Moon and Lake

Also, it’s hard to read the complaints against foreign films as anything other than plain xenophobia

Just 10 pages into “The Tunnel” and I am in AWE at the quality of Gass’ writing

I don’t even play World of Warcraft and also I’m a few years late to this discussion but it should be clear to all that Blizzard made a HUGE blunder by not adding Dark Iron Dwarves to the Horde. Much more interesting on all levels.

@mtgarena.com what you really ought to do is make a format called “no franchises” I promise it will be popular

i might be in a minority here but I really don’t think words like “lo” or “alas” belong in any modern translation

I’m well aware of the replication crisis (which is not unique to psychology btw, but is also a problem for psychiatry and medicine). But as psychologists we never agree on anything, our foundations included. So what studies are you referring to? Milgram and Zimbardo etc?

@amprestigepod.bsky.social I listened to your conversation with Shadi Hamid on a recent episode. I agree with you on many things, but had to raise sn eyebrow at the point made by Danni that psychology isn’t a real science since its foundational experiments have not been replicated.

Meanwhile we have Kate Bush who, though obviously celebrated, is almost never talked about as a genius

why is it that we keep talking about a certain musician as a genius when he, for all the music he’s put out, has neither made anything with a real impact on music as “high art” nor mass public appeal?

For all his insistence that Tolkien is his biggest influence it is quite clear that GRRM is a pulp guy through and through

“The Curse of Chalion” by Bujold.

Set in a fantasy version of medieval Spain. Follows a former soldier as he attempts to navigate the royal courts. Very tactile and lived-in world. Great characters and superb dialogue.

What to* make of it

I have! But didn’t quite know what that make of it. The Woldercan connection is what convinced me. But apart from that I remember an interview with Gene where he talks about a potential story like “what if a mermaid in a circus was an actual mermaid?” which is also straight from Dr Lao

@rereadingwolfe.bsky.social did Wolfe ever talk about his influences?
I recently read Finney’s “The Circus of Dr. Lao” and I am convinced Wolfe must have read it too.

I think at the end of the day regardless of nationality, race, religion or political affiliation we can all agree that Jar Jar Binks is a character that appears in multiple Star Wars films as well as several pieces of spin off media.

You’re all gonna go hog wild when I unveil my revisionist retelling of Gormenghast from the perspective of the villain, Steerpike!
[picks up Titus Groan and flips through it for 5 seconds]
Nevermind.

There should be a term for this. It's like that kid in grade school that would ask during a fire drill "What if there is a tornado at the same time"

If that extremely unlikely and dumb hypothetical happens then we all die I guess, please shut up.

‘Dickinson‘ had a bit of the same problem where they start poking fun at their own premise.
Couldn‘t you just make a TV series and mean it?

The first season of ‘The Bear’ is flawed, but sincere, and ultimately good. The second season has that ironic distance that residents of the anglosphere apparently require in their media, but which, to me, makes it unsufferable to watch.

When you think about it, the aesthetic of Bloodborne really boils down to “steampunk dark academia”

Somehow these streaming services have convinced us we need AI “curated” playlists. Cretins the lot of them! For centuries our forebears got by with playlists made by humans, and were much richer for it.

Why does self-taught snd amateur art always look kind of similar no matter the time period and locality?

Someone building a wooden dog statue in 2025 will end up doing the same thing as someone from 400 BC. Why is this???

notice how people with good social skills never complain about small talk?

Something about a blind chicken and grain except the bits of grain suck ass

The great thing about Steven Pinker is that he’s mostly wrong and when once in a while he turns out to be right it’s the most pedestrian insight imaginable

hate it when a novel is “philosophical”
it’s always some half-baked nonsense
even Dostoyevsky’s “wisdom” is just the grievances of an extremely petty guy who was wrong about 90% of the things he had an opinion on

I love it in a movie when someone says in a cheerful voice “Then it’s settled!”

We all love to have a go at George Lucas’ way of naming characters but if we‘re being honest Gríma Wormtongue is just as goofy of a name as Jar Jar Binks

If it weren’t already a popular disco song ‘Night Fever’ would be a great name for a cursed sword

I will embrace the concept of the worksona in all its wisdom