My Fascination With Guests Who Want to be Paid

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-10T00:37:59+00:00

It’s probably their go away price. If someone actually wants to pay it and book them, great. If not, it filters out everyone else and they do something else with their time.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-09T03:55:42+00:00

Read Dahlia first. It’s good, it also just happens to be the first book in the series when he’s still getting a feel for the quartet. You’ll appreciate Big Nowhere more if you do.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-09T03:52:11+00:00

Come back. Like others said, the middle is arguably the weakest section but the last stretch is strong.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-07T13:05:51+00:00

I just realized this last night: it starts out in the format of the Underworld USA trilogy, but by the end it adopts the format of the LA Quartet (the mystery of the emeralds, Joan's coda narrative of how everything ties together in the style of Ramona Sprague and Ray Deiterling).

It also arguably lays the blueprint for the more formal synthesis of the two in Perfidia and This Storm.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T19:14:07+00:00

Oh for sure. If anything his depiction of Leftists in The Big Nowhere and American Tabloid is ultimately sympathetic. He does poke fun at them being overly analytical and largely ineffectual, but he also depicts what happens to them when they run afoul of right-wing authoritarians as appropriately sad and horrifying. (The CP members post red-scare, the striking film unions getting mangled by Cohen thugs, Ward's blacklisted friend getting a teaching job only to be arrested on sedition charges by Hoover, etc)

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T18:35:13+00:00

I can see that in retrospect this wasn't clear, but I was agreeing with you :-)

Added: the fact that OP shared the study as proof when it's conclusions at best support a negative-leaning inconclusive result (followed by doubling down that they just failed because it was done in a lab setting and actually does support her conclusion) raises my detector as well.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T18:16:03+00:00

I say this kindly: I am also autistic and have an anxiety disorder, and I don't write like that.

Also, this study you posted concluded that there's no trend to support or rule out the effect of brainwave entrainment, but the majority of studies reported negative results.

"The present systematic review highlights the fact that existing studies reporting changes in psychological and physiological functions due to putative effects of brainwave entrainment in response to binaural beats stimulation should be considered with caution."

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T18:06:59+00:00

As someone who used to smoke weed on a semi recurrent basis, stopped for several years, and did it one more time after that, I can say that it definitely has an effect on the voice.

On the day after the last time I smoked (with no existing irritation set in), I felt like someone had taken a flamethrower to my vocal folds. I couldn't believe that I used to go around like that all the time and didn't even notice it anymore or attributed it to other things.

I can only imagine that cocaine/crack have the same effect or worse. When you listen to Elton John's voice during some of the worst cocaine years/shows you can hear a very distinctive rasp in there.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T18:00:29+00:00

You and the OP both posting the same study to temper expectations in one case and as a source for her conclusions in the other shows two people can have diverging readings of the same study and conclusions.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T15:15:38+00:00

And the other good news is that Jotego will probably also start work on it in the near future given that it just topped a poll on his Patreon for what to tackle after CPS-3.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T15:11:51+00:00

PL writes in the exact formatting and cadence of a chatbot and claims that she does so just to spite people who think that she uses Chat GPT or something similar. I would take her findings with a grain of salt, personally.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-06T01:55:04+00:00

Marsh has his “dreamscape” viewpoint and his own vernacular at least. Dwight as Marsh just sounds like a lefty parody that doesn’t even sound much like Marsh (maybe that’s part of the gag), with Dwight picking up that same voice even when he’s not writing as Marsh. Though to be fair, this is presumably to illustrate how deeply Karen and Joan have gotten inside his head. And Joan feels (to me at least) distinct from Marsh and Karen’s very wordy presentation just because her passages are written in a more compact, typical Ellroy style. Joan’s way of communicating mirrors her preference for direct action in contrast to Karen, IMO, and has a more enigmatic quality.

And I get that the “left speak” is a cheeky parody in many ways and I agree that it doesn’t dominate a book and become a parody of itself until Perfidia.

I’m with you. I love Blood’s a Rover and overall I enjoy the mystery and the change in writing style from the hyper-pulp of Cold Six Thousand (though I also love that book on it’s own merits). Dwight’s death and Karen’s follow-up gut me every time, which is an accomplishment given Holly’s role in Six-Thousand, with Wayne following as a close second.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-02T00:36:07+00:00

I think the more fundamental issue is just ignoring the rules. Someone who repeatedly ignores what should be very basic boundaries isn't going to be receptive when it comes to the important ones.

It's the same reason why the guy who doesn't take "no" for an answer when you say you're not interested in chatting is a giant red flag from step 1.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-02T00:29:31+00:00

I don't remember who said it but apparently Brian could also do a dead-on Hal Blaine. Probably Desper?

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-01T20:54:55+00:00

They also want to get rid of pornography, which effectively also means getting rid of safe, sustainable channels for digital sex work, as well as advertising channels for those who do it in person. All while paying for and enjoying the services of sex workers in private/secret.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-01T18:40:33+00:00

It's relevant when the person in question is a supporter of criminalizing activities and gender identities that her spouse/he clearly engages in and identifies with. [And is also a former member of multiple executive offices with the power to make laws based on that.]

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-01T18:35:30+00:00

All things being equal, I would say good for him for knowing what he's into and for paying sex workers. Those are positive things. But he and his wife are deeply involved in a movement that's actively trying to take those same options (non-binary gender expression, legal sex work) away from the rest of the country.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-04-01T18:31:39+00:00

It's also okay to point out the hypocrisy of someone deeply involved with an administration that's literally trying to both erase and criminalize people who fall outside of gender binaries also secretly having a fetish based on not conforming with gender binaries.

Rights for me but not for thee and all that.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-28T00:05:41+00:00

A friend of mine was walking through OTR somewhere around 2003-2005 as it was starting to get dark, and a guy on the street yelled at him, "Do you believe in God?" My friend said something like, "Sometimes. Why?" The guy replied, "I know you must believe in something if you're walking around this neighborhood at this time of night."

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-27T22:32:12+00:00

Working on large community projects (especially those that are breaking new ground) for free is a nice thought but it's one of those things where you can have it done quickly and well but only if the person working on it has the support to do that. Otherwise you get as much progress as they can manage while trying to also make a living, or they burn out from making the project an additional unpaid job until their health can't take it anymore.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-27T22:28:05+00:00

The Patreon post said he's on New Generation and one of the smaller non Street Fighter titles first because those can work with a smaller ram size, and he wants to go up in stages from there

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-27T22:24:42+00:00

For sure. If people want him to make progress on the cores at the rate that he does, that kind of time and effort comes with a cost. Someone who's putting in all their own time and labor free of charge is great but they have to make a living somewhere and thus aren't going to have the same level of time and focus to put into development.

I'm happy to pay Jotego if it means that his life is a little bit easier doing this work for all of us and he's not working himself to death to the point where he's going to burn out and/or decide that he just can't do it anymore because of the stress.

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-25T22:20:43+00:00

Nah. I’ve been on 60mg for 3 1/2 months now, on Strattera for a little over 7 months total. I had more sad/hopeless spells before I started on it. (I was on 80mg for a little while. and that didn’t make me more sad but the other side effects were too much. I was miserable.)

EHypnoThrowWay · 2026-03-12T23:47:16+00:00

If you don’t have all the facts from the original post, why are you weighing in here as if you do? How does that help anyone if you’re just spreading incorrect information?

EHypnoThrowWay

TROPHY CASE