netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
It took me faaaar too long to realize how poorly Hearts of Iron's AI handles convoys. I can't imagine what it's mangling on the less visible fronts.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
What, no love for Deep Purple?
edit: wow Golden Brown does not scan well at all. Agonizing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Okay, there's a local radio station which does user suggestions on Sunday nights, and I think I have my submission.
Previously I was going to go for something more folksy.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Less sneering, please. Regardless of how you feel about the order, you should be civil about it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I was actually thinking of pulp magazines. But yeah, there was definitely some demand for word counts.
I suppose I don’t actually know what the common pricing models were for whole novels in the 1800s and 1900s.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
The physical media of film made their runtimes readily available, and purchasers had a vested interest in learning that information since they were scheduling showings or programming.
Neither really held for books prior to the word processor. Well, maybe for pay-by-the-word magazine authors.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Yes and no.
It’s a different approach to triggering the sense of “coolness” which underlies a lot of fiction genres.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Nah, the Silmarillion is still closer to wuxia.
The strongest heroes are still credibly threatened by a sufficiently large pile of orcs. Their greatest deeds are fundamentally mortal achievements, not cosmic ones, with one exception: the creation of the Silmarils.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Yeah, getting hit with a VD is a natural fear at plenty of college parties.
And I can’t wait to accuse other posters of promoting prostitution!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Do you know where I can read such an updated 40MC translation?
I started it ages ago and was enjoying the premise, but wow.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
There’s a difference between strategy and reflex. I think what you’re seeing from Hollywood is the latter. Mass media hasn’t yet come to terms with the fact that it’s Balkanizing.
Producers want to be culturally relevant. Audiences want to feel like they’re witnessing the next big thing. Both are measuring success by the moviegoing culture of their childhoods. Neither has adapted to the realities of modern movie distribution, which has made movies much more accessible but also softened their cultural impact.
The easiest way for producers to defend their egos (and budgets) is cherry-picking. Conveniently, technology has also increased the accessibility of reviews, diluting the influence of movie critics. As it turns out, it’s much easier to discredit Internet randos than critics with skin in the game. “Racism” is occasionally a convenient way to gerrymander a line around the loudest critics of a film.
Audiences buy in whenever it is in their own interest. The obvious examples are all-female reboots and 80s nostalgia grabs, but I’ll add another genre: the Christian drama. It doesn’t matter if Fireproof is critically panned; it fills a market niche. They’ve got their own awards and their own box-office success.
Hollywood doesn’t want to play to that model because it spent so long as the cultural touchstone. Hence, racism.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Couldn’t say. In a rare exercise of self-awareness, I never actually told a doubter to stick with it through Arc 8. But if someone had read that far and then asked if it were going to get better, I’d confidently tell them no.
Worm had me from the beginning. It was also my gateway from Potter fanfic to a broader world of rationalfic, and then the LessWrong and Scott spheres. So I guess I was pretty invested.
I do think it had the Tvtropes page that said something like, “for those skeptical of high school fiction, it quickly moves on to the far more pleasant setting of a bombed-out city.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
For the optical, wire-guided kind, probably more than $5K, but much less than the TOW.
For the bargain versions deployed in Ukraine? Maybe even less.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
We already had those, they were called TOW Missiles!
More seriously, I get the impression we are working on plenty of counter-UAS weapons. Military procurement is just slow.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Agreed. To the point where you should probably spoiler-tag that last sentence. The catch is that those epilogues have completely different valence depending on the book.
So far, I’ve read Phlebas and Windward, Player, and Use. I’ve got copies of a couple later ones, and I’m consciously avoiding Excession.
My working theory is that the novels can be divided by whether Banks was using the Culture as a stand-in for American imperialism or American hegemony. The epilogues in “imperialism” books are awkward because it’s not like they were hiding their message. The ones in “hegemony” books work a little better, since they
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I enjoyed it, but this was long enough ago that I can’t remember most of the plot beats. I don’t believe there was an obvious inflection point aside from the finale.
Contrast something like Worm, where I can comfortably say “push through the first arc!” Or “If you got to Leviathan and weren’t sold, it’s not for you.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
For what it’s worth, SQS does explicitly allow Culture War topics. It’s just a relaxation of the effort rules.
So there’s nothing wrong with this post, but also, it would totally qualify as a good CW top-level.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I had this experience too! Sinus infections like clockwork every spring, awful green mucus, and a sense of head pressure that I never recognized until it was gone. And it wouldn't go away on its own.
Eventually I saw an ENT specialist who said something like "wow your turbinates are obstructing drainage, so whenever you get a cold, it triggers a sinus infection." No, I'm not sure how the pathology works. But the solution was a minor surgery to deflate two of those turbinates.
Point is, it's probably worth talking to a specialist.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
No…why would they be? I think a security relationship is basically a non-starter, and outside of that, Russia doesn’t really have anything to offer us.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Not that I’m biased or anything, but it’ll probably be good for her. The opportunity to plow through multiple volumes of Potter probably has a lot to do with my later taste for chunky slabs of fantasy.
I'll be damned. I figured Napoleon III was too busy worrying about the Prussians to go after the colonies. That alone makes this more plausible.
Speaking of Prussia, what happened to Wilhelms I and II? Did Germany unify and end France's continental ambitions? Did we get any world wars?
I think those determine the fate of British and French colonies more than anything else. Depending on how the late 1800s go, you might even manage to dodge macro-scale communism, too.
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