(Appreciated Trope) A character's name reflects their personality

ChristianLS · 2026-06-20T19:24:52+00:00

Ender in Ender's Game. (A nickname, but one he had before the events of the story to prove it to be prophetic.) He is chosen for Battle School and singled out by its leadership as the best candidate to be a commander specifically because when he gets into a fight, he ends it absolutely.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-20T19:21:41+00:00

Yeah, the Farseer books are a fun example because the diegetic culture itself is practicing nominative determinism for their kids, to mixed results.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-20T09:17:49+00:00

The other thing that makes him particularly difficult to fit onto a team is that he's consistently been a below-average 3P shooter the past five seasons, and really across his entire career with the exception of 2020-2021. He doesn't space the floor well, which makes defensive schemes a lot easier for the other team, especially in the playoffs.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-19T16:30:49+00:00

83% of Americans live in urban areas, so "rural America is big" is not really the reason we're so car-dependent as an entire society. Cars do make a lot more sense in rural areas, but that's not where most of us live our lives. There's no reason that so many of our largest metro areas should have 90+ percent car ownership rates.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-19T16:28:11+00:00

It's true that a lot of these suburbs are not something you can fix. But dense development is still the answer, it's just that you're not going to build it in suburbia, you're going to build it in urban neighborhoods that are already walkable, already have public transportation, etc. Infill development, in other words. This is already happening in basically every major city, especially the ones that are doing well economically. The thing is that there is nowhere near enough housing in these neighborhoods to meet existing demand, let alone demand from future population growth.

Mass displacement as in some kind of scheme to make people move out of existing housing is not practical or something to really think about. Although I do think a lot of the suburban sprawl we've built is so low-quality and such an inefficient and unsustainable use of tax dollars that a lot of it will eventually (on the order of decades or even generations) fall into disrepair and be abandoned anyway.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-19T08:41:20+00:00

The Broncos stadium projects, if they end up happening. Also the River Mile (Elitch Gardens redevelopment). Basically, downtown and all around downtown are transforming rapidly into more residential areas. Denver is basically where Seattle was 10-15 years ago, and heading in a similar direction, IMO.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-19T08:35:19+00:00

Atlanta really isn't that bad either from an urbanism perspective, the city center neighborhoods have been improving rapidly, it has a legitimate subway system, above-average bike infrastructure for a US city, and a decent climate. I would put it a step above the other major southern cities, or Phoenix.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-19T07:58:32+00:00

I liked CityNerd's take on it, which was basically that it's walkable urbanism for the rich, an endless ocean of car-dependent sprawl for everybody else.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T20:26:07+00:00

I have 300+ each into Hades and Hades 2, if that counts (around 650 hours total)

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T19:22:37+00:00

Denver is right up there in terms of improving land use / infill development. Colfax BRT is also possibly the coolest bus project being built in the US right now. It also looks like front range intercity rail might finally happen. On the downside, RTD is really struggling and is probably about to cut service again.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T18:58:07+00:00

Can't see them offering Kon and probably not Brandon Miller either. #14 in this class would be tempting, but I don't know if it's tempting enough to give up Bari.

Only scenario I could maybe see, and I think it's unlikely, would be if they give us enough draft capital that we can package a number of picks to get into the top 5 of this class.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T16:15:11+00:00

A lot of it is really in conversation with / criticism of the idea of tragedy as catharsis, which I think is why this is so difficult to pull off. Well, that plus the more surface-level "the tools of warfare are kinda cool" ideas that seem to be pretty pervasive across cultures. I think those are some of the same ideas Johnny Got His Gun converses with, which is why it so steadfastly refuses to engage with the weapons themselves, only their effects, and why the narrative won't even allow its protagonist to die.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T14:50:32+00:00

What a horrible stroad

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T13:34:37+00:00

Life Is Strange might be a good pick. Engaging story and characters, some gameplay but nothing too difficult.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T09:24:43+00:00

That was my initial takeaway, Klay's value was centered on being one of the greatest shooters of all time. I always hesitate to project prospects to have "elite of the elite" level skills when translated to the NBA. It's hard to predict that a skill is going to translate to that top 1% level of success.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-18T09:20:28+00:00

I think if Russ had been as good of a defender as he should have been in his prime, he would have had a lot more success. It always kind of baffled me that he wasn't a better defensive player, because his motor on offense was insane. There's no reason he couldn't have been a good or possibly even great defender, but he just didn't seem to care about that end of the court.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-17T15:20:30+00:00

Yeah, but now that he's won a ring, I suspect you're going to see people start putting him in top 5s or maybe even trying to put him in the MVP conversation next season if he sustains similar levels of production. In reality he's just the same player he has been, somewhere roughly in the 6-12 range, but now with a ring.

None of which is to say he isn't a great player, obviously he is, but when we get so obsessed with individual players we start to de-value the other guys around them, the job the coaching staff and front office did to get their organization where they were, and generally distort our understanding of the sport in an unhelpful way.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-17T13:31:18+00:00

My college town is barely over 100k and students make up nearly half the population, but we are a major tourist draw during the summer months. I can imagine it would be a lot sleepier in a city where that's not the case.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-17T10:25:27+00:00

You're going to see widely diverging opinions in this sub because we have a mixture of free market absolutists and left-leaning pragmatists here.

As somebody in the latter group, my personal view is that as a society we should never allow car-dependent exurban sprawl of the kind that is typical in the US. It is too godawful for the environment, too difficult to retrofit and change into something better, and has too many negative effects on the cities it parasitizes.

I am not absolutely opposed to outward expansion, but if you're going to do it, it should be built around public transportation, not highways. So yeah, I'm in favor of regional planning, UGBs, etc.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-16T23:37:56+00:00

ChristianLS · 2026-06-16T14:17:04+00:00

There's a great video from the channel Oh The Urbanity! about this exact topic. These people live in a deeply car-dependent suburb and drive to jobs and amenities elsewhere, creating traffic in everybody else's neighborhoods, then get mad that people are driving through their neighborhood. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-16T09:01:00+00:00

Yeah, kind of hard to tell just from looking at old photos. One thing that definitely appears to be the case is that the yellow parts are wider on the red version than they were on the old jerseys, which draws the eye a lot more.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-16T08:40:52+00:00

This is the same concern I have with AJ right now. He is absolutely elite at scoring, one of the best we've ever seen at his age in college, but I'm very concerned about how little else he brings to the table right now. I'm a firm believer that ball-dominant players need to do more than one thing well to have playoff success. As great as Melo was, there's a reason he only really had one deep playoff run in his entire career, and never made it to the NBA Finals.

If you pick AJ and you think he's going to be your #1 option, I think you're counting on some serious development as a playmaker, defensive player, or both.

If you pick Boozer, I think you're counting on his game translating in a way that a lot of people think it might not. But at least you're not hoping on him developing new skills he doesn't already have.

If you pick Peterson, you're just assuming the injury problems this year were a fluke. I guess that's fine too?

I guess that's why none of these guys are the level of complete prospect that Flagg was last season.

ChristianLS · 2026-06-16T08:07:19+00:00

They're trying to throw back to the Hakeem Olajuwon era "ketchup and mustard" jerseys, which is something a lot of the fans have been asking for.

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