site banner
PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   2497 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 6, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So, how doomed should I be about the national debt situation in the US?

It seems pretty hopeless. Even if we have excellent growth (>2%), and do something politically impossible like increase taxes by 2% and cut spending by 2%, we will still probably become unable to service the interest on the debt by 2032 or something. Do I have that right?

Anyplace safe? Seems like Europe just does as badly if not worse than the US if the US defaults.

Maybe it won't be so bad? #cope #cope #cope

Even if we have excellent growth (>2%), and do something politically impossible like increase taxes by 2% and cut spending by 2%, we will still probably become unable to service the interest on the debt by 2032 or something.

Source?

The Government Accountability Office's most recent report on this topic is here. It projects (in figure 11) that, even in year 2054, interest payments still will be "only" 27 percent of federal spending.

Source

napkin math. let me see why I'm so off from the GAO report

UPDATE: I don't quite understand the takeaway from Figure 11. How does interest on the debt growing to 27% of federal "spending" mean we would find the revenue to keep paying it? Isn't it more clear to say that our liabilities would grow such that 27% of them are interest payments alone?

In 2025, we already currently deficit spend $2t to meet our $8t a year in obligations.

What figure 3 of that report makes clear is that the size of our interest payments will grow out of proportion with revenue growth. That's the scary part IMO. It's already happening and I think even higher GDP growth + the other politically impossible things I mentioned in my OP wouldn't help us catch up with it.

Why do people say "half a dozen" instead of "six"?

Probably stems from purchasing like baked goods?

I suppose for the same reason French people say "four score and eleven" instead of "ninety one".

It's more like four-twenty-eleven.

Do you think the Muslim world’s proximity to Africa and use of Slavic slaves gave them a big advantage in warring against Europeans? They had a constant supply of slaves in their economy. I wonder how they would have done in war if they had no slaves supplying them constant boosts in productivity.

Janissary/mameluke-style military slaves performed well in battle, so possibly yes. The Ottomans were by far the strongest force in the Muslim world, probably in part because they made good use of actual Europeans fighting for them.

Without steppe nomads or Europeans, Muslim combat power seemed to be quite low.

Muslim armies seem to have done well when led by a nomadic or recently nomadic military class i.e. Bedouin tribesmen or Turkic horsemen, and to have lost their edge after settling down in much the same way the Mongols, Manchus, and Khitans did after conquering China. I don't think slaves had much to do with it.

Slaves are not a productivity boost(they usually perform worse than free labor), not really, and labor generally isn’t the limiting factor on premodern economics anyways.

It’s possible that the use of military slaves gave Muslim armies a greater degree of flexibility in comparison to European armies where, pre-line infantry, soldiers performed tasks in battle dictated by their civilian social standing rather than the needs of the army. But I don’t think ready supply of Eastern European slave girls did much for the Ottoman Empire.

Slaves are not a productivity boost(they usually perform worse than free labor)

Not sure how this passes the intuition test. If I force you to labor in a mine and beat you if you don’t, the mines will be productive, and I don’t have to pay you much. Or, if I have to pay a cook $30 an hour to come to my house, it is more productive if I pay you in $4 beans and beat you if I don’t comply. All of the extra “resources” saved could be taxed to raise armies.

Hence the famously efficient Soviet model?

Coercion smooths out the economic signals that tell you how valuable your industry really is. It’s possible to get a good deal, but you will lose out to competitors who aren’t trying to command their economy.

  1. Slaves have poor motivation to improve their condition. They have little aspiration to improve their position, and practically speaking you can't beat a cook into making you a great dinner. You can beat them into cooking you A dinner by beating them if they don't cook; but if you're going to beat them unless the dinner is perfect they're probably getting beaten regardless. At which point there's no motivation to make a better dinner. Where a free chef who comes to my house is motivated to enhance his status, make a great dinner, get more business, etc.

  2. Free labor typically provides for itself in the long run on a lower wage than it costs the slaver to feed and maintain his slaves. Chattel Slavery only works with continual infusions of fresh slaves from foreign parts, otherwise it doesn't tend to perpetuate itself well.

Of course slavery takes many historical forms, and we can debate details.

Societies with slavery have such low labor costs that it doesn’t really matter, and, furthermore, slavery removes a lot of the incentives behind productivity improvements. The alternative to a $4/hr slave cook is usually a $5/hr master chef.

You can speculate all you want(and the motte has a fetish for low labor costs), but in general more economically optimized societies aren’t eager to adopt slavery. The gulf states and apartheid South Africa were not models of economic efficiency, and that’s probably the closest thing to slavery in the industrialized world.

Slavery gives the center of an empire a quick economic boost from conquered territories though. Which otherwise would be very hard to extract without letting them develop economies and tax infrastructure that the empire might lose control of to local elites.

Can someone recommend an explained numerical estimate of the economic effects of the recent tariffs, assuming they continue unchanged? Looking for something from a broadly neoclassical perspective, largely based on general theory (not "look at my linear regression mum"), that isnt aiming for maximum Trump-condemnation.

https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-week-april-7-2025

Is there an explanation of how they got those numbers as well? The excel offered is static and AFAICT has no additional info above the site. A few questions: Am I reading it correctly that they expect no compounding effect, just one multiplier? How is the GDP effect only -0.6%, if the price level is +2.3%? And Im assuming the GDP effect counts the fiscal revenue already, since otherwise its net-positive.

They use the GTAP model.

They have some notes in the appendix of an earlier version

https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-illustrative-reciprocal-us-tariffs

Thank you.

Afraid I don’t have one. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a policy evaluated by normal economics. I’m willing to believe it happens, but it sure doesn’t make it to the public eye.

YouTube has started recommending me “tariff equation” apologetics, but I’m not desperate enough to sift through them for quality.

I dont generally look for these things either, because with more "normal" policies you have a good enough idea anyway that the details dont matter, and its not like these forecasts are that precise to begin with - unfortunately that means I dont know how to find one now that I would want it. Im pretty sure even good tariff equation apologetics is not what Im looking for.

I have kept my youtube free of politics-first content. Most political discussion is very unpleasant for me in audio, which likely contributed to achieving this, but I would very much recommend.

TLDR: Request for fantasy / scifi stories.

I am looking for a certain type of fantasy stories, but it's a bit difficult to describe exactly what too concisely, so please bear with me.

I keep noticing two kinds of problems in Western fantasy stories of the last decade that breaks immersion for me and makes them all feel very similar to each other (and thus more boring).

The first is that the main characters will go out of their way to virtue-signal some stance or action to appeal to the modern Western audience. It may be in the form of immediately going out to fight slavery / chauvinism / racism in a medieval society, even if such a course of action would've realistically carried great risks for the gang and little practical changes.

The second is that their thoughts and actions will be sanitised to not include anything that any large percent of the audience would be likely to find "icky" and cause them to leave a negative review or stop reading the story. This includes inner monologue of sexual nature (if it's in 1st POV); very rarely using intimidation against "non-combatants" / non-enemies; rarely using the character's advantageous position (or e.g. some resource monopoly) to strong-arm concessions from allies, neutral parties, or civilians; almost never deciding to procure slaves of their own (unless there's some convenient excuse to "force" such a scenario upon the MC); and so on.

So I am looking for stories that will not have these two types of writing tropes, and will in addition:

* be well-written in general; preferably be completed and have a large word-count

* the main character(s) should also

** not be edgelords (unless it leads to a really well-executed character development later on)

** not be sadists who tend to cause suffering / harm just for its own sake

** not be hypocrites, not apply double standards when judging others' actions v.s. judging their own

* not be the Prince of Nothing series. (edit:) Or aSoIaF, or Chronicles of Amber.

Does anyone know any such stories? Any format is fine, be it printed literature, web originals, or fanfiction.

And to clarify, I am not advocating for any real-life applications of what I've listed earlier. I just want my fictional stories to have more variety to them, and am trying to find works of western origin that would offer such variety.

edit: stories recommended so far:

  • Acts of Caine series / Heroes Die (1998) — new
  • The Black Company (1984) — new
  • The Bloodsworm saga (2021, 3 books, complete) — new
  • Brigador Killers: Pilgrim (2025) — new
  • Codex Alera (2004) — new, but Jim Butcher
  • Cugel's Saga (1950 / 1983) — new
  • Dresden Files — didn't like the writing
  • Eisenhorn (2004) — new, but WH40k. May give it a try.
  • First Law trilogy (2006) — new
  • Furies of Calderon (2004) — new
  • Locke lamora (2006) — IIRC, didn't like it for some reason
  • The Malazan series — was just about to start reading myself
  • Night angel trilogy (2008) — new
  • Powder Mage series (2013) — new
  • The Sun Eater series (2018) — new
  • Vlad Taltos series (1983) — new
  • Warhammer 40k — I liked the Astartes miniseries, but the overall format of this franchise is not for me.

-

  • Berserk — liked the Golden Age Arc, but the overall manga's not for me.
  • Lymond Chronicles — probably not fantasy enough
  • oyasumi Punpun — not Western
  • Worth the Candle — This story is superbly written, and it matches the "not pandering to the audience" part. But the MC is also extremely motivated towards helping as many people as he can. IIRC, it was pretty much the driving force behind his Quest.
  • The Witcher series — I've mostly liked both the books and the games. However, I don't think Geralt's personality fits this request.

Thanks for all these recs! If you know any others, please post them too, though.

I second the suggestions below for Daniel Abraham's Dagger and the Coin series. (Daniel Abraham is one half of James S. A. Corey, the partnership that wrote The Expanse.)

In addition, you cannot go wrong with Adrian Tchaikovsky. The man is enormously prolific (like, Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson level prolific), but a much better writer than Sanderson, and he writes science fiction and fantasy equally well. His Shadows of the Apt series is ten books long, but I also love his Final Architects and Children of Ruin space operas.

You might check out Flames of Mira by Clay Harmon, but he's only up to two books. Ember Blade by Chris Wooding is also very good (and long), though much more traditional fantasy. Dreams and Shadows and Queen of the Dark Things by C. Robert Cargill if you like Dresden-style urban fantasy. Rob J. Hayes's The War Eternal starts out looking like it's going to be YA, but it really is not (and features the protagonist as a much older narrator looking back on what an idiot she was). Evan Winter's Rage of Dragons is also a good series but it is an unfinished trilogy at present. Both of the latter have very flawed protagonists in fucked-up societies, but I would not quite call them grimdark.

What do folks here think of The Blacktongue Thief? I'd seen it recommended quite a bit and am two-thirds of the way through and think it fits his search pretty well.

It's certainly quite different in it's language and characterization than your standard genre work. Although the MC might be a bit of an edge lord (I'm not totally certain what this means) but I think if he is, the self reflection in the first person narration takes the edge off it a bit - he's presented as pretty self aware.

Curious to hear what others here think of the novel.

Dagger and the Coin

If you like low fantasy try The Crippled King by the A. Trae McMaken. It's a very procedural story about the development of a grand dwarvish mine, plus plenty of politics and conflicts between the dwarves and their human former slavemasters. The MC has a great arc.

Its already on your list, but I can second the Malazan books. Start with the 10 book series The Malazan Book of the Fallen, its been complete for over a decade now. Erikson and Esselmont are actual professionals with bills to pay and an output to match, so there are many more books after those. Its not just very good fantasy, its some of the best fiction every written. Memories of Ice is probably the best fantasy novel ever made.

You may like "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" - seems to fit your request, some people liked it. Personally I bounced - but not exactly sure why.

I'd like to recommend the Hammer and the Cross. It's an alternate history set in medieval Europe where Vikings rapidly develop technology without the accompanying enlightenment ideals. I think it fits a lot of your criteria.

Reverend Insanity fulfils your criteria almost perfectly. It's a Chinese xianxia webnovel, extremely, extremely long (albeit sadly unfinished due to a murky legal situation), translated into English.

We have a brutal but not sadistic main character who routinely intimidates non-combatants, 'strong-arming' could be his middle name, closely followed by extorting, betraying and deceiving. He starts the novel beating up fellow students for money. Later on he does some industrial-scale slave-raising of non-humans.

There's basically no sex, rape is alluded to occasionally (notoriously in chapter 1 but this is never followed up on), we never actually see it. That's the only sanitization in the story. Generally it's incredibly un-PC, there's casual homophobia and misogyny that's not even intended to raise any questions, it's just atmospheric. There's a race war going on in the background, a zero-sum struggle for dominance over the world is assumed. There are some nice people in this world, some even highly successful but this is a brutal world with dynamics that incentivize harshness and repression. There can be no political or social equality when personal combat power in their world is more unequal than wealth is in ours.

There's no hypocrisy, our MC doesn't think he's in the right or make justifications at any point, he mostly just clowns on people who are forced to betray themselves by the social constraints they're in. Occasionally he recognizes and salutes fellow people who are true to their own selves, whether they're evil like him or good or just crazy obsessed with something.

Reverend Insanity is also super thoughtful in the construction of the setting, in the conflicts of the characters and the social games they play. The slave-raising chapter I mentioned is interesting, it goes into detail about how he manipulates the rockmen leadership structure, how he toys with them, making it seem like they're defiantly resisting him as he works them to death. Nothing about the story is generic, he made up his own power system with its own dynamics, a rich and strange world with its own power structure, international relations, economy, culture and so on. It all feels like it fits in its world,

However the prose is weird, it's super straightforward, almost childish to a certain level. That may be due to the translation, I don't know. So if you go in and think 'this is insanely low-level, what kind of shit taste does this guy have', sure... it is basic in prose. The author gives up on flowery descriptions quite quickly. But there is a lot more than you'd think in this story. The power of love, fate, revenge, duty, sacrifice... Possibly this is also due to it maturing over the years. While I'd say it's not an edgelord story at any point, (even the infamous bear scene has a thematic level beyond shock value) it definitely becomes less edgy over time. There's a whole meta-level with the in-universe allegories, Reverend Insanity has a claim to literary merit.

Reverend Insanity does have plenty of flowering descriptions, the issue I find with it is that the narration is about 99% tell, 1% show. It will explain at every moment what a side character's inner thoughts and motivation were and why they acted like they did, as well as every intricacy in the magical system that facilitated a difference in power between two characters.

To a certain extent sure but there's a lot of mystery in what happens. WTF was Thieving Heaven up to, what was his whole deal? It was deliberately written so that commenters who tried to work out what would happen would be deceived, he'd change the plot to surprise them.

Lilliana Bodoc's Saga of the Borderlands. Vague retelling of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, but the Spanish are Sauron. I've only read the first one and am making my way through the other two but it's good. Ecological twist on Lord of the Rings with some pretty unique races of people that I don't think I've seen anywhere else in fantasy.

Also have to recommend Wizard of Earthsea. Best character development I've seen in fantasy by far.

I know you say that Warhammer isn't for you, but I would actually recommend you give the Ciaphas Cain series a go, it's very different from anything else in Warhammer, very light hearted, fun and unusually sensible for the setting.

Similarly I would suggest for Warhammer Fantasy the Gotrek and Felix series, at least up to Beastslayer, after which I've found myself falling off the series. It's good fun fantasy adventuring, the first book is different from the others in that it's more of an anthology of short adventures rather than a single narrative. I quite enjoyed it but the second books introduction of the skaven and their schemes really adds a lot of humour.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. (There's an element of edginess there because the main character starts out as a torturer/executioner, but he isn't a sadist and sees it more as job/necessary evil).

Anything by Daniel Abraham (link to my old review), particularly the Long Price Quartet.

It may be in the form of immediately going out to fight slavery / chauvinism / racism in a medieval society, even if such a course of action would've realistically carried great risks for the gang and little practical changes.

And I in turn would love to see some story with anti-slavery campaign - feel free to recommend me some.

Just it should be serious conflict, not "everyone claps and praises to moral superiority of main character, slavery instantly disappears". It is a pity that I do not remember any stories doing it well. Narnia is closest of all things that I remember right now.

almost never deciding to procure slaves of their own (unless there's some convenient excuse to "force" such a scenario puon the MC)

mostly the same, it sounds like interesting topic to explore but either everything goes unrealistically well or entire story does not deserve to be read at all

I have no problem with Goody Two-Shoes protagonists, I have problems with story having no conflict or having utterly useless world-building.

I in turn would love to see some story with anti-slavery campaign - feel free to recommend me some.

Just it should be serious conflict, not "everyone claps and praises to moral superiority of main character, slavery instantly disappears"

I think the Honor Harrington series and short stories get there eventually.

I think the Honor Harrington series and short stories get there eventually.

I tried reading something by this author and quality was atrociously terrible, in my opinion.

Once again I'll trot out Pale by Wildbow. I think it captures both "anti-slavery campaign" and "slavery does not instantly disappear".

How much of dystopian grimderp world it is?

As much as Worm? 10% of worm? 5%?

I dropped Worm on account of being distilled grimderpness.

I wouldn't call Worm too grimderp, but Pale is definitely much brighter. Maybe 25%? The most grim elements of the setting that were on full display in Pact, the other work in the Otherverse, are pretty much out of the way.

That being said, if you dislike a few horrific displays of torture and violence sprinkled here and there, those do exist in Pale. As I said, there is slavery and the associated mechanisms of suppression.

Thanks for info! I have less problem with "a few horrific displays of torture and violence sprinkled here and there" and more with general hopelessness/pointlessness. Or world where everyone depicted would benefit from being nonexistent or deserves to be nonexistent (see also WH40K).

In that case, I can assure you there is definitely less pointlessness in Pale.

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) is pretty good, although short-ish.

The Ends of Magic Series (2023) has a lot of relevant stuff also. It has pretty good magical system and fight scene simulation, ok-ish worldbuilding, but underwhelming global plot arc and characters (in my opinion).

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) is pretty good, although short-ish.

I really liked it despite not being 12 year old. Thanks for recommending. And recommending it also for others!

I did damn it with faint praise by bringing up the market segment like that, didn't I? That wasn't intentional; it's one of my favorite books, without qualifiers, and I just wanted to explain the length. It is aimed at 12 year olds, but it's better than Heinlein's other juveniles, which in turn are better on average than most books targeted at adults.

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) is pretty good, although short-ish.

It's a juvenile (what publishers now call "middle grade"), and about the right length for its target audience. It's much better than you'd expect for a book targeted at 12 year olds, though. It also fits

serious conflict, not "everyone claps and praises to moral superiority of main character, slavery instantly disappears".

perfectly.

Dorothy Dunnett is historical fiction, but it fits what you want. It even has some very minor low fantasy elements. If you want to dive into a series, begin with the Lymond Chronicles or King Hereafter if you want a taste of her writing.

The Malazan series maybe? personally dnf'd it since it lacked character focus and development for me but if you dig worldbuilding its kinda king.

The Sun Eater series by Cristopher Ruocchio, one book still not out, but you'd have 6 to read to catch up. MC starts out idealistic but things change quickly.

The Bloodsworm saga by John Gwynne recently finished. I'd say it's borderline, characters are mostly following their own motivations, killing is just part of their world, maybe a bit of commentary on slavery but it doesn't feel like a modern sermon it is guilty of the fantasy thing where women have unrealistic combat ability however.

Powder Mage series and it's sequels seemed to mostly avoid this but it's been a while since I've read them so I could be misremembering.

The Witcher series would probably fit this if you haven't read it.

Been recommended The Black Company by Glen Cook a lot for this sort of fantasy, but haven't personally read it yet, on my to read list.

Just started Heroes Die, part of the Acts of Caine series as I was looking for something similar to what you're describing after how guilty of all this Sanderson's latest was. I'll update if it's any good I guess.

If you don't mind manga Berserk fits, and it's not fantasy but I just finished oyasumi Punpun and that story definitely doesn't sanitize it's characters thoughts author might fit your sadism complaint though, even though the characters don't.

The Witcher series would probably fit this if you haven't read it.

this one is quite funny in "The first is that the main characters will go out of their way to virtue-signal some stance or action to appeal to the modern Western audience" category

at the same it has some quite evident targeted attacks and virtue-signalling, but...

  • it applied in a completely different political context
  • to the point that some will be utterly missed
  • this is decades old at this point so it is not so modern politics

Even blatant ethic/racist discrimination stuff is far less jarring as it has more realistic presentation than in a typical modern story (usually both sides did shitty things)

  • Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. The books are fun to read. They do explore issues of racism and serfdom, but in a way that doesn't correspond to the modern world, and the main character retains a grounded, no-nonsense attitude.

  • Both the Dresden Files series and Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. The latter is a six-book completed series, with a cool fantasy-meets-Roman-Empire theme.

  • Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy has some of the most vividly developed characters I have ever read in a fantasy novel.

I also considered the first law, but despite the morally grey main characters, it had a modern western feeling to it. The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter. The opponents engage in slavery and dark magic, while the main characters, for all their faults, have clear red lines on that front. Modern-style romance and gender relations in general are quite clearly implied to be the morally correct option. It has been quite some time since I read it so I may be misremembering/forgetting some parts, though.

The Union has gulags out of sight in Angland; one of the main characters had run such a gulag just prior to the novels, and sends people there during.

The penal colonies are imo quite clearly presented as bad, and Glokta likewise as a cynical anti-hero literally broken by life.

Also, this reminds me of another thing that gave it such a modern western feeling: West hangs out a lot with the Prisoners because he gets along with them well, while the prince he is supposed to be with is a complete idiot asshole. This is mirrored in the cast of PoV characters; By far the most insufferable person, and deliberately so, is Jezal, the nobleman, who only redeems himself through the adventure the story is about. The king, meanwhile, is a fat, drooling senile. The first law consistently portrays the aristocracy as vain idiots with few exceptions, and even those exceptions make up their intelligence with malice. On the other hand it idealizes the wretched.

In history however, meritocracy didn't succeed because commoners are better than nobleman, but because the best of the commoners are better than nobleman. However, the average nobleman had always been better than the average commoner in most ways you could care about. Nobleman often suffered higher casualties than commoners during wars due to their bravery, even common-born upstarts would prefer spending time with the noble-born due to their sociability and commoners in general often engaged in the kind of dysfunctional self-hurting behaviour that contemporary lower classes still exhibit much more than contemporary middle and especially upper classes. And this is and was true even more so once you compare criminals with the nobility.

The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter.

Her abilities get represented as highly unusual in that world, and the reason for her deviation is important to the plot. Unfortunately, the author provides no such reason for the protagonist of "Best served cold" set in the same world and time. So skip that one, if martial females mess with your enjoyment of the story.

I don't really mind it too much in itself. It's a question of frequency and presentation; It's annoying and stupid that it has become the default, especially so if it's not justified through fantastic elements. But it seemed relevant to the OP.

Seconding the First Law, with the caveat that some of the (six) protagonists fail pretty hard on the hypocrisy metric.

Do you like urban fantasy? They're not completed but The Dresden Files are a fun time.

Codex Alera is completed, 6 books - that's a more traditional fantasy from the same author. I don't know about any ideological axes to grind in that one. In fact the political elements are interesting if a bit muddled because the "evil side" is clearly making some good points and the "good side" has failed the citizenry in various ways. But that tends to be more in the background as the main story follows the traditional "peasant has to level up and become a hero" saga.

Most things from the golden age of Science Fiction are pretty good. Things by Robert Heinlein, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov etc.

Most of the heroes are strong willed masculine archetypes, but flawed in one way or another.

Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance fits the bill. Cugel the Clever is a smarmy conman antihero who commits felonious crimes and treats women badly. The reader sympathizes with Cugel because he strives valiantly to survive in a hostile world. Cugel's Saga is set in the Dying Earth: a far-future setting where the Sun flickers weak and red, and the Earth is scarred with the ruins of millions of dead civilizations. The world is polluted with cursed artifacts and monsters. The powers-that-be are insane, malevolent wizards. It is a despondent, hopeless world inhabited by selfish, cynical people. Cugel victimizes many innocent people, but most of the people he tries to con are even worse than he is, and they usually get the better of him. After endless setbacks and frustrations, the novel ends in a hard-earned triumph for Cugel the Clever.

Matthew Colville dislikes Cugel's Saga because he thinks it is too mean-spirited. That's as good of an endorsement as you could ask for.

What about the Warhammer 40k universe? Very grimdark of course, but as far as I see it should mostly fulfill your conditions, though it depends on which particular book you read. Neither sadists nor edgelords are rare, for one, but they also aren't universal. I guess some may say the entire setting is kind of edgelord-y.

Another option would be old epics and stories, especially greek or german are enjoyable. Or do you specifically mean modern western? I wanted to mention japanese stories, but they are also excluded if you are spefically looking for western ones.

Eisenhorn was pretty good and would fit this I think. He's a rather grey character even from the crazy perspective of the Imperium

Based fellow hater of Goody Two-Shoes protagonists

Worth the Candle probably satisfies your criteria, IIRC.

Huh, from my memory, "Worth the Candle" has a lot of modern-day virtue signaling.

The protagonist's internal monologue does discuss the attractiveness of his lovers Amaryllis and Fenn; he (or at least his close ally Amaryllis) does strong-arm concessions out of nominal allies; and he does engage in some mind control late in the story. But this is all IIRC, and I may be misremembering.

I suppose that's true. I never finished the story, but there was a fair amount of pragmatism in the protagonists in what I read.

Hmmm ...

Brent Weeks night angel trilogy. Locke lamora if you don't mind waiting 20 years per book. Chris Wooding's old stuff.

I read "Brigador Killers: Pilgrim" last week. It was phenomenal in that it completely avoided practically all of the tropes that usually annoy me.

See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F199RDCY for the ebook version.

Much recommended if you can stomach reading a novel set in a video game universe.

Thanks for the recommendation. How much will I be losing from this story, if I haven't played the game and know nothing about the original setting?

Possibly quite a bit, but I have no control group. It's a short read though, and you can get a kindle sample for free, or listen to half the audiobook for free on youtube, so I'd say try that and see whether it works for you.

There's also an earlier Brigador novel that Pilgrim is a sequel to. Reading that first might make sense. It's also very good.

Is Trump actually just cooked now? There is absolutely no way his tariffs don't cause major pain through huge inflation (the thing people voted for him to fix!), layoffs, and the return of stagflation. I mean these tariff numbers are absolutely eye-popping.

2 arguments I can steelman for the tariffs:

  1. Give it time, the incentives will slowly lead to a resurgent manufacturing sector.
  2. These tariffs can be re-negotiated and Trump is using door-in-the-face technique to extract favorable terms.

For 1, maybe true but almost certainly would take years if not decades. Meanwhile stock market is 50% of peak, boomers' retirement and everyone's 401k has evaporated in a puff of smoke, layoffs that ripple through almost every industry as consumers pull back on spending and the engine of America's economy (aforementioned consumer spending) grinds to a halt. In other words Trump is toast because nobody is willing to suffer through that for 4 years, let alone 4 months. Republicans get annihilated in midterms unless Congress takes back tariff powers from the executive. The one thing you can't do in America is fuck with the economy, it's the raison d'etre of the entire thing. And this can't be blamed on vague macro factors or credit default swaps, it's entirely traceable to Trump and his tariffs and everybody and their mother knows it. Even a child can understand what a tariff is conceptually.

For 2, also maybe true. But the uncertainty will lead to R&D pullbacks, depressed investment, and FUD all over the place as long as Trump is in power. This argument and scenario is the optimistic case. But even here you're again fucking with the American raison d'etre. Stability, certainty, relative lack of political shenanigans with the economy are a large part of the reason everybody and their mother wants to invest in America. If you take that away all of a sudden America doesn't seem so attractive anymore. Economy probably chugs along but either way it's nothing like Trump's first term and voters again have a very obvious catalyst for their economic malaise.

Honestly I don't see how Trump or Trumpism survive as a political force. DOGE was a farcical disaster which didn't even touch SS, medicare, or the military and consumed massive amounts of political capital, and now Trump is basically going full retard and strapping on his suicide vest as he wages jihad on the American economy. Trumpism's political capital is deep in the red now, and we haven't even begun to feel the tariff pain. If he actually keeps the tariffs and Congress doesn't wake up and take that power back, I'm not even sure the guy makes it to 2026.

Is Trump actually just cooked now?

Betteridge's law of headlines? It seems like we ask this question every few months about some new problem and it is never true. I've been wrong about it over and over, so I'm going to take the pro-Trump side here:

Trump maintains an iron grasp on the GOP. It resembles a holding company structure: he might not ever have a majority of the country, or a supermajority of the GOP, but he has a sufficient die-hard MAGA base within the GOP primary electorate that he can exercise total control over the GOP, and in a two party system every time the GOP is in power Trump is in power. The non-MAGA GOP political establishment lacks either the ability or the courage to get rid of Trump, no other figure within the MAGA movement has anywhere near the gravitas or the cojones to betray him. The core MAGA base is essentially immune to being persuaded by outside information, having constructed their own information ecosystem, and as long as they control every GOP primary, no one will turn against Trump.

In MAGAland, we're about to enter the era of the Woke Capitalist Wrecker. Most of the "facts" involved will be sufficiently mediated by human intervention that they can easily be blamed on ideological foes. Stock market going down? Woke (((Financiers))) are manipulating prices to try to force a panic and foment opposition to Trump. Companies aren't hiring because Woke executives want a recession to drive down wages for real Americans. Woke Capital is refusing to invest in obviously profitable American manufacturing because of their opposition to Trump. It's all a plot, and as soon as True Patriots are put in charge of the economy, things will turn around, the Trump Plan cannot fail, it can only be failed or betrayed. We may even see actual threats against executives, or even a few attempts at investigations of woke capital for political interference.

Alternatively, we might get the Same Puppet with New Strings. Trump might not lose power, because of his totemic importance to his base, but he could jettison a pile of advisors, and bring in new ones, and totally reverse his policy choices. It's happened before: Trump might not be cooked, but this flavor of Trumpism might be.

Finally, we might just be stuck in a two player game where somebody has to win. The Conservatives stayed in power in the UK longer than their expiration date, because Corbynite Labour was persistently unelectable. The Democrats don't seem to have much of a message here, and a timely rape or riot could throw enough culture war fog into the mix to cause the Democrats to trip over their own dicks and fail to capitalize.

So, I think there are plenty of scenarios where Trump isn't cooked. He could get out of this in a lot of different ways.

I mean my hunch is he lost in 2020 to Biden in large part because of Covid economic woes which were largely not his fault. In 2026 if we’re in a recession that’s directly attributable to him and the Republicans who enabled him, so the fallout will be much worse, and if Congress flips that will basically hamstring him until 2028.

But just a hunch and I don’t follow politics as closely as many of you so curious what people think of this.

I mean not to relitigate, but the economics of COVID was the least concerning part.

Stock market going down? Woke (((Financiers))) are manipulating prices to try to force a panic and foment opposition to Trump.

Comments like this don’t help dispel that impression:

With uncertainty emanating from DC, some on Wall Street say it’s time to send an unambiguous message to the president and his team: Don’t buy the dip.

Stocks are cheaper than they were a week ago, so it’s only natural investors may take a break from the sell-off and load up on some bargain assets. But going into dip-buying mode risks rewarding Trump for playing chicken with the global economy. Like training a puppy, you sometimes need a negative correction if you want it to stop peeing on the rug.

”We need this market to crash — to keep the pressure on the administration,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told my colleague Matt Egan on Monday. That is a frankly shocking comment from an analyst as prominent as Yardeni, who also happens to have a Ph.D in economics from Yale.

Oh I've no doubt there will be plenty of evidence.

Some of the current developments are increasingly pointing towards 2.

But we will have to see. If he really intended primarily for 2., his move was very ballsy. I'd have been much more careful, first negotiating and only considering targeted tariffs in case a country shows no willingness to change. In a one-on-one, America is always economically larger, so they can strong-arm almost anyone; By picking a fight with everyone simultaneously, they risk them banding together instead. But I'm also quite strongly generally opposed to tariffs, while Trump at the very least does not mind introducing them if he feels treated unfair (and he does so quite easily).

The bigger issue with point 2 is that the calculus for determining the tariff rates is unhinged from reality. Countries like Switzerland, Israel, and Singapore don't charge any tariffs to the US (and in the case of Switzerland and Singapore, to anyone else). Countries like Brazil do charge tariffs, but we have a trade surplus with them. Trump counts VAT as a trade barrier, which doesn't make sense to begin with and would require countries that have it to rejigger their entire systems of internal taxation, which isn't going to happen. He tariffed countries that already have free trade agreements with us. Services, for which we run a trade surplus and which employ the majority of workers, apparently don't count. If these were simply reciprocal tariffs with the goal being to get free trade agreements, Trump may have had a point, but these countries have nowhere to begin negotiations, and the manner in which the tariffs were implemented, combined with Trump's general schizophrenia, doesn't inspire much confidence that any deal will survive longer than a week. Given the overall environment, it's better for them to just hang in there and hope that domestic pressure puts an end to this nonsense sooner rather than later.

As far as I understand Trump, he considers the trade imbalance itself a problem and thus if a country doesn't buy enough american goods - even if it isn't the result of tariffs - that needs to be fixed. Negotiations can then still be done by the governments of the respective countries by deliberately buying american for large-scale infrastructure projects and pressuring their own larger companies to invest/buy more american. Taiwan, for example, has had no tariffs, but has declared their intention to invest more into american companies to start negotiations.

But yes, I agree overall. Achieving a perfect equal trade balance with all countries is the same kind of nonsense as the desire on the left for the perfect equality of all people - neither desirable nor realistic. I'd greatly prefer genuine reciprocal tariffs.

Presumably with free floating exchange rates, trade should end up roughly balanced between all currencies, right? So even if the country doesn't buy enough american goods, they would at least trade the USD back into their own currency, making theirs more valuable and therefore less competitive over time, until trade balances.

I think the only way to get persistent trade surpluses is when one country is saving in the other's currency (earning or buying their currency, and then just sitting on it). Some small amount of that will happen dynamically, particularly for desired stable currencies. But any country actually trying to pursue serious export-led growth will have to actually continually buy up foreign reserves and sit on them. That was definitely the case with Japan, and then China; I'm not sure about Switzerland/Israel/Singapore.

And thus, any kind of not letting the currency truly float (with a declared or de facto peg), is maybe what Trump had in fine print as 'or otherwise from currency manipulation', on his chart.

Meanwhile personally, I'm on the side that thinks other countries working hard to make stuff to send to us, in exchange for dollars that they can't spend, is on balance a strongly desirable position for us (as long as we can find jobs for people to do other than manufacturing). But yeah this has always been trump's ideology, that trade deficit = getting ripped off.

I think the only way to get persistent trade surpluses is when one country is saving in the other's currency (earning or buying their currency, and then just sitting on it).

From what I understand, Import/Export is specifically goods and services exchanged for money, so it does not include many financial instruments, such as direct investment into a foreign country or leaving your money at a foreign bank. So a country can run a long-term trade deficit indefinitely as long as it can re-capture the difference this way. Which is especially easy if you just-so happen to be the financial headquarter of the world. But yes, many countries saving in US currency is also an option.

I agree that, if anything, this implies a trade deficit is good for you.

Yeah it's not that foreign governments / central banks buying the currency counts for imports/exports. It's just that that's the required action to counteract the natural sell-pressure on the net-importer currency and the buy-pressure on the net-exporter currency, which would otherwise cause the exchange rate to move and would eventually end up evening out the imports & exports, dynamically.

So I believe the agency is pretty much all on the side of the trade surplus nation/currency, because anyone can issue their own currency and buy foreign reserves (which will be called 'establishing/maintaining an exchange rate peg' if formally acknowledged). No one can really force themselves into the trade deficit side.

Well, he's an old man and a lame-duck president. His political future was probably cooked regardless of what he did. But he'll still have all the usual presidential powers like vetos, pardons, and foreign policy. The tariffs might be the defining feature of his presidency.

The first point is exactly it. Why is any company going to invest tens of billions in reshoring manufacturing during a global recession, when debt is expensive when it will all end in a maximum of 2-4 years? As I understand it congress can also reverse the tariffs because they’re merely delegated to the President, which means it could be sooner if GOP reps realize they could be annihilated.

SS is nearly impossible to contact now, so DOGE has done something to it. Their website says no drop ins, impossible to get anyone on the phone for an appointment. Seems this was by design.

Is it just me, or is it normal for babies to cry very loudly right before they go to sleep for the night? Our baby cries for maybe 5-10 minutes in the evening as she drifts off to sleep.

I have a pet theory that babies who loudly cry before they go to sleep ensure that they sleep in a safe location. From an evolutionary perspective, imagine you're a hunter-gatherer with your baby in a questionable place: This loud baby is making me think twice about settling in here for the night. Best go back to our cave since this thing is making such a racket.

Those quiet and compliant babies were probably taken away by saber-toothed tigers and didn't pass their genes down.

There's a theory that it's instinctive to try to stop parents from having sex and having another child too soon that would compete for resources.

That’s pretty normal. I wouldn’t read too much into evolutionary just so stories.

Human babies are basically dysfunctional compared to other mammals for the first year or so, probably just so that they can have such an unusually large brain, and by extension skull, for their body size. I wouldn't over-interpret any particular behaviour they exhibit.

And yes, crying before sleeping is very common for babies. It gets (much!) better with age, but most kids get increasingly cranky in the late afternoon and evening.

Is it just me, or is it normal for babies to cry very loudly right before they go to sleep for the night? Our baby cries for maybe 5-10 minutes in the evening as she drifts off to sleep.

Ours used to make quite a big deal of going to sleep, with plenty of noise, but she's grown out of it by about 3yo.

My newborn does not do this often, but she does take a while to accept moving from one of her parents to her bed when sleeping

My baby son does this too but I assumed it was because they're over-tired just before they drop off. And when you're over-tired everything hurts more. I feel like everybody is more emotionally drained (thus, more likely to cry) in the evenings, makes sense to me that it would be the same for babies.

Forgive my ignorance: if globalization suppressed the wages of blue collar manufacturing/farming workers, why didn't it then commensurately suppress their cost of living? Naively, if the cost of labor inputs to everything made by those workers goes down, the prices of all relevant end products should go down. I get that a significant part of the cost of living crisis is housing, healthcare, and education, which are all affected by various forms of natural and artificial scarcity, but have most other goods actually gotten any more affordable than pre-globalization?

If not, where did all of the savings and productivity gains of globalization go?

If so, then is the "cost of living" crisis more accurately just a "cost of specifically housing, healthcare, and education" crisis?

My father grew up affording meat and getting new clothes twice yearly on his birthday and the new year, nowadays a meaty meal and an outfit would barely cost an hour's minimum wage in the west. The austerity of my father's childhood doesn't exist in the west and would be much rarer than a few generations ago even by global standards.

Really nearly everything is cheap if you have a Western income that isn't a zero-sum status competition (housing, education, luxury goods), artificially constrained by regulation (housing, healthcare, education, childcare) or dependent on high Western labor costs (housing, healthcare, childcare).

Technology could help with the last of these but I can't really see anything short of the singularity solving regulated artificial scarcity and anything short of the end of humanity solving status competitions.

have most other goods actually gotten any more affordable than pre-globalization?

yes

check clothing costs, food cost

check what people expect from their housing

check what is considered as a minimum viable equipment in house

how much people travel

and so on

cost of living

compared to past, especially pre-industrial times it is more of growth of expectations

when you measure cost of square footage of housing, measured by hours of average/median/typical low wage - then a lot of costs increase disappears do that while holding quality standards steady, and it disappears even more substantially

people dramatically underestimate wealth of typical modern people, compared to XX/XIX/XVIII century

when compared to typical people in ancient times (NOT emperors or pharaohs) it is even more hilarious

Pretty much everywhere I go, modern housing is appalling. Buildings thrown together; decorative panels falling off new-built apartments; concrete slabs rush-poured and not given proper time to cure; residential towers that catch fire or crack so badly they become uninhabitable; just enough lighting that you can photograph it for a real estate listing, but not enough to actually live in it; cupboards shallower than the width of a single mug; I could go on. It is not clear to me that we know how to build things any more.

You should compare equivalent-cost housing (in work hours or at least in inflation-adjusted cost), not worst currently available to best preserved ones.

Are you doing this?

It did, probably.

Color TV cost like $650 in 1980. Ten years later you could get a Japanese one for…$400. They even ditched the wood paneling. Today a similarly-sized Chinese flatscreen is, like, $150.

I’d grabbed a bunch of links from the FRED, Minneapolis Fed, and BLS to show this for other goods, but lost my draft. So feel free to compare numbers. All else equal, more competition means lower prices.

These charts of food prices per hour worked in England may be of interest. Along similar lines, I happened to be reading some 100+ year old newspapers about a month ago, when egg prices reached their zenith, and I was interested to see that, correcting for inflation, eggs regularly cost more than $6.00 per dozen c. 1910–1920, which is higher than any of the highly elevated prices I saw recently.

I also recall reading in an old book of etiquette from the late 1800s that a gentleman should look to spend 2–3 months’ income when purchasing a suit. I cannot fathom spending a sixth of my annual salary on a suit today.

I also recall reading in an old book of etiquette from the late 1800s that a gentleman should look to spend 2–3 months’ income when purchasing a suit. I cannot fathom spending a sixth of my annual salary on a suit today.

Perhaps the society is truly richer or tailors are poorer. Does anyone have an idea how expensive are handmade bespoke suits? I know made-to-measure is certainly cheaper.

Taylor’s are also far more productive due to sewing machines.

That’s fascinating, but I wish it had data points from the mid/late 20th century. If the curve flattens out by the 70s, with ubiquitous refrigeration and antibiotics and other technologies, it wouldn’t actually contradict the OP.

(I suspect the curve does not, in fact, flatten at that point.)

First, globalization didn’t suppress the wages of blue-collar workers, it suppressed the wages of manufacturing workers. Blue-collar service workers are doing fine.

Second, it did suppress their cost of living. The idea of going to work “to put food on the table” is an idiom in modern-day America. When an American loses his job, he doesn’t stop being able to literally feed his family. He doesn’t lose the clothes off his back. He doesn’t lose his refrigerator. He doesn’t lose his microwave. Instead, he loses his house, his healthcare, and his children’s formal educational opportunities.

his children’s formal educational opportunities.

Not even this. You might have to switch school districts because you lost your house, but universities offer scholarships. Harvard is 100% free including room and board to students from families earning under $100k (and has lesser benefits for other income bands).

Yes. Shoes used to be really expensive; now they’re cheap, just for one example.

Scott is clearly very interested in Christian thought judging by his substack — does anyone know the extent of this interest?

Anyone have thoughts on Colors of her Coat? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-colors-of-her-coat

Is no one going to mention the elephant in the room? He takes it seriously enough to write 72 chapters of compare and contrast with an Old Testament cosmology.

Colors of Her Coat was beautiful. In better times, it would stand with some of Scott’s most recommendable work.

I’ve been trying for some time to put into words my model of postmodernism, and Colors hits one of the key points. The very process of refining an art form pushes it into familiarity. Familiarity breeds contempt. Contempt insists that there’s no difference between good things and bad things, you fool, you absolute moron. That’s how we get solid-blue paintings and noise music and nihilistic, deconstructive fiction.

Maybe the public hates modern architecture. To a critic, though? The kind of person who is paid to think about buildings day in and day out? Novelty is essential. It’s new training data. His job is not to tell us about good buildings, but to participate in a conversation, no matter how Advanced it gets. Who cares if it alienates the proles? They’ll catch up eventually, right?

This is what’s missing when reactionaries criticize progressive media. Most of the time, they aren’t actually trying to erase your aesthetics. It’s more that your preferences are old news.

Wasn’t Scott a philosophy major in undergrad? He seems interested in Christian thought to the extent that it overlaps with the overall western philosophical tradition. There are also plenty of Bible references peppered throughout his work.

True but he’s gone down the Chesterton rabbit hole, which is a gateway drug to apologia and finally authentic religious interest

I'm surprised. In Orthodox theology she is usually clothed in red, since she is putting on divinity.

Western Christianity uses blue=Virgin Mary very extensively. There’s a few codified depictions which are not blue, of the ‘Our Lady of whatever’ variety, but nearly all depictions of the ‘default’ Virgin Mary show her in blue.

In the West, she's almost always portrayed as wearing blue, though it's not given symbolic thought the same way it is in Eastern iconography. Red permeates the coloration of Eastern sacred art, but it just doesn't have the same meaning of divinity in the West and instead red is concentrated on the celebration of martyrs. If you asked a thoughtful Catholic what the color of divinity and grace is, they'd say white or gold, like baptismal gowns and haloes.

I've sometimes seen Western art where Jesus has a blue sash, but blue, especially light blue, is really strongly associated with the clothing of the Virgin Mary and so you'll find it called "Mary's color." But white is also always used, usually for her veil. I've heard that blue became prominent because lapis lazuli was expensive and so spending a lot on her coloration was a way of showing her status, but I just think blue was a calming color and there's a strong association between her and peace and quiet. ("Peace on earth")

That being said, I have a coffee table book of medieval Catholic art, and you can notice that red covering blue was common in early medieval Roman art, with Byzantine imitations being a big trend. There was a flip flop at one point, with blue over red becoming more common in Western art. This morphed into just blue being an option. But if her gown has any color other than blue, it's probably red. Black is occasionally an option: the color of mourning. Nevertheless you can still find red-over-blue artworks in the West for hundreds of years, like this artwork from 12th century Spain.

I'm sure there's an enterprising Russian or Athonite who's written a screed describing this artistic history as evidence of Latin perfidy, but even if we stick with the blue=humanity, red=divinity model, there's an argument to be made for both colors. She was overshadowed by divine grace, covering humanity with divinity, but also contained the divine son and granted him humanity, concealing the image of god inside her human body. I wish we could go back and interview 800s Frankish painters, but as far as I know figuring out what these colors meant to them is mostly guesswork.

I have a coffee table book of medieval Catholic art

That sounds neat, what's the title?

She's usually clothed in blue or blue over red in traditional Western art, though from a cursory Wikipedia search once "blue is the most expensive color" might have been the reason why that color was used.

So, what are you reading?

Still on my backlog. Retrying Korzybski's Science and Sanity. Getting interested in General Semantics again. Lovecraft moving slowly.

About a third of the way through The Door by Magda Szabó. I'm not loving it so far. In its focus on the blossoming platonic love between a woman and her housekeeper (who, to me, simply comes off as an insufferable, unpleasable bitch), it's definitely "women's fiction" in the same way Elena Ferrante's books are, so maybe I'm just not the target demographic for this sort of thing.

The Mauritius Command. Somehow Aubrey now has kids.

I wish the series were better spread out over the Napoleonic Wars, but I guess the author didn't realise how popular the series would get when he started writing it and timeskipped too much to cover the best bits of the wars.

I finished up Incurable Graphomania. After reading harassment architecture, I'm in a minor self-published author vortex. I saw this title....somewhere? Recommended? and bought it on only the basis of that, the title, and the cover art.

The blurb on the back is accurate. It intrigued even my wife. The writing is exactly what you'd expect based on the author's name. I see the same cadences, themes, and texture in many of the posts here from those who have hail from Russia or the baltic states.

This unfortunately means that despite the variety in subject matter, the short story collection felt very similar throughout. Anna did not utilize the technique I see from other collections like this where symbols are shared, or an overriding universe. It fixates on the geographic area near Washington D.C.. I've never considered it worth it to have a deep cultural knowledge of this region, so that effectively meant nothing.

The stories are consistently good. Light horror, dry comedy, irony, sadness. One of them was admittedly so awful that after a paragraph I scanned the rest, saw that it was just a jumble of meaningless words, and moved on.

For this post, I scanned another much more fawning interview/review to reference if you're on the fence. I have not finished it (longer than some of the short stories) but I respect her and enjoyed my time reading it.

4/5?

I'm now reading Gateway (Expeditionary Force 18). 12 Miles Below: Warlock was good and interesting, can't wait for book 6 there!

First 42 pages of Gates of Fire - fictionalized account of the Spartans holding the gate at Thermopylae - was banging. Ripped right through them last night … not really sure why I thought there would be weird prose.

Nothing ground breaking but I could read stories about soldiers being soldiers forever.

Basically an injured Spartan tells the tale of the Spartans to Xerxes after the battle.

Big fan so far.

I was fortunate enough to read this book near two decades ago, well before 300 vomited "SPARTA" into every corner of popular culture. I remember it being absolutely excellent, right down to the very last page.

I finally got my pc set up. While the user experience on the desktop hasn't changed much, going from a perfectly decent Ryzen 5600x and an RTX 3070 to a 9800x3d and a 5080, the performance in games is night and day. It certainly spanks my gaming laptop.

Random observations:

  1. Using a 48" 4K OLED TV as a monitor feels unfair in FPS titles where you need to pixel peep. At the distance I'm (forced to) sit from it, everything is larger than life. No more wondering if that blob is an enemy or a bush.
  2. Using a TV that size from barely 3 feet away isn't the best experience, it takes up more horizontal real estate than any ultra wide monitor, and vertically, you need to actively move your head rather than just look at things in the corner.
  3. HDR rocks. It's nice having full-fat real HDR versus the anemic 400 nits my old monitor had.
  4. I have had pleasant experiences with running cheap Chinese mechanical keyboards. No difference this time, it looks pretty nice, until you look closely at the keycaps and see the etching is subpar. But the thing is solid metal, the keys feel good, and I doubt I'll care. I already don't notice it.
  5. The in-built wifi on my MSI Pro B650 motherboard sucks donkey dick. My phones and laptop pick up great signal in my bedroom, this thing barely wanted to connect. Fortunately, the router is some kind of 5g contraption, and I just moved it closer and kept the living room door proper open. I went from no stable connection to several hundred mbps down, which is good enough. Problem solved for now.

Edit:

I was also concerned that at such close distances, the effective resolution of the screen would show holes. To my surprise, it doesn't. I don't know if there's some subpixel wizardry going on, but it looks pretty damn sharp even from 2-3 feet away.

The in-built wifi on my MSI Pro B650 motherboard sucks donkey dick.

Make sure there isn't an external antenna somewhere in the box, or at the very least the port for an external antenna on the back of the motherboard. The plug will 99% be SMA, which is a little coax port with an outside thread. If there is one, get a cheap ($10 max) dipole antenna for it.

If there isn't, it's magic you get any signal at all. The PC case is a Faraday cage, and the back of the mainboard is a really bad place for a compact print antenna - it almost certainly points the wrong way. In that case, just get an external USB wifi card with external antennas. I've got an Alpha Networks card with two antenna ports for $25. I replaced one of the dipole antennas with a directional patch antenna. The thing gets signal at the other end of my parking lot, through several walls, inside the car.

The reason phones and laptops have such good wifi is that they usually have 3 antennas built in around the inside of the screen, behind the plastic bezel. Much better than a single antenna in/behind a Faraday cage.

The plug will 99% be SMA

WiFi antennas, at least in the US, are typically RP-SMA, which swaps the polarity of the pin and the socket from standard SMA. It's still a 1/4"-ish threaded connection, but it's explicitly not compatible with standard SMA RF equipment.

But this is just being fairly pedantic: it's the only flavor of SMA most consumers see. But it is a pain in the rear buying RF parts to make sure you get compatible ones.

Yes, important point. Buy a "2.4 GHz/5 GHz wifi antenna" on Amazon/Ali Express, not a "12 cm full band dipole antenna" at your local HAM/radio nerd supplier. That should get around the problem.

You just saved me. I was convinced that since this was a pre-built, they must have set up antennae, if the system had them. I'd looked around before and hasn't seen them. But given your strong insistence, I checked the motherboard pdf, saw them mentioned, then dug around in the box of parts and found them! I hope I've managed to screw them in now, thank you for the help!

If you're the sort to write reviews for places you buy from, I would recommend mentioning this as part of the review. The vendor may not realize it as a potential problem that could have been solved with a single-page printout or a sticker, and it's not just bad for the frustration. While modern WiFi is less likely to damage itself from running without a load than older devices, it's still not great for the hardware.

I'm tactically refraining from writing a review. I suspect the reason this particular pc was several hundred pounds cheaper than others with similar specs was because of the abysmal 3.2 star rating. Apparently a bunch of people received it missing the CPU. Well, mine boots and runs well, and if it's just the 5080 doing all the heavy lifting, Nvidia has my stamp of approval haha.

The in-built wifi on my MSI Pro B650 motherboard sucks donkey dick. My phones and laptop pick up great signal in my bedroom, this thing barely wanted to connect. Fortunately, the router is some kind of 5g contraption, and I just moved it closer and kept the living room door proper open. I went from no stable connection to several hundred mbps down, which is good enough. Problem solved for now.

You may want to consider one of those wall modules that have ethernet ports on them that you can plug into an electrical outlet, and uses the mains as a bridge. That's what I would do to get at a router far away from my desktop PC in a rental apartment.

I would never use powerline if there was any other option. It works fine if you're on the same circuit, but once it passes through the breaker panel it's a coin flip. Also sensitive to having stuff with shitty power factor on the same circuit. CFLs, LEDs, cheap appliance motors, etc. you never want to be trying to diagnose "why does my Internet cut out whenever my fridge compressor cycles?!"

I've actually got it running to a distant building 500' away, through the woods so a ptp wifi link would have been much harder to set up.
It works, but it adds a lot of latency and periodically drops unless you keep a device constantly pinging the router.

Just run an Ethernet cable across the floor and put a rug on it, 9 times out of 10 it's the best option.

Yeah mine wasn't ideal, I had to go down stairs and around some corners.

If I had to do it again I would've just drilled through some walls. Was my landlord going to like it? No. Would they have been able to stop me? Also no.

Just run an Ethernet cable on the floor lol. Stick it under a rug, job done. The important part is a wired connection to the router, because there's a lot of local interference on the WiFi spectrum (and very little on the regulated cell spectrum between the router and tower).

Although if there's no other channels around a 2.4ghz connection might give you a more reliable signal than 5.

Why are you using wifi to connect a stationary PC??

Anyway, congrats on your upgrade. A new PC is always a treat and now you understand the OLED religion.

Try playing the new Indiana Jones. It looks amazing.

I understand all the benefits of a wired connection, but sadly it's not an option. It's a rental, and my flatmate told me that the local ISPs won't roll out fiber this far. However, no data cap 5g isn't a bad experience at all!

A 5080 is a fucking beast. I've had an unfortunate habit of upgrading both my gpu and monitor at the same time, so a 1070ti and FHD to a 3070 and 1440p, which tends to eat up the performance gains. Well, even at native 4k, this baby flies. I've had an eye on the new IJ, will see about giving it a go!

Yeah, what pusher_robot said.

The 5080 is a fun gpu. It's perfectly adequate for everything out now. I had one for a month before I got a chance at a 5090. :)

Lucky you. I could have opted for a 5090, but I decided that this was good enough without bordering on extravagant. Maybe one of my elderly patients will die and leave one for me in their will, haha.

But the motherboard wifi is not talking to the LTE tower. Presumably there is an LTE device that bridges your private network with the Internet. You should at least hardwire the connection from your PC to that device.

@pbmonster just made me find the actual antennas for the wifi, but if that doesn't work well I'll bite the bullet and think about stringing up ethernet, thanks.

thesis of a possible effort-post. does this have legs?

Globalization didn’t have to break the working class, but blank slate liberalism did

A few decades ago you could show up with a 3rd grade education and still get a decent factory job that fed your family and gave your life... maybe not meaning, but some dignity. Today, those jobs are gone. Globalization took them, and now America has a surplus class of unemployable and underemployable mopes; people born too late for easy jobs but too early for gay-space communism to take care of them. They're stuck, adrift.

Was there any way to help them? Was the populist backlash unavoidable except for the choice of the form of our destroyer, Bernie Sanders’ classist rage or Trump's MAGA nationalist rage?

Is this a false choice? Yes, but the solution hinges on IQ realism. It hinges on slaying blank slate liberalism.

Countries like Germany faced the same global pressures but came out intact. They kept their working class employed, respected, and connected to dignity. How? By accepting a truth America refused: not everyone is wired for lambda calculus. Germany didn’t chase a fantasy of universal upskilling, or telling freshly unemployed coal miners to learn to code. Instead, they built protected, respected, cottage industries and stable vocational tracks with early sorting, precisely for the millions who weren't destined to debug beta reductions.

America, by contrast, swallowed a comforting lie: that we could escape globalization’s consequences without sacrifice. We embraced blank slate thinking, believing with enough TED talks and vocational bootcamps everyone could become high-skilled, high-status knowledge workers. We decided dignity wasn’t found in factories or plumbing, but in laptops and cubicles. Work that liberals secretly preferred.

But the bell curve didn’t care. IQ didn't budge. And so today, millions of Americans remain underemployed, abandoned, and pissed off.

Globalization didn't have to do this. Our denial of human cognitive differences, our stubborn insistence on the blank slate, did.

Germany got it right. America told itself comforting lies.

Alright, here's my take as someone who sees everything as downstream from culture, be that right or wrong.

Germany had a good formula for dealing with the post-war years, minus the bits where we got over a manpower shortage by importing totally-not-permanent-guest workers from abroad. It worked in a non-globalized world with fixed borders, in which Germans unquestioningly stuck to German ways of doing things and accepted German standards and expectations as practically god-given and naturally correct. Naturally you'd get a job - any job if you can't get the one you want - and work for a living and deliver high-quality work; what kind of asshole would do any less and leave others to pick up the slack?

Obviously this state of affairs has changed.

  • Germans have by all means adopted the axiom that anyone who doesn't go to Gymnasium (the top tier of our three-tier secondary school system) is a failure. Not universally and necessarily that one must go to university and study, though very many do subscribe to that view, but there is a very noticeable class divide between those who went for the Gymnasium white-collar track and everyone else. Blue-collar work is lumped in with the asocials and unemployed, with barely-integrated immigrants and with intolerably backwards troglodytes who do and say and think all the wrong things.
  • Several generations of unchecked immigration, large-scale failure to force immigrant assimilation, and the wilful destruction of the Leitkultur have turned the lower classes into a fucking mess. Half of them are effectively foreigners who are just here because it pays, and they work only as much as absolutely necessary and only to such standards as they cannot get away with ignoring, and if possible they will work not at all. Welfare makes it possible. And the other half is ethnic Germans who wish they were migrants because being German isn't cool anymore, and why work hard and try to sustain society when everyone is just looking out for themselves? It's a race to the bottom of who can be the biggest defect-bot. And the third half is basically balkanians who are ferried here in bulk to do work that Germans and immigrants alike think themselves too good for.
  • Meanwhile, the middle and upper class try their damndest to ignore what's becoming of the country while fantasizing about emigrating to doesn't-even-matter-where.

Germany got nothing right.

Depends on where you live to some extent though. Baden Württemberg and Bavaria are full of guys in their late 20s and 30s making €75,000 a year as machine operators in factories producing some kind of industrial equipment who live in places where rent is relatively low and they can spend their weekends (and their million sick days) growing and smoking weed and a month a year in winter in Thailand with their Serbian girlfriends. Certainly a much better material condition than the Italian or Greek or British working class.

It's not really like that, although yeah, it's certainly better than in Greece or Britain.

Some unskilled 55 year old I know has been pushing a button at Porsche for 15 years, makes 30 Euros/hour base pay. He‘s being offered free early retirement packages (which are insanely good in germany). He‘s also addicted to coke and in bankruptcy proceedings, but that‘s another story.

Yes, those specialists, hard workers who do useful work, exist, but they are relatively rare and their numbers are dwindling. Most earn less, and do less useful work, and do it worse. Our material conditions are good, overall, but at the cost of burning down the commons by taxing productive members of society and growing ourselves an ever-larger underclass or outright parasites. We're being kept afloat by hyper-industrious boomers and those few who follow their example, and by leftover wealth from better years, and we have absolutely no perspective on improving our competitive position, social cohesion or working culture.

Perspective in English doesn't share the meaning [2] zeitlich: Zukunftsaussicht, Entwicklungsmöglichkeit (Wiktionary) that Perspektive has in German, just by the way.

Thanks for pointing it out, though I was aware. I just allow myself some Germanisms from time to time.

Edit: Does this sound like a lame excuse? It does. It does.

You have quite a bit of work to do to claim that the stagnation of manufacturing wages is due to globalization rather than technology, and also to claim that this is a US-specific issue. Lines like "Work that liberals secretly preferred" are just not good.

Countries like Germany faced the same global pressures

Is this true? Germany spent most of that blue-collar period partitioned, demilitarized, and stripped of human capital. It’s probably the worst comparison in Western Europe.

and came out intact.

Is this true? I definitely recall some of our European users expressing their disgust with the absolute state of German politics. And industry. And entertainment, etc. etc… If you want to make the case, you should probably bring some receipts. My guess would be that Germany imported all the soundbites and “learn 2 code” dismissals of the American consensus when it imported all our fintech and communications advances.

Instead, they built protected, respected, cottage industries and stable vocational tracks with early sorting

Here’s the part with legs. I want to see more about the proposed alternative, because that’s where a lot of critiques of neoliberalism stumble. How does it get around the supply/demand curves? How well can it generalize to larger players in the market?

I have a lot more to say about this, which is a good sign for a top level.

German issues now are largely a product of the past few years of policy, not any long term failures.

They elected the Greens, who promptly exploded their nuclear power sources and left them entirely reliant on natural gas from Russia. Now they have the highest electricity prices on the continent and vast swathes of industry are completely unviable.

I'm pretty sure the American working class gets a better deal than the German one. American plumbers and factory workers probably both earn more and have a higher employment rate compared to their German equivalent.

Instead this is about a few left behind areas. This isn't an issue with blank slate liberalism; Western Pennsylvania didn't have blacks to compete for jobs anyways. It declined anyways. The rust belt is one of the whitest parts of the country.

I want to stop and ask- are German small towns doing that much better? It seems like everyone on earth has an issue with small towns pouring into the metropole due to lower wages. Literally. Gen. Franco couldn't stop it. Chairman Mao couldn't stop it. Donald Trump won't be able to stop it.

American plumbers and factory workers probably both earn more and have a higher employment rate compared to their German equivalent.

Don't you need to be at least a little smart to be an electrician or a plumber? Moreso if you are self-employed doing these things and making a nice amount of money?

I've done my own electrical work and plumbing at home and it requires a non-trivial amount of attention to detail and being able to do some basic computation. I probably couldn't do it stoned. Surely 100 IQ minimum needed to be employable.

Electricians have to pass trigonometry. Plumbers must be able to contort themseves into rather small, awkward spaces, which is more weight and age than IQ limited. Poster Plumber on DSL said there’s a standardized test to become an apprentice plumber in CA.

In CA, probably. In Texas if you’re a citizen you just find someone willing to hire you for a few years and then take the journeyman’s exam.

Electricians additionally need to have a record of a passing grade in algebra 2 from high school, or college algebra from community college, to be accepted for an apprenticeship. They also have to take a math for electricians class as part of it, but I don’t know what exactly is entailed(quite possibly trig).

In both cases the apprenticeship length is four years except classes and overtime can cut down on it somehow. The formulae are complicated but generally an associate’s degree cuts a year off. There’s a journeyman’s test afterwards. After a few more years you can get a master’s license to own your own company but most don’t bother.

For HVAC you get your EPA license(you can self study and just pay for a written test through HVAC suppliers) then register with the state and find someone to hire you. There’s a test to become a contractor after four years but most techs don’t bother. HVAC tends to have a much stronger commercial/residential distinction than the other two trades because it’s so easy to get into; most HVAC guys start out with residential(and usually residential installs, which is shittier work) and after some experience the smarter ones tend to switch to commercial.

Welders aren’t regulated by the state. Basically all welders go to school and get some kind of certificate, but you don’t technically need one.

In all three cases union apprenticeships have their own process which is different from the standard one but has an identical end result in the eyes of the government- the union apprenticeship is generally seen as higher quality, and union trained tradesmen tend to be paid more even if they aren’t part of the union. Trades unions themselves are basically guilds; tradesmen work for, and are paid by, the union itself and technically leased out to union shops in a temp agency like arrangement. In practice in DFW union members only switch companies when they want to.

An electrician? Yes- even low level electricians need to understand algebra to work unsupervised, making an effective IQ floor. A plumber? Depends on what you do within it. There's plenty of plumbers making a good living in, not really a sinecure because they actually work, but doing things your average handyman or construction worker would be able to do for much cheaper if it wasn't due to regulatory capture.

Moreover, I'm pretty sure that semi-skilled blue collar workers make more in America than anywhere in the EU; it's possible that genuinely low skilled workers make less, but I wouldn't count on it. The part of the American working class that's really struggling is mostly the residents of small towns in the former industrial heartland, and 'small towns in the former industrial heartland suck' isn't unique to the US.

Right, in my (anecdotal) understanding even people without these qualifications or strong brains made a decent living before globalization.

My own father and uncles came to the US in the 70s (illegally!) with a 3rd grade education and no local language skills or writing skills (in any language), got jobs as construction workers and masons and still were able to buy houses and provide for big families.

They're not dumb, as they have started small business since then and have become substantially wealthier, but the work they were doing did not require even electrician or plumber level brain power and certainly not any credentials.

It's a good start, but I'd like to see topics like stronger unions (and better aligned union and executive interests), governmental attitudes on industrial policy, subsidies and the like before this goes from interesting idea to something more.

"Unions good" is a profoundly alien idea to me. What do you have in mind?

I don't have a source but what I'm told is that German unionists were heavily influenced by British ones who wanted to avoid making the same mistakes. The main idea was to avoid getting into the directly antagonistic relationship you see today in Anglo countries.

I was told that German unions tend to be more attached to individual companies, giving them more of an incentive to preserve their hosts and make agreements that are sane, but a quick search doesn't show any evidence for this. Wikipedia does say that strikes are very rare, and that companies and unions strive for consensus (and apparently achieve it most of the time). I'm not sure how this is achieved.

Perhaps @Southkraut or others would know more.

I've never had a union job, so I don't really have any insight into how the sausage is made here.

What I can confirm is that our unions are generally not very confrontational. Compared to the French, they're docile doormats. It's mostly public transport that strikes, i.e. rails and bus drivers, and the strikes are announced in advance, short in duration, and then negotiations drag on for a few years before the union employees get a one or two percent raise and some other nominal benefit. Other unions don't really strike a lot; they mostly just protest for this or that.

I'd say our unions are fairly cooperative overall.

I don't think unions are always good or bad, even if I tend to agree that on the net, they're tending towards a negative in terms of productivity and competitiveness. Germany has a form of corporate governance where labor union reps sit on equal terms with management, but I'm no expert on the finer details. I just think it's a common talking point that is worth addressing, even if to say it's not relevant in the end.

If your goal is specifically to increase blue collar compensation as a percent of corporate revenue, there's not really another way to do it.

In the opinion of at least one prominent economist, the ideal currency would be, neither fiat nor based on a single commodity (such as gold), but based on a bundle of multiple commodities.

By that standard, is the S&P GSCI, an index of commodities weighted by global production (or the iShares ETF based on that index), effectively the "one true currency" against which all government-issued currencies should be measured?

but based on a bundle of multiple commodities.

That was the plan for the (still hypothetical, possibly defunct) BRICS dollar.

Wasn't there a Paul Ryan proposal along those lines? He's always been a bit of a nerd so I wouldn't be surprised if it was based on actual economic theory.

It does seem so.

Unlike Ryan’s other thoughts on monetary policy, he has not been as vocal about why he wants the Fed to follow the price of a basket of commodities, or which commodities he would want to follow and why. Ryan made his preference for this policy clear in two Wall Street Journal op-eds. In “Blame Congress for Inflation” (May 1, 2008) Ryan wrote:

[My] bill, called the Price Stability Act of 2008, allows the Fed to choose how it will put this single mandate into practice (my preference would be an explicit price rule anchored to a basket of commodities), as long as its overriding policy goal is to control inflation.

And in a piece titled “A Republican Road to Economic Recovery” (March 2nd, 2009):

I believe the best way to guarantee sound money is to use an explicit, market-based price guide, such as a basket of commodities, in setting monetary policy. A more politically realistic path to price stability would be for the Fed to explicitly embrace inflation targeting.

FrumForum contacted Ryan’s office for clarification of this policy preference, asking which commodities he thinks need to be in the basket and how Ryan would respond to criticisms of this policy. Ryan’s office responded by providing links to his op-ed, and clarified that Ryan was not in favor of a gold standard, but was not able to provide any additional information beyond that.

I had a little party this Friday and woke up to find that someone had stepped on my macbook. I'm partially to blame for this, I shouldn't have left it on the ground (albeit in a room that was supposed to be locked, under my bed) and I don't think anyone will fess up, most likely because they won't remember doing so. Regardless, the tiny 5 millimeter indent on the edge of the case by the webcam managed to strike some sort of achilles heel and almost the entire screen is now non-functional, save a small sliver at the top. This allows me to screen mirror to my ipad (and is how I'm writing this post).

I spent all of yesterday trying to find a place that could fix the screen and found out that nobody in a 1-hour radius has the apple approved replacement for my screen in stock (Small college town in bumfuck nowhere). The nearest Apple store says the screen will be $500, with a $100 labor charge. The compounding issue to all of this is that I don't have a car, and ubers to the medium sized city (an hour away) are like $80 for a one way trip. This means that going to the Apple store adds $160 to anything they do. In fact, it's even worse than this, because they only do overnight repairs, meaning I would have to go to the city, drop off the computer, and then come back the next day to pick it up. The other option is the local computer repair shop, which is only 10 minutes away by bike. However, they are charging an $600 for the screen, and I'm not sure how much for the labor.

Right now, I'll probably go with the ~$700 local process, because it saves me time and is cheaper overall. Does anybody have any other suggestions?

Louis Rossmann has built a 2 million subscriber youtube channel complaining about this specific issue. Apple designs their laptop displays such that they cannot be repaired without replacing the entire upper half of the laptop, and has also made it basically impossible to source the replacement part from anybody besides themselves. This makes third party repairs just as expensive as repairs from Apple themselves.

$700? You can almost buy a new MacBook Air M4 with that. Why not upgrade?

Honestly didn't think of that, and it seems like a shame. This one is only a year old. I'll look into it.

Do you have to drop it off at that specific apple store, or can you ship it to somewhere and get it shipped back? Even super-express return shipping is probably cheaper than $320.

Last year, and so far this year, I avoided putting anything into an IRA, expecting a stock market decline sooner or later. I still have a week to make contributions for 2024. Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether now would be a good time to buy, or whether I should just forgo any IRA contributions for 2024? (I did put money aside in my now decimated 401k.)

Throw it in a money market fund or certificate of deposit for now, to max out your ira.

What, no, always max out the IRA. You don't need to buy stock with it. I have most of my '24 contribution in a money market fund for the same reason. It's just a tax free savings account.

Thanks to you and @TowardsPanna for the advice. I’ve never invested in anything but stocks and mutual funds with my IRA, and I didn’t think to look into other options. I also make much less than most people here and so can’t usually max out both my IRA and my employer-matched 401k. But then, I live in a low cost of living area and likely spend vastly less than most of you.

Oh yeah, definitely max out the 401k match first. My IRA contribution was actually a big chunk of my (wage) income last year, thanks to some tax and cap gains shenanigans.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats