For dragon enthusiasts
It looks like break dancing is going to be part of the next summer Olympics. I don’t watch or follow it, but it seems like it could be interesting.
The Olympics needs something interesting. They’re running a bit behind, and this might freshen things up.
In the year 1312, Goblin Reckoning, human-caused events occurred at Bloodharvest.
Goblins reckon from the fall of Whitehall when talking about humans.
When talking among themselves, they use other years. The Thunderblood reckon from the Tallfoot taking of Ipsath Mountain when discussing clan Tallfoot, and such call year 1312GR year 853. The Throathurters reckon not from taking possession of Bloodharvest in 238GR, but rather from 745GR, when Firetail tried and failed to take the prison. Blacktongues call this year 1, the year of their ascension.
It is cumbersome.
3000, Futurama will only be one year old.
Pentel makes some good high-polymer erasers. They work wonders on medium hardness mech pencil graphite.
The scene where the dwarves sing the Roaring Pines number is one of the great dramatic musical bits in non-musical movies.
It would be a great musical bit among musical movies.
The movie is full of weird dramatic contrasts. It’s too long, and yet there are moments of brilliance in there. It relies too much on special effects, and yet they’re great.
I just read this graphic novel by Sebastien Samson.
I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.
The medium of the graphic novel is an odd one, constantly being usurped by collections of comics which possess no meaningful story arc or singular plot. But novels in graphic form do exist. My New York Marathon is one.
The story is fairly straight forward, and there are no spoilers here. A man, Sebastien, has some friends who decide to run the NY marathon. He also decides to run the marathon. He’s not very athletic and his friends are, yet he does some manner of training. He does run the marathon. He thinks about things before, during, and after, and makes a lot of sketches. The art is cartoony but pleasant.
The whole thing is very mild, and it has to be. The crux of the matter is an unpleasant ordeal 42km long, but millions of people do this ordeal every year for fun. If the story got gritty and dark, it would come across as being absurd.
Sebastien never falls into that. He thinks, he runs, he thinks about running, and while there’s nothing really new, it’s very human. There’s a very accessible person on the other side of the page. He talks about his wife. The little bits of friction and cute little moments come together to form an extremely enjoyable narrative relationship. There’s obviously filtering going on, but what’s there is simply nice. Sebastien’s talks with his principal, various doctors, and other runners are all very much real people.
When you read something about people from other lands, even if they come to your land, you want to read something about the people. Who are these humans? What are they like? This book answers that. This is a runner, he’s not in great shape but he kinda likes it, and these are the people he knows and the places he lives. The book gives you a sense of self.
What really surprised me about this was how enjoyable it was without really having a plot. The guy runs a marathon. That’s it. The stakes don’t rise much, and even the climax, the running of the marathon itself, isn’t really a shocking incident. It’s well done. He talks about the wall at 15 miles, the excited anticipation, all those things, but there’s no real interpersonal conflict. There’s a bit of man vs self, but he’s not trying to destroy himself. He’s trying to overcome being lazy. And 26.2 is no joke.
This was a story sublimely appropriate for a graphic format. It reads so easily that the lack of grit and the effortless read fit the moderate battle of self vs self. It just works. It hits the balance, its stride, and cruises along to completion.
It really surprised me. I expected to be bored and wasn’t. I stayed up late to finish it the day I got it.
LC is down on my home wifi but not elsewhere. I don’t know why.
Doing debugging things.
In the Army an E-5 is a Sergeant. An E-6 is a Staff Sergeant, and an E-7 is a Sergeant First Class. All may be referred to as Sergeant ****.
“Sergeant Smith, where’s the whatever?”
That’s a perfectly acceptable polite form of address for SGT Smith, SSG Smith, and SFC Smith.
In the Marine Corps, it’s different. One calls the NCO by their specific rank.
“Segreant Smith, where’s the whatever?”
“Staff Sergeant Smith, where’s the gadget?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Smith, what’s the contraption?”
You pick the appropriate one. This is cultural.
The bounds of these cultures are well defined. The Army does is one way, the Marines do it another, etc. Joint forces often specify this in formal doctrines of address, though arguments ensue. Off duty servicemembers fight about this a lot. But off-duty fights are, of course, off duty and not professional anymore.
There is absolutely no chance of a formal doctrine of address in the civilian world such as what exists in the military. There are merely conventions, and these are subgroups of cultue.
Right now, the president-elect’s wife has a PhD. There’s a brewing culture clash over the appropriate form of address for her: is she Dr. Biden or Mrs. Biden? (In the US, we put the period after Dr. and Mrs., in the UK and most other commonwealth countries, they don’t)
The WSJ published an op-ed to the effect that only MDs should be addressed as Dr. Twitter reacted Twitteresque. No one impressed me.
WSJ has consistently reserved the address Dr. for medical doctors, so they take refuge in that, but the article is pretty sanctimonious, bordering on trolling. Joseph Epstein was clearly instigating. But the NYT and others wasted no time in rising to the bait. Obscenity and accusations of sexism followed like light bulbs coming on after a switch is flicked.
Two cultures are colliding, and the bounds of these cultures are nebulous. People exist in both, and the bounds of them are not well limited. My old rule, call people what they want to avoid a fight, is merely my rule. Should the WSJ writers be impelled to alter their terms of address in the WSJ? Should the First Lady accept not being called her preferred term of address?
Again, I go back to the military. You call a Marine E-6 Sergeant ****, and you’re going to get an earful. But when we’re sitting around in our hootch, trying to figure out who to go to to get something resolved, we fell back on traditional modes of expression if that Marine wasn’t there.
I don’t think anyone has any moral high ground. Bush got called a terrorist. Obama got called a terrorist. Trump got called literally Hitler (which was weird because he’d be, like, a hundred and thirty something). No one’s given the other side enough respect to demand it in turn.
Furthermore, there’s an odd bit of cultural imperialism at play. People are demanding others do things their way. Now the First Lady is clearly part of one culture, and she’d gone on the record as establishing her preference in address. But she’s also part of American Culture, and there isn’t one American Culture. There’s a ton of them. Most are arguing with each other. What’s weird is that the anti-imperialists, generally the left and Democrats, are demanding that others adopt their culture and their modes of address. They have anointed themselves the correct culture, and fight to compel others to adopt their ways. You can follow the Twitter threads if you want; they’re basically codified in the NYT (though the more overt obscenity and threats of violence are not included).
The right, WSJ, and Republicans, which complained bitterly and relentlessly about the lack of respect for Trump, are indulging immediately in the same. Now there’s a little less hypocrisy in this side as both sides have been utterly vile to each other for years. But Epstein starting picking before Biden even got inaugurated. Of course, this was an opportunity for WSJ to play to its base (stick it to the libs!) even while criticize the Biden administration for playing to its base. That’s pretty stark hypocrisy too.
The way I see it, both sides are quarreling over how many imaginary jerk-points the other side has.
The Republicans say, “You have twenty jerk-points and we only have ten, so we’re better!”
The Democrats rebut, “No, no. We have twenty, but you have fifty! We’re better.”
I don’t care. You’re both jerks.
The imperialism thing is odd. It makes the Democrats seem like strangers in their own land.
I am certainly a stranger in my own land. I don’t get this place.
Stay safe, everyone. We’re in September, 1918. Some safety is coming, and we’ll have to live with each other in the morning.
So I think it would be Morgoth.
Who would be the better landscaper?
Total Voters: 2
Loading ...Buy the rumor, sell the news?
Quite possibly.
For a few weeks, there’s been a significant rally in US equities and many international markets. One ostensible cause was the imminence of a vaccine for Covid. Now the vaccine is here and the market is going down. Why?
An old truism is buy the rumor, sell the news.
News rarely lives up to the hype. A successful vaccine probably isn’t going to be the light-switch for Covid people are making it out to be. Problems are arising, and while those problems look manageable, or at least expected, they’re nontrivial. So the rally, which may have been supported by vaccine-optimism, is now retreating a bit in the face of vaccine-reality.
Rallies objectively happen. Motivations are speculation. We don’t know if the rally was vaccine driven. There are millions of people in the US equity market, so assuming they’ve all got the same motivation is a bit unreasonable. That some people bought equities due to vaccine-optimism is near certain. That the rally was driven primarily by vaccine-optimism is much more debatable, and that vaccine-optimism looks the same to all people is wrong as certainly as that it drove some action at all.