week”; and by the implication of my “Mittwoche” being so obvious to listeners that no-one had bothered to correct me or ask what I meant when I used it in spoken German.

   (The reverse development between dative and genitive is more common, to the point that there is famous book series, collecting a language column, called “Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod”, the title of which illustrates or, even, satirizes the issue, through combining a “The Dative is the Death of the Genitive” with a dative-centric formulation.)

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7. On the tail end of my exchange studies, I had to write an essay or whatnot to summarize my experiences. (Likely, to not retroactively forfeit a small stipend that had been given by KTH, but I am very vague on the details. Note some similarity in idea with this entry. The intent was probably to provide information for prospective future exchange students, who could read up on the experiences of their predecessors.)

   For the better part, I do not remember what I wrote, but two things stick out retroactively:

   Firstly, I wrote something along the very rough lines of it (a) being natural that an essay of this type focused on negatives, but that (b) this should not be seen as a lack of positives or as a reason not to go.

   The (a) seemed self-evident to me at the time, but might be seen very differently by others (or so I suspect), who might wish to share the good things, “inspire” (I dislike that presumptuous term) others to go, or similar. I would still contend that the negatives are both more valuable and more interesting. There is e.g. more to learn (with regard to human nature, a civil-servant mentality, how to handle or not handle a matter with an eye at customer friendliness, whatnot) from the above incident with the lazy jackass who opened computer accounts than from a much smother experience. Likewise, from a fresh-off-the-boat (-airplane, in my case) perspective it is usually more helpful to know what mistakes to avoid, what not to attempt at all, what traps might exist, what bureaucratic problems might be expected, etc., than “Yay!!! The X is a great museum!!! You must go!!!”. (For instance, the number of tourists who have been taken unawares by German opening hours must be enormous—especially, then as now, by stores being closed entirely on Sundays.)

   A further complication is matters of taste: Let us say that I had gone to the Oktoberfest. Would I have enjoyed it? Probably not, with potential problems and annoyances including unfortunately expensive beer (compared to e.g. those of a Kneipe outside Oktoberfest), loud and bad music, excessive crowding, and similar. (Drawing on a mixture of what I observed while passing by when coming home from work during that September in Munich, what I have read on the matter in e.g. newspapers, and my experiences with various other events, for want of a better word, in Germany.)

   Many others, however, would have enjoyed it. My potential recommendation of “do not go” would be of little help to someone who would have enjoyed it, while his potential recommendation of “must go” might have moved me over the edge to a (likely) poor decision.

   Secondly, while I did speak negatively of the German nonsense of dubbing virtually all movies, I also made some claim about some actors sounding cooler in dubbing (notably, Bruce Willis). This is not a claim that I would make today, as the type of “coolness” displayed is usually so artificial and exaggerated as to be off-putting or involuntarily comical. Here, I suspect a mixture of own maturation and the chance that my early poor grasp of German made me spend so much time on decoding what was said that I failed to notice that e.g. Bruce Willis’ designated German voice was involuntarily comical. (Problems with poor acting and ridiculous mistranslations, however, were something that reached my awareness very early on—and the ethical problems involved did so from minute one.)

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   Side-note:

   At least at the time, non-dubbed movies were very rare outside some very few cinemas in major cities that targeted English speakers (including U.K. and U.S. expats), which showed specifically English movies in English, and some more “artsy” cinemas, which might have showed some select movies in the respective original language and with German subtitles. The latter might have a wider range of languages, but also less consistency and, of course, with a very low likelihood of showing big blockbusters. The former, in turn, might well show a German or French movie dubbed into English, because it caters to English speakers—not those who wish to avoid the destructive distortions of dubbing.

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   Side-note:

   An honorary “Thirdly”:

   I did have considerable doubts, but probably did not mention them in the essay, as to whether these essays were ever read, be it at all or beyond a skimming by an administrator to ensure conformance with stipend criteria. The existence of such essays was certainly not mentioned to me in advance, when I conceivably might have read a few in preparation.

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8. I have also contemplated what has changed in Germany between then and now, but this is harder to write about without extensive fact checks, might just give a German version of a more global phenomenon (e.g. the rise of smartphones and social media or the current pollution of pavements and street corners with mis-parked e-scooters), or otherwise be problematic. (For instance, while I contend that Germany has turned ever more Leftwards since my arrival, making a true comparison of something like that would be extremely hard. Non-comparing claims, e.g. that German was too far Left back then and that Germany is too far Left now, are free from that complication.) Indeed, the three particular points, in the overlap with those early days, that spring the most strongly to mind are all variations of a more global theme:

   Firstly, the disappearance of the once frequent public telephones and, in particular, telephone booths/boxes/whatnot. In the very early days, I had no cellphone with me, adding a landline to my dorm room seemed like overkill relative my very limited needs, and the dorm did not have a “communal phone”. Consequently, I trotted out to the nearest telephone booth once or twice a week, put in a few coins, and called my mother. (Occasionally father, but he was far less likely to complain if I did not call.) I would even suspect, but do not actually remember, that one of my very first actions on German ground was to “phone home”, simply to calm any worries of plane crashes and hi-jackings that might have arisen during the short flight.

   Today, such phones are typically only found in special circumstances, e.g. in high-traffic train stations, and are usually limited to the phone and, at most, some minor cover well short of a traditional booth. (I have not read new Superman comics in ages, but I do see a problem for him.) This while that old telephone booth stood in the middle of a residential area, and not one remarkably densely populated, at that.

   However, it is the same in other countries and largely for a common reason, namely, the great rise of cellphones, which has severely reduced the market for and commercial viability of such telephones. (Possibly, combined with a lesser public-service interest in phone companies.)

   Secondly, Germany had the curiosity of small vending-machines for cigarettes, likely, more frequent even than telephone booths, and equally to be found throughout town. I was never a smoker, so they had no practical effect on me, but they were something that I associated strongly with, for want of a better phrasing, a German look-and-feel of streets and cities, just like a difference in the design of zebra crossings can make the look-and-feel of two countries different. Today, they are all long gone, because (as in much of the rest of the world) legislative pushing has made them impossible, especially, through requirements on age checks.

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   Side-note:

   In a Swedish parallel, I and my sister sometimes played with a girl who lived in our neighborhood—and who was repeatedly sent to the nearest store to buy cigarettes for her father. Today, it would not just be illegal to sell those cigarettes to someone underage, let alone a pre-teen, even if for an adult, but chances are that many anti-smokers would be clutching their pearls at the very thought of her father sending her on such an errand.

   (At an extreme, I do not rule out that sending her to buy a carton of milk would cause pearl clutching, because, as we all know, there is a kidnapper on every street just waiting to swoop down on any child left unattended for more than two minutes.)

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   Side-note:

   Both with the vending-machines above and the store names below, the contrast Germany–Sweden must be considered, in at least two regards:

   Firstly, in that what was different between the countries affected my impressions more strongly than what was similar, as with the vending-machines, which Germany had and Sweden did not.

   Secondly, in that my perceptions of this-and-that (including what was German or “German” vs. what just was) might have been very different from those of a native German, because I had been transplanted very rapidly from one look-and-feel, one set of store names, etc., to another, while the native German would have grown up with them, seen them change over time, etc. (Changes, obviously, did not magically begin with my arrival.) In a manner of speaking, my impressions of Germany began with a single movie frame from a single scene, gradually complemented with more frames from the same scene, while the native might have seen many thousands of frames from many different scenes—a state that I have also long reached now, but which was very distant then; and had relative Sweden back then, but only partially have now, because I have missed so many frames in the interim. That one scene, let alone frame, then made a much stronger impression on me and my view of the film than on the native.

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   Thirdly, the loss of many then-familiar-to-me German brands, names, and whatnots of various stores/businesses/banks/..., that I also came to associate with Germany in those early days.

   For instance, I often went to a nearby grocery store branded as “miniMAL” and often saw other stores of the same brand, but these have long been re-branded as “Rewe”. Ditto e.g. HL-Markt. (Rewe has a long history of buying up originally separate chains and brands. Even then, I could tell from the products on the shelf that Rewe, miniMAL, HL-Markt, and, maybe, one or two others, belonged together, but they still had separate store names, logos, and similar. With time, their assimilation into the Borg collective was completed.)

   For instance, my first German bank account was with Dresdner Bank, which was acquisitioned by and/or merged with Commerzbank in 2009. (But good riddance: I had left long before that because of its customer hostility. Unfortunately, it appears to be pretty much the same with all German banks.)

   However, this too is a global issue and the specifics a matter of personal nostalgia.

Peanuts, synchronicity, cause, and coincidence (2025-10-01)

After some minor “Peanuts” readings around last Christmas, I made a more serious effort during 2025—and actually went through the complete collection of strips published in the 26-volume “The Complete Peanuts”.

A very personal reflection on coincidence is that “Peanuts” falls into spans of 25 years (give or take a few months): The strip began in 1950, I was born in 1975, the strip ended in 2000, and I read it in 2025.

This also shows that coincidence does not necessarily mean much. For instance, had I done my readings just a year earlier or later, these spans would not have held; for instance, most others are not born in 1975 and would have had another alignment or non-alignment, even had they read in 2025.

To boot, it can illustrate how cherry-picking facts, stretching facts, and similar can create a greater impression of coincidence (or correlation, causation, whatnot) than there actually is. For instance, Schulz was born in 1922 and died in 2000 (more on that below)—and would it not have been a more perfect coincidence, had he been born in 1925? Yes, but a little trickery can create an almost alignment out of this: In 1947, he worked on a pre-cursor to “Peanuts” (“L’il Folks”), which ran until 1950. We then have 25 years from birth until serious work, three intercalated years (intercalation being common in timekeeping), and then the already mentioned set of 25-year intervals. For instance, should the end of “Peanuts” count as 2000, when the last strip was originally published, or as 1999, when the last strip was actually written? For instance, these 25 years between this-and-that hold well if we look at calendar years, but could turn into something else if month of year is also considered and/or time spans rounded to the nearest year.

A more globally interesting case of synchronicity is the death of Schulz: He spent almost his entire adult life putting out “Peanuts” strips on a daily basis, but retired in late 1999, leaving a supply of already completed strips for continued publication. The last of those strips hit the presses in the early morning of 2025-02-13. Schulz died in the evening of 2025-02-12, a few hours earlier—making the end of “Peanuts” and his own life coincide.

A natural reaction by many outsiders might have been that he died and the strip ended—perfectly natural. (Barring the continuation by some other author, which is common with popular strips.) Here, we might have had simple cause and consequence leading to a very natural synchronicity. Indeed, if e.g. a book author dies, chances are that there is an abrupt stop (if from one book to another; not from one day to another). He might or might not have some single book ready to be published or some work sufficiently progressed that someone else can complete it, but there still remains a very clear causality—author died, no more books. However, with comic strips (at least, more successful ones in continuous publication) it is standard practice to work months ahead, e.g. to avoid that a temporary illness or a sprained hand interrupts supply. Had Schulz died “on the job”, there would still have been a buffer of strips, and the last publication would have followed months after his death.

No, the synchronicity was in so far a coincidence that Schulz retired and happened to die at the same time as the strips ran out.

In a next step, however, it was not entirely a matter of coincidence, because external circumstances limited the likely range of death: He retired in his old age and while suffering from cancer. While I am not privy to medical details, chances are that this reduced the coincidence needed very considerably. Had he, e.g., retired twenty years earlier and been killed in a car crash just when the strips ran out, this would have been a far greater coincidence. Similarly, the likelihood that someone shares a birth year with a random stranger depends strongly on how filtered for age the strangers are, e.g. in that two kids in a schoolyard are much more likely to share birth year than two adults on the street.

More on Peanuts (2025-10-01)

While the previous entry covers my main topic, it might seem odd if I do not say anything about the actual strip. During reading, I did indeed have countless thoughts about what might be worth pointing out, which could have resulted in thousands upon thousands of words of text—but I decided against such a text very early on and did not make notes or keep references to particular pages. Some more limited remarks, however:

1. Schulz had an amazing work ethic and professionalism, which e.g. shows in the very low number of rerun strips (but there were a much higher number of Rerun strips, strips that featured the character Rerun—especially, in the later days of the strip). This while many others write for two years, suddenly pull in a month of reruns, write for six months, have another two weeks of reruns, etc.—and never mind how few have the tenacity, with or without reruns, to keep going for more than just a handful of years.

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   Side-note:

   There were quite a few cases when a strip felt stale, e.g. through repeating a variation of the same joke once too often, or through pushing a certain theme for too long, as with some Snoopy-centric strips. However, over 50 years this might be forgivable—especially, almost absent outright reruns. To boot, such staleness might not have been detected at all by someone who, like me in the 1980s/1990s, read strips at a tempo of one a day and for a small part of those 50 years.

   His work ethic can also be important in understanding the previous entry, pointing to the strong possibility that he truly kept at it for as long as he reasonably could. (And more than a decade past a regular retirement age; several decades beyond, I presume, securing life-long financial independence; and at least several years beyond the point where a drop in ability to reliably draw smooth lines was visible in many of his drawings.)

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   A particular, if subtle, sign of such professionalism is the matter of schools: Charlie Brown and most of the other kids went to one school; Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and some other kids went to another. Very early on, I suspected that Schulz would at some point silently merge the two schools into one, be it out of personal convenience or because he slipped up out of carelessness—as have so many others in similar situations. He never did, despite having several decades to do so. (There was one brief occurrence of a shared school, but that was because Charlie Brown’s school had literally collapsed and kids were now temporarily moved to Peppermint Patty’s school. Once a new school building had been erected, things went back to normal.)

2. Inevitably, however, there were some oddities in continuity and oddities more generally.

   For instance, the aging of the children: Apart from the traditional comic strip approach of having characters be at a fix age or age much more slowly than in real life, there seemed to be a strong trend for the children to age comparatively more rapidly the younger they were and to slow down as they approached Charlie Brown in age. (And there were some classroom scenes where kids that “should” have been in different classes shared a classroom. There might or might not have been an off-screen explanation, e.g. a temporary arrangement or that the school was so small that different ages sometimes studied together, but this compression of age ranges seems a more likely explanation.)

   For instance, I found the story line of Lila (?) very disappointing and anti-climatic: She was mentioned in a mysterious manner for some strips, given a single “on screen” appearance (with a bit of a shock moment, because she was human where I had expected another dog), was mentioned with a brief explanation after that, and was never seen or heard of again. (Apparently, Snoopy had briefly had another owner, Lila, before joining the Brown family.) As is, the entire thing was pointless—and there is so much that could have been done around Lila but was not. (If in doubt, I would rather have seen a gamble on Lila than what did follow about pre-Brown Snoopy connections, e.g. his brother Spike. Maybe, she would have flopped, but the chance of having something more worthwhile than Spike would have been worth the gamble.)

   For instance, to continue with Snoopy and ownership: Early on, he did not seem to be implied to be specifically Charlie Brown’s dog. I even have a vague recollection of some strip where Charlie Brown did not seem to know where Snoopy lived. Some time in, this connection became very strongly established, however.

   For instance, before Marcie appeared, there was a virtual carbon copy of her by another name, who even called Peppermint Patty “sir”. (I do not know what the idea was, but I could e.g. imagine that Schulz wanted to use that character, got the name wrong, and, thereby, accidentally created a new character. Other potential explanations include that Marcie went by a fake name or had an, otherwise unmentioned, sister. Overall, the issue might be trivial, but it irks me in the way of a greatly discordant note in an otherwise strong musical performance—Schroeder might sympathise.)

3. While Snoopy is often viewed as a breakout character (to the point that the strip is named after him in some countries, including my native Sweden), there were quite a few portions of his life, adventures, and fantasies that either did not work for me or worked and simply were pushed too far—the more so as they took away “screen time” from the other characters. Notably, almost anything around Snoopy’s brothers, including the aforementioned Spike, seemed pointless to me. (And also a bit geographically odd, as almost everything else in the series played “locally” or in some limited outside settings, e.g. various camp scenarios, while the brothers were spread far and wide.) I loved the WWI flying-ace strips, but they went on for too long—and why tack on the too similar “Beau Geste” strips? (The more so, as the presence of birds in the latter brought nothing that could not be covered by other types of stories, most notably the camping/scouting ones.)

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   Side-note:

   A complication is that it can be hard to tell what is real and what fantasy with Snoopy, absent interaction with the kids—to the point that I am not certain how much of e.g. the Spike-centric strips were real. (Some late strips could even be interpreted as some Spike-centric events being literary efforts by Snoopy.) This the more so, as borderline cases occur. For instance, there are WWI flying-ace scenes that feature Snoopy and Marcie in a French setting and others that do so in Marcie’s kitchen. Are those in a French setting, then, entirely in Snoopy’s fantasy or are they just a fantasy-version of a real-life scene, say, from Marcie’s kitchen? (And such adventures of Snoopy’s are still local in a physical sense. His mind might have been in France but his body was not.)

   As occurs to me during writing: While this type of fantasy life could match that of a young child reasonably well, the actual children only rarely engaged in similar fantasies—much unlike e.g. Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbs”. (With reservations for details, e.g. what of Schroeder’s piano playing was real and what fantasy. As noted in some strip, the black keys on his piano were only for show. However, even this is more closely tied to reality than, say, fighting the Red Baron over France, through having less of an influence on the surrounding story.) This might be a contributor to how adult the children often seemed.

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4. The success of a character depended strongly on having some type of hook or gimmick. (Be it because the character was more attractive to Schultz or to the readers.) More generally and in real life, there can be advantages to standing out, being memorable, whatnot, as implied by claims in the “no publicity is bad publicity” family.

   For instance, early on, there were five main characters: Firstly, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, who remained central characters throughout. They might not have had that much in terms of hooks early on, but they developed such over time, and they had the early advantage of being, respectively, the focus character and a dog-among-humans. Secondly, Shermy, Violet, and Patty (not to be confused with the later Peppermint Patty). They were all fairly generic characters, developed little, and were overrun by the likes of Lucy (who, among other things, had a “fussbudget” gimmick). With more characters entering, the three received less and less space—and I doubt that I was even aware of their existence during my 1980s/1990s readings. (Nevertheless, they were once important to the strip and should not be forgotten.) In the specific contrast Violet–Lucy, they might have been too close in looks and potential roles for both to thrive at the same time. (Even Lucy’s football gag was actually first performed by Violet—giving me an early “WTF!!!” moment. However, the football gag was a better personality-match for Lucy.) Without going back for a direct comparison, I might speculate that the three also stood out less optically than most of the later characters. (Including, in another direction comparison, Lucy over Violet.)

   For instance, in the smaller circle around Peppermint Patty, there were (likely) only three characters that really stuck, Peppermint Patty, herself, Marcie, and Franklin. The two former were breakout characters and might (especially, when paired with each other) be my two favorites of the entire “Peanuts” universe—and they truly had something to offer from early on. Franklin was a “meh” character, who only ever stood out through being Black in an otherwise almost entirely White strip (restricted to humans). He brought very little as a character, received far less “screen time”, and many of his appearances, beyond some point, made him a surrogate for his grandfather (who, being an adult, did not appear in person). Other characters from the same circle either had nothing or only something of temporary value.

   However, even a hook or a gimmick was no guarantee for long-term success. If in doubt, any single characteristic might soon loose its appeal. (Who cares if someone has naturally curly hair?!?) Early appearances of Lucy, e.g., often had a strong focus on the fussbudget angle, but she did not remain there. (In fact, that angle soon disappeared, if partially replaced by a related angle of grumpiness and whatnot.) In later years, we instead had variations like amateur psychiatrist, comically poor baseball player, bitchy and dominant older sister, unrequited lover of Schroeder, and whatnot—all giving plenty of comical opportunities. Other attempts might have failed because they simply brought too little positive. (Complement bragging about having naturally curly hair with pestering a dog about chasing rabbits, and a character might just turn annoying.)

   Pig-pen is an interesting special case, in that he was with the strip for decades despite only having the one gimmick of being preternaturally dirty. That gimmick was sufficiently memorable that he is often seen as a major character, and enough to keep him coming back, but he actually was never a truly great presence. The reason is simply that he would have needed something more to actually be more than a “novelty character”.

   (With many examples unmentioned—often because they appeared in too few strips for me to have a clear and immediate memory.)

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   Side-note:

   There are a great many factors to consider when it comes to success, and I do not intended to attempt such a discussion. However, one notable point with “Peanuts” is how the overall character gallery grew and how early characters might have had a considerable advantage in gaining a permanent position through lesser competition. Most of the really big names were likely all established at some point in the 1950s, while there might have been none added after the 1970s. (Shermy, Violet, and Patty notwithstanding. While they disappeared, they did so for other reasons and they might have fared much worse had they, in identical versions, been added in 1960 or 1970, instead of 1950.)

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5. One of the dominant characters of the last few years was Rerun. He might first have appeared in the 1970s and must have figured in my 1980s/1990s readings—but I had no awareness of him. This was likely from a combination of his appearances still not being very frequent and mostly limited to riding on the back of his mother’s bike, often experiencing terror or accidents as said mother proved an incompetent bicyclist. During these bike rides, names were unlikely to be mentioned and the similarity in looks with Linus might well have made be believe that it was Linus. (Linus is his older brother and the nick-name Rerun stems from a great similarity and/or another early perception of, likely, Lucy’s that he would be a “rerun” of Linus—something not borne out by their later behaviors and storylines, beyond both being harassed by Lucy.)

   (Looking back at the previous item, Rerun might be a partial example of weak early character, who was mostly on ice over a, maybe, two-decade span, before taking off. Being the sibling of one or more major characters, two in his case, is obviously a major advantage for success.)

6. Many of the stories (maybe, more so early on) can be seen as reflecting adult situations in a children’s setting, rather than just children’s situations, including many quasi-Existentialist fears/frustrations/whatnot.

   A particular point is women’s behaviors towards men, female double standards, and similar. A particularly telling early story is when some of the girls (likely, still Patty and Marcie; however, my memory is weak) have some of the boys do all or most of the work to construct some type of hut. Once the hut is done, the girls slam up a sign of roughly “Girl’s club. No boys allowed.” (I do not remember the actual phrasing), leaving the boys with nothing to show for their work—something almost symbolic of the ideas of some Feminists and the attitudes of some spoiled women. Lucy, in particular, borders on being a caricature of a (certain type of) woman and often show ideas and behaviors well suited for a Feminist. (Note e.g. those football gags, her complete lack of self-perspective, and her treatment of her younger brothers.)

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   Side-note:

   However, the exact take of Schulz, himself, is often hard to detect reliably. For instance, there are several strips in which one of the girls complains about a lack of women in sports reporting. Is Schulz then trying to let the girls speak for himself or is he displaying unreasonable behavior in a girl, maybe, to caricature a real-life protester? (And the behaviors are, indeed, unreasonable, as e.g. sportscasts, barring ideological pollution and outside pressure groups, chose material based on what the audience wants to see—not based on “gender parity” or, in the reverse, a wish to “discriminate women”.) Lucy, specifically, is so inept at baseball that even Charlie Brown (very far from a star in his own right) despairs, and is singularly poorly placed to push such issues. (As a counterpoint, there was an early story with, IIRC, Lucy having great success at golf, but chances are that it is best viewed as more of a Snoopy-style fantasy than a real event. The more so as there were oddities in terms of e.g. distances travelled in what time and the appearance of adults “on screen”, if only in the form of legs.)

   More generally, the issue of “Peanuts” and politics is tricky, and it might best be viewed as apolitical (and most individual strips have nothing to do with politics to begin with). However, I find myself puzzled at how many seem to view it as Left-leaning. One reason might be that many, as usual, truly do not understand for what the Left and the non-Left actually and respectively stand. Another might base on an arguable anti-authoritarian stance displayed in “Peanuts”, but where authoritarian or anti-authoritarian attitudes are found on both sides of the political spectrum, the worst and most mindless authoritarian nits tend to be Leftists, the strongest anti-authoritarians (short of Anarchists) tend to be Libertarians, and many have an individual stance that varies depending on whether authority is currently held by someone with similar or differing opinions/priorities/whatnot. (The claim, in particular, that the Left would be about speaking truth to power is outrageously wrong: The Left in power usually speaks power to truth; the Left out of power often speaks lies to power.) A third might be that it is easy to view others through a lens of our own ideas and preferences, to be more aware of things that are important to us than those unimportant when reading, and similar—which might be why I experienced “Peanuts” as slightly Conservative or Libertarian, accumulated over the cases where a political angle seemed to be present.

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7. Speaking of men and women, an almost tragic point is that there were not only many more characters in a state of unrequited love than I would expect at that age in the real world, but that there was sometimes love to be had for those willing to look in the right direction—which they did not. (Leading to interesting questions like whether it is better to hold out for “the one” or to “love the one your with”, whether someone is in deep love or just suffering from “one-itis”, and whether a certain act is romantic or stalking/harassment.)

   Most notably, Charlie Brown had various romantic aspirations that came to nothing, while he had two girls (Peppermint Patty and Marcie) who would have been more than happy to have him almost throughout their entire runs.

   Romantic failures also often went back to poor approaches, often found in real life. For instance, Charlie Brown never screwed up the courage to approach that Little Red Haired Girl. For instance, Lucy pestered Schroeder to the point of putting him (further) off the idea of marrying her, when she should have dialed back and tried to give him a positive impression—and understood that “going steady” was a far more suitable and realistic goal than marriage at her age. (With a very similar claim applying to Sally relative Linus, minus the marriage part.)

8. Changes of the outside world brought some oddities—the more so as my first readings of “The Complete Peanuts” rooted me firmly in a 1950s setting (or, more generally, a pre-1975 setting) and as most of the actual stories, humor, philosophy, whatnot, is timeless. When someone then mentioned or used a modern-in-the-late-1990s piece of technology in a late 1990s strip, it was almost disconcerting—as if the same had been done in a 1950s strip. Ditto when there was a sudden reference to Tiger Woods—whatever happened to the likes of Ben Hogan?

   A particular loss was how Lucy was dressed. Her earlier outfit with that skirt that somehow stuck out to the sides might not have been the most practical, and it might have been an increasingly anachronistic style of dress (relative the respective real-world “now”) as time moved on. However, she really did not look like herself in her later more unisex, slack-y, whatnot, outfit; the new outfit failed to match her persona in the manner that the earlier dress did by taking up that extra physical space and making her look larger; and it was a bit of an eyesore. (And, cf. above, it might have outright hindered her, had she had that outfit in the very early days, when she was a new character.)

   Franklin might be a particular issue: While Schultz apparently denied any political or otherwise dubious motivation, Franklin did occur in the strip at around the time that others added the infamous “token negro”, and (cf. above) he really added very little to the strip (beyond, to those who see value in such things, merely being Black). My personal suspicion is that he was added for all the wrong reasons of (what today would be referred to as) “diversity” and not for reasons of actual value. (Whether because Schulz favored this or because he wanted to avoid outside pressure, I leave entirely unstated.) Another potential “token negro” is found in some few of the strips with Snoopy and the birds, where one of the birds is of a decidedly darker color than the others—while otherwise looking just like them and while bringing nothing to the story. (But why someone would apply human skin-colors and skin-color ideas to birds is a mystery.)

9. A particular benefit of reading material stretching over such a long time is that many interesting references can be found and things learned (including Beethoven’s birthday), especially, when one is willing to look something up on the Internet. In my case, it has also resulted in other readings (works by comic artist and author Bill Mauldin; and “Hans Brinker”, which I only knew by reputation) and with others (notably, Ernie Pyle) that might have followed, had my reading list not been too long as it is.

Never have I ever ... and a happy New Year! (2026-01-01)

Come the switch from 2025 to 2026, I find myself reflecting on the fact that never have I ever been to a New Year’s party—something seen as a near given for many others (at least, in certain age ranges) and portrayed so often in various works of fiction.

Looking at my early childhood, I naturally spent the evening at home with my parents and was likely asleep in bed long before midnight. My parents did not have a party either, beyond possibly some eating, TV, and whatnot, with just the two of them.

Later, post-divorce, New Year’s became the main celebration that I shared with my father’s side of the family (while I celebrated Christmas with my mother’s side), which, because of geographic distances, amounted to the two of us and my paternal grandmother. (Grandfather was long dead, unfortunately.) With time, grandmother’s health dwindled and, in 1994, she passed away. leaving me and my father. Throughout, a similar pattern followed of something nice to eat, TV (especially, cf. side-note, the two traditions and the odd variation of “the year of X in review”), and general quiet enjoyment and contentment.

By the time that I moved to Germany, in 1997, and a New Year’s of my own became more common (depending on whether I, in any given year, was in Sweden or Germany when the day came), I hardly ever even considered the possibility of going to a party. In part, I rarely find parties enjoyable; in part, the idea of New Year’s as that type of quiet family affair had become so ingrained that I found the party goers a bit weird.

This has been aided by the fact that never have I ever married and founded a family of my own (cf. below) and, to my immediate recollection, never have I ever had a girlfriend around New Year’s, which brings me to a fact that might seem even odder to a U.S. TV character than not going to New Year’s parties—never have I ever kissed someone at midnight of New Year’s.

Now, I have no regrets with regard to New Year’s parties or, even, New Year’s kisses. (Had I been Kate Perry, the song might have been “I kissed a girl and I could take it or leave it”.) However, there are, obviously, some never-have-I-evers that I regret. For instance, a few years ago, it suddenly struck me that I had once spent a year-or-so doing weekend commutes—and that never had I ever come back for the weekend to be met with a hug and a home-cooked meal by a beautiful woman. During these times, I did have some minor entanglements on the work side of the commute, but never on the home side. I had no wife or other long-term relationship at the beginning and, what, should I spend the weekend searching for a girlfriend for the weekends to follow?

Well, maybe, I should have, because the realization of this particular never-have-I-ever really irked me. This, especially, in the contrast to my “old” family where a hug and a warm meal had been the standard welcome for someone returning from an absence or coming to visit (not limited to women; my father has mostly, if not consistently, followed the same pattern). This ranging from my adult visits in Sweden, while leaving in Germany, back to early recollections of the family arriving at my maternal grandmothers after nightfall and several hours in a car, and being whisked to the kitchen table for hot dogs. Looking deeper, my mother, grandmothers, and other female relatives always seemed to have a caretaking mentality relative both me and other men in the family (my maternal grandmother to her husband, in particular), which I have seen to a far lesser degree, if at all, in my girlfriends, and which seems to be weaker in most modern women in general. (Limited to my own experiences, this might be a matter of most of my relationships being short and/or casual, or of the fact that I have hardly been an exemplary boyfriend in return, but my impressions of others do point strongly to a wider difference.)

In the continuation, my failure to look for girlfriends more often, including during those weekends, might well be what explains that never have I ever been married and never have I ever had children, but I am not certain that I regret that beyond a “the grass is always greener on the other side” effect. The thought, in particular, of living with children is anything but attractive to me. (Then, again, a weekend commute might have made that more palatable. I also do not deny some concerns for the future, when I might be less able to fend for myself than I am today.)

Next, never have I ever owned a car. In fact, I have hardly ever driven a car since I passed my driver’s license test: Shortly thereafter, I moved to Stockholm (big city) to go to college and having a car was neither practical nor affordable at the time. Once I entered the workforce, I lived in Germany and was not yet certain for how long I would remain—and I preferred to build some savings instead. Once it seemed clear that I was in Germany for the long haul, I was in big cities with excellent public transport and a lack of parking. Eventually, so much time had passed, with no driving, that I did not even bother to renew my license and concluded that I would need to take at least some new lessons before I could “unrust” the skills needed, which I found embarrassing. By now, we are more than thirty years down the line. But this is no big deal to me: There have been cases, especially for commutes, when a car might have brought great advantages, but these must be offset against the high costs, the infamous German Stau, parking issues, and whatnot, which, notably, would apply even in times when no great advantages would have been present.

Drugs could provide yet another interesting never-have-I-ever: With some limitations, never have I ever used drugs—no marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, ... (The necessary limitations would be smaller in my native Swedish, cf. side-note.) However, I have consumed large amounts of coffee and I drink some alcohol (if likely less than average)—I have even used nicotine on some very few occasions. Then we have drugs in the sense of medicine, as with e.g. aspirin. Maybe, I could go with “never have I ever used illegal drugs”, but what is illegal has varied from time to time and place to place, making this a vague or misunderstandable claim (both coffee and alcohol have a history of bans, if never in a place and at a time when I have consumed them, while marijuana has an ongoing trend towards greater legality). There is also a variation based on age in many cases, and I have engaged in some (limited) alcohol consumption at an illegal age. I might go with “recreational drug”, but only under the condition that coffee, alcohol, and nicotine are not counted. Specific claims that “never have I ever used [name of individual drug]” would hold, but are firstly lacking in generality, secondly not necessarily remarkable—even with marijuana, far more can make the same claim than with coffee and alcohol, and chances are that it only becomes somewhat remarkable over the sum of all the drugs that I have not used.

Of course, other examples could be added, but I will instead conclude with the observation that any claim of “never have I ever” refers to a given point in time—and that the future might often bring changes. Whether this is a good, neutral, or bad thing will, of course, depend on the details at hand. For instance, I have no non-negotiable policy of “never will I ever go to a New Year’s party” (it might even be good for me), but a heroin injection will not be in my future if I can at all help it.