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."
23hr ago
I'm actually between books at the moment, having just finished Desperate Measures: Convergence Book 5 by Craig Alanson. I'll probably be starting Path of the Mitespeaker: 12 Miles Below Book 7 by Mark Arrows tonight.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
3d ago
My favorite part of that trial was when, after the FBI denied having a sniper in place, the defense produced internal FBI communications talking about the sniper and suddenly they were all, oh, you mean that sniper! Whoopsie!
My wife knows a bit better but I think her deal is that she mostly feels like she lives in a sick society and wants to escape to Europe
In this respect, my wife has similar feelings. She now agrees with me that America is in decline and she, too, would love to live elsewhere. (ETA: I'm not necessarily so sanguine on the living elsewhere bit.) However, she has never been out of the country and has yet to experience actual culture shock, let alone any sort of negativity or hostility directed at her for being American.
I get it. Even though she mostly avoids media (we're the usual no TV in house, no subscriptions, she minimizes screen use herself) she still can't help catch politics contagion from her friends and the few times a week she checks FB to see what her local mom's affinity group is up to.
And in this respect, we differ. My wife is informed by her reading of NPR, which she does daily, and her political podcasts of similar vein.
The irony in all this is my goal in my posts to socials isn't to own the libtards! My goal is to try to help people see that we're not living in a fascist dystopia. Billionaires don't matter! Things are improving! The economy is relatively good! Don't believe the hype about declining longevity and health care! Stop despairing all of the fucking time.
And people get so mad about it. (emphasis added)
And this is precisely the part where long experience has taught me not to engage.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4d ago
Will do! I'll likely be doing another Coffee Hater's post after I've done a few tastings of my first Gesha roast, and although I told myself that I was going to roast down my stash of green beans before buying more, Sweet Maria's has what looks to be a bumper crop of African coffees and several of the Ethiopians in particular are calling to me...
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4d ago
I had to stop posting about this stuff to socials because people were contacting my wife and asking her if she was safe with me.
So I'm not a Social Media bird, and I've talked about this before, but my experience has been incredibly similar in the sense that my wife sometimes checks in because she's afraid that I might be an in-the-closet Fascist White Supremacist Neo-Nazi (and I'm talking genuine uncertain fear here, not performative) because in the past, I've had the gall to point out existing precedents engage in whataboutism sometimes when she wants to conversate in the vein of, "ZOMG Trump/The Republicans did a thing! Outrage!"
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4d ago
So very, very yes. One of my favorite scenes of the entire series!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Got it in one.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Eh, it's been out all of eight days now so I wouldn't worry too much about it were I in your shoes.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
I was wondering if/when someone would bring up the Hunt brothers in the context of this discussion. Once again, The Motte fails to disappoint!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Thanks for the report! I'm planning on roasting my first batch of Gesha soon, and I'm highly interested in smelling it and tasting it for the first time. That said, when comparing old-school coffee scoring, I've tasted coffees, particularly Ethiopians, that have scored higher than the Gesha that I have, so I expect that I'll feel like you do WRT paying the premium for what is essentially equivalent to an exemplary Ethiopian coffee. Speaking of which, Sweet Maria's has a ridiculous wealth of good-looking Ethiopians right now, I told myself that I was going to roast through my existing green coffee stores before buying more but now the itch is upon me and I don't know if I'll resist.
Also, +1 for Indonesian coffees! Generally speaking, I find that they have spicy and earthy notes that I don't get from African or Central/South American coffees, and to me, they are exemplary of their region!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
I'm afraid not, the drawn-out development of Peace Talks and Battle Ground pretty much habituated me to waiting indefinitely for my next dose of Butcher, but FWIW, I also found the sword moment deeply satisfying even as it called to mind another series that had one of the best subversions of Chekhov's Gun that I've ever seen.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Agree, if he can pull of a book every two years I'll be happy! Regardless, I hope his Troubles are behind him or at least mostly behind him at this point.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
What's the best bang for your buck (in terms of QOL) purchase you've ever made? The cheaper the better.
IDK about best of all time, but my best recent lifestyle upgrade was a Bio-Bidet BB-1000.
I own a pair of Galaxy Buds 3 Pros, purchased at about £130. I think they sound great, the ANC isn't quite as good as the Airpods I bought my brother on his birthday, but it's clearly a cut above my older Buds 2 Pro (Plus?).
For whatever reason, the Galaxy Buds 3 Pros actually weren't quite up to the Galaxy Buds 2 Pros in terms of ANC. They were pretty widely knocked in for worse ANC at low frequency levels compared to the Buds 2 Pro, which was something that kept me from upgrading to them.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
6d ago
Yeah, as I was reading it I was also surprised to find that, for the most part, it was only advancing a few larger plot threads. Finishing it left me hungrier than usual for the next Dresden files, which really isn't saying that much but still.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7d ago
Glad that you're enjoying them! The Dresden files quickly went from decent enough read to one of my all-time favorite series, and I got the first eight books at a cheap price, but Grave Peril was the one that hooked me. They do get darker, but for me, they also get deeper and more poignant as they progress.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8d ago
I'm glad to get another fix of Harry Dresden suffering porn.
It definitely delivers the goods, though that'd pretty much be a given after the last book. I was lucky enough to be finishing my last book the day that it came out so I'm fortunate in that particular department!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8d ago
Finishing up Twelve Months: Dresden Files Book 18 by Jim Butcher. I expected to be finished with it by now but, fuck, some of its themes just hit too close to home right now for me to be able to devour it in my usual fashion. I'm finding myself having to take breaks and deal with my own feelings frequently, which is probably a good thing, but it also reminds me that despite having more good days than bad, it's going to be A While before I find whatever my latest new Normal is.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9d ago
All right, it's been a few days since I finished the book and I gotta agree that Mote wouldn't have ever made it past the editors in modern publishing. That said, I have to say that the book is quite well-written and I can easily see why it's such a classic. Yes, there's zeerust, as there is with all aged works, but the CoDominium being the obvious big one is actually pretty impressive to me. Gotta give Niven and Pournelle props for not getting too into the weeds with the science part of their science fiction there.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9d ago
I can't even count the number of times I've fallen into the trap of reading some post or another that happens to push one of my buttons (which tends to be when the ghosts of old culture wars are invoked via their commonly-accepted memes) and next thing I know I'm hip deep in a, "well, ackshully," reply before I catch myself and hit cancel.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9d ago
Aaaaaaand, now /u/ThomasdelVasto is Algernop Krieger in my mind's eye. Thanks for that!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
12d ago
Twelve Months: The Dresden Files Book 18 by Jim Butcher, now that it's dropped.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13d ago
Yeah, that makes sense, Breville just wasn't a Thing back when I was chugging along with a Rancilio Silvia and daydreaming about the one-armed bandit. NGL, said one-armed bandit was hands down one of the best scores that I ever made on an Amazon Warehouse deal back when they were actually deals and it was more common to get stuff that was better than advertised, if not NIB, instead of worse. That said, I did find the imperfection they had talked about by accident one day when I was cleaning it. Still, I regret nothing on that particular purchase!
IMAO, this sort of thing is where, "the past is a different country," saying gets its teeth. Again, IMAO and all that, but the barriers to tech were higher and different, the PMC hadn't yet metastasized, kids could still fail out of public schools, colleges were not yet degree factories with extra steps, TFR decline wasn't quite a Thing beyond the Doomers, the American monoculture had yet to be fractured by the internet, Western ideology seemed ascendant in the larger world, Social Media had not yet been unleashed upon the world, etc. etc. etc.
Somewhere in my head there lies an ill-formed effortpost on these themes. If I can keep myself from getting too turgid in my prose, I may even write it and perhaps post it.
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