Zompist Bboard Again

I'm reading the Thirty Six Strategems again.

Also, Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales. This is not the kind of book I usually recommend. The writing isn't lyrical. It's a rational fiction webnovel. After the death of his friend from school, a DM creates increasingly grimdark worlds and punishes his players until they all leave. Then the DM finds himself isekai-ed into the world he created. There is no heaven. There are 9000 hells. The souls of the dead are consumed for fuel as a mercy. Although this sounds grimdark, the tone is rational. This is the only D&D optimization story I can remember where the optimization is from the perspective of the DM. There are Redshirts vibes throughout.

Edit:

Reading Plotinus again.

I'm also looking into the economic theories of Steve Keen and Hyman Minsky.

The last thing I watched was anime: Apothecary Diaries and Zenshu.

Edit edit:

Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris. A leftist history of Silicon Valley.

I am mesmerized by watching pseudorandomly-generated trees be drawn one after another with turtle graphics on an ST7789V display attached to a Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 running zeptoforth.

I was reading The Recognitions. I wish I could ignore the news so I can concentrate on reading again.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 4:59 am I wish I could ignore the news so I can concentrate on reading again.

Same.

Odd as it may sound, I've recently started reading Lord of the Rings, which I had never done before. I tried reading the Silmarillion when I was 19 or 20 and the Peter Jackson LOTR Trilogy was being released, but I didn't get far, and that put me off reading Tolkien for a while. But it turns out that LOTR is, after a slow start - the various introductory notes and the hobbitological treatise - quite compelling reading. We'll see how it goes.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 2:10 pm Odd as it may sound, I've recently started reading Lord of the Rings, which I had never done before. I tried reading the Silmarillion when I was 19 or 20 and the Peter Jackson LOTR Trilogy was being released, but I didn't get far, and that put me off reading Tolkien for a while. But it turns out that LOTR is, after a slow start - the various introductory notes and the hobbitological treatise - quite compelling reading. We'll see how it goes.

Yes, Lord of the Rings is an easier read than The Silmarillion. Well, the former is a novel, written in a somewhat old-fashioned but still reasonably modern style, while the latter is written in the deliberately dense and archaic style of a translation of an ancient corpus of mythology - very dense, and full of names from exotic languages (though Lord of the Rings of course also has quite some such names, too). When Tolkien was asked by the publisher for a sequel to The Hobbit, he submitted the Silmarillion - which the publisher promptly rejected because it was "full of Celtic [actually Elvish, of course] names" and did not even feature hobbits.

Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be.

I'm excited to read Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays by Berlekamp. I want to get back into the head space to do technical thinking.

I just started George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for the first time, and it's great so far!

/nɒtɛndəduːd/ wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 2:56 pm I just started George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for the first time, and it's great so far!

I tried it, but it did nothing for me.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:09 pm

/nɒtɛndəduːd/ wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 2:56 pm I just started George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for the first time, and it's great so far!

I tried it, but it did nothing for me.

I really liked it when I read it years ago, but have gotten kind of disillusioned with Martin since then, thinking more about its flaws these days.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:13 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:09 pm

/nɒtɛndəduːd/ wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 2:56 pm I just started George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for the first time, and it's great so far!

I tried it, but it did nothing for me.

I really liked it when I read it years ago, but have gotten kind of disillusioned with Martin since then, thinking more about its flaws these days.

Same here. That and the fact that the remaining books won't be published until long after he's dead.

In a detour from reading LOTR itself, I spent the last few days reading Anything You Can Imagine, Ian Nathan's book about the making of the movie trilogy. Pretty good and informative, though at some times poorly edited - there are a few sentences that don't make syntactical sense.

alice wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:15 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:13 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 3:09 pm I tried it, but it did nothing for me.

I really liked it when I read it years ago, but have gotten kind of disillusioned with Martin since then, thinking more about its flaws these days.

Same here. That and the fact that the remaining books won't be published until long after he's dead.

hey, now, I've just started the series, let's not get too in-depth about whatever might come in the books still unpublished.

I just finished both seasons of Severance, and that was some truly great science fiction. One of the best series I've watched.

With that and Succession I did get the impression that Americans are really not doing OK at work these days. Speaking of Succession, it's very good but a little too bleak for me; I watched the first two seasons and I think that'll be it.

Dogma by KMFDM

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Mar 08, 2025 2:18 pm Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be.

What do you find right-win about it?

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 10:13 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Mar 08, 2025 2:18 pm Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be.

What do you find right-win about it?

Any ideology that opposes the conquest of bread is regressive. I think Eddy is right-wing too.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Mar 30, 2025 11:17 am

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 10:13 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Mar 08, 2025 2:18 pm Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be.

What do you find right-win about it?

Any ideology that opposes the conquest of bread is regressive. I think Eddy is right-wing too.

What do you mean by the conquest of bread? What in The Know-It-All indicates such an ideology?

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Sun Mar 30, 2025 10:59 pm What do you mean by the conquest of bread? What in The Know-It-All indicates such an ideology?

The Know-It-All was written by a guy who went through a cringy "Marxist" phase when he was a teenager. He makes up for this by repeatedly and loudly declaring that although he wants to improve the lives of the poor where possible, the goals of Marxism are against human nature, he expects no radical changes in social structure, he doesn't think equality is achievable, and so on.

This is conservatism. Non-MAGA conservatives did want to improve the lives of the poor. They just thought no big changes are possible and/or desirable.