Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Sounds like an epic case of grifting and laziness on behalf of trad aerospace companies. Then again, I'm not really a space guy so there may well be more to it.
You've got the right of it. There's more, sure, but "more" really just boils down to the meta-boondoggle that was the space shuttle, the latest fruit of which is another iteration of graft boondoggle that is the SLS and its shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters and engines. If anything, calling that epic grifting sells it a little short, I think!
Still a cheap date over here so no worries on my end even though
ETA: I'll be interested to see if expies of either Huginn or myself exist in the book...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Doh, I'm actually only a few chapters in, but it's certainly an odd beginning. I'll reply here in detail later this week when I've finished it!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
12 Miles Below VI: The Icon of Stars by Mark Arrows.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
IME the book was even freakier than the movie and I'd be most interested to read your thoughts after you finish reading it!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
It kind of blows my mind that people can't get it from text alone.
Same, although TBF I'm old enough that my teenage years largely predate the world wide web, so there's definitely a generational component to that for me. The dirty stories and smutty books had all kinds of good stuff that could push a lot more of my developing buttons than the stock "three flavors of provocatively posed naked young ladies" that made up the majority of pornography back when Shelbyville was called Morganville and you couldn't get a white onion because of the war and all you could get was those big yellow ones.
Totally understandable. For me, I think the reason that I love Lost Highway so much is that so many of the themes and archetypes that it plays with and explores connect with me on a personal level. I could wax poetic about it, and still might if you're interested, but for now I'll just say that I think your first post put the finger directly on the beating heart of the movie: the characters of Renee and Alice, and more specifically, how they drove Fred and Pete each to their respective extremes.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
As you can probably tell, Lost Highway is my favorite David Lynch film, although TBF I've really never given Mulholland Drive its due and I really need to see it again and on the big screen before I'll feel like I've done that. Anyway, a nearby theater did a David Lynch Retrospective after his death earlier this year and I took the opportunity to see Lost Highway again on the big screen. Like you, I hadn't seen it in decades, and despite agreeing with just about everything you say, the entire movie just clicked for me from start to finish. Each and every scene, and in fact each and every beat of the movie felt sublime, flowing inexorably into the next one and the next one, ultimately building to its intense climax and conclusion. It's like I had that same spellbound feeling that you did when Patricia Arquette was onscreen except I experienced it for the entire movie. I left the theater that night feeling like I had fully grokked the film itself for the first time, almost three decades after initially seeing it in the theater. That being the case, I'd quibble a bit about whether or not Lynch pulled off what he wanted to pull of in Lost Highway, because I think he did, and say instead that the issues that you point out are all genuine and ultimately make it much less accessible than a lot of his other work.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Many people with this condition incorrectly label themselves with a bunch of other stuff that may or may not be real but generally doesn't apply to them.
Just chiming in to note that I've personally heard mental health professionals admit to incorrectly diagnosing borderlines as well, ostensibly so that they could receive mental health services that explicitly excluded borderlines from eligibility in their guidelines. I strongly suspect that several percentage points of bipolars are misdiagnosed borderlines.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Interesting. After discovering that One Battle After Another was based on Vineland, I've wanted to read it to get a feel for the source material, all the more so since I made my way through Gravity's Rainbow and well remember the sense of,"what in the actual fuck did I just read," stupefied awe that I felt afterwards. I kinda want to read it both less and more at the same time after that description!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Working Class (SC Marva Collins Book 2) by Nathan Lowell.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
I grew up in the Los Angeles area during the best time to grow up there (I might make a top level post about this some time) and it is essentially unrecognizable.
Please do, I would love to read that!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
So the book is Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller, but being a biography of Puller, there isn't anything else to explain Willoughby's motives at all. There might be more insight to be had from a good bio of MacArthur on that front.
Reminds me of a bit from back when I read a biography of Lewis "Chesty" Puller. General C.A. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chief, had come to X Corps HQ in Wonsan from Tokyo, along with his staff. Evidently, when Willoughby asked General Almond how things were, Almond told him about the seventh division fighting the Chinese, and that both sides had taken casualties, to which Willoughby replied, "that's another goddamn Marine lie." Almond promptly led him out to the POW stockade and showed him around 80 Chinese POWs that the 7th had captured. Willoughby reportedly departed without saying another word and that evening, the situation map from Tokyo that showed detailed positions of the troops suddenly showed 500,000 Chinese troops scattered around the map. It was clear from Puller's point of view that the issue was political. Quoth Chesty:
Now that's the fastest damned troop movement in the history of the world, gentlemen. You'll never see another such. And don't forget this lesson: Tokyo wouldn't admit that we had Chinese fighting us even after the Eight Army was in flight, because some damned staff officers hundreds of miles away willed it to be so. You can't will anything in war.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Book of the Dead 3: Masquerade by RinoZ. Pretty confident that #4 will be up next on my reading list.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Sticking strictly to the antipsychotics, it's more that the meds help, but can only ease the symptoms and not actually rid most folks entirely of schizophrenia when they take them. If you've watched Reservation Dogs, the character of Maximus is a good example there. He knows he needs his medication when he's on it, and he tries to take it regularly, but he forgets sometimes and starts to spiral until his behavior catches up with him or he recognizes that he needs help. Either way, he gets treatment and can hold down his life again.
When it comes to not even believing that medication is needed, and with the caveat that I'm not a psychiatrist, etc. etc., my impression based on what I've seen is that for the most part is that there's a host of different justifications for that thinking, but the practicalities tend to boil down to a either a lack of insight or awareness that their behavior is even problematic in the first place, and/or an attachment to their particular flavor of schizophrenic ideation. On top of that, the side effects of antipsychotics tend to suck, too. More generally, kinda like how Hassan has the rigid belief that police officers want to have (homosexual) sex with him, in his world the police wanting to have sex with him is the problem, medication's got nothing to do with it! Or in my example above, of course the unaccompanied kids are in danger, there's no adult present to look after them! If the police were doing their jobs, they'd be either looking after the kids themselves, or going after the parents of the kids for not looking after their own!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Although I'm IT, I happen to work in the mental health field, and we see a lot of Hassans on a semi-regular basis. I get the feeling that working with them would be extremely difficult, just because it'd be so fucking heartbreaking. I mean, I'd want to do everything I could for him, and I'd feel terrible that bare bones basics like medication management and linking him to help and encouraging him to use it would be the best that I could do for him, and that he probably wouldn't take advantage of any of the help because of the paranoia. It seems like bad choices all the way down when it comes to the question of when should these individuals lose their rights. I'm firmly on record as saying that the SC has erred on the side of turning the mental health problem into a law enforcement problem with the current doctrine of imminent danger of harm to self or others or chronic inability to care for self, but I also have no illusions that widespread institutionalization was worse. The reality of the law being a blunt instrument here really hits home with frequent flyer clients like the lady who is consistently hospitalized for abducting children off the streets which in her mind is for their own safety, treated with medication, then released, whereupon she promptly stops taking her meds, "because she doesn't need them," then goes back to her delusions and tries to protect another kid and starts the cycle all over again.
And the big kicker in all of this is that your example of Hassan is a great one in the sense that he seems to code to the classic, "would probably never even hurt a fly unless he is triggered in a highly specific fashion," sort of situation, which is, of course, the vast majority of schizophrenics. I know, I know, it's very trope-y to be busting out the, "less violent than normies," meme here but the other piece of this for me is that from what I've seen, the violent mentally ill throw many more red flags than just trying to protect themselves. Threats of violence and violent or even homicidal ideation are common and even then, the biggest single red flag is that they've been violent in the past, not that they threaten violence or fantasize about it. I'm sure this, in part, is why having a plan to harm someone or oneself is a prerequisite for involuntary commitment, lest we start locking folks up left and right for wanting to hurt or kill an antagonist or themselves.
Anyway, I really appreciate this post because it brings home the reality that absent a major breakthrough, schizophrenia in particular will remain a particularly poor fit for the lens of the culture wars. Even if we go with the metaphor of the spectrum for mental illness, there's a clear-cut difference between the Jared Loughners and the Lee Harvey Oswalds.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
This is true to an extent, but you've already got the vocabulary to get started. Basic things like sweet, sour, chocolate, fruity, spicy, nutty, earthy, and even smoky will probably be noticeable to you right away. As you get into the taste of your coffee, you'll notice more and more details, and be able to get more specific. Tart and sour resolves to something citrus-y. That nutty flavor tastes a little like pecan. That one sip reminds you of a nibble of really dark chocolate as the bitterness fades and the chocolate really opens up in your palate. And doggone if that one doesn't taste like black tea or green tea here and there. I've uploaded a coffee wheel image for your reference.
More than the caffeine, this is the hook that coffee set for me. I don't always get every flavor advertised in the particular bean but it's there so consistently that I'm confident that the flavor is there as long as I roast it right, which of course is half the fun, except when I'm consistently getting savory out of my beans. That means that it's time for me to clean my roaster!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I saw it and liked it, though I felt that the overall narrative of the movie lacked coherency. Then I found out that in large part, the movie is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and now I'm impressed that PTA was able to take something from Pynchon (I've never read Vineland, though now I want to) and make it that accessible on the big screen. I can definitely see why it could be seen as resistance bait, though, and I'm sure for some folks the CW angle could be enough to sour them on the movie.
Book of the Dead I: Awakening by Rinoz. I was a little leery of the story at the start but it's been handled well enough to grow on me, and now I'm hooked.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I'm going to see if it's possible to train my nose to become more sensitive and receptive again. Sort of like how exercising the body influences the brain etc. If I demand more performance from my palate, maybe something will respond. I'm something of a food/drink enjoyer, it's one of my joys in life, so having a weak receptivity won't do.
I'm not surprised that you enjoy food and drink and I strongly believe that it's possible to gain or regain sensitivity to taste and smell. Simply paying attention to the sensory inputs while imbibing is, IMO, a large part of the battle. Not-so-coincidentally, I also believe that this is why explicit tastings are a Thing; for me, it's far easier to pay attention to the sensory input when that's the explicit point of the exercise. Anyway, sounds like you've got your eye on some nice new beans to try. Indonesian coffee in particular will likely give you a good idea of how different coffee can taste by region, assuming the roast isn't too dark.
My dude, I appreciate the report! I'll just comment on a few things here:
I enjoyed a pleasant buzz from the caffeine in the first few days - a better buzz than ever before in my life from coffee, it seemed.
I also feel perkier when I'm drinking pour-over coffee when compared to a cup from a Keurig or an automatic drip coffeemaker.
The grinder (Krups Silent Vortex; blades) is not that great. It does its job, but the coffee ends up ground to different sized bits. There's some light brown bits that are clearly much bigger and are thus perhaps not infused to the same degree into the liquid, compared to the tinier bits...?
This is exactly why the grinder is the second most important component. Equal grind size equals equal infusion, which yields a more consistent flavor from the beans.
The taste was not all that special. I was whelmed. The Yirgacheffe clearly tastes better than pre-ground Arabica, but not that much different. There's a few subtle notes of perhaps fruit or a spicy flower or something, but it's all a bit too subtle for my untrained, somewhat aged palate. Pleasant to drink though. I don't need cream or sugar when brewing this one.
This tells me that you've got enough of a sense of taste and smell that you'd probably get to the point where you could get definite flavors from your brew if you decide to keep going down this path, especially when combined with your sharp observation that different sized grounds will yield uneven results in the taste department. When I first started down the road of fresh roasted coffee it seemed like drinking tea to me, which is to say that I definitely noticed differences with different varieties of black tea and so did freshly roasted beans seem to have some distinct flavor to them. I still don't know that I'd be good enough to actually go cup individual coffees and buy for a specialty house or operation but I'm definitely in wine snob territory when it comes to getting a lot of flavor notes out of a good fresh roasted pour over. I suspect that there's similar potential for you there if you choose to pursue it.
The Rugori was even less impressive though. It was far too close to a totally average cup of coffee.
Sorry to hear that one wasn't so special for you, though it's entirely possible that it might come into its own if you keep trying it over the next several days.
Regardless, I'm glad you shared your experience and it sure sounds to me like you've started your journey. If you decide to continue trying fresh coffee, please continue to write more here and feel free to continue asking questions, I'd appreciate it and from your last I know we have a few other coffee buffs around here that might chime in as well. Enjoy!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
I’ve been reading Ars Technica for years — I loved John Siracusa’s old macOS deep dives — but the tone of their reporting has shifted. A lot of it feels like “heckin science!” coverage
(snip)
Funny, it seems like a decade ago that I myself was Noticing that Ars was following the path of Slashdot and no longer worth a read. Shame, too, they were one of the good ones BITD; I learned a lot from Jon Stokes' articles there.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
2mo ago
Yes, essentially. I'll have to check out more of his work and I've been impressed with the translation, too. I've particularly noticed the abbreviated speech of some of the characters and I can't help but think that the translator is mimicking the Japanese tendency towards the same in their speech.
The closest equivalent to that man that I've personally heard is Mister Trump, which I'd agree is not the same thing.
More options
Context Copy link