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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3255 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 22, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Hall and Stead's A People's History of Classics to my list. Definitely the most interesting open access find I've made.

The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert. This is my second attempt to learn about the French Revolution, having previously read Mencius Moldbug's recommendation, same title, written by J. F. Bosher. I'm starting to think that there is so much going on that a single volume treatment leaves stuff out and the reader notices the gaps and goes "Wut!"

Hibbert is great on how terrible the Terror is. I've read as far as the execution of Danton, and now Robespierre is getting nervous. His denunciation of atheism as aristocratic has gone down poorly. I'm feeling a little lost. Is calling something aristocractic a general purpose insult, like calling some-one a NAZI is today? Was there an actual link, with atheism arising due to wealthy aristocrats sponsoring philosophes. Did the denunciation upset atheist sans culottes?

Ten years ago I wouldn't have had a problem with Hibbert's description of the Terror. But in recent years I've read the line "They tell you what happened to them, but they don't tell you why." too many times. Perhaps The Terror is warning me that we live on a frail raft bobbing on a sea of psychopathic cruelty and must be careful that it doesn't capsize. Perhaps The Terror is darkly hinting that the outbreak of unhinged violence is a response to previous horrors, too terrible to mention.

I have a weak clue that it might be the later. I recently blundered across this paragraph

In early 1726, Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot taunted Voltaire about his name change, who retorted that his name would win the esteem of the world, while Rohan would sully his own.[40] A furious Rohan arranged for his servants to beat Voltaire a few days later.[41] Seeking redress, Voltaire challenged Rohan to a duel, but the powerful Rohan family arranged for Voltaire to be arrested and imprisoned without trial in the Bastille on 17 April 1726.[42][43] Fearing indefinite imprisonment, Voltaire asked to be exiled to England as an alternative punishment, which the French authorities accepted.[44] On 2 May, he was escorted from the Bastille to Calais and embarked for England.

in Voltaire's wikipedia page. This hints that aristocrats in pre-revolutionary France abused their power unconstrained by any sense of honour or proportion. And general principles suggest that the lower classes would have got it a lot worse than Voltaire. But by page 257 Hibbert hasn't yet addressed the issue, so I don't think he will.

I am particularly troubled by the executions of nuns. If The Terror had involved gang raping the nuns, in an attempt to fuck some hedonism into them, the gears in my head would have turned and I would have computed: wait, I'm on Earth, this is a mammal thing isn't it?

But execution? Is this the Lizard People resenting that mammals are viviparous? No. I have turned aside from reading science fiction (worried that it is just made up) and I'm reading orthodox history, stuff that really happened. Yet it makes no sense. Hibbert doesn't notice that it makes no sense and makes no attempt to explain it. Hibbert is doing his job correctly; as a historian he should be telling me what happened and not filtering out the bits that make no sense. There is a dark abyss containing peoples motivations. I don't know how to look inside it, and rather suspect that it will be better for my sanity that I never do.

Trying to work my way through NoStarchPress's Computer Graphics from Scratch (caveat: got it deeply discounted during a Humble Bundle, definitely wouldn't pay full price). It's a little obnoxious because I've dabble enough in newer technologies that a lot of the early tutorials are annoyingly useless, but I'm also finding all the places I've missed conventions or misunderstood processes before.

Re-read The Left Hand of Darkness which I had read a very long time ago and remembered almost nothing from that time, so it can be counted as the first reading essentially. This novel is well known for it's exploration of gender topics, which got me interested in how it would read in 2025, being written in 1969. It actually read quite well. Since then, a lot of efforts have been made - including, unfortunately, by Le Guin herself - to make the novel be more woke then the text would support, but it did not ruin it for me (one of the reasons being I only read most the commentary after finishing the novel). Wikipedia's description of it is one of the examples of such wokification, which is as expected, and serves as another warning, if one still needs it, that trusting an anonymous woke mob to pre-chew your information for you may be convenient, but has significant dangers. I don't think I agree with all the ideas implied in the book (like "wars are caused by male hormones") but I found reading it and thinking about it enjoyable.

I love that book! Still my favorite read of all time, and one I've been intending to re-read for, fuck, over a decade now. It was a remarkably profound book when I first read it, and significantly more so for its time. Like you, I didn't agree with every idea LeGuin entertained in the novel either, but between the extensive world-building and the evolution of the relationship between the main characters I quickly went from almost bouncing off of it the first time I read it due largely to said world-building at the beginning to completely enthralled.

Picked up Cyrano de Bergerac without realising it was a play instead of a novel. Makes quick reading though.

About three-quarters of the way through Unsong.

Dungeon Crawler Carl, on the third book. It’s decently fun after the disappointing “The Devils” from Abercrombie.

The latter was not that bad, by the way. I just have to accept that Abercrombie will never reach the level of his first five books again.

If Mistborn is at all representative, there’s a long way to fall yet.

Death of the Ideal: Godclads Book 2 by OstensibleMammal. Still like Cyber Dreams overall, but by book 4 some of the plot devices were becoming repetitive and one of the major plot threads felt majorly "off" to me so I'm putting that series down for a while.

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