Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
From my limited reading on the Wars of the Roses, this was also a factor there - Henry IV's usurpation of the throne meant that all the various cadet branches of the Plantagenets felt they had some kind of a claim.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
every time the King of Castille dies there's a civil war for succession in this period.
It's kind of crazy how unstable the house of Trastamara was compared to the Jimenez and Ivrea dynasties. The previous dynasties had plenty of minor succession struggles and an unfortunate tendency to keep breaking apart and reuniting the kingdoms, but rarely anything that broke down the kingdom's ability to resist external threats. My theory is that Reconquista/Crusader kingdoms generally had far more flexible customs of succession (note how much more often you had queens ruling in Iberia/Jerusalem than in the older Western kingdoms) - a necessary adaptation to frontier rule, where you needed a monarch to fight off Muslim threats, but one that became very troublesome once you either ~finished the Reconquista and no longer had that threat compelling unity, or when things started to go badly in the frontier struggle as they did for Jerusalem.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
This is so easy a dunk as to not be worth posting, but do you honestly think people on the left believe that Darwinian evolution applies to the human brain? I'm not seeing any major political faction which meaningfully believes in evolution.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
iirc during the Africa/America section the narrator is also losing the plot somewhat
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
I'm at my most attractive when I feel full of will and energy.
You already know the most important thing. And the second most important, which is to learn how to be gregarious. The third most important thing is to dial in your dating logistics. Think like Napoleon - logistics enables everything else. For a classic drinks date, find a spot you like, ideally classy-ish but chill and quiet (I like wine bars), with tables/bar where you can sit close to her, somewhere nice you can walk to nearby to sit and talk in the dark. That's first date and first kiss sorted, and if you're within walking distance to your place often more. For coffee dates, find a place with a park nearby you can walk in with your coffee. Concerts most of your logistics are sorted for you but try to get a drink beforehand so you can have some time but not too much time to talk. Etc. etc., but the main failing I see for guys once they can get dates is that they sit down for 'job interview' first dates and never build up a real rapport because they're not comfortable in their surroundings.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Glasses on men are like short hair on women - if they're hot, they make you hotter, if you're busted, they make you look worse. If you wear glasses that's a good reason to get your haircut and any beard grooming dialed in, and wear clothes that work with the glasses.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
I actually find it much more of an issue in small-town restaurants, the kind you'd go to on a roadtrip stop if you wanted to avoid a chain. Recall once stopping off at a BBQ joint in the Central Valley (not necessarily a mistake, there are good ones) and my sandwich was like eating a salt shaker. Same with a fried chicken place in the coastal South that all the locals raved over. Though I did recently eat a bag of store-bought popcorn and it was so salty I had to put chapstick on for the next two days to heal my lips.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
I also feel the same way about salt in a lot of US food, although there are definitely times the body just wants MOAR SALT.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Karlin
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Two ex-wignats, one guy mindbroken by Russia's failed blitzkrieg, and a former holocaust revisionist who changed his mind after seeing a gas chamber (apparently he just... hadn't thought about that?) are not exactly the cast of the Level Headed Good Judgement Hall of Fame. A casual browse of David Cole's spittle-flecked twitter feed may help to confirm that impression.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Cole, like many disillusioned members of the right-wing commentariat, is really telling on himself here. If all you can do is churn out Takes on this week's story to an undifferentiated mass of readers, you will eventually come to see them as a giant lump of aggregate stupidity, and caricature accordingly. I assume this explains most of the phenomenon - I wouldn't want to make a guess at how much is internalized self-loathing for one's writing career terminating in what is essentially slop (that is to say, Takes).
This was probably a (well-deserved) gesture of disrespect toward Unz for his descent into increasingly conspiratorial beliefs, ultimately culminating in Holocaust-denial.
Unz has been like that for a decade at least. This is more likely connected to Sailer's newfound career opportunities with Passage et al.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Storm of Steel is certainly the classic place to start, but worth remembering that Junger published it at 25 and lived to be 102. Most people only know him for WWI, and so they miss the incredibly rich development of his work afterwards. I'd urge you not to be satisfied without reading either On The Marble Cliffs (fiction) or The Forest Passage (philosophy) to get a taste of the later Junger, both of which are very short books. If you had to pick just one Junger, given your intense reading schedule, I would recommend On The Marble Cliffs (in the newish NYRB translation), which will hopefully give you the taste for more.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Happy to give any recs based on what you're looking for, I happen know a thing or two about Junger. Have one book and a half left before I've finished his entire (translated) bibliography (and "Bartender Venator" is chosen after the protagonist of his novel Eumeswil).
Celine is excellent, and he had a big impact on the young Sartre, although of course after the war they hated each other. There's a darkly amusing anecdote in Ernst Junger's war diaries where Celine manages to horrify a party full of Nazi officers with his antisemitic bloodthirst. Still, at least Celine was an honest misanthrope, whereas Sartre buries it under layers of bloated theorizing and projected dishonesty.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
"Why in Lenin's name is the General Secretary suddenly running the Politburo?!"
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
If by non-sweet tea you mean the pre-made Southern kind, yeah I enjoy it as a Southern thing but it's low-quality, industrially processed tea and it's not going to be good on its own. If you'd like a neat little hobby, try getting into brewing your own iced tea with high-quality ingredients - tons of variety as well as better taste.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Pajeet was an Indian name that happened to be used in a 4chan meme about "designated shitting streets" (itself a variation of a comic making fun of Turkish claims to steppe nomad heritage), and the name just stuck.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Spoiler for the big twist of the first season:
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
My understanding is that Russian and Chinese submarines are intended to operate in very different waters and for different purposes. Chinese subs are intended to operate in the South China Sea and within the first island chain, so it makes sense for them to focus on smaller submarines with much less need for nuclear subs. Could they catch up to Russian capabilities? With time, I'm sure, but they don't really have a need to until they take Taiwan and start playing force projection games.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Perhaps we need a new version of Aristotle's Four Causes for systems analysis...
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
I make a lot of shredded chicken, beef, pork, etc. What's a better solution than shredding it with two forks? Gets a little tiring when you're doing multiple Instant Pots' worth.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Thanks, was hoping you would comment on this for the medical perspective. I take them a couple times a year for heart stuff, so never really had a chance to notice side effects, and my friends who use them off-label also do it very infrequently.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
You can get CBD-infused green tea from Harney and Sons' Hemp Division, and I'm sure other providers. CBD doesn't seem to have notable cognitive effects, but does take the edge off.
You may also consider talking to your doctor about beta blockers. They focus on the sympathetic nervous system, with minimal if any cognitive effects, and aren't habit-forming. They're essentially an off switch for the physical symptoms of anxiety, from what I've heard and experienced (some people use them for public speaking, dating, etc.), so if that's a major component of your stress they may help.
Bartender_Venator
1yr ago
Really 1948. It was the Apartheid government that facilitated mass movement of people between black and white areas of SA, because they believed they could keep blacks on the pass system forever.
I think it's fair to say that any movement will have people who sincerely believe in the motte and do not believe in the bailey.
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