domain:themotte.org
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15hr ago
I have been hermiting it up big time since getting back to Australia, and mowing my neighbour's lawn doesn't really count since I do it all the time, but I had the opportunity to do a good deed for someone the last day I was in Osaka - an old lady at the subway station dropped her umbrella and didn't realise it. She was so cute, like the platonic ideal of a little Japanese grandma, and she almost jumped out of her skin when I tapped her shoulder and she turned to see me looming over her. Then she double checked her bag like I was playing the old 'pretend someone dropped their umbrella and give them a second identical umbrella' prank on her. Then when she she realised I was being sincere she transformed from reserved and slightly suspicious to joyous gushing and appreciation, grabbing my arm and thanking me like I just pulled her off the tracks before a train arrived. The way people in Japan transform from mostly affectless to hyper animated when you break through the social conditioning is so much fun as an outsider.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
15hr ago
Oddly, since it was realtime, it felt so slow and repetitive or maybe I just got too involved with the faction wars of my sonsors and bogged down. I never really got into this one.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
15hr ago
private businesses tend to be focused on the long-term
Private businesses aren't focused on anything, since they don't have minds. The people who make decisions on their behalf are quite often focused on the short-term. As a chief executive, I may be able to sell shareholders on a long-term plan, but often as not they're looking for a good quarterly report and I'm looking to keep my job and score a bonus.
self_made_human
śāśvataṃ jīva athavā yudhyamāno mṛtyuṃ āpnuhi
15hr ago
Sounds good! Your endorsement makes me inclined to give it a proper shot.
Grant_us_eyes
16hr ago
I really need to stop playing Vintage Story. But the moment I finally get out, they pull me back in...
chooky
16hr ago
Pets! At some point in life, when your kids beg for a dog, actually say yes.
Keyless front door lock (like with a number code) is a spectacular lifesytle improvement. You will never lock yourself out, ever.
Otherwise, the acquisition of power tools and knowledge in order to not deal with ridiculously expensive and incompetent contractors is somewhat satisfying.
thejdizzler
16hr ago
I'd have to say that The Children of Men feels both more realistic and hopeless to me (and also The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster). Although I suppose both end on a somewhat hopeful note: I have seen the hills of Wessex, as Ælfred saw them when he overthrew the Dane.
thejdizzler
16hr ago
I haven't read Years of Rice and Salt since I was about 16, but I remember absolutely loving it. It is an interesting exploration of reincarnation and of how "locked in" a lot of history seems to have been. It also inspired me to do an Iroquois mega-campaign in Eu4/vic2, which you will understand when you've read the book.
I also have this on my bookshelf (it's been checked out of the library for ages), so perhaps we can agree to read it September and discuss?
erwgv3g34
16hr ago
I always thought that was a punishment sphere.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
16hr ago
Reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the third time.
My first time was in high school in the 90’s, where mostly it was Newspeak that impacted me. I’d just finished Rush Limbaugh’s two current affairs books, and the trickery of politicians changing words to “politically correct” variants was my takeaway.
My second read was during the first Trump administration, where the shock of the totalitarian state of IngSoc/Airstrip One/Oceania and the geopolitics of Goldstein’s book made me look at current affairs in a new light, especially during the Biden/Covid years.
This third time through, the small details of Winston’s life are hitting me hard. He’s 44 or 45, a few years younger than me, and his constant mentions of physical problems punctuate the existential misery of his life in the lower rungs of the Party.
He’s married but separated, a fact I’d forgotten. I haven’t yet reached the parts detailing his love affair. I also hadn’t remembered his furtive writing of a diary where he introduced the idea that freedom is the ability to say that two plus two equals four, giving [spoiler] the perfect tool to break him in the end.
Contrasted with the other big dystopias I’ve read (The Hunger Games’ Panem, Brave New World’s ultracivilization, Atlas Shrugged’s crippled Communist America, and Harry Potter’s Voldemort’s Magical Britain), the world system in 1984 feels the most hopeless, the most capable of keeping heroes from arising, the most terrible to live under — and yet somehow, the most realistic and likely, with certain aspects already showing up in America’s coastal capitals.
self_made_human
śāśvataṃ jīva athavā yudhyamāno mṛtyuṃ āpnuhi
16hr ago
Having finished Reverend Insanity for the second time, I'm left with the same void in my soul.
Of course, the easiest solution was to seek out something by the same author, Gu Zhen Ren. He wrote two other novels since RI was banned, Infinite Bloodcore (points for the name, negative points for being left unfinished) and Mysteries of the Immortal Puppet Master.
I opted for the latter, initially, I felt lukewarm on it, but I know that in Xianxia, you don't judge books by their covers, or their first 50 chapters. Yup, sure enough, it became very clear that it's a Gu Zhen Ren novel after all. The protagonist is... callous, if not as ruthless as Fang Yuan. Maybe his little nephew. There are plots within plots, excellent attention to detail, and heart wrenching stories about seemingly insignificant characters. It has the majority of my attention, even if the edges are sanded down a tad bit to reduce the risk of another ban. GZR himself stated that it's a more "mass-market" novel, with a more standard Cultivation setting. It's still pretty solid so far.
Others on my reading shelf:
- The Simoqin Prophecy by Amit Basu. The first of a trilogy. It's my second go at them, I heartily enjoyed the first. The easiest way to describe it is Indian Discworld, with clear inspiration from Pratchett. It is often ridiculously funny, while being poignant, but I'm afraid that a significant amount of the charm is lost on Western audiences. I could swear that 70% of the character and place names are references outsiders won't get, be they incredibly dumb puns or allusions to wider Hindu mythology. You'd probably need ChatGPT to let you in on the joke.
- Kim Stanley Robinson's The Year of Rice and Salt. I fucking hated Aurora, and I'm the process of writing a full review, but while this novel is supposedly mid, it has an interesting premise with an AU setting where the Black Death absolutely rekt Europe (even more than it did in actual history, of course).
- I was supposed to read Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Model of Communication for an ACX book club meeting. I was too lazy to do so, went in, claimed I knew a little bit about Game Theory, was embarrassed to find out that an actual PhD in the topic was present, and then unembarrased myself by actually making (IMO) good points. I do actually know a reasonable amount, especially when it comes to practical applications such as in military history. I might have another essay in the oven on that particular topic.
vorpa-glavo
16hr ago
Who on earth liked the Force witches or whatever the hell these things are supposed to be? (Just a hint here, if you're doing a sacred mystic ritual, try not to have it look like an am-dram society pretending to have epileptic seizures).
Didn't watch the Acolyte, but it is sad to see them botch the Force witches so bad. I like the concept of there being non-Jed/Sith force traditions out there, and I think with the right approach they could absolutely make them feel distinct and interesting. Too bad Disney doesn't know how to do that.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
16hr ago
They would have to do something really extreme, like declaring all the Disney content non-canon
If they flip to the Legends canon and make a Yuuzhan Vong trilogy I would return to the franchise.
Jiro
16hr ago
I think if you're pro Trump doing this you also need to consider you're implicitly pro Kamala doing this, do you think that sounds good?
My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly.
"My rules" would be no government control of companies. "Your rules, fairly" would be that all political sides get to have the government control companies. "Your rules, unfairly" means that only the left gets to do it.
The answer to this is the same as the answer to a lot of similar things: The left broke the norms so much that the only choices are to do so equally or to do so only for the left. And doing it equally is better. The option of not doing it at all would be the best, but the left has foreclosed that option.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
16hr ago
This book should not resonate with 15 year olds, not this much. Which means that these girls are still getting sexist signals from somewhere, and, follow the trail, those signals came from the 40 year old women who like the story, i.e. "feminists." This is what I mean when I say the system no longer needs men to maintain the status quo: it has feminists doing the job for it. - TLP
In this, Dave Sim was prescient when he authored and drew Cerebus the Aardvark. Initially a Conan the Barbarian satire, it became one of the greatest long-form anti-feminist screeds in Western literature. The political and religious totalitarian sect known as the Cirinists do their best to demolish the patriarchy, but in the end, become a monstrous variation unrestrained by chivalry.
GBRK
17hr ago
The thing is, regardless of whether the government buys specifically stocks, the government will allocate capital anyways. Currently that goes toward treasuries and direct subsidies. The government buying stocks instead is pretty much a direct improvement.
thejdizzler
17hr ago
Drove my roommate to the airport and will be picking him up tonight. Wrote a training plan for a friend for the Baltimore marathon.
So what are you reading? I just finished The Children of Men by P.D. James, review below. Also working on Way of Kings, Capital, and some Kant.
Didn't realize that the author of this was THE P.D. James, of thriller writing fame. I guess there is something about British authors who abbreviate there first and middle names and pulling surprisingly deep science fiction commentary that has stood the test of time (thinking of you E.M. Forster).
The Children of Men is a book about a world with ultra-low fertility, in other words, an extreme version of a world that we already live in. I had a friend's birthday party at the park a couple weeks ago (I'm getting close to 30 unfortunately), and I noticed that out of the 20 or so couples there, only one had a child. And I think this is becoming increasingly true over the whole entire world. Many of the downstream aspects of this fact also seem to be shared between James' novel and reality: the prevalence of pet parents, the lack of interest in the future of society (but a fixation on the past), and an obsession with health and safety at all costs.
Beyond the social commentary, the actual plot of the novel is a little lackluster. It centers on an Oxford Professor of History, Theo, who happens to be the cousin of the dictator of England. Theo lives a pretty unremarkable and utterly selfish life (even before the "Omega" where most men suddenly become infertile), until he becomes involved with a rebel group that wants to enact some minor changes in the governmental system, but more importantly, is sheltering a woman who happens to be pregnant. Theo's time with this group changes his inner and outer lives almost completely: it's amazing what hope for the future does to an individual, although I was left wondering at the end how much would really change in England after the birth of this child.
Having children is no basis for a moral system in of itself (this was Chesterton's critique of H.G. Wells), but it sure as hell makes constructing a society a hell of a lot easier. Unfortunately I think our world is headed to a future more similar to what James envisioned in the 1990s. People simply aren't having children: I'm guilty of this too: it's not like I'm close to being married even. And that, I think, means that this society isn't very long for this world.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
17hr ago
Unsounded is great. Alderode is a ethnat police state with strict castes, Cresce is a child-sacrificing horror communist monarchy, and Sharteshane is the worst of Dickesian Victorian capitalist apathy.
How can you care for anyone, in such a soul crushing world?
Without spoiling anything, I think Cope answers that question quite well.
C. S. Lewis doesn't count; that was back when everyone was Christian, or at least Jewish. Even Jerry Pournelle was towards the tail-end of that era. A science fiction author being Christian doesn't really become remarkable until after the New Atheism of the 2000's.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
17hr ago
The best depiction of the heroine's journey is, unironically, the schlocky Princess Diary movie, which plays it so straight that it is practically canonical. A awkward but virtuous heroine discovers her inner beauty and refinement and prevails over circumstances to end up with a good man. She overcomes her own insecurities and the judgements of others to become a princess in heart as well as in fact.
And this is an internal journey, for the most part: complementary to the masculine hero. If you watch media that women genuinely like to consume (like magical girl anime and Disney princess movies) the fighting and bluster is largely secondary to the dramatic arcs of feminine self-realization.
The perversion happens when you combine the superficial aspects of the masculine journey with the contemplating-one-navel nature of the feminine one. If you're a supercompetent girlboss you have no virtues to realize in the feminine sense or to learn in the masculine sense. Stagnancy. The only arc that is possible is 'the world doesn't recognize how awesome I am, and so it must suffer'. This narcissistic plot is utterly repugnant and is rejected by all but the most hidebound ideologues.
Skulldrinker
17hr ago
I'm more trying to make a point that stories about women/by women have been written that can be enjoyed by humans of whatever gender, this isn't utterly uncharted territory where artists have to build everything from scratch.
erwgv3g34
17hr ago
Mormon cosmology might have something to do with it.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
17hr ago
I also loved those books. (Alan Garner was my favourite contemporary fantasy writer growing up in England, but Cooper was a close second). The Dark is Rising is written by a woman, but it isn't a "girl" story - Will, Bran and Merriman are all standard male heroic archetypes played straight.
I'm sorry, is my post breaking any rules? Or is it merely still held for moderation?
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