FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
15hr ago
That's sort of my point. In 1954 you have this established idea of the story, and you can play with that in important ways, and then after it's established you can get a big kick out of it, really play with audience expectations.
Once subversion becomes your expectation, it's eye-roll inducing.
I often wonder how Tolkien's readers would have thought about the great Elf-Human romance subplots. Beren and Luthien, Aragorn and Arwen, these were (for Tolkien) Big Deals. Then every fantasy writer afterward did the same thing, to the point where if you have a human and elves, you know they're gonna bone, and if the setting allows cross-breeding any RP ruleset needs to figure that there's going to be halfsies running around in every combination imaginable. But the first time that happens, it's a big deal! It's epic!
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
16hr ago
What's going on here? Is my theory of mind about Alvin Bragg off the mark?
I wonder if a lot of this is the aftermath of the Daniel Penny acquittal: intentionally aim low to get a conviction rather than shooting for the moon and getting egg on your face.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
16hr ago
It's a great line, the first time you hear it. Like maybe in 1954 when LOTR came out. By the fifth time it comes up in a book, it's a cliche, this is actually exactly how it goes in the stories, because this is what all the stories do these days. The story was always going to go exactly this way.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
17hr ago
I'm unfamiliar with it, would you recommend him? I'm on kind of a fantasy kick, I want literary junk food, but the quality of some of this just drives me off.
I'm not against strong female characters, even in a patriarchal setting, I think that female agency exists and is often underestimated in patriarchal settings! I even think you can do ye olde feminist trope well with the right context created.
What bugs me about Abercrombie is the unevenness: there's casual sex, and casually strong women, but then there's also "oh this can't be you're a commoner and I'm a noble!"
For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
19hr ago
I was in the mood for cheap fantasy and a lot of people recommended Joe Abercrombie's First Law series as being really good. And it's not that bad, I got midway through the third book so it can't have been that painful, but it's reminding me of the degree of schlock that exists out there in the world, that I haven't really interacted with.
The tone is hopelessly GrimDerp. On the one hand Abercrombie wants to have a brutal world where people are constantly torture-murdered for no reason by mysterious government agencies, a cynical "gritty realism" where characters on a DnD adventure say things like "This wasn't how it went in the stories!" On the other hand, everything is super lightweight, with no effort at realism or serious effort at world building or character creation. Religion is supposed to be a scam, I think, but there's no effort at actually building a religious foundation to the work. The world is weirdly modern, with "bathrooms" and dentists, but no real attention is given to what level of development exists or doesn't exist in the setting.
Characters have no consistent values. Sex is post-Sexual Revolution casual but look out oh no there's the medieval patriarchy, but also characters don't actually do anything interesting when confronted with it they just kind of shrivel. The women are too open and powerful and feminist, but supposedly acknowledged to be exceptional but we don't see any other women so... He wants to create complex characters that do bad things sometimes but also have heroic qualities, but misses the mark, the sins don't have much weight and the struggles feel fake as a result. The best books that use grimdark settings present us with likeable characters that we identify with, that act according to their own internal sense of right and wrong with a consistent moral compass, then deliver a result that is so brutal and discordant that it creates psychic discomfort in the reader and makes you think.
The writing is idiomatic to modern English. The "brutish uncivilized northern barbarians" will use phrases like "That's the point of fucking exercise." There's no real dialect within the text across different regions, other than the fantasy-Africans using the racial slur "pink" for the fantasy-Europeans, as in "I'm stuck here with this group of pinks" or "you don't know what you're talking about, pink;" which might be my favorite racial slur for white people of all time.
The example that finally got me to give up on the third book was this: a character becomes king through a series of completely unforeshadowed unlikely coincidences. He gets an arranged marriage because, you know, of course he does. His wife, on their wedding night, refuses him, knees him in the testicles, and makes clear she will never sleep with him. And it's very confusing to me why he doesn't rape her, or at least consider it and give a reason why he can't. The setting has been persistently grimdark up to this point, and we're dealing with a feudal patriarchy in which this marriage was arranged, the character himself is shown to be of questionable moral fiber at numerous points. But then his wife refuses him on his wedding night and he just...tolerates it? This is what I mean when I say creating a morally grey-dark grey grimdark universe can create an interesting values dissonance, how does one deal with a refusing wife when one's marriage is a political creation to begin with? Is it, in fact, the king's duty to rape his wife and seek to produce an heir? Alternatively, he can deal with the political consequences of an annulment, which could be severe but are necessary if she won't do her wifely duty. What doesn't work is telling me, the reader, that the young king just sits there and stews. That dog don't hunt.
Anyway it's fine enough as a book if you want schlock, but I forgot how much schlock there was in the world. And it's making me think about the recent discourse in themotte about "female characters" and similar, in that so much of complaint about the lack of quality representation of such-and-such is that people read garbage and call it literature. There's great genre fiction, but there's also so much junk, and this isn't even close to the junkiest junk, and I think that the complaints about things like "rounded female characters" are a matter of expecting genre junk to be literature.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
And I'm pointing out that out of the four sports you list
Hockey, soccer, basketball and rugby
Hockey and Basketball are both in varying crises of audience engagement, while Soccer and Rugby have never conquered American territory already committed to their sports despite billions of dollars invested in the process. People have predicted that the more action packed sports would surpass the traditional American sports for generations now, to say nothing of the various other sports stood up as more exciting modern games for the modern man. Pardon me while I head to the local Jai Alai game, lucky I was able to swap my professional lacrosse tickets to a buddy for these.
One can stand up a just-so argument for why a sport is boring that will feel super intuitive to people who don't like the sport. The existence of these arguments, or how good they feel to you as an intuitive matter, have little or no predictive value for the performance of that sport over the next several decades.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
3d ago
Kamala Harris could have made attack ads against Trump [on foreign policy].
She really couldn't do that. Because ((assuming Trump had a sufficiently coherent view of his own foreign policy beliefs that he more-or-less knew that he'd be bombing Iran within a year or so of returning to office)) Trump simply lied about that intention, saying repeatedly that there would be no new wars, that Kamala in fact was the one that would start a war with Iran and get us into World War Three.
The alternative thesis, that Trump is so inconsistent in his foreign policy beliefs that he sort of stumbled into the war with Iran so he wasn't lying about his intention he was simply unable to carry it out, is too insulting to Trump to be taken seriously outside of MSNBC, and cashes out to the same thing as lying anyway.
There exists no subset of Republican voters that will be so offended by Trump refusing to commit to bombing Iran or supporting Israel during the election that it would harm his chances, while there is a subset of Democratic voters that will be so offended by a heel-face turn against trans rights that it would harm a Democrat's chances. That's the difference.
I think a more appropriate apples-to-apples question would be something along the lines of "Are you categorically opposed to war against Iran?" Certainly there are a lot of Americans who are categorically opposed to transing of children under any circumstances.
A stronger argument might be this poll showing just 42% support and 56% opposition to using US troops to defend Israel from an Iranian attack. That gets pretty close to categorical opposition.
Polling only ever gives you broad stroke ideas, specificity is impossible. I don't think we need to ask the categorical question here because this particular war with Iran is pretty general in its execution: Iran wasn't really doing anything in particular to trigger this war that Iran hasn't been doing for twenty years, Netanyahu and Trump just happened to pick this particular time to do it. None of the justifications offered publicly for this war are any more or less persuasive today or in March than they were in 2024, 2018 or 2012. Probably moderately less persuasive to the public than they would have been in 2006.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
3d ago
I like tge game, but if you’re not used to turn-based play where you get time to set everything up 4 times and run the play to see what happens, it’s kinda boring and I think it makes the games longer than they need to be.
And if you're not used to Soccer, where there's only maybe three goals a game and another three serious chances and the rest is just cardio, it's boring. And if you're not used to basketball, where leads are transitory and the points barely feel like they matter until the fourth quarter, it can feel boring. Boring is in the eye of the beholder, it's silly to pretend that something that people pay money to watch is inherently "boring."
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
3d ago
Skateboarding back in the days of the X-Games I was addicted to; and I used to skate when I was a teenager, along with a younger cousin of mine.
Is skateboarding still a real thing? When I was a kid it was at the peak where it had been domesticated enough that skate brands and stores and whatnot were everywhere aesthetically, but it wasn't so dangerous that people got arrested. Now it mostly just feels like another kind of gymnastics, with classes and parks and camps and instructors.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
Ooooh that's the one! Send out a flyer encouraging people to tithe 10% for Israel, as trump linked pastors have urged!
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
I agree, the real Ramaswamy strategy is too politically incorrect to report accurately. Vivek isn't saying "I think she's a liar." He's pattern matching "woman with estranged mother who married a molestor stepdad = Trailer trash broken home loser with bad genetics."
It's a profoundly Unchristian attack vector, which I think will backfire on Ramaswamy particularly because his biggest weakness is already his paganism.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
I'm not sure that this is an apples-to-apples comparison. Disapproval of how a war is being handled is not the same thing as categorical opposition to such a war.
All the numbers I've seen indicate that support for the war climbed slightly after it started compared to pre-war polling around questions like "Should the US launch strikes against Iran?" or "Should the US invade Iran?" but we can't get an apples-to-apples comparison because nobody polled the question "Should we launch a surprise decapitation strike against Iran in cooperation with Israel?" because that policy was never put on the table as something we might do. It was done completely as a choice by the executive branch, without any attempt to inform or sell the war or what it meant to the American public. Clearly the element of surprise had advantages in terms of the military's ability to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian leadership, but it also has costs.
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is all true, why don't Democratic candidates such as Kamala Harris simply disavow the unpopular position, e.g. state that they oppose trans-identifying-men in women's locker rooms; oppose "transitioning" for youth; and so on?
So I'm not speaking about some hypothetical ideal here, just what Democrats were like in 2008. Barack Hussein Obama publicly opposed gay marriage, saying publicly that while he supported civil unions he thought that marriage was between a man and a woman because then "God is in the mix." Dan Savage told his readers at the time, vote for Obama, because he's lying about his support for the gays, and even if he isn't he's better than the alternative. Democrat freaks used to comfortable with accepting that their leaders would sometimes need to swerve in public, but trust them to take care of them when they came into power. Trump's super power is his supporter's belief that he's lying about all the things they don't like.
That may be a factor, but also I am pretty confident that Israel and even oil companies are more popular among the general public of Republican voters than trans-identifying-men in women's locker rooms are among the general public of Democratic voters. That being said, if it's really true that only 56% of people are in favor of banning medical care for "youth gender transition," I may be out of touch.
Coincidentally, the latest Pew Polls show Favorable/Unfavorable for Israel (the state) at 37% favorable and 60% unfavorable. Slightly higher for "the Israeli people" and much lower for "the Israeli Government." So Israel is slightly less popular than "transing kids." I would assume, though it's hard to find numbers on this as it's not exactly ethical polling practice, that transgender people are more popular than "transing kids."
I agree that it's tough to get an exact 1:1 between policies across different fields, and for the most part the median voter is foolish and incapable of thinking about tradeoffs so you're going to get overlapping impossible policies if you just go off public polling.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
I started to say "Come on even the Democrats can't be that stupid" but then I heard myself.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
Sure and these flyers appear to be sent mostly to Republicans as a turnout tool.
Send flyers to Hispanic and Democrat households from PATRIOTS AGAINST THE GREAT REPLACEMENT telling you that more than 80,000 American soldiers are married to illegal immigrants, and we need to DEPORT THESE WOMEN NOW, and urging you to vote Republican so that ICE can continue to do important work like literally exceed the Gestapo in venal lack of honor.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
It seems that much more than the Republicans, the Democrats have positions which are very unpopular, very embarrassing, but which they still are reluctant to disavow. To be sure, I am a conservative so I am possibly biased on this issue, but if anyone can identity a few analogous issues on the Republican side of things I would be interested.
I would suggest, speaking as a perpetually disappointed Republican, that Republican politicians do have a revealed preference for pursuing toxic, unpopular policies while in office. They simply lie about them if confronted with it in advance, and often continue to lie about it afterward.
Trump's war of choice with Iran is actually managing to be less popular than transgender kids. Pew polling shows 56% of Americans favor banning medical care for youth gender transition. While close to 2/3 of Americans polled disapprove of the handling of the Iran war. It should be noted that there has probably been an uptick in approval for a war with Iran after the war started, compared to approval for starting a war with Iran beforehand, though I couldn't find definitive polling on the topic.
But if in 2024 you put out a flyer saying "Don't elect Donald Trump, he'll start a war of choice without seeking public or congressional approval, raising gas prices;" Donald Trump would simply say that he won't start any wars while in office. Reminiscent of George W Bush running on reducing America's role as global policeman.
Democrats have a unique problem regarding issues like Trans rights and Reparations where they can't publicly disavow these policies, because the parts of their coalition that want these policies are insane spoiled children lobbying for status rather than for material or political success. Where the Zionist lobby or the oil companies are sophisticated enough to not care what you say about them in public as long as you deliver in private.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5d ago
I hope I never have to hear about Kamala Harris again as long as I live.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
Republicans have been doing this for a while. I used to get tons of text messages about Kamala Harris' purported sexual conquests with a "you go girl don't let the republicans keep you down" vibe.
If Dems don't like it they can fight back. Put out a flyer telling people to vote Ken Paxton so that he can help the president run for a third term and rename Texas Trumpsas.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
Jokic, Ben Simmons (burned out mentally and physically but was a legit star for several years), even somebody like Joel Embiid I think has a more complicated relationship with basketball than the pure passion for the game you see in professional baseball players. MLB players are students of the game, love the game. NFL players would give their lives for the game or they wouldn't play. NBA players often seem trapped by the game by comparison.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
...you get a game that is 99% fluff. You end up doing other things while waiting for the good parts of the game. And I don’t see that as being a sustainable model for a popular sport.
Point me to the popular sport where I can't make this complaint. I mean, the answer is hockey, which is the least popular of the major pro sports leagues and faces constant ratings decline. A game that is 99% fluff appears to be the only sustainable model for a sports league.
Baseball games take a long time between pitches and even longer between balls in play. Football games are short bursts of action between huddles and commercial breaks. Soccer is just endless dribbling and back passing and writhing around on the ground. Basketball seems like it features a lot of action and points scoring, but outside of the playoffs they mostly just go through the motions until the 4th quarter, and so many points are scored that every individual scoring play isn't that exciting. NASCAR races are mostly just watching left turns, long periods of time can pass with nothing really happening. Combat sports are probably the most variable of any sport, but you can't watch a full UFC card and not catch some really real lay'n'pray snoozefests.
The reality is simple: "boring" sports are just a matter of personal perception. If you don't understand or don't care about the game, then it's boring to watch; if you understand the game on a deep level and care about it, then it's interesting.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
It’s interesting in football because you largely do not get to pick your position because positions require very specific athletic traits.
Sure, but the athletic traits are just table stakes. Enduring the extended process of becoming an NFL player requires matching your personality to your position for years.
Contrast: NBA stars have vastly varying personalities, including those who don't seem to like the sport of basketball all that much at all, because the athletic traits are so dominantly important that a guy can make it as an NBA star despite actively disliking the game.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
Oh, carry on. I see the misunderstanding now.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
My Father had a buddy who played with Joe Namath and he used to tell a story about going to a bar after practice and at the end of the night Broadway Joe was about to walk out with a really ugly girl. And he took Joe side and said hey come on man are you drunk she's not up to your usual standard. And Joe looked at him and said, it's midnight on a Tuesday, Miss America ain't walking through that door.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
Either the Early Church or Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy. We have so many thinkers that were very important, but who we only know through criticism and invective directed against them. To really find the full intellectual output of just a few of these lost writers would be a civilization changing event.
There exist "Baden-Powell Scouts" who are trying to do a kind of RadTrad fundamentalist boy scouts that hews closer to the original Scouting for Boys text. I'm all for competition.
I decry as woke the urge to sue the Boy Scouts for the (in)action of the unrelated third party Girl Scouts. That is wokeness personified: losing the battle and filing a lawsuit to make Mommy Government force you to play with me the way I want to play. Using the tools of wokeness to attempt to advocate for boys isn't anti-woke, it's reifying the woke framework that Mommy will force everyone to play by Mommy's rules of fairness.
And anyway, the reason that Scouting chose to allow (but not require) failing troops to choose a coed model has to do with the massive infrastructure that Scouts has as the incumbent. Scouting has huge land holdings, massive organizational advantages.
If Pete wants to start the Hegseth Youth, that would be great. And perhaps if you build it they will come. But there's a lot of building that needs to happen before it can seriously compete.
I was at my parents house reading the Sunday Times with them yesterday. The Ethicist column featured a man who wanted to contact the principal at his nine year old daughter's school because a group of boys playing soccer after school didn't let her join the game. It filled me with a deep sense of despair. I don't care which side of the gender divide uses the tool of forced interaction: it's wrong and bad and ruins our children's lives and futures.
Great! I'll give that a try, might scratch the itch for me.
Religion is so touchy. Tolkien got it perfect, everyone else tends to either make religion too immanent and just another magical mechanic, or they go full Reddit atheism like the Eragon series which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?
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