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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2538 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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To anyone who says that Wikipedia isn't ideologically captured, allow me to present exhibit A.

Please keep CW to either of the CW threads!

Sorry about that, it was meant more as a joke. Happy to delete if necessary.

Eh, no reason not to keep it up, I think.

How is this evidence that Wikipedia is ideologically captured? It seems like a rather banal description of terminology with little editorialization. Is there something in particular about the article beyond its mere existence that makes you think otherwise?

In contrast, the 'Same-sex marriage' section of the 'Christian views on marriage' article seems more like evidence of ideological capture than the article you linked, as the listing out of individual denominations that recognize same-sex marriage while grouping opposition is pretty clearly an editorial decision to make the former seem more popular than the latter.

The fact that Wikipedia is treating the concept of a "queerplatonic relationship" (i.e. a friendship) with deadly seriousness, without even a one-paragraph "criticism" section saying something to the effect of "The concept has been criticised by conservative commentators on the grounds that it is functionally indistinguishable from ordinary platonic friendship in all particulars."

Has it been formally criticized in a published source? If so, have you tried adding it to the article with the appropriate citations? I don't see any attempt in the page's history.

The article is not edit protected as far as I can tell. Go ahead and add that section, if you believe it true. As far as I could tell by reading the edit history, there were no such passages reverted by devious ideologically captured admins, yet (although there was one user aptly named EndWOKENESS who replaced the article with "lorem ipsum" twice and was reverted).

"Article is one-sided because no opponent with IQ above 80 ever bothered editing it" is not the same as "ideologically captured".

So I played master of Orion 2 for the first time last night, because my brain was too fried to do anything productive.
It's pretty funny going "oh, so this is what endless space, starsector, Stellaris, and all those other games were copying. Like reading Larry Niven for the first time when you only knew the Pratchett parodies.
It turns out I was copying its leader system for a management game I'm working on without even knowing it.

It's honestly a better game than most of the modern ones. The graphics still look great, interface just needs a bit of work: dealing with the horrors of racial integration is even worse when there's no way to tell which race gets + and - what on different planet types without shipping them there and testing.

MoO II is a good game. Balance isn't perfect, but in that "most options arguably lie somewhere on the Pareto frontier, even if it's a very small portion of the surface" way. (...with the exception of some of the custom racial traits.)

I do wish the singleplayer AI had been fleshed out a little more; a pretty common complaint about games of that era.

dealing with the horrors of racial integration is even worse when there's no way to tell which race gets + and - what on different planet types without shipping them there and testing.

If you're talking about the stock races, there's 13 of them and only a couple of planetary traits (high/low G, aquatic, subterranean, cyber, litho) that are mostly obvious from the racial portrait. You learn pretty quickly.

I do wish the singleplayer AI had been fleshed out a little more; a pretty common complaint about games of that era.

Era? I've yet to play a single 4X game with a decent AI, which is by far my biggest gripe with the genre; Low difficulty gets boring quickly, high difficulty is about taking advantage of the quirks of the AI. So far I usually have most fun by using medium difficulty, lots of arbitrary self-constraints and/or other obstacles, such as very frequent and aggressive barbarians/pirates.

Modern 4X AI tends to lack adaptivity. AI of games of that era tended to lack subsystems altogether.

(For instance: MoO II has creative/uncreative races. Normally you pick from one of ~3 choices in tech, uncreative gets one randomly, creative gets them all. So how do normal AI races in MoO II pick tech? ...completely randomly, as though they were uncreative.)

Lacking adaptivity is a great understatement. I've played multiple entries in the genre in which I was at first amazed, only to find out that the AI is barely functional for several factions - it gets stuck on a small number of planets, utterly mismanages holdings in a way that even a static AI could do better or is completely incapable of running a war in a meaningful sense.

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.

Yeah, a lot of it is learning which traits are genetic vs government and how they combine (pollution when only some races on the planet are toxic tolerant, etc.)

Am I going nuts, or does Ziz look like Denny from The Room?

Worst song about heroin addiction? My money's on "Golden Brown". I can't remember the harpsichord ever being used in a pleasing way in either a classical or pop context, and this is no exception.

What, no love for Deep Purple?

edit: wow Golden Brown does not scan well at all. Agonizing.

Harpsichord, when you want the sound of two skeletons fucking on a tin roof.

Golden Brown

One of my all-time favorite songs; the harpsichord is simply delightful!

Are you familiar with their Vladimir sequence?

"Thank you my fatherland, for helping me to be totally re-integrated and normalized."

Bonus:

"To the Advisory board for the development of cultural visits to sympathetic states: Dear Sirs!"

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.

"Thank you my fatherland, for helping me to be totally re-integrated and normalized."

This is so annoying, Jesus.

For some perverse reason, it cracked me up the first time I heard it, and every subsequent time since. The song came on in a playlist, and with zero context but the music and that line, I knew exactly what I was in for, and loved every minute of it.

There's no accounting for taste!

I always liked the harpsichord intro in planisphere part 2.

I was talking about LLMs with a Japanese friend the other day, and they brought up a 1963 SF short story by Hoshi Shinichi that neatly prefigured an element of the current ChatGPT debate. Prophetic scifi is always fun, so I figured I'll give a sloppy translation of the abridged representative blurb that everyone seems to quote from it.

"The Secretary on the Shoulder" (from the anthology "Bokko-chan")

It is the near future. A door-to-door salesman is visiting a private residence to pitch his company's product. A single parrot is sitting on the salesman's shoulder, and the resident who just emerged from the entranceway likewise has a parrot perched.

The salesman mumbles to the parrot on his shoulder:

(Buy it)

As he does, the parrot starts speaking fluently.

"I am most sorry for bothering you at such a busy time. Today, I would like to humbly request that I may introduce you to the latest product that is the pride of our company."

The resident's parrot translates this.

(Seems like he's here for sales)

Having received this much, the resident whispers to his parrot.

(Ok, what?)

The parrot in turn translates:

"That will be most welcome. At your pleasure, let's hear about it."

The premise, in more detail, is that everyone has a personal robotic parrot that translates to and from convoluted/polite/considerate/PC prose for the benefit of its owner. The full story features the dialogue between salesman and individual (a housewife) in more detail, where in the end parrot translates the housewife's "I don't need it, so scram already" into a long polite excuse about how she would have to consult with her husband before making a big purchase, and if he would kindly inquire again another time. Then the salesman returns to his office and is chewed out by his boss('s parrot) for not closing more sales, and in turn has his "as if it's that easy lol" turned into a suitably deferential statement of contrition. In the end, he drops by a hostess bar to unwind after work, and is of course welcomed by a wall of flattery from the mamasan's parrot. Closing line: "For [salesman], this is the moment he always looks forward to the most."

Especially during the segments where the prompts turned progressively rude, I couldn't help but think of our occasional posters cracking out the AI rewrite in response to being stop-and-searched by the tone police. Much like in the other modern narrative where LLMs will expand one-liners into compliance forms, powerpoints and press releases which are in turn only ever consumed and reduced into digests by other LLMs, the intention presumably was to make the reader wonder whether all the polite bloat (of which Japanese especially has a lot) really serves any purpose.

It did freak me out when one of my colleagues told me he uses ChatGPT extensively for drafting emails. It occurred to me that at least some of the people he's emailing are also drafting their replies using ChatGPT. What you essentially have is two instances of ChatGPT talking to each other via their respective human puppets intermediaries.

A comic that comes up often enough

Bruh sound effect

My wife is pregnant so I was searching for a non alcoholic red wine. Apparently they are very difficult to make, or at least make in a way that a wine company will attach their name to it. Got a sparkling rose instead, guess we will see how that tastes.

Miguel Torres makes excellent non alcoholic Rosé and Sauvignon Blanc, they’ve been making it for like twenty years

I got this bottle:

https://store.wolffer.com/product/Spring-in-a-Bottle

We both liked it.

That looks delightful. German N.A. bubbly from a quality region like mosel seems like a winning combo.

This was the wine I was referring to earlier.

Congratulations on the pregnancy! I hope things proceed smoothly for the two and soon to be three of you.

You'll probably be better off with non-alcoholic beer.

This is my favourite non-alcoholic beer.

This one is easily the best N.A. beer in the world.

My kids really like sparkling red grape juice for things like New Years' celebrations.

My favorite mocktail is a virgin Moscow Mule - the ginger and acid leave it with enough "bite" even without vodka.

I've only tried a non-alcoholic red wine once, though, and it was lousy, so I can't help directly, sorry.

Congratulations and good luck on the pregnancy!

I am not sure how good they are given the regulations around them. My family did get some bottles of non-alcoholic sparkling wine, not sure if I can suggest that in good faith to someone pregnant, for everyone else, it's fucking fantastic.

I wish you guys luck with the pregnancy!

I recommend a shrub, kombucha on tap, or de-alchoholed mimosa.

Alcohol free wine is uniquely bad. Alcohol free herbal “liquor” is better, alcohol free beer still better.

It’s because the most economical ways of making non alcoholic wine end up cooking off the aromatics, which make up the majority of the flavor of wine.

There’s high fidelity ways of doing it but they are mega capital intensive

Valentine's Day post 2025

This all happened years ago when I was younger. The first part.

I once fell for this girl really hard. Thought about her all the time. Like, minute-to-minute. I couldn't eat sometimes, I was so enamored. I used to live my days wondering what she was doing, as if every space she filled were magical. Was she eating? With whom? Was some guy making her laugh? Would it be okay to send her a short message? Sometimes I would then send one on inspiration--a joke, a link to music, something else inane--then ride the buoyant wave of anticipation for a while, until I got no answer and no answer, and eventually my face burned with shame at my own fey sentimentality. Was I not a man? Had I not been raised to be tougher than this weak sniveller? God damn it.

Just being around her, though, was a thrill I had without questioning it, something I felt without having asked for it or willed it. I sometimes saw her from the bus, me riding, her out there walking and my heart skipped--literally I could feel that palpitation. She was a good deal younger than I was--tall, willowy, sure of herself. Beautiful. Her hair was in a popular style at the time, though rare now. When I did see her, time stood still. They say you should plan dates and do fun things--and it is true, you should, you must--but to me, truly just sitting on a bench with her was better than sailing to the Bahamas (which yes, I've done), if she were there on the bench with me. Just staring into air. All very corny. Pathetic even. What I'd warn anyone not to feel. The stuff of saccharine pop.

She left, though, and like a teenage girl I spent my time pining over her. Tried not to show it, did show it when drunk. My closest drinking buddy at the time was sympathetic but couldn't relate and told me just to move on, move on. Cease all communication. I tried. It worked for awhile. Still I'd wonder where she was. I could even stir a perfectly benign moment like waiting for a bus into an existential crisis of jealousy by simply imagining: "What if right now she is with some guy?" I ruined my own day many times by doing this.

I always wondered what it would be like to know her forever, and I actually envied her family--that they might know her for so many years, whereas I would almost surely be forgotten, and soon. It took a lot of alcohol and sinking into shallow self-indulgence to shut her out of my mind.

Then this and that happened and I married her and I left her sleeping this morning with her feet sticking out of the covers.

"Life is a trick. Life is a kitten in a sack." --Anne Sexton

Sweet story.

Probably because I stopped the telling abruptly and skipped the later pointless bickering.

I still remember being struck with what felt like a thunderbolt the first time I saw my wife. I had even been prepared, slightly. I knew her roommate, and so had seen pictures on Facebook. The only excuse I can muster is that the average resolutions back then were so low they gave you what I think is more of an idea of a person.

I was able to stabilize myself for the rest of that night and act normal, even if every conversation with her started with me being a little short of breath, or having the same palpitations you describe. Over the next year or so, I was struck by how funny and kind a woman with this much beauty could be. It didn't hurt that she was dating someone else, so the stakes were low.

When we both had to stay in our small college town over the summer, I brought her tea and aspirin when she was sick. She helped scrub the old green truck I drove that didn't match my personality at all, and we made trashy cheddar bacon fries with meat from the ag department she was part of. When they broke up, I swooped in.

More than a decade later, I still actively give my male friends opportunities to talk to her 1 on 1 in social situations. It's such a great experience that I think it would be selfish not to share it, even if I know firsthand it hurts a little when it's over.

I think I've been in love, butterflies in the stomach, heart thumping at the sight of them love twice in my life. Mere lust or fondness? I think I've lost count.

The first instance was painful. A pining adolescent romance for someone who was emotionally unavailable, and just not that into me. I thought the fact we were going out on dates and that she was coming over was enough, while doing my best to ignore the fact that while we were in college and her friends were around, she'd treat me as if I was just one of them.

The second... It didn't pan out. At this point I'm well over the bitterness, and I wish I had understood we weren't compatible, but as the bitter and wise say, when you're in love and have rose-tinted goggles on, red flags look just like flags.

The two of them could have passed for sisters (if absolutely nothing alike personality-wise, barring a love for dogs). I guess twice bitten forever shy? I'm sure it'll happen again, if experience is any hint, I never have a choice in the matter. I thought both of them were the One (or two, in rapid succession), and was at the "We'll get married eventually" stages with the latter, but alas.

I tell myself I don't miss them. And it's mostly true.

I've had that feeling a few times. It... never went well. Got summarily shot down every single time, and eventually learned to dread those feelings of attraction. The last time it happened to me, I remember saying "oh crap" out loud once I realized what was going on.

Oddly enough, though I'm happily married now I never felt that way about my wife really. I liked her, certainly, but I didn't spend time mooning over her or get a jolt in my stomach when I saw her. Probably has something to do with the fact I was 30 when we met, I imagine. Mainly the process of dating my wife was one of existential terror, as literally every step (first date, first kiss, and so on) was the furthest I had ever made it with a woman. So I was terrified of doing something to fuck it up. Then on top of that, I had to try to figure out if I really liked her, or if I just liked that she was the first woman to show any interest in me. That was a tough bit of introspection. But it all worked out in the end, so I guess I can't complain too much. I wouldn't go back to those days for any amount of money, though. Way too complicated.

From time to time I have had sudden bouts of insecurity because I never had an experience like that when I met my wife, or when we were dating. So when people talk about “love at first sight” I get uncomfortable. I’m a romantic at heart, and I like the idea of falling desperately in love with someone like that, but that’s not what happened to me. I was not especially attracted to her when I met her, no more than any other young woman. I grew to love her slowly, as I got to know her. I love her deeply today: I would die for her if I had to. But I never “fell for her”, so to speak.

Of course I never fell for anyone else either. There have been three times in my life that I saw a woman and was struck by her beauty. I felt strongly physically attracted to her: infatuated might be a good word. But I wanted to bed those women, not love them. Two of them were complete strangers whose character was unknown to me. The third I had a conversation with, and discovered she was not the kind of person I wanted to have a discussion with, much less live with. It was lust only.

You're not alone. I've never fallen head over heels for anyone this way. I've pined for and creeped over many girls in my youth, but it has always been a gradual and groundless infatuation.

My wife doesn't like to be reminded of it, but I asked her out because I didn't feel this crippling anxiety around her that came with my usual feelings towards a girl.

While that moment is an incredible memory, it's long ago been dwarfed by the rest of our relationship. I've been a hopeless romantic since I was very young. 99/100 times, it was just a way to get my feelings hurt, but eventually, it stuck.

The third I had a conversation with, and discovered she was not the kind of person I wanted to have a discussion with, much less live with. It was lust only.

Many such cases.

Then this and that happened

Reminds me of the Snoop Pierson interview where she recalls walking down the street, seeing some people arguing across the road, "and then one thing led to another and I got sentenced to seven years for attempted murder".

Interesting. I've also had a moment with a girl I thought was a lesbian--she had had a girlfriend for about four years but had broken up with her. I think. If she hadn't then, she did later. She made very clear advances toward me. That sentence no doubt sounds like a boast, but there is no chance that I am mistaken in her intentions. There we were, lying on a futon in the guest room of my mutual friend, she and I beside each other, I assumed for sleep. And then she was slipping off her clothing until she was just in her panties. She arc'd around one long leg over my midsection until she was on top of me, and looking at me in the dim light told me that she would show me things I had never dreamed of.

It is difficult to explain my reaction. It's not that I doubted her; I didn't, and not because my dreams were pedestrian and asexual, as they certainly weren't at the time. But I had only known her as a lesbian for about two years.

I was struck with the sudden fear that is hard to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it--the knowledge that I was with a woman who knew extremely well not only the fairly easy methods of pleasuring a man, but also knew those of pleasuring another woman. And who had been a lover of and loved by a woman who also knew these skills. I was less practically educated in such matters then than I am now, but I don't think I was a slouch. Nevertheless something about the proposition made me go cold, and as I lay there, her poised above me bare-breasted, I mumbled something about friendship and awkwardness.

If you are doubting my sanity let me say that it is possible that I might have been obsessed with someone else at the time. It wouldn't have been unusual, as I often fixated on certain women. (Aside: I once asked a French professor, at a party of drunk people in Palolo Valley in Oahu, none of whom I knew but the host, if he didn't sometimes see a singular woman as so beautiful, so perfect, that every other woman was only beautiful in as much as she looked like the one you had in mind. He swirled around his red wine with ice in it in his glass ["You Americans are such snobs about ice in wine," he had said earlier. "Sometimes it needs it," and plopped in two ice cubes.] He looked at me and shrugged. "Of course," he said. "But that only lasts a couple of days.")

Anyway I shut her down. The almost naked athletic girl on top of me, I mean. And I learned something at that moment--well, I was to learn it, even if I did not realize it at the time. I learned that while men can come back from such a rebuff--some of us even grew up accustomed to at least one such hurdle in the pursuit of our goal--women, it became clear to me, do not take well to rejection of this sort. I'm sorry, Phoebe, if you're reading this. I was, as they say, a lot older then.

Then this and that happened and I married her and I left her sleeping this morning with her feet sticking out of the covers.

Did you at least tickle them as you were leaving the bedroom?

It was early. I let her sleep.

Hell yeah, dude. Great story, and I'm glad that it has a happy ending.

Well done.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Any of you folks have a spicy date for this weekend? Hoping to live vicariously through you all here - my wife and I have a newborn so we have put the romance on pause for a minute.

My wife and I walked to a nearby seafood izakaya and were marveling at how good the food was and what a diamond in the rough the place was. After a few plates, I took out my phone and opened my photos to reminisce about what we did last year, only to discover that we had spent Valentine's Day 2024 at the very same restaurant last year. We had completely forgotten, likely due to our most recent baby arriving only about a month later and bringing the usual flood of joy, exhaustion, and amnesia. So I suppose what I'm saying is -- whatever y'all do this year, take pictures, lol. And congrats on the baby!

Lol my sister and her husband were like that when they had their second kid. I lived with them at the time and one night they came to me very excited, because they had just watched The Endless and they just knew I was going to love it! I smiled at my sister and gave her a hug and explained that yes I did love it, which is why I gave it to them to watch three months ago.

I think it means you have your priorities straight.

Congrats on the newborn, and enjoy this time! You'll miss it.

I rewatched "American History X." It's both as good and on-the-nose I remember. But one good way in which it's on-the-nose is that Derek (Norton's character) gives long monologues about rational racial grievances, showing how radical ideologies tempt a certain kind of person in a certain situation. Any other good examples of media doing a good job at this?

Some misc. thoughts:

The main plot has two inciting incidents that co-occur, with one being Derek's younger brother getting in trouble at school for choosing Mein Kampf for an English assignment about works related to civil rights. The school principle defends him to his English teacher, pointing out that it met the requirements of the assignment... but didn't do so by calling it "work to rule," which was a missed opportunity.

Norton was too old for the role and it really showed in the flashbacks... but his performance justifies willingly suspending disbelief.

The overqualified high school teacher/principal and community outreach something-or-other is played by Avery Brooks, filmed concurrently with Deep Space 9, in which he played Captain Benjamin Sisko (the one who responded to Q placing them in a boxing ring by punching Q in the face - totes the best Star Trek captain). This made me wonder if this role was the reason his character on DS9 grew a goatee mid-season, rather than between seasons, but it was filmed two years after the debut of the goatee.

The rest of the supporting cast was also great, including Ethan Suplee, best known for playing Randy Hickey (the brother) in My Name Is Earl. .

There are a lot of obvious continuity errors, confusingly mismatched sightlines, and things that just don't make sense. Again, the impact of the performances justify willingly suspending disbelief.

It was filmed disproportionately in close-up, with few wide shots. It's unclear if there was a thematic intent to this, but it's interesting.

All but the youngest character in the family (including the dead dad) have first names starting with the same letter, but nobody lampshades this.

I watched it for the first time last year and found the second half way too unbelievable. Some wag on 4chan summarized the movie's message as

>be based race realist
>go to jail
>get gang raped by a bunch of dudes
>turn into an effeminate libtard
What did they mean by this?

which, while clearly trolling and uncharitable, is a framing that I just can't unsee. I know that the director was trying to show that racist WNs are evil, violent, manipulative hypocrites and losers and that Norton's character learned his lesson after meeting "real" WNs in prison, but like with Starship Troopers, an alternate, unintended interpretation just seems to fit the movie better IMO.

Norton was too old for the role and it really showed in the flashbacks... but his performance justifies willingly suspending disbelief.

I think he was only twenty-eight at the time of filming, I assumed his character was meant to be about that age before going to prison.

I assumed his character was meant to be about that age before going to prison

Except the younger brother was still in high school, when he got out of prison.

I respect the film for actually allowing Derek the space to articulate his arguments behind his opinions. I recently linked to a dumb rap-metal song released six months into Trump's first term which is essentially three minutes of "punching Nazis is good, actually". The bridge features the line "what makes you think you're the superior race?", which the vocalist clearly intended as an armour-piercing question which would instantly silence any alt-right types listening. It's sobering to be reminded by American History X that there are plenty of far-right people who would not be flummoxed by this question at all, and who would actually be able to present very detailed and persuasive arguments as to why they endorse white supremacy.

That aspect of the film and Edward Norton's exceptional performance aside, I don't really rate this movie. Making a convincing movie about neo-Nazi or far-right extremists seems to be remarkably difficult to do - Romper Stomper with Russell Crowe is even worse; Green Room was very entertaining, but only nominally about this theme (if the skinheads had been Mafia members and the band had stumbled in on a Mob murder, the plot of the movie would have been identical). The only such movie I remember being really convinced by was This is England. The naturalistic, largely improvised performances, verité-esque cinematography and unobtrusive score sold the experience far more effectively than American History X, in my view. Like American History X, it does offer its far-right characters a chance to express why they arrived at their opinions, but this usually comes in the form of impassioned ranting rather than Derek's sober, articulate (hence chilling) expressions of his worldview. I've heard The Believer with Ryan Gosling is very good, I must check it out.

I recently stumbled across this video essay talking about American History X's behind-the-scenes drama, concerning how director Tony Kaye's original cut of the film was rejected, and Edward Norton stepped in to handle the recut when Kaye proved extremely uncooperative (to the point of suing the producers and starting a knife fight with them in the press). Even though the video essay essentially takes Kaye's side and says Hollywood mistreated him, I came away from it with the distinct impression that Kaye is a colossally pretentious narcissist who is extremely difficult to work with. If he'd been willing to compromise and play the game a bit, he might have eventually been granted an auteur license which would ride him to glory at the Oscars. Instead he torpedoed his career right out the gate, and unsurprisingly hasn't helmed a major Hollywood production since.

There's a clip in the video when Edward Furlong is doing a promotional interview for the movie and the journalist asks him about the behind the scenes controversy. He says something to the effect of "Yeah, it's a pity that the producers weren't happy with Tony's cut of the movie. Maybe one day they'll release the director's cut on DVD or something, that'd be cool." As more than one YouTube comment points out, it's pretty embarrassing when a 21-year-old former child star with a drug problem comes off as more reasonable and emotionally mature than a 46-year-old director.

Any other good examples of media doing a good job at this?

There's a pretty decent Worm fanfic called The Slippery Slope about Taylor joining Empire Eighty-Eight. Also, not about race, but Princess Luna in "Just an Assistant" gives a surprisingly good defense of slavery.

Didn't expect to see brony content from anyone other than @DuplexFields
If anyone wants to read hundreds of thousands of words along the lines of Flashman/Ciaphas Cain (coward dipshit is inadvertently/accidentally the hero) but ponies, you have two excellent options (note that there are additional works in both series): https://www.fimfiction.net/story/55377/blueblood-hero-of-equestria or https://www.fimfiction.net/story/354235/the-prisoner-of-zebra

Regarding my favorite brony content: Jenny Nicholson's youtube series Friendship is Witchcraft has more and better laughs per minute and usually better songs, Dawn Somewhere's youtube series my little pony: mentally advanced series has jokes that are somewhat more funny over the age of 30, in terms of morons being outraged that a proper daquiri isn't a frozen daquiri, or that peer review is a fucking inconsistent mess that isn't at all reliable, and also songs that are far more goofy and memorable a decade later to the ipad raised zoomers that landed on the video as illiterate children and are overjoyed in the comment section they finally found that love song between fat rainbow dash and the monkey who is the joker and voldemort at the same time.

Didn't expect to see brony content from anyone other than @DuplexFields

There aren't exactly that many reasons for the topic to come up here, aside from maybe FiO (which I see has already been linked). And the brony community's unwritten rule of 'be open about being a brony' it once had (which is half the reason it became somewhat notorious in the first place) has mostly disappeared.

Regarding my favorite brony content

As long as we are throwing links around...

has mostly disappeared

Well, 2011 was 14 years ago and the fountain of content was just opening up; G4 was just starting its second season. It's not like I have much of an opportunity to bring it up in conversation; though once a brony, always a brony.

Friendship is Magic was HUGE in the 2010s; it's not surprising that there are former bronies around. Hell, some of the best science fiction I have ever read has been MLP fanfiction (Friendship is Optimal, The Moon's Apprentice, Message in a Bottle, The Maretian, etc.).

And, yes, Friendship is Witchcraft kicks ass. Never liked Mentally Advanced Series, though; not enough polish.

I'm quite looking forward to my daughter being old enough to watch the series.

Ed Norton is great but what a dumb premise. There is no neo-nazi culture. They essentially don’t exist outside of places like prison. Also no fucking way Edward Norton can dunk. It’s basically escapist fantasy for liberal whites.

There is no neo-nazi culture. They essentially don’t exist outside of places like prison.

Was this true circa 1985-1995? The script was written 30 years ago.

There absolutely was in Sweden, not a big one, but it existed. Nowadays people are violent rightwing extremists in different ways and people crying about skinheads are living in the past.

Yes

I stumbled across some old annual reports from the Pittsburgh Police and when they listed the arrests by crime there were a few old-timey ones that aren't immediately apparent,. particularly ones involving various types of house of ill fame or loose ethics. See how many of these you can get:

AAB-FAB

RS Goods

VUFA

KA House

CP

Pandering

VA House

KD House

VD House

KG House

VG House

Alright, the weekend is over, so for the vanishingly small number of people — @curious_straight_ca, @DoctorMonarch, @sarker — who expressed interest, here are the answers:

AAB-FAB: Aggravated Assault & Battery / Felony Assault & Battery

RS Goods: Receiving Stolen Goods

VUFA: Violation of the Uniform Firearms Act (this is still police lingo for an illegal weapons violation)

KA House: Keeping an Assignation House (Brothel or no-tell motel)

CP: Common Prostitute

Pandering: Would probably be categorized as "promoting prostitution" under current law.

VA House: Visiting an assignation house

KD House: Keeping a disorderly house. This is still on the books, though this is usually a municipal ordinance rather than a state-level criminal offense. College towns will use these to put pressure on students who frequently throw loud parties, and urban areas will use them to cite owners of crack houses and the like. Nuisance bar laws are closely related. Basically, being in control of any building with excessive police calls for things like noise, fighting, drug use, or other things that make it a public nuisance will make you liable for this.

VD House: Visiting a disorderly house. These days, when the cops break up a party for noise and arrest everyone inside, this is what they get charged with if they don't have grounds for an underage drinking charge. Not commonly charged.

KG House: Keeping a gaming house.

VG House: Visiting a gaming house.

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!

KG House: Keeping a gaming house.

VG House: Visiting a gaming house.

Hah!

This gives me mental images of some twitch streamer getting raided.

No idea. Answer key?

Aside from CP- obviously Cheese Pizza/Captain Picard- only guess is for Resale Stolen Goods.

CP isn't what you probably think it is.

Vat Upper Fubic Area

A tiny tweak to history that changed everything.

Queen Victoria was quite likely a bastard. She was a carrier of hemophilia, but her mother's side of the family had no history of hemophilia, and her father was not a hemophiliac. (The hemophilia gene lives in the X chromosome. As women have two copies, they can carry hemophilia without expressing it. Men cannot).

This little quirk in history changed everything.

Victoria had 34 surviving grandchildren, many of whom sat on the thrones of Europe: including Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Alexandra, the wife of the last tsar of Russia. It was this connection that would have lasting affects since Alexandra passed on her hemophilia to her son Alexei, the heir to the Russian throne.

Alexei's hemophilia caused him to almost die many times and caused Alexandra to seek out the help of Rasputin, a charismatic cult leader type from Siberia. At one point, Rasputin was banished, but then Alexei almost died again, and Rasputin was recalled. The boy miraculously improved. Rasputin's presence at court was toxic, as he seduced the wives of many high ranking people. Eventually, some noblemen were able to off him by poisoning him, shooting him, then wrapping him in a carpet and drowning him in the Neva River. But the damage to the reputation of the imperial family was done. In this weakened state (and of course due to WWI) Nicolas was forced to resign, creating the opening for the Bolsheviks to take power.

If Queen Victoria's mother didn't cheat then... no hemophilia, no Rasputin, no Bolsheviks, and probably no Mao either. Who knows what the world would look like if China hadn't been mired in communism for 40 years post WWII.

Wikipedia has a whole page on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_Queen_Victoria

De novo mutations do happen. Your idea would require her mother (who was in her early 30s at the time) to cheat with a hemophiliac man for whatever reason, but life expectancy for hemophiliac men in the early XIX century was abysmal, and guy she was rumored to have an affair with was quite healthy. If anything, her cheating with a younger guy would actually lower the chances.

It looks like we'd need to compare odds of

  1. Denovo mutation

  2. Cheating with an unknown hemophiliac man

  3. Her mother was a carrier despite no family history (also perhaps the result of a denovo mutation or infidelity herself or in recent generations).

We could plug it all into a Bayes calculator but I think the math gets wonky when comparing 0.0001% on one side vs 0.0001% on the other.

What makes you think Victoria wasn't really Prince Edward's daughter?

Rasputin's presence at court was toxic, as he seduced the wives of many high ranking people.

That was the thing about Rasputin - I've heard it said he could preach the bible like a preacher, full of ecstasy and fire. But he also was the kind of teacher females would desire.

I think Rasputin's role in the demise of Russian monarchy is greatly exaggerated. Russian monarchs have been entrenched in the idea that any change or modernization in Russia are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted in any form, and yet that Russia must play a prominent role in the world affairs. This led to both internal opposition that grew more and more violent as they grew convinced nothing is going to change unless extremely drastic measures are taken, and to the series of humiliating defeats abroad. It pretty much painted itself into a corner, and Rasputin episode, while colorful, was just a footnote to much greater and more fundamental problems which led to Russian monarchy collapsing. It still could go the less bloody road if the following democratic government could govern efficiently and not being eaten by the Leftists, but they been proved incapable, the Left took over, then the Bolsheviks massacred all the rest of the left fractions, and the rest you can read in any textbook. Nothing of it has much to do with hemophilia, though the general atmosphere of everything going wrong and nothing being able to stop the collapse, probably, contributed to being open to weird stuff, out of desperation. But it was the symptom rather than the cause.

Ehhhh this seems pretty dubious. Firstly because type-B hemophilia has been known to occur as a spontaneous mutation in the children of older fathers. Victoria’s presumptive father, the Duke of Kent, was 51 at the time of her conception. She’s also a spitting image of him, and of his father George III. Among plausible proposed alternatives for her paternity, such as John Conroy, I’m not aware that we have any record of hemophilia in their ancestry.

What is some horror that emphasizes the power of an entity — sheer power that provides fear and awe? Do I just read Lovecraft? Any other great contenders? Or anything of horror, like a particularly good descriptive historical account of something terror and awe inducing?

I found Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' new Nosferatu movie to be absolutely menacing. He is not a cosmic horror like in Lovecraft, but you can absolutely feel him emanating raw, evil power when he is on screen.

Does There Is No Antimemetics Division count?

Or some of the books in The Laundry Files? Though this one is more played for comedy.

One other arguable contender is NSFW (and I am going to err on the side of caution, not seeing anything one way or another in the site rules, and so not mention it beyond this sentence.)

You should read Stross's first novel 'Scratch Monkey', which is kind of like a hard-sf take on cosmic horror. It's a little rough but it's actually pretty good. It's available for free on his website..

There's also a paper copy if you're a masochist.

I can't think of anything I've read from Lovecraft that really emphasizes power. I will second the Chernobyl miniseries and Blindsight. I'd recommend Gateway by Frederik Pohl, the climax of the book really captures the powerlessness of humans against a specific phenomena.

Thematically I wouldn't say Lovecraft emphasizes alien power so much as human powerlessness; it's just that those are two sides of the same coin. His is a universe where humans are alive not because we're strong enough to survive so much as because we're weak enough to go unnoticed.

The first Gateway book is probably a good answer in the same sense as the Chernobyl miniseries; I'd say the final book in the series ("The Annals of the Heechee") is a good answer in other ways. I don't think I can say much more about the distinction without spoilers for both, though.

The rest of the Gateway series isn't as good as the first book, though - bigger ideas but without the same depth of characterization.

HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries does a great job at this. It’s a lightly fictionalized docudrama about a real event, but it feels like a cosmic horror story. And it really nails the feelings you mention, to the point that you actually start to feel your stomach drop every time you see the reactor. I’m sure many of the people here can point to errors in accuracy or history that it made, but as a work of horror fiction it’s just great.

Sci-fi with only touches of horror, but A Fire Upon The Deep was pretty good at this. The worldbuilding is a bit contrived, but cleverly so and no more than necessary to make the power+horror plausible.

I'd recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts. The aliens are alien, far beyond on us, and don't particularly like us.

Great book, one of the most surprising and enjoyable reads of the last 5 years for me.

Without spoiling too much, Watts' aliens not just don't like us, they are nothing us, which is rather terrifying and very Lovecraftian - an entity who is entirely incapable of caring for humanity's existence at all, and possessing powers well beyond humanity's understanding.

Robert E Howard's original Conan stories have a lot of almost Lovecraftian horrors in them. I know they had a correspondence, and a loose understanding that their stories could conceivably occur in the same world. Nothing explicitly shows up (to my knowledge) that crosses from one author's fiction to another's. But there are often shared themes.

Some of his other stories like Solomon Kane had some of those elements too.

Blame, Biomega, most Tsutomu Nehei, especially his earlier works seems like it might fit this category. Possibly the "three shakes" chapter of A Sum of All Fears? Chernobyl, come to think of it, which chains to Roadside Picnic.

Inhuman creatures that have unlimited power over you? Just read /r/fednews

My anti-piss meds I have to take due to my severe UTI putting pressure on my bladder all day and night are dyeing things to the point it looks like yellow printer ink is pouring out of my Oompaloompa urethra.

Legitimately based.

In Neal Stephenson's Anathem, a cloistered group of scientist-monks had a unique form of punishment, as an alternative to outright banishment.

They would have a person memorize excerpts from books of nonsense. Not just any nonsense, pernicious nonsense, doggerel with just enough internal coherence and structure that you would feel like you could grokk it, only for that sense of complacency to collapse around you. The worse the offense, the larger the volume you'd have to memorize perfectly, by rote.

You could never lower your perplexity, never understand material in which there was nothing to be understood, and you might come out of the whole ordeal with lasting psychological harm.

It is my opinion that the Royal College of Psychiatrists took inspiration from this in their setting of the syllabus for the MRCPsych Paper A. They might even be trying to skin two cats with one sharp stone by framing the whole thing as a horrible experiment that would never pass an IRB.

There is just so much junk to memorize. Obsolete psychological theories that not only don't hold water today, but are so absurd that they should have been laughed out of the room even in the 1930s. Ideas that are not even wrong.

And then there's the groan-worthy. A gent named Bandura has the honor of having something called Bandura's Social Learning Theory named after him.

The gist of it is the ground-shaking revelation that children can learn to do things by observing others doing it. Yup. That's it.

I was moaning to a fellow psych trainee, one from the other side of the Indian subcontinent. Bandar means a monkey in both Hindi, Urdu and other related languages. Monkey see, monkey do, in unrelated news.

The only way Mr. Bandura's discovery would be noteworthy is if a literal monkey wrote up its theories in his stead. I would weep, the arcane pharmacology and chemistry at least has purpose. This only prolongs suffering and increases SSRI sales.

trying to skin two cats with one sharp stone

Wait, why would you want to have more than one sharp stone, if you're skinning cats one at a time?

You have conflated two separate proverbs: "Kill two birds with one stone" and "There are more than one way to skin a cat".

If you're hunting birds with a sling, it's hard enough to hit one bird, let alone two, let alone actually manage to kill them. So "kill two birds with one stone" implies something highly improbable.

If you are skinning an animal, you may have your preferred method, and someone else may have a different approach. And if your method isn't getting the job done, maybe another method will. So "there are more than one way to skin a cat" is a reminder to focus on the goal and not get hung up on a method.

If you're hunting birds with a sling, it's hard enough to hit one bird, let alone two, let alone actually manage to kill them. So "kill two birds with one stone" implies something highly improbable.

I believe it's actually meant to imply something that's highly efficient, not improbable. You are killing two targets with one shot. From what I understand, slings can be very accurate and hitting a bird might not be that difficult.

But how would that even work, with a single stone in one throw? Does the stone ricochet off of the first-hit bird to the second-hit bird? Or does the stone go bullet-like through the first bird and hit the bird behind it?

I believe the term would be a joke, an intentional mixing of metaphors at the very least.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to want to do look more like? I do not think it is possible to look more like insofar as having to decide even how to look, the being so far is not even decided by the looking more like, but rather a sense of deciding while looking more like would go so far as a whole. A good example of this is when the man for the McDonalds asked and had the mayonnaise and the employee when and the put on the side burger and not when how when the picture was taken it was mayonnaise and the McDonald's.

Prisencolinensinainciusol!

So, like 2 years ago I built my kid a stool with a drawer, and stuck a copy of The Hobbit inside it, since she was developing more of an affinity for fantasy through these "Julia's House for Lost Creatures" stories I bought her. But she was only 3 and not very interested in it. Too many words, too much description, not enough things happening, or pictures. She's 5 now, and we were doing pretty OK getting through it. She had more interest in the story, but the lack of pictures really were hard on her. A friend of mine had tried reading her 4 year old an illustrated and unabridged copy of The Hobbit (I've since learned he lost interest in it), which gave me the idea to order a companion art book for my daughter to look at while I read. So I ordered Alan Lee's Hobbit Sketchbook.

It's been night and fucking day. I think it took me 6-9 months to read The Hobbit to my daughter. I got the art book when we were almost finished, right after Smaug had been killed. My daughter went from having enough interest to sit down and see what happens next once a week, to begging me to read it to her virtually every spare moment. Then as soon as we finished, she wanted to start again right from the beginning. We get through about 20 pages or so a day, and after 2 weeks I expect we'll finish in another week or so. It's all she talks about too, it's adorable as can be.

I'd like to believe this could be a core memory for her spending time with her dad. In much the same way I remember what must have been the 1991 Washington Redkins' season, and how much it became a family event watching football with my dad.

Somewhat related: I loved the Redwall series as a kid. I remember my 1st grade teacher being skeptical and incredulous that my book report was on Mossflower given its length. This link is an image on purpose - I think that the cover art for that book is unbelievably good, and helped 6-year-old me power through it.

Contrast that with the new book cover. Holy fuck, is nothing sacred? It probably couldn't be any worse - it even spoils the end of the entire novel!

I suppose I have to drop $150 on an older print boxed set now even though I'm 2 years away from my kids being able to start it.

There's at least competition for worse, though I'll admit the spoilers and overall 'Graphics Art Is My Passion' feeling is worse with the one you link.

That's amazing. Good job, dad. I would read my to my boys from many books, but my personal favorite was D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It doesn't get into the weirder parts--Pasiphaë's more socially-backward sexual habits are not explored--but it has illustrations on almost every page. Good stuff.

That's a great idea, I'm going to try it :)

I started my kids off with Harry Potter. After watching the movies, it's much easier for them to visualize what's going on when I read. I read books 1 and 2 to my 6 year old that way.

I thought about doing the same with the Hobbit or Narnia, but the movies aren't quite as friendly to young kids. (I've also got a 1, 2, and 3 yo right now that even Narnia would be too much for. Harry Potter is full of funny scenes in between the scary ones that these other "kids" movies don't have.)

I made sure my kids watched The Hobbit, but only because they'd want to see it eventually anyways and they enjoyed it much more by watching it before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so it was a source of excitement rather than disappointment.

Beware reading Harry Potter to kids who might still be too young for the later themes. I started reading the first book to my oldest, figuring it would take us half a year to get through each book at a few pages a night, which would give her a few years to mature as the sequels got more serious and frightening. Instead she decided that this was going to be when she started reading chapter books by herself, and then I couldn't bring myself to make her wait on the later books, nor or to forbid her watching the movies after she'd blitzed through the whole series. She at least didn't have any nightmares that she told me about...

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.

Yeah, my wife wants to read Narnia to her too. She's been looking for a nicer hardcover edition that doesn't break the bank. There are a bunch of all in one hardcovers of the whole series on Amazon, but they seem suspicious. The page count seems too low (500 pages?) and the photo reviews all show horribly quality issues.

Edit: I almost forgot! We're making an earnest attempt at not being a "TV" house hold. So it's unlikely we will ever proceed from The Hobbit book to The Hobbit movies. Or for Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.

It's actually interesting, trying to raise her as long as we can without the crutch of TV. It's exhausting, for sure. Sometimes life would be a lot easier if we just threw on a DVD and walked away for an hour or two. But I think it's been worth it.

The Hobbit movies

Movies? I'm sorry, I only know of the one.

We've got an all-in-one Narnia that I got used for $2. It's fantastic for an adult, but for kids I'd go with the smaller size. The font on our all-in-one is a bit too small to be comfortable for a kid to read (or to point with you're finger at what you're reading to show a kid), and the weight is too heavy for them to comfortably carry it around. Mine is ~400 pages but they are very large (bigger than US letter paper size).

For purposes of "traffic calming", urban planners (1 2) often make the roads in residential neighborhoods curved rather than straight. What if a developer were to simply use a space-filling curve to lay out his residential subdivision on a single ridiculously curved road?

Example subdivisions appropriate for the International Zoning Code's R1d single-family-residential zone: 1 (Hilbert curve), 2 (curve name unknown), 3 (Peano curve)

See also: Small intestine

@Southkraut: "Outmanoeuver"? A daring synthesis, as the cool kids say.

Exhibit A in 'how to make your local fire/ambulance/police department planning agency very annoyed at you'. Another problem is anything that results in a closure of a section of street will cut off a lot of people. Yet another problem is if this is put anywhere that gets winter conditions.

I suppose one could put in authorized-only cutthroughs similar to how divided highways do, though this would eat into the area for housing, and would require enforcement to prevent them from becoming impromptu shortcuts.

anything that results in a closure of a section of street will cut off a lot of people

It's a loop, with one travel lane and one parking lane (which can be cleared in emergencies) in each direction. I don't see how anyone would ever be cut off.

Anacdote:

The town I live in has had two short sections of street completely car-impassible & blocked off within the past week. Not a problem due to the grid structure except for ~4 houses.

(One due to a water main break, and one due to a power line across the street.)

I think you are underestimating how often this happens due to the normally-relatively-contained consequences.

Digging up the road to fix a water/gas/sewer main or something is the usual reason -- roads also need to be repaved from time to time.

Road work normally is not conducted in such a manner as to block the entire street. Rather, work will be conducted on half of the street, and traffic will be directed through the other half of the street (using alternating flow and flaggers if half of the street is too narrow for two lanes of traffic).

Not in places with sane street grids -- even in cases where you might theoretically be able to dig up one side (ie. not any sort of service main, which doesn't reliably stick to a particular part of the street) at a time it's way more efficient to put up a "Detour" sign and get the work done ASAP. Also safer, as you don't have traffic-worker interaction all the time.

I like the Hilbert Curve one. I would add some backyard foothpaths to it (green = definitely should be added, blue = might be skipped, but they really improve the walkability), as shown on the attached image. This way walking/cycling will become the preferred way to move around the neighborhood.

Another idea: upzone it to R3b, so you can utilize these ring-sector-shaped corner lots better. If you put multiple-unit dwellings on them, they become natural shortcuts and you no longer need blue-colored footpaths.

/images/17395455291457095.webp

AUTISMVILLE LOOKS LIT!!!!

I just need a small loan of one million dollars to bring it to fruition.

I imagine people wouldn't want to live there considering how much more time-consuming it would be to get in and out of your neighborhood.

In the biggest Hilbert-curve subdivision, the distance from the center to the nearest edge is 8000 feet (2400 meters) in a car versus 2000 feet (600 meters) as the crow flies (or on one of the pedestrian paths proposed by another commenter). Is that such a huge price to pay for an ultra-quiet neighborhood?

@Felagund

It's not just the difference in straight-line distance. It's also that it's a lot of back-to-back sharp 90 and 180 degree turns, which are slow and exhausting to drive especially in winter conditions.

Admittedly, this observation is based on the base curves not your catboxes - catbox blocks a surprisingly large chunk of the internet, myself included.

slow and exhausting to drive

This is basically a feature, people should be driving slow in neighborhoods.

Sorry, let me rephrase:

With a conventional layout most of a trip is outside neighborhoods, with only a little bit at the start and end that's slow & exhausting to drive, so it's mostly fine.

With this layout you have to travel far further within said traffic-calmed (read: slow and exhausting to drive) area.

Imgur album

The inside radius of the right-of-way lines shown in these images is 30 feet. When you add the 6-foot sidewalk and the 8-foot parking lane, you get an effective inside radius of 44 feet for the travel lanes. (Standard minimum travel-lane inside radii are 25 feet for a passenger car, 30 feet for a single-unit delivery truck, and 40 feet for a shorter multi-unit truck. A long fire truck can swing wide into the oncoming lane.)

Ok, so less sharp than I was imagining. Thank you for the mirror.

I still think the Hilbert curve one would be slow and exhausting to drive, especially in winter conditions. The Peano curve may be alright - though at that point one wonders why you bother with the Peano curve as opposed to just a Boustrophedon.

You could make it more equitable by making it a one-way road. This way every resident would have to drive the same distance.

"Oh no I drove past my friend's house."

(hopefully this isn't considered a low-effort post)

Should've used the guest parking and walked.

This works fine for someone who is able-bodied and does not need to carry more than a few items into the house.

For someone who does not meet these conditions...?

They can use their motorized scooter

It would be worse if you scaled it up, though. Or were you planning just that size?

Under one state's subdivision law (§§ 4.1 and 4.2): The biggest Hilbert-curve subdivision that I've drawn would generate traffic of around 3600 trips per day (362 single-family houses × 10.1 (trips per day) per house). That already is a little above the permitted limit of 3500 trips per day for a "minor collector" street, which is the highest-level street on which houses should front. So this is just about the biggest Hilbert-curve subdivision that you can make without running into problems.

10 trips per house per day? That sounds like way too many.

Two commuters, a school bus, a mail carrier, and a trash/recycling truck or a delivery van add up to ten trips (in and out are counted separately) pretty easily.

Note that this is for ordinary "single-family detached housing". "High-rise apartment" generates only 5.0 trips per day, and "senior adult housing—detached" generates only 3.7 trips per day.

A school bus, a mail carrier and a trash/recycling truck do one trip for all households in the subdivision. It seems disingenuous to multiply them by the number of households.

The developer probably can make that argument to the zoning board. (And I'm not a traffic engineer, so I may be misrepresenting it anyway.)

Yeah, this is funny, but a horrible experience to live in.

@Southkraut: "Outmanoeuver"? A daring synthesis, as the cool kids say.

I'm just a tired old Swabian who pretends to speak english. I don't get it. What are you saying? What has it to do with roads?

American: Outman(eu)v(er)

British: Outman(oeu)v(re)

Your fascinating innovation: Outman(oeu)v(er)

Ooh, now I see it. Yeah, typo. Thanks for pointing it out.

You know how we Germans fixed it? Manöver. There. That's how you appropriate a French word!

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