Raistlin's recent activity
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Comment on Easily discover partner libraries with new Libby update in ~books
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Comment on Easily discover partner libraries with new Libby update in ~books
Raistlin LinkOdd, it's not showing up for me. I've tried restarting the app, the phone, and even reinstalling, and nothing. It's possible that none of my three libraries have partnerships, but I'd be surprised...Odd, it's not showing up for me. I've tried restarting the app, the phone, and even reinstalling, and nothing. It's possible that none of my three libraries have partnerships, but I'd be surprised if King County didn't have anything.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
Raistlin Link ParentOh yeah, every single chapter in thinking to myself "is she into him?". However, it doesn't bother me too much because even though his internal monologue is the standard romcom insecure guy, his...Oh yeah, every single chapter in thinking to myself "is she into him?". However, it doesn't bother me too much because even though his internal monologue is the standard romcom insecure guy, his actions are just as bold as hers. So he's not slowing things down by being dense!
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
Raistlin Link ParentWith Stop I'm Falling for You, manga doesn't usually get a physical reaction out of me even if I'm enjoying it, but the panel where he assumes she's going to sit next to him and instead she sits...With Stop I'm Falling for You, manga doesn't usually get a physical reaction out of me even if I'm enjoying it, but the panel where he assumes she's going to sit next to him and instead she sits in front of him between his legs to read the scrap book made me audibly gasp! The way his internal monologue then becomes a combination of "Kyuragi?!" and "what?!" is just so funny to me 🤣
It's hard to say for me what's special about Nagaroro to me. I don't think it's the deepest cast I've read, or the most unique spin on the genre. The art is excellent, but it wouldn't be enough. But I still really like following these two kids throughout their year. I think I like watching them learn from each other. It's fun watching Naoto become increasingly assertive, and it's also fun watching Nagaroro pretend she's in control when she's blushing just as hard as her senpai. My favourite chapter still is when Naoto asks her out to the aquarium half-assedlly, and Nagarori runs up to him and asks him to ask whahever he's going to ask properly, and then he finally asks her out on a date.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
Raistlin LinkJust a whole bunch of slice of life romance manga. It's been a shitty week, and it usually perks me up. Stop! I'm Falling for You is my current favourite, because I really do enjoy an aggressive...Just a whole bunch of slice of life romance manga. It's been a shitty week, and it usually perks me up.
Stop! I'm Falling for You is my current favourite, because I really do enjoy an aggressive FMC. I think it's particularly struck a chord because it's not common to have an aggressive FMC with a series not playing into the fan service aspect of it, and also one that is blushing like hell the whole way through. MMC might usually annoy me because he initially reads as the usual Japanese audience self insert, but his actions are much braver than his internal monologue, which makes for a really fun juxtaposition.
Also caught up on Oishii Kouhii no Irekata, which is another one that comforts me. I've never seen a romance manga have a scene where the leads are going to have sex, but one of the parties is obviously still not ready, and the other one loses his erection because of the stress, and the just decide to call it off for now and just snuggle. I'm not gojng to pretend it's high art, but I dunno, it's more mature than what I was expecting.
I also just reread Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro. It's still really special to me. It's the manga that showed me that I actually really like slice of life romance. I don't know if it's better than other things I'm reading right now, but it's always a comfy reread for me.
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Comment on Autistic/Neurodivergent/"just stubborn" members: how did you [happily] learn to do something you couldn't just instantly do? in ~life
Raistlin (edited )LinkAutistic, not ADHD, in my case. Habit formation during my hyper-obsession period is the only reliable trick I have to commit to things. For example, learning a language. I usually wouldn't want to...Autistic, not ADHD, in my case. Habit formation during my hyper-obsession period is the only reliable trick I have to commit to things.
For example, learning a language. I usually wouldn't want to try anything new, and forcing myself to do so is an exercise in futility. But, there will be times in my life when literally the only thing I want to do is learn that language at the expense of everything else. Because I'm aware that that feeling is temporary (might last a week, a month, half a year) I spend that time doing all the boring prep work; breaking down the tasks, and most importantly, setting up the habits. If I can turn my plan into a habit for this obsession period, it has a pretty high chance of surviving once I inevitably get bored and more on to my next hyper-obsession.
Everyone's different though. I'm not a perfectionist. I know ahead of time that one more kana or one more kanji is more knowledge than I had before, and so therefore my efforts will never be pointless, because no matter what happens, I will end up a better person.
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Comment on Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor? in ~tildes
Raistlin Link ParentI often don't know what to say to them. Other people are going to disagree with you, sometimes in profound ways. Across cultures, religions, generations, you're going to encounter other humans...I often don't know what to say to them. Other people are going to disagree with you, sometimes in profound ways. Across cultures, religions, generations, you're going to encounter other humans with different values and beliefs than yours. You can't moderate that, you can't use tech to make that go away.
If you are a secular French guy from Paris talking to a Marsh Arab in southern Iraq, you are going to disagree on a lot of stuff, and are going to offend each other in many ways. The most a community that contains those two people can do is tell them to knock it off when they're going too far, and ask them to be civil to each other.
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Comment on Neo: A novel-writing tool created by a novelist in ~tech
Raistlin Link ParentSame thing happened to me. Neither the exe or setup worked, and then had to find where the broken installation was since removing from remove programs didn't work.Same thing happened to me. Neither the exe or setup worked, and then had to find where the broken installation was since removing from remove programs didn't work.
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
Raistlin Link ParentDon't want to invalidate your feelings, but would it make you feel better to flip the script in your head a little? We're used to things always updating and changing, and then things were dead if...- Exemplary
Don't want to invalidate your feelings, but would it make you feel better to flip the script in your head a little? We're used to things always updating and changing, and then things were dead if they stopped. That was never a healthy way of interacting with stuff. Tildes is solved, all of the features that were needed are done. Just like you might've bought Super Mario 64. There were no more updates, it was done. That was a good thing. You could play the game for 2 hours or 50, up to you.
Tildes won't get enshitified, add the downvote button, or anything that could potentially upend the community. Development is over, and now it lives or dies based on what kind of community it nurtures.
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
Raistlin Link ParentI made the analogy in the other thread, but I really do see this place as a kind of digital pub after work. Sometimes I just have a drink, sometimes I chat with people. The owner is responsible...I made the analogy in the other thread, but I really do see this place as a kind of digital pub after work. Sometimes I just have a drink, sometimes I chat with people. The owner is responsible for the pub being open and clean, and to occassionally tell some of the patrons (me included) to knock it off. For particularly nasty people, they get trespassed.
You can't expect anything from the owner beyond that, because tech can't save you from people being people. Communities police themselves. I think we have a pretty good community. It's not perfect and lts not one that agrees on everything (even really important stuff), but we disagree politely, try to steelman each other wherever possible, apologise, and disengage when things grts heated.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentAh sorry, this is a topic I enjoy, didn't mean to make it unpleasant. Have a good rest of your day ☺️Ah sorry, this is a topic I enjoy, didn't mean to make it unpleasant. Have a good rest of your day ☺️
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentJesus is "Dad" in the formal dogma of the church. In practice, regular people think of and talk about Jesus in very different ways from the Father. They pray to them differently and think of them...Jesus is "Dad" in the formal dogma of the church. In practice, regular people think of and talk about Jesus in very different ways from the Father. They pray to them differently and think of them differently. I grew up Catholic too, this is personal experience. The dogma of the Church is absolutely irrelevant. The actual belief system is how people on the ground act like.
YMMV, but if your Catholic community Mary was thought of as a 14 year old child, then we ran in very different Catholic circles. For us, we prayed to a big motherly statue of Mary looking down on us kindly and wisely. She was thought of as a mother figure. I don't want to presume, but I am willing to bet money that for the vast majority of Catholics, Mary is a mother figure. And if you have a mother figure you regularly (very regularly!) pray to, you build huge statues of her, you attribute miracles to her... I'm sorry, Christians can come up with whatever fancy Latin or Greek derived terms they like, but that's anthropologically just run-of-the-mill Mother Goddess, with a dash of the womanly griever and mourner, another common archetype in religion.
To be clear, this isn't coming from the Jews. This likely wouldn't have been a thing in early Christianity. This happened when the Romans mapped the new legal belief system onto their society. Christianity very quickly became, and still is, the religion of the Roman people.
In terms of mapping saints to deities, Christianity isn't the only religion with fancy "not a god" names for its deities. Zoroastrianism does it too. Islam struggles with defining djinni sometimes. In Shinto, the difference between a god and a spirit is academic. My point is that if we saw something like saints in ancient Akkadia, we would refer to them as gods, because they quack like gods and swim like gods. A thesis specialising into them might point it out, but we very commonly refer to the Zoroastrian yazatas as gods, even though they're closer to concepts of truth. But, uh, they're just regular gods when compared to contemporaries.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentIt's just an interesting belief. Presumably, an omnipotent omniscient God doesn't need convincing, and presumably such a deity doesn't love the human that have birth to its body more than an...It's just an interesting belief. Presumably, an omnipotent omniscient God doesn't need convincing, and presumably such a deity doesn't love the human that have birth to its body more than an innocent orphan or a mass murderer. Like, would someone be picturing an actual conversation where Mary goes up to Jesus and makes her argument? And then Jesus talks to dad, or does it himself?
Mary herself is also so obviously your standard earth mother goddess too, like the Romans would absolutely not give way on having a divine mother figure they could pray to. If civilisation collapses and people unearth our ruins, I don't think future archeologists would determine that Christianity was a monotheistic religion. Depending on where they dig, they might even list a full pantheon!
I just love that that humans can come up with whatever ideas we want, but we always come back to the things that make sense to us innately, regardless of what dogma says. Like, how many Christians do you know that believe in ghosts or that their ancestors are angels? The former being expressly forbidden by the Bible, and the latter not even being a thing. But you can't get rid of geists or ancestor worship, no matter what you do!
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Raistlin Link ParentI think it's because it's one of the first cracks in the class foundation of Europe, and it inspired quite a lot of stuff we value today. Like you said, a lot of innocent people died. I find it...I think it's because it's one of the first cracks in the class foundation of Europe, and it inspired quite a lot of stuff we value today.
Like you said, a lot of innocent people died. I find it odd when people praise revolutions, but not the ones that were bad. All revolutions are a failure of the system. Sometimes they're necessary, but if your system has gotten to the point where the masses are picking up pitchforks, those masses are furious, and innocent people are going to suffer and die. The nobles, the servants in the palace, and innocent bystanders. We would ideally avoid that by not creating the conditions that allow for revolutions to form, (e.g. make sure people can afford to go to a hospital).
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
Raistlin Link ParentSame reason people idolise the French revolutionaries, I suppose. Or any revolution. All violent revolutions involve, well, violence. Ideally society comes back from the brink where an increasing...Same reason people idolise the French revolutionaries, I suppose. Or any revolution. All violent revolutions involve, well, violence.
Ideally society comes back from the brink where an increasing number of people feel that the nobility has left them no way out.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentOne of the things I know about ancient Mesopotamian beliefs was that you could have your personal god, your family god, and the national (city) god. You wouldn't just pray to the national god,...One of the things I know about ancient Mesopotamian beliefs was that you could have your personal god, your family god, and the national (city) god. You wouldn't just pray to the national god, that didn't even make any sense. The king had rituals in how the city interacted with the national god. You would offer thing to your personal god, and holed that it would intercede on your behalf.
Like you said, Christianity didn't actually get rid of this, not for most Christians. Christisns pray to Mary, the saints and angels all the time asking for intercession. Now, this obviously doesn't make sense because God knows everything so what's the point (is Mary going to convince God???), so they need to have narratives around it (it's just a respect thing, etc), but it's the exact same behaviour. The human doesn't think the creator god will bother so the human prays to the caring mother goddess or their personal god (perhaps their saintly namesake) because that somehow feels easier. Even the way people appeal to Jesus as opposed to the Father draws from this.
This is the consequence of imposing a universal religion in a species that is more or less naturally animistic. We won't ever stop seeing ghosts of our ancestors and spirits in the forest.
Islam actually does a more successful job at tamping down at this behaviour, but generally through force. The second the grip lessens (shias), they start praying at saintly tombs again.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentAnd most religions avoid it, either by having the gods be limited, or dualistic or distant. You only get the problem if you insist there's only one god, that that god is all powerful and all...And most religions avoid it, either by having the gods be limited, or dualistic or distant. You only get the problem if you insist there's only one god, that that god is all powerful and all knowing, that that gods precedes everything (including logic and morals), and that that one god is good. The vast majority of religions avoid this trap by avoiding any of these things. Christianity still really struggles with it, like you said.
I kinda respect Tolkien for it. Because he really could've just said, orcs are just evil, they're orcs, we're done. But it obviously gnawed at him. He cares about his fictional world in a way that makes me really jealous, as someone who occasionally tries to write.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin (edited )Link ParentThat's a fair point, you're right. Tolkien never really meant to publish the text we got. And I want to be clear, this is not a critical view of the text. I liked the text, and I liked Children of...It's probably worth remembering that the "text as written" is a compendium of writings produced over decades and collected and edited by his son after his death. Tolkien himself was aware that he was never able to satisfactorily square that circle, which is partly why the Silmarilion was never published while he had editorial control over it. We only have the work because Christopher Tolkien realized what a tragic loss it would be if it were never made available to readers. Some grace should probably be given on that account.
That's a fair point, you're right. Tolkien never really meant to publish the text we got. And I want to be clear, this is not a critical view of the text. I liked the text, and I liked Children of Hurin, and the little we get out of out of Beren and Luthien and Fall of Gondolin.
Part of my read of the Valar is that Tolkien (as a Catholic) and I simply have different moral frameworks. Tolkien, like many Christians, struggled with the problem of evil in a world with an omnipotent omniscient God, and is following the old tradition of trying to solve it. I think the result is that he creates an arrogant, hedonistic pantheon, but that's absolutely not what he meant to do. It's merely my personal read. I like it, I don't think it's bad writing.
For what it's worth, I absolutely agree with your assessment. Tolkien's greatest weakness–if it can be so called–was his insistence that his creation be consistent with his vision of Christianity (OK, maybe his "greatest" weakness was his love for and imitation of archaic verse forms, but the Catholicism comes in a close second).
And this is one of those weaknesses that actually got worse with age, not better. He spent such a long time trying to fix problems in his world that did not exist, like the constant attempted retcons of Galadriel that would've made her character more and more boring by removing the core flaws that made her story fascinating.
Obviously we're allowed to spend our time like we want, but it reminds me of Newton spending the better part of a decade trying to find numeralogical significance in the Bible.
But I think that's only really a weakness in a textual context; metatextually I think it makes his ouvre even more rich and fascinating. It throws the incompatibility of the pre-Christian mythic modes with Christian theology into stark relief, and sheds light on the tremendous shift in thought that must have accompanied christianization in medieval Europe (not coincidentally Tolkien's subject of expertise).
It's very European too. He didn't want to explicitly wrote a Christian story because it was boring, and because literate European really liked pagan pantheons. But as he decided that his world was Earth, he needed to square it with the Christian creation story. And ultimately, he really can't..he wrote a flat Earth where the Sun is a god. He was able to change some thihg, like bending the world, but bot others.
And I 100% agree with you that it's one of the things that make his world so incredibly rich.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentBut what did the Valar so about the Children? Almost completely drain Middle Earth of elves so they could live with them. Why? According to the text, because the elves were fair and pretty and the...But what did the Valar so about the Children? Almost completely drain Middle Earth of elves so they could live with them. Why? According to the text, because the elves were fair and pretty and the Valar liked them . Elves that were meant to stay in Middle Earth because their job was to prepare the world for the Second Children.
The Valar were meant to make the world. They do this once until Melkor turns. Per the text, the Valar get tired of building things only for Melkor to destroy them, so they build an impregnable fortress in Aman and spend the better part of an age in their island paradise while Melkor has complete free reign in the rest.of the planet. The absolute only reason Morgoth didn't go on to dominate the entire world is because the Noldor kept him contained in his fortress for half a millennium during the Siege. And even after the Siege was broken, Morgoth was busy waging war on them in this tiny corner of the world. And by the time Morgoth wins, the Valar are finally moved into fixing a problem they've ignored for who knows how many millennia.
The out of universe reason for all of this is that Tolkien was a Catholic trying to marry his brief system into a fictional world full of contradictions. But taking the text as written, I have a very poor opinion of the Valar.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Raistlin Link ParentFeel free to not answer, but do you know what you plan to do if/when that money runs out and it needs to come out of pocket?Feel free to not answer, but do you know what you plan to do if/when that money runs out and it needs to come out of pocket?
Yup, King County has several, it's not that. I'll just wait patiently.