Nova Daily - 16 June 2025: Which seat on the airplane would you pick?

Hi!

With 40 nice topics to write about, freshly formed in my head, it'd be a waste if I'd only list them and then never wrote anything about them. However, not today. I'll start with one or two on the list tomorrow, and then I'll see which ones I'll use in the time to come. Several of them may be combined, and I know in advance that there will be some topics that I'm not going to write about at all.

Which seat on the airplane would you pick?

For the last few weeks, Chesscom has been plagued by a lot of bot accounts that spam blogs. These blogs don't do much more than be annoying, possibly scam the users, and flood away a lot of good blog posts that would otherwise receive more attention. It's been a recurring topic in the blogging community, and I've been quite annoyed about it for several reasons. For one it takes up space that could've been used to discuss other topics that are vastly more interesting.

A certain while back, Chesscom released an image on their socials that I suspect has no connection with this issue. I'll put up the image here because I quite liked it:

It's an interesting one to play along with. I'd be curious to find out which one you'd pick, and why. And I'd also be quite interested to see if you'd be able to guess which one I'd choose.

The game

While waiting for the game to start, I decided to do the chess personality quiz. I've done it once before, and I was interested to see if I'd get the same result this time. Turns out I did. Feel free to have a guess if you want to.

The game itself was quite good, but I'm not entirely satisfied. I got a very promising position from the start, but I couldn't find a way to bring it home, and I had to rely on a cheap but easy-to-miss tactic in order to win the game.

So, I got a pawn almost straight out of the opening, but then played too indecisively and allowed my opponent to get back in the game to some degree. But right as my opponent thought to level the game, I was able to perform the oldest trick in the book.

For about 75% a deserved win, I'd say. But the point is in the bag.