OMWC
I haven’t had much fiction time this past year, but some travel allowed me to read The Bear and the Dragon, by Tom Clancy, which posits a future alliance with Russia and a shooting war with China (this was written before Putin had transformed the Russian government into a one-man Mafia). Ever find yourself at home and alone, and just vegged out on the couch finishing off bags of Doritos? This is the literary equivalent- absolutely no substance, but lots of fun if you don’t get caught. Like the usual Clancy novels, the characters would have to be fleshed out quite a bit more to even reach the level of cardboard, the plot is predictable, and the tech is more interesting than the prose. It sprawls, it badly needs editing, and Clancy’s verbal tics, particularly useless foreshadowing, pepper the pages (“He would soon find out how wrong he was.”). His sex scenes are cringe-worthy. But still… mindless fun.
SugarFree
Getting ready to read the new Laundry Files novel from Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index. I say getting ready because my habit with The Laundry Files is to back up a few novels and hit the new one at a run with the last couple or so fresh in my mind. I went back to The Annihilation Score this time, the one everyone seems to hate and is the jump the shark point for the series, blah blah. I like that The Annihilation Score and The Nightmare Stacks are from different POVs than Bob–it keeps the series from going stale. I’m about halfway through The Delirium Brief, so I should start the newest one this weekend.
I’ve been spending most of my reading time this month gorging on Dracula movies since I finished rereading the novel in October. The 1931 Bela Lugosi’s version is slower than I remember, but his performance is still fantastic. (It is an adaptation of a stage version of Dracula and its yap-yap-yap origins really drag it down.) I rewatched all the Hammer Draculas as well, and their pleasures are intact. Christopher Lee will always be Count Dracula to me: haughty, snide, sadistic and bloody-eyed. He doesn’t even have any dialogue in 1966’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness–he just snarls and growls and ends up the only thing on the screen.
Blacula is so much better than it has any right to be and even the much-derided 1979 version with Frank Langella’s disco hair is better than I remembered. Dan Curtis’ 1973 version for American television has Jack Palance as the Count and it is really enjoyable. I still have the 1977 BBC production (supposedly the most faithful adaptation of the book ever made) and Coppola to go. It has been a very long time since I have subjected myself to Keanu Reeves’ whoa, like totally Jonathan Harker, bro, and I’m not looking forward to it.
Riven
Over Thanksgiving weekend I read the first two Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher: Storm Front and Fool Moon. They were both fun and easy reads, which was nice because two dogs and a toddler were a huge distraction in the living room in which I was reading. They were a little formulaic, but I was sufficiently pre-warned by SF and was expecting that. In fact, I expect the rest of the Dresden Files books will follow very similar formats. I’ll be finding out soon because Grave Peril is next on my reading list. Reading these books feels a little bit like homework, since reading them was sort of a prerequisite for my rpg group’s next adventure: Your Story. (Everyone wanted a Pathfinder break.) But it’s really easy homework, and they remind me a bit of The Hollows series that I enjoyed so much last summer. If you’re looking for entertaining urban fantasy that isn’t too challenging and builds a nice world, either series would be a good fit.
mexicansharpshooter
Recently I found an old book titled, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Its been gathering dust as a shim for the kitchen table for the past three months, I figured I might as well actually read it to my 4 year old.
Its a harrowing tale of a missionary named Sam, sent to an unfortunate land where nobody speaks in complete sentences, or without a form of pentameter. I imagine it might have taken him months to adapt to the local custom in order to converse with the locals, and the story focuses on his interaction with one nameless local. I imagine Dr. Seuss was unable pronounce the local’s name, and to be honest I doubt I would remember it either—the man is vegan, as is the standard in his culture. I imagine his B12 deficiency is the root cause of his demeanor throughout the entire story.
Sam is a missionary from the Church of Carnivorous Kinship (COCK) and is charged with converting a single vegan to a meat eater, thus fulfulling his destiny, and securing his place in heaven by his alien Reptilian overlords.
I assume it begins early in the morning as the story begins while the local is reading a newspaper, and Sam offers him a simple ham and eggs breakfast. He first tries to convince the local to eat it with a both a rodent and cannine companion, offers him a consideably large piece of real estate, and even offers the local to eat it in the location of his choice. Much to Sam’s charign, the local then violates NAP by pushing him into oncoming traffic on a major highway, even forcing Sam to dodge an oncoming train—WITHIN A TUNNEL. The local’s shocking refusal would shake the convictions of the average missionary, but Sam is no average missionary. The local eventually forces both over a seaside cliff, where he finally submits to Sam’s simple request and tries the meal.
He loved it. Becasue ham and eggs are delicious.
The local, now cured of his B12 deficiency, is a much more personalble fellow, and likely continues the COCK lifestyle to this day. It wouldn’t surprise me if the local is the missionary in the sequel Go Dog Go.
Tune in next month.
SP
More Bosch. (And I started watching the series on Prime, and have some thoughts, but this post isn’t about TV shows.) Also read Scott Pratt’s latest Joe Dillard, Due Process, number 9 in the series. Enjoyable, if predictable, mind candy. Robert Dugoni’s A Steep Price, the most recent Tracy Crosswhite installment, is now the fiction in rotation on my Kindle.
I’ve just begun the non-fiction-ish Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency. Too soon to have formed a real opinion.
Another book that just landed on my doorstep is Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome, penned by Venki Ramakrishnan, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with the ribosome. I purchased this one in print, as is my habit for anything I think OMWC and/or various geeky houseguests might also be interested in reading (and why we have overflowing bookshelves in our library). Haven’t read more than the introduction, but I think it will be very interesting.
As part of an ongoing personal project building a sort of online research aid website for family history in my hometown (yes, I’m a nerd), I am re-reading the history book the two local historical societies produced 30-odd years ago and indexing the people . It’s very interesting to revisit this collection of local history and local family histories submitted by the families. This makes the book something of a cross between oral history anecdotes, verifiable facts, supposition, and wishful thinking. My family joined this community just a few years before my birth, and even having spent my entire life before college there, I’m finding all sorts of new connections and gossipy details about the place. It’s quite fun.
jesse.in.mb
It’s been a trying two months and I haven’t gotten much reading done. I finally (and just in the nick of time) Finished James R. Walker’s Lakota Myth. It’s been on my shelf since I visited the Crazy Horse Memorial. The editor, Elaine Jahner does the unenviable job of balancing an academic understanding of ethnography and folklore, the context that Walker brought to the stories, and showcasing the work Walker did in trying to bridge the gap between oral story-telling and a literary cycle. Some of the stories are told multiple times in the book, with each telling revealing how differently shamans, converts and entertainers told familiar tales with different emphases. I’d picked it up expecting something more like Bulfinch’s Mythology, but was pleasantly stimulated by the explanations for why certain decisions were made about the presentation of a mythology that was not already rooted into an English-speaking audience’s popular consciousness.
Web Dominatrix
I am currently enjoying We The Corporations by Adam Winkler. I met the author randomly some years ago at a book festival. Truthfully the book caught my eye because I recognised the author’s name.
Winkler is a constitutional law professor at UCLA, and We The Corporations explores the complex topic of corporate personhood, and how businesses have won constitutional protections. I’m not far enough into it to give a review, so I expect I will report back next month.
Brett L
My big read of the month was Charlie Stross’s latest Laundry Files book The Labyrinth Index. Let me start with the good: The premise — that a Cthulonic cult has worked a mass glamor on the USA to make everyone forget the President every time they sleep was actually excellent. The group of Secret Service agents on the Presidential detail basically sleep every 4th day so enough are awake to remember why they are guarding this guy. The rest of the book is shit. Everyone and his fucking brother who isn’t currently the Eater of Souls or cohabiting with him is basically a vampire by the end. I don’t know, Stross started out emulating the styles of spy novelists in his first 2 or 3 installments. Maybe he decided to emulate Robert Jordan with this one because basically nobody remotely important dies, and I was bored by the end.
I also tried to read The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World. Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point but if you’ve ever had to take any sort of process engineering or electronics course, you’ll know the systems he’s talking about. And then take a not particularly imaginative person and have them try to explain through large, complex poorly defined systems in the real-world like schools. I don’t know, maybe its because the author started with a “nuanced” view of Norman Borlaug and I have a very un-nuanced view of Norman Borlaug. I’m sure this is a revelation for people who don’t have any formal systems training, but I found it not particularly insightful and his deep thoughts not particularly deep before I gave it up about 2/3 of the way through.
i read the subtle art of not giving a fuck, thought it would be funny, just a mediocre self help book.
also started In Praise of Folly
I read Oathbringer when it came out a year ago. My library just got the audiobook so now I’m listening to it. Damn it is good.
I’ve read some of Branden Sanderson’s other stuff and thought it kind of young-adult, but this is the good shit. I look at those 1,000 page books and wish they were longer.
Sandersons stuff is getting better as he ages, or maybe more adult?
Creative juices need to ferment a while.
Ewwwww….
My son loved Steelhart when he was in Junior High. More YA stuff although some bodies hit the floor pretty hard.
I’d like to read Stormlight, but after waiting 15 years for the conclusion of WoT I’m somewhat reluctant to start reading a large multi-volume series that isn’t at least near completion.
He seems to have a lot of different writing projects planned I just wonder how long its gonna take him.
Sanderson seems much more serious author than GRRM and probably won’t croak anytime soon like Jordan. He claims to have the thing mapped out for 10 novels – so sure, we won’t all be alive at the conclusion.
I recently got back all my Goosebumps books from childhood, considering reading them.
DO it, do it, do it! My bairns (4yo boy & 7yo girl) absolutely adore them and I am having a GREAT time reading them to the kids. They hold up quite well for YA horror.
l0b0t,
I’ve drank all the beers except the big one with the wax seal and outside of the Hawaiian grapefruit IPA, they were all excellent.
I wish I could find the Heavy Boots of Lead around here.
That one was a very thick and heavy beer, but in a good way.
Still in my Ryu Murakami phase:
Currently reading Piercing. It’s… disturbing.
is there a movie?
I don’t think so. If there is, it’s probably in Japanese.
hmmm
A film adaptation starring Mia Wasikowska will be released in 2018.
Piercing is a 2018 American horror comedy film written and directed by Nicolas Pesce based on the novel of the same name by Ryū Murakami. It stars Christopher Abbott, Mia Wasikowska, and Laia Costa.
The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2018. It is scheduled to be released on February 1, 2019, by Universal Pictures.
Contents
Ah, that should be cool/disturbing. It’s one of the more bizarre books I’ve ever read, though R. Murakami is known for being pretty damn dark.
Mid-way through Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzoles. Interesting work on survival psychology that has application from a split second decision behind the wheel to being stranded in Siberia. Good read.
Well, There is a bit of a list this month.
Listening to – “Monk’s Hood” (Brother Casfael book 3)
Reading – “Beyond the Edge of the Map”
Writing – “Beyond the Edge of the Map”, “Prince of the North Tower”, “Home from the Unknown” and “Blank Spaces on the Map.” Beyond the Edge of the Map I wrote in a week, and it got the narrator (Now named Dug FitzHelen) halfway around the globe. “Home from the Unknown” is supposed to get him back to Salzheim, and “Black Spaces on the Map” is supposed to be about a subsequent voyage where he looks for a sea route to the port he started sailing from that doesn’t require going 80% of the way around the world in the wrong direction.
I’m also forcing Evan to Read “Beyond the Edge of the Map.”
*Blank Spaces on the Map
Not ‘Black spaces’.
Le sigh.
if you read what you write how do you avoid spoilers?
By not telling myself how it ended.
I actually just guffawed.
Currently reading I Shall Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer, which documents his personal views of the rise of Nazism in Germany through his daily diaries, which somehow managed to survive the war, and his close brush with being trained off to Auschwitz. Funnily enough, his diary gives credence to certain stereotypes about (((them))), specifically the deep neuoriticism and complaining, but at least there is good reason for it. Someone should start a parody Twitter account which puts out his entries, as contrasting his observations of a legit authoritarian and anti-semitic regime, versus the howling SJW one sees on Twitter, would make for some good laughs. There are three books in the series, 1933-1941, 41-45, and postwar; I’m only working on the first at present.
Also nearly finished with Thaddeus Russell’s first book, Out of The Jungle : Jimmy Hoffa and The Remaking of The American Working Class, which is an interesting history of the rise of Jimmy Hoffa and The Teamsters. It’s a bit dry and academic, but Russell makes an interesting case that Hoffa was one of the better labor leaders around, insofar as Hoffa was not an ideologue, and couldn’t stand the socialists and commies in the wider labor movement. Secondarily to his own power, Hoffa was legitimately concerned about the material conditions of his membership, and applied an understand of market forces to his organizing drives. He marked the Teamsters as a Union of choice, and doing what he could to offer the best contracts to his boys was nearly as important as his use of baseball bats and high explosives.
I think it was The Bear and the Dragon that finally made me quit Clancy. And I’d been a loyal reader since Red October in middle school. The need for a editor just made it painful. I think that’s the one that even had a full passage repeated; it was a description of where a CIA executive’s office was in the building or something.
#metoo
I loved Clancy when I was younger, but trying to read that one was painful.
I didn’t get very far before I quit.
I quit after the ‘Jack Ryan is President’ one.
He actually referenced a lot of actual Armor officers I knew/worked for/was aware of as the leaders for OPFOR unit that kicked ass in the desert.
In fact, our former NSA, McMasters was one of them.
I thought he really phoned that one in.
It did make sense that Russia and the U.S. should be natural allies against the Chinese. Putin and Democrats both think there are more votes to be had playing up the old rivalries.
I think B&D was the last of the Jack Ryan novels (with the exception of the prequel, Red Rabbit). I was skimming tech descriptions as early as Sum of All Fears. My fave is probably Cardinal of the Kremlin which is one of the few books wherein I read a scene and swore out loud I was so taken by surprise.
Cardinal was my favorite too, although I gave up reading Clancy around/after Clear and Present Danger.
The need for a editor just made it painful.
Stephen King says ‘hi!’.
And it only took 78 pages to do it.
Halfway through Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE. Reminds me of how much I like Stephenson.
I’m almost done with working my way through Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. I think once I finish that I’m going to take a break for the next installment of Galaxy’s Edge.
I LOVE THAT SERIES!
I was a late convert to Stephenson, and I still take him with a grain of salt, but I really think the Baroque Cycle is his strongest work.
This is my 3rd time through and I keep picking up new things. It really is an amazingly deep and complex series that all hangs together. And I kind of dig how the first two books are essentially a discursive setup for the third. I was in Seattle a few weekends ago for a leather conference but we went to the Science Fiction Museum and saw the original manuscript and notes which was impressive.
I LOVE this place because with the depth and breadth of our commentariat’s knowledge/interests one could think holster/saddle maker or garment industry or kink.
I thought Retribution was the last one?
Or are there more Tyrus Rex books coming?
I’m referencing Retribution. I haven’t read it yet. Or the new Order of the Centurion series either. Though I understand there is more Tyrus Rex coming and a whole new ‘Season’. I’ve also got several Baen authors in my backlist including the latest Tom Kratman.
I hadn’t heard of the Order of the Centurion books, Thanks.
And I’m slowly going through Dorothy Sayers’s whole Peter Wimsey series. Just about to finish The Nine Tailors, and I think Gaudy Night is next. I picked the series up since she’s a contemporary of Lewis and Tolkein, and also a noted Sherlockian, and I thought those bade (boded?) well. Not disappointed.
Working my way through the Longmire series – I think I’m six books in. They are good, but I’m losing interest. I may take a break and put some space between them.
I’m the last person in the world reading Jordan Peterson’s book. As many others have commented, it’s not revolutionary, but there is some really good stuff in there.
I found the first four books of the David Wolf series from Jeff Carson on Prime, so decided to check them out. They sucked. Basically a Longmire ripoff set in Colorado (main character is a former Army Ranger, of course), the first couple book were really bad. I tend to cut a lot of slack because so many writers up their game after their initial books.
Not this time. By the end of the fourth book – when he referred to the “Austrian speaking” part of the Italian alps, I was done. The only saving grace is that they went fast. Skip this series.
Finally, I picked up The Joint Book: The Complete Guide to Wood Joinery. It’s fucking sweet! I saw a link for it on Instapundit and thought it looked interesting. The explanation of the joints and when to use them is worth the price of admission.
A great book for woodworking nerds.
I think that the series fatigue you run into is a function of ebook readers.
In the olden days, it was a pain in the ass to get an entire series of real actual books. So you naturally spaced them out with other books. Now with my kindle I am like you, I get a whole series (usually because of bundled pricing) and read them one after the other.
I’ve consciously made the decision to split up reading a series because of this. I try to mix things up so that a series stays sort of fresh.
Yes. I think you are exactly right.
Related, a mini review of my new Paperwhite:
Almost perfect. Why cant we have page buttons, though??
Physical Buttons? Why not just buy a real book?
/Bezos.
Tundra, sometimes you say such smart things!
Yup. I love my paperwhite soooooo much. But I want the buttons for page flipping too.
His sex scenes are cringe-worthy. But still… mindless fun.
So… like having sex.
OT: Gentlemen, start your erections.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/30/cure-for-hiv-world-aids-day
Lol
Accursed Penguin! I’m now sitting on german wikipedia hitting ‘Zufälliger Artikel’ trying to see how much german I actually know. I just learned ‘Zufälliger’ means ‘random’ or something along those lines.
Looking at German is actually more frustrating than, say, urdu. If I see urdu text I just skip past, because I know I can’t make heads or tails of it. German has little pockets of “I can figure out what that means” followed by text that means nothing to me.
My problem with Clancy novels is that everyone in the military is super competent and totally committed to the defense of the country. The enlisted men are treated as complete equals by the officers and there isn’t a floor buffer to be found.
I’m not saying that my buddies and I wouldn’t have fought like crazy against the Russians back in the ’90s, but we would have appreciated it a lot if they didn’t attack during the weekend so we could keep drinking like fish and chasing Okinawan ladies of questionable morals. And we bitched a lot about the officers and the pointless field days of the barracks every week.
Semi-relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQlQlQ6_pk
I was enlisted but also observant enough to note that if left to our own devices, we would quickly get into all kinds of trouble – running the full spectrum of McHale’s Navy type harmless fun to something worse than the Crips and Bloods. When we got to Saudi Arabia, some guys got busy distilling their own moonshine, others stole everything from the port not nailed down while selling our own equipment. When we returned home, we didn’t train with radios again for a year because the conex box with our comm gear was seized by Customs because every empty space was found to be packed with opium.
So marching around and doing field-days was how they try to keep us from slipping the leash.
*snort*
Everything you mentioned is spot on. My only rebuttal is that maybe if they didn’t keep the leash so tight in the first place or treated enlisted people as real humans they might not go so crazy when left to their own devices.
I thought they wanted us crazy?
This is why I find most military fiction boring. Very rarely do they ever develop military characters beyond caricatures. I saw this meme the other day that our population would do well to embrace:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiBvJ331fzeAhVPG6wKHap7AyMQjhx6BAgBEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmemesbams.com%2Fmilitary-memes%2F&psig=AOvVaw2kOo_jwD3QVfSyKtwVK8AO&ust=1543686346228252
Ringo made me laugh a few times with barracks humor. I liked the one where a Sergeant was screwing around with his new alien devices and accidentally created a force-field that chopped off his roommate’s legs.
I don’t get it. How is that supposed to be funny?
(They regrew the roomate’s legs)
The funny part was that guy was a barracks lawyer and they couldn’t court martial him because they had assured everyone the devices were harmless. Turns out he had also inadvertently invented a new landmine they ended up mass-producing.
The first one was good. The rest, rather lame.
YES!
I did a lot of cool shit in the Marines, made some of the best friends I ever will, had some fantastic times…..but that’s the stuff I want to remember. The things I block out, frankly, sucked ass. Field day, oh my god…..because HQMC has a sick sense of humor, they like to send grunts who make sergeant major to wing squadrons. We got one of these delightful fellows in Okinawa, Sgt. Maj. Small. We had an IG inspection of our squadron maybe a month after he showed up. We field dayed the SHIT out of the barracks for days to prepare for that. Someone neglected to tell the inspectors that we were on decks 2-4. First deck was Stinger, who were part of MTACS not MACS. Inspector failed the barracks because of first deck without actually going up to the decks where the squadron he was inspecting was.
Not our fault, right? Oh, that didn’t matter to Sgt. Maj. Small. We started doing field day every evening after work, usually from 1800 until 2100. Well, Sgt. Maj Small was dissatisfied with the results. After that, we started having a formation in front of the barracks at 0430. Staff NCOs had to be there, too, which made him enormously popular with them. Field day time! Field day until 0700….and then again at 1800. I was fortunate enough to leave on our deployment to Uzbekistan at that point. It kept going on for almost a month after we left.
Vaguely discomfited by the online payday lender that advertises on this radio station, with two apparently black actors talking in urban black accents about always being short on cash and needing to borrow money to-day. Is that racist? At least it’s not a pair of barrio cholos calling each other ese. Maybe that’s how they advertise in more exclusively black cities.
With the 100th anniversary of WWI I’ve Just read “A Subaltern on the Somme” and the classic “All Quiet on the Western Front” which I somehow had neve read.
Stalin was right – One death is a tragedy a million is a statistic.
Reading several tens of thousands died in one day is just unimagineable. Following individual soldiers (Brit in the first case, German in the second) as they deal with the constant bombardment, mud, random deaths and stumbling over body parts uncovered by the rain makes it more real.
Four other WW1 books I can recommend:
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves; the same author as Claudius
Now It Can Be Told by Philip Gibbs, a reporter who was on the scene of the front lines
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who fought on the Western front
and, for a large overview, John Keegan’s book The First World War – which was bewildering the first time I read it, as one battle morphed into another. Further study/reading was required.
The Jocko podcast discussed this about two months ago. The cruelty of British and Prussian officers to their troops was startling.
Fighting using 19th century tactics with 20th century firepower tended to make human life pretty much useless.
And the old Generals were unwilling/unable to change.
I have that lying around from a German class and still haven’t read it. Shame on me.
The odyssey by Homer. I hadn’t read it since middle school, so it’s like reading it for the first time. Side note: if I was going to choose a religion, it would be Greek mythology. Their gods are fun.
Try reading the Norse myths. They really had fun and were more “human” than the other mythologies. Not only is their marriage but there is divorce. Women choosing husbands based on their anatomy. There is jealousy and bad outcomes. Plus half the chosen spent eternity fighting with weapons during the day and partying at night. the other half went to the goddess of sexuality so who knows what fate befell them.
Neat. I’ve never read Norse mythology.
My off-and-on reading is To the Last Cartridge which is a collection of true war short stories, often cornered soldiers fighting to the last man or some of the more terrible engagements. Some of them make me
cryman mist with the heroism and sacrifice. Highly recommended.I have the first three Horatio Hornblower books coming my way. I’ve already read these multiple times but gave my collection away to my friend Bill when he was station in Iraq. These quickly became his favorite books so I’m revisiting them in his memory. RIP Bill!
And the last book I finished reading is Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine – which has a special significance to me since I know Charleston pretty well after visiting it five times in the past decade. Interesting story how the submarine was created, tested, and sunk (three times). And it’s discovery and recovery.
Ironically, I just finished the third Hornblower book. I’m hooked on the series, I think in part because Hornblower is not a particularly likeable character. I’m alternating between the Sharpe books, and the two characters are almost opposites: Sharpe is a charismatic, likeable person who sometimes does shitty, vicious thing, and Hornblower is a bitchy, cold, sometimes-bratty little shit who routinely does heroic and noble things.
I enjoyed the Sharpe books… at first… and then, like a lot of Bernard Cornwall writing, got tired of them. And how does one character end up in every major battle, even Trafalgar!?!?!? Ah well, such is fiction.
“That book you recommended was soo unbelievable. There was no way this Alexander dude was in every major battle and such. And the pretension, calling their main character ‘the Great’?”
“It was nonfiction.”
It’s been a long time since I read the Hornblower books, but as I recall he grows up along the way, after making many a mistake along the way. All I really remember is how glad I wasn’t in the RN during the age of sail.
The actual Hunley in the lab at the old Navy Station ranks up there in my top 1-3 things I’ve ever seen in real life.
Next time I’m in Charleston, I’ll have to check it out.
Have to be a brave bastard to get into that for real.
So, Tom Clancy’s mansion was in Southern Maryland. My wife and I have developed this odd tradition of going to downtown Frederick on her birthday to hit this big antique warehouse and drink a lot of beer. After Clancy died, his family apparently decided to sell off a bunch of his estate, and one of the things was this massive, massive French armoire that was (and may still be) at this warehouse. When I say massive, I mean it’s 7′ tall, 5′ wide, and about 4′ deep. Solid oak. It’s about the dimensions of an elevator car, and I believe it’s 16th century.
On-topic: I’m working through the Sharpe series, alternating books with the Hornblower series. I’ve picked up the first of the Malakan books as well as the first Monster Hunter book. I’m also, to continue on my weird Napoleonic War fiction tear, going to start the Aubrey/Maturin books.
I haven’t read the Sharpe series, but I’ve read all of Cornwell’s other historical fiction books.
Aubrey/Maturin is my second favorite series behind The Saxon Tales.
Speaking of that, The Last Kingdom season 3 is currently on NetFlix and my wife and I will be watching it this weekend.
Destiny is all!
Sharpe is the best of Cornwell’s series in my opinion.
There’s so many books, it makes me hesitant to jump in.
But I had the same initial problem with the Aubery/Maturin books and loved all of them.
Nerd Alert!
I am still reading A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.
Interesting, but HOLY SHIT is it looong!
I am currently at 12% according to my kindle and it feels like I’ve been reading forever.
It is also a little hard to keep track of a lot of the people because their names are so similar.
The stranglehold the Catholic Church had on local nobles back then was terrifying.
What I’m reading right at this moment is the reason I’ll never take seriously another self-aggrandizing political ad featuring bunches of Hollywood inbreds sermonizing to the camera a couple words at a time. Not that I took it seriously before, but it’s really fugging rich hearing these sanctimonious fuckwads utter word one on ethics or morality.
OT: An actual article about actual geopolitics that isn’t foaming at the mouth. How refreshing.
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/a-sino-russian-greater-asia-from-shanghai-to-lisbon/
I’ve personally thought for a while that it was only a matter of time before Russia aligned with China to start throwing its weight around Europe. We’re already seeing it with Putin’s policies and it will only get worse with a Russo-Sino alliance. The true victim here will, as usual, be Eastern Europe. They have shown a commitment to self-determination and liberty and they’ll unfortunately be caught in the middle and crushed, again as usual. Western Europe has lost the will to live and will welcome being conquered by Strongmen Authoritarians. Embrace full-on postmodern nihilism and people will subconsciously crave *any* value system, even a repressive one; hence why Western Europe is intent on importing as many Shariah-compliant immigrants as possible. Russia and China, unlike weak willed, mealy-mouthed Euro-socialist pussies, actually know how to deal with Muslim terrorists and Western Europe will positively beg for help sooner or later.
Weep for Poland, Bulgaria and Romania (the Baltics are already a lost cause). Get out while you can Pie.
We almost never hear about it but the Ruskies and the Chinese have a lot of problem with muslim minorities in their countries. There are bombings and attacks quite frequently. It is a big mess.
I dunno what the Russians are up to but the Chinese seem to be working on some sort of final solution to their “Muslim problem”.
I’m not supporting their methods (Russians in the Caucasus and Chinese in Xinjiang), I’m just saying that as Western Europe slides ever more into Dhimmitude, they’ll be looking for a savior.
Agreed. There is a problem. And the solutions will inevitably be ugly. It’s almost like empires built by annexing foreign cultures tend toward authoritarianism in order to remain “stable” or something.
The Russians and Chinese can at least deflect being called Nazis by pointing out that Jews weren’t actively trying to kill other Germans and destroy cultural institutions.
Let’s be careful here. Uighur does not equal “Chinese Muslim”. The PRC seems to have no problem with their around 11 million Hui, and the Hui continue to be over-represented in the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army.
Less of a Muslim problem, more like problem Muslims?
You know who else made Eastern Europe their victim…
That guy from 90 Day Fiancée?
The EM-50 and Sgt. Hulka?
Like wiping out Uighurs they get things done!
OT: This kind of shit happens all the time. Commodious knows.
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/nation-world/couple-forced-to-prove-new-mexico-is-a-state-while-applying-for-marriage-license/618929551?fbclid=IwAR2MMo5hShYJ1Er4fLxy-HQF_s2QG1cEyr0COneyy5sRWUI0s6K5kI2UbjA?fbclid=IwAR2MMo5hShYJ1Er4fLxy-HQF_s2QG1cEyr0COneyy5sRWUI0s6K5kI2UbjA
Why dealing with the employees at the DMV or any other public office hasn’t turned the entire country libertarian is beyond me.
The only time I’ve witnessed something similar was being trolled by an online friend from the northeast who insisted I must be Hispanic because I live in NM. At least, I think he was trolling.
I usually write these stories off, but now I’m not so sure. There’s a chance he’s narrating the clerk’s confusion over our Real ID status as confusion over our statehood, but gosh, our public education being so contemptible, I can’t write it off anymore.
There’s plenty of ignorance to go around, I’ve talked to people in California who thought that you could easily see Canada from Cleveland, since it’s just on the other side of a lake. I’ve also had people ask if Lake Erie was salt water. In fairness, there’s lessons for everyone about the states.
It’s not unbelievable that you might be able to see the far shore. I have pictures of Toronto taken from Fort Niagara.
But yeah, it is very hazy, and closer than the width of Lake Erie.
It’s about 55 miles across the lake here in Cleveland. This person also thought swimming across would be a common thing. Even those of us who live in America can forget how freaking big it is.
Well, they made the mistake of calling them lakes instead of seas.
Being freshwater probably had something to do with it
Calling Erie ‘fresh’ wasn’t always true.
I lived in San Marcos, CA, for about a year after high school. When I told people where I was from, about half the time I’d hear, “Annapolis? That’s where they have that car race, right?”
It got to a point where I just told people I was from DC.
“Annapolis? Is that where they keep the school for cannibals?”
Gahhhhh I hate that.
Did I make that mistake…
No, because it’s more of a transition to the bad consequences of being wrong.
Nah, it’s fine in the 1st person.
So funny you should say that.
On FB a fellow writer maintained her stance that first person and/or present tense was flat “bad writing.” No, honey, that’s just your reading preference. First person, present tense, whatever, are mere storytelling devices.
Your example is third-person omniscient, which is verboten in romance, but more common in other genres. It was also a staple in most of the fiction written until around the 1980s.
I can see why you don’t like it, though. Most of us didn’t grow up reading third-person omniscient.
I hadn’t thought of that but yeah. It does have a ring of Brontë to it.
I call it the “Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” method of storytelling.
I cannot stand present tense. Since everything is “NOW” my head tries to fit every piece of the scene into one continuous buffer to fit the moment being described, and invariably leads to fits of paroxysm when the buffer overflows and I’m never able to finish painting the picture of “NOW” as described.
But that’s your preference, not necessarily automagically “bad” writing.
On top of that, so much of my day to day language is in past or future tense, present tense just sounds alien, more so the longer it goes on.
Right. Like second person. I’ve read a story in second person present tense and I thought it was really well done.
U wot m8?
You go to the store. You walk down the baking aisle and pick up a can of cherry pie filling and wonder if you can use it as a prop for blood clots on your student film.
Cherry pie filling is too viscous to be used as convincing blood. It also has a higher degree of transparency and leaves a shinier residue as it dries. You use that and it will look like the character got into a food fight.
And I hate the author’s presumption to tell me what I do.
It’s like being in a D&D session.
Well, that’s why almost no one ever uses it as a storytelling device.
If your DM dictated that much of your character’s actions, they were shitty at their role. A properly run session has 3-4 first-person protagonists and a third person narrator who tells them how far they get thrown across the room when the thief botches disarming the explosive trap.
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
@Ted, that is a brilliant observation.
Currently working my way through Annals of America, Volume 3 – 1784-1796
Ch. 3 – John Filson, Daniel Boone in the Wilderness.
Good stuff.
I never read fiction anymore. My wife burns through 3 or 4 books per week.
If you got some real fuel, she wouldn’t have to use books to heat the place.
It’s a stockpile of remaindered copies of Hard Choices, Stronger Together, and What Happened, so she’s doing the world a favor.
There should be a question mark at the end of that title.
What Happened?
Actually you could do the same thing with the other 2.
Hard Choices?
Stronger Together?
I crack myself up sometimes.
Nice. I wonder whether she herself smirked at those titles. I have to imagine she’s not so much a narcissist as Obama. Just a run-of-the-mill sociopathic kleptocrat.
Same. I really enjoy good fiction but I have a hard time finding anything that holds my interest. I appreciate writers who don’t waste prose but I’ve read all the Hemingway I care to and everything Cormac McCarthy ever wrote.
Only boring (to other people) stuff at the moment. As an electronics hobbyist, I find that my grounding in the basics is woefully spotty, so I’m flagellating myself by reading through a couple of introductory texts that are good for me (in an “eat your gruel” kind of way). One is Stan Gibilisco’s Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (6th ed.), which is many pages of disciplining myself reading through stuff I already know plus the occasional “Oh crap, I should’ve known this decades ago.” (In some cases, I probably did know it decades ago, but have since forgotten . . . ) Every time I run into such a nugget, I get the same shock I used to get in University lectures where the prof would suddenly hit upon something I didn’t know which I found well-nigh riveting.
Learning should be stuffed full of episodes like that, but as we all know, it normally isn’t.
Up next: a disciplined cover-to-cover reading of The Art of Electronics (3rd ed.). I’ve had the book since it was published a couple of years ago, but have only dipped in on occasion to grab some info I actually needed.
Forrest Mims is my hero!
He was The Man, Back In The Day. 😉
I took some EE classes in college (I was an EE major for a spell) – but I’ve forgotten way more than I remember. Ohm’s law and power calculations are about the only things I regularly use, but I’m more of a “borrower” of schematics than doing something completely new. I have in the past, using an old RCA tube manual, made my own preamplifier and even did load lines, etc but these days I don’t have the time (or effort) to do from scratch designs. For amplifiers I’ll modify the power supply but usually not the signal path itself. These days I’m more interested in the building.
The last amp I built
or I should say that was the last tube amp I built. Lately it has been solid-state designs like the Aleph J
Schweet. Love the “radio room of the Titanic” look of the tube amp. 😉
I’m trying to work up the nerve to instantiate a from-scratch build of the Blameless amplifier concept of Douglas Self. Lots of learning to do first. :-/
Just started “If the Allies Had Fallen: Sixty Alternate Scenarios of World War II” edited by Dennis Showalter and Harold Deutsch.
First thing I had never realized, there was a pretty comprehensive plot to remove Hitler before Munich in 1938 but Chamberlain’s appeasement caused the generals to back off. The historians offer realistic scenarios based on actual capabilities at the time, not sensationalized speculation.
“First thing I had never realized, there was a pretty comprehensive plot to remove Hitler before Munich in 1938 but Chamberlain’s appeasement caused the generals to back off.”
Yep, the Germans would have been totally fucked if the Western Allies had gone to war in 1938, and the general staff were absolutely planning to decapitate the Nazi Party and trade them for German territorial integrity in that event.
But then Hitler’s bluff worked, and the old school generals on the staff figured they wouldn’t get away with deposing a guy who managed to keep winning territory without fighting. Hell, even as late as 1942 the Germans could have absolutely brokered some kind of deal IMO. THe sheer stupidity of Adolf Hitler as a strategist is more and more mind boggling the more you read about his time in power.
It also makes the hagiography of FDR as CinC even more hilarious to me. Like, leaving aside my utter distaste for him, I cannot really think of a single thing that he did as a strategist that actually changed the course of the war. Once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then Germany declared war on the US, it becomes a matter of “Go go gadget US industrial plant.”
I was a kid when the oldsters in my family were still bitching about FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor before it happened, and letting it happen to get us into the war.
Something that often gets overlooked is that the US wasn’t completely unaware of a potential war. The National Guard had been mobilized for over a year, along with peacetime conscription. In fact, their initial year had expired and was being extended indefinitely. NG units were captured in the PI and were on the Bataan Death March.
The other thing that gets overlooked is far from being a voluntary endeavor of the entire Greatest Generation, conscription provides the vast majority of men and while large in number, the percentage of population in uniform during WWII really isn’t that much more than today and most did not serve (~85%+ vs ~95-98% today).
Yeah the repeated violations of the Neutrality Acts by FDR so he could get the US into a war the American people had no interest in fighting.
I don’t know how representative they were of the general population, but I got the vibe the US citizenry was thoroughly uninterested in getting into WWII.
They absolutely were, on the whole. Of course, once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Germans declared war, they fell to the task of victory with a will.
Historians like to think that the invasion of the USSR was Hitler’s fatal error, but it wasn’t. It was him giving FDR a declaration of war that FDR could use to jump into the war he wanted to fight the whole time. The Nazis could have defeated the Soviet Union easily without the US being involved. The USSR was completely dependent on America for absolutely essential military supplies. There’s no way in hell they would have won the war without America being in the fight.
Nazis shot their bolt and got dickslapped at Moscow just as Hitler decided to declare war on the US. 1941 was the peak of their efficiency, and the gap in quality between their army and opposing armies will only shrink as the rest of the world catches up to German mobilization.
Their second attempt was defeated before American supplies started pouring in. After that, the issue of “winning” was settled. The questions after were how long and how much blood?
You must have oil to wage modern warfare, and vast amounts if you want to be attacking. Hitler knew that, his generals didn’t. Hitler wanted to attack towards Ukraine (coal, wheat) and Caucasus (oil), generals wanted “destroy army in the field, take Moscow” because that’s how wars are won. Only, they had no clue about how much USSR could mobilize and what their potential was. Once Fall Blau failed, that was it.
Oh, and no declaration means nothing to economic aid. US would still ship supplies to USSSR, just like they shipped them to UK before they entered the war.
Oooooo, gotta look that one up.
there was a pretty comprehensive plot to remove Hitler before Munich in 1938
Well, that’s what the surviving generals told Western Allies after the war, knowing they’d find a receptive ear. Of course there is no evidence – who would keep it around? And there may have been mutterings but note that they never moved against Hitler, even when the war was clearly being lost (as far as I can tell in Valkyrie there was one active general involved, few retired ones and the rest were Colonels and lower).
And as mah boi TIK pointed out, “so they swore a personal loyalty oath to Hitler, and removing him would have broken the oath? Well they also swore the loyalty to Weimar Constitution, and they had no problems breaking that one.”
Other than compulsively refreshing Glibs.com, I don’t have time to read much anymore.
Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
It’s in the national archives in a display case. Careful, the ink is a bit faded.
That’s what they want you to think.
OT: “Two humans with mouths, making noises that are words.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBR0G_ogx54&app=desktop
Read the Darth Plagueis novel a week back. I normally can’t recommend a SW novel, but it was very well written, and wisely didn’t indulge in trying to write large battles- one of the many failings of books set in a galaxy far, far away.
I just finished Max Hastings new history of Vietnam. (Book same name) Hastings runs his narrative from 1945-1975. It was a worthwhile read and he makes sure to document communist atrocities as well.
Earlier in the month I finished “KL: A History of Nazi Concentration Camps” by Nikolaus Wachsmann. It is not a light read in either pages (800+) or subject matter but documents very well the entire range of how the KL evolved over time.
I am looking at a bunch of hours on planes for biz trips so I was about to start rereading the Aubrey series on the flights; but based on what I read above think I start re-reading the Hornblower series instead.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: Addendum podcast had an interview with Hastings about his Vietnam book.
OT: Political correctness not only kills, but is the death of art.
I’ve been shopping around for something new on Netflix and it seems that ~95% of original content that’s come out in the past 1-2 years *has* to have some kind of social justice angle. It’s possible to include that shit in a film/TV show/whatever and not have it completely spoil the whole thing. However, it’s such transparent agitprop and so ham-fisted that I might as well watch MSNBC instead.
I dropped Netflix a while ago in favor of Hulu for similar reasons (also I can watch South Park, Always Sunny and Archer on Hulu). One bright spot that I may go back for is Mindhunters, I really enjoyed that and hope the series stays strong in the second season.
When does the second season get released?
interwebz search comes back with nuffin’. Late in 2018 was the closest anyone is willing to guess.
Damn. I was hoping you had info, because I haven’t found anything so far. I guess that’s why.
My guess is they’ll ruin it. At the end of season 1 there were no heroes. I liked that. Most shows can’t resist the temptation.
Is there at least a villain protagonist? If I can’t find at least one character I like, want to follow and am willing to root for I end up the way it was with Game of Thrones where I start asking “Why am I watching this? I don’t care about any of these people.”
The protagonists are plenty likable, just flawed and subject to all the personal failings that come with hubris, etc. It’s a very well done show.
The younger one seemed like they were suggesting he might be a serial killer himself.
eh, I think it was a little more subtle than that, more like he was realizing that there was less of a degree of separation between him and the guys they were interviewing than he’d like to admit.
And I think the panic attack at the end was realizing that he’d alienated enough people in his life to a degree that a psychotic killer in a mental institution was his most unstrained relationship.
That makes more sense.
That was my interpretation as well.
That, for my money, was the theme of the whole first season. “Old school” LEO philosophy had this black and white view of the world; good guys are good and bad guys are criminals. Bad guys are born that way, they’re destined to be bad and we can lock them away and forget about them without trying to understand anything about them.
Holden comes in and through his investigation finds out that he (and everyone for that matter) has a lot more in common with the bad guys than anyone ever thought. Getting in touch with his Jungian dark side pulled back the curtain and revealed the shades of gray.
That’s probably the best synopsis of the show I’ve read.
Exactly. You don’t know if Holden is a hero to root for or a villain protagonist.
I hte shows that make government employees out to be heroes to root for, just smacks of statist propaganda. We all know government employees are more likely to be villain than hero. I only watched Mindhunter because of a Glib recommendation and nearly gave up because it looked like they were setting Holden up to be a hero. The networks probably rejected the show because the writers refused to be that lazy.
“Why am I watching this? I don’t care about any of these people.”
Which is why I bailed on Breaking Bad.
I like how the Psych consultant’s Professor domestic partner was insufferably pretentious and she dumped her ass. Bold storytelling for NF.
Tits were too small.
Nevermind, I was thinking Holden’s girlfriend, not the Psych consultant.
Carry on.
Still, in regards to Holden’s GF, that’s a hearty WOOD. Of course there is something about that actresses face/body type that gets my motor running.
I’m still stuck on watching The Office reruns. It ended just 5 years ago, but a ton of jokes on the show don’t seem like they would fly with the 20 year old crowd.
I find the fan theory that the Scranton Strangler was Toby the HR guy to be thoroughly convincing, and the kind of thing I would think the writers would get a kick out of sneaking in.
Killer Angels which was recommended to me here.
I spent Thanksgiving of 1993 in Madison, WI alone. I bought that on Wednesday evening and read 1 day per day over the holiday weekend. It was hard to stop at the end of Friday and Saturday.
That was a holiday tradition for me for a few years after, rereading every Thanksgiving (around travel and family, as that was the only one I ever spent entirely away).
Big fan of that one, myself.
1. Dictatorship of the Proletariat
2. ?
3. Utopia!
?Stalin?
If we use history as a metric then #2 is Re-education camps and mass graves
and then the capitalists ruin everything before they can get to #3
Currently working my way through Annals of America, Volume 3 –
STEVE SMITH CURRENTLY WORKING WAY THROUGH ANALS OF AMERICA.
AND ANALS OF CANADA AND MEXICO IN SPARE TIME.
STEVE SMITH CURRENT GOAL TO COMPLETE PAN-AM RAPE HIGHWAY. LOOKING FORWARD TO PUSHING THROUGH THE DARIÉN GAP.
AND BY PUSH THROUGH MEAN…
CROSS THE BORDER.
EVEN STEVE SMITH NOT SO OBVIOUS AS THAT.
STEVE SMITH OLD VETERAN OF BOARDER PENETRATION
STEVE SMITH TRAVEL BY ANY MEAN NECESSARY
…STEVE SMITH BEING THE ONE DOING FARC-ING IN COLUMBIA
You’re late to the party dipshit.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/418880-ryan-casts-doubt-on-bizarre-california-election-results
This is why Dems laser-focused their efforts in 2018 to winning as many Secretary of State positions as they could. “Improved Voter Access” = More Opportunities for Fraud.
It’s incredibly fishy that there were several Pachyderm victories in OC on election night, then all of a sudden, they’ve lost a week later!
They’re testing what they can get away with and, apparently, that’s a lot.
Does it happen the other way?
I don’t remember the GOP gaining from recounts, but that might not be accurate.
They never do. And, once again, because of Marquis of Queensbury rules, it would be ever so uncouth to even question the validity of our vaunted and uncorruptable election system. Notice how No-Nuts Ryan in the article above has to hedge and say he didn’t dispute the results, even though there’s every reason to.
This is one of the rare cases in which I think Federal regulation might be necessary. State-level election systems are a hodge-podge of conflicting methods that just confuses and opens the door for more funny business. And since one side is much more Machiavellian than the other, they’re the ones that will benefit the most. I think there should be some kind of universal standard following a thorough audit of all state-level systems. It won’t be perfect but something has to be done or the shit that went on in 2018 (and has probably been going on more subtly for decades) will get more and more brazen until the elections won’t matter at all anymore.
I don’t think the Republicans won a single race that wasn’t called on election day. That is highly suspicious and non-random. Either the Dems are cheating on late counted ballots, or the Repubs are cheating on election day, and I know (a) which is a whole lot easier and (b) which has a history of committing fraud.
I used to listen to Dennis Miller before my full libertarian awakening. One thing I often circle back to is a point Miller used to always make; maybe the best thing is to let the crazies crash the train before we get going to fast so there might be something left worth salvaging.
I look at the rank corruption of the DNC on all levels and think…..maybe……given the full reigns of power they’d horrify enough people to cause an opposite reaction and reverse our trajectory……
But that’s probably crazy talk.
I suspect they’d insted burn away enough of what accountability framework remains as to not let go without bloodshed.
‘Burn it down so they can be king of the ashes’ comes to mind. You’re probably right.
Give them power and they corrupt the institutions to keep themselves in power indefinitely. Temporary full control by the Left creates unfixable entrenched problems (see: Obamacare, the election system in Cali, Sanctuary cities, etc.). I wouldn’t matter if a majority are horrified, they’d no longer have the ability to do anything about it. Sanctuary cities are enormously unpopular, yet we can’t get rid of them. Why??
I agree with UCS, give them an inch and they’ll take a light-year. The only way to change anything after that is violence.
Like you said above, they are above all else Machiavellian, and watching their preferred policies fail only makes them double down and clamor for more control. My hope would be to see us decentralize like when the soviet union collapsed but it would probably ply out more like the French Revolution.
Absurd.
This is why Dems laser-focused their efforts in 2018 to winning as many Secretary of State positions as they could. “Improved Voter Access” = More Opportunities for Fraud.
There was a video leaked (I think) of the AZ Dem candidate for SecState pretty much saying that running the elections was key to winning the elections.
Just starting The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, which so far is delightful.
Sam is a missionary from the Church of Carnivorous Kinship (COCK)…
I take it the followers of this religion are known as Disciples In Carnivorous Kinship.
Caught in an eternal battle with the Pastors’ Union of Sanctified Sacred Youth.
What, not the Apostles of New Age, err, something starting with an “L”?
“Life?” “Love?” “Lebensraum?”
Lechery.
Or mebbe “licentiousness.”
Gotta get me some of that.
I finished the Fourth World series (what’s released so far), which all you people need to read. Yes, it’s YA but you know the author even if some say she’s….mythical.
I am now doing an Aubrey-Maturin reread. I forgot how pleasurable those books are. Best milfic of all time, I say, because Patrick O’Brian knows he doesn’t have to stick to a single plot. Hot blooded naval action? Sure. But he also does Regency Romance, spy story, tale of survival in the wilds and straight up comedy as needed.
That’s what I loved about them and they were unpredictable.
Disasters and good fortune could come out of nowhere.
Aubery and Maturin were very good at what they did, but that didn’t stop them from being put through some horrible situations and causing bad things to happen to themselves and others.
“Jack Aubrey is an idiot about money” is a plot that never fails to raise a smile to my face, even when it’s clear this will lead to horrible outcomes for a character I like.
Ditto “Maturin finds a new drug, gets addicted without noticing.”
Yep, and the bad puns were hilarious.
I laughed out loud when he “lifted Maturins heart” by showing him the carving of his initials and my wife asked why.
When I explained the joke, she gave me her patented “your wife married an idiot” look.
Earthquake in Anchorage.
7.0
https://www.adn.com/visual/photos/2018/11/30/photos-aftermath-of-the-70-earthquake-in-southcentral-alaska/
Sucks.
I’m about 3/4 through “The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness” by James Campbell. Its a good read about a remarkable man.
Off topic: All that sweet public money shoved into a pit.
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/failed-oregon-solar-equipment-plant-leaves-behind-millions-in-taxpayer-losses
A shocking waste of money in Oregon on a boondoggle that appeals to idiot fundy leftist religious prejudice is ignorance of basic laws of economics and physics? I’m appalled. I’d have never thought it could happen here!
>>In an audit of the company Oregon’s Secretary of State pointed out although “Multnomah County had the legal right to seize the borrower’s equipment for delinquent taxes,” it was unlikely to do so because the plant was heavily polluted with cadmium and hydrochloric acid.
but Green technology!!! /unicorn fart voice
RE: MUH LOW BURTH RAYTS MUH DEMUHGRAFIK CRYSIS
Given that citizens are, in reality, tax livestock, the tax farmers really have quite a problem on their hands when the livestock aren’t reproducing. Therefore, I predict we’ll see some pretty interesting pro-natalist policies coming down the pipe in the near future, especially given that second generation Hispanic immigrants (not so much Muslim immigrants) tend to have LBRs similar to that of long-term native citizens.
Nah, when funds run low it’s a lot easier to start talking wealth redistribution and purges.
Not really, like all the farmers, one way to adapt is to raise higher quality stock, getting more income per head. But, if tax farmers really were interested in maximizing the profits, they’d stop wasting money on non-producing stock and instead try to leverage whatever income can be extracted from them.
Now, proper tax-maximizing farmers like the ones in Europe? They already have a boatload of such policies. Their impact is…well, on one hand, the birth rates are still low. On the other, what would they be without said policies?
True. They have the benefit of being able to easily import zillions of MENA immigrants with generationally high fertility rates. I think they’ve refocused their efforts in that direction. Here in North America, we can only count on the Hispanics to pump ’em out for the first generation then it falls off. We can bring in “refugees” but that’s never going to be as effective as it is in Europe just due to geography. Novel strategies are needed.
Perhaps it won’t be too much longer until we see Big Government types actually jumping on the “reverse Roe v. Wade” bandwagon. After all, the Soviets had to reverse their policy of legalized abortion after about 25 years or so for just these reasons.
Yeah, no. Those MENA livestock are the low-quality I’m mentioning. You get no tax out of them since they operate in black markets, and you then pay for their upkeep unto the third generation (and going).
Something more like this is what I had in mind.
In America, there’s plenty of tax income to be harvested yet per cattle head. Just a simple 20% VAT would do wonders.
Or the Finnish Free Shit Package for every child.
It’s a dicey proposition; you gotta make sure what you’re offering is still far less than what you can get back.
Ah, but tax farmers just deliver the tax. How it’s spent is not their concern. As long as tax delivered this year is greater than tax delivered last year, their job is a success.
I asked a Finnish exchange student if her parents used the baby box as a crib, and she looked at me like I was an idiot.
That said, her parents still had the box stored away with some of her baby stuff.
She was funny. One of her comments in her first month here was something like, “No wonder Americans are fat. Food tastes good here.”
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? The livestock that pays the most taxes votes for the wrong party.
And the breeding stock that votes properly consumes more taxes than they produce.
Denmark is already doing that. (Chick is fine, by the way)
More money than sense.
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/payless-punks-vips-sells-discount-shoes-at-luxury-prices-at-fake-luxury-store/1629581611
Having read a little bit about Eat Move Sleep, I bought a copy to see if it would be appropriate for a family member or two. The thesis is essentially that nutrition, exercise and sleep hygiene are three legs of a stool. You do much better if all three are strong. It’s a super quick read and is probably a good book for some, but it’s fairly superficial.
Annually, when I sign up for the Bataan Memorial Death March, I typically buy a book or two about the atrocities in the Philippines. This year I read Last Man Out. I was familiar with the slaughter at Palawan and had even read a chapter or two in other books about it, but Last Man Out presents the massacre through the eyes of a small band of survivors.
Most of the book is devoted to how they got to where they were, including the various beatings and other ravages they and their fellow prisoners were subjected to. As I read these things I’m typically a little sick to my stomach. It’s not pleasant, but I have a crappy memory, so I to put up with a little discomfort to periodically refresh it.
For the last few years I’ve been fascinated with the Rust programming language. I’ve played around with it a tiny bit, but have decided to pursue contract programming in it, so it’s time to build a solid foundation. I’m really enjoying reading Programming Rust, but I’m glad I had taken time out to read (and do the exercises in) the first half of Haskell Programming From First Principles.
Who didn’t see this coming? Are there any adults left?
http://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/cleveland-radio-station-stops-playing-holiday-song-amid-me-too-movement
I’m thinking it’s more for publicity. They launched an online poll to see if they should keep the song or not. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever heard of the radio station, and I live here.
Probably so but you’re supposed to give the people what they want in the end, not stop playing a song that the audience wants you to keep playing by a 19 to 1 margin.
If it makes you feel better, the girlfriend went to the poll, and said only 5% of people wanted the song banned.
It would if I didn’t think all Christmas music should be banned, particularly that Feed the World song and anything by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Well, except the Chipmunks thing. Those are terrible.
Even Santa stole my whiskey? And I Don’t Believe in Santa Claus?
I love that song. I have several versions of it and I love them all.
Yeah, it’s a great song.
There is only one version.
Nope.
Grow up, Peter Pan!
I don’t know if this one’s believable.
*barfs*
It could be worse, though.
That was disgusting.
One more.
That one wasn’t bad.
From the comments for that song:
And woosh the joke goes over your head:
In the movie, there are two versions, one with the gender roles switched.
I sense there could be a large increase in female utilization of male prostitutes since regular doodz will be increasingly reluctant to actually approach women. Women, who have been brainwashed into thinking they need betas, will outsource their more primal carnal desires to pros.
Now might be the time to invest in male escort services.
Nah, bruv. Fifth Generation Dildos. AI, replacable skin-like coverings, and a gender studies lecture/affirmation through bluetooth headphones.
Why the fuck is this considered a holiday song? It’s fucking cold in Cleveland in June fer crissakes.
We’re in the midst of a heat wave right now. We’re supposed to be up in the 40’s this weekend! Time to ditch the jackets.
Youngsters have no fucking idea what that song is about.
There was a well-known joke when I was growing up: If a lady says no, she means maybe. If a lady says maybe, she means yes. If a lady says yes, she’s no lady.
Before the sexual revolution, single women were not “allowed” to consent. But that didn’t stop sex from happening. So excuses were needed to explain away what everyone wanted to do anyway. This song is about negotiation — coming up with the right excuse.
Yeap.
It was part of the romance. The negotiation, the uncertainty, the excitement.
Hook ups are fine, but the dance is better.
I agree. It’s a very romantic song.
Thing is, he’s trying to persuade her. He’s not attacking her.
The structure of the song is: Her “think of what people will say”; Him: “here is another excuse to stay”
“My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious” is a particularly brilliant line.
yes it is.
I think Feliz Navidad should be banned, as well as Mele Kalikimaka.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-gbeI0AFQ
Paging HM…
Wonderful Christmastime and Do They Know It’s Christmas too
Yes. We should make a list.
In the future, these will be known as “The Stupid Years.” Or, in a more frightening possibility, “The Last Golden Age.”
from CPRM’s comment at the top of the thread .
scratch that, since I chose a shitty site.
Try this .
I’m currently reading the wrapping of a pastry from Bauli.
‘Passion for bakery since 1922!’
That’s one stale pastry!
Mum, mum, mum.
I read this:
http://cdn.powerequipment.honda.com/pe/pdf/manuals/00X31V45A081.pdf
I also have been reading Ward, the sequel to Worm. Worm was great, but Ward is not nearly as appealing to me. The PoV character in the sequel has internalized the “victimhood gives status” mentality too common these days, and frankly it would be offputting even if this wasn’t a superhero story.
Nice. My 30+ year old John Deere probably has only a season or two left (runs great but parts are no longer available). That one is on my short list to replace it.
Why are snowblowers so gorram expensive? I can understand them costing twice what a lawmower would, but six times?
Its that Honda sticker that makes it worth 6x.
Also joystick chute control? Luxury!
I am on my third Honda mower. The other two are still running. Hondas are expensive, but worth every dime.
I think its been scripture for decades that nobody does small engines better.
Night 807. Getting closer.
Read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman in one day a few days ago.
Also read High Justice by Jerry Pournelle. That one had a hard time keeping my interest.
… Hobbit