domain:mattlakeman.org
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
You probably know he's hugely popular, and I'll admit I've read quite a few of his books because he's got a pleasant and entertaining style, but in my opinion he's very overrated. However, if you like the series (SA is his "flagship" magnum opus), he (unlike GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch) will probably actually finish it.
And he'll also write like five other books per year along the way.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
Yes. I am satisfied, mostly because you're not trying to cram me into a WC-shaped hole.
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
museums literally being torn up like an SNL sketch of Great Replacement Theory
Most of this sounds wild to me too, but I have no difficulty believing that bit. I don't think it's got much to do with immigration - even a connection to wokeness-writ-large seems strained - but memorials to otherwise-non-historically-relevant individuals being lost to renovations because nobody gave a shit is a story I've heard many times. My old college absolutely broke a sweet old nonagenarian's heart when they reorganized which departments got what buildings, and, in the process, failed to carry over the naming of one of the humanities dept.'s main lecture halls after his long-dead wife, who'd been a lecturer there herself. It wasn't anything to do with her being cancelled, it wasn't anything personal at all. There was just no procedure for carrying the tributes over, and no one cared enough to make one even with the old guy protesting to anyone who'd listen.
zPvQINBQvfFR
1hr ago
Ok, I trust you and concede that the guy was in fact harassed by police during normal working hours.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
What I did say is that, in my experience, crimes get weirder as illegal immigrant migrant labor increases in small communities
Okay. I believe that. Are you satisfied?
phailyoor
1hr ago
it’s not like you are going to have any crime at a grocery store operated on a military base.
You would be surprised.
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
because I thought bloody meat was gross, and consequently I did not enjoy steak any more than I did chicken
Dunno about that "consequently". I prefer my steak well done, and a nice well-done steak is one of my favorite foods.
deluxev2
1hr ago
I think mostly it is just cheap, and thus every cheap thing that needs sugar has it in it. Some people say that they can taste the difference but chemically it becomes identical if there is enough water/acid so I doubt the effect is the corn syrup.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1hr ago
I have not read any of his other stuff (I read a lot of fantasy literature in middle school and high school, but took a very long break from the genre) so I have no preconceived notions.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
There's even the movement to stop saying pro-choice (among pro-choicers) and instead say pro-abortion.
Among pro-choicers themselves? I remember in the past once, wanting to avoid biased labels, talking about 'anti-abortion and pro-abortion activists', and the latter angrily telling me that this was incredibly biased of me, and they're not 'pro-abortion', nobody is in favour of abortions as such, but rather they are in favour of a woman's right to choose. I thought that remained the general position, and that outside of a few relatively radical voices, very few people actually try to present themselves as liking abortion as such.
In practice today I mostly just use 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', and when people quibble those labels ("They're not pro-life! They're just pro-birth! Look, they oppose the welfare state and support capital punishment!" and similar), I tend to assume the quibblers are just trying to pick fights and are not worth engaging with in good faith.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
1hr ago
No, which is why he was only talked to by the police and warned, then booked for a magistrate's court hearing and fined rather than anything else.
If you want to see an example of a case where real punishment gets meted out by the Crown court see here from last week.
The defendent got 15 months in prison for his antics, but that was because he explicitly posted on Twitter "Go on Rotherham, burn any hotels wi them scruffy bastards in it" (talking about refugee hotels) and linked to far right materials very soon after the country was on edge due to the Southport murders (committed by a born British citizen).
Those actions could have potentially spurred on a real human tragedy costing an order of magnitude more lives than the Southport murders themselves.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
That is... That is an uncharitable take on what I said.
First of all, I'm not WC. Please do not treat me like I am WC. Please do not put WC's words in my mouth. Please do not assume that my intentions and his are the same. We are not the same person. We have different goals and intentions.
Now that's out of the way, you're reading a much stronger version of what I wrote than what I intended to write. Did I say "hellhole" anywhere? No, I did not. That's your interpretation through the lens of whatever other biases you have. WC might have said it, but I did not. I didn't mention Black Americans either. I'm not even sure why you're bringing it up now.
What I did say is that, in my experience, crimes get weirder as illegal immigrant migrant labor increases in small communities. I provided some examples of that. I did not make inferences about larger civilizational impacts, because once again, I am not WC and I do not share in his motivations.
All I can say is that you can tell me that I'm wrong, but I'm still the one that spent an afternoon hosing human shit out of my cousin's toolbox.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1hr ago
2D graphics had already peaked by the late 90s; there's not much further you can go after you can already make gorgeous games like Marvel vs. Capcom.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
Yep, that's the distinction I was going to make as well.
Organisations and movements have names, and those names are often intended to communicate something flattering about the organisation. Nonetheless using those names is not usually taken as endorsement. I call the Human Rights Campaign the Human Rights Campaign without necessarily agreeing that they do in fact campaign for human rights. I call the Justice Democrats or the Freedom Caucus by their names without thereby conceding that they have anything to do with justice or with freedom.
I understand wanting to be careful about the language you use. There are cases where I would be careful. But this seems excessive to me.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
FWIW I thought it was quite interesting and a useful window into the impact of immigration on American towns outside the most affluent.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
You (and WC) aren't just asking me to believe isolated incidents. You are asking me to believe that everywhere immigrants exist, they are transforming entire cities and turning them into third world hell holes, and hardly anyone is noticing all these horrible crimes and community destruction. It's not that any one story is hard to believe. It's the parade of horribles, more horrible incidents happening one after another than most people see in a lifetime.
I am actually not pro immigration, or at least not pro mass immigration. I believe they generally increase crime, put a burden on social services, and negatively impact society.
But it's kind of like the guy who really hates black people and is constantly telling stories about how everywhere he goes, at work, at the store, in his neighborhood, everywhere, there's always a story about a black person doing something awful. Often something cartoonishly awful.
Do I believe one or two of those stories? Sure, maybe. Do I believe black people often do awful things, and at a disproportionate frequency? Yeah. Do I believe that he is constantly running into black people being nothing but horrible? No. At a certain point you recognize a pattern to the stories. They are more of a vibe than accurate narrative.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
1hr ago
Fair enough. I agree chickpeas and lentils go better with rice, but it's more effort to cook them properly in a reduction sauce while for beans you can just dump them out of a can and it sort of works.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Remember that Chinese hot air balloon over America? Why isn’t similar technology being used in Russian / Ukraine war? Seems like you could fill one up with drones that then free fall out and use guidance to hit locations in the interior of the country. Wouldn’t the weapons used to destroy something 70k feet in the air be considerably more expensive than the production of decoy balloons?
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
To be fair most visual adaptations I've seen of LotR go pretty hard on Anglo-Saxon Rohirrim, and all the white horse imagery makes it tempting. Nonetheless I think it would be just as reasonable to present them as something more Scythian, which would fit well if you're inclined to a more Byzantine vision of Gondor - the eastern/southern half of the great empire of antiquity, its western/northern cousin long since fallen, but still holding out and serving as a bulwark against the east. I have seen people draw comparisons between the Black Speech and Turkic languages before. I could also see maybe a comparison between the Rohirrim and the Cumans?
At any rate, the Rohirrim are clearly fair of skin and fair of hair, so that would definitely constrain my casting of them.
I should also say, to be fair, you are correct that one of Tolkien's motives was to create a kind of mythology for England. Here's Letter #131:
Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.
For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read.)
Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.
So my nitpick does not pertain to this motive in any way. It's only that I don't think this motive constrained Tolkien to depicting places geographically analogous to England. I suppose this is inevitable; any fair reflection of the historical or mythic consciousness of England qua England must surely also include a sense of Europe, or of the lands to the south that have, for better or worse, shaped England's history and identity.
Lewis2
1hr ago
there are a million struggling restaurants who will gladly buy your stolen product from you, no questions asked.
That seems unlikely to me. Do you have any evidence to back that up, either anecdotal or published?
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Cane sugar tends to generally-but-not-consistently taste better. I'm unconvinced that the health difference isn't just another 'gluten sensitivity'.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Don't forget that the government is currently setting the precedent for forcing you to make social media accounts public, meaning we're all fucked here.
Quantumfreakonomics
2hr ago
Why is high-fructose corn syrup bad (compared to cane sugar)? If it's not bad, why do people think that it's bad?
Reminds me very much of Scott's misophonia essay.
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