Ethan
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User ID: 2275
Ethan
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9mo ago
Edward Feser's The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism is a great introduction to Thomism. It gives good Aristotelian arguments for the existence of God.
Ethan
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24d ago
On first watch it didn't quite land with me. But now I think it's really good. The Cameo joke was great, and it's better when you realize that James (the one bullying Charlie) was the one who sent it.
Ethan
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7mo ago
I'm very quick to judge music based on, like, the first minute. I don't think that's unreasonable as a song's beginning sets the tone for pretty much the whole thing.
Ethan
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8mo ago
I think the recommendation is to drink enough to loosen your inhibitions. Not enough to get drunk.
Ethan
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8mo ago
Putt putt is classic, if a little cheesy. But I think that can be worked to your advantage.
Ethan
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8mo ago
I'd be interested. Will there be one topic per month on which members write their pieces? Or do members get full discretion on what to write about every time?
Ethan
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9mo ago
That's a shame, I enjoyed the first animated Spider-Man and I was thinking of seeing that one. Life's just been too busy lately.
Beyond the Spiderverse, which is the sequel to the animated one, is pretty damn good.
Ethan
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1yr ago
Sounds like the barrier for entry is low. Also, I've never followed through with learning to code and building machines might give me the incentive I need to do so. Plus I am looking for something small-scale and relatively mess-free, so microcontrollers sound great.
Ethan
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1yr ago
"Nothing illegal about being a deranged meth-head?" To my understanding the associated activity is in fact illegal. Is acting like a druggy not enough to infer the use of illegal drugs?
Ethan
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1yr ago
What about De Sade may anybody find fascinating? He's not a good writer and his books are calcavades of whatever indecent actions he can think of. You'd have a similar product if you'd asked a rambunctious teenager to write "the naughtiest story ever."
Ethan
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1yr ago
You might be fine with a cheap coffee maker, a coffee bean grinder and whole coffee beans. Grind them beans fresh just before use, to desired consistency. (Generally, if you were using something like a french press to brew the coffee, the ideal coarseness of the beans would approximate kosher salt. I prefer going a little finer if I'm using a regular percolator. Experiment a little.)
The way I've described is an easy way to upgrade the average coffee routine.
Ethan
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1yr ago
https://twitter.com/TheWorthyHouse/status/1599041437081161728
This tweet. Charles Haywood writes at a blog called theworthyhouse.com which is excellent for longform dissident content. He doesn't give attribution for the flea circus comparison, so I guess it's his idea. And he criticizes stuff like this often on his Twitter, including self-driving cars and the idea that robots will take our jobs. And I agree that a lot of our fears and hopes about these things are unfounded.
Ethan
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1yr ago
You say you're not going to "suck it up and lie." But then why do you say one paragraph before "I'm not misgendering [my friend]" because "he's never formally asked me to change names or pronouns?" Would you capitulate to that request, if he were to make it? Wouldn't accepting such a request also be lying?
Ethan
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8mo ago
Just started Frank: The Making of a Legend by James Kaplan, about Frank Sinatra. It's the first biography of a celebrity I've read with any attention. I think I hold some deep feeling that musicians' lives aren't as worthwhile to learn about as geniuses in science or philosophy or politics. But Frank Sinatra was a kind of genius, and his life is pretty interesting so far. Also, Kaplan is a good writer and sometimes I read the prose aloud to feel it on my tongue. I think it sharpens me in some way to feel how good writing conforms to the breath.
I'm also reading Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. Good Western so far -- it kind of seems like Red Dead Redemption 2 is to video games what Lonesome Dove is to novels: longform, epic Westerns which are modern but don't treat the genre's tropes with contempt. Really, come to think of it, the Western seems to be the one genre which is allowed to have some dignity against the eviscerations of postmodernism. Occasionally you'll get a flat-out anti-western like No Country for Old Men. But then you'll get really good modern takes on the genre which incorporate the spirit of the best while modernizing the trappings of the story, like Breaking Bad or that Wolverine movie Logan.
I finished The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. It was good, but I suspect it shouldn't have been my first McCarthy novel. Yes, it may well exemplify his sparse prose the best. But I feel like even though Blood Meridian is a lot longer it seems to have more in the way of action. Maybe when my docket is free I'll try it out.
Ethan
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8mo ago
Goggins is probably the single best human exemplar of human malleability. He's like a fascinating edge case of what happens when somebody just ... has infinite willpower.
Ethan
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8mo ago
Sometimes I'll play music when writing. But if the music has lyrics I prefer to listen to it when the writing is not labor-intensive -- more like the initial, stream-of-consciousness stuff that goes into the first draft of an essay. But instrumental music, like classical, goes with doing anything.
Ethan
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8mo ago
The Summa is a big 'un and unless you seriously mean to delve into mediaeval logic and theology, better to just look up particular queries in it (e.g. what did Aquinas say about X?)
On the other hand, a good introduction to Thomism would help clear up a lot of the confusion a modern person would have going into Aquinas. Edward Feser is a good contemporary Catholic philosopher whose books are very illuminating.
For a broader book on medieval thought, Etienne Gilson's Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages is tough to beat.
Ethan
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1yr ago
I've heard it described as a flea circus. If you want to be convinced, you will be. But look at GPT's output under the cold light of day and it's very clearly a kind of mush. There's no human texture to it, nothing idiosyncratic.
Ethan
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21d ago
If you say you can't function in the morning without coffee people will act understanding, if not sympathetic. Say the same thing about booze and people will start giving you pamphlets.
You mentioned the relative severity of alcohol, but I think it's good and natural to treat addictions with greater or lesser severity based on their risks. I mean, how much concern would you want people to have if you tell them that you're crabby and irritable without coffee?
I think a more apt comparison might be made to nicotine, cigarettes specifically. Of course cigarettes, too, are more dangerous than coffee. But nicotine withdrawal won't literally kill you like alcohol withdrawal can. And if someone says "don't talk to me until I have my cigarette," everybody sees that this is a problem. But there won't be any pamphlets handed out. It's pretty clear that our responses to addiction run on a gradient. As they should.
Ethan
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4mo ago
Batman: Arkham City is identical to RDR2 in this regard after Batman is poisoned. The only side mission which organically makes sense for Batman to prioritize is the Mad Hatter one, because it's predicated on Hatter tricking Bruce with a fake cure. But then it doesn't make sense if you wait till after the main storyline is done to complete the mission, because Bruce is already cured.
Ethan
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8mo ago
It's a shame because I liked both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game, I remember reading when I was younger -- too young, I think, to understand much of it. I believe I gave up on the Ender series after Xenocide.
As for the sequel to Ender's Shadow, called Shadow of the Hegemon, I was hopeless to comprehend it. I remember it being nearly entirely about the various machinations of warring states, masses of soldiers led from here to there, what this genius kid might be thinking at this time, etc.. It lacked so much of the human drama which made the initial novels good.
Ethan
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10mo ago
Breaking Bad is our modern civilizational epic. Better Call Saul is a prequel which is just as good.
I always thought if there were a novelization of Breaking Bad the full title would be "Breaking Bad: or, the Modern Ozymandias" due to its obvious literary associations.
Not even a gay couple walking in the background? Strange.
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