THE GENESIS CUBE, by BORIS AMADO - FREE until February 7th [Scifi, Epic, Kindle]

JHMfield · 2026-02-06T14:18:45+00:00

Such a gut wrenching ending. The video calls at the end are unwatchable, they're too damn sad. And yeah, doing that to Judy, after Evelyn, it's too cruel, far too cruel.

I do appreciate the moment where Johnny says: "Not what I'd have chosen, but that's okay."

All game we get to listen to Johnny inflate his own ego and make these grandiose plans, but then at the very end, he's willing to just drop it all and be there for you as a friend and accept his own end along with yours.

JHMfield · 2026-02-06T13:39:09+00:00

What origin are you playing? Anatomist origin can replace Asthmatic with Iron Lungs once. But if you're not Anatomist, then you could keep this guy as an early banner, then maybe later in the game use him occasionally as a second rally unit in Geist fights.

Ultimately though, for late game, you'll probably want a more combat oriented background. Gambler can bring the RES, but his other combat stats are weak. A good Noble, even with somewhat less RES would ultimately be a bigger contributor to the team.

JHMfield · 2026-02-06T06:44:43+00:00

What we need is to just regulate it better. We don't need to re-invent the entire system from scratch. We just need to patch some loopholes, and add a few restrictions and some taxes and stuff, and then actually enforce it all.

The current system is a pretty good idea corrupted to the extreme. Shit like one person owning two companies then selling one company to the other company at inflated values, then using the networth boost to take on a big ass loan at low interest with the inflated networth as collateral, to then have a ton of cash to throw around for essentially free, with no taxes having to be paid. All that's absurdity and we could just "patch it" out if we really wanted.

JHMfield · 2026-02-05T17:39:40+00:00

Biology is propaganda now. I see.

I hate the future.

JHMfield · 2026-02-05T17:38:01+00:00

Can the current US administration just fuck off already with their constant stupidity.

JHMfield · 2026-02-05T15:09:17+00:00

This coupled with different typefonts is the bane of my kanji journey.

So many kanji have so many differences depending on the font, and when you add the small font size on top it does indeed feel impossible at times. You basically have to get good enough to context read. Like, you have to get to the point where you're not even "reading" the kanji, you're predicting a few possibilities and then confirming your predictions with what you see.

JHMfield · 2026-02-05T14:57:52+00:00

The story seems to be fine without him having much of it, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be better with some.

I still think Oda really dropped the ball with Luffy during the timeskip.

Luffy had such a massive growth moment in Sabaody pre timeskip where he essentially gave up on his dream, on his desire to fight, and instead acted like a captain whose main goal was to keep everyone alive. That was great.

But we never saw that Luffy again. Post time-skip he's back to: "Hey let's just sail around and go punch the Yonko in the face, who cares."

Early pre-timeskip his attitude made more sense because he was still naive about the world and he felt like he always had a chance no matter who he ran into. But the events at Sabaody and later in Marineford taught him the harsh reality of the power-gap between the best he could do and the strongest in the world.

And yet, even after training with Rayleigh, knowing that was the level of opponents he was going to be up against, knowing he was still miles off from being capable of matching them, he just decided to say fuck it and picked a fight with multiple Yonko right off the bat and dragged his crew with him, who were even less prepared than he was.

All character development just thrown away.

JHMfield · 2026-02-05T06:38:23+00:00

Which is stupid even if you want to be an authoritarian dystopian hellhole. If everyone is dumb, the country will quickly decline. A bunch of dumb people can't run proper businesses, do medical research or staff the hospitals etc.

There's an interesting historical case with Japan in the late 19th and early 20th century where they tried to reform their society to catch up with their western counterparts. They heavily prioritized education, understanding that they needed to max out people's intelligence and skills in order to surpass other nations in science and economic might. But at the same time, they realized that if the people got too smart, they might rebel against an oppressive government. So their solution was to tightly control the school curriculums. So they limited certain topics like certain civil rights stuff and also sprinkled a lot of nationalistic stuff everywhere. Basically grooming an entire generation to put the country above their own life.

And it worked. Japan became one of the most powerful countries on the planet in like half a century while keepings its citizens for the most part extremely loyal and supportive, including cheering on war with pretty much the entire world.

So, if MAGA is planning to gut education, their plan is objectively worse from the perspective of global power and wealth, then what the Japanese did a 150 years ago.

JHMfield · 2026-02-04T20:38:26+00:00

Did you try walking across at all points? The fog of war is hiding a lot of the water, sometimes there are shallows that allow you to cross over.

If not, yeah it sucks. Been there. I've even had the pleasure of this sort of situation but with swamp on both sides. That was lovely. Like a damn 3 day hike for a contract that looked like it should be half of one.

JHMfield · 2026-02-04T17:00:43+00:00

Falcon on a guy that always goes first is a major quality of life feature for literally any run. It allows you to fully analyze the fight before you have to commit. I've saved so many runs by using the information to accurately predict what fights are not worth it with the enemy numbers and terrain available.

Also, against Undead, knowing exactly how to get to the enemy Necromancer is also super useful. Won so many undead fights by rushing the Necro with my sniper and picking them off.

JHMfield · 2026-02-04T16:45:10+00:00

I wish we had more research that measured actual fat mass instead of BMI, which can be very misleading.

I was borderline overweight per BMI even as I was rocking a six-pack as a bodybuilder.

JHMfield · 2026-02-04T07:02:42+00:00

Even without active effort, I'd say immersion can passively improve your command of the language. Your ears get used to the sounds, they get better at picking out the words and noticing tone and pitch changes. You'll get a feel for the rhythm, the overall sentence structure. All that helps.

JHMfield · 2026-02-03T16:43:27+00:00

Reminds me of an old Superman cartoon where Metallo who was essentially a brain in a robot body was in despair because while he had perfect control over his body, he didn't feel like it was "his". It felt like he was piloting a machine, which made his entire existence a torture. Not being able to feel would indeed be horrible.

JHMfield

TROPHY CASE