domain:kvetch.substack.com
WhiningCoil
3m ago
I may have to add that to my list.
I'm still slowly making my way through Crime & Punishment. I'm some way through Part II. I am enjoying it, but I just haven't felt a lot of motivation to read lately. Was on a huge gaming kick playing through Unicorn Overlord, which I highly recommend. But that's over, so I've been getting back to it a bit.
Sometimes my wife and I have conversations about the human condition, and I use that exact phrase a lot, the "human condition". I don't know when that specific phrase was coined, but it's a subject matter that's been at the core of nearly every enduring work. And Crime & Punishment is rich with it. Although the author has a funny habit of crafting each chapter as a pseudo monologue. Perhaps with a bit of brief narrative to move a character from point A to point B, and once there, we enjoy another 10 to 20 page monologue. Not that it bothers me. These monologues serve as interesting, if unsubtle, character studies. The one a few chapters in where Raskolnikov encounters an alcoholic that opines how he ruined his wife and daughter's lives for love of drink is fairly on the nose.
But it's supposed to be one of the greatest novels ever written, so if you are a Crime & Punishment stan, you can ignore my ignorant impressions of such a great and unimpeachable work.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9m ago
dsfewr
10m ago
You seem to be describing the Total War series.
What about other Paradox games?
Wargames from Matrix/Slitherine might also scratch that itch. I would recommend Strategic Command or War Plan, if you're into WW2.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
14m ago
Yes, there’s a bit in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins where people sing a patriotic campaign song calling him “Bill McKinley”.
I’ve tried to find out if during McKinley’s life, people actually did refer to him familiarly as “Bill”. The only concrete example I’ve found is that during the Battle of Antietam, McKinley drove a supply wagon carrying, among other things, coffee, and that this led to political opponents later in his career derisively referring to him as “Coffee Bill”.
cjet79
21m ago
I'm looking for a strategy game that is BIG. Stellaris kinda scratches the itch, but I've played the hell out of it too many times. I want the sense of massive armies movies, and not just fighting battles, but fighting wars.
There seems to be a glut of strategy games lately that are on a small scale with a few dozen people or a hundred or so people fighting. I'm not entirely opposed to a game like this, but they often just feel so tiny. I don't like having to care about individual units, but so many games seem to make that a selling point. They Are Billions is a "smaller" scale game that I still find enjoyable, because at least the scale of your enemies feels massive. I'd be happy playing that game again if there were maps that were five to ten times larger, as it currently is you are failing on the harder maps if you don't cover the entire thing with defenses by the end.
Recursive_Enlightenment
45m ago
The real games the powers-that-be care about are foreign policy and the distribution of money. The Supreme Court mainly handles the cultural wars kayfabe stuff that keeps the masses entertained.
Bartender_Venator
46m ago
It's a beautiful book. I recommend Joseph Roth, if you haven't read him, for similar treatment of that subject matter (from a slightly different class position, less elite than Zweig).
Recursive_Enlightenment
48m ago
sliders1234
52m ago
Is Tiberius Gracchus someone we are expected to know here as common knowledge? I’ve actually read Gibbons huge book and can’t place him a long time ago. I assume I am just expected to be smart enough to google and hit Wikipedia.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
57m ago
Right, and it’s possible he would have stalked Garfield even if the VP wasn’t from his preferred party. But he specifically said "I am a Stalwart, and want Arthur for President." So he definitely counts for this question.
HighResolutionSleep
58m ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
I’d say the Stormy Daniels prosecution is probably unjust in that it wouldn’t be happening but for Trump’s political status. Low confidence.
The classified documents, on the other hand? Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing. While I was surprised that it escalated to a trial, I don’t think it’s unjust.
raakaa
1hr ago
For convenience’s sake, here’s a direct archive.is link: https://archive.is/wIt8h.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1hr ago
If you don't like the commentary, yes, go do something else. And I did not read the OP as suggesting or advocating for assassination, which makes your pot-shot seem disingenuous and contrived.
Your constant low-effort sneers and pointless posts (and self-admitted drunkposting) are becoming very annoying, and if you don't stop, you're going to get banned.
DelendaEst
1hr ago
I don't think Trump will get assassinated. If I were ranking potential assassination risks my top would be that if Biden is elected and has a Senate majority (even 50/50 with VP as tie breaker) the value of killing a right leaning SCJ would be very high in certain eyes.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
For all of the disasters that bedevil American military procurement, we can always look to our closest ally, the UK, when we need to feel better about our ability to buy weapons. Twice in the last 40 years, the British have poured enormous sums of money into an airplane, and walked away empty-handed. To make matters worse, it was the same airplane both times, the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod.
From a 2018 Naval Gazing article. Thanks, bean—you always know how to cheer me up!
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1hr ago
Let me spare you some time: take two days off for low-effort antagonism in this thread, degrading the discourse with your inability to keep your seething contempt in check, and generally failing to take heed of our previous warnings to stop being a jerk.
It is tiresome to have to keep reminding people that this place is for discussing the culture war, not waging it. This place is also not for you to vent and work out your anger issues.
2rafa
1hr ago
Again though, this is attacking the system rather than the rationale. I don’t agree with using this kind of thing to harass random gun owners, but do think this kind of analysis could help track down actual terrorists, or people undertaking illegal gain of function research or things like that. The problem is more that the entire federal government was co-opted by the enemy and the right went along with giving it the tools to do this.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1hr ago
In most cases, nobody. Bureaucrats have made obtaining legal remedies so time-consuming that, if you can't make do with private arbitration, it's almost always better to just cut your losses and walk away from a broken deal. But in the business world, reputation matters - if you fail to honor your agreements, you are choosing exile from much of the world of profitable enterprise.
charles
1hr ago
Are either of them offering to be your wholesaler? Or represent an organization that you can work with? It's a difficult "industry" to break into on your own without one of the above. Cannabis legalizations around the country have really hurt the prospects of the independent grower/seller in the present era. You can probably grow/sell your own mushrooms still, but its a niche market. Unless you're a regular at raves/festivals/Phish concerts you probably wont shift enough of it to be useful. Its honestly not a great time to move into this sort of thing. Opiates are are selling lot hotcakes, put prices are pretty low compared to historical levels and most of it is controlled by OC at some level. Selling stimulants to the PMC (adderol, cocaine, provigil etc) is an option, but you'll need a reliable and discreet supplier, as well as a customer base. This really isn't the sort of thing you can just decide to do. If you aren't already part of this world its very difficult to get involved at all.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that?
This is facile. There is no specific transaction pattern highly predictive of mass shootings, in that it is both selective and specific; there can't be, because there are way too few mass shootings. The way they get "highly predictive" is by reversing the order and noting things like "gee, looks like nearly all mass shooters purchased guns recently", maybe we should check out anyone who buys a gun?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1hr ago
Yeah, that’s what I get for posting right before I go to sleep.
cjet79
1hr ago
I always see these reading threads and think y'all read such heavy stuff. I read for fun. Not a serious book in sight.
I just caught up in Markets and Multiverses. A young lady dies. Her soul gets pulled along in a big soul ocean to a galaxy sized ship floating in the soul ocean. The ship is called "the market". Its a place for re-incarnators to stop by and buy powers between reincarnations. But the ship has been taken over and all the reincarnators seem to have been killed, and the enemies are still lurking around. She meets some new people from different worlds who also just got reincarnated. Together they Reincarnate and try to build up their powers.
I'm currently subscribed to patreons for some stories I enjoy. Like Millennial Mage (A Slice of Life, Progression Fantasy) and The Path of Ascension. I recently got to read the end of Ar'Kendrithyst which is one of the longest completed stories ever at 4.39 million words. I'm also caught up on The Stubborn Skill-Grinder In A Time Loop which is the perfect level of trashy dumb progression fantasy for me. I'm waiting for Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube and Unintended Cultivator - A Xianxia-inspired Cultivation Novel to build up more of a chapter backlog for me to start reading them again.
I like action, powerful main characters that kick ass, and fantasy worlds that mostly don't resemble our world at all. I prefer stories with low levels of moral ambiguity. Made up fantasy systems and rules are fun. Betrayal is not fun. Horrors of war are not fun. Politics is boring.
I maybe should go back and play some old Total War games. The Warhammer ones have been leaving me unfulfilled. I don't think I like the magic spells that were added for battles, and the single units that are powerhouses.
I have no particular interest in WWII, but it does seem like the genre of games I'm interested in are all set in that time period.
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