Incanto
11d ago
Always freeze your dependencies to ensure your system is reproducible and won't randomly break when deployed.
Consider reading Effective Python 2nd edition for an overview of Python's features, though as other commenters have pointed out, you probably don't want to use every feature of Python at once.
Use @dataclass for simple data.
Incanto
1mo ago
This would select for low-skilled ideologues instead talented and pragmatic people. Also, the increased scrutiny might be more than counterbalanced by the increased need/incentive for corruption.
Incanto
2mo ago
Really getting tired of your constant baiting and insinuation on this topic.
Incanto
29d ago
I tend to get winter depression but also don't deal well with super-humid tropical weather. So if it was more practical I would like to live in one hemisphere in the summer and the other hemisphere (or a semi-tropical location) the other half of the year, avoiding winter entirely.
War brides and loot goblins: The Iliad
(Epistemic status: The Iliad is 2700 years old and practically a field of study unto itself. I doubt anything I have to say here is original.)
(You can skip this paragraph if you're familiar with the story). The Iliad is an epic poem composed in ancient Greece by oral poet(s), first written down around 700BC and attributed to an unknown poet called Homer (along with the Odyssey). It describes events towards the end of the Trojan War - a legendary event occurring hundreds of years earlier where mainland Greeks travelled to Greek Anatolia with the ostensible goal of rescuing/re-kidnapping Helen, a beautiful woman who'd been taken away by the Trojan Paris. Notable characters on the Greek side include warrior Achilles and his close friend/possible lover Patroclus, ineffectual king Agamemnon, and got-his-own-spinoff Odysseus.
Recently after a lifetime of mostly reading sci-fi and fantasy I was thinking that I should catch up on some of the classics. After comparing a few translations of the Iliad I went with Robert Fagles' version as it seemed the most energetic. (People like to say that the Iliad was meant to be listened to rather than read, but I'm not an audiobook guy). With the high and mighty reputation of Homer I was expecting an eating-your-vegetables experience where I might be encultured but not necessarily entertained, but it was actually rather engaging. The story is mostly (rather violent) action with a bit of drama and pathos and was clearly composed as popular entertainment first and foremost. Some sections get a little repetitive (there's a bit too much back and forth action - it starts to feel like a long MOBA match after a while) but overall it was both enjoyable and an interesting insight into bronze age society. I have a few scattered thoughts, some of which touch on culture war issues.
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Tropes. Some things I think of as Hollywood tropes are already present here. Random fighters die instantly and reliably in a single hit while major characters get injured if not missed entirely. The few that die get just enough time to make a dramatic speech before death. On the other hand they hadn't come up with quippy one-liners yet - when characters try to dunk on each other they make speeches.
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Names. An interesting difference from almost all modern media is that almost every single character who dies in battle, no matter how minor, gets named, usually with their father's name and often even a mini-bio as well. This does get a bit repetitive at times but also takes the cost of war more seriously than the typical Hollywood mowing down of faceless mooks. One interesting exception to this is that the dozen Trojan soldiers sacrificed by Achilles for Patroclus's funeral pyre are not named - perhaps their deaths were not heroic enough.
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Morality. Ingroup-outgroup morality is very strong here, as well as an absence of altruism in the modern sense. The characters don't see anything wrong with looting random cities, slaughtering men and taking women as slaves, nor with summarily killing (or human-sacrificing) prisoners or desecrating their enemies' bodies - indeed they tend to boast about these things. Achilles just barely softens a little at the end, with bribery required. The Trojans are worried that they might be sacked and killed/enslaved, but they don't seem object to this on moral grounds. Meanwhile both sides show a great deal of concern over protecting the bodies of their fallen comrades, even at great risk to themselves.
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Loot. The characters are obsessed with loot and on multiple occasions get killed or injured while trying to loot their enemies' armor mid-battle. They also send people back to base with loot mid-battle instead of trying to win the battle with their full force. Even the god Ares, fighting in the battle, stops to loot one of his victims - I guess even gods could use a spare set of armor.
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Gods. The gods are involved surprisingly directly and frequently in the story, going so far as to redirect spears and arrows or even fight in the battles personally. Most often the gods seem to be used to explain events that in modern times would be attributed to good or bad luck - oh your chariot broke down, or your spear missed? Must have been the interference of Zeus again. They also seem to think character's thoughts for them at times - something that formed part of the basis for The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, if I recall correctly.
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Women. Human women play little role in the story except as prizes - an explicit goal of the Greeks is to take the Trojan women as slaves/war brides, and both the Trojan war and the Iliad itself start with disputes over the possession of women. At the funeral games a woman, 2nd prize for one of the events, is even rated as being worth only 4 oxen, compared to a 1st prize cauldron worth 12. (This may have been intended as a joke, perhaps implying that this woman was not so desirable - another woman is also part of the first prize for the prestigious chariot race). It's interesting that the goddess Athena is portrayed as something of an ass-kicking girlboss, unlike any of the human female characters.
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Theme. The theme could perhaps be summarized as "War is harsh and tragic, but at least it's glorious. Also you can really load up on loot".
One thing I speculate about - for a long time Homer was prestigious partly because you had to know ancient Greek to read him. Then there were various English translations (famously Alexander Pope's rhyming translation), but they weren't so easy to read, so there was still some prestige from the effort. I wonder if relatively easy/readable translations like Fagles have hurt the prestigious nature of Homer and, along with feminist opposition to the very unfeminist portrayal of women in the story, contributed to the apparent decline of the classics in academia.
I'll leave you with an excerpt from the end of book 20, which reminded me a bit of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian:
Achilles now
like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges
splinter-dry, setting ablaze big stands of timber,
the wind swirling the huge fireball left and right—
chaos of fire—Achilles storming on with brandished spear
like a frenzied god of battle trampling all he killed
and the earth ran black with blood. Thundering on,
on like oxen broad in the brow some field hand yokes
to crush white barley heaped on a well-laid threshing floor
and the grain is husked out fast by the bellowing oxen's hoofs—
so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallion's hoofs
and churning, whirling rims—and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms—
Incanto
1mo ago
Very good comment and I think you're right about the underlying beliefs of the hardcore "equity" crowd. However I do believe that there's a limiting factor here in that most of the biggest proponents are in the PMC, which is why, out of hypocritical self-interest, they try to keep the politics of envy focussed on "billionaires" (previously the "1%" until some of them realised they were technically in that group).
Unfortunately while this makes Full Communism less likely it doesn't help so much with the racial angle especially since the PMC is generally able to insulate themselves from the worst aspects via informal segregation (eg expensive neighbourhoods with "good schools").
Incanto
4mo ago
I wouldn't normally expect a teacher yelling at a student, even inappropriately, to be a national story.
Incanto
5mo ago
I agree with Musk when it comes to the ADL specifically, but it seems unfair to blame "Jewish communities" more broadly.
Incanto
1mo ago
Maybe send a brief message on the day-of saying "looking forward to meeting you tonight" or something?
Incanto
6mo ago
The lack of clarity around this is part of the reason it lost so badly. At least on the center and right there's also been some perception of the Voice as a possible Trojan Horse where in a few years a left wing government could give Aborigines a veto (or something less dramatic but still disruptive) and the High Court would shrug and say "Well, the constitution says Aborigines have a 'Voice', that could mean anything, so this is constitutional".
Incanto
6mo ago
I'm glad this lost despite the overwhelming support from most institutions but like all one-sided election results I get the impression (anecdotally) that people are reading too much into the result - on the left that Australians are all racist or heartless or at least misinformed, on the right that we've heroically stood up to say no to wokism or some such.
As much as I'd like to believe that Australians are categorically opposed to this kind of thing, the voice was polling 60-40 or better earlier in the year, so its failure probably comes down to swing voters being unhappy with the details - or lack thereof. I believe the median voter wants to help Aborigines - but they don't want to spend too much money on it or give a political blank check to the government.
Incanto
7mo ago
The library of Slaanesh by Qiaochu Yuan.
Incanto
2mo ago
The caffeine would contribute to the insomnia, especially if consumed after noon. Can you try the same routine with less/none, or earlier in the day?
As a (white) immigrant to Australia this is much rosier than my view. I've heard plenty of woke and anti-white rhetoric from non-white immigrants (including from Indians and East Asians), to the point of losing friends over it. And while Australia's immigration story has been pretty successful overall, a lot of that is down to selectivity. The cases where that's been abandoned, such as Sudanese refugees, haven't always gone so well - the Sudanese commit crimes such as burglary at a rate a whopping 50+ (edit: 7) times the native population - a fact that was reported in The Age, hardly a right-wing outlet.
I also think COVID lockdowns were largely unjustified bullshit (especially the restrictions on outdoor activities), but that's another story.
Edit: now that I think about it, the most aggressive wokeness from non-whites I've heard has mostly been from 2nd gen or people who immigrated here as children rather than adults, so probably more down to absorbing the surrounding woke culture. Of course 2nd gens are an inevitable effect of immigration so that doesn't fundamentally change the story.
Incanto
6mo ago
I was in a similar place and eventually met my now-wife online in my mid 30s.
Incanto
7mo ago
Hmm, not Scott's best work I'd say (and it was early days for him) - but "Hector, driver of sports cars" got a laugh.
Read the Odyssey. Enjoyed it but not as much as the Iliad. It gets a bit slow once Odysseus makes it back to Ithaca. There are some colorful adventures along the way, and the greater presence and activity of women is notable. Some parts have a sort of "world's first fanfiction" vibe like when it wanks off some of the characters a bit too much.
On the other hand I find myself opening up the Iliad again to read random passages.
Incanto
5mo ago
Looks like a lot of libertarian-ish stuff in the National and ACT agreement which sounds good to me.
Incanto
7mo ago
Fagles is my first and only read of the Iliad so I can't really compare it to anything else - when I said I compared translations I meant the first dozen lines, not that I read multiple versions! I did consider trying a prose version, but I figured that since it was written as poetry it should be read as poetry. I did find Fagles very readable, it's all modern language. If you enjoyed the excerpt above you'd likely enjoy the rest of it.
Yes, during some of the action scenes I was reminded of gangsta rap (specifically Wu-tang clan ain't nothing to f' with) - youthful bravado and violence accompanied by a long list of shoutouts.
Though I dunno if I'd want my ancestor to be known as "guy who didn't do much then got killed instantly by Hector". No doubt there was some valor in just having been there.
If it turns out that that she rates you as highly as you rate her, why not go with her?
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