Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
"So rowed they till day broke, and a light wind sprang up fresh and keen. Juss waked, and stood up to scan the gray glassy surface of the sea spread to vast distances where sky and water faded into one. Astern, great clouds bridged the gates of day, boiling upwards into crags of wine-dark vapour and burning plumes of sunrise. In the stainless spaces of the sky above these sailed the horned moon, frail and wan as a white foam-flower blown from the waves."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
Multiple reasons that I know of.
There is a significant degree of uncertainty in interpreting the primary sources. The language is more than archaic, the wording may be unclear, imagery if present at all only presents one still shot of what might be a complex sequence, there is extensive implicit contextual information that modern readers simply do not possess, and there is always a risk that the document in question is merely meant as an aid to an actual flesh-and-blood instructor rather than as a standalone manual. So after reading the text, you need to experiment a lot to find out what actually works in a given situation, and then you vary the parameters a little and find out that the technique you just reconstructed stops working when the distance, relative positioning, enemy posture, momentum, body size differential or god-knows-what differs a little from your previous setting. So while you absolutely can have fun and learn a lot from doing this kind of archaeology, it's not necessarily a straight road from there to becoming tournament-effective.
And even beyond that, we do not always know for sure what type of fighting a given source describes. It could be for war, for self-defence, for regulated judicial duels, for nonlethal competition, it could be for armored or unarmored or even horseback fighting but forget to mention it, etc. Regarding historical tournaments, we also don't know much about what historical competitive fencing looked like, what rules and regulations they employed. From depictions, we deduce that medieval sports fencers generally wore thick everyday clothing, but no face protection, so either risks were significantly higher for them than for moderns with all their fancy protective equipment, or their rules somehow resulted in more restrained fighting, or they just shrugged off broken bones and lost eyes even though their livelihoods depended on them. Obviously if you argue that the fencing manuscripts are for judicial, martial or self-defence fighting rather than competitions, then you're suddenly playing a completely different game.
Modern tournaments are quite possibly more forceful than historical unarmored competitions, but at the same time modern tournament fencers can make many more mistakes and take greater risks than someone could in a self-defence situation.
We're not necessarily better nowadays than people were 600 years ago; there's just a massive gulf of time between them and us and little information that made it through. So instead of trying in vain to accurately reconstruct what they did, we focus on what works nowadays, which we can actually get actionable feedback on.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
4hr ago
Fair in theory, but has this happened at least once?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
5hr ago
Germany: The new federal government coalition has formed, and it is the maximally unsurprising fifth iteration of a Conservative CDU/CSU plus Social Democrat SPD compromise deal.
Also Germany: The populist-right AfD is now matching the CDU in polls at 24%.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
5hr ago
How do pirates credibly threaten a specific ship and get them to pay up with a missile 500km away? What's the procedure here? Has this actually happened?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
8hr ago
· Edited 8hr ago
There are many people out there doing sports already. They advertise, too, and are very open to newcomers. Possibly the easiest avenue for communicating-with-people out there.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
No, please keep it up, it reminds me of there being some things I wanted to do. An identity apart from my daily troubles. I dread the day you refuse.
Pretty much a continuation of last week. I concluded five days of taking care of literally everything and my wife then insisted that, now that I had proven that the kid can indeed go to kindergarten if only there is a will, she would take over that responsibility again. So far, at least with her mother's aid, she's been doing it. I'm not sure that's remotely enough for me at this point, but I appreciate the effort. On Sunday I went to a HEMA tournament and came home with a busted knee and a bruised shoulder, but it was fun. This week I spent some hours visiting a potential new kindergarten close to work, and the little one seemed to like it (though by now she likes her old one, too), but they pretty much told us they had no spots left. Apart from that I had to put extra hours into work, went to an office party, aaand...yeah, all blogpost, no tinkering. I apologize for this waste of thread-space.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
Alright, revise my post to "eradicate any human presence on the coast of yemen or occupy it indefinitely". Or what exactly are you suggesting? Patrolling the waters to intercept all boats that might conceivably contain pirates, check them for weapons, then detain the armed ones - forever? And intercept any missiles through technological means? AFAIK (which is little) that's close to what's already being done, maybe throwing more money at that could indeed tighten the mesh until shipping can return to normal. But would that be a permanent solution?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
His argument RE: houthis seems simple and obvious: No feasible amount of spending can obviate the need to commit to either a strategy of eradicating yemen entirely or one of putting it under indefinite occupation.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Because nobody ever had a war forced on them against their will, or because unconditional surrender is always an option?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
For one side.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
1d ago
Easy: Stop paying Bürgergeld and similar incentives to parasitism.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2d ago
Possibly quite a bit, but I have no control group. It's a short read though, and you can get a kindle sample for free, or listen to half the audiobook for free on youtube, so I'd say try that and see whether it works for you.
There's also an earlier Brigador novel that Pilgrim is a sequel to. Reading that first might make sense. It's also very good.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2d ago
· Edited 2d ago
Thanks for pointing it out, though I was aware. I just allow myself some Germanisms from time to time.
Edit: Does this sound like a lame excuse? It does. It does.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
2d ago
I've never had a union job, so I don't really have any insight into how the sausage is made here.
What I can confirm is that our unions are generally not very confrontational. Compared to the French, they're docile doormats. It's mostly public transport that strikes, i.e. rails and bus drivers, and the strikes are announced in advance, short in duration, and then negotiations drag on for a few years before the union employees get a one or two percent raise and some other nominal benefit. Other unions don't really strike a lot; they mostly just protest for this or that.
I'd say our unions are fairly cooperative overall.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
My brain looked at the person depicted and how they were presented on the papyrus and said "that's Amenophis the First" despite not knowing a lick of Hieroglyphics.
Please explain. What led you to the conclusion?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
I read "Brigador Killers: Pilgrim" last week. It was phenomenal in that it completely avoided practically all of the tropes that usually annoy me.
See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F199RDCY for the ebook version.
Much recommended if you can stomach reading a novel set in a video game universe.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Yes, those specialists, hard workers who do useful work, exist, but they are relatively rare and their numbers are dwindling. Most earn less, and do less useful work, and do it worse. Our material conditions are good, overall, but at the cost of burning down the commons by taxing productive members of society and growing ourselves an ever-larger underclass or outright parasites. We're being kept afloat by hyper-industrious boomers and those few who follow their example, and by leftover wealth from better years, and we have absolutely no perspective on improving our competitive position, social cohesion or working culture.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
· Edited 3d ago
Alright, here's my take as someone who sees everything as downstream from culture, be that right or wrong.
Germany had a good formula for dealing with the post-war years, minus the bits where we got over a manpower shortage by importing totally-not-permanent-guest workers from abroad. It worked in a non-globalized world with fixed borders, in which Germans unquestioningly stuck to German ways of doing things and accepted German standards and expectations as practically god-given and naturally correct. Naturally you'd get a job - any job if you can't get the one you want - and work for a living and deliver high-quality work; what kind of asshole would do any less and leave others to pick up the slack?
Obviously this state of affairs has changed.
- Germans have by all means adopted the axiom that anyone who doesn't go to Gymnasium (the top tier of our three-tier secondary school system) is a failure. Not universally and necessarily that one must go to university and study, though very many do subscribe to that view, but there is a very noticeable class divide between those who went for the Gymnasium white-collar track and everyone else. Blue-collar work is lumped in with the asocials and unemployed, with barely-integrated immigrants and with intolerably backwards troglodytes who do and say and think all the wrong things.
- Several generations of unchecked immigration, large-scale failure to force immigrant assimilation, and the wilful destruction of the Leitkultur have turned the lower classes into a fucking mess. Half of them are effectively foreigners who are just here because it pays, and they work only as much as absolutely necessary and only to such standards as they cannot get away with ignoring, and if possible they will work not at all. Welfare makes it possible. And the other half is ethnic Germans who wish they were migrants because being German isn't cool anymore, and why work hard and try to sustain society when everyone is just looking out for themselves? It's a race to the bottom of who can be the biggest defect-bot. And the third half is basically balkanians who are ferried here in bulk to do work that Germans and immigrants alike think themselves too good for.
- Meanwhile, the middle and upper class try their damndest to ignore what's becoming of the country while fantasizing about emigrating to doesn't-even-matter-where.
Germany got nothing right.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Is it just me, or is it normal for babies to cry very loudly right before they go to sleep for the night? Our baby cries for maybe 5-10 minutes in the evening as she drifts off to sleep.
Ours used to make quite a big deal of going to sleep, with plenty of noise, but she's grown out of it by about 3yo.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3d ago
Outside of this, western game companies tended to have incredibly unimaginative narratives. This friendly white man turns out to be the actual evil bad guy all along! This orc is actually the poor oppressed woobie. Etc etc etc.
Also, evergreens like "The church is actually the bad guys!" and "The bad guys have no reedeming features whatsoever!".
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
8d ago
Interesting idea, but no. Too distasteful, and I'll have a hard time telling my daughter why she shouldn't if I lead by bad example.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
8d ago
· Edited 8d ago
It is kinda wholesome tbh. I enjoy the extra time with the little one, who is actually 100% cooperative when she's alone with me. As opposed to the screaming obstruction she turns into in her mother's hands. According to my wife that's because with her she's not afraid of being honest, whereas with me she's terrified into obedience. Screw that view. Conservative parenting fucking works, and to hell with self-sabotaging housewives. As if a kid being turned into a dissolute, undisciplined third-generation depressive whose only aspirations in life are sugar and screentime were somehow preferable because it means nobody has to ever buckle down and do anything they don't like.
We spend pretty much the entire weekend at the playground, and are looking forward to summer, which we intend to spend entirely at the pool, like we did last year. Anyone who tells me that this is somehow worse than keeping her locked up indoors and telling her to let the adults stare at their phones is full of shit.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
8d ago
I had one of those melatonin sprays a few years ago. Not sure if it did anything, but I guess it's a good idea to try that first. Worth an attempt. Thanks!
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
8d ago
Can someone recommend sleeping pills (I assume pills are the conventional form) that work with a minimum of side effects and/or long-term damage?
Lately I've been alternating between nights of 12 hours of sleep, and others with pretty much none. Right now I'm at two all-nighters in a row. This is a little unusual for me, but I can't afford to be groggy all day long, so I'd like to get back on a solid schedule by any means necessary. Any advice appreciated.
I'd argue the opposite. If you break some fingers or a rib in sparring, or sprain your ankle, then that doesn't at all impair your ability to drive or ride the subway to your office job and interact, perhaps a little more slowly than usual, with your computer / papers / coworkers. Plus, nowadays you can just take sick leave in many western countries.
If your livelihood depends on your motor abilities, you'll probably be less rather than more reckless.
OTOH, people back then were probably more tolerant of pain in general.
More options
Context Copy link