I've been reading Dwellers in the Deep by @WoodFenton, where he gives an exhaustive look into deep sea diving, and I am always amazed by stuff like this because imagine how many men had to die/be crippled to figure out these exacting processes. Also, it's a good book.
RE that Obsession Art Director. It may be too late, but doesn't she have any friends telling her to stop? She is destroying her career. The remorse in her coming years will kill her.
Before they were made verboten, I was steadily stocking up on incandescents. I have pantry shelves full of different voltages. Since I'm an old man, I'm pretty much set until death.
LEDs are awful.
old joke: four rabbis are arguing doctrine. its 3 against 1. the odd one out asks God for a sign that he’s correct. it snows. the 3 dismiss it. it thunders. the 3 dismiss it. finally a voice calls from heaven, “hes right”. so one of the rabbis says: “alright, now its 3 against 2”
Most of life is sadly downgrading one's model of the "average" person.
The greater sadness is realizing that the "reasonable man" does not exist and that NPCs might.
Despair is forestalled only by faith in the compatibility of the Imago Dei and Vacuous Stupidity.
I used to wonder why so many pieces of media have giant, gaping plot holes when writing a logical causal sequence of events should come naturally since humans intuitively understand cause and effect, but seeing how elections play out has made me realize:
No, they fucking don't.
It's the perennial author's complaint, but indulge me, please, while I whine about writing blurbs for my books. Sure, in the end, I manage; but boy howdy it's hard.
Sounds like he's confusing reason for a war and conduct of a war. Not every war escalates or must. He is basically making war impossible, even "defensive" war (which he allows); since the "capacity for destruction" is available either way.
And honestly, why is it worse to nuke a city than to massacre a village? The Church had no problem with just-war thinking when hundreds could be killed. We can refrain from megadeaths. That's what jus in bello is for.
P.S. None of that has any bearing on the jus ad bellum of the Iran war.
Pope Leo XIV on war in Iran:
"I think this has already been made very clear: the notion of a just war no longer applies. The problem is that just war theory developed in centuries when no one could have imagined the weapons we have today or humanity's capacity for destruction."
It is only when I made a presence on Twitter than I was able to sell my books at all. Other authors can market themselves well, but not me. Twitter has been berry, berry good to me.
That said, Twitter is terrible. What is the point of this all, if nowadays I get 15 views on every post? I'm not going to be an engagement whore!
But then, I guess whores are what Twitter wants now.
Last night, I read the entirety of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. It's a novel told in the form of letters written by a demon to another demon instructing him on ways to manipulate his "patient" to do evil.
This one quote sounded familiar.
@robkroese The latest physical versions of Acquire are definitely off-putting. I still have a proper (and aging) physical version, which apparently I must truly safeguard! (I've already lost the instruction book.)
I think one of the neatest tests of those who are "conservative" or "based" or what have you, is to discover what they think of abortion. If they don't reject it outright and entirely, you know you can take everything they say with an eye askance and a step backward of them.
we have this old heavy wood table. i thought it was the stupidest table. the legs slant out: terrible design. but today, i realized the legs are fully detachable: they slant out because that angular pressure is locking the legs in. its brilliant. how much of the past is like this