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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3318 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

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.

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So, what are you reading?

I’m still on Mises’ Human Action. Also going through Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching which appears to have had an influence on the classical education movement.

Still working my way through Life Worth Living. I keep finding myself pausing to note down various choice quotes. And I definitely appreciate the authors' clear disdain for Bentham.

Here's what I have read during my digital Lent. The list is shorter than I wanted, because around week 3 I had to jump in and spend my evenings saving one of my teams, which left me too tired and wired to enjoy reading.

  • Where the Water Goes : Life and Death Along the Colorado River, by David Owen, +2, but the Colorado is my favorite river, so I am biased. The book traces the river from its source to its former delta, exploring the history of how its water has been used since the first settlers appeared in its basin. One recurring theme that is relevant to rationalism is that efficiency should never be the only goal: when you have X consumers (acres of farmland or suburban lots) consuming Y water each, if you simply teach/force them to consume Y/2 water, the number of consumers will double. You'll still have X*Y total consumption, but now your system has no slack: you used to be able to force your consumers to scale back their consumption temporarily, but now they use as little water as possible already.
  • True Names, by later Vernor Vinge, +2. The news of his death defined my immediate reading list. I had already read the Zones of Thought books (I recommend A Deepness in the Sky) and Rainbows End a decade ago, so I decided to read the rest of his most popular books. True Names is a novella, so you can easily finish it in an evening. It's one of these sci-fi classics that are truly timeless, I didn't feel it was written in 1980 at all.
  • The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge, 0. It starts a bit like a Philip K. Dick's novel, but it's mostly the setting. Then it becomes The Book of the Long Sun: sufficiently entertaining that you don't feel like you've wasted your time and want to see how the story ends, but not something that stands out. The biggest science-fiction concept is treated more like a magic spell, and the characters are cardboard-like. Lots of mystery boxes, some of which are opened by the narrator between the scenes.
  • Across Realtime, by Vernor Vinge, 1. It's the sequel to the previous book, but a different one, The Book of the Short Sun to the Long predecessor: a smaller-scale and more personal story. Not very much so, Vinge loves thinking about planet-sized issues too much to write one. At one point I felt like I've read the same story beats somewhere before, and turns out I was right, it was actually Vinge's Children of the Sky.
  • Creatures of Thought, the Age of Steam, +2. An ongoing series of blog posts that explores the history of steam power, from Newcomen's pump to, presumably, the phasing out of everything except power stations after the WWII. It's not the only one online. I remember reading a different one that went deeper into the steelmaking aspect of the industrial revolution as well (no link, sorry), but this is one more extensive and good. The author still hasn't convinced me that Isambard Kingdom Brunel is worthy of the attention he's usually given. The only thing I would want from this series is more maps. It's not a big hassle to switch to another tab and find where Featherstone-upon-Hawthing (pronounced "fisting") is, but it gets old quickly.
  • Bits about Money. +2 I followed a link to the article about how credit card rewards work and ended up reading a dozen more. It's not super technical (at least to a person with 15 years of banking experience), but still full of insights. I laughed a bit at the recurring "they bought a bank" quips in the payments in Japan article. Is buying a bank for internal purposes so unusual in the US? It's completely normal for a large Russian company or more often a conglomerate to own a pocket bank to simplify the management of its finances.
  • Materialized View. +1 A blog about data engineering written by an industry veteran. A good way to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest happenings in the data engineering world.

I had a very similar opinion about The Peace War, and am absolutely psyched to check out your last 3 links when I'm not working (especially steam engines since I've been talking a lot with kids about trains recently). Thanks for sharing.

I broke 1000 pages on War and Peace. I'm going to dump my thoughts about Tolstoy afterward, the way he plays with the question of what is real and what is fake, the concept of society and the layers of power and importance, are fascinating.

My tablet book for boring public meetings is Stranger in a Strange Land. I commented a couple months ago about how after reading Dune I suddenly realized half of A Song of Ice and Fire was ripped off from Dune. Now I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land and realizing that half of Dune is a straight rip from Heinlein. A specially trained Psychic young man who founds a religion, along with his loyal Water-Brothers, to overthrow a corrupt and sclerotic government. For the most part though, the book is rendered a historical artifact by how it was written. It's set in the near future, and we've reached Mars, but is filled with Mad Men era businessmen and Chandler-esque gumshoe reporters calling secretaries 'Toots.'

Fascinating factoid from the introduction by Heinlein's wife: the germ of the story came from a SciFi magazine Time Travel gag issue, a fan wrote a letter to the editor where he said he had traveled through time and seen next year's issue and here were the Authors and the Titles of their pieces. So the magazine contacted the authors and asked them to write a short piece with that title. Heinlein and his wife dreamed up the outline of Stranger and it expanded until it morphed into a novel, he wrote something else for the magazine.

I also have my old copy of Shogun sitting on my nightstand, between the series and a friend reading it I'm looking up and referencing passages constantly.

On audiobook, I'm listening to Numero Zero by Umberto Eco. It feels at halfway mostly a shorter version of Foucault's Pendulum, with the same theme of the fake accidentally becoming real, so if you like Eco but want something short and punchy it's great. I adore Eco, so even a knockoff is worth it. Sort of like Hemingway with The Old Man and the Sea vs The Undefeated. It's got everything I love about Eco: it's fun and light, easy to enjoy, while also having a ton of depth and intelligence to it. I'd highly recommend it.

Request: a while back someone on here was reading a long book and posting a series about it on Irish history around the IRA and the Easter Rising, what was the book? I can't remember.

Request: a while back someone on here was reading a long book and posting a series about it on Irish history around the IRA and the Easter Rising, what was the book? I can't remember.

Smells like Trinity by Leon Uris.

Still on Errol Flynn's autobiography. So far he has told stories (by no means in confessional form, more of just like "And this is what I did next") about how he:

  1. bought women while he lived in New Guinea at different times to be essentially sex slaves (but he really liked them). One lesson he takes away from these experiences: "A man and a woman should never speak the same language." (The women--probably just post-pubescent girls actually--were Melanesian.) Did I mention he liked them? He did. He never says anything bad about them. But he must have left them to their own devices at one point as they are each brought up, described, and then never mentioned much again. Except one girl to whom he apparently gave a lot of stuff so that she returned wealthy to her village. (?). Edit: He was in his early 20s at this point.

  2. was a slave trader in New Guinea (capturing and literally selling off men into servitude.)

  3. was shot by a poison arrow and gunned down the New Guinea man who did it

  4. had sex with a woman then, while she was sleeping, stole her jewels and ran off (he was pursued, but successfully hid the jewels and was not arrested). Edit: This woman was Australian.

I'm not even a 5th of the way through the book. Will update next week.

"A man and a woman should never speak the same language."

Sorry to hijack this a little -

Does anyone have any zero-language overlap romance stories of personal experience? I've read about these online (some of the old and new PUA blogs) and, controlling for the sometimes obvious embellishment, it does seem like one can sense attraction from/to another even without any real language ability. What's more, it seems like these are often some of the more especially rewarding trysts.

This is mostly for idle curiosity sake. Becoming a passport bro is not on my list as leaving even my Red state is a thought I abhor.

What exactly are your fears regarding leaving your "red state" for a trip?

I FEAR NOTHING.

I believe the odds of the State artificially and outlandishly prosecuting me for something like self-defense or free expression go up when in blue states. Especially if the news cycle is just right.

This is wildly out of touch with the actual odds of something like this occurring if you leave you home state. This is fox news 80 year old grandpa levels of living in a fear bubble. I'm really not trying to be rude here. It is just a bit boggling to me, the world is a big beautiful place and just because people have a different opinion on some issues doesn't make it dangerous to visit other states or countries. Do some traveling, step out of your comfort zone and you'll find that your fears are unwarranted.

the world is a big beautiful place and just because people have a different opinion on some issues doesn't make it dangerous to visit other states or countries.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

Do some traveling, step out of your comfort zone and you'll find that your fears are unwarranted.

Nice try, NSA.

This is fox news 80 year old grandpa levels of living in a fear bubble.

Get. Off. My. Lawn.

Look, the above section is playful and obvious trolling because you and I just aren't going to agree. Do I have ideological consternation when I'm in liberal cities / states - sure. Is it a real, palpable "fear"? - of course not. Then again, ideas and values are truly important to me and I would trade extra income in California for a little more demonstrated freedom in Idaho.

"But, but, but, you can travel! Don't artificially limit yourself, especially not with this Fox News fear mongering." Well, it's kind of my decision to do what I want for me, right? (so long as I'm not breaking any laws etc.) And trying to "convince" me otherwise by kind of insulting me or boomer-hectoring me to "get out of my comfort zone" is not a winning strategy.

It is just a bit boggling to me

Be boggled, then. I'll stay over here.

Not everyone likes to travel, if that ain't your game I can respect that. But yes your overwrought "I can't even leave my red state or I'll be persecuted" schtick is silly, false and just wrong at an objective level.

If you do decide to travel I have some great recommendations for you, most of Europe is actually more conservative than the US regarding a lot of things, you might be more comfortable than you think.

But yes your overwrought "I can't even leave my red state or I'll be persecuted" schtick is silly, false and just wrong at an objective level.

Why do you need to say this?

Up to this comment, I think you could summarize the exchange thusly:

TollBooth: Something something, I'm a red stater, get off my lawn

French: "That's goofy. You're goofy. Stop being goofy"

TollBooth: "Fine. You got me. Here's me being tongue-in-cheek and a reasonable cessation to our mostly pointless disagreement"

And then you have to go "you are just wrong at an objective level."

Y tho?

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Ok that sounds amazing. I need to find this book.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn

Still reading Kissinger's Diplomacy. A few surprising things I found out (coming from a background of not knowing much about WW2):

  • America was already attacking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour
  • Roosevelt intitially overestimated Britain's post-war potential and planned to pull American troops out of Europe while letting British garrisons pick up the slack.
  • Stalin was proposing post-war plans while German troops were outside of Moscow.
  • Churchill consistently tried to convince Roosevelt on the need to take land before the Soviets got to it, and he was consistently ignored. One plan was for D-Day to include the Balkans.

Aside from that I'm doing more 'reading' than ever by listening to audiobooks at work, I'm on my 30th this year. It's mostly light reading, classic sci-fi, horror and now Sherlock Holmes novels.

America was already attacking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour

Hitler's speech declaring war on America is quite interesting, in much the same way as Osama Bin Laden's Letter to the American People. Having it all laid on the table like that makes you realize why some people hate us.

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