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.
7d ago
· Edited 7d ago
I don't know what your wife or children or the general situation is like. Does she have a space she can go to and read a book or do something quietly? Do you? When do you have time to write on a message board?
On work-days my wife shares child care duties with her mother, and I sometimes drop in after work to take the kid out of depressed-couchbound-woman-land to hit the playground. When the child is in Kindergarten, my wife has half the day free to do as she please. And then she has pretty much the entire weekend off - seriously. Sometimes she does some light household work, but mostly she just cooks and then nothing. - , and from Friday evening to Sunday sleepytime it's dad time for as long as the kid is awake. She's pretty much like your older daughter: demanding of attention, always has her mind set on an activity or topic of conversation and tolerates no deviation from that, and can get very angry if she doesn't get her way. I guess that's how she keeps busy during weekdays, when everyone around her is trying as hard as they can to stare at their phones and forget their physical existence. On the weekends I make it very clear that it's dad-time. She gets attention all day long, no distractions, but she needs to play by Dad rules, which means no sweets, no screens, no screaming, being outdoors whenever possible and we get some chores done during the day. It works. We both have a good time, get things done, and for all that she gets to talk my ears off about volcanoes and the TV shows she watches with her mother and whatever imaginary game ruleset she just invented for the umptenth time in a day, but she has to do so while we get groceries, clean up the living room, or take a walk to check on what flowers are growing this time of the year, and sometimes those activities even break through and grab her attention and the topic of conversation shifts to what we're doing.
I have time to post on messageboards either after getting her to sleep, at which point I should be sleeping myself, or during work-days. Such as now.
I'll readily grant that our situations are not comparable. My observation is simply this: Trying to run and hide from the child to stare at a screen instead makes people miserable. Maybe alter the structure of your days or week to make a little room for yourself? Get your husband to take the kids for a while?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
Hm. Germany is probably simply behind the curve, then. I'll grant that the identifiable latter-day hippies are almost all pretty damn old by now.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
Tried it, hated the combat. "Use a dozen skills to completely cheese the action economy, then stack a million buffs on your guys and pulverize the enemy in one turn. Else, die.", repeat ad nauseum for every fight.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
· Edited 6d ago
Tried No Rest For The Wicked, a top-down ARPG soulslike. Nice actually. No real penalty for dying, so it's relaxed even though the bossfights are damn tough. It's in EA and there's a big update with a wipe coming up at the end of April, so I quit playing for now and will pick it up again after that. A little annoying, but that's what I get for EA.
A friend of mine asked me to play Space Marine 2 with him. We used to play various games back when, including Factorio and high-ish level Darktide, and we've always conflicted on how challenging and complex a game should be. I like mine to be barely beatable and only if you carefully theorycraft for an hour before playing and do an analysis session afterwards, and he likes to win by showing up. So Space Marine 2, a game so shallow and casual that I fall asleep thinking about it. He won, I guess. We even play on the lowest difficulty. Can't recommend, it's absolute console trash, but what don't I do for friendship.
That same friend also gave me a gift copy of Selaco, a boomer shooter. It's alright. The maps are too confusing for me, though.
And I'm further refining my playstile in Nebulous: Fleet Command. By relying on my allies to supply an Intel Center and getting rid of most of my Damage Control, I was able to free up enough budget on my three destroyers to give each a VLS with six cells of large, decently-built hybrid missiles. Too easily softkilled to take down capital ships or fleets, but just right for taking out lone scouts that might spot my origami ships. Switched to drives that offered better power economy and top speed but gutted my angular acceleration so that I now ned to pre-aim my spinal weapons well in advance, and I used the extra power to combine goood RADAR, EWAR, Fire Control and high-powered Point Defence on top of heavily-buffed Beam Cannons all in one, and all in the green power-wise. It's a sneaky fleet that can hide in plain sight, shoot down spotters at range, kill anything within 6km (provided I aim at it five minutes in advance), and evaporates as soon as it's spotted. Oh why can't I ever find anyone to play Nebulous with me...
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
Like 4Chan dubs? Nice.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
I read my aunt's old poetry album from the 60s. Rural Germany, mind you. The poetry was entirely of the wisdom kind; dozens of people all writing down exhortations along the lines of
- Be pious and pray fervently.
- You live for others, not for yourself.
- Work hard to give God something to work with on your behalf.
- When life sucks, suck it up.
- Be glad at all times, even when life is hard.
- Remember the people around you, and the good times you shared.
- Honor your parents, they won't be around forever.
- Speak softly or don't speak at all.
- Do somethign with your life that you are good at.
It struck me as very different from what one would hear as poetic advice nowadays. Not exactly surprising insights, I suppose.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
Recently finished Epitaph, by Mary Doria Russell. Competently written, interesting subject matter (the life of Wyatt Earp from the perspective of Josephine Marcus), and maybe it's confirmation bias but I thought her political inclinations showed a little even though she made an honest effort to be impartial.
Read Swords and Deviltry, the first book of Fritz Leiber's dealing with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Entertaining, do not regret the read, but not sure if I really gained anything.
Currently reading The Worm Ourobouros, by Eric Rücker Eddison. Beautiful language, refreshingly antiquated world-view, but the world-building leaves a lot to the imagination. Or maybe that's not even a but; but actually works in its favor.
Next up: Ninti's Gate, by Matthias Pierce, one of the few youtubers I actually enjoy. Let's see whether he's any good as an author.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
Not really. Perhaps I misdescribed it. It's just small things I come across that are interesting to me and might be interesting to some mottizens. It's an offer of vaguely cruious information; not a prompt.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
7d ago
I often have small thoughts I'd like to use as discussion prompts on the Motte, but that aren't explicit questions (for the SSQS thread like this one here) or really suitable for top-level culture war posts. Could I attempt to open something like a "Small observation Saturday" thread, or is that just directionless low-effort posting unsuitable for the Motte?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
9d ago
AFAICT, the hippies and their ideological descendants have convinced themselves that the quasi-commies are their best allies against the crypto-fascists and predatory capitalists who, as they imagine, directly oppose them.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
9d ago
What exactly was the insult?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
9d ago
· Edited 9d ago
I suspect this will all go nowhere because no matter how gently the criticism is phrased, who would want to stand up on the other side, in favor of equity-based weeding? Who's going to take that stand? I doubt we'll find anyone here.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
9d ago
Yeah, I'm not arguing. I just feel like after decades of that being water to swim in, I'd like to know why.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
· Edited 9d ago
IIRC there was a Scott article or Mottepost a few years ago about how forced labor is generally unproductive because the overhead costs exceed the value produced by unmotivated and unskilled workers? Not sure how much of that is motivated reasoning, but I'm willing to credit it.
Does anyone know which text I mean?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
I have to stop writing now, because my daughter has followed me through a couple of rooms, to talk about ladybugs. She has, as I wrote this, read out loud all the letters on my keyboard, asked for a dry erase marker, asked for a drink, and talked for several minutes about ladybugs. She is, of course, more important than writing on message boards. But I am tired. I'm not sure how to make things better and less exhausting.
Why are you writing on a messageboard at all while your daughter is around?
My wife also does that - face glued to her phone while the kid is around and requests attention - and unsurprisingly she reports that parenting is exhausting and unfulfilling. Now your case may not be nearly as bad, but I'm seeing a very obvious mistake in trying to combine screen-time and child-time.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
Why are "Status Quo", "Status Quo from the next town over" and "Hyperbole" the only viable options?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
That sounds a lot like @FCfromSSC. We already have him, and I don't presume to do his job better than he, so I guess I'll do my part by shushing up.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
· Edited 10d ago
I can only interpret as a deep insecurity* that letting the experiment run will actually disprove, rather than prove their ideas.
I don't think so. Rather the opposite really - true believer leftists are very secure in their belief of the correctness of their ideas, to the point where experiments are in fact immoral, since people will end up suffering from the wrong solutions, and unnecessary because the good leftists already know the correct solutions.
Does this sound boo-outgroup? I'm serious, as an ex-leftist who spent decades in a leftist bubble and still lives next door to it. Experimentation may seem like a golden compromise to someone with enough epistemic humility, but epistemic humility is completely absent from the water the left swims in. They know. They know what the problems and the solutions are, and experimentation can only be worse than doing the obviously correct thing.
There's also a practical, political reason not to allow this - they have long-marched through most institutions; why ever give up now?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
Luckily, that kind of propaganda is only a small subset of the children's books available in Germany.
Most is still propaganda of the sort of "be a good little meek cheek-turner", "work smart, not hard, or don't work at all" and "a just-so solution will come to you", or ethically incomprehensible gibberish. And why, just why, must nineteen out of twenty children's books feature anthropomorphic animals? It's not a new trend, I didn't mind it as a kid, and I don't want to make a big deal out of it now, but it does frustrate me.
Other than those, we subsist on children's books from 30+ years ago. Those are far from perfect too, of course, but at least you needn't worry about the very modern maladies. Something something C.S. Lewis.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
10d ago
I agree with this mod action and I also agree with @SteveAgain's sentiment.
What would be a rules-compliant way of expressing violent disgust?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
11d ago
The 20% who voted for the AfD, the 28.5% who voted for the CDU given its campaign promises, and the 4% who voted FDP...
I'm not saying that these are the people and others are not. I'm also not saying that the CDU traded poorly on Realpolitik. I'm saying that the CDU is extremely brazen in how it goes back on its promises, and that this gives credence to the far-right's usual accusations that no matter which establishment party you vote for, you're getting the same policies either way.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
11d ago
· Edited 10d ago
Related to @IGI-111 's post: https://www.themotte.org/post/1754/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/310065?context=8#context.
This is why I've always thought "party switch" arguments to be sophomoric. Politics is about coalitions. Any glance at any country's political history would tell you that political positions are driven by the expediencies of retaining a coalition that can maintain power, and literally nothing else.
After the recent federal elections, the victorious conservative CDU are looking to give themselves financial leeway by undoing the the so-called "debt brake", written into the constitution, which strictly limits how much debt the government can build up to balance its budget. In order to do so, they called upon the old parliament to quickly push through a slew of constitutional changes including the relaxation of the debt rules. In order to collect the required two-thirds majority, the CDU has given the Greens a constitutional commitment to climate neutrality by 2045.
In order to govern, the CDU aims to form a coalition with the Social-Democrats. And those have now announced their demand: Unconditionally legalize abortion. A trifle compared to what the greens got, who will not even be part of the coalition.
During the election the CDU played the part of the culture-warriors standing up for conservative Germans. They broke taboos to demand a crackdown on immigration, painted the Greens as agents of deindustrialization and poverty, and made a stand on balancing the budget without further debt. But that was then, and now it's time to jettison the drama in favor of getting along with everyone except the nationalist AfD who, I remind you, received the second-largest share of votes.
This is pretty much telling the stupid neo-nazi tinfoil hats that yes, they were right, the establishment is entirely willing to conspire against the people, democracy is a sham and the constitution is a worthless piece of paper.
Looking forward to a great four years.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
11d ago
This feels so obvious to point out that I suspect I'm missing your point, but here goes: The Germany of a hundred years ago is not the same as Germany today.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
11d ago
Keep in mind that weaponized emotional appeals- including appeals to sympathy for social compact violators and shaming campaigns against those not showing enough pity towards preferred beneficiaries- have been a hallmark of the American culture war for decades now, and which the current political context is part of a political revolt against.
I'm no American, so feel free to ignore me, but are you sure about this? Is there a political revolt against those kinds of tactics, or is it merely a political revolution that aims to switch out the old good/bad distinction for a new set?
A sufficiently well-practiced performance will be indistinguishable from genuine belief. TDS, from what I observe in Germany, is entirely performative if only because Germans have very little to fear from Trump yet still ape the same kind of condemnatory panic that leftist Americans adopt. Overstating the danger is a form of virtue signalling analogous to claiming that video games cause satanism, or similarly absurd claims. It's considered good form among humans to exaggerate the danger posed by one's enemies in order to rally around a common friend/enemy distinction.
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