George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
I finished Hail Mary Project after having abandoned it some time ago. I still hated the prose but it's out (the movie) on Netflix and my sons and I can probably watch it and I wanted to have read the book. I could barely get through it due to the writing style, which clearly must be entertaining or funny for a lot of people but made me wish I was better at speed reading. The "Oh crud" type exclamations and the general sense of humor of the protagonist (and by implication, author) grated. What's that Stephen King analogy? "Like biting on tinfoil."
From the same friend I am now reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's okay so far but in a way that is making me realize the distance in our habits and tastes. He's a big gamer and reader of sci fi. I haven't really played a game since I quit Warcraft a decade or more ago and have only read a dozen or so sci fi books, most of those long ago. Unfortunately the narrative voice so far is somewhat similar to the protagonist in Wier's Weir's book.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
"They" are at least arguably not a completely unified discrete group, though I get the spirit of your response. I would suggest humans in general regardless of political stripe are capable of deceit and even fraud, as well as a conviction that their own side is morally superior and thus its rules should be foisted on the perceived opposition.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
You can find frauds, hucksters, shills, charlatans, and quack mountebanks in the "ranks" of progressives, to be sure, but let's not pretend they do not exist in likely great numbers among liberals, moderates, conservatives, or the reactionary right as well. The degree to which their quackery is unveiled will vary depending on the news cycle and/or the degree to which their lying is seen as egregious.
Recently watched with my sons. I remember reading somewhere on Reddit probably about the reveal that you mention in the spoiler tags, but really you can still make up your own mind.
In BR, Ridley Scott insists Deckard was a replicant, Ford says he wasn't, Villeneuve (director of 2049) says it's still ambiguous (which it is-- there is evidence both ways.) In the PKD story Deckard's character is definitely not a replicant.
Edit: My point being the director can vague himself into not being definitive.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I imagine counseling is available gratis as part of your work? Which may be shit tier counseling, it's always a diceroll, but might be worth it. I can't imagine the shit you deal with, almost as bad as cops. Worse, in a way.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I think if my benign quokka ass is being blocked that blocking or the desire for blocking will always be with us. That may be me underestimating how annoying I am.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Who else but fencers?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
When I see the red You're blocked symbol next to a username it has typically been on users who seem to be mathematically-oriented quantitative types (sorry for the word types) who no doubt find my bloviated meanderings tedious. My posts are usually on the other side of the ordered, pegs-in-holes sensibility, which I do not share.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I'm beginning to see a trend in the users who block me.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Whenever I see Margaret Qualley I think of her mother, and my fixation on her roughly beginning with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Showing my age no doubt.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Without knowing a cause simply attacking a symptom such as this is possibly very counterproductive. Of course seeing a specialist is a pain. Doing things that are a pain is part of adulthood. Add my voice to those suggesting you consult a specialist. Even with a doctor looking at it you're also not guaranteed to get the proper diagnosis immediately, but you've a better chance with someone actually looking at you than with listening to randos online.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
I was about to say the open steppe, a fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair, but I knew about how well that would have been received.
I did say perhaps. I qualified throughout. Admittedly I haven't read all your replies to everyone, only the one(s) I was answering.
I personally don't have issues overusing my phone by my own standards of that term. I do have teenage sons who would benefit from giving the damn things a rest, as I repeatedly suggest to them. Parenthood informs my views to some degree, as does the fact that I lived well into adulthood before smartphones existed, so I remember a different world.
Sure phones "utility is ridiculously high" yes, I believe I granted you all of that. I think you might be slightly on defense though of course I'm not the shrink. I'll leave it.
Edit: I'm not leaving it because I am smugly convinced of my rightness, or your wrongness. But I think we're talking past each other to a degree and I'm not interested in taking part in a pile-on.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
Replying because you're missing the obvious truth that different strategies work for different people and you do not always know why, especially by reading an internet post. First Toil then the Grave's plan may work for him splendidly, and not because he has some defect of character.
I concede all the usefulness of smartphones (I am typing this by the way on a computer). I still balk at your seemingly inalterable attachment to them. The other day on a walk I witnessed nearly every third person driving by looking at his or her phone. Who knows why. A map, a menu, an emergency text from a pregnant wife, a thesis on Heidegger. Or maybe just some dumbass inflammatory reel or so-called influencer. I do know that were Japanese suburban traffic only slightly faster on average that there would be a lot more swerving and crashing than there is now. And this with a current law enacting large fines and potential voiding of licenses for driving while staring at a phone.
People lose situational awareness when gazing at phones. They forget where they are, they forget what used to be basic manners. And this is in Japan where actually speaking on a phone in an enclosed space (such as a bus or train) is still tantamount to open-mouthed sneezing in an elevator. I still see it, and not always from foreigners. I had a girlfriend in grad school who used to read fucking books while driving until she was warned repeatedly that this was a reckless, selfish thing to do. This of course does not mean that reading books is innately harmful. Nobody is saying books are the devil. Still, reading has never been the best way to learn. As for phones, we've all seen the pithy quote.
You suggest @FtttG has claimed:
total removal as the obviously superior intervention
And maybe that was his intention (I did not get that.) And I understand perhaps yours is just an instinctive desire to defend technology or modernism or whatever.
But phones are not always, or even most of the time, such a wonderful thing, despite what is perhaps their potential to be such. Any more than many things that should be good, that are good in theory, that seem foolproof in their benefit to humanity, end up fucking people up. But then you know all this and you know some version of all the stories I might tell to make this point. I predict that you will remain intransigent. I would consider this a blind spot of yours, a shortcoming worth reflecting on. You will not agree. Call me Kreskin. You do you, as they say.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
Interstellar I've enjoyed watching several times. Tenet I did not enjoy as much but it was a great moviegoing experience. Just as counterpoint.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
American here amd I understood immediately.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
14d ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
15d ago
Gin and tonic with ice and a lemon wedge. Not precious about the gin though London Drys are my preference. Wilkinson tonic.
Yesterday I was given something called Framboise by a very wealthy Frenchman and it tasted as if would take the paint off a car.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
16d ago
Yes and no. I used to detect a fish taste in everything. I wasn't wrong -- bonito (katsuo) and dashi powder are ingredients in many, many unexpected foods. I did get used to this and barely notice it if at all now.
No in that I have never really liked fish and still don't eat it unless decorum demands it (i.e. I am at someone's home or there is a dinner somewhere out and I am a guest, etc.) I never choose fish if I have a choice. The less said about things like mentaiko and namako the better. As has been noticed before on this very board, yes it is a waste. Everyone I know likes Japanese food better than I do.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
17d ago
Technically user is a noun. I'm not trying to be tedious here.
I suppose my peeve is with the default to the plural when his/her or he/him is perfectly clear in cases where one does not recall who someone is (in your sentence: "I've warned him/her as well"), and indeed was a norm until trans-activists (and the likeminded) pushed for the universal use of the plural pronoun, or terms like zim and zey or whatever. (I will admit I do not know to what degree these were seriously offered as "solutions" or by whom.) The argument that him/her used in this way is an awkward construction is not compelling to me for a number of reasons. And I think the still soft voice of the serpent is in such small details that we do not notice until they're second nature, at which point bringing up the issue at all makes one seem like a man shaking his fist at a cloud. Indeed we may already be there (lowers fist.)
That said, of course you can ignore all this. If no one else cares I'm not going to waste your time or mine any further.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
17d ago
Her. You've warned her. Pet peeve.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
17d ago
After moving to Japan and living several years, I returned to the US briefly and many foods that had once been part of my routine diet had become nearly unpalatably sweet. A full can of Cola at this point in my life is distastefully cloying. A Krispy Kreme doughnut and it's like I can feel my insulin levels cranking to 11. I think we get used to our diet like our surroundings. The way you drive down your childhood street after a decade away and suddenly notice everything, while when you lived there you drove through automatically without noticing anything or even feeling aware of the drive. Tastes must be similar. Probably.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
Your diagnosis is compelling. I think my concern is more with your prescription. I think reform is not impossible, for history or any number of disciplines. "Dismantling the system," as you put it, would have downstream consequences, and I suppose my concern is that these would mostly be negative. One of the usual complaints about youth (and Americans in general) is a lack of awareness of history--the country's, the world's. Would you agree with that criticism? If so would you suggest self-study is the way to rectify it, and not a better education system?
I do see great value in history as a discipline -- and reading widely and even widely different perspectives I think is part of that, and I'd suggest the role of a professor is to provide exposure to this. Banging one partisan drum is no better than banging another.
Your comment deserves a longer response but I've kept this dormant for a day and am currently on a train.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
21d ago
You may need to learn Slootspeak. I would bet he was being sarcastic in most of his comment until the last bits there.
Very possible. He gave me a big hardcover and knows I don't dig audiobooks.
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