Strong earthquake near Zagreb, epicenter about 1km north from me, 10km depth, 5.3+ on momentum tensor scale. No significant damage on my condo. No injuries. Woke up with shit falling and flying all over the place and plaster showering me from the ceiling. Fortunately, the structure is reinforced concrete and seems to have held up nicely.

Many aftershocks so far, one almost as strong as the original quake. The impacts are sharp, the damage is going to be significant on older structures.

Updates:

Magnitude was revised upwards to 5.5 for the initial tremor, momentum tensor scale (Croatian seismologists are the source). Destructiveness in Zagreb was assessed as 8 on Mercali-Cancani-Sieberg scale (also Croatian seismologists as source; I would say it’s accurate). Location was revised to 750m south-west and 500m south-east from me, for the initial tremor and the main aftershock; it was basically right under me. Locations of the tremors indicate a new, previously unknown fault line parallel with Medvednica mountain, on the southern side. I got my information from the https://www.emsc-csem.org/  website, and it’s actually accurate, unlike some info that comes from Croatian seismologists who are talking nonsense about Kašina fault line without actually bothering to look at the data.

So, yes, as you can imagine, the weather can be described with a “repeat rain until snow;” loop, but it is what it is. 🙂

Just in case you were wondering about my lack of recent activity, I’m on a vacation with Biljana, basically trying to not do what I do for the most part of the year, which is stare at the screen and get stressed out over shit that’s going on and I have no control over.

It’s raining now so I’m writing this. As for other things, I keep buying silver, as I had the impression recently that the last train is about to leave the station. As for the politics, I try to read as little of that as possible now, as it just pisses me off and I can’t do anything about it in any case.

I’ve been sort of absent lately, for several reasons. First, I get depressed from following all the political and societal trends; observing the depraved nature of godless people only reminds me that I am far from where I want to be, and this is not pleasant, to put it mildly. Second, I put on too much weight from just sitting behind the desk and eating all day, so I had to lose weight and put on some muscle. Third, there are difficulties at work that demanded my attention. And fourth, I didn’t feel like writing because it felt redundant; many things that sounded almost crazy when I first wrote about them, became all too obvious now, too obvious for me to even say “I told you so”.

So, I had a prolonged vacation, if you can call it that, from September to mid-November, where I worked mainly on getting my body into shape: water fast, and then ketogenic diet with 8:16 intermittent fasting. Body mass went from 94.7 kg to 82.5 kg. Upper body muscle mass went up enough to replace all the fat with muscle; I can do a hundred push-ups before breakfast now. I still have problems with my back, and those might be the most difficult ones to fix because I’m still sitting most of the day, and that’s just how it is, especially during the winter. I’m off the ketogenic diet now; my physical condition no longer requires such radical interventions, and it took too much effort to maintain for me to even consider it long-term. 

My oldest kid is in high school now, and it’s quite a difficult one (MIOC) so this was stressful. Also, my car was 14 so that needed to be replaced; that was initially expensive but regular maintenance is now reduced to filling it up and cleaning leaves from the windshield. At one point when I played some music for my son on my computer I decided that I’m too old to waste what’s left of my hearing on computer speakers, so I got a proper HiFi set as my computer audio output – NAD C-316BEE V2 amplifier, PSB imagine XB speakers, NAD C538 CD, and I connected it all to my computer’s digital output via a DAC (which is actually a CD player unit my brother made 20 years ago, and since the CD drive died of old age, I re-purposed it). Now I no longer need to use headphones if I want to hear what something actually sounds like. If all of this sounds as if I’m finding inconsequential things to do so that I don’t go crazy thinking about what’s actually going on, then you’re getting the right picture. Although, going crazy might actually feel like an improvement, compared to full awareness. I don’t feel like trying it out, so I’m left with fixing inconsequential things and waiting for either a nuclear blast, or God’s mercy. Whichever comes first.