Hieronymous Alloy

Sci-Fi Author Octavia Butler Dies at 58 Host Ed Gordon remembers science-fiction writer Octavia Butler, who died on Friday at the age of 58. She was the first African-American woman to gain prominence as a sci-fi author. Her first novel, Ki...

www.npr.org/2006/02/27/5...

Octavia Butler said her "I want to write about what's going to happen if we keep doing what we've been doing" in *2004*.

She looked at problems that, even back then, had not been at all addressed for decades, and went "what do they look after 30 more years of rot"

Not only did they launch a rapidly spiralling war without a plan, these guys are literally incapable of a plan. They think “a plan” is where you say “let’s hit ‘em everything we’ve got, don’t hold back” and then you win. Every crisis resolved by just full sending it, bro.

Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren’t Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats too want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn’t what it was in 1992.

THIS! Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren’t Anymore? Moderate. newrepublic.com/article/2074... via @newrepublic.com

We knew there were problems but Obama had promised to fix them.

Then he didn't.

“everything’s gender” no, everything’s reconstruction, and we should finally do it right this time

He knows the answer he just doesn't want to say what he's thinking. He's thinking three words. One of them is five letters and starts with "P". One of them is three letters and starts with "F". The third is six letters and starts with "N."

Part of Trump’s mass appeal (and of why he’s so dangerous) is that he really seems to share Joe Barstool’s worldview that there are no complex problems: Everything has a simple brute solution, which previous leaders were somehow too stupid or weak to deploy.

The Post and Courier, which is leading the investigative work on the woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a child, looks into the woman’s FBI interview and substantiates many details through public records

It’s cool that this generation gets to find out the answer to “what would you have done when we started interning the Japanese?” and “what would you have done when we invaded Vietnam?” and “what would you have done in Watergate?” all at the same time.

Yeah this seems probably correct, or close enough to correct as makes no difference.

"The time changed in the night," murmured Fred. / "And now it is different instead: / "Is it early, or late? Should I hurry, or wait?" / "Perhaps I should go back to bed."

Yeah this sort of thing is virtually textbook division-sowing

if the citizens of Melos didn't want to be mass murdered and/or sold into slavery, maybe they should've reconsidered how unsafe they were making Athens feel by being there

Pete Hegseth's murderous buffoonery, coming amid a lifetime in which he's betrayed everyone close to him and failed up from one disaster to the next, is a perfect example of how the appeal of Trumpism is that it creates a permission structure for people to openly be their worst selves

looking over the stats, that's 6866 bolts expended during this seige, eighty-six invader corpses left on the map (out of roughly 105+ invaders), and two dead dwarves, both of whom were caught outside the fortress walls at the start of the conflict and couldn't make it to safety in time.

the dumbest form of politics is yelling at voters after you lose. if you lose it is *always* your fault. every confounding factor in the universe is your job to overcome. if you take a position that is unpopular and don't adjust to learning that, you are bad at running for office.

Most of what I've read of Brandon Sanderson's writing is like this for me. It's all . . . fine. Not bad, just not interesting. I've read so much generic fantasy at this point that more of the same is like chewing through infinite pound cake.

Oh there's a tag

#dwarffortress

I've been going *deep* into dwarf fortress after the Seige Update made "star fort" style designs practicable.

Here's a video of a full scale goblin seige with a demon and a cave dragon running full tilt into this fully armed and operational battle station.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jcx...

This all feels more "fastened to a dying animal"

we're all waiting for him to slouch towards Blythe Road

Mark Twain talks about this in his autobiography, about how is writing improved immeasureably once he started giving travelling readings of his own work.

“MAGA’s fundamental shared quality is a total lack of theory of mind for other people” is a theory that keeps getting validated by reality - look at almost every decision they’ve made in the war with Iran, and how they seem constantly surprised by the unanticipated actions of other parties.

Wait, has she scheduled a press conference? I need some good news!

Having faced no consequences for anything, Trump has noticed that he has the world’s largest military at his command, and believes he has found a brilliant solution for solving problems that no one before him was smart enough to discover: just kill everyone in your way, until they obey you.

My advice to the Administration: With the U.S. uncomfortably close to a recession -- and already in a jobs recession -- don't do anything rash that could make things worse.

So Philip Glass just joined TikTok. He only has like 4 posts and they’re simply him in what I assume is his living room playing the piano. First comment on one I saw was “your piano is too close to the fireplace, you’ll dry it out” and if that’s not the internet in a nutshell I don’t know what is.

Media environment. Democrats are speaking but nobody hears them because Republicans own all the major media.

As with Vietnam - when the military starts to list off big numbers instead of tangible accomplishments, things are going nowhere

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!