Zompist Bboard Again

Trying to remind myself of ideas I might have forgotten:

Malhar: https://youtu.be/CqQY75fnqH4
Deepak: https://youtu.be/k25zubw8j8E

Jewish mysticism: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ__ ... HHWdZNLGlj
Shia mysticism: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh8b ... E9wmjEvPGn

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun May 25, 2025 10:27 pm

Civil War Bugle wrote: ↑Sun May 25, 2025 5:16 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 9:51 pm Ah-ha. As a devout Catholic, it would certainly make sense for Lafferty to have been aware of this.

This reminds me, has anyone here read The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, and have an opinion they care to share? The reason I ask is because the source which brought this series to my attention noted that Wolfe was apparently very Catholic.

No, but I have read one of his other stories, namely The Fifth Head of Cerberus. I struggle to detect any Catholic themes in it, but that probably has more to do with my own unfamiliarity with Catholicism (and Christianity in general, really). I have heard that The Book of the New Sun is strongly influenced by Catholic themes.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 5:16 am I started but did not finish Shadow of the Torturer. It didn't really grab my attention, but I remember the intriguing post-apocalyptic setting.

Thanks! Will probably still at least take a peek at it when I get around to it.

I read it long ago, but I found it funny too and I'm pretty sure Sorel is intended to be more than a little ridiculous.
The Charterhouse of Parma is similar.

I've been thinking about reading that as well.

After having had it on my bookshelf for years while being a bit intimidated by it, I'm now, finally, making my way through The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. Given how famous the book is, I'm not sure whether it really lives up to its reputation, but in any case, it's pretty good. And that goes no matter what you think of Caro's later work. Some parts are difficult reading, but the interesting parts are really interesting. (From a 21st century perspective, it's a bit grating how Caro keeps briefly describing the good looks, or lack thereof, of any woman who appears in the book, but then again, to a lesser extent, he does that with some of the men, too.)

However, if you get yourself the paper edition, and you're a small and skinny person, you might find it physically difficult to handle. It's big.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 4:12 pm After having had it on my bookshelf for years while being a bit intimidated by it, I'm now, finally, making my way through The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro. Given how famous the book is, I'm not sure whether it really lives up to its reputation, but in any case, it's pretty good. And that goes no matter what you think of Caro's later work. Some parts are difficult reading, but the interesting parts are really interesting. (From a 21st century perspective, it's a bit grating how Caro keeps briefly describing the good looks, or lack thereof, of any woman who appears in the book, but then again, to a lesser extent, he does that with some of the men, too.)

However, if you get yourself the paper edition, and you're a small and skinny person, you might find it physically difficult to handle. It's big.

I'm now somewhere between one third and half-way through it. Two thoughts, one short, one long:

1) It can be a bit weird how Caro moves back and forth between writing from the perspective of people close to Tammany Hall and writing from the perspective of people fighting against or being harmed by Tammany Hall. It is useful to see the political struggles of the time and place from both of those perspectives, though.

2) From the perspective of a European, especially a German, reader familiar with European and especially German stereotypes about the USA, the book is an interesting indirect refutation of some of those stereotypes.

I sometimes have the impression that German political leftists and German political conservatives basically agree on a fantasy image of the USA that's even more catoonishly right-wing and hypercapitalist than the real thing. They just disagree on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

At the same time, Germans tend to see many aspects of the machinery of the state and of public administration as "typically German", no matter what their attitude towards them may be. Against that background, it's interesting to read about attempts to reform, reorganize, and streamline structures of state and city government in parts of the USA that start out with dozens or more than a hundred different agencies or offices. "What", German readers might say, "they've got that kind of thing in the USA, too?"

You'll read about those administrative structures being full of commissioners for this or that. Translated into the language of German local administration, I'd say many of those are most fittingly called "Beauftragte" or "Bevollmächtigte". Now, some German readers might react with an unbelieving stare. "They've got those in the USA? Really?"

Finally, at one point, an important role is played by a newly passed act which, in one of its more obscure clauses, refers back to Section 59 of a much earlier act. I guess for some of the aforementioned German readers, hearing that there are obscure laws with 59 or more sections in the USA might finally lead to the collapse of their ideas of how the world works.

It would surprise me if Germans think the complexity of modern governments is a cultural matter.

Songs: https://youtu.be/706hFXjbFJQ https://youtu.be/5qfHStxaj2o

FLCL is basically Looney Tunes with fan service. I had forgotten how violent it was. Also, how good the animation was. Way better than comparable releases today. The ending is still legendary: https://youtu.be/pmwEa3-1r6s

PS. Rereading sections from Picoeconomics by Ainslie. I strongly recommend it.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Jul 06, 2025 8:23 pm It would surprise me if Germans think the complexity of modern governments is a cultural matter.

Well, in my experience, some of them seem to do.

Listening to Aristotle, Spinoza's Ethics and Rothfuss' Wise Man's Fear gives me energy.

Spintronics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7w-RwaXjc8 https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10007 http://www.ece.umn.edu/~sachin/conf/aspdac16zxl.pdf

Sea spider nutrition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crW5fg87PZ0 I'm so jealous.

Why we pursue a PhD: https://cracksinpomo.substack.com/p/pro ... r-students Benjamin Studebaker is a Marxist Neoplatonist: https://benjaminstudebaker.com/

I wish I had the time to watch Haibane Renmei again: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... k96ZB0SW9p Back when I was a real otaku, I used to call it my favorite anime. It's a slice of life in a gothic fantasy setting.

AI music:

Rock song: https://youtu.be/HEzv7cmSxCw

Cowboy Country Rocket Man: https://youtu.be/GcA5aKkaJyo Serious candidate for the funniest song of all time.

Trying Chants of Sennaar, a game about deciphering ideograms.

Techno: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9d ... tR9fKQG6pq

ChibiAkumas coding channel: https://youtube.com/@chibiakumas

PS. Rick and Morty Season 8: https://www.wco.tv/anime/rick-and-morty Watching this in the background could be a disservice to this series. I'm torn.

Interesting video on the physics of musical dissonance and its relation to overtones on various types of instruments. It seems potentially useful for anyone interested in developing music and tuning systems for their conworld since apparently drums and bells have different overtones than strings and pipes.

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 10:25 am Interesting video on the physics of musical dissonance and its relation to overtones on various types of instruments. It seems potentially useful for anyone interested in developing music and tuning systems for their conworld since apparently drums and bells have different overtones than strings and pipes.

Thank you! That seems interesting,

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 10:56 am

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Jul 19, 2025 10:25 am Interesting video on the physics of musical dissonance and its relation to overtones on various types of instruments. It seems potentially useful for anyone interested in developing music and tuning systems for their conworld since apparently drums and bells have different overtones than strings and pipes.

Thank you! That seems interesting,

It's very interesting; thanks malloc!

Takedown of Sabine Hossenfelder's science denialism: https://youtu.be/oipI5TQ54tA

Bengali folk: https://youtu.be/QaisFYIRfEU

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 7:45 pm Bengali folk: https://youtu.be/QaisFYIRfEU

I love this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csAGuwm-ZAQ Sufism has brought some amazing art into this world. I'm sorry my brother hates Bengali music, especially folk music. Some people don't understand deliberately avoiding slickness to create a feeling of greater intimacy. I don't know how much longer Sufi music can hold out against Hindutva and Islamist violence.

পিঞ্জিরার পাখির মত আমি তারে উইরা যাইয়া দেখি
কোথায় গো আমার কালো পাখি।।

শিকল কাটিয়া গিয়াছে উড়িয়া গিয়াছে কোন অজানা দেশে
আমারে ভুলিয়া কার প্রেমে মজিয়া
কেবল আমারে বানাইলো চির দুখী।।

ছিল আমার প্রেমে পোষা কত ছিল ভালবাসা
ছিল আমার অন্তর বাহিরে
সর্ব সাধন হরে নিয়া কোথায় গেল লুকাইয়া
আমি সয়নে স্বপনে তারে দেখি।।

যদিগো পাইতাম হৃদয়ে বসাইতাম শুনিতাম মধুর ও বুলি
জীবন থাকিতে না পাইলাম দেখিতে
আমার মরনের আর কয়দিন আছে বাকী।।

Google Translate with the most egregious errors corrected:

Like a bird in a cage, I see it leaving me.
Where is my black bird?

The chain has been broken, it has flown to an unknown land.
Intoxicated in whose love, having forgotten me?
It has only made me eternally unhappy.

Kept as a pet by my romance, how much love was there?
My heart was on my sleeve.
Where did it go, having lost all its achievements?
I see it in my dreams while I sleep.

If I could find it, I would put it in my heart, I would listen to its sweet words.
I could not live to see.
How many days are left before I die?

After having been prodded to read it for a while, I've now started to read George Lakoff's Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, about, well, how "Liberals" (used with the North American meaning of the term) and Conservatives think.

In case you haven't heard about it yet - zompist likes to bring it up from time to time - the main idea is that conservatives derive their ideas about political morality from what Lakoff calls the "Strict Father" metaphor of family life, while liberals derive their ideas about political morality from what he calls the "Nurturing Parent" metaphor of family life. In the relatively small parts of the book that I've read so far, there's a lot of interesting and insightful stuff, but I also have some quibbles.

My biggest disagreement is with Lakoff's apparent belief that in politics, "coherence" means completely agreeing with either his "Strict Father" metaphor or his "Nurturing Parent" metaphor. People who only partly agree with one or both metaphors are, to him, "incoherent". This sounds to me suspiciously like the idea that people who unthinkingly accept a collection of idea and beliefs handed to them by others are "coherent", while people who occasionally try to think for themselves are "incoherent". And I don't accept that idea at all.

A person might come across as "incoherent" to Lakoff because they aren't 100 percent on board with one of his two metaphors, but they might still have their own system of principles which is internally coherent and informs their beliefs. From their perspective, it might well be the "standard" Left and Right positions that look incoherent.

In my case, for instance, if you insist on explaining all politics through conceptual metaphors from family life, I'd say my views would fit best into a kind of "Mother Bear" metaphor: very much in favor of nurturing the cubs, but also very much in favor of getting aggressive when the cubs are in danger. I think that's an internally perfectly coherent conceptual metaphor, and most of my political beliefs and opinions flow coherently from it.

A smaller disagreement is that Lakoff claims that an important part of the conservative system of values is supposedly the idea of self-control and self-discipline. Err, what? When I look around me, it looks to me as if today's conservatives see any kind of restraint as weak and unmanly. These days, if you're a man who has self-control and self-discipline, conservatives will see you as a contemptible beta male, and if you're a woman who has self-control and self-discipline, conservatives will find it difficult to believe that you exist at all. And that's not necessarily a new thing: having constant undisciplined outbursts of rage has long been a major feature of US right-wing talk radio, and US right-wing talk radio was already a big thing back when Lakoff wrote the book.

Then again, I think zompist himself once wrote, in a ZBB post that has been pruned since then, that Lakoff might have spent 40 years trying to explain Ronald Reagan.

On the whole, interesting book so far.

lakoff's is a model, and just like any other model it makes sense to analyze things in terms of whether they fit or not fit the model. perhaps a better way to put it would have been consistent (which suggests consistent with the model) instead of coherent

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet. Every philosopher conventionally thought of as postmodernist, including Umberto Eco, appears as a character.

PS. Other books I finished recently:

Second Ending is a novel where the lives of musicians are horribly shitty, but then they play the music and it inspires them to new heights. It's funny. A pianist is blackmailed about plagiarism. She goes to sell her piano, plays a tune, and it inspires another girl to dedicate her life to music.

The Dark Side of the Felt contains adventures about winning money in private Poker games on Long Island.

The Iron King. A historical novel about the French nobility.

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is about corporate management power plays.

Phenomenology of Cognition by Cassirer is about how symbols are combined to create worldviews.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Wed Sep 03, 2025 4:48 pm

The Iron King. A historical novel about the French nobility.

I loved the Accursed Kings (though the series loses a bit of steam after the first few books, as I recall)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 2:07 am I loved the Accursed Kings (though the series loses a bit of steam after the first few books, as I recall)

Thanks for the motivation to get started on the second one.

Have you read The Game of Kings? It was recommended to recently as a good historical novel. It's about a rogue nobleman in Scotland.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 2:15 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 2:07 am I loved the Accursed Kings (though the series loses a bit of steam after the first few books, as I recall)

Thanks for the motivation to get started on the second one.

Have you read The Game of Kings? It was recommended to recently as a good historical novel. It's about a rogue nobleman in Scotland.

No, but thanks for the recommendation!

Looking at the Wikipedia page -- I didn't know a Guise was Queen of Scotland too. (The House of Guise was the all-powerful scheming aristocrat house of 16th century France, remembered for orchestrating Protestant massacres.)