Zompist Bboard Again

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:55 pm I didn't mention this before: Starship Troopers very specifically glorifies war, not just the military.

Are you talking of the book or the film? The society in the book is very different from the society in the film. The recruitment office in the book was deliberately off-putting, with the recruiting sergeant a maimed advertisement of how one risked life and limb - very different to how he appeared when off-duty! Incidentally, in the book, there was a constitutional right to serve; disabilities were worked round. The film was a travesty of Heinlein's book.

I recently started Japan 1941, by Eri Hotta, about the decision-making processes in Japan that eventually lead the country to go to war against the USA and Britain. I'm only in the second chapter at the moment, but so far it's vividly written, with lively portraits of leading participants' personalities.

I finished How Not To Write A Novel last night. Hilarious. It should probably come with a trigger warning for, well, pretty much everything, but still hilarious. It's been a long time since a book made me laugh that much.

https://www.pdfdrive.com/encyclopedia-o ... 40735.html
https://youtu.be/gdVtjQ8A1Ds

Music again:

https://youtu.be/isrHE6PiY38
https://youtu.be/Gy_0kaNl-8A
https://youtu.be/d0cHaPJhHe0
https://youtu.be/DkhYYnvf8Go
https://youtu.be/soiigxYf4mQ
https://youtu.be/PXZ7Ut5Liq8
https://youtu.be/xVEUwv1H1tU
https://youtu.be/Jv2ZcEtbJ7I
https://youtu.be/cJqjlFGZxtE

Edit: Quran recitation:

https://youtu.be/_1y9c3Jvwhw

More books I remember reading recently:

How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle by Jonas Ceika
Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson
Moonchild by Aliester Crowley
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
How God Becomes Real by T. M. Luhrmann
The Alpha Protocol by Duncan M Hamilton
Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World by Jon Stewart
What Does A Martian Look Like by Stewart and Cohen
Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)
A Commentary on Hegel's Science of Logic by David Carlson
Evolution Cradle: The Aryan Origin by Charith Pidikiti
The Elements of Theology by Proclus
Endymion by Keats

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:46 pm Are you talking of the book or the film? The society in the book is very different from the society in the film. The recruitment office in the book was deliberately off-putting, with the recruiting sergeant a maimed advertisement of how one risked life and limb - very different to how he appeared when off-duty! Incidentally, in the book, there was a constitutional right to serve; disabilities were worked round. The film was a travesty of Heinlein's book.

I read the book back in high school, but IIRC even that was an attempt to illustrate the nobility of the military. Maybe I'll feel differently if I read it again. My understanding is that the film parodies the book.

That's about it. And I think the intent of the film was to parody the entire subgenre of action / military sci-fi, not specifically Starship Troopers. As I recall, the decision to specifically adapt that book came kind of late into the creative process.

I love both the film and the book; both are trying to do something completely different. The film is great satire, with lots of great ideas. ('I'm doing my part!', Neil Patrick Harris in an SS uniform...)

The book (even though I like it a lot!) invites satire, because of a glaring fault: of course war would be an unambiguous good thing and an unquestionable civic duty if you're fighting an alien horde of mindless drones on barren planets conveniently devoid of civilian life. The problem is, in war we tend to fight sentient, human beings (even if they're communists!)

I'm not reading it this second, but I'm in the middle of reading the LCK. (in English)

Edit: I've finished it and moved on to the ALC. (also English)

Cluster Ensemble – "Music with Changing Parts" (Philip Glass, composer)

Karch wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 7:46 pm Ensemb' zot - Mendiant malgré lui

Réunionese music! (seggae or maloggae i.e. a mix of sega or maloya with reggae)
If you like that, you might like similar groups like Naéssayé (literally 'We'll try'):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up5Z03LyZaM

I read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - really enjoyed it.

I have finished reading Piketty's Vivement le socialisme ! and I have already gotten about 70 pages into La grande confusion by Philippe Corcuff (a book about the far-right-ification of French politics).

Fiction:

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Religious: (my mother was a scholar of religion)

Or Ne'erav
The Theology of Arithmetic by (Pseudo) Iamblichus

Math books (recreational):

Geometry of the Octonions by Corinne Manogue and Tevian Dray
Essential Turing
The World's Most Famous Math Problem by Marilyn vos Savant
An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry by Bertrand Russell
Bernoulli's Fallacy by Aubrey Clayton
I also looked into a number of these Manga Guides: https://www.pdfdrive.com/search?q="Mang ... rchin=&em= Basic, but interesting.

Other nonfiction:

Cryptozoologicon
Sandworm by Andy Greenberg
Numbers Don't Lie and China's Past, China's Future by Vaclav Smil

Traditional Bengali music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VT_mZqvKN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkoj6ueljuc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8z5a1O0K4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioH-RJjFw1g

I'm looking into K-Pop, though my jam is really the super quiet style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioNng23DkIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsX3ATc3FbA

Other YouTube:

Documentaries by Raphael Treza: https://youtube.com/c/RaphaelTreza
Orangutan Jungle School https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLErD ... jptkofcV0v followed by the full show on Paramount+

Games:

Mostly Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) puzzles on Android apps. At least for me, they get very hard after the first few dozen or so.
When the Past Was Around
Inscryption

Edit: I found an app called Einstein's Riddle by Rottz Games. I suspect practicing on this can make people better at puzzles generally.

I'm reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

An interesting trend I noted: why is hard science-fiction almost always grimdark and depressing? Aurora's about a failing interstellar expedition; Saturn's Children has manking extinct and the posthuman society is awful on any and all levels; in Alastair Reynolds' work the technology itself is all diseased, plus the ancient aliens are all out to kill mankind; in Blindsight all humans alive are assholes and the aliens are sociopaths.

Do pain and suffering somehow feel more realistic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_-AHeGO-bE
https://youtu.be/uDd3iupKUyI

Reading The Accursed Share by Bataille. IIRC this is the book that inaugurated the postmodern economics of plenty that's opposed to the classical economics of scarcity. The thesis is that the sun pours out more energy than we know what to do with. If you don't invest the extra portion in art and other luxuries, governments will invariably use it to fund their war efforts. One interpretation could be: Be economically inefficient! Your life depends on it!

However, it's not clear to me that wealth is reducible to a universally fungible substance like energy. For example, Paul Cockshott and colleagues have shown that labor is very highly correlated with economic output. (Edit: More so than fuel sources.) If production is paid for by work, then that could be the bottleneck in the system until you break the cycle by switching to automation.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:07 am I'm reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

I have to check this out. Thanks.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:07 am An interesting trend I noted: why is hard science-fiction almost always grimdark and depressing?

Wasn't hard science-fiction optimistic about the future in previous eras? My first instinct is that this is a new trend started by the cyberpunk genre. Video essay on why the Neuromancer aesthetic appealed to so many people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvor7hhDKTs (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E)

PS. I'm also reading The Man Who Was Born In 9 Countries recommended by Moose-tache: https://hotoffthepresses.blog

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 7:46 pm Wasn't hard science-fiction optimistic about the future in previous eras? My first instinct is that this is a new trend started by the cyberpunk genre. Video essay on why the Neuromancer aesthetic appealed to so many people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvor7hhDKTs (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E)

That's correct! I think the trend started with John Brunner (but John Brunner is very early cyberpunk.)

I wish we'd see a bit more optimism in contemporary science-fiction. Aurora, which I mentioned, is really, hmm, over-the-top in its committment to depression.
Looking at the latest Clarkesworld, there's not a single story there that isn't horribly bleak.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:56 am
I wish we'd see a bit more optimism in contemporary science-fiction. Aurora, which I mentioned, is really, hmm, over-the-top in its committment to depression.

I think this is due to the sentiment that the world may really face the end, if we don't get to deal with problems such as climate change. And indeed I concur with you that I wish to see more optimism in contemporary SF - I do think the current problems can be solved, and I feel that entertaining stories could (and should) be written that deal with these solutions. I am working on some such stories, and planning a blog. A few days ago I found this magazine which at least seems to get close to that, so it appears as if I was not alone in this quest.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 7:24 am
I think this is due to the sentiment that the world may really face the end, if we don't get to deal with problems such as climate change.

I don't think so...Prospects were pretty bleak in the 50s and the 60s. SF authors, it seems, largely considered that a full scale global thermonuclear war was inevitable; they also expected billions of dead from famine and overpopulation.

Looking at Asimov or Heinlein (for somehow caricatural examples), it's interesting to see that the outlook in their stories is pretty hopeful, even though the world they describe is really pretty bleak!

Ares Land wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:56 am I wish we'd see a bit more optimism in contemporary science-fiction. Aurora, which I mentioned, is really, hmm, over-the-top in its committment to depression.
Looking at the latest Clarkesworld, there's not a single story there that isn't horribly bleak.

What would you like to see? There is contemporary optimistic science fiction. Most notably, singularity fiction. Those are pooh-poohed as uncritical trash.

The fact of the matter is, given the current level of technology, it is not easy to conceive of the future as not being more interconnected. See how imposing economic sanctions on Russia devastated economies all over the world.

PS. I thought the first arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena was mind-blowing despite having several annoying anime tropes.