I'm reading Losurdo's Liberalism for the first time and it's honestly almost impressive how they've been calling the unperson group "mentally undeveloped children" for centuries, seamlessly shifting the targeting of it whenever needed.
Nacarbac
joined 2 years ago
Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) and Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) did a podcast called The Delta Flyers where they do a full episode-by-episode rewatch of Voyager and often rant about the many problems of the show (and about the bits they enjoyed, as well). Didn't get through it all, but it was decent travel listening.
Both of them are pretty often annoyed about how their characters (and most of the others) were stuck on a writing treadmill to obey that absurd syndication demand of an eternal moment, such that new viewers can drop in without feeling like they've missed anything.
Buddhist position of the empty nature of the self based on dialectical materialist epistemology
I'd be quite interested in any texts along these lines you might recommend.
An interesting-ish and anti-verifiable thought about nonexistence is that since we cannot perceive nonexistence or time "while" nonexistent, and all things necessarily change... stretching that then any kind of law or logic or universal pattern that decrees we are dead may also eventually change and we just reappear. No matter the infinite infinities that may need to pass. And not just "an exact duplicate of ourself", but "ourself".
Which is to say: isekai is, alas, inevitable.
Watching TOS last year and yeah, he wasn't celibate, but he was pretty much married to his ship and more interested in the stars than romance.
To the point that he'd have several crew members tell him that to his face and he would reply "that is... indeedacorrect... statement of... mynature".
The visual quality of set and costume design in general has been getting really fucking cool for a while now. But the writing attached to whatever adaptation they're butchering this year has rarely kept up with it.
Perhaps as the guns that make it so easy will never be controlled and the social care will not be funded, there must instead exist a constant baseline terror of other people. So the people need to be controlled instead. They need to be kept in line. And the more they need help, the less they deserve - the victim is the threat.
Not that I think there's any actual conscious intention there, per-se. More of a general structural disinterest in making healthy people (capitalism being antithetical to the health of the masses) that has various specific manifestations.
Just started watching it due to this, and saw that episode - it was so nice! She was basically being harassed by the Serious Cops who have no time for Silly Emotions like grief and pushed out of the room to let them do Serious Work, and he catches up and actually listens and shows care and has her smiling a bit by being an earnest and harmless lil' guy who makes a mean omelette.
...probably a good thing I didn't watch this when I was younger, or I might have assimilated a lot of this character. Hmm, might not have appreciated it as much back then though.
Been playing some Skyrim - namely some mods that were recommended here, VIGILANT and The Forgotten City so far. The later was fine, nice concept that doesn't work well in Skyrim - might check out the indie game version of it.
VIGILANT however... Now that's a diamond in the rough, a heavily Dark Souls inspired Skyrim story that reinterprets a lot of the background material - and has genuinely engaging in-universe books. The strongest parts were where it went beyond either Souls or Skyrim's style - the cryptic in-setting books that are actually relevant, the memory sequences of ancient souls' greatest triumph or torment - a1nd the weakest were the various expy armour sets from other franchises stopping it from really settling into its own aesthetic (not that I didn't collect them all). A near railroad of a story, but the different choices made really do dramatically change the details, if not the end result (which itself is part of the story of reclaiming something from a vast and uncaring cycle of time and powerlessness... I think).
Just started Glenmoril, the sequel, which takes a different tack by having the prologue establish important ties to a few characters before getting all Bloodborne-ey. The mod maker's clearly experimenting more with it, and it's cool to see.
"The police are looking for a Mr John Kler..."
But a little cleverer.
He'd be a great DM (Dungeon Marx) - I just wanna play a tabletop RPG game without the default feudal/capitalist anachronisms.
My level 3 Flaxman casts Thresh the Chaff and- wait, I also want a Magical Labour Theory of Value addenndum, because that was something that came up while discussing a rather interesting homebrew setting elsewhere which is trying to hash out a basically-democratic mageocracy with an economy that isn't just Wizard!.
If only we could invest in the growth of site taglines...