wayfarer
1mo ago
I've long stopped caring about how accurate anything on my timesheet is
sadly, this seems sole sane answer to that (based on description)
wayfarer
1mo ago
I have gotten very good at amusing myself over the internet
have you tried combating this? Leechblock? /etc/hosts ? Some other kind of filter or commitment device?
wayfarer
1mo ago
I feel like I suck at programming
I would investigate are you suffering from impostor syndrome or actually sucking at it.
Many real good programmers deservedly earning piles of money described themself as being absolutely terrible at it.
wayfarer
1mo ago
I thought of a third: Do nothing, thanks for catching up, guess you'll soon go radio silent on me as you become fully indoctrinated. Lose your friend to whatever she ends up becoming (a version of this will happen no matter what you do.) Read about it later. You can't save everyone.
I would at least try to tell them what you see here. Do not expect it to work, maybe do not followup, be prepared for bad response. Do not try to rescue them. But at least let them know how it looks from outside. (at least I would be quite irritated if everyone would recognize that I am getting caught by cult and noone would tell me what they noticed)
the way both my friend and the afore-mentioned teen hugged me when we parted at the train station last night was disturbingly intense for goodbye hugs (also I have known the younger one like 24h at this moment).
this one does not seem too suspicious to me? unless there is something extra that you omitted?
and some got very upset and went no-contact.
If multiple people went no-contact over it that seems very strong indicator of something being really wrong (either with workshop or general population, but I would bet on workshop).
And based on further description it sounds very cultish.
But I have no idea whether my expected reaction would it be helpful AT ALL.
If I would be in this situation I would probably stand up, tell them something along "it seems to be a cult and, you should rethink situation and maybe escape before it is too late" and leave. Maybe something less aggressive would be better, maybe not directed to all. But I would let people know that it seems abnormal to you, maybe they will also recognize it? Or give them signal that they are not in fact crazy that it seems weird.
I would definitely would not try to become deeper involved or rescue people, unless it was some extremely close friend/family (and even there involvement seems of dubious use).
wayfarer
1mo ago
In Iran it seems that targeted attacks on leadership and GBAD allowed them extreme freedom of operation.
So far Iran shot down a single drone.
It seems so far to be going as well as Russia wanted its SMO to go.
(it is an open question how well it will go long term and whether they will stop Iran from getting nukes)
wayfarer
1mo ago
OP characters are admittedly very common and that is short circuiting a lot of my recommendations.
it is not a strict blocker for me, just that some sort of conflict is needed (maybe it is foregone conclusion that OP character will win - but they want to achieve also secondary goals?)
Any other aspects of MOL you liked?
hmm, what I remember now, after reading it few years ago...
- worldbuilding that was not aggressive stupid (I have a high bar here)
- government etc as depicted in story was not bunch of incompetent clowns and story was written by someone not detached from reality
- various nuggets like magicians overclassifying their spells for prestige regions making them unavailable for beginners
- opponents that were not huffing idiot balls and were opponents not speed bumps. Unlike half of stories on RR ads where "OP protagonist" is mentioned like it would be a good thing
- Kirielle, Kael and others - and that time loop actually resulted in building relation with at least some (especially with his sister and brother)
- Xvim and Alanic were cool
- progression, going for example from "Zach simply erected an aegis – a freaking aegis!" to "It was just a simple force aegis, nothing fancy"
- time travel
- ending was well done
- nonevil church
- the spiders
I felt that part when Silverlake was very prominent was dragging on and if I would be editor I would trim it. Some parts felt repetitive in uninteresting ways, especially multiple webs. I would also drop entirety of dungeon delving. Felt a bit of serial story disease (they had Patreon, right?).
But I would love to read more a bit about what happened after exiting time loop. For many stories I feel they end too soon, and I would cut middle to get more of ending.
Main reason it might not be for you (or anyone really) is that the protagonist is bisexual.
I guess that depends on how it appears. If narration is going in detail over alluring penises/anuses then yes, it is likely going to be a blocker for me. If he is just having kind of relations that would make pope sad it is not a problem, if it is not taking over the story. Though yes, I have lower tolerance to homosexual romance as it is not sexy at all to me. For example if there would be MOL story about Zach using initial time loops to seduce various women in academy (there was a throwaway mention of this) then maybe I would read it.
wayfarer
1mo ago
likely to sign off on and aid a nuclear strike on the city.
no, it is not likely for start USA does not benefit from breaking nuclear taboo and after Israeli clean up conventional bombing will achieve the same things at lower costs
I am predicting you are wrong and your prediction will fail (with chances of USA/Israel using nuclear bomb on Tehran being deeply below 0.0000001% )
wayfarer
1mo ago
Also, if something is too well protected for drones to blow it up: then drones can observe and summon artillery/missile strikes/glide bombs etc.
And it is not only on land, we had already plane being shot down by naval drones.
wayfarer
1mo ago
No, strategic bombing has a mediocre track record and in most of those cases it was accompanied by full scale land invasions. Strategic bombing alone just makes the bombee really really mad at you.
Israel seems to be bombing very very specific targets in Iran. Up to nearly comical level - in some cases destroying specific room in an apartment block. Not demolishing entire cities.
hitler is in hell right now being forced to watch split screen footage of the jews precision striking the exact apartments of their enemies, and the germans decommissioning their nuclear reactors for no reason at all
wayfarer
1mo ago
with not much more justification than might is right.
Are you sure that it applies to for example Houthis?
wayfarer
1mo ago
what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that
well, easy answer would be "stop sabotaging deportation of people who immigrated illegally" though for deeply open border people who consider nearly any deportation as unacceptable it is nonstarter
despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts
how bipartisan they were? Is "bipartisan" used here in meaning "one republican voted for"? Or some deeper support?
and AFAIK left wing in turn sabotaged orderly deportations or blocking them at border (and yes, border walls can work if maintained properly)
History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?
South Korea just did it
wayfarer
1mo ago
but they want men to be direct with them (insert Darth Plagueis meme here), at least within the bounds of decorum
the trick is whether something is within "bounds of decorum" often depends on whether they want specific person to ask them
wayfarer
1mo ago
So if I know lots of non-alphas who are fucking, what's up?
apparently under that definition alpha is greater than 5% or you do not see vast number of people stuck in basements
wayfarer
1mo ago
Maybe the hippie dropout is happy to hang out in the public park or town square, but the millionaire lawyer guy tends to get tired of those places pretty quickly.
personally I like hiking etc, and I expect that I would still like it if I would be really rich (millionaire seems to be not really impressive nowadays after few rounds of inflation).
wayfarer
1mo ago
I have deep allergy to I think nearly all aspects of wuxia :) So for that I will not even ask for recs.
But do you have some recommendations for completed progression fantasy story with sympathetic protagonist? Or at least one that does not deserve immediate execution?
I liked MOL and I think it qualifies of progression fantasy.
wayfarer
1mo ago
I would ask Gaashk out, but she would probably stab me
sounds like sort of deniable asking out, AKA flirting
He did not in fact ask me out
I am pretty sure that it was an attempt
is still single and complaining about it on Facebook
well, clearly their strategy is not going well but it mirrors more common complaint about woman sending utterly unclear signal and expecting man to spot it and interpret as interest and act on it this one was quite clear though
wayfarer
1mo ago
Which other government systems you claim to be overall better? What you care about?
Currently the best plausible candidate is China, but note that they made so great progress because Mao-shaped disaster caused them to start from low base. So overall it looks like a poor example to me - "it will manage to dig out of hole they caused themselves".
If your government system causes 15 to 55 million dead via one of the largest man-made disaster in human history then "we managed to dig out of that damage in few decades" is not enough to balance it.
wayfarer
1mo ago
Democracy simply does not work.
still works better than other government systems
wayfarer
1mo ago
post communist corruption. And EU membership made the second one worse
not exactly, it introduced new forms
post communist corruption in some countries (Poland) got attacked and reduced in some only a bit (Ukraine)
wayfarer
1mo ago
and there are reasons why 'this obvious way to take over the world' doesn't work out
in some badly thought-out fiction this may be missing
though much better story is where character actually encounters some fitting opposition, without sneering at source material or something else
try to ask people in field for advise? they need to be somewhere. but if you get paid for embedded systems programming in C and your product work, then I bet that your assessment of "I feel like I suck at programming" is wrong
(I am paid more, in lower cost-of-life country and I assure that I regularly feel "I am terrible at programming" then I proceed to ignore it as I realized that it is misleading)
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