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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   2747 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Two weeks ago, the winners of the 2026 edition of the Lyttle Lytton award were announced.

For those unfamiliar, the Lyttle Lytton award is a competition in which entrants are challenged to write the worst opening line to a novel they can think of, using no more than 200 characters. In addition to the competition itself, there's a "Found" division in which people submit lines from actual published work (not just novels, but also journalism and non-fiction).

Some personal favourites from this year's edition:

  • It was 2016, the summer of Pokémon Go, but I was going nowhere.
  • The year is 1353.  The Black Death has unalived half of Europe.
  • My hands trembled as I watched the emperor form his much steadier hand into the shape of a thumbs down emoji.
  • “Oh Chat!” Vanessa wailed as she gazed upon the throbbing em dash which would soon be thrust into her sopping wet data centre.
  • As she lustfully stared at me, my loins exploded like the Titan submersible, and she, the ocean I wanted to be so deep into.
  • On my first mission I HALO jumped into Muhammad City, but was KIA (Kicked In Ass) by unfriendlies and had to exfil via helo.
  • Joe, having finally bought a plane, could now travel everywhere!  You know what else is everywhere?  Your personal data.  BlockMi can protect you from data brokers online.  More on that later, back to Joe
  • This fanfic was written and uploaded on the traditional homeland of the Anishinabe people.

This fanfic was written and uploaded on the traditional homeland of the Anishinabe people.

How do they determine which people is a specific plot of land the traditional homeland of? Do they use the snapshot of their location in 1492? Or in 1 January 1950?

The guy who runs the competition had the same thought:

The thing that gets me about these land acknowledgments is that they generally only go back so far.  The ones I hear in my neck of the woods acknowledge the Ohlone speak­ers who lived here before the arrival of the Spanish in the eighteenth century, but we never hear about the Hokan speakers those Ohlone speakers displaced when they migrated in from the Central Valley.  Sequent occupancy has a little bit more complexity to it than the “traditional homeland” formulas tend to acknowledge!

I hate land acknowledgements with a passion. I saw the tweet the other day that suggested starting off a meeting in the US with "we acknowledge we are gathered here today on former British land". Come to think of it, one could do the same thing in Ireland.

As she lustfully stared at me, my loins exploded like the Titan submersible, and she, the ocean I wanted to be so deep into.

I can't tell if the author intentionally got implosion/explosion wrong here, or if it's accidentally even worse than they tried to be.

This fanfic was written and uploaded on the traditional homeland of the Anishinabe people.

This is cheating, though. Front matter (such as the copyright information, the dedication, or the summary on the front flap of the dust cover) is not part of the novel proper.

Yeah, he acknowledged that in the commentary. It still made me laugh.

What do you call it when you're debating whether to shoot your shot with a girl on Instagram, then you decide "fuck it, you only live once"?

Carpe DM.

By shooting your shot I mean sending them a DM, per the punchline.

I don't know Gen Z dating etiquette. It's just a play on words.

Ah screw me, I'm slow. Stayed up all night and it's 6AM here.

Boooo

(Good one)

Hahah

I posted the original in last Sunday’s small question thread, but posting my reply here.

Thanks you to @Thoroughlygruntled, @yofuckreddit, @MathWizard, @Hieronymus, @charlesf, @erwgv3g34, @Vollerei, @KingOfTheBailey, @orthoxerox, @Rex, @TowardsPanna, @chooky, @WhiningCoil, @ulyssessword, @birb_cromble, @aqouta, and @ToaKraka for the computer game recommendations. Before this post, I was already playing Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate III. I also bought The Long Dark.

I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to get through these. I’ll keep you all up to date. As @yofuckreddit said, it would be best if I was unemployed for a whole year so I could play them.

Does the combat in BG3 ever become less of a chore?

Warlockracy (whose channel I've been binge-watching) has come up with the theory of bimodal difficulty of combat encounters. He classifies them into three tiers:

  • trash fights, requiring no real effort to win
  • "captcha" fights, just hard enough to make you pay attention
  • challenge fights, that require you to come up with an ad-hoc solution

The theory is that "captcha" fights are bad, and you mostly need a combination of trash and challenge fights in your game. Weak encounters make you feel powerful and reinforce the theme of the dungeon. Strong encounters force you to master the combat system. But medium-strength encounters should exist only as an onramp to the next challenge fight, teaching you the new mechanic. Yes, players can complain about too many trash fights, but turning half of them into captcha fights will make the game worse off.

It sounds like BG3 has too many captcha fights.

It's interesting to me that he doesn't consider the point of captcha fights to be attrition - ideally to me, an RPG should be slowly grinding away your resources as you approach the boss, maybe even forcing you to withdraw and come back another day, refreshed and re-equipped.

That seems to be a bit of an uncommon view, though, and a lot of games don't encourage it -- 5e both tabletop and adaptation pay lip service with long vs short rests, but in practice...

The channel looks interesting. Is this combat encounter theory in his BG3 video or is there a combat theory video? They are very long so it will be hard for me to scan them.

I think its interesting that the internet has such diverse opinions on BG3 combat. Many (especially 5e veterans) say it is extremely hard. The min-maxing community considers it easy. Most people consider Larian's other hit, DOS2, to be a lot harder. I recently finally bought XCOM (2012), and that is truly an old game because it is hard.

I would say BG3 combat feels unrewarding -- it leaves me wanting more. That is similar to "feels like a chore." I think part of the issue is the game is schizophrenic, meaning it can't decide if its a narrative game or a combat game. Narrative gamers think the combat is hard, and a chore; Combat gamers think combat is easy, and lacking.

If you spend multiple hours straight doing quests, social encounters, and reap a lot of progression and quest rewards; and you don't like combat, you're going to find the combat is a slog. That's because it's not a combat game, and you can progress quite well without fighting at all. If your goal is to experience the story, then passing the conversation checks is quicker and less effort. In some sense, the combat feels like a slog because the rest of the game spoils you without requiring the player to play anything.

On the other hand, a true combat game would be structurally designed to condition the player to feel rewarded by the combat, making it fun, even if all the fights are captcha fights.

It's in the Pillars video, IIRC.

One of my favorite RPGs series replace basically all trash fights with captcha fights: the SMT series (including Persona). Unless very overlevelled, and even then, you're not expected to auto-battle your way through any fight, and if somehow you are able to, you probably messed up by overoptimising to make it possible to do that with that specific enemies (for instance, enemies with physical vulnerabilities) and made yourself extra vulnerable to others in return. When you first enter a new dungeon/area, all fights against new enemies have to be treated as challenge fights until you figure out a reliable sequence, which will usually involve spending a scarce ressource (MP). Once you have your strategy to beat all the enemies in an area, it's a matter of balancing ressource spend and taking risk in fights with those enemies as your goal is to reach the boss with enough ressources left that you stand a chance as you probe and figure out a strategy against them.

This is what I find annoying about Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: the incredibly swingy damage formulas mean that a trash fight can become a captcha fight and even a challenge real quick, so the optimal way to play is to treat encounters that 99% of the time are trash as if they are about to kill you. The trash/challenge fights both work well (autofight is very quick, and the challenges are good), and it's often the case that multiple trash monsters create combinations that you have to take seriously, but imo the game would be much better if the RNG variance was toned down so that the types were more clearly distinguished.

Dunno. The thrill of permadeath makes trash fights captcha fights. Swingy damage only makes it more...exciting? Or its supposed to be like that at least.

Tab fighting in DCSS is great though. But I miss the old days of carrying rations and food, it gave the game more character.

There's no thrill of permadeath whatsoever in fighting a quokka, most derived undead, something you outlevel significantly, or whatever (a rule of thumb for me is "can I safely melee this as a caster? trash fight"). Though you always have to watch for anything walking onscreen while you're tabbing the quokka. What I don't like are the situations where, for instance, your character is at a point where you can mindlessly melee a komodo dragon or a troll one-on-one almost all the time, but suddenly a series of rolls go differently and now you're scrambling to escape this one scrub (early game is awful for this too but that's WAD I guess, early game is supposed to suck). Tying GDR to AC instead of body armour was a big improvement, and I suppose the converse is that characters can escape when they should absolutely die due to the enemy rolling low. My thinking on DCSS's design is that many enemies are meant to be unchallenging one-on-one, depending on your character, so that they can create interesting challenges when they show up in combination with each other, without those group fights being impossible to overcome without luring.

More generally, and I know I always bang this drum, I think a game which can accidentally double player damage without anyone noticing, during a tournament needs to take a long hard look at its philosophy around damage rolls. It also creates a pretty boring version of optimal play (and I say this as someone who can win pretty often, currently have an MDFW tearing up Zot), where you are focused on minimizing your exposure to 1% chances of death. Honestly I don't think you need to play like that to win regularly, just to play as well as the best players, but the devs seem obsessed with taking away boring tools for optimal play without ever asking "why does our design philosophy push players towards this path".

bimodal

three tiers

ಠ_ಠ

Yes, tiers 1 and 3 should be more common than tier 2.

I think this depends on the style of gameplay. Trash-fights can be fine in real time, rtwp and auto battle types of games; because you get through them very quickly and with almost no effort or input from the player.

In turn-based it's unacceptable to me, the floor should at the very least be captcha, because there is so much required busywork to get through encounters and they take practically as long as a captcha encounter.

Trash fights in Rogue Trader were fine. The navigator had a great AoE ability that would kill most trash mobs in her cone of sight outright, leaving you with only a couple stronger enemies to mop up.

Cassia had one job in my party: cast Lidless Eye.

Bit of a hijack, but the theory sounds intriguing to me as someone who only has D&D experience from behind the DM screen. To any players here, is this something you actually feel during tabletop play? (Emphasis on tabletop)

I run a beer-and-pretzels game for friends, and have felt increasingly compelled to juice up encounters from the books as they happen, so they are more engaging for a party of munchkins power players who are less interested in the RP aspect of the game (thankfully so; I'm not good at roleplay) and are mostly here to kill shit and commit heroic atrocities, with a martial-heavy party fairly well-optimized for such.

Given that four of us, myself included, are big no-lifers enjoyers of Path of Exile I can definitely understand the appeal of trash fights; the "captcha fight" term would probably fit many of my adjusted encounters, since I try to take the murderhobos up at their game to keep it fun and engaging. My justification for juicing encounters is that by the books, many crumple too fast to five martials (most with long-range options); the players seem to actually like judiciously spending resources and having to strategize together around unexpected counters like walls of force or unlucky save-or-suck hits (they fondly remember and eagerly retell their moments of so doing); and trash fights IMO are less well-suited for tabletop where any combat still briefly grinds the game to a halt as we unpack minis, draw the arena, roll initiative and go one after the other.

Why not combine the approaches? Have trash enemies mixed up with a few serious ones. Lancer does that with Grunt-type mechs and Exalted has "extras".

Especially in tactical turn-based combat games trash fights have a bad tendency to still have a high floor of complexity you have to jump through. I guess by the theory that turns all trash fights by default into captcha fights, which makes them bad.

See my reply to @Ioper. A trash fight lets you click almost mindlessly: the tank self-buffs and moves forward, the DD spams the strongest free ability, it's over in two turns. A captcha fight goes like this: "oh, damn, this is one of these mind-control guys, so I need to put the other amulet on my tank and keep everyone else out of his range; oh, and the summoned thingies have too much health and no vulnerabilities, I need to actually proactively heal my tank, shame it's the same setup as the previous fight, except with three summoned thingies instead of two, hope two of them don't crit in one turn, or I'll need to reload." Basically, you already know what to do each turn, but you still have to pay close attention.

Once you reach level 5 it becomes trivial but I'm not sure that qualifies as it becoming less of chore.

It never was a chore imo. I think you just don't like the game and should stop playing it. There's no shame in putting a game down if you don't like it.

@Lazuli

My problem is that I’m really enjoying everything else besides the combat, so I’m a bit bummed that I find the combat gameplay to be a chore. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me though (Bioshock).

There's also a story mode, I think, if you just want to play on super easy mode. Might be a mod or two out there to give "kind of easy mode" as an option.

If you hate the turn-based combat, you should quit while you're ahead.

I don’t hate all turn based combat. This one just seems to be very heavy on the RNG in a way that seems to flatten out all my inputs. It reminds me a lot of my bette noir, Civilization III.

That's 5e DND by design particularly at low levels (a version of bounded accuracy) The result on the D20 is going to be much more important than your skill/attribute bonus to begin with. There are options to mitigate this (inspiration, spells like Guidance out of combat, or Grease and so on in combat, expertise, getting Advantage and so on) until your level ups begin to increase what you can do.

At the beginning you are a scrub and will fail a fair bit, until you learn the various mitigating options. It gets pretty easy later on when you have more options and spells and items.

This one just seems to be very heavy on the RNG in a way that seems to flatten out all my inputs.

What difficulty are you playing? Turning it down a notch could help.

I loved Divinity: Original Sin (1 and 2), but bounced off of Baldur's Gate 3. I don't think it's the turn-based nature that did it for me.

I don't think it's the turn-based nature that did it for me.

What was it?

I am relieved to hear other people have complaints about BG3 combat. I am pretty sure the problem is just 5e. One issue is 5e combat is extremely simple (especially low-level), and you don't really feel like you're making tactical decisions. In Divinity: Original Sin, you're doing more than 1 action per turn so it feels a little more fun.

BG3 is a faithful adaptation of 5e, which means it's mainly a narrative and story game, not a tactical strategy game.

I honestly don't know, but there was something about the combat (in the early game, I never got to the late game) that just turned me off.

If I had to guess, things felt too slow, and I had to go through the motions (and/or wait for others to do the same) before making a meaningful choice. But it's been a while so the impressions have faded.

It mostly becomes a formality by the end. If you're at all competent at exploring and building characters you amass a pile of scrolls and potions so massive that you can crush any encounter under the weight of them.

Early game combat on the harder difficulty was my only time having to really scrape and strategise in the entire game.

Accrue more capital; take a year off or retire early. 8)

I like to say that I’m ready to retire, but my bank account isn’t.

[laugh track]

it would be best if I was unemployed for a whole year so I could play them.

Be careful what you wish for. For a while I day dreamed about being unemployed so I could finally focus on making a game. Then it happened and I lost my brain at my burn rate supporting my family.

Reminded me of the ending of the Twilight Zone episode, Time Enough at Last.

True! So yeah, not wishing I was unemployed.

Wishing you were independently wealthy so you could take a year off and just play games.

Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.

Probably one of my top ten all time favorite movies!

“Lumberg FUCKED her.”

Have you seen Silicon Valley?

(That quote was posted 2 weeks ago too. And I'll post the same reply now that I did then)

Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

I’m a mediocre piano player. I can play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata, and on a good day the opening exposition of the third movement of the Tempest Sonata. I can play for a small church, but while no-one may notice mistakes they won’t walk away raving about the piano.

Yet I keep struggling through Beethoven’s sonatas that I have no hope of ever playing with anything resembling competency (I don’t even know how anyone CAN play the simultaneous trill and 32nd notes in the third movement of Waldstein). His arrangement and structure is both familiar (typically keeping a sonata structure) and surprising (subverting the structure), and I find ever more nuances the more I "play".

Sonatas typically follow an exposition, development, and recapitulation structure. The exposition has two main themes. The development extends and varies the themes (often in the opposing tonality). The recapitulation will return to the main themes from the exposition but usually in a different key signature. Mozart’s Sonata No. 16 (often played, like Fur Elise, due to its simplicity rather than its musical merits) provides a good example of this structure. Mozart opens with a basic motif in C, then develops the exposition ending in G. The development is a straightforward minor variant of the second theme. During the recapitulation, the first theme modulates to F, developing and resolving back to C.

An example of how Beethoven subverts expectations is in the first movement of the Appassionata. The opening F-minor theme softens into a calming second theme in A-flat major. But rather than recapitulate using the expected D-flat major, Beethoven uses perhaps the least likely key: F major! Delightful surprises like this abound throughout Beethoven’s work, and are hard to decipher merely through listening: one has to read and play the music to unravel the complexity.

I am also a big fan of metal. A high caliber metal band has the range, skill, and instrumentation to require rapt attention and multiple listens to understand. My interest has drifted slightly as I age, moving from nordic bands (Opeth, Windir, Moonsorrow) to Southern American bands (Periphery, Between the Buried and Me, Animals as Leaders). As I can’t play guitar or drums, and my screaming is not something anyone would intentionally listen to, the closest I can come to "playing" in a metal band is attending a metal concert and seeing live and up close how the musicians handle their craft.

Niche metal bands play in small venues. These venues are the only good way to listen to live amplified music. The speakers are sufficient to fill the space without distorting. The deleterious effect of the relatively slow speed of sound is not as noticeable in a small space. And the audience is typically much better: they are there because they are true fans and not to show off on instagram. Small venues also get loud. Hearing protection is a must to avoid permanent damage.

I don’t go to many concerts. Bands I like don’t usually perform close to where I live, and even when they do I have trouble convincing anyone to attend (and attending a concert alone just feels sad). But recently the stars aligned and for the first time in over a decade I saw one of my favorites live.

Over the past decade, some things had changed. The audience, of course, had aged. Rather than young 20-somethings that still had hopes for the future, the fans were now overweight, ossified, and lower-middle class. A good chunk of this is selection effect: the successful 20-somethings now have children and responsibilities that put the kibosh on moshing into the late hours of the night. Those that remain skewed "diner-goth".

Southern metal tends to be apolitical, and the band remained so. However, the venue itself overtly signaled leftist political affiliation, in contrast to the pre-Trump venue of the previous concert. Despite a relatively subdued June overall, this venue had draped their entrance in a "progress" flag. The sound mixer’s booth displayed both a Palestinian and transgender flag. There were a disproportionate number of lesbian couples in the crowd.

There were also some things that hadn’t changed. I was still the only one in the place without a tattoo. The band was still in peak form. The pit was still active. I still got cut and bruised during especially crazy parts of the set.

Unlike the audience, the band members were aging gracefully, looking almost respectable compared to their long-haired days. There was still nothing graceful about their music. If anything, the set was heavier than the previous time I had seen them live. The drummer played the double bass with ferocity and precision, the guitarists flawlessly balanced heavy riffs and soaring solos, the bassist cleverly counterpointed the guitars, and the lead singer juxtaposed growls with the occasional sublime melody. I was mere feet away from one of the guitarists, a literal front row view as he performed (I caught the guitar pick he threw into the audience at the end).

Much like Beethoven, this band has surprises for those who know a little music theory. One of their clean vocal sections ascends through an unsettling augmented triad, then descends back through the augmented triad and continues to descend in a diminished triad, then again ascends in an augmented triad a half-note lower than the original. When the tune repeats, it sounds as if it starts at a higher note, subverting the kitschy method often found in pop music of raising the final chorus a note to get a cheap dopamine hit.

The band isn’t against a little kitsch themselves. They have quasi-random “easter-eggs” that they fling into their songs. In isolation these should never sound good but somehow fits in the context of the song. One of their longer riffs is a metal-sounding version of Pachelbel’s canon. Typically, a "break" is an eye-rolling method of inducing audience energy, and one of their songs leans into it with a winking self-awareness. Live, it was still effective: even though the audience knew it was coming, the insanely heavy return from the break drove the mosh pit into a frenzy.

I have not mastered the piano, and I’m an amateur at theory. But even that is enough to enhance my appreciation and enjoyment of the complex and technical music that I listen to. Almost everyone likes music but few understand music. Take some time to learn the basics, and a whole new world will open for you. And go to a concert, whether classical or metal. Appreciate the creativity and skill of the players and the composition.

Good post, got a strong resonance in me

do I have trouble convincing anyone to attend (and attending a concert alone just feels sad)

I can only recommend to get over that feeling, especially because you can enjoy live music the way you describe here. Sure, it's even better in good company, but going through it alone is well worth the time/money/potential awkwardness. I've long made peace with the fact that my taste in music is... exotic, so I almost always go alone nowadays. There's also advantages. I can fight my way into first row if I want to. I can mosh for two hours if I want to. Or I can just chill in front of the mixer. And nobody to interrupt that zen flow state if the show is good...

Niche metal bands play in small venues. These venues are the only good way to listen to live amplified music. The speakers are sufficient to fill the space without distorting. The deleterious effect of the relatively slow speed of sound is not as noticeable in a small space. And the audience is typically much better: they are there because they are true fans and not to show off on instagram. Small venues also get loud. Hearing protection is a must to avoid permanent damage.

Very true. I often regret not having cought today's juggernauts before they hit mass appeal. I'm a Maynard James Keenan fan boy, and live I enjoy A Perfect Circle and Puscifer so much more than Tool just because of that.

Just got back from The Odyssey. What did you guys think of it apart from culture-war implications?

I'm glad that there were no gratuitous sex scenes. I guess I'm one of those sexless zoomers. I actually think they went too far in this regard. They could have gotten some topless models as sirens or had Calypso be thirstier.

Lupita Nyong'o, E. Page, and Zendaya really are miscast. It's not a meme. Charlize Theron should have been Athena.

It was pretty cool how they tied in the establishment of the oral mythic history of the Trojan War and forshadowed the collapse of the bronze age (spoiler alert: the Greeks are the sea peoples).

I'd say it's better than Dunkirk and Batman Begins but worse than all of Nolan's other films (I've never seen Tenet or Insomnia).

I just saw it and thought that it was what Nolan does well, which is do a popcorn flick that gives you enough of a "it's not just a popcorn flick, there's something greater there" while you're watching it to sufficiently give you an illusion of a deeper experience than it is, contributing to the enjoyment (for the duration of the flick). The incongruous aspects were there, but in the end the silliest stuff were the constant "people of the sea" / "age of bronze is over" style "historical" callbacks.

One thing I've seen people comment on is that it goes against the myth to cast Odysseus as a traumatized war veteran from the sack of Troy and that this, too, is a woke modernist intervention, but I think it mostly just tries to answer one of the central actual problems of Odyssey from a modern view; that we're constantly told that Odysseus is the smartest of the Greeks, but he also continously behaves like a moron, like taunting the Cyclops while escaping from it, wanting to listen to the sirens (sure, nothing happens, but it's still stupid and impulsive!) and so on. Sure, in the original culture he's smart because he comes up with clever tactics and stratagems while still being a standard Bronze Age warrior leader in other ways, but in modern storytelling a smart character needs a special reason if he's continuously behaving stupidly, and Nolan attemps to give him one. Could this have been handled better? Perhaps, but it's one way to do it.

Incidentally, when it comes to Zendaya as Athena, I think the movie very strongly suggests that "actual" goddess Athena is not actually really talking to Odysseus at all and Odysseus is just hallucinating the priestess he saw getting killed at the temple in Troy as Athena. They make sure to contrast the white, European-featured Athena statue at the temple with Zendaya-as-priestess in that scene, and no-one else seems to be seeing Athena anyhow, and the discussions are centered on Odysseus's attempts to handle that trauma.

that we're constantly told that Odysseus is the smartest of the Greeks, but he also continously behaves like a moron, like taunting the Cyclops while escaping from it, wanting to listen to the sirens (sure, nothing happens, but it's still stupid and impulsive!) and so on.

I haven't watched the film and the only version I read was a novelization for 5th graders, but those strike me less as stupid (though they are) than as conceited, arrogant, and hubristic. Intelligence and cleverness is one of those things that's jagged enough and not sufficiently anti-correlated with negative personality traits that very intelligent, high performing people being bumbling idiots in certain contexts such as things regarding their egos which are sometimes way overinflated even beyond what they deserve to be is a common cliche among humans IRL and in fiction today.

Charlize Theron

Nah, it's Angelina Jolie while we still have her. In full Javazon spear menace mode.

Apart from the culture-war aspects, which are basically minimal, "The Odyssey" is excellent. The film is Nolan's most ambitious one to date, and it looks fantastic in IMAX. Everyone should try to see it in IMAX, as it was filmed, to get the full experience. I'd love to see again in IMAX 70MM, or even 70MM, but showings are sold out everywhere for months, and seeing the movie in those formats will be nearly impossible if theaters follow the current screenings schedule.

Apart from the culture-war aspects, which are basically minimal,

I don’t see how you can say this, considering the egregious miscasting of that (widely ridiculed on the right as obviously ugly, with attendant counter-signaling on the left against any sense of objective beauty) subsaharan as Helen, alongside a transgender Ellen Paige as Sinon. Both are ripe for CW rows which are visible on X and Reddit. Then there is the African-American coded injection of hiphop into trailers and even a rap song sung by the cast. For the right, it appears as yet more cultural vandalism mocking White heritage. There’s also the attempted woke morality lesson abusing the concept of Xenia by tying it into accepting the dissipation of the Occident by replacement migration. Not minimal on the CW front by any means.

widely ridiculed on the right as obviously ugly, with attendant counter-signaling on the left against any sense of objective beauty

I think that's harsh. I think I'd probably put Nyong'o in the top percentile of majority-sub-Saharan-African women I've ever seen. The blackwash is objectionable, and one of the multiple reasons is that absent SJ threats on the judges no SSA woman could ever win Helen's canonical status of "most beautiful woman in the world", but they don't seem to have selected for ugliness over and above the blackwash.

considering the egregious miscasting of that (widely ridiculed on the right as obviously ugly, with attendant counter-signaling on the left against any sense of objective beauty) subsaharan as Helen, alongside a transgender Ellen Paige as Sinon.

They both barely appear in the film, each with less than a dozen lines. You can close your eyes when they appear on screen and you won't miss anything.

Then there is the African-American coded injection of hiphop into trailers and even a rap song sung by the cast.

None of that appears in the film. Travis Scott appears for a few minutes in the beginning as the bard and is never seen nor heard again. The movie's official "rap song" plays during the credits.

For the right, it appears as yet more cultural vandalism mocking White heritage. There’s also the attempted woke morality lesson abusing the concept of Xenia by tying it into accepting the dissipation of the Occident by replacement migration.

People are reading far too much into a summer popcorn flick.

This is all very weak counter - “just close your eyes when passing by the vandalism and it isn’t there!” or “It only shows up in the outside promotional materials or in the post credits!” But it is there, it is noticeable, and it was placed there and praised for very culture war reasons. In interviews Nolan himself admits he constructed the film around his deceitful interpretation of Xenia. People aren’t reading into this at all, it is plainly apparent. Your reply is just pissing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s raining.

No, this kind of denial tactic died in 2016 if not before. We are not stupid, we have eyes to see. You should move on to Yes Chadding at this point, it would be less dishonest.

If a movie upsets you that much, then don't watch it.

I haven’t watched it and don’t plan to ever watch it. What upsets me is the denial of its CW elements and the political project behind it. That denial itself is waging CW.

If you don't care, why not let us have our way?

What, exactly, do you want?

Tenet is very underrated. It’s basically Nolan’s take on a James Bond film. In terms of woke politics, everyone should just be glad that the film didn’t present anything even remotely close to real historically accurate Grecian sexual and social dynamics.

I have a deep hatred of Tenet. While I was watching it, I disliked it. The guy's torture followed by cushy onboarding is really blatantly manipulative, the existential threat to reality conveniently justifies all collateral damage, and the bad guy is...a nihilistic Russian oligarch, who the MC has to rescue a White Woman from. This is aside from the questionable internal consistency of everything.

My (later-ex) friend who had reconfigured his personality into what was maximally appealing to college-educated white women at the time (so, a black gay communist who works in Finance) was absolutely transported. "I Identified with the main character, because he is black and I am also black. I also liked the themes of internationalism."

At that point, I went from dislike to disgust.

Well like I said, it’s a James Bond movie, so a certain level of eye-rolling CIA military-industrial-complex propaganda is just the cost of entry. The old Sean Connery ones were just as bad, you just don’t notice the subversion because it was the last generation’s brainwashing program, and theirs was a bit different.

There's the propaganda being present, and then there's explicitly approving of a film because the propaganda happens to be what you ally yourself with

Yes but that sounds more like a “@Skulldrinker’s boorish friend problem” and less of a “me problem”.

LeBron to the Sixers?

Did ANYBODY see that coming?

Philly sports fans how drunk are you right now?

LeBron James is on his way out. He should've retired.

Philly sports fans how drunk are you right now?

It'll be cool if I can get tickets to a game this year and see Lebron play, but idk that even King James can beat the curse of Embiid.

It makes sense in that they are probably the best team he can join and still get a lion's share of the credit if they win.

Our local sports talk guys (DC) were trying to hype up the Wiz as a stop and one of them mentioned Philly so I guess? I thought both seemed like the typical sports jock stirring the pot for calls.

What is something that you completely can not understand why it exists?
From time to to time I notice something and I am like wow there is a market for this.

One big one for me has always been Starbucks. I can not imagine paying their prices for coffee. And I generally want a coffee within the first 15 minutes of waking up so the idea of putting on clothing and going to a coffee store everyday seems both a huge waste of time and money.

So for the most part I can’t understand the volume of business at coffee stores.

There is some weird popularity surrounding toy goo or slime putty. Adults have YT channels reviewing/playing with the colored glittering slime. I don’t understand how it appeals to anyone else aside from autistic children with tactile fixations.

I can tell you why childen like that stuff because I can vividly remember playing with these fake snot-like hyper artificial things back in the day. Children are basically gooners for novel sight/tactile/taste experience. You have this non neutonian fluid like thing with bright colors that doesn't behave like anything else you have on hand, it sticks to itself and almost nothing else, of course they are going to autisticlly play with it. I guess some people just never grow up.

Chemically speaking, coffee (well, caffeine) doesn't wake you up so much as it inhibits you from getting sleepy. The reason to drink coffee early isn't that it wakes you up, it's that if you drink it late in the day, it will inhibit your ability to fall asleep come bedtime.

Starbucks is a reliable place to get an outlet to plug into and not be bothered for a few hours. Their food and drink products are inexplicable.

Ok but you doing that doesn’t make enough money to pay the rent. That’s what I don’t understand. They need a lot of people just coming and going.

They make a lot of money off of milkshake products.

If I take a 15 minute break, I look like a slacker. If I take 20 minutes to get coffee, I look like a go getter :marseyshrug:

Even standing around... If I have a coffee in my hand, I look busy. To me, that's worth the $2 for a large coffee

So Starbucks basically serves two markets. It has a lot of dairy heavy sweet beverages young women love. It also served the strongest coffee in the world caffeine-wise.

People talk about strong European coffee, but those are only strong flavour-wise.

For the first 20 years or so of it's existence no one was blasting you with caffeine in the morning like Starbucks. It fuelled the first dot com boom.

on going out for coffee generally - coffee varies between roasters and shops. I enjoy the variety, and DIY can be some effort (e.g. timing cold brew so it's not under or over-extracted). Cafe drinks don't cost that much more than doing it at home, and it forces me to go outside and go for a 5-10m walk, when I might otherwise spend the entire day indoors.

on Starbucks specifically - known quantity, not terrible coffee. Their staff around here get paid decent wages and all speak English as a first language. (unlike Tim Hortons, our budget chain, where 95%+ of their staff are temporary foreign workers on slave wages). I don't go to Starbucks often, but definitely pick up the free birthday drink, and occasionally use it for reliable app pickup because it has locations everywhere.

I make brewed coffee at home, but I can't make a cappuccino at home without buying a bunch of special equipment I don't have room for in my kitchen and only would want to use a few times a year, but it's nice to get one before Christmas shopping or when you're on another fun outing.

My dad loves their drip coffee and it seems as cheap as any other restaurant's version.

With the increasing dominance of expresso-based coffee (paradoxically partly driven by Starbucks), Starbucks is actually one of the best places to get decent drip coffee. At least in London, any of the other major chains will just serve you an Americano without warning you, and the good independents will check you are okay with Americano before serving it.

Paris used to have a culture of decent drip coffee, but I'm not sure if they still do. The last few times I was there I was with kids in a way not conducive to serious coffee exploration.

I've never understood the appeal of espresso over drip coffee, unless all you want is an instant caffeine hit. The whole process is just over so quickly. With a nice big cup of drip coffee, I can have a pleasant chat or get in a solid reading session, I can nurse it through all my morning emails. I can choose to take it to go or spend an hour leisurely drinking multiple cups. It helps keep me warm for an extended period of time on a cold day. An espresso is like 3 sips and you're done.

I mean, I totally get that it's gone quickly, but I personally love a good espresso and I'll tell you why. The idea of espresso is to extract everything that's great about the taste of coffee into that demitasse cup and to leave everything nasty and bitter in the puck of coffee grounds that the water is forced through. A good shot of espresso will light up your senses the moment it hits your palate in a concentrated flavor burst, and can be a whole new level of amazing, especially when getting one from places that know their craft--every single sip will bring that powerful, concentrated flavor. And yeah, the caffeine does in fact hit more quickly when drinking espresso. That said, if you like to sip your beverages leisurely, coffee is always going to be a better choice. But yeah, just talking about it like this makes me want one and maybe I'll treat myself tomorrow!

An espresso by itself, I agree. It's more of "I need to get this in my system quickly" thing than a truly enjoyable experience. I mean, it's good for the couple seconds it lasts and it does leave a lingering aroma on the tongue, but that's still too short for me. But espresso based drinks, on the other hand... Less water than drip coffee; a latté or cappuccino is "creamier", more "milky" than a drip coffee with milk, for the same amount of coffee solubles and overall volume, due to not having nearly as much water.

Musical accompaniment for this conversation.

As someone with an occasional craving for frothed-milk coffee drinks, moka pot coffee with French press-foamed milk scratches the itch reasonably well.

but I can't make a cappuccino at home without buying a bunch of special equipment

It's not tiny, but I bought one of the smallest espresso machines available on Amazon with good reviews for around $100, and I've been slowly upping my cappuccino game with it. It's probably 12"x12"x4", and I was able to find counter space for it. I did already have a burr grinder, though. I'm not sure if it can make the best coffee, but I think it was a fun choice.

I bought this milk frother during (or shortly before) Covid. I use it literally every day. One button, easy to clean, footprint is about the same as a large jamjar.

Thanks all for the suggestions, looks like it might be time to up my foamed milk game.

I make lattes each morning on a little machine with an espresso press and steam wand, and it's lovely.

What model and what'd it run you? I've been considering one now that I'm working from home more.

I don't see the exact model, it was Yabano, with a pressure gauge and about $80 when I bought it three years ago. This looks pretty similar:https://www.target.com/p/anycold-20-bar-espresso-machine-compact-stainless-steel-maker-with-milk-frother-34oz-removable-tank-for-home-latte-cappuccino/-/A-1007776423#lnk=sametab

I did work at a coffee show for a couple of years, and don't mind spending ten minutes making the coffee myself, though that style of steamer does involve running a little litter of milk in circles for two or three minutes each cup.

Yeah if I drank them every day, I'd probably get one. But for something I get 4 or 5 times a year, I'll rent the time and expertise from a coffee shop.

Boba tea. Women love it, I'm perplexed by the appeal. Or matcha, which has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It tastes like liquid grass.

Sweet matcha drinks heavily mixed in with milk/coconut milk can be pretty good in my opinion, since the grassy taste is softened out significantly by the other components. But matcha proper, drunk the Authentic Japanese™ way, certainly tastes like liquid grass and is absolutely revolting. I like my tea steeped in the Chinese manner.

In any case I think the better green East Asian flavour is pandan. It's like Southeast Asian vanilla, but with a fresher, nuttier flavour.

I like matcha, but I also like glass jelly and root beer, so some of this might just be a raw different tastes thing. That said, there are some fantastic options for boba; most shops will have mango tea and coconut jelly as an option, and so long as you get it low sugar it's very hard to dislike.

I love root beer, but my fiancée thinks it's disgusting, comparing the taste to Deep Heat, a muscle relaxant cream. (Google tells me the American equivalent is called IcyHot.)

It's an entirely apt comparison: it does taste exactly like Deep Heat. But I still love it. Shame it's so hard to come by in Ireland. Part of me even wants to order a case of Barq's just for the novelty.

I just don't get why europeans (and others, I've heard it from south americans say it too) immediately compare root beer to medicine. It's really consistant too, they all think it, even one who likes it like you agrees with it. To my north american palate, it's a completely distinct taste from any medicine I've ever tasted.

IDK, some root beers, like A&W seem to have a little bit of a wintermint note to them, so I can kinda see it, though I'd totally agree that there's a lot more going on there, flavor-wise. Maybe it's something like the cilantro/soap thing.

For boba, some how the tapioca balls and foreign origin let people pretend that they aren't just drinking a warm milkshake.

It's a replacement for alcohol/hookah for a lot of women, just an excuse to hang out. That gets backfilled into an actual habit.

They could just have normal coffee or tea?

They could!

I really like boba tea, but I prefer making it myself since the ones you buy usually have the balls too soft where as I prefer they have some bite to them.

I like tea, and boba is basically just lightly sweetened ice tea, with the balls having interesting texture.

De gustibus non est disputandum. I love matcha, personally, in basically any form -- lattes, shortbread, cheesecake...

Boba tea. Women love it, I'm perplexed by the appeal.

Try Taro flavor, with white-people levels of sugar. It's like a mild, creamy slushy.

I liked the matcha candy I tasted, but I ordered a matcha latte and it really did taste like really bitter liquid grass, accurate description. It was awful. Never buying matcha anything ever again.

Matcha tastes like liquefied salmon to me. And not in a good way, even though I love salmon.

Starbucks in Europe

I have two fond memories of European Starbuckses (Starbucii?) - first, a heatwave in Nuremberg, where the Euro lack of air conditioning meant that the local Starbucks, with its fan and tiled floor, was the closest thing to relief and, secondly, coming to the end of a two-month backpacking trip and finding a Starbucks on the Asian side of Istanbul, and the strange relief of knowing that at least one thing today would be the same as it always was.

Sometimes I just really want Cold Brew and while some parts of Europe have new wave coffee places that have it, in much of Europe only Starbucks does (and even then only in the summer).

While I disdain Starbucks, I frequent local espresso shops and order all kinds of girly drinks. It's tasty, it's fun, it's something I can't entirely recreate at home, it's a fun outing with Mrs. FiveHour or by myself with a laptop to sit for a few hours. I don't think I could go every day, but on the scale of indulgences, I find it perfectly fine.

But I can't understand:

-- Lifted pickup trucks. Nobody drives off-road. Nobody. It's not a real thing people do at the scale where you would need any kind of rig to do it beyond a Subaru Outback with good tires. But I can't go anywhere without seeing trucks that have been lifted to the point where they handle like hell, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

-- The vast majority of DoorDash traffic. I understand the value when one is three sheets to the wind, or ill, or whatever and getting food delivered becomes more valuable. I don't understand how it accounts for such a large share of orders that it's a huge element in the service economy. I'd think the average person would order delivery once a month or less, it appears to be much more than that.

-- Cruises. The whole set-up seems wildly unpleasant, particularly if I'm going to have spend my time on a boat cooped up with other people who wanted to go on a cruise.

The vast majority of DoorDash traffic. I understand the value when one is three sheets to the wind, or ill, or whatever and getting food delivered becomes more valuable. I don't understand how it accounts for such a large share of orders that it's a huge element in the service economy. I'd think the average person would order delivery once a month or less, it appears to be much more than that.

We don't own a car so if we want to stay in and not cook we turn to it once or twice a week. It's roughly as expensive as going out to eat which is another thing we do quite often. It's definitely not frugal but surely the convenience should explain the appeal even if you wouldn't want to pay that mcuh.

Wow we have the exact same tastes I don't even need to write my comment. I wouldn't have put lifted pickups (but they are dumb) but delivery when you live in a downtown city and cruises were my first two answers

My extended family has a lifted pickup that we all sort of pass around. I think it's in my cousin's name. Literally the only thing we use it for is to go up on the Land. Other than a few bike trails that I've cut, it's completely unimproved. It wasn't lifted until the stream washed out - at that point it was either a build a bridge, lift the truck, or add a snorkel.

The use case for something like that is very small, and the brand new lifted trucks confuse the hell out of me.

Lifted pickup trucks. Nobody drives off-road. Nobody. It's not a real thing people do at the scale where you would need any kind of rig to do it beyond a Subaru Outback with good tires. But I can't go anywhere without seeing trucks that have been lifted to the point where they handle like hell, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

The widely accepted theory is that it's to compensate for a small penis.

More and more men have been getting exposed to pornography in their formative years, causing them to view their own average penises as inadequate and to buy a larger, lifted truck to compensate.

Lifted pickup trucks. Nobody drives off-road. Nobody. It's not a real thing people do at the scale where you would need any kind of rig to do it beyond a Subaru Outback with good tires. But I can't go anywhere without seeing trucks that have been lifted to the point where they handle like hell, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

I drive off-road, and my pickup has the pinstriping from scratchy brush to prove it. However, my truck is not lifted. A factory pickup with high-quality all-terrain tires will take you almost anywhere, and you'll need a customized rock-crawling Jeep to go those last few places (watch some Moab off-roading videos for examples).

The lifting you're talking about is vanity and signalling and makes all driving worse. They usually have shit tires, too, so it's extra terrifying when you see one whipping down the road at 85 mph in the rain.

factory pickup with high-quality all-terrain tires will take you almost anywhere

A rwd chevy s10 and a brain will get you 99.9% of the places that 99.9% of the population ever goes.

and a brain

I see the problem with your analysis.

On lifted pickup trucks - not sure how lifted you mean, but around here lots of the access roads get washed out and you need something with good clearance and breakover angles to get through.

Yeah, the number of people that live there and does that rounds down to zero. A tiny fraction of the population does that a tiny fraction of the time. And frankly, they don't need to anyway. Going hiking twice a year in no way justifies spending ten thousand dollars to ruin the ride of your daily driver pickup truck. That would be like if I walked around in my bjj gi at the office.

And anyway, from the video that appears to be a stock bronco, not a lifted pickup truck.

Cruises. The whole set-up seems wildly unpleasant, particularly if I'm going to have spend my time on a boat cooped up with other people who wanted to go on a cruise.

It's basically a resort where you get to wake up somewhere new every day.

The girls I mentioned here love DoorDash, because it lets them avoid interacting with strangers. I also know a few men who use it multiple times per week, but that’s because they’re lazy devils who don’t want to leave the couch.

I don't understand how it accounts for such a large share of orders that it's a huge element in the service economy.

Because, you fool, any female born after 1993 can't cook.

(Joking aside, there's an appallingly large number of people who literally cannot cook themselves a single meal.)

I 100% understand all the sweet girly drinks. It’s like going to Dairy Queen for a treat. Chilling at a cafe while having a coffee drink with some sort of cake for a few hours is a lot of fun, but I don’t believe it pays the bills for them.

But I assume the bulk of their profits come from caffeine rush to get thru the working day. And that just seems like a huge time sink. Even if you work on the 50th floor of mega corp office building then going to get your coffee at Starbucks on the ground floor is still a 20ish minute adventure versus whatever office pot or espresso machine in the office.

Lifted pickups are the same as 80% of the economy. Status games showing yourself spending money. No different than spending $3k in the club whose real purpose is showing every girl in the club that you have enough money to spend $3k frivolously.

Even if you work on the 50th floor of mega corp office building then going to get your coffee at Starbucks on the ground floor is still a 20ish minute adventure versus whatever office pot or espresso machine in the office.

Sometimes you just need an excuse to get out of the office and take a walk, and sadly, in a lot of workplaces "I'm going out to grab a coffee" is more acceptable than "I'm taking a stroll to clear my head." Same thing as having a smoke break, really, but for non-smokers.

Yes. I get all the reasons people are saying. But personally I go to Starbucks or other chain coffee maybe once a year. Usually at the airport or something.

Maybe the logistics are a lot better than I am imagining but my intuition tells me it would take a minimum 20 minutes but probably closer to 30 to get to your chain coffee place, order, and get your product. I think I’ve seen the average office worker spends 3 hours a day goofing off on the internet so maybe it’s not a problem. Or the logistics are much faster than I imagine.

Money is a secondary thought since most offices have a coffee pot for free. But honestly Americans are rich enough and everyone waste money so $5 a day 250 days a year isn’t a huge mental block for me.

My “I don’t Understand” is much more on the financial side in America where rent and wages are high. So you actually need a lot of people with 20-30 spare minutes to get a $5 a coffee a day to support the store. I guess that’s about 1500 daily customer needed to support one Starbucks.

-- The vast majority of DoorDash traffic. I understand the value when one is three sheets to the wind, or ill, or whatever and getting food delivered becomes more valuable. I don't understand how it accounts for such a large share of orders that it's a huge element in the service economy. I'd think the average person would order delivery once a month or less, it appears to be much more than that.

Around 40% of Gen Z and Millennials order food at least once a week. A significant minority, can't remember how many, order food delivered every single day. The wasteful fucking slobs.

Ordering food can be cheaper if you use the apps and wait for a deal. But that's still something you do once in a while, not a an every day thing.

I used to order food about once a week when I was at university. Typically pizza or chinese.

Sure, that's understandable, maybe good even. But every day? Very different situation. That's someone who never bothered to learn a single thing about cooking or how to get nutrition without additives or how to get through a day without over-spending.

Yes, absolutely agreed.

Starbucks I don't know, here they seem to be more around malls and their clientele for their extremely sweetened coffee inspired drinks is mostly affluent women, so it makes sense.

When I go to the office in person, or leave my apartment to head pretty much anywhere in the morning, the Tim Hortons and McDonalds are on the way, so I stop at either one of them every time, at the drive thru, to get breakfast to eat while waiting in traffic. A coffee and a tolerable breakfast sandwich is usually like 5-6 CAD, which I don't mind paying for the benefit of not having to wake up earlier to make myself breakfast at home. So that's between 1 and 3 times a week, I can imagine I'm not alone doing this, I think their business can be doing just fine in that context.

I understand that with McDonalds. But I would not that all their capex is funded thru selling burgers. The egg sandwich and coffee only needs to make more than the labor costs in the morning. And McDonalds is of course very good at execution and getting your stuff fast.

Feel like I’m being forgetful today but I usually have a few things where I don’t quite understand how something gets financed.

Apropos of last week's conversation, I'd like to propose that our good friend @self_made_human try dropping some salvia. It has a penchant for revealing the truth of things. Although, you might also get trapped in an alternate reality for 8 years and come out the other end with radical permanent belief/personality changes, so, maybe it's not worth the risk...

I've done my fair share of psychedelics, but I have my limits. As far as I can tell, my personality remains intact, I've just learned to be more fond of myself and value my limited amount of time under the sun appropriately.

Don’t people say this about ayahuasca (getting “one-shotted”). I have a friend with some mental health issues who claims she was destroyed and turned into a wreck with anxiety issues by weed (which she smoked, on a few occasions, in college), which has always seemed ridiculous to me as someone for whom it has a mildly relaxing effect at best - like a couple large glasses of wine but without the calories or the slight headache in the morning. The worst thing about weed, in my opinion, is that it tempers dissatisfaction with one’s life. I think I’m happier not doing the salvia thing.

As someone with social anxiety, weed gives me tachycardia and makes me extremely paranoid. I've tried different strengths and strains, the outcome is roughly the same more or less.

Different people have different reactions to cannabis, some people have crippling anxiety or paranoia. Some people end up outright psychotic with some of those progressing to permanent schizophrenia.

The primary active ingredient in traditional ayahuasca is DMT, which is certainly an extremely potent drug that can have long-lasting effects; but most people who have tried both agree that salvia is on another level, just for the sheer range of potential effects it can have.

Most people tolerate weed very well, but some can have very poor reactions to it, especially if they happen to have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia or similar issues.

Although, you might also get trapped in an alternate reality for 8 years and come out the other end with radical permanent belief/personality changes

That was a wild story, thank you for posting this.

Apparently it's not the only story like it! That's crazy, never knew salvia was like that. I took a hit in college and definitely felt like it messed with my depth and time perception. But not nearly as crazy as this guy

What’s everyone reading? (Sorry guy who usually makes this one)

I’m 1/3rd through a reread of The Player of Games by Iain M Banks.

I’ve been rereading a lot of Banks this year since I’ve finished most of the sci fi author i think I would like. Before this, I went to reread Use of Weapons and quickly realized I had not in fact read it before! I had always put off reading it for some reason but I ended up really liking it

One of my favorite qualities of banks is that everything is so low stakes, but memorable and satisfying all the same. The plot is at best, a neat device. But there are so many memorable and creative vignettes in his books that it makes him one of my favorites

Speaking of The Culture series, I’m saving the Consider Phelbas reread for last. It was my first culture book and quite contrary to public opinion, one of my favorites. Perhaps because the MC is so disgusted with the Culture. Ever since I read that, I can’t help but notice even in the later book the undercurrent of critique of the Culture. It’s puzzling to me because Banks wrote an essay where he swears up and down that he earnestly believes The Culture is the best possible outcome for humanity and his preferred societal structure. Even after reading that, I can’t help but believe he’s still just yanking everyone’s chain.

Also, I find it very odd how many smart people I know don’t reread good books or rewatch good films or tv shows. Anything that is good or enjoyable the first time around is often just as good or better when revisited. Particularly if what you think of as good includes some decently complex theme or subtext that’s impossible to fully appreciate without knowing where the characters or story is going.

Looking for something new to read. Big fan of military scifi/thrillers and near future stuff, huge fan of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee among others. The genre seems to have fallen off, the more recent ghost authored Clancy stuff is fine but the thriller aspects make it take so long to get to the action. I've read all of FX Halden's books and James Rosone's Monroe Doctrine as well as quite a few others, unfortunately the part of the genre Kindle recommends me is increasingly filled with ai slop. Anybody have any recs?

On a separate topic. Does anyone know anything about Larry Niven’s Known Space book series? I’m at the end of my Culture reread and need something new.

One reason I reread so many books is that any fiction written after 2016 is completely pozzed. I’ve been through all the often recommended sci fi authors like Peter Hamilton and Alaister Reynold and Simmons. No one ever mentions Known Space. I only just now read about it while searching for the longest sci fi book/series ever written. There was a stay comment of someone saying they like Niven, with the caveat they they know it hasn’t aged well. That piqued my interest.

Turns out he’s some dude from the 1960 who’s written some beloved sci fi books - however he’s a massive misogynist.

Check out this gem of a comment from Reddit:

I don't say this to be rude, I say this with honesty so you have a starting point to gain awareness if you'd genuinely like to do that: if you can't tell Niven is a rank misogynist, you're likely pretty blind to the treatment and presentation of women in fiction. Sometimes when there's observable misogyny in writing, it's part of the universe or a characterization choice. Sometimes, however, it's pretty clearly a general miasma coming from the writer which underlies the way they build worlds and characters. Niven is very much the latter. Ringworld has two sentient female characters. One is too stupid to live, and is basically a sexy baby that the main character is using as a dick warmer in between scolding her, and the other is a manipulative hooker who, like all women according to the text, "enslaves men" with the "tasp between her legs." The other females mentioned in the book are literally non-sentient and used for breeding by sentient males. This is not one but THREE species. It's REALLY blatant.

These Reddit people are so embarrassing. A bunch of dorky guys all patting each other on the back for spotting the misogyny. Fuck these people for ruining the whole genre.

Does anyone know anything about Larry Niven’s Known Space book series?

I consider Niven to be peak sci-fi. Not the best sci-fi. Like Commando is peak Schwarzenegger, not the best move with Arnold.

That is to say, his books are a firehose of "cool stuff in space", with everything else subordinated to the hose.

Games/weapons/phelbas are by far the best 3.

I think he's genuine and correct. The culture is by far the best outcome for humanity and also sucks for its own reasons.

But those reasons are literally just the human condition at the end of the day "wahhh I fuck 10/10 models constantly and go lava surfing so much it's boring. What does it all meannnnn."

> inb4 "but the AI runs everything and we have no power/are basically glorified pets"

You have essentially 0 power ovwr the institutions that run your life today. The government of your respective locality could largely be replaced by a benevolent AI and you'd have no idea, in fact your government would probably get much more competent. I don't really see how it's different. If the CIA wanted to fuck my shit up tomorrow they could. Hell, a few years ago all it took was an angry mob on Twitter.

Ugh, this reminds me to post my review that compares the Golden Oecumene against the Culture. My backlog is getting out of hand.

I am done with The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. My main advice for those who find themselves shipwrecked while in the 18thc. Royal Navy:

  • Do not sink off of Western Patagonia. It's cold, rocky, the weather sucks, and you'll be praying for random birds to kill in order to stay alive. Shackleton and his crew shipwrecked in Antarctica, admittedly with smaller crew and more modern supplies, but they basically could live indefinitely off of seals while floating on big blocks of ice. Sail South, crash there.
  • What are you doing? Immediately salvage anything useful on the ship as soon as possible. Salvage the ship. Take every board and every canvas.
  • Do not scare or aggravate any natives who show up no matter how savage they appear.
  • Do keep meticulous logs of your voyage and any subsequent shipwreck no matter rank or position. This will help legitimize unforeseen but necessary actions in the future up to and including marooning your former captain.
  • Do not surrender yourself to the Spanish if you are free black man. They will enslave you.

Also, I find it very odd how many smart people I know don’t reread good books or rewatch good films or tv shows.

There are lots of books I want to reread because it has been long enough to justify it and there are all the books I haven't read yet. I try to balance it.

Also, I find it very odd how many smart people I know don’t reread good books or rewatch good films or tv shows.

I don't have the time to read and watch all the things I'm interested in once.

I just finished Consider Phelbas and was underwhelmed enough to not continue the series. It gets better you say?

Banks is very much hit or miss in terms of tone and story. The only book he's done that I really enjoy and will re-read from time to time is Excession, and that's predominately because the focus is almost 80% on the Minds.

Maybe I'm just being sensitive or cranky, but I can't help but think that Banks falls into the same trap that a few number of sci-fi authors do by making all their human characters be insufferable assholes.

Most people find it to be the worst the series. I’d try player of games and if you get a good bit in and still hate it. Call it quits. Player of games is a better book

Phelbas might be my favorite and I've genuinely read all of them. Games/weapons other two favs. Found the rest interesting but not inspired to read again unlike the prior 3 which I've read a few times each

What are your favorite culture books?

I loved Surface Detail (the one with the tattoo girl and bunny hell).

Matter. An odd choice I know as it usually ranks low. I think I just like different things about Banks work. I remember the MC in that was such a boob. I was always amused with his antics. And very cool setting.

Phlebas is a decent but underwhelming book. The rest of the series is great. The only other one I was somewhat disappointed by was the Hydrogen Sonata. Lovely name, but a disjointed, unsatisfying mess by Banks standards.

It's very much different from the other novels. The Player of Games is often considered the better way to start

I have only read the first two, but yeah I'd say so. Consider Phlebas was so boring I struggled to finish it, while Player of Games was genuinely quite interesting and fun to read.

Finished reading Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive by Prit Buttar. I've read through most of his Eastern Front histories now because they feature lots of primary sources. Knew most of the subject matter already but an interesting element that this book brought which many others do not was an expanded emphasis on partisan infighting, especially the conflict between Polish, Jewish, and Soviet (and Soviet-aligned) groups and how the various governments interacted with them. Buttar is also generally much more skeptical about received wisdom and is quick to point out possible inconsistencies/misleading elements in testimony.

Started reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. I don't know exactly where this one falls in his authorial timeline but the prose is noticeably more purple in this one than in others I've read of him.

Item 1 of 7

The arguably-illustrious Ozy semi-recently penned an article on the internal workings of a jury trial, which reaffirmed that person's faith in the justice system. Here we find a detective story that may push opinions in the opposite direction.

  • Branning and Stark are two workers at a manufacturing business in Pennsylvania. They are on non-overlapping shifts, and rarely interact. On October 15, Stark switches to a different shift that overlaps with Branning's. Neither of them returns from work, and their families report both of them missing within a few days. An investigation determines that, after work, (1) Branning and an unknown person (possibly, but not definitely, Stark) drove Branning's car to an ATM and withdrew 500 dollars from Branning's bank account, and (2) Branning's car, Branning's and Stark's cell phones, and Stark (no direct sighting of Branning) moved from east-central Pennsylvania 120 miles to southern New Jersey and then 90 miles to Philadelphia before dropping off the radar. The police eventually find Stark 600 miles away in Detroit as of October 27.

  • In December, Branning's car is found abandoned in Virginia. The steering wheel bears DNA from Stark and an unknown man, but not from Branning. At this point, Stark is arrested and presented to a grand jury, which indicts him on a plethora of crimes—robbery, kidnapping, murder, et cetera.

  • More than a year later, a nonprofit organization dedicated to identifying unidentified corpses identifies a corpse found in a Maryland drainage ditch on November 2 as Branning's. When the corpse was discovered, the Maryland investigators found time of death to be October 29 or later, and could not determine the cause or manner of death (due to decomposition). However, the Pennsylvania investigators reassess the Maryland autopsy records and decide that the time of death could have been as early as October 11 (before Branning actually disappeared, but the "forensic anthropologist" told to do the analysis doesn't know that).

  • At trial, the prosecutor introduces evidence of three robberies that Stark committed 25 years ago. In those crimes, he brandished a gun and demanded money from a business, but did not harm the employees. The jury convicts Stark on all charges.

  • The appeals panel vacates and remands in a very angry opinion. (1) "There are absolutely no commonalities between Stark's 1990s robbery convictions and the instant events." So introducing them in this trial did nothing but prejudice the jury against Stark. (2) "None of the experts can say how Branning died. Not only can none of the experts explain how Branning died, but the investigators also never located a murder weapon or evidence of one. Finally, none of the experts could even conclude that there was a homicide in this case. Because we cannot say with any degree of certainty that there was even a homicide, let alone that the other offenses were committed, we conclude that there is not overwhelming evidence to sustain Stark's convictions. Accordingly, the trial court's error cannot be and is not harmless, and we are compelled to vacate Stark's convictions and remand for a new trial consistent with this opinion." (Emphasis in original.)

  • Remember, the jury convicted Stark of a zillion crimes under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard! But the appeals panel points out that there was a whole two weeks between Branning's disappearance on October 15 (assuming he made it to Philadelphia alive) and his original estimated death date on October 29, and what happened in that period may or may not have involved Stark at all. Obviously, it seems a bit far-fetched that Branning would randomly skip town with Stark of his own volition. But is the idea that he was kidnapped and killed by Stark (and not by the unknown third person whose DNA was also found in the car) the only reasonable explanation? According to the appeals panel, no.

Item 2 of 7

  • Year 1993: A 51-year-old divorced immigrant from Japan works as an interpreter (and later the general manager) at a golf club. She enters into a close friendship with a 25-year-old chef at the same club.

  • Year 2003: The golf club is sold to a new owner (and eventually is redeveloped as housing). The woman (age 61) retires. Her friendship with the man (age 35) continues.

  • Year 2023: The woman (age 81) suffers from delusions and temporarily is committed to a mental clinic. The man (age 55) visits her while she is committed, and after she is released she begins to rely on him more. He hires housekeepers for her, finds lawyers for her, drives her to medical and legal appointments, et cetera.

  • Year 2024: The woman gives to the man power of attorney, transfers ownership of her house to him, and writes a new will giving 60 percent of her estate to him and 20 percent to each of her two sisters (who still live in Japan).

  • Year 2024, later: The woman's sister and niece come from Japan to visit her for the first time in years. Upon discovering the situation, they try to persuade her to return to Japan, but she refuses. They file a lawsuit, (1) accusing the man of exerting undue influence over the woman, and (2) seeking guardianship over her.

  • Year 2026: The trial judge finds that the woman now is incapacitated, but also finds that the man did not exert undue influence over her, and awards to him guardianship over her, rejecting the claims of her Japanese relatives. In particular, when the woman visited several lawyers in year 2024, they all were suspicious of the man, but after interrogating the woman they all were convinced that she was not incapacitated or unduly influenced at that time.

I'm sure that this website's resident weeaboos can imagine a cute (or sexy) visual (or kinetic) novel inspired by these events.

Item 3 of 7

  • A municipal govt. on the Jersey Shore™ claims that, "for many decades, it has experienced substantial numbers of unsupervised minors who rent rooms during the months of April, May, and June to celebrate high-school proms and graduations", and these crowds of minors are responsible for "unlawful and unsafe conditions". On that basis, it passes ordinances increasing the minimum age for renting a hotel room during those months, first to 18 in year 2018, and then to 21 in year 2023. In response, two hotels sue under a litany of theories.

  • The trial judge rejects all of the hotels' arguments (including the idea that the ordinance discriminates against Hispanics who celebrate Cinco de Mayo and blacks who celebrate Juneteenth—the hotels offered no evidence to support this assertion). However, the appeals panel reinstates two claims (equal protection and due process) that obviously fail under the federal constitution's rational-basis review but under the state constitution's balancing test have a chance of success.

Item 4 of 7

Ugly custom house update: More delay. The contractor claims that ordering the countertop was not possible before the cabinets were installed, and the countertop manufacturer has an unexpected backlog. But I guess I'm not actually suffering any damages.

Item 5 of 7

A side-splitting family case:

The parties have a long and contentious history of dysfunction. Mother and Father were previously married but had an acrimonious separation, which included the filing of three separate petitions pursuant to the PFA (Protection From Abuse) Act, the final petition of which resulted in a no-contact order that expired in July 2025. Father is a recovering alcoholic and has been diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Mother is engaged again, although there are safety concerns regarding her fiancé. Father lives with Paternal Grandmother.

On June 24, 2024, Mother initiated this action by custody complaint. Subsequently, the parties commenced voluminous and protracted litigation, which included numerous emergency motions, petitions for contempt, and other requests prior to the final trial. Among other incidents, the following notable events occurred: (1) Child's finding a firearm under a pillow on Paternal Grandmother's bed; (2) Father's declining to return Child after a period of partial custody and absconding for 10 days; (3) Mother's fiancé's kicking in a window on Father's car in an attempt to extract Child from the vehicle; and (4) Paternal Grandmother's forcing Child to urinate in a cup, either because she suspected Mother was overmedicating Child, or because she wished to use the urine in her other son's custody and criminal cases, which required drug testing.

On January 8, 2025, Paternal Grandmother filed a petition to intervene, which the court granted on February 6, 2025. On October 30, 2025, the court convened for a custody trial.

On November 24, 2025, the court entered an order granting shared legal custody to Mother and Father, primary physical custody to Mother, partial physical custody to Father, and no separate period of partial custody to Paternal Grandmother. Since Father was living with Paternal Grandmother, Father could determine how much time Paternal Grandmother spent with Child. Additionally, the court issued a thoughtful, thorough, and lengthy recitation of the history of the matter and explanation for its decisions.

On December 19, 2025, Paternal Grandmother timely filed a pro se notice of appeal.

Paternal Grandmother's brief on appeal is woefully deficient. These substantial defects preclude meaningful review, warranting suppression of Paternal Grandmother's brief and dismissal of the appeal. Accordingly, we suppress Paternal Grandmother's brief and dismiss her appeal.

Item 6 of 7

Apparently, recently-deceased low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines was infamous for the low quality of its passengers. Here we see one in the wild.

  • A woman is sitting in a wheelchair, waiting to board a Spirit Airlines flight. Upon being told by an employee that she will not be permitted to board due to intoxication, she stands up from the wheelchair and starts screaming profanities. Four police officers escort her out, and she continues to curse at them. Upon being warned that further outbursts will result in arrest, she continues to shout. She resists the officers' subsequent attempts to handcuff her and to put her in a police car.

  • The woman is acquitted of public drunkenness, but is convicted of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and is sentenced to six months of probation and 125 hours of community service. The appeals panel affirms.

Item 7 of 7

  • In year 1989, husband (age 34) and wife (age 49) get married. Just seven years later, they separate, but don't bother to get a divorce. The husband voluntarily continues to provide financial support to the wife—500 k$ over 28 years.

  • In year 2024, a house owned jointly by the husband (age 69 and apparently still working) and the wife (age 84, incapacitated, and living in a nursing home) is sold. The husband gives the entire 300 k$ of proceeds to the wife, and in exchange stops sending support payments to her. The wife (through her daughter as guardian) sues, alleging that she never agreed to this exchange and she's still entitled to spousal support under the law. (The 300 k$ of house money that she got apparently already "has been depleted" in the space of a year.)

  • The trial judge rejects the wife's arguments, and the appeals panel affirms. Setting the husband's spousal-support obligation to zero is not unreasonable when he already has given such a huge amount of money to the wife for a separation period that was far longer than the marriage.

I don't see why Item 1 would cause anyone to question their faith in the justice system. This is exactly the kind of case the prohibition on admitting prior bad acts was meant to address. What you have is a guy who engaged in a bunch of extremely suspicious activity pertaining to someone's disappearance, none of which is actually evidence that he committed any crime. No, Branning's actions do not make much sense, and we are drawn to the conclusion that there must have been foul play involved in his disappearance absent any other explanation. The problem is that Stark's actions don't make much sense, either. The prosecution's theory is that Stark, finding himself alone with Branning at work, decided to rob him. From there, the theory goes downhill:

  • The proceeds of this robbery were $500 and a tank of gas. People commonly will rob someone for this amount. People won't commonly turn it into an elaborate jaunt across several states culminating in the victim's murder.

  • The drive to Cape May makes absolutely no sense. There were no further ATM withdrawals, and Branning had an opportunity to escape when they stopped for gas at the Wawa.

  • The drive back to Philadelphia makes no sense. They allegedly visited an open air drug market, which is admittedly not as good a place for an escape attempt as a well-lit gas station, but still not somewhere you take a hostage if you don't have to.

  • Branning was almost certainly alive when they arrived back in Philadelphia. If he were killed at any point prior it would mean that Stark drove an extended distance across the pine barrens with a dead body in his car and rather than dump it in possibly the best spot for such a job in the Lower 48, he decided to drive back to Philadelphia, buy crack, then drive to exurban Baltimore with a dead body in his car. An SUV that doesn't have a trunk.

  • Stark is 5' 2". He would have evidently used a gun to effect Branning's kidnapping, but not use any weapons to murder him. Stark may be built like a brick shithouse, but it would still be quite a feat for him to overpower Branning if he were even 5'7".

It's true that criminals don't always act rationally. But we're more likely to ascribe this behavior to someone whom we've already pegged as a criminal. If Stark is a normal, law-abiding citizen, a jury is unlikely to believe the improbable tales of an prosecutor looking to tie up an unsolved mystery in a nice little package by claiming that Mr. Stark simply decided to kidnap, rob, and murder a coworker one afternoon in the most bizarre and complicated way possible. They are more likely, however, to believe that someone they've already pegged as a criminal to be capable of that behavior. This is exactly the scenario the rules are designed to prevent. Knowledge of a string of 25-year-old robberies that bear no resemblance to what the prosecutor is alleging have nothing to do with the case. The only purpose is to give the jury the idea that Stark is a bad dude and is capable of something like this.

Knowledge of a string of 25-year-old robberies that bear no resemblance to what the prosecutor is alleging have nothing to do with the case.

Allegedly he was also on charges for resisting arrest and drug possession, had a drug debt of $13,000, and was going to be fired from the job anyway. So that gives him more motive to skip out, and maybe hustle a naive co-worker into helping him with the ends of "get this guy to give me money by a sob story". If he semi-truthfully told him "Man, I'm in a bind, I'm gonna get fired and I owe a ton of money to bad guys who will put me in the hospital, any way you can help me out with a temporary loan?" he might have been able to talk him into driving him to the meet to pay off some of the bad guys. Stark meets his drug dealer, persuades him that they can get some or all of the money out of this pigeon, and the three of them head off together to take out the $500 and Branning ends up dead however it happens.

Both were seen working there on Oct. 15, Weintraub said. Later that night, a security camera at a local BB&T Bank branch recorded Branning withdrawing $500 from an ATM, with another person visible in the back seat. Cell-phone data from Branning’s phone, as well as toll information, showed his 2002 Lexus sedan traveling into New Jersey, and later Cape May, according to Weintraub. That was the last trace of Branning that investigators found.

...Weintraub noted that there is a bench warrant out for Stark’s arrest in Monroe County — about two hours north of Philadelphia — for failing to show up in court on charges of resisting arrest and drug possession and he will be extradited if taken into custody anywhere else.

It's true that it can't be established how Branning met his death or that Stark had anything to do with it, but there's a lot of blank space in between that needs explanation. I agree that he was convicted on circumstantial evidence and suspicion, so the quashing of the verdict is correct, but there is something that went on that has not been adequately explained; for instance, why would Branning drive off to New Jersey with this guy and never contact his family? Maybe he did have a dark secret life that his family never knew about, but the cops would have been looking for something like that to explain what happened to him, and nothing seems to have turned up:

Attorney Craig Penglase, who represented Stark in his 2024 trial, called the wording in the superior court opinion significant, especially involving the lack of cause or manner of death for Branning, and describing the state's murder case as "entirely circumstantial, even speculative."

...During the five day jury trial in 2024, Penglase contended investigators immediately targeted Stark, who maintains his innocence, as the only suspect based, in part, on old criminal convictions.

...The Lexus was found abandoned without its license plate in Virginia in December 2021 with Branning's driver's license, credit and bank cards inside. His body was discovered in a ditch a half-hour outside Baltimore, Maryland a month earlier, but he was not positively identified through dental records until April 2023.

At trial the prosecution did not offer a motive for the murder, but revealed that Stark was $13,000 in debt, addicted to crack cocaine and about to lose his job programming machines at Enchlor.

Authorities did not find any detectible injuries to Branning, and also never established his cause of death, or how he ended up in Maryland.

But prosecutors argued that cellphone records, surveillance video, DNA and other evidence provided a clear timeline of events that strongly implicated Stark in Branning's disappearance and murder.

Penglase did not dispute that Stark and Branning traveled to New Jersey together on Oct. 15, 2021, but he suggested the two parted ways in Philadelphia later the same night.

I don't see why Item 1 would cause anyone to question his faith in the justice system.

My wording was too broad. I meant to point specifically at the jury rather than at the justice system as a whole. Quote from Ozy's article:

I was also impressed by the professionalism of the jury. My fellow jury members were thoughtful, intelligent, morally serious people who were conscious of their responsibility as jurors.⁎ Even given how frustrating the experience was, I was impressed by their rationality, how closely they stuck to the evidence, and their determination to follow the norms of good discourse. Sometimes I see people say online “you elites in your epistemic bubbles have no idea how stupid normal people are”. But, judging from my jury-trial experience, normal people are actually pretty smart! At least in Alameda County.

⁎With one exception, whom I haven’t talked about because I don’t like saying mean things about private figures on a blog this big.

Yet the jurors in this case seem to have delivered unanimous convictions on evidence that fell far short of "beyond a reasonable doubt", even with the prior-bad-acts evidence.

Sorry, at first I thought you were implying that the blow to one's faith was caused by the overturning of the conviction of the most obvious suspect in a murder case. As far as your actual concern, I wouldn't worry too much about it for the simple reason that you can't expect jurors to know the law better than the lawyers involved and to not act like humans. The rules of evidence are cognizant of the fact that certain prejudices are so difficult to put aside that we won't even let the jury hear evidence that may inflame them, and in such a situation, I can hardly blame the jury for thinking that these prior offenses were relevant and that fact influencing their conviction. This is an unusual case, where there's no real evidence but also no satisfying explanation. This case can't be conceived of in a way that makes sense, because any angle has some obvious deficiency.

There's also that two other retrials took place in Bucks County and did end with the same result, the original defendant found guilty again and sentenced again. So even though Stark got his retrial and very likely can't be convicted of murder, he may not walk out a free man:

In the last 20 years, at least two high profile murder retrials have taken place in Bucks County.

Richard Laird was retried in 2007 after a federal appeals court cited errors in his original 1987 trial for the murder of Anthony Milano. He was convicted a second time and resentenced to death.

Most recently Alfonso Sanchez was retried in 2023 for a 2007 double homicide in Warminster after it was revealed the prosecution withheld material DNA lab reports. He was convicted again and sentenced to death.

At least in Alameda County.

Yeah, that would do it!

Item 2 is uncannily similar to a Pulitzer-Prize-winning story from NYT: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/katie-engelhart-contributing-writer-new-york-times

Re: Item 1, did Stark have any explanation as to where he was, why he decided to drop everything and leave without a word to anyone, and whether or not he was with Branning? Why was his DNA on the steering wheel of Branning's abandoned car? Who was the third guy? Because it could be possible they both decide to do a midnight flit independently, but it's certainly one heck of a set of coincidences. The conviction probably is shaky, but it's more "we have very strong suspicion he dunnit but we can't prove that on the evidence we have now, so we'll have to lean on him having a past violent criminal history".

Not ideal, but it's also not like they just plucked some random guy off the street and said "you are the man!"

EDIT: Looking up online, reports of the case indicate that Stark was not completely reformed between 1994 and 2021:

Weintraub noted that there is a bench warrant out for Stark’s arrest in Monroe County — about two hours north of Philadelphia — for failing to show up in court on charges of resisting arrest and drug possession and he will be extradited if taken into custody anywhere else. The district attorney asked anyone with information to come forward.

It's an odd case, because if Branning was just giving Stark a lift and loaning him money on foot of a sob story where Stark planned to skip town, why would Branning also leave? Why head off in the same direction as Stark? Certainly it can't be proven Branning was murdered, or if murdered Stark did it, but there's something fishy going on there. I can see how it's highly unsatisfactory for everyone involved, from the family of Branning to the courts:

The Lexus was found abandoned without its license plate in Virginia in December 2021 with Branning's driver's license, credit and bank cards inside. His body was discovered in a ditch a half-hour outside Baltimore, Maryland a month earlier, but he was not positively identified through dental records until April 2023.

At trial the prosecution did not offer a motive for the murder, but revealed that Stark was $13,000 in debt, addicted to crack cocaine and about to lose his job programming machines at Enchlor.

How did he end up with the car, if he had no idea what happened to Branning? I suspect this is one of those cases where we'll never know the truth unless and until the mystery third guy is located or somebody decides to give a death bed confession:

Branning’s Lexus was located in an apartment complex parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia, in December 2021. The SUV had a flat tire and a missing license plate. Inside, detectives found crack cocaine vials, Branning's driver’s license and credit cards.

DNA on the steering wheel matched a sample from Stark.

You replied to the wrong comment. (Though now that you've gotten a response on the merits from someone else it's too late to delete and repost in the correct location.)

The conviction probably is shaky, but it's more "we have very strong suspicion he dunnit but we can't prove that on the evidence we have now, so we'll have to lean on him having a past violent criminal history".

This is the precise set of circumstances where the rules of evidence are designed to prevent past criminal acts from being introduced. "Our case against this guy is weak, but look at all this bad stuff he's done. Therefore, he's a bad guy and probably did this and you the jury should convict." It's understood that prior bad acts are some of the most prejudicial/powerful things to a jury, so in theory there are limits on when those things can be introduced.

The rule against introducing prior bad acts (numbers vary, but called 404(b) at the federal level) has so many exceptions that they almost swallow the rule. Even ignoring those exceptions, convictions will often be upheld because the evidence is so overwhelming against the defendant (on camera, clear cut DNA evidence, a dozen witnesses, a solid confession, being caught with the victim's property, etc.) that the appellate court will say even if the wrongfully introduced prior bad acts weren't present, the jury still would have convicted (appellate courts apparently have crystal balls and can see alternate realities). The likelihood of a conviction getting overturned go up as the evidence against a defendant gets weaker because those prior bad acts start looking like they carried more weight with the jury. When it's a marginal case like the discussed one, that's where the bad acts can have the most impact and it's the most important to exclude them.

If it were only "bad acts from twenty years ago", I agree that it was wrong. But the guy also had current "bad acts" that weren't used. I think they were desperate to get a conviction and over-did it, but I also think the guy had a lot of explaining to do, and without the transcript of the trial I have no idea if he did manage to sufficiently explain "Okay so I have his car because..." or not.

You're right about the weak case and circumstantial evidence and prior bad acts, but there's also the complication that the entire situation seems very suspicious and with no better suspect at hand, I can't say the prosecution were absolutely in the wrong.

Whether from 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago, the important thing is the nature of the bad act, not the age. Stark had a history of robbing fast food places at gunpoint with an accomplice and stealing from the safe. That evidence could be admissible as a modus operandi, or as evidence of a common plan or scheme, if he were charged with a crime that somewhat resembled these robberies. But, as the court makes clear, the story prosecutors were running with was so different than what Stark did in 1993 that it didn't have any probative value. That he was charged with resisting arrest is wholly irrelevant since there's no indication that he resisted arrest in this case. The drug charges may have some slight relevance here, but they'd almost certainly be outweighed by the risk of prejudice.

Stark had no explanation for what happened, but he isn't obligated to provide one. That he's free from such an obligation is a cornerstone of out legal system. What you're basically arguing here is a position the rules were expressly designed to avoid: We don't know what happened. But this guy was somewhat involved, and though we don't have any real evidence against him, he's a Bad Guy, and because he's a Bad Guy you shouldn't give him the benefit of any doubt, shouldn't require any evidence, convict him on the basis that him being guilty is the best explanation we have, even though it isn't a good one.

I get into this a bit in an above comment, but you're making a critical mistake when you assume that Stark must be guilty. Yes, it's true that it's very difficult to envision an explanation for the known facts that doesn't involve foul play. But it's equally difficult to construct a narrative where Stark murders Branning. For instance, Stark was 5'2". I can't find any information about how large a man Branning was, but even in the unlikely event that he was smaller than Stark, he'd have to be significantly smaller for Stark to be able to manhandle him; otherwise it's a fair fight. So it's presumed that Stark would have to have some kind of weapon. But if he had a weapon, why didn't he kill Branning with it? And how did such a small man kill Branning at all without use of a weapon, all while managing to avoid any cuts, bruises, broken bones, or other signs of obvious injury?

Even if he had a gun, how was Stark able to enter a Wawa and buy stuff over the counter without running the risk of his hostage escaping? This is a Wawa in a resort area around 9 pm on a Friday. Not typically a deserted location, even in October. For that matter, why didn't Branning escape when they stopped for gas earlier in the evening? This isn't a problem, of course, if Branning is dead, but then he has a much bigger problem of going to a Wawa with a dead body in the back of an SUV, and then driving back to Philadelphia with it, and then on to Baltimore to dump it. If we assume Branning was alive this whole time, the question arises why he was still alive. If Stark had always intended to kill him, it would make more sense to do it in the Jersey Pine Barrens than to go back to Philadelphia, and then to exurban Baltimore.

You know what also makes sense? That this whole thing was a drug deal gone bad. It's easy to look into the accused's background, but did you ever consider looking into the victim's? Maybe he has some dirty laundry that isn't being aired out of respect for the dead, or maybe he had a secret life his family didn't know about. Or maybe he was just naive and thought he was doing a guy a favor. But who drives from Philadelphia to Cape May on a Friday night, stays for an hour, then turns around and heads back? To one of the worst areas in the city? Suppose Stark tells Branning that he needs a ride to Cape May and that there's something in it for him. Things go fine in Cape May but turn ugly when they get back to Philadelphia. Maybe the guys Stark is working for take exception to the presence of an outsider, get spooked, and decide that he can't talk. They take him to Baltimore to get rid of him, and Stark drives his car to DC because it's the closest city that hasn't been involved thus far. From there he somehow gets to Detroit, where he's finally far enough away to feel safe.

Of course this is ridiculous, but it has the advantage of having fewer obvious plot holes than the theory that Stark lied in wait to ambush Brannin so he could steal $500 and a tank of gas and take an unnecessary trip to Cape May.

Another possibility is that they went out for beers or w/e, Branning had a heart attack or otherwise dropped dead, and Stark decided to loot the car/phone/corpse and drive away from his shitty life. That'd be illegal, obviously, but not murder (since you're a lawyer: is stealing a corpse kidnapping?).

They'd probably charge you with abuse of a corpse, but the timeline doesn't match up for that theory. Stark arrived at work between 3:30 and 4:00, and Branning made the ATM withdrawal a little after 4:00. From there a combination of phone pings and toll cameras put either the car or the phones together at regular points on the way to or from Cape May. There's simply no time for Stark to drive to Baltimore until the following day at the earliest.

There's simply no time for Stark to drive to Baltimore until the following day at the earliest.

Is there some reason that doesn't make sense other than "that means he'd have been driving around with a dead body"? Because, well, okay, that falls under the heading of Bad Ideas, but the guy clearly had a history of bad decision-making.

They'd probably charge you with abuse of a corpse

I'm not planning on it! It's just that this theory involved stealing a corpse and the guy got convicted of kidnapping over this incident so I was wondering if that'd actually apply.

Another possibility is that Branning had a heart attack or otherwise dropped dead

The Maryland autopsy actually noted that his coronary artery had 50-percent occlusion, which was unlikely to be the cause of death.

Is stealing a corpse kidnapping?

Abuse of corpse (which he was charged with and convicted of; I just omitted it from my summary in light of the more major charges)

The Maryland autopsy actually noted that his coronary artery had 50-percent occlusion, which was unlikely to be the cause of death.

'Crack bender' strikes me as more likely than 'out for beers' considering these guys' bios -- which could be a bad combo with heart disease?

More comments

It's tough, because a man is dead and another guy went missing and ended up with his DNA on the missing man's car, which contained the missing man's bank cards. How do you explain that?

I agree Stark doesn't have to incriminate himself, but he has to be able to explain the car. Even if it's "yeah Branning drove me to work, everyone knows that, and I was sitting in the driver's seat while he [went and did something on the way there]".

Two guys go missing at the same time, their positions are plotted on the same route, one ends up dead? You can't just waltz away with "nothing to do with me, no sir!"

Stark had a history of robbing fast food places at gunpoint with an accomplice and stealing from the safe.

You know what also makes sense? That this whole thing was a drug deal gone bad.

Which might account for the DNA evidence of a third man, if it was an accomplice of Stark and/or someone he owed the drug debt to. They make Branning take money out, he says he can't/doesn't have the full amount, they think they can maybe force him to take more out later or hold him for ransom, something goes wrong. That works too, and explains why Stark and Branning can be put in the same places at the same time, and the car. I don't think Branning was dirty, the family insist he was a great guy but soft-hearted. Of course that's the family, but I think the cops would have found some trace of a secret life. I think Stark did manage to persuade Branning to "help him out" by driving him to that place after work and then it all went badly wrong for everyone.

But like I said, we'll never know for sure until some witness is found or someone comes forward with the full story.

he has to be able to explain the car

Two guys go missing at the same time, their positions are plotted on the same route, one ends up dead? You can't just waltz away with "nothing to do with me, no sir!"

Not under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. If Branning's estate were to sue Stark for wrongful death, maybe it would be able to collect under the "preponderance of evidence" standard. But that's civil, not criminal.

Yeah, that's why it's all such a mess. Stark is a shady character, but did he kill Branning? No way to prove it one way or the other, so the family is in limbo with no real ending.

Fragrance thread. As you know, I spent my latest digital fast looking for new scents. Since I already have several bottles, I tightened my rating scheme: good stuff that doesn't show me I have a gap in my collection gets a zero.

  • -2 is vile
  • -1 is fine in general, but not to my liking
  • 0 is fine, but not novel
  • +1 is interesting
  • +2 is very nice

This time the fragrances are sorted chronologically.

Essential Parfums Mon Vetiver, +1. One of the basic man smells: citrus and vetiver. Smells more complex than Escentric 03, but I actually prefer the straightforwardness of the latter. Has the same background note as Tabarome, which I can't really describe.

Wife: not bad

Houbigant Duc de Vervins, -2. The smell is too sharp for me. Grey Flannel is sharp as well, but it's bitter and fresh. This one doesn't have the freshness and neither is it aromatic. Again, my poor fragrance vocabulary can't explain what the notes are. Acrid is probably the word I would use.

Escentric Molecules Molecule 03, 0. As you know, I quite like Escentric 03, which is a fragrance based on vetiveryl acetate. This is just this single compound alone, and I bought it to see what it smelled like. It's a pleasant woody smell, but I quickly lose the ability to sense it.

Escentric Molecules Escentric 04, 0. I like it, but it doesn't smell like a revelation. It's a mix of citrus and flowers and sweet woods, I can't really separate one note from the other.

Wife: hated it, called it cloying and sweet

Mauboussin Une Historie d'Homme Irresistible, -1. Pleasant, but not my style. I says it's for men right in the name, but I see it more as a sophisticated women's fragrance. People say it smells like Ombre Noire, but I find them quite different: MUHdHI is very smooth, with none of the oriental notes from ON.

Wife: meh

Byredo Mojave Ghost, -1. It's really a ghost: the scent is very weak. It's sweet and floral, with the same synthetic undertone I usually notice in MMM perfumes.

Wife: weak and feminine and synthetic

Max Philip Cypress, 0. It does smell like cypress when you spray it: that briny smell that was the feature of Cipresso di Toscana. The sharpness recedes quickly, and you start noticing the oily vetiver like in Etro, but, again, it's more subdued.

Issey Miyake L'Eau Bleue d'Issey Pour Homme, +2. Wow. It smells incredibly fresh and green, with the citrus notes providing the backing vocals. If Terre d'Hermes or one of its flankers isn't fresh enough for you, this one definitely is. The only drawback is its poor longevity. Oh, and its name is impossible to remember, like one of a Turkish all-inclusive resort.

Wife: wow, this one it so good, I didn't expect this from you

Frederic Malle French Lover, -1. It's not bad, but the overall effect is spoiled by the presence of some kind of incense. I find practically all of them irritatingly stifling. Other than that, it's a nice mix of herbaceous and woody notes.

Wife: loved it, but she's a big fan of Middle Eastern resins.

Cerruti 1881 Men, 0. A very sharp dark green fragrance. A bit like green Polo, but without the vapor rub note. There's a bit of a mothball in it, though. Of all the fragrances I've tried, it's the most "old man" one. I'm not exactly young, but still too young to wear it.

Wife: that's just Fahrenheit.

Byredo Bal d'Afrique, +1. My first association is a fruit-flavored milkshake. Sweet, sour, cold. Not herbal at all, at least in the first hour. I quite like the result, it's a literally attractive scent that is unusual enough to make you want to investigate its source. Not aggressively masculine.

Lalique Encre Noire A L'Extreme, -1. While I loved the OG Encre Noire, this one has a cold sweet synthetic note that I don't like at all.

Wife: that's amber

Bonus round: Creed Spice and Wood, 0. From my wife's stash. Maybe it's a very old tester (the rubber band around the phial crumbled when I touched it), but it completely vanished on my skin in less than half and hour. While it lasted, it was a rather generic woody scent with just a hint of pepper.

Lalique Pour Homme (Lion), 0. Kinda smells like Duc de Vervins at the start, but less aggressive. Mellows out quickly into something soapy. I can't say it's bad, it's nice, but I want my fragrance to either smell like something or to make people wonder what it smells like. Lion smells nice, but it's a large ensemble of very familiar notes. You can't tell exactly what they are, but it smells familiar.

Wife: that's a basic bitch fragrance

Lalique Pour Homme (Equus), +1. I like the horsey more that the kitty. Smells like an Orthodox monastery gift shop: pryaniks and expensive wood.

Initio Parfums Prives Side Effect, +1. It's exactly like Narcotic Delight by the same company, but without cherry. A very nice sweet tobacco fragrance.

Wife: you know I hate sweet fragrances, why do you do this to me?

Diptyque Tam Dao Eau de Parfum, 0. Eh. Smells like some exotic wood. I think Equus is the better choice out of the two.

Laboratorio Olfattivo Vetyverso, 0. By that moment I got tired of testing new fragrances myself and just gave everything a zero by default. None of them had anything surprisingly good or bad about them.

Roja Dove Elysium Pour Homme Parfum Cologne, 0.

Roja Dove Vetiver Pour Homme Parfum Cologne, 0.

Houbigant Duc de Vervins L'Extreme, -1. I expected it to be worse than regular DdV, but it's a bit better. Still acrid, but not offensively so.

Summary:

  • Issey Miyake L'Eau Bleue d'Issey Pour Homme is the best of the bunch. I might get a full bottle.
  • Initio Parfums Prives Side Effect is good, but I won't buy it. Wife hates it, and I have enough left of it and Narcotic Delight in the tester bottles to annoy her from time to time.
  • Lalique Pour Homme (Equus) and Byredo Bal d'Afrique are nice, one spicy, one floral. Both outside my usual range, but both nice. I might get a full bottle of Equus, since it's so inexpensive, and a decanter of Bd'A.

I ended up getting a bottle of Equus and bought a fresh batch of testers with it. It's this close to being my final fragrance, but it's been discontinued, so I keep looking for a potential replacement.

Lalique White, -1. I like Lalique in general, but White smells like toilet freshener. It gets better when the first notes evaporate, but it's not worth the wait.

Aesop Hwyl, -1. Recommended by an LLM as a Sycomore replacement. It has this "nasal bacterial infection" note that I hate.

Chanel Antaeus, +1. I faulted Lalique Pour Homme Lion for smelling like everything, but the difference in price between Lion and Antaeus is understandable. It's another fragrance that is a complex blend, but it delivers. The opening is sharp, bitter herbaceous, then it mellows a bit and you can smell various flowers, but the overall presentation is still incredibly masculine. When you're wearing a suit at night, you should smell like this. In my first review roundup I wrote that I didn't like chypres, but it looks like I simply didn't try the right one. Unfortunately, the longevity is abysmal. It very quickly cycles through its various notes and in just an hour smells like nothing at all.

Alain Delon Hommage, -1. It has this base note that I don't like. I think it's supposed to be musky, but it's unpleasantly synthetic.

Caron Yatagan, -1. Smells like Duc de Vervins when first sprayed. I don't think this acrid note is lavender, which is what "Fragrantica" claims they have in common.

Diptyque Oud Palao, 0. I wanted to try what out smells like, and this was recommended to me as natural, but now overpowering oud. The smell is... interesting. Like a leather warehouse or a taxidermy workshop. It's also incredibly resilient, if you put it on, you'll have to wear it.

Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey Pour Homme, -1. Unlike the "blue" version, this one has a generic sweet and fruity scent that I don't find appealing.

Gucci Love At Your Darkest, -1. Doesn't smell like anything. Supposed to be pepper and cedar, but I didn't get anything from it.

Eight & Bob Eight & Bob (Original Inside Book), -1. Smells a bit like furniture polish

Antonio Puig Quorum Silver, 0. Bought as a potential Equus alternative, but it is less sweet-spicy. Not bad, but not what I was looking for.

Cerruti 1881 Bella Notte Man, 0. Another Equus alternative, a bit worse than Quorum Silver. There's a pickle note in the beginning, and then it's just nutmeg.

Escentric Molecules Molecule 02, no rating. That's pure ambroxan and I can't smell it! My wife can and hates it, which explains why I'm find with certain fragrances and she can't stand them.

Escentric Molecules Molecule 01, no rating. I think I can smell Iso E Super, but the concentration in 01 is too low.

Jo Malone Hinoki & Cedarwood, -1. Smells like a bit like one of these gummy candy stores at first. Then it smells like the drum of a washing machine: clean wet clothes and detergent. I don't know why I thought Jo Malone would be any good.

Bottega Veneta Bottega Veneta Pour Homme, 0. Smells nice, but is quite weak to my nose. I might try higher concentrations later, they surprisingly have the same notes.

Yves Saint Laurent La Nuit de l'Homme, 0. It smells like shampoo that makes you cry. Which is a nostalgic scent, but I was looking for an Equus alternative.

Perroy Blueforest, 0. I was looking for another peppery-woody option, and this delivers, it smells like black pepper and cedar, but in the most boring way possible.

Diptyque Vetyverio, 0. Nice vetiver fragrance, but kinda feminine. Like a mix of Mojave Ghost and Bal d'Afrique, but with some vetiver in the background.

Boucheron Singulier, 0. Cheap, pleasant, derivative. Nice if you want an inoffensive summer fragrance.

Caron Aimez Moi Comme Je Suis, +1. The first blast is coffee latte and cumin. Then they decay into hazelnut and vetiver. The scent is natural and distinctive.

Lalique L'Insoumis, 0. Pleasant, but weak and not distinctive. A bit of the washing machine in the base notes.

Chanel Paris - Edimbourg, +1. Finally, something similar to Sycomore in woody quality! Of course, being Chanel, it's the Indian tailor joke all over again: it's again as weak and impermanent as it is delightful.

Eleven testers left, which I plant to finish by the next FFT, along with some final thoughts.

prole-tier fragrance review: Old Spice Wolfthorn deodorant smells like orange candy, and I love it

I went through your list only looking at the 2s, and realized I already have the Issey Miyake Blue - due to a mistake. My father had wanted the Issey Miyake L'eau and was gifted a bottle from another family member, except they brought the Blue. Since he wasn't a fan they passed it on to me.

I found it ok.

Crazy. I've smelled only a small handful of these, but I admire your thoroughness. Nonetheless, might I suggest that the job of perfume (cough, what? Cologne) is not to be fragrant to the wearer, but to others. To what degree have you looked into pheromones? I remember in the 80s Polo did it for all the gals, and of course we boys dutifully followed suit by buying it...until it became yesterday's (at this point yesteryear's) fragrance. I remember some students once came into my office, when I was wearing Polo Sport, and said it reminded them of....their host father.

My point is that smells say different things to different people, in particular I think even unisex fragrances have different hits for men and women, and even in men and women individuals will vary.

Also you must have spent a fuckton of money. For science, I applaud you.

I remember in the 80s Polo did it for all the gals

The green one?

My point is that smells say different things to different people

That's why I always ask my wife for her opinion. That's the most important opinion after my own. I want to enjoy what I smell like too!

Also you must have spent a fuckton of money.

I haven't. Like I said in the previous roundup, 1-2ml tester bottles are cheap. I mean, they are relatively expensive, but I must've spent about $500 on them in total. For a midlife crisis hobby, that's peanuts.

Testers, brilliant. Can you buy those? I guess obviously the answer is yes, you can. I somehow always thought they sat there with a sticker saying not for sale. I wonder what @Closedshop would have to say about this list.

I'm smelled some of these, but this is definitely a more extensive list than when I first started buying colognes. I haven't even heard of some of these before.

Regarding samples, there are many ways to get them. Large department stores will generally hand out samples of scents, but generally only of designer brands. Outside of that, brands will sell samples of their scents or give away samples for free with a purchase. If you ever go shopping in Asia, the brands are generally really good for throwing samples at you with purchase. There are also online stores that specifically sell decants at smaller sizes. Scent Split and DecantX are two I've used before. Fragranceswap on reddit also has a lot of decant sellers. I've never had a problem with buying samples, but YMMV, especially on Reddit.

Do note that when buying decants, the price per ml is generally more expensive than buying full size from a brand. You're baying for variety as opposed to volume. I think it's worth it, because I'd much rather spend $100 on samples and $100 on a full sized bottle than $200 on a bottle I won't use.


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