Nova Daily - 3 April 2025

Hi!

When Dr. Samuel Johnson had finished his great lexicography, the first real English dictionary, he was visited by various delegations of people to congratulate him, including a delegation of London's "respectable womanhood" who said, "Dr., we congratulate you on your decision to exclude all indecent words from your dictionary." He said: "Ladies, I congratulate you on your persistence in looking them up."

- Christopher Hitchens 

This small excerpt from the history of the English lexicography teaches a simple lesson: those determined to feel offended will find a reason to feel offended. While the prudeness of the womanhood is a relatively innocent example, some people go through quite some lengths to get themselves offended on purpose.

The woman who bites a gentleman's nose off for holding a door open for her sees his act through the lens of outdated gender norms and interprets it as an act of condescension and sexism. The guy who passes a group of girls that start to giggle straight afterwards might think that they are making fun of him. The religious enthusiast who crosses the street and is being honked at may consider this as a sign that he is being persecuted.

In each of these cases, the offended party's interpretation may be completely off. The gentleman shows kindness in holding the door open for the woman and might in fact do so for everyone. The group of girls may be nervous to talk to the guy and want to see if they can attract his attention by giggling. The spiritual man may have been reckless in crossing the streets, and the warning signal is completely justified. You can't see this from the outside.

Offence

The best response to an explicit accusation of racism that I've ever heard happened in a scene of a crime series that I used to watch. Even though it's a scripted scene, I think that it's beautiful. In this scene, the foreign boyfriend of a deceased local teacher is being asked for his whereabouts. He responds with "How DARE you think that?" The policewoman responds, "We're just keeping all options open." The man says, "But my option is more obvious, is it? Because of my name?!" Without breaking eye contact, she calmly tells him, "I have NOT heard that."

The communication in this scene is very powerful. The policewoman implicitly realises that being subjected to racism may well be a daily reality for the man. She resists the temptation to argue the point he raised, because that would lead to a pointless yes-no discussion. She doesn't attack him over it, which would force his walls up. She doesn't act affronted, but she doesn't lose face by ignoring the issue altogether (which, again, would only confirm the sentiment of polarity that he has just uttered). Instead, she communicates in no uncertain terms that what he has just accused her of is not the case, and she leaves it up to him to take his own words back without making it a greater issue than it needs to be.

You can't see what's going on in someone else's mind. The person looking up to the left while touching his nose may not be lying at all, even if your highschool teacher said that that is what it means. It may not even happen consciously, but what is true in all of the above cases is that someone's beliefs, habits, preconceived notions and experience provide a lens through which the situation is perceived. Notorious offence-seekers exist, and there's nothing that you can do for them.

There's always something to complain about, and I don't want to downplay any grief that anyone is feeling. But it pays to wonder at times whether feeling offended is a choice.

If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.'

In this country [N.S.: the United States of America], I've been told, 'That's offensive' as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don't.

- Christopher Hitchens

The game

Today was a good day for my chess. I broke four of my personal high scores. Unfortunately, Survival wasn't one of them. But I:

• won against a 2700+ rated player in bullet for the first time
• got myself a new bullet max at 2575
• won my Puzzle Battle and lifted my Battle rating to 1800+
• won my rapid game to get me up to a new peak of 2150+

Nothing to complain, then? Well, that depends on the context of it. The highest bullet win came after a tilt in which I had dropped 75 points, from my new max bullet rating back to 2500. It's at 2554 now, which is one point higher than my max was yesterday. So there's still progression.

Today's game was weird. My opponent played so slow that I was almost convinced that he'd flag by move 10. He ultimately did flag, though this was much later in the game.

My thoughts:

That went quite well, but my opponent's weird use of clock time cast its mark upon the entire game.

Model games:

The 3...dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 line is only recommended in Schandorff. The reason why l'Ami doesn't like to play it is precisely because of the line that my opponent played. The 6...Qd5 move that I played isn't covered by Schandorff, who instead points towards 6...Be6 with the intention to put the bishop on d5 on the next move. I'm not fully convinced that 6...Qd5 is a bad move: it's the second most played move. Trading on d5 isn't correct, though: white usually goes 7.Qh4 or 7.Qf4. This seems worth the study, but let's stick around with 6...Be6 for now.

Two blitz games between Nakamura and Fedoseev:

The analysis:

The opening wasn't really all that spectacular. The early trade of queens granted black easy equality. The position wasn't dry equal, though, which I was able to exploit later on in the game. I missed the right ideas in the endgame with Ra5, Bc4 and Rb5 to swap a pair of rooks.

What can I take away from this game:

1. Postponing any decision in the centre and developing the bishop with 3...Bg4 is a reasonable, principled and good variation for black, as suggested by l'Ami.
2. The 6...Be6 line is a good way to play, as Schandorff recommends.
3. At move 15, I could've played the move 15...Ne7, with the idea to play h5 and safeguard the f5-square for the knight. This is a nice positional feature which shouldn't be that foreign in pawn chain positions like this.
4. The endgame was engine-equal but slightly better for black from a human perspective. White had to defend the queenside for the entire game. The game wasn't only lost because of abysmal use of the clock; white was under a lot of pressure.
5. Missing tactics occurs often in such situations, because neither side is looking for it. The status-quo is such that black is playing for the win, so white doesn't look for active ideas. The c4-square has been defended for the entire game, so it's a bit of a blind spot.