Clan Zorah

Gonna take a breather from the forum for awhile again. Realized I'm once again getting sucked into internet stuff and while I do a good job of not letting the web drive me insane, it is an attention drain and encourages me to do self-performative stuff that is just not good.

The premise that even if your lifestyle was nearly identical, which is easily could be, having it all contingent on the men in your life allowing it does not sound acceptable from anything I've read from you. I don't like being intellectually humored. Some kind of Mary Shelley type "oh how qua...

Academic librarians and big city public librarians are woke. Librarians from West Podunk Public Library are not but they don't go to ALA conferences. You can still expect librarians to be on the left fringes of whatever is acceptable in their community on average. It's driven by professional organiz...

I obviously can't answer which would be less shitty, but I'd say if they truly functionally pay the same amount, a lot comes down to how much of an introvert or extrovert you are. Are you at your best and happiest with other people or when you are alone? I'm *insanely* introverted. Non stop social i...

A pretty big thing that helped me was that at some non-specific point in the last 10ish years, I embraced mediocrity. Not mediocrity in the sense of "do everything half-assed" but mediocrity in the sense that I'm just not that important, nobody outside family actually cares that much about...

Weird, blast from the past article I heard about:

A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage written in 1989. Apparently this essay was a big deal at the time.

Pretty accurate with two nitpicks. I don't think I actually have much empathy for the popularly marginalized. On the contrary some of them fill me with anger. (Fake refugees absolutely the most. The sense of fucking entitlement these people have will easily fill me with rage if I let it. If there wa...

I'm not wedded to my own protag either. I just don't really want the unending adventures of Geralt where he is utterly run into the ground.

Second more exploration of Cyberpunk. I'm hoping if they release some stellar DLC for it, it will allow that property to finally breath some.

Personally hoping they leave Geralt be and opt for a more V type situation where you make your own protag in that world. I really hate how nothing is ever allowed to end and stay ended anymore. Let him chill at his vineyard, goddammit. He's earned it.

Most Women Denied Abortions by Texas Law Got Them Another Way Sad trombone noise. Pretty much what I figured. Law is much ado about nothing. Then National Review (a conservative rag) saying no, actually that's not true . So who fucking even knows? *Sigh* I will have to be content with amusement tha...

Might be closer than you think because I tend to look up to European right-wingers more than US ones. They tend to be less stupid. And my go to answer to "what are you" is I'm whatever the heck Roger Scruton was . He's a British conservative but not a typical Tory. Other right-wingish peop...

My turn! Disillusioned non-specific non radical far right. Defined in some ways more but what you wished was true but don't seem to quite believe. Whiffs of some kind of white preservationism. Whiffs of desire for universal order enshrined in a venerable religion. Whiffs of desire for patriarchy (n...

Finished Mao book, but sick of China so moving on to this: https://cdn.blackstonepublishing.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=400,quality=75/2/7/2722/2722-square.jpg Supposed to be the flagship work in the genre of "the West has some variety of mind rot or other that is ruining everything." *Edit* W...

More links: Ukraine and the Clash of Civilization theory, an interview with Olivier Roy He is correct that a Christianity vs Islam conflict largely collapsed partially because Islamism largely collapsed an any kind of unified, competent front. The lack of unification or competence on a given front d...

Close to finishing the Maoism book. (Horizon: Forbidden West is a very good mindless game to listen to audiobooks to especially if you never fast travel anywhere and prefer the "slowly snipe things to death" el cheeso tactics I usually employ). No bombshells in this one because I had alrea...

Eh, it was just like five pounds or so. Unless you literally stick your hand in its face or something, it was not a big deal. It was more just unexpected and funny.

I hit a dog one time (coming around a blind corner on a curve in a 2 lane country road), but it had no collar and there were no houses around. I was going like 50 mph so it died on impact. There wasn't much I could do beyond drag it off the road. Me and sister did stop one time and get this turtle o...

Not that I needed much convincing on this, but this book does not present a particularly flattering portrayal of assorted anti-colonial independence movements. In most of these places it really is like, "okay, chose between these options: 1) militant violent Maoist revolutionaries who want to s...

Didn't even notice an option to choose between offense and defense. That may be my problem. Though I also intentionally put the settings on "give me all the hints and also fill my HUD up with 7000 information panes" mode so I'm still mildly annoyed they didn't explicitly tell me this somew...

They completely nerfed override in the new Horizon game and it's quite annoying. Now you have to kill several of whatever kind of megafauna robot to get parts to craft the override skill. There's a timer which is really short. And the overridden robot no longer preemptively attacks other robots but ...

You don't strike me as somebody with a set ideology actually from what I've seen you say on here though I get how that can come off as me dodging the question. Most people don't have one. Some species of centrist that tacks left or right of center based on circumstances is my best guess. And that is...

I'm either delusional or I maybe read too much political junk or both, but increasingly I feel like I can tell the politics of a writer even when they don't explicitly state them. Last person was maybe not a literal Marxist, but definitely sympathetic to some kind of internationalist leftism. New pe...

Wow, all those alternate names really stink. Nebula: Guardians of the Citadel? Biowar? Lol

stuff about determinism killing agency, will, and self I was starting this whole point for point argument but I think everything I was saying can be condensed down to the question of whether or not determinism kills a self capable of understanding. I'm not sure that agency and understanding are...

There is an upper limit on what reasonable amount of farmland they could sow is And this would be notably different from the past so long as they continued to use modern medicine and thus avoid historical rates of infant mortality. There has never been a mass agrarian + modern medicine society (oth...

I sorta want to try them but I get let's say highly expressive when I'm playing a game and things aren't going my way. So I have been informed I'm not allowed to try them unless Theo goes on a 3 month vacation to Africa so he doesn't have to hear it.

Since Grant was mentioned earlier, he came up in this book I'm reading now. Apparently he went on a world tour after his second term and was enlisted by the Chinese as an intermediary to try to settle some disputes with Japan over territorial and sovereignty issues. Dunno if he talks about that in h...

She has the right to privately be an unrepentant racist and think the worst of black people, but when it starts to affect her workplace, then her being fired over it wouldn't bother me much. The article said she herself was a black woman and was responding to a notification the system gave about hi...

Bleh, Sapir-Whorf horsehit right off the bat in new book on China. Not a strong start. "His article demonstrated that the change from old empire to modern nation-state really ran in the opposite direction. Change began with words. As intellectuals struggled to explain and address the problems c...

Finished my book on China. I'm going to keep going with this for now though unfortunately there just aren't as many good audiobooks on Chinese history as I hoped. There's 87345448473 written by every pundit who fancies themselves a political strategist on "confronting China" or whatever bu...

Unrelated, but Black Panther's director has been handcuffed by police because a bank employee mistook him for a bank robber . He was deemed suspicious because he wanted to withdraw a large sum of money from his (entirely legal) bank account and handed the employee a note saying "be discreet&qu...

She does get called on it to some degree. They also keep putting forward this pointless side kick character who is a boring footnote from the first game (Varl). He keeps following her around like a lost puppy and she keeps running off and leaving him behind. At a point, he hooks up with another char...

Thing supposedly written by some big shot Chinese foreign policy guy about what China should do because of Ukraine: https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/ *Edit* Interesting semi-related thing. My China book finally got up to the Chinese Communist Party. Apparently, no...

Started playing Horizon: Forbidden West. Pretty much a complete extension of the first game so far. Still really visually impressive. Aloy still her unlikable self. Facial animation still stiff. Writing still wooden. World-building still really interesting. Robot dinos still bullet sponges. Never th...

Does their unbowed population boom disprove the r/k selection justification? I'd say not really for a couple of reasons. 1) The r/k selection theory is only a partial explanation for lower birthrates in developed countries. As already said, the reasons people don't have kids are idiosyncratic thoug...

Went ahead and did my Aldecados run now instead of waiting. It's definitely more interesting of a gameplay scenario than the Rogue ending which is very fast and kinda boring. It's also just a better flavor and really fit my character, who was a nomad, better anyway. That being said, I was co...

Oh she does totally try to save her son in the books as well. So in that sense, yeah, she won't accept that he is a lost cause for a while. As to protomolecule, they get into biology of the aliens that built the ring gates (kinda) in the last book. It's very vague but they are some ...

I finished Cyberpunk. Went with Rogue storming Arosaka tower ending and Johnny going off into cyberspace. I'll reload tomorrow and see what the Aldecados ending looks like. That's sort of the one I wanted to take but 1) it seems selfish and pointless to ask them to potentially throw thei...

I've not read the books but seen the series. I have one question, okay kinda two with how I am writing it. Naomi Nagata, is she in the books? Is she, in the period set where the third seaosn is set, also basiclaly sit herself off to the sidelines and let herself be walked all over like in the show ...

A Guide to Ukraine's Far Right *Edit* Slavic Neo-Nazis are just really fucking weird in general because Slavs were only slightly above Jews on Hitler's shit list. Don't get. Legal podcast I listen to in which the last 16 minutes and 30 seconds or so are discussing the legal implications of Ukraine ...

Finished The Expanse. It did indeed pull its head out of its butt by the end. This series is consistently enjoyable but it does tend to meander in the last 3 books or so. It's very tight thematically and stylistically in the early books by mostly being about conflicts between humans within the Sol s...

I really felt that connection between V and Johnny at the end and it would be very different between a female V and Johnny, I think. The only potentially really weird stuff is when/if you let him take over your body and he immediately starts in with the hookers or whatever, but this is pretty shitt...

I did that spate of reading "primary sources" if you will from history last year and enjoyed it. I should do more of that. Some I've thought about doing that would probably be really interesting are some of those first hand accounts written by various people who accompanied the conquistado...

Researcher finds 'stunning' rate of COVID among deer. Here's what it means for humans Still nobody bringing up deer breeding facilities as the likely spillover point which is just baffling to me. These mass breed deer and them ship them around to various high fence ranches where there is absolutely...

Getting a sense of the Russian Soul

On population genetics in Russia and Ukraine and assorted other places controlled by historical Russian Empire

The Amish fertility rate is roughly 6-7, with some families noted to have kids in the high teens. And often can't sustain this number by farming and thus must heavily subsidize their living by working for the "English" or continually acquire more land, which is not often mentioned. Pertin...

Getting close to being done with Cyberpunk. So far as I can tell, I just have a few more missions having to do with Johnny's old band and maybe one more having to do with investigating the death of the mayor. And then endgame stuff. Game is solid with some notable issues. The physics are clunky. It'...

Eh, tried my ludicrous number of library cards I hoard and one library (Houston Public) did have JSTOR but my card is expired. I never use it because fuck driving into the city. I bought a copy of the Kojiki a while back but have yet to read it. What translation did you pick?

The Expanse is an example of a series that is woke in the diversity sense (LGBT characters, non-white characters, etc) which I have 0 issues with while not being woke in the philosophical sense (which is dumb and tedious). It's kinda started to be more towards the end. Most overtly in this last book...

Another glut of Ukraine articles from the weekly newsletter thing. I haven't read these yet so they may stink. Dumping ones that look plausibly interesting or relevant. 90% of houses are damaged’: Russia’s Syria-honed tactics lay waste Ukraine towns War 101 I’ve Dealt With Foreign Cyberattacks. Amer...

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