mexican sharpshooter
This month I read a short book called The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge by Abraham Flexner. It is an essay by the relatively unknown researcher today, but was reprinted recently as an argument to continue funding sciences and humanities. The idea being that the truly curious minds that make discoveries that push social and cultural change can only do so when unencumbered by what others define as “necessary”. Which in a sense is not a bad idea. Flexner cites Faraday’s work in magnetism, and how utterly useless his discoveries were in his day, but all suddenly became useful once enterprising individuals figured out how to use Faraday’s knowledge to make electricity. In short, not knowing what the future holds, what is worthless today can indeed become worthwhile once we know what to do with it.
Of course, such sentiments breed inane arguments “like the government created the iPhone.” Which seems silly when considering the amount of taxpayer money was flushed down the toilet for decades and none of those research grants actually resulted in an iPhone.
OMWC
I actually had some small chunks of time, so could read a little bit. For whatever reason, I had never actually read Robert Williams’s Negroes With Guns, so I corrected THAT situation. It is a story from 1962 by the grandfather of the Black Panthers who, living in Jim Crow era North Carolina, experienced racism, the real kind complete with assaults, lynchings, plain old murders, torture, rape… and of course constant humiliation and treatment as a subhuman enforced by law. And hey, it’s democracy, that’s what most people wanted, something I remind Progressive advocates for more democracy and less liberty. In response to his experiences and observations, Williams advocated deterrence through strength, clearly distinguishing aggression from self-defense (a distinction that often eluded the Panthers). The willingness to use armed defense turns out to be a major deterrent. Huh, who would guess that?
Sleights of Mind hits my two deepest intellectual loves, science and magic, simultaneously. The two authors are a married couple of neuroscientists, specializing particularly in visual processing. Through diligence and interest, they managed to spend time and work with some of the greatest sleight-of-hand performers alive at the time of the writing (2011). Their analysis of some classic tricks and WHY they work makes it well worth wading through their cutesy pre-Instagram travelogue bits of writing.
SP
I’m on Book 5 of the Will Robie series by David Baldacci. I kind of backed into this character when Robie made an important guest appearance in Baldacci’s sixth “Memory Man” installment, “Walk the Wire.”
Fun, escapist, adventure fiction with a solid dose of character development thrown in…even if the protagonist is a government agent and I disagree with much of it. Frankly, it’s about the level I feel up to reading lately, although I am about to embark on three more health information management courses, so I’ll be cracking the textbooks soon.
SugarFree
Another month of horror reading for me. I used to save horror for the spookiness of Fall and the bleakness of Winter, but
“Spending warm summer days indoors
“Writing frightening verse
“To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg”
is a depression as well. Morrissey knows all the best ways to be miserable.
Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (1977), a hallucinogenic trip through late ‘60s San Francisco, a city prone to gathering dark beings through the occult science of “Megapolisomancy.” Quite a bit of inside baseball concerning other science fiction writers of the time and reaching back into the 1930s, as well as Leiber’s struggles with alcoholism. A very interesting work, one of those books that I read and immediately thought “Why haven’t I read this before now?”
Devolution by Max Brooks. A modern, well-written update of the “Bigfoot attacks” novels that were pretty popular in the 1970s. Brooks goes back to some of the earliest reports of Bigfoot attacks for his savage beasts that smell like hot garbage and are anything but cuddly. The novel is also a brutal satire on modern techie smart houses and on-point delivery reliance. The members of isolated community the Bigfeet attack are well and truly fucked when they are cut off and no one has a gun or a guard dog or even a hammer to help build improvised weapons.
A trio of werewolf novels: The Werewolf of Paris (1933) by Guy Endore, Darker Than You Think (1948) by Jack Williamson, and The Nightwalker (1977) by Thomas Tessier. I read them together because they each cover an aspect of the various ways the idea of the werewolf has been represented in fiction. The Werewolf of Paris is the occult-based loup-garou, the transforming beast that desires human blood and flesh, cursed forever by his mother being raped by a priest and being born on Christmas Day. Darker Than You Think is the rationalized science fiction werewolf as a small community of humanoids that co-evolved with humans as a predator species. (Much like the “vampire” species in Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger.) And The Nightwalker is the human wolf preying on the sheep of London. All three are really good reads.
(The Hunger was also made into a pretty good film in 1983. Very 80s, very Tony Scott… but you’ll never understand how badly you wanted to see David Bowie as a vampire until you see The Hunger. And Peter Murphy singing in a cage over the opening credits while Catherine Deneuve and Bowie stalk victims in a nightclub birthed countless goth kids.)
I read the 3 books so far in The Eden Chronicles. Not bad – set in a near future where the U.S. is in the process of going full communist, some people have found a way out.
Now reading Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge and The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. I really needed the stoicism reminders.
How I looked I read the economic numbers this week.
https://twitter.com/LucaDivesDeep/status/1287532945088053251
I’m afraid my reading for this month has been unreleased works – Junior Redemptioners (Juvenile delenquents serving as sidekicks to turn their lives around and avoid jail time, sequel to Lucid Blue); Prince of the North Tower (Prequel to Beyond the Edge of the Map); and Prince Errant (being released over the next fix weeks).
I have a circumstance in Prince of the North Tower where the main characters have walked into a magical trap and my intuitive storyteller has them logic their way out, but my analitical brain is going “Wait, wait, this would be a perfect time to have the narrator’s interest in magical theory pay off”, but then my brain doesn’t offer up any way to do that.
I may end up just following the intuitive storyyteller’s suggestions, because he actually has a way for the story to progress. Sure, thematically, it would be grand to call back, but not if that means the book stays stuck until I can think of a way to do it when there’s an open road I could take that’s still good for the plot.
Now that’s a a porno I’d watch!
Not funny.
*Drags thread over*
The reason you can’t have magic in a real world setting is because the real world (and all actual technology) exists because there are limits on what is possible. Magic, by definition, removes those limits. So every time you have something that can be affected by magic, you have to add another epicycle to explain why the real-world thing it’s interacting with exists at all.
I have no idea what series you’re familiar with, but let’s take the Culture series. Economics is completely broken, by intent, because it’s a post-scarcity society. That relies on the magic of unlimited completely interchangeable resources, which leads naturally to immortality. But to make anything like this hang together it requires the existence of literal omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent gods in the form of Minds.
Wonderful series and completely worth reading. Zero connection to the real world.
Here’s how works in Tarnished Sterling – Magic is powerful, but unreliable, so where a few powerful practitioners can do amazing things during their lifetime, most practitioners with the same theoretical understanding may not be able to replicate it.
Technology is reliable, and replicatable.
Oh, I should have thrown a caveat in there — if you have a sentience that controls magic, it can work (though that’s another epicycle).
There was some series I read wherein the professor at the magic school told his students “magic hates a smartass,” and students who tried to go much deeper in their understanding beyond “this spell does this,” vanished or exploded under mysterious circumstances.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you may not be the target audience for most fantasy.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Not… actually true.
Sufficiently advanced technology is based on the same physics as existing technology. Magic, by definition, breaks physics. It does the impossible.
Now a lot of things that are called “advanced technology” in SciFi books are actually magic though we pretend it’s not. I”m looking specifically at FTL travel, transporters, holodecks… pretty much all of Star Trek is fantasy in SciFi clothes. Which are mostly polyester.
Are you really that young?
I know the quote, it’s snappy but false.
Like a lot of sci-fi
*finger guns*
ZING!
ok then.
get off my lawn!
You assume that we’ve reached the limits on our knowledge of physics. I don’t believe we have.
Not quite, but I do believe that our knowledge of physics is not grossly wrong. FTL travel being possible means that we are so far from being correct that our GPS locators shouldn’t work.
My current handwave on that topic:
Though Ixahau explicitly gets her magic from a sentient entity who can opt to deny it.
A Ha!
‘A Ha’ what?
In a magical universe, I could edit that.
Your assumption that magic does not have rules is incorrect sir.
You’re assuming an attitude of “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it”
The caveat about Ixa is a mention that there is more than one type of ‘magic’, each of which has a ruleset.
How does a sentience controlling magic solve your problem with magic in fantasy worlds with tech? I do not think your objection is as rational as you are claiming; I think it is pure de gustibus (which is fine).
It has rules. But not the same ones that the universe in which the reader was born does, nor derivable from those rules.
Dr. Who (which is fantasy, not sci fi) — the sonic screwdriver does not affect wood. Even though anyone who has played a musical instrument in the last few thousand years or so knows full well that sound waves sure as fuck interact with wood. But it’s an arbitrary limit placed on the Doctor’s magic.
Jedi apprentices — toddlers that avoid dismembering themselves with unshielded energy blades that can cut through anything.
The whole Admiral SJW maneuver in whatever the hell episode of Star Wars sequel that was is an excellent example of what happens when you mix magic (things can be accelerated faster than light) with technology (KE = 1/2mv^2). You wind up with things that are obviously world breaking (literally) that only don’t become ubiquitous because… they’d be worldbreaking and we need to tell a story and have some suspense.
So you’ve got to have some arbitrary limits.
Ok, I see you don’t really mean a sentience controlling magic (which is to my mind what a wizard/witch/shaman etc. are), you mean something akin to a God/Gods from whom magic flows. That makes more sense.
Obeying f=ma is just as much an arbitrary limit. I would instead point to the fact that the SJW Admiral Maneuver was written by someone for whom logical consistancy was not even on their narrative radar.
Because having an arbiter explains the arbitrary limits that you need to keep the magic in check.
Otherwise you wind up with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality .
I go back to “The rules should be there or the reader will notice the absence”. These are not thaumaturgical textbooks, so just as we don’t put a physics primer for firearm ballistics, we don’t need to explicitly include the ruleset in the story. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Is a hyperspace jump actually a physical accelleration? or is it slipping into a parallel dimension/universe/etc where the traversal can be done faster?
I’m arguing that the event in question should not have worked.
I catcha de nextabus.
I think the impeccably dressed rat is saying you can have hyperspace and you can have ramming with KE = 1/2mv^2, but if you have ramming from Hyperspace you done broked your hyperspace loophole for FTL.
I agree that if you try to ram from hyperspace you’re not going to get the lightspeed kinetic energy, you’re going to have some smaller value of actual momentum that your sublight engines can generate.
If it’s a dimensional shift, then you wind up with the problem of people hyperjumping bombs inside your capital ships/space stations/planets.
Star Trek added the epicycle of “transporters don’t work through shields” to oslve this problem. But then the Borg ignored that .
Aiming that bomb would have to be a bitch.
Also, the transition out of the other dimension into a solid object might not do much to the object you’re trying to bomb. It could bounce off and prevent the transition, possibly with damage to the ‘bomb’ing object.
This would be consistant with the dialog from the first movie, but is mere speculation.
As for Trek – they violated their own rules so often that it’s not worth getting into.
They jump entire formations simultaneously without any collisions.
That is maintaining formation, aiming for a large, empty space. Not hitting a pinpoint target.
As in – if they all had the same alignment pre-jump and ‘burned’ for the same time, they’d exit together. A different problem to hitting a warship.
If it’s a dimensional shift, then you wind up with the problem of people hyperjumping bombs inside your capital ships/space stations/planets.
The books I mentioned above (or wherever) have exactly that.
Magic, by definition, removes those limits.
I have read plenty of stories with magic where the magic is “inherently” limited, most often by the toll it takes on its users, the “impossibility” of a user doing an infinite amount of magic or, as UnCiv notes, by its “inherent” unreliability or danger.
When you are building a world, you can make magic work however you want.
I’ve never said otherwise. What is… bothersome to me are worlds in which there is magic (to whatever extent) but the obvious implications of that magic are ignored in maintaining a setting that is as close to the really real world as possible
I’ll counter with Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Magic and technology, both with limits.
The Dresdenverse operates purely on the rule of “because I said so.”
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the hell out of it. But seriously, what he can or can’t do is determined purely by the needs of the plot at the time. Butcher even lampshades this when he talks about how the pseudolatin incantations work.
I may have been over-reading this:
the real world (and all actual technology) exists because there are limits on what is possible. Magic, by definition, removes those limits.
as saying that with magic, there are no limits on what is possible.
The magic goes away (Niven fantasy book), finite magic.
Like Bitcoin.
When you are building a world, you can make magic work however you want. – but if you establish rules keep to them.
or don’t but omnipotent magic is difficult to do right.
I liked the magic in Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrel although it did not have clearly defined limits, but it was well made
If you’re gonna do omnipotent magic, then your viewpoint characters shouldn’t be able to use it.
Stick to the traditional domain of wizards being either wise counselers to the protagonist, behind-the-scenes string-pullers, or adversaries to be overcome.
Omnipotence is boring.
Magic is something I’m not really comfortable writing, but mostly because I’m lazy and I’d have to make rules, which I do not want to do. These rules, expanded enough, would be technological in nature.
Soooo I find myself unable to write magic just because I think all those hocus pocus things are possible, but not by any technology we have discovered. Do I believe we have discovered all the rules of physics? No, I do not.
In fact, I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of what the natural laws’ limits are or how everything works.
Maybe I can accept the idea that practitioners of “magic” have somehow stumbled over a law of physics we don’t know yet and then harness it to use it as magic. Maybe s/he doesn’t even know HOW it works, just that it DOES.
I mean, who really thought drilling a hole in somebody’s head was a good idea the first time they did it? How did they come up with that? How did they do it without killing the patient?
There’s a whole lot we don’t know.
ANYWAY.
I generally stay away from magic because magic (to me) in any other form is a type of deus ex machina. I don’t generally like them even if I’ve sort of used one twice (both involving extreme cold to keep them alive).
And lastly, what was Darren’s problem that he forbade Samantha from using magic to do her housework? And why did she agree? Even as a kid I recognized that it was to create conflict and zany antics and hijinx, but it still bugged me. Surely there were other conflicts that generated zany antics and hijinx.
I have been reading the Destroyer books, it started out as something light and funny to kill time and has become an exercise in seeing the wheel of time in action. The themes and settings in the early 70s are astonishingly apposite to current events.
Have you got to Mugger’s Blood yet?
If people on Twitter could read, they’d pass out from performative outrage overload.
Not yet, I am up to the Last Temple
It is a story from 1962 by the grandfather of the Black Panthers who, living in Jim Crow era North Carolina, experienced racism, the real kind complete with assaults, lynchings, plain old murders, torture, rape… and of course constant humiliation and treatment as a subhuman enforced by law.
That reminds me of a coworker of one of my grandfathers. A black guy who lived in the Philly area.
One day, in the 60s or 70s, I can’t remember which, some KKK goons decided to burn a cross on my grandfather’s coworker’s front yard. The guy came out on his porch with a shotgun and a pistol. He told the Klansmen to get lost, and never come back or else he’d shoot him. They ran and never came back.
For my reading, I am still reading “Argentine Mauser Rifles”.
I never understood why the Klan didn’t just burn crosses on the parkway. No trespassing that way.
If you’re confident you’re not going to be arrested then…
Right now I’m reading the health and safety information for my son’s boarding school this Fall. It’s going to be insane.
One way halls, no room visitors, on-campus quarantine, daily health checks, required masks, etc, etc, etc….
boarding school ? gay
It’s a school of the arts, so there will probably be plenty of that too.
What kind of arts will he be studying?
Music, specifically pipe organ
…we’re really not doing phrasing anymore, are we?
It starts with roses on the piano and ends with tulips on the organ?
I expect kids to follow those rules for maybe a week. My son keeps getting safety videos from his college, and deleting them without watching.
I’ve always known that people are stupid, panicky herd animals, but it still sucks having it constantly rubbed in my face.
Question: What is the round count going to be in October? I’ve been googling around and am not coming up with a good answer.
I don’t think that the round count has been decided yet. I generally take a thousand rounds to Nationals, which should cover the worst possible case and then some.
24 stages x 32 rounds per stage max = 768 rounds, round up to a thousand for the inevitable reshoot or two.
(Did I tell y’all about how I got paster-fucked, TWICE, on back to back stages at Western PA? It was one of those laugh-or-cry moments…)
OK, I’ll set aside a case and shoot what I have access to until then.
I was finding widely varying estimates from forums where people were discussing how much they had brought to past years. The official stages haven’t been released AFAIK. I need to reread the rulebook weekly.
Remember, dry fire is good for you!
*nods*
…but there are three more KF&G shoots between now and then, and I think my other club will be having an event, and…
At least I decided to switch to rimfire for Steel Challenge. Though even .22LR is up to $0.10/round.
It’s hard out there for a pimp. Also for a high-volume shooter.
Seriously though, at this point I would grab any 9mm ammo in the ~$300/case range I could get.
I’m probably gonna shoot up three or four thousand rounds in the month before Nats, just to get trained up.
Special dorm party monitors that are tasked with shutting them down.
What a bummer.
With encouraged anonymous snitching…
Gauleiters in the dorms.
And when the ‘Vid season rolls into the flu season, I’m betting a strong play is made to continue this nonsense.
Nobody gets the flu anymore.
The hunger was a must see during the 80’s version of Netflix and Chill with my goth girl friend.
I have been reading Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming. Not gonna lie, It’s going slow. I haven’t taken an actual programming course since FORTRAN77. Most everything else has been figure it out while doing it.
+1 Skinemax
Teenage me was very fond of that movie.
I….I agree with Pelosi! Steve Jobs nor Apple invented the smartphone. But neither did a government bureaucrat.
I’m trying to think of who was the first. RIM maybe?
RIM Jobs?
Inventing something without bringing it to the market is pointless anyways. Even commie government scientists invented some things. so what
Depends on what you mean by smart phone. Phone + email/text, probably RIM. If you mean microcomputer with the ability to run a wide range of apps, not sure, but it might be Apple.
Microsoft had smartphones (they even called them that) before Apple*. They were bulkier than iPhones and woefully small amounts of storage and RAM. There were stripped-down versions of Internet Explorer and Office, and the phones ran a stripped-down version of Windows called Windows CE on a platform called Pocket PC.
* = Apple had the Newton but it wasn’t a phone, just a PDA like Palm/PalmPilot devices.
I stopped paying attention to the Hugo awards due to the wokeness. Especially since 3 years in a row the prize was won by books by the same author in the same trilogy. This should not happen no matter how good the books are as it is basically the same world etc, imo.
But to be fair I did read this month one of them, The Fifth season. It was not bad really, although I did not like the writing style. The world building was imaginative, the characters ok. The dialogue so and so. But it was certainly not 3 awards level writing. The world was not really immersive as I like it to be, like say The Book of the New Sun which I read earlier this year. The dialogue was nt interesting, and from the writing I did not get a single passage which made me stop and think this was a good bit of writing. It is an okay book. But trying to much to be all about trauma and tragedy at the expense of being more complex.
The puppies are sad.
well be that as it may. It was not a bad book. not a great one either.
Nothing in literature, not even SugarFree, can top the rat scene in American Psycho.
I’ve read that book too many times to remain sane.
Lets face it, we were never sane to begin with.
You should try Chung Kuo by David Wingrove. It’s got a couple that are right up there.
Here’s where I agree with Tha Hat about Ching-Chong-Bing-Bong.
I’ve been reading through the Archangel series and the related Odyssey series
“Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times” by Brands.
Not so text booky as the Patrick Henry book I finished recently. I don’t get much time to read, too much to do. Retirement ain’t for sissies.
Because of discussions at work with a coworker I am back to Volume 1 of Shelby Foote’s Civil War history. It is still a great read.
Because truer words were never written on presidential election politics I did my election cycle re-read of Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972”. The strange vibe of that election cycle seems to strangely reborn this year.
Because I wanted some escapism I have started a series of novel’s about the Roman Army by Simon Scarrow. The first two volumes “Under the Eagle” and “The Eagle’s Conquest” have been entertaining. I am waiting for volume three to arrive under the ILL system. Then I will make an appointment to pick up my book outside the doors of my local library. (This is reopening in the “new normal” after a complete closure from 3 months of closed libraries.)
In between the Roman Army I am continuing with the O’Brian RN novels. Recently I finished volume 9 (“Treason’s Harbor”).
I did purchase “Romancing the West” in large format. It is a book about the art of Alfred Jacob Miller with some high quality illustrations on his painting on the “Trapper Era” Rocky Mountains. Miller was one of the very few who travelled there and painted with the subjects. His paintings of the annual Rendezvous were on scene as the business and entertainment swirled around him.
I am trying really hard to alternate my fun reading with my more serious reading. AKA trying to get vegetables in my intellectual diet, not just gorge on candy.
So naturally I plowed through the entire Destroyermen series. WWII destroyer slips to an alternate reality where the asteroid never hit and thus the world is divided between evolved Madagascar lemurs and ravenous dinosaur descendants. It was good, I enjoyed it. Nothing deep, just fun.
I’ve mentioned it once or twice, but I am now reading America’s Second Crusade. It’s free on Mises. Published 1950, attacks the idea of WWII as the Good War, pointing out that none of America’s war aims were achieved, and that FDR was basically treasonously incompetent in his actions of 1944 and 1945. I was pretty well acquainted with how FDR lied the country into war in 1940 and 1941, and I knew he was soft on Stalin, but the author makes the case that the whole “The Japanese never would have surrendered” line is a total lie, that they were ready to throw in the towel a year before the atomic bombs. Oh, and I also learned that the British and French had spent weeks bombing German cities before the Germans launched the Blitz.
Popped over to Baldwin Book Barn last weekend and picked up Jane Jacobs – The Nature of Economies, Thomas Sowell – Wealth, Poverty and Politics and Salman Rushdie – The Jaguar Smile. I’m still trying to find a copy of Pentagon Wars by Burton and I haven’t finished Jefferson in Power by Bowers (the follow on to Jefferson and Hamilton).
Stalin’s Mountaineers by Cédric Gras. It’s a book about two Russian mountain climbers, Abalakov brothers, who conquered the tallest peaks in the Soviet Union, Stalin Peak and Lenin Peak, in the Pamir Mountains. One of them was later sent to the Gulag. I was surprised to learn that mountaineering was popular among several high-ranking Bolsheviks. Apparently, they picked up the hobby while staying in exile with Lenin in Switzerland. They would arrive late to the mountain when almost all the camps were already set up by the guys like Abalakovs and try to reach the summit without doing the hard work.
I had no idea the gulags were that big. Impressive.
That’s what often happens when I add additional details to a sentence.
I often deliberately misread things. It’s my shtick.
strippers, JFK, and Stalin
“They would arrive late to the mountain when almost all the camps were already set up by the guys like Abalakovs and try to reach the summit without doing the hard work.”
I would expect nothing less from a bunch of Commies. On the other hand, you could argue that the Sherpas do the same thing now for rich Westerners.
Except Sherpas are paid for their efforts and paid handsomely by Nepalese standards.
Reading the first Witcher novel. It’s pretty good, but I probably should have started with the short stories. It helps a lot that they were apparently the basis for the most of the first season of the Netflix series. I usually get the references to prior events, and the recognize the names of the people involved in them when they are brought up.
Wait, so the author didn’t reestablish the characters for people who didn’t read the other works?
Any given book can be a reader’s first.
Or did I misunderstand you, and this is oblique references in dialog and not the appearance of characters you’re expected to recognize?
It was written by a polock, you can’t expect too much.
He uses some exposition at the beginning, in the form of a famous singer’s audience arguing about past events and people referenced in his songs, and whether they are true or not. And critical characters are reintroduced to some extent. But for the most part, you’re just dropped right into a very complicated political situation, and there’s a ton of references to events and people that you would have no idea about if you’d never been exposed to them somewhere else.
I actually can’t stand the books that spend the beginning reintroducing us to everyone and summarizing previous events.
There’s an art to making it a natural part of the narrative and knowing what to skip.
It’s probably because I always read books in order one after the other. I imagine the people who get into a series that isn’t completed yet often need a little refresher because they may been waiting years for the next book.
There are also people who don’t realize the book they just picked up is part of a larger set.
*looks around suspiciously*
Though I can’t say I’ve done that. /lies
I do the same thing and prefer a forward with “What went before” in a synopsis (so I can skip it) I understand the reasons for in book explication, I just don’t enjoy it.
Yeah but those people don’t matter.
Sorry that was non sequitor and in the wrong spot. Ha.
“As you know, Bob…”
Half my work meetings are reminding people of what they already knew.
So you are a Platonic?
I don’t get the reference.
Best just to hang a lantern on it, then.
Socrates (Plato) believed that ‘learning’ was actually an elicited recollection of inherent knowledge. Failed joke.
No, Jar, I end up repeating things these people were told before or themselves said before.
Like I said, it was a failed joke.
Did the joke fail, or did we fail the joke? I like it, even though I didn’t get it at first, either.
LOL. Not quite that bad. My kids like anime, and I always tease them about that kind of exposition. “As you know, having just completed training at the Poly-Sci Institute for Mental Inquisition, a Mental Inquisitioner’s sanity is always in danger any time he enters a subject’s mind.”
I agree. But this is the first novel in a series, so it’s a little unusual.
I haven’t read the books but I’ve played the video games and they were a great introduction.
I have been reading UnCiv, online at Glibs.
I really, really need to get back to books.
I just don’t read long-form anymore; I do read mid-form stuff like the insert reports in the Economist.
I do consume podcasts thanks to my son and many suggestions here.
Carolla: Jo Koy Live 27-July has a couple of novel, amusing ideas. I love his tone; YMMV.
Advisory Opinions: Not in Oklahoma any More 09-July is pretty tolerable. French can ruin a thoughtful dialogue with his let me explain how to be a soldier tangents, but I don’t recall one in this episode.
DarkHorse: I listened to three of these before banishing Bret Weinstein from my podcatcher forever. Vague and unhelpful declarations punctuated with conspiracy theories isn’t my cup of tea.
Economist Ahead: The World Ahead, Red, white, and Green 27-Jul is an excellent review of the inane goings-on in industry as it responds to climate change; the subject itself, laws and theories pertaining there-to are both stunning, but, even as all this is treated as rational by the sold Economist, it’s a good view of what the idiots in power think and are doing.
Federalist Radio Hour: all the subjects lately have seemed too obvious; if I get really bored I’ll give a listen and see if any of it rises above elementary observation.
Making Sense with Sam Harris: #211 The Nature of Human Nature 17-July drones so monotonically that, after waiting five minutes for anyone to make a point, I just turned it off. There’s too much competition in this medium for anyone to delay the intelligent, insightful, and funny bits. Advice: if you’ve got a fastball, bring it. Harris will get one or two full chances from me before I write him off.
Bill Burr: Monday Morning 27-July also starts too slow for anyone but a devoted fan to put up with. Is this starting to say more about the medium or me?
The Dispatch: All Sizzle and No Steak 23-July is a sane listen. Larry Hogan 24-July is also a decent ramble through the issues of the day.
The Remnant: Banana 28-July is a solid chat with Michael Strain about economics and the virus. Podcast Pate’ 25-Jul proves that Goldberg has more airtime obligations than good ideas . . . this one is unlistenable.
Reason Interview: Jonathan Rauch on Cancel Culture 22-July is trite; I find this entire discourse and the Vanity Fair letter the most boring of the hot topics.
Fifth Column: there’s nothing special about their topics lately; I like the crew, so I listen socially and, for now, hope an interesting issue arises soon.
Soho Forum: Who Should Libertarians Vote For 24-July is a great review of the issues Glibs already know too well.
Reason Roundtable: Coronavirus, etc 27-July The government failure at every corner chat is pretty good, but the group lacks balance without Gillespie; hope he’s back next week.
I have started listening to the Fifth Column again (after a long break). I’ve added the Babylon Bee podcast to my rotation of EconTalk, Malice, and Part of the Problem.
Been alternating between an old Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child and “The Second World Wars” by Victor D. Hanson. Hanson shows how Stalin’s whining about the Allies’ failure to open “a second front” as soon as Stalin demanded, is crap. The Anglo/American strategic bombing campaign in 1942-43 drew off tons of Nazi resources that could have been used on the Eastern Front. Hanson also opines that the Sicily and Italian campaigns were a strategic error and waste of lives and resources just so the Americans could learn amphibious landing techniques.
[Raises hand and starts braying like Horschack] – When I was in the 7th Infantry Division (Light), it was beaten into our heads that the 7th fought across the Pacific right alongside the USMC/USN and the Army’s failure to learn from the amphibious experience of the 7th (added to the War Department’s failure to learn from the Marines/Navy) cost many, many lives and led to the creation of the Army Center For Lessons Learned, an after-action investigative body.
The department of hindsight will not be consulted until after things are over.
Life update carried over from last thread. New house purchased. The counter offer on the old house was accepted. Happy about the pregnancy. This would be the best birthday ever if my uncle hadn’t died last night.
I’m feeling overwhelmed, sad, relieved and ecstatic all at the same time.
Sorry for the loss…happy for the house and bun in the oven.
I think you managed to encapsulate all of 2020 into one day. Congrats – mostly and condolences.
This should attract lots of millennial voters to the booth.
Joe Biden narrows down his VP list, with Karen Bass emerging as one of several key contenders
In more than two dozen interviews with CNN in recent days, members of Congress, top Democratic donors, Biden allies and others close to the vice presidential vetting process said California Rep. Karen Bass, the 66-year-old chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has gained real traction in the late stage of the search.
Its so cute they are pretending he is making the decision.
The interview itself starts with the question “Are you ready to be President on day one?” They’re not even trying to hide the ball any more.
And, of course, she refers to Biden as “the Vice President”. If anyone does that around me, I’m going to ask them “What does Mike Pence have to do with this?”
For some reason, I’m thinking its probably time to start looking for a self-sufficient off-the-grid property.
Who? Never heard of her. And something tells me I’ve been following the US politics more closely than the average bear.
Pretty sure she was in NSYNC and then changed genders.
Became a man?
chair of the Congressional Black Caucus,
Someone that did not run the debate/primary gauntlet.
If Biden announces an unknown for VP, it means no one that cares about her political future will take the job. Determine the implications of that on your own.
The problem the DNC has is that every well known possibility has the baggage. Throw out a name and she…Pretty much like most VP candidates, someone obscure and hasn’t done very much politically.
Pretending that Joe is even in the room is rather far fetched. Has to be someone with an easy to pronounce name so Joe can handle it. Even Klubochar would have been a stretch. Probably why she took a hike.
He should pick a former CEO of Halliburton or maybe the governor of Maryland 🙂
Maryland’s two cultural contributions to the U.S.: Spiro Agnew, whom most have forgotten, and Old Bay, which most people have never heard of.
What are you talking about we used to use Old Bay all the time.
I like Old Bay seasoning.
I use Old Bay seasoning a lot. Didn’t realize it was considered obscure.
Old Bay is solid
They’re trying to sneak in a Generic Democratic Candidate, who always outpolls whatever hairball the DNC actually coughs up as the D candidate.
Except picking a black female Democrat is unlikely to get anyone remotely politically moderate.
Bass is a full-blown commie true-believer. She isn’t like Harris who pretends to like their ideas, or even Warren. She’s the real-deal Castro wanna-be.
Any good online tutorials for classical guitar?
I don’t know if they have classical, but the Fender Play app was free for a few months, and I ran through some of those lessons. I liked them a lot. You have to pay for it now, but if I were serious about learning I’d pay for it.
I don’t know anything about classical guitar even though I own a pretty good one.
That said, here’s a fun tune you might aspire to.
My best friend is a classical guitarist with a masters but stopped teaching. However, I recommend you get a real teacher and go in person for your first lessons. These people just do not make a lot of money and you’ll learn faster with the pressure of live lessons.
Clearly the best solution.
Not sure what is going to be available in my corner of Iowa.
You know what? I’ll text him for advice on this. I played in bands with him for over 10 years. Amazing guitar player.
Much appreciated.
I’ve got a subscription on jamplay, and like that they combine video and sheet music instruction. Plus you can download everything for offline use.
Looks like they’ve got 20+ lessons in classical… may be worth $20 for a month’s access.
I just finished the first new Harry Dresden novel.
It’s a good typical (but light) example of the series.
Spoiler, it’s actually part one of a two parter. The 2nd novel is due in September. Cliff hanger ending.
I also picked up the 4th novel of the Sir Apropos trilogy by Peter David. Entertaining, but really a pop-corn fart with lots of silly puns. The trilogy was written ~25 years ago and this one was written 4 years ago. Nice to revisit the character, but kind of lacked the same weight as the originals.
And have been reading a novelization done by a guy using Stieg Larson’s investigative notes on the assassination of the old swedish prime minister. Interesting, but wonkish so far.
I remember those.
Heh. Butcher had him die at the end of one of the books, so cliffhangers aren’t exactly new.
But in this case, he was still setting up the main plot pieces.
to whomever posted the plague mask a few weeks back. Thank you. My friend bought it for me after I showed it to him, and it’s quite a hit in the office.
Red Mountain: The rise and fall of a magnesite mining empire, 1900-1947. It’s a history of some mines near me at the end of Mines Road. I always wondered about the name of the road, since there are no mines operating here now, so it was kind of fun to read about the reason for its name. If you aren’t from around here it probably wouldn’t be all that interesting.
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. It seemed like a timely read.
Just started The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel, and next up is The Closing of the American Mind.
TTB is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.
You in the upper Mojave? Red Mountain off 395?
The Bay Area. There’s lots of Red Mountains.
I indulged in some much-needed escapism this month. Fortunately for me, some real good stuff. As per my usual, a mix of fresh and re-reads.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time, Children of Ruin.
Highly recommended. There are a few weaknesses, but very solid world-building, engaging characters, etc. good stuff. And how nice to not force it into a trilogy.
Glen Cook, Black Company, complete
A re-read of one of my favorite series. I first discovered this before the initial trilogy completed. The very long pause before Glittering Stone got well underway was agonizing.
Interestingly, this series seems to have been popular with the troops for years.
Steven Brust, Vlad Taltos series, about 1/2 way
Another re-read, another old favorite. Among other things, I like how he plays with various fantasy conventions, occasionally subverting them or turning them on their heads.
Jim Butcher, Dresden Files, first 7
Re-reading preparatory to Peace Talks and the final volume of the series due in September.
Benedict Jacka, Alex Verus series, first four so far
New to me and quite enjoyable. I’d recommend for those into magic and detective work. Engaging characters.
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This is How You Lose the Time War
Weird but rather wonderful in its quirkiness. It has more in common, little though that might be, with Empress of Forever than with Gladstone’s Craft series.
Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever
Just finished it this morning. Someone (Rhy?) mentioned his fantasy series, the Craft novels, which I very much enjoyed. This is very different, but good. It does have more than a few cringe-worthy moments & scenes, but by and large, well, here’s another author to keep an eye out for.
Steven Brust, Vlad Taltos series
One of my all-time favorite books is Brust’s The Phoenix Guards. Another one is his To Reign In Hell.His Taltos stuff is hit and miss, for me. The earlier stuff is better.
Huh. I hated To Reign in Hell.
I can’t read any of the “Parfi” pre-history to the Taltos books — the ‘authorial voice’ grates horribly. Which is too bad, I’d like at least the Sethra Lavode history, but I’d need someone to rewrite it without the poncy mannerist style. Self-important authors, even fictional ones, get right up my nose.
The “Parfi” books are a
rip off ofhomage to Dumas’ Three Musketeers books. Which is fine for me, since I also liked Dumas.Finished reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Started The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett.
Have you been having the urge to impale people on the Shrike tree yet.
I’d settle for letting people take a “nap” until we reach our destination.
What’s this? I know shrikes are little birds that impale their prey on thorns, which is pretty metal. I don’t see them here in the UK.
The Shrike is the nickname of a creature that lives at the end of time and occasionally abducts people from through out to impale them on the branches of an enormous metal tree where they suffer for eternity.
The Shrike himself is large humanoid made out of thousands of blades.
Hyperion is great. I highly recommend it and the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. I do not recommend the last two books of the tetralogy.
Same here. It really falls off after the first two.
My recollection, BTW, is that the Matrix stole from the real story behind the shrike, and then enstupidated it by having the victims be batteries rather than computing nodes.
I’ve been cross stitching.
Crocheting, so reading things like “ch 2, dc blo 16, ch 2 , dc blo 2nd ch from hook…” (Doing this from memory, so please don’t hold me to it.)
That is a fucking Klingon language, I swear. My mother can read it. I never could. I stick with English and occasionally, musical notes.
yIDoghQo’!
Just finished the Pangea trilogy by John C. Wright. A think piece on the different facets of human nature disguised as Burroughs-esque adventure. Brimming with toxic masculinity. Turns into a bit of a sermon at the end, but it’s not terribly off-putting.
I’m reading the local benefice/parish magazine thing since it’s back up and running after MUH COVIDS had put a stop to it. Apparently if you want holy communion you gotta bring your own bread and wine to church with you. I was raised Catholic, and I think Catholic Jesus would have a thing to say about his body being too good for Tesco own brand wholemeal. Jus’ sayin’, but I don’t know how those C of E cats roll when it comes to magic bread ceremonies. Church wine was always some sweet, dessert wine tasting stuff. If Jesus has been happy with being trans-substantiated into a Budweiser or a Stella Artois, I think my 14yo self would have been down with that.
Tonight’s Jesus takes the form of Estrella. God bless thee, August Kuentzmann.
One Sunday when I was a kid, communion at our Presbyterian church was pumpkin bread and Hawaiian Punch.
That’s some serious letting down of the proverbial hair.
I enjoy the Bee’s semi-regular Presbyterian articles.
In my experience, most RC communion wafers have the consistency of cardboard.
A very belated and random apology to say that I haven’t forgotten Sir D and Mo; am just wayyyy behind on life and here and such.
JD, you funny.
*slight blush*
I’m glad someone thinks so. How you doin’?
I’m sure you have many fans!
/your loyal Anglophile
almost 10 pm and stil 30 damn degrees. Stupid heat. 54% humidity because some people seem to care about that. Humidity always seems to go up at night.
So those Gislaine Maxwell court documents are out, and I’m hearing certain press outlets are not covering it. Sure enough, if you Google “Gislaine Maxwell”, and click “News”, you see stories by Fox, NPR, Washington Post, and Daily Mail. CNN, NY Times, and MSNBC aren’t in the search results. I spot checked CNN and there is no mention of it.
I pray she has a stash of blackmail material she either deals into plea bargain and/or has set up on a deadman switch.
Me too. The docs indicate some of the victims went to the FBI and were ignored. Which puts into question if they were gathering or destroying evidence when they raided Pedo Island.
They waited a week(?) to go there after his arrest. Plenty of time for evidence to disappear. Not sure whether his French home was ever searched or, if so, by who.
I just googled it and the top story was CNN, followed by NY Post, and NY magazine. Don’t know why the difference.
But none of the Legacy MSM put Clinton in the headline like more conservative outlets.
man that guy was an epic creep
Was?
i mean before he was a harmless invalid.
Yeah, a specific search for “CNN Ghislaine Maxwell documents” showed it up.
That’s interesting, it’s an enormous story but what the media doesn’t cover is more important than what they do. It sounds like they aren’t completely in agreement on the blackout with this one though.
if you Google “Gislaine Maxwell” first thing you see is that is not how you spell that.
I used autocomplete on my search LOL
I’ve been reading backwards through Gardner Dozois’ annual series of Years Best Science Fiction anthology. Finishing up the earliest one I’ve got, from 1985.
Noticed somewhere around 1990 the stories about climate switched from catastrophic Iceball Earth scenarios to Global Warming TM.
I ‘m reading slowly through the collected works of Joseph Roth in German. I’m practicing on his newspaper pieces before tackling “The Radetzsky March”.
TKindle version cost 99 cents.
Make certain you clap your hands in time as you read it.
Correct. That’s necessary, but only when the conductor signals the audience to do so.
Every year I enter the lottery for tickets to the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concerts but I never have any luck.
Rereading Stephensons Baroque trilogy- partway through vol 2.
Think I want to reread all his stuff before I get the new one. I love his worldbuilding.
Coming through a James Ellroy kick, I needed something a little more etherial, and so went with Lafcadio Hearns Kwaidan (Japanese mythology. And insects circa 1904) and for a little intersitial reading picked up a copy of Cthulhu 2000 (Arkham house) Bathroom reading is Wooden Ship Building from 1911.
Late to this thread. I recently read the majority of Alan Dershowitz’s “Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo”. The kindle version is free on Amazon. I jumped around reading different parts, but have probably read about 80% of the book. I find his arguments believable. I also have the impression that Virginia Guiffre, one of the supposed Epstein victims to be pretty unreliable; she’s made multiple claims that have been clearly disproved. I think she’s in it for the money (and maybe the attention). She clearly was on Epstein’s island and other locations. it’s believable that she had sex with various “friends” of Epstein’s, maybe even Prince Andrew. But it’s unclear how “forced” she was vs. enticed by the money Epstein paid her. She also was not a minor at the time, unlike some of the other victims. And I think she tried to make her story more interesting by naming other famous people, even though she never met them.