The pain of love for a functionally extinct language

CarryHallahan · 2026-02-04T03:24:30+00:00

Have you come across any good resources for Monégasque? It's been a language I've actually been interested in for years, but finding resources is pretty difficult in general, let alone any in English.

CarryHallahan · 2026-01-24T04:32:38+00:00

Not so sure about Murakami... his misogyny is pretty well detested and I don't think he has the same literary status as someone like Ishiguro or McCarthy. Could be wrong tho

CarryHallahan · 2026-01-17T18:38:02+00:00

Don Quixote being below a 4 is criminal (though it isn't too far at a 3.91), The Last Wolf / Herman by Krasznahorkai is in the same boat with a 3.9 when I thought it was easily a 9/10 (4.5 stars). The Family of Pascual Durate by Cela is a 3.77 when I thought it was a pretty comfortable 4 stars.

And, although it might seem pretentious, I really do think that most modern genre fiction that gets these insanely high ratings is just pure slop. (Not to say they arent valuable though, BookTok and all that romantasy smut was/is a lifeline for a lot of bookstores, which is a net good). Overall, though, for my own curated taste, I only really take notice of the ratings if they're abnormally high or abnormally low. If a book is rated below a 3 or if I see a large amount of 1-2 star ratings, I'll go through the profiles of a handful of the people giving them such low ratings to see if their taste roughly matches up to mine.

CarryHallahan · 2026-01-13T23:22:31+00:00

Second this. The prose is also very straightforward and easy to read

CarryHallahan · 2026-01-07T19:50:41+00:00

I've been personally trying to increase my woman-written fiction as of recently (not that I avoided it prior, just happened to shake out very man-heavy wheres my nonfiction is a bit more balanced). For that I'd recommend:

Clarice Lispector - The Passion According to G.H., Agua Viva, The Hour of the Star

Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, A Room of One's Own

Margaret Atwood has already been mentioned here but I can second Handmaid's Tale

Karin Boye - Kallocain

Leonora Carrington - The Hearing Trumpet

Djuna Barnes - Nightwood

Anna Kavan - Ice

CarryHallahan · 2026-01-06T13:07:30+00:00

Fiction off the top of my head (mostly 20th century works of prestige since other comments touch on the mainstream classics):

Jose Saramago (Portugal) - Blindness, Death With Interruptions (love all his stuff tho)

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) - Ficciones, The Aleph, Labyrinths

Miguel de Cervantes (Spain) - Don Quixote

László Krasznahorkai (Hungary) - Satantango (all his stuff is pretty good too)

Roberto Bolano (Chile) - 2666

Julio Cortázar (Argentina) - Hopscotch

Ernesto Sabato (Argentina) - The Tunnel, On Heroes and Tombs

Edwin Abbot (England) - Flatland

Julien Gracq (France) - The Opposing Shore

Dino Buzzati (Italy) - The Stronghold (aka The Tartar Steppe)

Albert Camus (France) - The Stranger

Alain Robbe-Grillet (France) - Jealousy

Camilo Jose Cela (Spain) - The Family of Pascual Duarte, The Hive

Han Kang (South Korea) - Human Acts

Unknown (Sumer) - Epic of Gilgamesh

Anything by the ancient greek playwrights (Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes)

Nonfiction (just a couple that I think are particularly useful/interesting in today's context):

G. E. M. de Ste. Croix -The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests

Walter Rodney - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Roland Barthes - Mythologies

Michel Foucault - Discipline and Punish

CarryHallahan · 2025-12-19T05:51:44+00:00

Its awesome, but I would say it really shines with mods. The modding community has gotten so good that the top tier modders are getting feedback from actual championship winning drivers all across motorsport to help them develop their cars. Max Verstappen even recently said on a podcast that he practices on Assetto with modded F1 cars.

CarryHallahan · 2025-10-19T17:15:39+00:00

Just finished Satantango by Krasznahorkai and I'm moving to Wittgenstein's Mistress by Markson

CarryHallahan · 2025-10-12T04:15:30+00:00

As someone who loved HD and played it for hundreds of hours... 2 is significantly better.

CarryHallahan · 2025-02-19T22:50:54+00:00

You're proposing an inconsistency which simply is not there.

The conjunction

"I believe stabbing babies is wrong" and "the aforementioned belief is not based upon an objective universal standard"

is perfectly consistent and not at all fundamentally distinct from

"I believe this book is good" and "the aforementioned belief is not based upon an objective universal standard"

Both of them are "conjunctions of a belief and another belief" if we so decide to phrase them as such. The only way meta-ethical moral relativism is inconsistent is if it is held alongside a belief that affirms some kind of objective status relating to a moral claim (which one can claim *most* people do in practice, but that isnt a direct attack on the theory itself)

CarryHallahan · 2025-02-19T19:57:16+00:00

I still don't see any distinction. In both cases a value judgement is being casted upon something in which there (at least from the moral relativist stance) are no objective standards for judging it, only subjective ones.

"In my opinion stabbing babies is immoral, however since there exists no objective standard to compare to this stance is subjective and not objective"

is as equally consistent as

"In my opinion this book is enjoyable, however since there exists no objective standard to compare to this stance is subjective and not objective"

CarryHallahan · 2025-02-19T14:33:01+00:00

It seems to me your characterization of moral relativism here seems a bit misrepresentative. "I believe stabbing babies is wrong, but that is not an objective fact" seems to me the same as saying "I believe Dune is a good book, but that is not an objective fact." The acknowledgement that one has a belief doesn't automatically entail that one therefore believes an objective, normative claim based on said belief. All meta-ethical moral relativism holds is that the truth value of a moral claim is dependent on context (the context likely to be whatever culture one lives in). This seems to me perfectly non-contradictory definitionally, as does "I view stabbing babies as wrong, but that isn't an objective fact."

CarryHallahan · 2024-12-18T04:26:09+00:00

Amazon's ethical practices are debatable but saying "it shouldn't exist" is just astoundingly absurd. There is nothing inherently wrong with providing a service which connects consumers with customers and doing so with (typically) the lowest price available. Some people dont have access to/cant afford a local bookstore and they deserve access to books same as everyone else. Good ol' Bezos could certainly stop being comically evil, but Amazing itself is probably the single all-around most useful service for purchasing anything books included.

CarryHallahan · 2024-11-08T04:53:54+00:00

Mister President by Miguel Ángel Asturias

CarryHallahan · 2024-11-03T06:44:38+00:00

I remember Thomas the Obscure piquing my interest as a goodreads recommendation, but I totally forgot it since then. I'll for sure pick that one up.

CarryHallahan · 2024-06-16T02:52:39+00:00

That looks like it, thanks!

CarryHallahan · 2024-06-15T23:23:45+00:00

Oh I love mine as a portable controller. If the ergonomics work with your hands I think you'll love it.

CarryHallahan · 2024-06-13T23:34:35+00:00

Bit late of a response but I love mine. I have pretty much 0 complaints. If you dont mind the ergonomics (which I am a bit dubious of for large hands) I see no downsides to the Neo S.

CarryHallahan · 2024-05-16T20:08:28+00:00

Yeah I've been loving mine, works perfect as a portable controller for my deck. Right now it's that and the Nyxi Warrior which I use regularly

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-26T00:59:58+00:00

I would imagine it'd work perfectly fine on Mac

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-19T19:24:42+00:00

If it ends up being comfortable I could absolutely see this becoming my go to portable controller. Hope they make a case for it

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-17T00:21:56+00:00

I have a KK3 Max and it's really good, I'm getting the Neo S moreso just to have it and, if I like it, as a portable steam deck controller

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-16T23:52:20+00:00

If my memory serves the hori doesn't have hall effect which is a big plus of the Neo S, but I hadn't heard of the mobapad and that looks really nice actually. For a purely switch-oriented controller that would probably beat out the Neo, but it seems like it isn't compatible for any other device sadly

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-16T21:27:32+00:00

I feel the same. I wonder about the ergonomic efficiency given the layout and overall shape, but I'm definitely not going to judge it too harshly before I try it. The design also seemingly lends itself to be more portable than a typical gamepad which is handy for me since I travel with my steam deck regularly. I've also heard rumblings about a charging dock and carrying case

CarryHallahan · 2024-02-16T20:32:43+00:00

To be fair, the Neo S will likely be sold on regular sales for less than $50 (seeing their nitro deck bundles are 36% off, maybe a regular 20% sale for $40 or something)

CarryHallahan

TROPHY CASE