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Messages - Nephew Twiddleton

#31
Quote from: Juana on July 12, 2019, 07:48:09 PM
Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on July 12, 2019, 06:57:03 PM
Quote from: Juana on July 12, 2019, 03:52:36 PM
Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on July 12, 2019, 01:35:45 PM
Quote from: Juana on July 11, 2019, 09:52:05 PM
I'll survive. I'm just poor and cheap, lmao

That reminds me. I'm probably going to have to shell out quite a bit for admissions applications to PhD programs this fall
Yeah, that shit ain't cheap from what I've heard.

On the one hand, I'm only going to apply to Boston area.

On the other hand, I'm applying to Boston area
Yeah, I imagine that's more expensive than elsewhere.


Also, I have a rib misaligned and I'm mad about it bc I can't figure out how I did it.

Get well soon!

It's more the amount of places I can apply. Though I'm pretty sure that I can expect not to get into Harvard or MIT due to competition. To be fair, even though MIT is prestigious, I hear their biology department is more interested in what I can do with bacteria than what I can find out with bacteria
#32
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 07:52:48 PM
Seems like it's the month of rib injuries. That's the third one.

Goddamn
#33
I really enjoyed the prequels though. It was fun to see the origin of the Bene Gesserit, Mentats, and Navigators, as well as the Butlerian Jihad
#34
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 07:51:16 PM
God Emperor is definitely the high point. Leto II is a horrible/wonderful character, and it's the most convincing writing about precognition in the series. Full agreement with you there.

I'll agree, but even God Emperor had parts that were hard to get through
#35
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on July 12, 2019, 07:44:02 PM
The Dune series goes downhill pretty quickly after God Emperor, IMO.

I mean, it goes Downhill after Dune. Children was pretty good because it was Dune-like
#36
The weird focus on sexuality is why I couldn't get through Heretics when I was, laughably, in my 20s (I turn 38 in a few weeks).
#37
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 07:32:46 PM
Wasn't Chapterhouse the last Frank book?

Either way, Herbert hasn't aged well. I read Dune in 2012 and loved it, all the way through Chapterhouse. I reread it all about six months or so ago and it was painful. Joe Biden defending his record on racial segregation painful.

Okay, bit of an exaggeration there. Unlike Biden, when judged as a product of its time, it's fine or better. Today, though, it just comes off as horny for dominatrices at best, and everything goes downhill from there. Shame, really: the cultural elements outside of the Bene-connected stuff (G or T, irrelevant really) holds up strong as nails, still some of the best worldbuilding I've seen done.

I agree with your assessment. It's hard to get through and frankly I prefer his son's additions to the series more readable
#38
I'm indirectly bitching about a needing a better work/life balance. I apologize for getting a little cranky at you
#39
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 07:18:16 PM
The correct thing to do is to simply add it to your pleasure reading backlog, silly.

Unless you don't like hard sci-fi, in which case I guess you can spoil yourself, but that'd be a major disservice to that story and I'd rather let others around here be able to go in blind on it. PM me if you want the spoiler.

EDIT: wrote the above up veeeery slowly, while distracted, before your second post. To be clear here, I have books I've been meaning to get to since 2005. I only just finally got around to reading The Thread That Binds The Bones this past September, and well... That's one I'd meant to read since 2003. I fully expect people to read stuff years after I suggest it to them, it's inevitable. A simple hazard of existing in information overload: even once you sort the noise from the signal, you still have far more to consume than you ever can possibly hope to.

There's a downside to academia. I've been trying to finish the entire expanded Dune for years. I'm about 20% through Chapterhouse and have been for months. I'm probably going to have to start from the beginning. And then there's the two sequels to that.
#40
Aneristic Illusions / Re: Pelosi vs AOC feud
July 12, 2019, 07:22:45 PM
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 06:07:50 PM
RWHN: with all due respect, you have lost your fucking mind.

The neoliberal half of the Dem Party has no spine and kowtows to the merest whim of people who would gun them down in public if they thought they could get away with it, all so they can look like the good guys and appeal to the centrists. "I want to get something done!" They scream, while ignoring that the only things they'll be allowed to do is continuing the inexorable painting of a swastika on the American Flag.

Newsflash, fuckface, Pelosi's geriatric, weak-sister groupies aren't going to get shit done either. The pushback is too strong and the opposition is playing the pigeon strategy. Schumer isn't going to throw the fuck down over basic human rights considering WE HAVE CHILDREN BEING SENT TO DIE IN CAGES and he has the skeletal strength of a deep sea fish after soaking in a vat of hydrazine for a fucking decade, STILL. What's he going to do when it turns to black people, or LGBT groups? "But that's illegal, mister supreme leader!"

If we don't get some steel-boned motherfuckers up there we'll continue to watch our "left wing" make weak gestures of opposition and mumbling statements of gratitude to goosestepping fascists until the day the camps open for political opposition.

Tiptoeing toward a better future doesn't work when you're faced with people who have no empathy, big boots, and a gun in hand. You fucking sprint for it and hope you make it to cover before you get a hole blown out of you. Same goddamn principle here.

Pay the fuck attention to what's going on. You don't placate a fucking genocidal sociopath! You don't make incremental moves when you're on a treadmill set to high speed, either. Pelosi doesn't have the goddamn RABIES necessary to make the right decisions here and if you can't see that, I have no fucking clue what the hell you learned from your time in these parts.

This, plus the fact that we're pretty much out of time for action on not having human civilization collapse due to climate change
#41
Aneristic Illusions / Re: Pelosi vs AOC feud
July 12, 2019, 07:19:48 PM
Quote from: Norman on July 12, 2019, 05:17:26 PM
At the same time, Congress is a numbers game. Which I think, like her or don't like her, is ultimately where Pelosi is coming from.  The Dems in the House can do shit if they are in the minority. With a majority, they may not be able to do what the liberal wing of the party wants done, but they can do more than zero. 

I think that is where the rub is.  Pelosi and establishment want to move the ball to see if they can smash their way to a first down, AOC et al want to get a touch down on first possession. 

Of course the reality is with an R Senate and White House, it's not like there's too much the D's can accomplish, but whatever possibilities there might be, it certainly isn't going to be with a red-meat liberal initiative.

So in other words, we have to accept a moderate centrist agenda to achieve the agenda we need a buck short and a day late.
#42
Like, I'll do it but it might be months if not years
#43
Quote from: nullified on July 12, 2019, 04:30:26 PM
Becoming "aliens to the aliens". The whole sequence is so well done that saying more would ruin it. Just read it, it's well, well worth it.

Egan handles the most out there ideas so casually and effortlessly that it makes me jealous. He does more with one seemingly off-the-cuff word than I can do with four paragraphs and a committee.

You say just read it like I don't have a backlog of pleasure reading and more importantly, required reading.
#44
Quote from: Juana on July 12, 2019, 03:52:36 PM
Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on July 12, 2019, 01:35:45 PM
Quote from: Juana on July 11, 2019, 09:52:05 PM
I'll survive. I'm just poor and cheap, lmao

That reminds me. I'm probably going to have to shell out quite a bit for admissions applications to PhD programs this fall
Yeah, that shit ain't cheap from what I've heard.

On the one hand, I'm only going to apply to Boston area.

On the other hand, I'm applying to Boston area
#45
Aneristic Illusions / Re: Pelosi vs AOC feud
July 12, 2019, 03:28:23 PM
Yep. It's a bit mindboggling how out of touch establishment Dems are.