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Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

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Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#311

Post by Ma8ee »

freetime2 wrote: post #289
throwaway2037 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly my experience at Goldman Sachs. Sorry, I should be posting under a throw-away, but let's be real for a moment. That place was nothing but a cult. Yes, they make lots of money, but you need to sell your soul. I never worked in a place with so many sheep (non-believers but scared to speak-up) and assholes (believers, only because they profit / climb the corporate ladder) _at the same time_. Fortunately…

I don't doubt that you need to sell your soul to work for Goldman, but those two examples don't seem particularly striking to me. > We had multiple "partners" (super senior, old-school MDs) tell us: "At Goldman, there is not publically available org chart." Fucking dead wrong. I raised my hand at each of those bullshit meetings and said, "I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. There is a website where you can view and sea…

> It's not uncommon to show "propaganda" videos to new hires when they join a company

And as a new hire it's interesting to get to know something where the company comes from. Often it makes it easier to endure some of the company's idiosyncrasies if you know their origins.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#312

Post by KrishnaAnaril »

jerrre wrote: post #306
Dig1t wrote: post #125

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it. Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs. I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and wh…

>if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it. so what?

The person may lose an opportunity. Eg. if you don't train (any sport), someone will occupy your spot in the playing eleven.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#313

Post by bsenftner »

ska wrote: post #246
Loughla wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to guess why you would say that (and by that, I mean the fact that you would avoid writing because it's trying to preach to you), and I do want to say that Lewis is, overall, very close to proselytizing in his writings (generally it's pretty explicitly stated that's what he wants to do). But. Avoiding something because it disagrees with your worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert literally a…

> But also yes, it's an amazing piece of literature. I think you are overselling. It's worth a read, but the writing is often stilted and repetitive, the central conceit interesting but tired by the end. It's not a long book, but probably would have been better as a shorter form.

Yes, that draining of energy towards the end is the anti-theist critism of the novel and philosophy. Quite a few essays have been written about how even this great intellectual peters out his reasoning and just repeats.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#315

Post by bsenftner »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #112
bsenftner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any claimed author who's not read The Screwtape Letters has no business writing modern literature.

This doesn't work even as a joke.

Not a joke; the Screwtape Letters is a seminal piece of literature, forget the written story, the story is the context of the novel, it's intention, it's composition, and it's ultimate weakness as a intellectual milepost. It practically destroys itself. It's a masterpiece of self deception.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#316

Post by corobo »

m463 wrote: post #283
akiselev wrote: post #31

This is a great article but the best part is an off hand link to a book review of A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression [1] which includes choice quotes like > The writer George Jean Nathan claimed that before the 1920s, there existed only eight basic sandwich types: Swiss cheese, ham, sardine, liverwurst, egg, corned beef, roast beef, and tongue (yes). But by 1926, he “claimed that he had counted…

> writer George Jean Nathan claimed ... before 1920s ... eight basic sandwich types ... by 1926, he claimed that he had counted 946... Can't help but think people wrote to tell him he was wrong.

Cunningham's Law before scale

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#317

Post by ElfinTrousers »

Jiro wrote: post #232
ElfinTrousers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also seem to remember that the story went on to say that Crowley at one point had been praised for his work in the Spanish Inquisition. That was the first he'd actually heard of it--humans had come up with it on their own--so he went and had a look, and then went and got blind drunk, because there are some things even demons would rather not think about. That kind of abrupt tonal slam, from comedy to horror, leavin…

>That was the first he'd actually heard of it--humans had come up with it on their own--so he went and had a look, and then went and got blind drunk, because there are some things even demons would rather not think about. This seems like one of the things you might say to diss humans, but which doesn't actually make sense when you think about it. I don't believe for one moment that an actual demon, who does the kind…

Well yeah, the point is not to make _literal_ sense, this whole book is fiction, not technical writing. It's OK in that context to use devices like hyperbole and irony. A previous author, can't remember who and don't feel like googling, wrote a line in a similar spirit: "Hell is empty and the devils are here". He didn't mean that there were actual demons walking around on earth, who had left a physical place named Hell, which was at the moment unpopulated.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#318

Post by bsenftner »

beefield wrote: post #132
bsenftner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any claimed author who's not read The Screwtape Letters has no business writing modern literature.

I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?

Not sarcastic. The Screwtape Letters is important literature because it was praised at publication, became lauded, and is an complete intellectual failure. The Screwtape Letters stands as a milestone of logrolling: the practice of approval due to who authored something rather than what the writing actually contains. The Screwtape Letters is a debate exposing one of the several weak intellectual foundations of Christian philosophy - but none of that critism was socially allowed for many decades. Such critism still causes many a panty to bunch. The Screwtape Letters is important because it is weak intellectualism, wrapped up in pretty good writing, but not good enough to disguise its intellectual bankruptcy, yet it still lauded.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#320

Post by ElfinTrousers »

latexr wrote: post #126
vanderZwan wrote: post #38

> For legal reasons, I’m not saying the people who write this stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It’s just that, if I wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince people to spend more time doing things they hate When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fe…

> my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly Pretty sure it was written by Gaiman. I’m not finding the interview where he said this, but (if memory serves) Gaiman wrote that part of the story and had shelved it when Pratchett contacted him: — Do you have plans for that thing you sent me? — Not really, why? — Because I know what happens next. So either sell me the righ…

Now that you mention it, I do remember one author--pretty sure it was Gaiman re Good Omens--say that the parts you'd think were him were mostly the other author, and vice versa.
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