johnfabian
20hr ago
Before I reached the end I had already guessed meteorite. Surely several orders of magnitude a more convincing explanation than a nuclear weapon.
johnfabian
20hr ago
But the scale of organization makes it completely different. Military spending isnt' "gibs" just because instead of letting the people's militias buy their own Ford-class carriers and ICBMs you're having the government spend the money on their behalf. An extreme example obviously, but a centralized bureaucracy with immense market power achieves very different results than millions of diffuse individuals.
johnfabian
1d ago
The notion that all social programs are just "gibs" is pretty silly. Like you can dislike Medicare or think there's a lot of waste in the program, but it's fundamentally very different than just mailing people a check.
johnfabian
2d ago
It's longer, more difficult, more intense. But a lot of people consider the Long War mod to be the absolute pinnacle of strategy gaming.
johnfabian
2d ago
I've been playing a lot of the "Long War" mod for XCOM:EU this week. It's the best way to play the game, imo.
johnfabian
11d ago
Ha, I was going to comment that this novel really feels the most of the series like it starts and ends at arbitrary points (which I find charming, as no modern novelist would do so). Or maybe it was the previous, which literally cuts mid-scene. I thought they were really going to go to Chile in this novel, as it was set up as their next voyage in the previous. But come the end of the novel they still haven't got around to it!
johnfabian
11d ago
I read three books last week: The Letter of Marque, instalment 12? 13? in the Aubrey-Maturin series. Very fun book as usual, including maybe the funniest subplot about opioid addiction ever?
Also read A Canticle for Leibowitz, a sci-fi classic I had never got around to. My Dad mentioned he had it for assigned reading in grade 10 back in the day. Deserving classic, very interesting premise with great execution, handles multiple different tones very well and builds up to a terrific finale.
Also because of his death I read John Crowley's short fiction collection. Never read him before, sort of a "magical realist" along the lines of Borges or JG Ballard. Enjoyed it on the whole, especially the novella "The Great Work of Time."
johnfabian
14d ago
They actually overshot, and now the new leadership of Iran are woke transgender communists. More execution strikes may be necessary to bring them back to equilibrium.
johnfabian
15d ago
Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Marianas islands. The residents of these places are not slave races. They are not lower than me in terms of dignity. They don't get senators. Their Congressional representatives can't vote. They don't vote for president. That's fine. That's about right for Canada.
No thanks, and no thanks.
johnfabian
16d ago
I have to comment here because this is so absolutely mind numbingly wrong. The war was totally completely won, Afghanistan was completely pacified and the withdrawal was a political optics move planned by Trump and executed by Biden. There were literally 0 American casualties in Afghanistan in the year and a half leading up to the withdrawal and the coalition had control over any semi-urban or urban area in the country. No doubt the Taliban still existed, but that's about the worst you could say.
The Taliban were deliberately not targeting American forces because of the upcoming withdrawal. There was no reason to risk the men or the possible retaliation.
Likewise, one could conclude that the US had decisively beaten North Vietnam - there were only 29 American deaths in 1973, and just 1 in 1974!
johnfabian
16d ago
There's a very real problem right-wingers have modeling the beliefs of others, where if they don't subscribe to very specific elements of right-wing mythology and engage in performative flag-fondling then they must hate their country. It is not mystifying why Canadian resentment of the United States has abruptly skyrocketed, and the fact that it has does not reveal some prior hollowness in Canadian national identity.
I wouldn't even say this extends to right-wingers in general, which despite me not counting myself among them I think on the whole tend to a decent job of modeling others beliefs, better than their left-wing counterparts. This is a specific feature of the MAGA camp, which has ensconced itself in its own bubble of self-contradictory beliefs.
You don't need to look any further than this comment thread to see variations of Canada isn't a real country, they're ungrateful vassals, they wouldn't exist without us and frankly shouldn't - and why do they hate us when we're so nice to them?
johnfabian
18d ago
The added Faramir subplot also does two things that are important for the film medium: they introduce Osgiliath and also subtly rejig the timelines of the two plots so they are aligned
johnfabian
18d ago
Or that Aragorn sings Elendil's words when he came to Middle Earth at his coronation. IIRC that's even in the theatrical cut, and without subtitles. It's a baffling inclusion from the perspective of a studio exec that no fan would ever dream of making space for, but it's there.
johnfabian
21d ago
In the spectrum of movie adaptations, the Jackson movies (while I have my problems with them) were fairly faithful. You cannot set the standard at "nothing whatsoever is changed."
Certainly as a Tolkien überfan I wish that certain things had been done better, but there are some elements that one would never hope in a million years for that got included.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Yeah, I may have a somewhat skewed perception, but a lot of the women around me have distinctly old-fashioned tastes. My 15 year-old niece is rampaging through all the 19th century classics. I have multiple friends whose interests in sewing and crochet root their tastes in art and culture centuries past. Obviously this doesn't apply to all the women I know, but there's certainly a cohort of them for whom the past is alive.
johnfabian
1mo ago
b. There are evil people colluding to drive up the prices of essential goods
This does sometimes happen, though. Grocery price-fixing occurs from time-to-time even though ostensibly it should be one of the more difficult sectors to do that in. More commonly it also occurs at the supplier level, especially now that there has been considerable market consolidation in key sectors.
I saw lots of people mocking those who thought something was afoot with the price of eggs in 2025: as if those evil companies were just conspiring to raise prices, instead of being it just the natural result of a supply crunch! What, do you think prices are just based on greed? Well...
johnfabian
1mo ago
Yeah, the scope of the project is a store each in four of the five boroughs, if I remember correctly.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Is this not fairly standard for a large enough (and sensitive) deal?
johnfabian
1mo ago
Also, one might wonder how a country would become more Christian while deporting or otherwise doing away with a substantial portion of the populace.
I don't think the proposals that would result in this outcome would be very Christ-like.
johnfabian
1mo ago
It's very much different from the other novels. The Player of Games is often considered the better way to start
johnfabian
1mo ago
Finished reading Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive by Prit Buttar. I've read through most of his Eastern Front histories now because they feature lots of primary sources. Knew most of the subject matter already but an interesting element that this book brought which many others do not was an expanded emphasis on partisan infighting, especially the conflict between Polish, Jewish, and Soviet (and Soviet-aligned) groups and how the various governments interacted with them. Buttar is also generally much more skeptical about received wisdom and is quick to point out possible inconsistencies/misleading elements in testimony.
Started reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. I don't know exactly where this one falls in his authorial timeline but the prose is noticeably more purple in this one than in others I've read of him.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Ah, I see your point. I think there's a bit of cherry picking: you can point to lots of white players who peaked at 18 or 19 and lots of African players who rounded into form later. I think I'd be inclined to agree that there might be a general trend where sub-Saharan African players might generally trend that way, but there's also issues in a lot of those countries with players faking their birth years (such that players that look to be excellent 16 or 17 year olds are really OK 20 year olds).
johnfabian
1mo ago
Because they weren't slow to develop, and had already established themselves as superstars by the time they exited their teens.
johnfabian
1mo ago
Compared with European players with 'potential' like CR7, Messi or Rooney that had 'potential' as teens and then hit their stride in their mid 20's.
I think these are all bad examples; they were all teenage wunderkinds who made their pro debuts at 15
Some are speculating the US might abandon its base in Bahrain, which is (was?) the headquarters of the 5th Fleet. Contrary to what has so far been an extraordinarily tight-lipped standard, Acting Naval Secretary Hung Cao told the Epoch Times (of all media outlets!) that the base had been badly damaged.
It always pays to wait at least 24 hours to see what emerges from the fog-of-war, but it certainly seems like this is still a very-active conflict. Saudi Arabia's proxies in Yemen seem to be collapsing.
More options
Context Copy link