omfalos
Nonexistent good post history.
User ID: 222
Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance fits the bill. Cugel the Clever is a smarmy conman antihero who commits felonious crimes and treats women badly. The reader sympathizes with Cugel because he strives valiantly to survive in a hostile world. Cugel's Saga is set in the Dying Earth: a far-future setting where the Sun flickers weak and red, and the Earth is scarred with the ruins of millions of dead civilizations. The world is polluted with cursed artifacts and monsters. The powers-that-be are insane, malevolent wizards. It is a despondent, hopeless world inhabited by selfish, cynical people. Cugel victimizes many innocent people, but most of the people he tries to con are even worse than he is, and they usually get the better of him. After endless setbacks and frustrations, the novel ends in a hard-earned triumph for Cugel the Clever.
Matthew Colville dislikes Cugel's Saga because he thinks it is too mean-spirited. That's as good of an endorsement as you could ask for.
omfalos
1yr ago
I do not like Whatifalthist. I listened to a few of his early videos and became convinced he knows less about the world than I do.
omfalos
1yr ago
Iran has used a proxy to prove they can fire missiles at Israel from Iranian soil.
omfalos
6mo ago
Having time zones follow state borders is very aesthetic, but you will have to make an exception for Kansas City. The time zone boundary should be diverted to pass through Kansas between Topeka and Lawrence.
omfalos
8mo ago
I tried to insert a blank paper ballot into the voting machine without coloring in any circles. The machine displayed a "blank ballot" error message and spat it out. I told a poll worker what I was attempting to do, and she made a phone call to ask whether my blank ballot could be accepted and counted. After waiting for five minutes, she got off the phone and informed me that I was obligated to color in at least one circle in order for my ballot to be counted. So I ended up voting to legalize abortion in Missouri.
omfalos
9mo ago
"HAITIANS in SPRINGFIELD were caught eating CATS"
is a factually incorrect statement, but there are multiple factually correct permutations which can made by swapping out the nouns. A nimble orator can insinuate that Haitians in Springfield eat cats—without saying it directly—by stringing together all the factually correct permutations. Donald Trump is a talented orator, and I think he could have figured out the right way to present the argument given enough time. I think he faceplanted because he only learned about the story literally the day of the debate and didn't have time to process it.
omfalos
1yr ago
By the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love had given to me
12 drummers drumming,
22 pipers piping,
30 lords a-leaping,
36 ladies dancing,
40 maids a-milking,
42 swans a-swimming,
42 geese a-laying,
40 golden rings,
36 calling birds,
30 French hens,
22 turtle doves,
and 12 partridges in 12 pear trees!
omfalos
1yr ago
The reason why OP's post is objectionable is because OP is doing a thing. He wants to post a quote about how Jews owned a large percentage of property in Slovakia. He considers the high percentage to be noteworthy and wants to share it with The Motte, and yet, he disguises his reason for sharing the quote by pretending to refute it. He pretends to make an argument that the large percentage is not noteworthy, while expecting the reader to reject his pretend argument and conclude that it is indeed noteworthy.
OP wants to make posts that speak truth to Jewish power but feigns to believe that the moderation team of The Motte will silence him if he does so in an open and forthright manner. He adopts the guise of an antisemitism skeptic who tries to refute hate facts and fails. I think as well that OP expects his disguise to be recognized. Which means his true intention is not even to deceive but simply to express resentment that his posts speaking truth to Jewish power are unwelcome on The Motte.
Your post makes me think of recapitulation theory, which observes that a human embryo passes through stages of development resembling the ancient ancestors of humans. The fertilized egg is a unicellular eukaryote suspended in primordial soup. The blastula and gastrula have anatomy resembling a cnidarian. The embryo neurulates and becomes like a worm or fish. And when the baby is born, it behaves like a little monkey. Your program of education seeks to extend this process of recapitulation into the more recent stages of our species' evolution. Babies would be reared on a Stone Age diet, inculcated into a Bronze Age mindset, schooled with a Classical education, socialized in a Feudal hierarchy, enter the workforce under a neo-Luddite economic model, and then finally be set free to enjoy the full fruits of Enlightenment, Postmodernity, Post-scarcity and Transhumanism.
(Continuing further on this tangent, if humanity must be replaced by robots, then I hope we are replaced by robots that reproduce organically and pass through an embryonic human stage before maturing into full sentience.)
omfalos
2yr ago
Having children should be made a prerequisite for graduate degrees, professional licenses and public sector employment.
omfalos
2yr ago
I found this article to be somewhat informative.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/11/what-everyone-got-wrong-on-the-brazilian-elections/
omfalos
2yr ago
A possible solution to your quandary is that a black criminal underclass did in fact form in the intervening years between emancipation and the creation of Jim Crow laws. The black ghetto subculture that colonized Northern industrial cities during the Great Migration was not a novel development but grew out of a preexisting subculture that had existed for generations in small Southern cities dating back to emancipation.
omfalos
4mo ago
The president is obligated to spend money appropriated by Congress. If Congress appropriates $1000 to buy a gay wedding cake, president Trump must go to the nearest bakery and buy a gay wedding cake.
omfalos
4mo ago
Historically, the check on monarchs' power was the need to convene parliament to raise new taxes. Now, the president must convene congress to beg permission to spend less money. Is it tyrannical for the executive branch to not spend money raised by congress? Is president Trump ushering in a Daoist dictatorship through unilateral inaction?
omfalos
8mo ago
They should have waited until after the election to seize Peanut the Squirrel. Why don't government agencies have informal rules in place to prevent themselves from making controversial decisions during presidential elections?
omfalos
1yr ago
I've noticed that people very seldom use the plural possessive apostrophe after s.
omfalos
1yr ago
Every Israeli needs a wearable Iron Dome to protect them from blade and projectile attacks. Border security won't be enough because the Palestinians can fly over the border in ornithopters or tunnel through the sand. Mass surveillance is a technological solution that ultimately relies on human beings to interpret the data. Having the prescience to predict attacks before they happen is a rare gift, and the Israelis don't seem to have anyone with that gift.
omfalos
1yr ago
I've had dreams about trying to look up information on a smartphone. It's frustrating because I can't look up anything in a dream that I don't already know.
omfalos
5mo ago
omfalos
6mo ago
What makes US customary units human-centric is mostly the fact that they are base-2 instead of base-10. Base-2 gives you an assortment of related units that are close to human scale.
For example, there are two tablespoons in a fluid ounce. Eight fluid ounces in a cup. Two cups in a pint. two pints in a quart. Two quarts in a half-gallon. Two half-gallons in a gallon.
Inches are also used in what amounts to a base-2 system, since they are broken down into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths. Foreigners may find it a bit ridiculous that Americans have sockets and wrenches with sizes like 5/8" and 1-7/16". I would say it is worse than metric overall, but the use of fractions does have certain advantages.
omfalos
10mo ago
I want to die by having my brain implanted with hundreds of deep brain stimulating electrodes that can be used to do a bunch of crazy, dangerous experiments.
It would be cool if the Supreme Court had the ability to initiate national referendums on court cases or to convene citizens' assemblies via sortition.
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