cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
Had it do some research for me on the revolutionary war. Finding out how many people were in counties where a battle took place. One AI gave me a 40-50% of the population estimate. Another gave me 50-60%.
Then had it teaching me some physics, specifically what happens when you tweak the speed of light. I learned that the speed of light is tied in with a bunch of other things, so it probably mostly just breaks the universe as we know it. Or maybe doesn't change anything because everything scales up and down with it.
cjet79
1d ago
Video game thread.
I played through Aethus this week. Its a top down survival / mining / exploring / puzzle game. The ambiance of the environments was great. I eventually turned down the difficulty settings for everything cuz it felt a bit like a slog on standard difficulty. The Scottish accents were ok sometimes, but every time I heard "no" pronounced something like "no-er" I winced. The story itself was very anti-corporate. Which I knew going in from the reviews, but it was still a little heavy handed with it all. At this point an anti-corporate screed in a video game just feels as generic as you can get.
Still playing Starship Troopers: Extermination on occassion with the 1stmi (a light military sim group). They are fun to play with. I recently competed what they call a "harbinger run" which involves leading a 16 person group from the field (rather than staying with the squad at base). Its a fun balancing mix of shooting the bugs around you but also needing to maintain situational awareness of the entire battlefield.
Dropped the factorio playthrough. Didn't have enough takers, and I messed something up in map settings that would have required cheating to fix, or flushing approximately 10-15 hours of early game play down the drain to start again. Both options didn't make me feel good so I stopped.
cjet79
4d ago
It's not worth it. Marx's version is a pure motte and bailey argument. It's labor value when you need to prove workers are being exploited. It's subjective value when you are proving the labor theory of value is true
They'll run you in a very long circle where labor value is only real when it has "use value". What is "use value" ... Well it's a subjective and it depends on what people are willing to pay for it
I had an econ professor tell me basically that in college. I didn't believe him, I was libertarian at the time but it seemed to simple and reductive of their views. I went and argued with communists multiple different times on debate a communist back on Reddit. Over a year I did like two or three mega threads that would reach 300-500 comments. About a third of the comments were me arguing by myself against the rest of the subreddit there. Another third arguing back against me, and the last third arguing with and correcting each other. Lots of blood sweat and tears to realize the professor was correct.
cjet79
4d ago
I did see someone point out that workers have cut down on time worked, but it's time worked over their entire life. More school and leisure up front, and earlier retirements relative to death at the end. But the amount of time worked during your mid 20's through late 50's is pretty static.
These are all different. But earnest author and protagonist are something they all seem to share. Hard to know if they fit the "pulpy" category for me.
John Carter of Mars. True pulp fiction in the sense of it was written in the pulp fiction era.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/87695/adamant-blood
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/107917/sky-pride
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/81002/the-years-of-apocalypse-a-time-loop-progression
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47826/millennial-mage-a-slice-of-life-progression-fantasy
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/72498/sublight-drive-star-wars
Beyond that, I'm looking for earnestness on the part of the author and the protagonist. I recently read Dungeon Crawler Carl after many recommendations, and it just felt a little too meta-ironic and quippy.
I bounced off of Dungeon Crawler Carl as well. There was something tonally messed up about killing 99% of all humans and then making jokes. I guess I've liked other books that do this, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but Douglas Adams did it better.
cjet79
5d ago
Reported for violating rule:
This is inflammatory/antagonistic. Report things violating the rules, don't tell people you are reporting them for violating the rules. If it bothers you a bunch don't respond to the person.
Because generally if it doesn't break the rules and you just reported it then we can just click approve and move on. But if you are going to make pronouncements about the rules we have to correct the public record.
So no, claiming that the Christian god exists is not partisan and inflammatory. I say that as an atheist. People do not need to justify the entire basis of their beliefs just to speak here. We don't require conservatives to prove that tradition is good and useful. We don't require progressives to prove inequality is bad. We don't require communists to justify the labor theory of value. We don't require libertarians to provide their ideal alternative to government.
The rules are not meant to be used as a bludgeon to silence people. They are specifically meant to stop people from doing that.
cjet79
5d ago
The rules apply everywhere. I'll address ace directly this post does not violate the rules.
cjet79
5d ago
Several of the rally organizers were successfully sued for civil conspiracy.
If they as individuals were guilty with what they were charged with and the law they were charged with was constitutional then there's no issue here. And generally I assume so, the criminal justice system is intentionally stacked towards letting people off per the founding fathers own philosophy regarding abusive government. It doesn't make lawfare impossible, but odds are heavily heavily towards you being guilty if you're found liable of a crime, yet alone if you can't get an appeal.
Emphasis added. This was a civil lawsuit and doesn't require the same burdens of proof as a criminal charge.
cjet79
5d ago
There's the loveable senior brothers thing, where you just know what's going to happen.
They ground him, eventually adopt him. He is nearly broken when he has to watch some of them get killed in what feels like a pointless war with a heretical sect.
The tsundere female foil of privilege, where you can sleepwalk into knowing they're going to end up friends/lovers.
Turns out she is not actually privileged, or that she is basically at the bottom tier of "privilege". They do become friends. Turns out later that her mentors use his ass whooping of her as a teaching lesson for her to be less of a loud mouth. The mentors point out that you never know when someone might be a hidden dragon or have a powerful backing so you should always be polite and courteous. Which is something so blindingly stupid and obvious in a cultivation world, but it seems rare that any story actually mentions it and notices it.
The main part I think you would have liked is the depiction of war. The MC is a thirteen year old in a war zone. Once he manages to distinguish himself a little they try to get him a slot as a hospital orderly which is relatively safer. Its safe from violence but not from Trauma. He is watching his senior brothers and sisters get murdered and mutilated in horrific ways. The heretics they are fighting like to use poison, necromancy, and gu (insects/parasites). The war also seems to be very pointless from the MC's perspective. Certain practices by the sect he is in are very callous towards the lives of the lower sect members.
Its very much a "shit is getting real" moment for a xianxia. Which is very much not the typical vibe for any xianxia. Which is part of why I thought you might like it more. Xianxia vibes can get very wishy washy about human tragedy. Exterminating families, including the children. Blowing up whole cities. Horrific wars with massive casualties. etc. And these things typically don't feel like they have much weight to them.
I also hated the greco roman cultivation story. Because it seemed like it would be a lot of navel gazing and gay wrestling without much power progression.
cjet79
6d ago
It's funny I was thinking of tagging you, since you are one of the only other cultivation enjoyers I know. But our tastes consistently do not align. To the point that I should be getting reverse recommendations from you, asking what you hate to find something I like.
I'm not sure I agree with the "purple prose" accusation. I do find there are stories where I will just skip over things and feel that I'm not missing anything. This isn't really one of those stories.
One thing that is described quite often is the elemental cycle. If you know the cycle already I can see how this feels like purple prose. I do not, and constantly forget it. The in text reminders are helpful not extraneous for me.
I also struggle with Eastern names. The author does seem to go out of their way to reintroduce characters or at least make it very clear who they are. If you don't struggle with names these parts would also be wasted on you.
The main character's earnestness is one of my favorite parts of the story. Psychopath MCs are incredibly hard for me to stomach, but so are whiny bitch MCs. It feels like Tian is far from either of those pitfalls.
cjet79
6d ago
Sky Pride on royal road.
The description felt very generic eastern cultivation story. But I finally gave in and read it because of its long tenure in the top stories. Even though it is generic and plays standard tropes quite often I feel many of the elements are done well.
What I feel it handles best is the ugliness of a cultivation world. Or at least having a non psychopath OP that finds the psychopathy of the setting horrifying and trauma inducing.
I do think there are some technological solutions, but many of them have nothing to do with pregnancy. From my perspective as a stay at home dad and parent of 3, in a neighborhood full of kids, I think most parents are accurately estimating the number of kids they can have and then having that many kids.
Shout-out to @HereAndGone2's post below pointing out the difficulties involved in potential surgery options. Throwing out surgery options feels easy, but actually going through with it is generally scary.
I'll go through the list of blockers and how I think Tech is impacting them:
I'll just end with the general observation that if you give parents more money but there aren't areas where they can trade money for more time then the money doesn't help them. As a single person you might think of money as the incentive in and of itself. But the calculations change a bit when you are a parent. Money is fully a means to an end. The ends being providing childcare, and enjoying your children. Technology that allows for that tradeoff is good. Technology that cheapens that tradeoff rate is great. Technology that adds a new time burden as part of the rat race or through regulation is terrible.
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