Pet peeve: An expatriate isn't like an ex-skier, it comes from "to expatriate", ie to drive out of one's country, like "excommunicate" or "excise". Something that has been excised wasn't formerly cised.
[deleted]
Yet another novel I will no longer write
141–150 of 180 posts
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#142> And then COVID-19 came along and basically rendered the whole thing unneccessary because we are all getting a real world crash-course in how we deal with people suffering from a viral pandemic, and we do /not/ generally deal with them using shotguns and baseball bats even if they're so contagious that contact might kill us. But that's not the standard zombie scenario. Having 1% of the population being somehow sick…
Person 151 is not a non-person, they're just a member of another group, who's leadership will include the other groups within the 150 monkey-sphere hence the basis of hierarchical human societies. The dumbest thing about most "preppers" is that they invariably develop absurd ideas about how their fortress will beat back the hordes they imagine to descend (sound familiar?) yet pay basically no attention to their local…
Reminds me of the Subgenius advice for the faithful. In the end times don't be a sap holed up waiting for defend yourself against marauding gangs. Join a marauding gang as soon as possible.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... that society will devolve into this immediately, every fender bender or bit of road rage turning into life or death conflict. To provide context, here is some data on that: "cases of road rage involving a firearm — where someone brandished a gun or fired one at a driver or passenger — more than doubled to 620 in 2016, from 247 in 2014." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/road-rage-guns.html That doesn't amou…
> brandished a gun or fired one There is a huge difference between brandishing a gun, firing it, injuring someone and killing someone. This is typical leftist misrepresentation of statistics by NYT - conflating of significant and insignificant events into single number to make it appear larger.
There is a huge difference, the number is rather low, and should be noted, but none of those outcomes are good.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many of those were would-be fistfights that were de-escalated to nonviolence by brandishing (literally: holding a weapon) by a victim? A lot of casually violent people become a lot more polite when they realize they don’t get to punch or beat whomever they like. That’s a good outcome, to me, but that figure lumps it in with violence where people get shot, mixing good gun-related outcomes with bad ones, as if bran…
Yeah, gun brandishing incidents is a really weird thing to get worked up about. Gun homicides, sure - but those have been going down in the US since the 90s. (Despite the assault weapons ban expiring. Funny, that)
Homicides aren't normally committed by people who would need an assault rifle, and most are probably not using an assault rifle to kill themselves, either.
Also, I wouldn't exactly feel good if someone cut me off for driving a little too slow for them and they waved a gun at me. Somehow these arguments make that OK as if it isn't an escalation or is "oh well gee at least we didn't fist fight."
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It started out as a zombie show, in the very first scene you had a Nightswatch patrol being killed by Zombies. The reason the Wildlings massed and marched on the wall was because they were being savaged by zombies.
I know. But it wasn't necessary to drop everything else but that storyline.
I’m not, in the end, a fan; but to me, that was the entire point. In the face of this crisis, their petty wants and desires, and even the more pressing matters of who and how they should govern themselves were irrelevant in the face of an ultimate threat, no matter how important they felt to those people or to the audience. The one person who held out against letting those lesser things go even temporarily was completely destroyed.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#146> And then COVID-19 came along and basically rendered the whole thing unneccessary because we are all getting a real world crash-course in how we deal with people suffering from a viral pandemic, and we do /not/ generally deal with them using shotguns and baseball bats even if they're so contagious that contact might kill us. But that's not the standard zombie scenario. Having 1% of the population being somehow sick…
Person 151 is not a non-person, they're just a member of another group, who's leadership will include the other groups within the 150 monkey-sphere hence the basis of hierarchical human societies. The dumbest thing about most "preppers" is that they invariably develop absurd ideas about how their fortress will beat back the hordes they imagine to descend (sound familiar?) yet pay basically no attention to their local…
> This isn't even speculative: the current the COVID-19 response in America has required local councils and city boards to coordinate, particularly in the absence of any clear direction at a Federal and frequently State level.
Yes. And so far the local responses have been better, or at least did less damage, than most of the more centralized actions. Like the FDA banning almost all tests.
Here's an article https://reaction.life/why-is-germany-able-to-test-for-corona... exploring aspects of centralization vs decentralization by way of comparing the German and UK responses to the pandemic so far.
The German system has centralized advice and coordination from the Robert Koch institute, but no centralized institution to ban local initiatives.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Especially not name-calling ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There is no name-calling in my comment, which is merely an expression of my (rather obvious) view that the analytical framework Stross employs to critique zombie literature is drawn from Marxist literary theory, rather than, say, New Criticism, formalism, romanticism, structuralism, or any of the other analytical frameworks he might have adopted.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know. But it wasn't necessary to drop everything else but that storyline.
I’m not, in the end, a fan; but to me, that was the entire point. In the face of this crisis, their petty wants and desires, and even the more pressing matters of who and how they should govern themselves were irrelevant in the face of an ultimate threat, no matter how important they felt to those people or to the audience. The one person who held out against letting those lesser things go even temporarily was comple…
To me that's like setting up a complex and interesting WW2 story, and then just smiting the earth with an asteroid. Lazy and boring. Never mind recycling all the usual zombie tropes. Oh, and throw in the usual Star Wars trope of the mass enemy has a single weak spot that one person can attack to wipe it all out. Zzzzzz.....
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Especially not name-calling ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There is no name-calling in my comment, which is merely an expression of my (rather obvious) view that the analytical framework Stross employs to critique zombie literature is drawn from Marxist literary theory, rather than, say, New Criticism, formalism, romanticism, structuralism, or any of the other analytical frameworks he might have adopted.
I like formalism! My favorite was Shklovsky. The falling stone.
Sorry, but "pre-Pomo Marxist literary criticism" counts as name-calling on an internet forum, unless you do something to make it clear you don't intend it that way—and you did just the opposite. Also, while I don't know anything about cstross really, I strongly doubt that he's a Marxist. The odds of an internet commenter spuriously spouting "Marxist!" are much higher. At a minimum, you'd have to make a serious case, which you didn't, hence the epithet "unsubstantive".
Look at it this way: if you reduce someone's post to a theory you regard as stupid, as a reductio ad absurdum, you're narrowing the discussion rather than expanding it. We want curious conversation here. That's a different mentality. We all have it in us to do both—close down or open further—but unfortunately the default is closing down. On this forum, the idea is to go against the default for great good.
Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even the term “elite panic” is lie. The elite are fine in a disaster and they know it. Look at Venezuela, the rich and elite simply moved behind walls and continue on. Sounds to me that the need to move behind walls is a pretty strong indicator of the elite panic concept you are criticizing. After all, if they didn't panicked then why did they felt the need to coward behind those walls and man them with armed minio…
Because lots of people actually do want to kill them, and the walls keep those people out. It's the same phenomenon you see in South Africa - everyone who can afford it builds high walls and private security, because everyone who can afford it is a target.
Possibly not the best example - the people who can afford high walls and private security are usually white. South Africa was run for decades by a minority elite (racist) government that brutally subjugated the majority black population. The exact situation that the article talks about.