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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2679 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026

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 still on Macpherson's Possessive Individualism and the rest of the backlog. Slow progress. Also reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes again.

Well, I finished A Canticle for Liebowitz. I was not expecting the mutant murder wasteland sections to be the least bleak parts.

I am very glad that we don’t live under the same pall of nuclear holocaust.

Polanyi's The Tacit Dimension.non-amazon link.

Started it today and I like that it isn't written in the typical academic philosophy structure. Which is partially why, according to the forward, Polanyi never got any real traction within that community (in a relative sense; he was lecturing at a bunch of prestigious universities for decades).

I'm reading it in the context of "lol, is AI gonna make us all permanent serfs?" and, in that context, it's quite uplifting. "We can know more than we can say" and tradition, broadly defined, being not only advantageous but necessary to the true production and development of knowledge means the clankers, as effective as they are, can't actually cover the entire area of human-level problem spaces.

Finally finished Marx thank god. Expect an effort post about this in March. Am currently working on Spinoza, The Knight by Gene Wolfe, and The Golden Compass in Italian.

Also reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes again.

I tried watching the anime, after it seeing it shared as an example of a "rational"(ish) anime.

The first episode (all that I bothered watching) disappointed me greatly. The so-called strategic genius won a fleet battle against all odds by using tactics obvious to a particularly bright seven year old. Someone tell me if it's worth persisting despite poor first impressions.

The so-called strategic genius won a fleet battle against all odds by using tactics obvious to a particularly bright seven year old

I'm curious now as to how many works involving strategic geniuses actually do involve tactics that wouldn't be obvious to a 7-year-old? I don't recall, say, the Honor Harrington books generally relying on amazing tactics, so much as well-executed tactics and knowledge.

Very few, but still non-zero. Classic examples would be Ender's Game; then we've got HPMOR and other rat-fic.

I did enjoy my listening of HPMOR, but it IMO also gets pretty silly at times. I don't really remember examples of the top of my head unfortunately since it's quite some time ago, but I do remember coming away with the impression that there isn't a lot that Harry is doing which would work nearly as well IRL as it does in the book.

Increasingly I think that the fundamental problem is, not only would very few strategic (or tactical, for that matter) genii write a book like that, if anything writing fiction like this anti-selects for competence in harsh competitive environments, since it's fundamentally escapism. And there's no way out of this inherent contradiction.

Most military action currently is one dominant side enforcing its will unilaterally on a weaker enemy, or a slow boring grind like Ukraine. If a weaker side wins, it's usually on morale and propaganda terms as opposed to military genius.

So the closest thing we've got currently IRL is probably gaming competitions, I guess.

Strategy-wise, don't expect anything too impressive.

LoGH runs on the strength of its (many) characters, the variety of its situations, its sometimes impressive handling of serious topics, the fairly well-developed political and social standpoints of the two main protagonists, and the remarkably high quality of the dialogue. And of course, the unforgettable Yang Wen-li.

(I'm talking about the original anime. The remake is quite good, but not as good.)

I finished No Life Forsaken. It was okay. I feel like Erikson has lost some of his touch. The "hidden" characters were too on the nose. It felt too much like an avengers-slop style full of team-ups/guest appearances. The dialogue was boring and without gravitas, the only interesting thoughts were those about worship which has been done better in his other books. Even the tropes just felt well-trod which is something I remember, maybe incorrectly, as something he was better at pathfinding previously. Lastly for a Karsa Orlong series there is a specific dearth of actual Karsa appearances, which is disappointing.

Still on Ubik, about halfway through.

I'm working on finally reading the backlog of books I acquired towards the end of 2025. Just finished Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, the only book of his that I've read. It wasn't bad, but didn't really inspire me to read more. There is some wit there, but I didn't find the book as funny as the author's reputation would've had me think. And the plot, while serviceable, was nothing super interesting (and also the everyone is secretly a girl thing got kind of old by the end). Overall, meh/10.

I also read but didn't finish a book called The Expectant Detectives by Kat Ailes. Honestly not something I would normally read, but my local book store had "blind date" books and I thought it might be interesting to go with something unknown. The blurb on the wrapping promised a "funny, cozy British mystery" which sounded promising enough, but I didn't enjoy it at all. The premise of the book is that an eight months' pregnant woman moves from London to a small rural town with her boyfriend, and gets caught up in a murder mystery when the shop owner hosting her prenatal class dies in mysterious circumstances. Unfortunately, the book also reads like it was written by Reddit. Partly in tone, but also in frequent asides for the protagonist to preach the good word of feminism, and comments about "adulting" that leave you no doubt whatever about how much of an adult the speaker isn't. The worst part came towards the end of what I read, when the protagonist shares with a friend that she's worried her boyfriend is "getting into right-wing politics", and goes so far as to say that she would more easily be able to accept him having an affair than that. It was a really awful book, don't read it. I made it through a third before giving up, and flipping to the back to see who the killer was.

Next up is Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson. I don't expect it to wow me (as the novella it is based on didn't), but I also don't expect to hate it either. We'll see.

If you’re interested in Pratchett, you should read something older. Monstrous Regiment was written only a few years before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and several years after his writing started to show signs of his mental decline (e.g., reduced vocabulary). Also, I haven’t read all of his books, but of those I have read, Monstrous Regiment was my least favorite.

Good to know. I didn't choose this one (it was a Christmas gift from my sister), so I'm open to the possibility of reading another. Any in particular which you would recommend?

Guards is great. Men at Arms is even stronger, IMO. Unlike some of the other sub-series, they transition pretty smoothly into more complex novels as the cast matures, so basically all of them are worth reading.

I’m personally fond of the Moist von Lipwig novels, where a con man is placed in charge of the postal service and then the central bank. But it’s been a long time.

I started with Guards! Guards! as a teenager and honestly the Vimes books from Guards! Guards! through Thud! are the best. I only read other Pratchett books because I enjoyed The Watch books and became comfortable with the style.

Though Hogsfather has a special place in my heart, I think it should be read after you are familiar with the setting.

I'll second the Guards series as Pratchett's strongest work: it has the broadest and most serious engagement with the philosophy, and the Thud! and especially Night Watch have some masterful writing. Only real downsides is that Jingo is a pretty dated, and The Last Continent is merely good and sets up later stories, rather than being great. If Guards! Guards! and Men At Arms don't do it for you you're not going to like any of Pratchett's writing, but they're really good stories.

Rincewind's saga is rough and early enough that it barely fits into the rest of the setting, and even the standalone Death works like Thief of Time require a lot of buy-in. The Witches series can be a good second set, starting with Wyrd Sisters, but they have kinda the opposite problem, where they're very much send-ups of mainstream stories that can be a little trite if you've seen other Shakespeare or Disney pastiches.

True on the witches stuff, Shrek 2 is basically Witches Abroad.

Any of the following are good places to start:

Pyramids

Guards!Guards!

Wyrd Sisters

Reaper Man is good but it's best to read Mort first

FWIW I have consistently found Pratchett to be overrated.

He's an absolute mindblower if you're a teenager, though.

He's a great Young Adult author who is treated like a writer of adult books because he doesn't include teenage throuples in his writing.

After realizing that consistently successful investing/trading is to a very large degree a mental and emotional game.

Knew a career Wall Street guy who once said something to the effect of "If monks didn't take a vow of poverty, they would crush all of us" (can't remember the exact quote. It was more pithy).

Ground State: Expeditionary Force Book 19 by Craig Alanson; I ended up wanting his brand of humor again more quickly than I'd anticipated!

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