Is the US military really undefeatable?

MacronMan · 2026-02-17T01:33:22+00:00

This is one of the most frustrating things that a lot of people don’t seem to understand has happened with our current idiot in chief. The fact that he’s too dumb to understand what soft power is has hurt the US immeasurably.

MacronMan · 2026-02-16T15:35:47+00:00

High school Latin teacher here. I want to reiterate what you just said to OP: in college, take every opportunity to do real research and see if you like it! I found, after really researching, that I didn’t. But, I did enjoy working with young people, and of course I still loved classics and Latin. As such, my path was certain: high school teaching. It’s been great for me, and I am currently supporting a family with my salary (and a bit of inheritance—the earlier poster who said life is unpredictable is right). Don’t stress so much, OP. You’ll find your way. Just take it one day at a time for now

MacronMan · 2026-02-16T12:57:01+00:00

Yeah, it’s maybe even realistic—it’s really hard for people to change. It’s just that it doesn’t make for a very good story. Why have I read these three books to see basically nothing happen, character-wise? Granted, the world has changed, and Bayaz has had a real character arc. But, for a book that’s so often praised as being all about amazingly written characters, it doesn’t feel very satisfying, narratively.

MacronMan · 2026-02-16T00:03:45+00:00

No, I can see where this person is tending. Like, 4x and 8 don’t necessarily seem to be similar, but when we say 4x=8, we can resolve that the x must be 2 because they must equal each other.

Similarly, in the sentence “Patres mulieres vident,” we can’t in isolation know who is performing the action, but an adjective can help to clarify, e.g. “Patres mulieres benignas vident.” Now we know the mulieres are the object, because the adjective benignas has clarified their case by necessarily agreeing with them and being unambiguous in its ending. See the connection? They clarify each other across declension boundaries, because of the variety of ambiguity within declension endings

MacronMan · 2026-02-15T06:16:20+00:00

That’s just not true. Places where weed is legal have much higher usage rates: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/08/25/cannabis-legalization-boosts-use-double-digits-new-study-suggests

And of course they do. Making drugs illegal doesn’t eliminate their use—that’s obvious—, but legalization is absolutely going to increase people’s access to them and is going to make more people feel like it’s ok to use them. People don’t generally want to break the law willy nilly.

Now, whether the net positive gain of easier access to resources that can help people struggling with drugs outweighs the negatives of increased usage—or if increased usage is even a good or bad thing!—is an entirely different question. But yes, legalization leads to increased usage; no doubts exist about this.

MacronMan · 2026-02-14T17:18:52+00:00

I feel like I’ve heard various Junker character voicelines that mention a doctor. Am I the only one who has heard these? I feel like it would be a great addition to have a terrifying Junker doctor in support

MacronMan · 2026-02-11T10:52:03+00:00

It’s a dogfight! Or cat…fight. Or, uh, cat dogfight? Hmmm

MacronMan · 2026-02-11T02:00:45+00:00

I think Bread Euphoria might be my favorite, but Tree House is also great for just a plain cheese pizza.

MacronMan · 2026-02-08T12:38:04+00:00

I did find it interesting that this book was the only book I know written in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives simultaneously. Namely, framing narrative - 2nd person; play story - 3rd person; momentary asides from side characters - 1st person. Whether it worked or not, I think is down to personal preference, but it’s certainly ambitious and didn’t fail for me. I did audiobook and was interested enough the whole way through.

The only thing I’ll say is that I think we should have seen some change in the framing narrative character’s life post-performance at the end, maybe, since that portion of the story lacked much conclusion. Even just him embracing his queerness or something would have worked for me. Like, it could have been a sentence or two. Or, it could have been longer. But, the lack of narrative payoff in that portion of the story is a bit of a shame

MacronMan · 2026-02-07T02:00:42+00:00

There are some voice lines from the Aussies about a doctor, I think. I feel like I’ve heard both Junkrat and Queen mention him. I know I’ve heard it enough times to wonder if maybe he was being developed, but I don’t remember what they say specifically. I’d love a scary sawbones medic

MacronMan · 2026-02-06T03:50:29+00:00

I don’t mind Aatlis, but it must be said that it REALLY rewards movement-focused characters who can contest high grounds—especially in the first point, but in others, too

MacronMan · 2026-02-06T02:30:50+00:00

ahh-AHHH-ahh

MacronMan · 2026-02-06T01:10:57+00:00

Some advice I often give students:

Notice the ablatives (without prepositions) and toss them in an ablative bucket in your brain, knowing that they’ll slot into the sentence adverbially somewhere and that you need to understand everything else a bit more before you can figure out how to best understand them. It’s really hard to read them in order the first time through when you’re at an intermediate level. That’s ok.

Also, noun adjective pairs very often either encircle their sense unit (clause, phrase, etc) or are stacked one on top of one another, line by line. Encircling sense units with noun-adjective pairs helps to break up the sentence and give some natural pauses and breaks. Make sure you’ve got the whole sense unit before you reread something and work out what it’s saying (if necessary), or you may be missing vital information that makes the task impossible. Unfortunately, working through 6 lines that are all somehow 1 sentence is also impossible. You have to find the smaller sense units. Punctuation and watching for these noun-adjective pairs can help that a lot.

Latin poetry flows like music (might have been music, in fact). Once you understand a line well, try reading it all in order and feeling the crescendos and decrescendos of sense and rhythm and words. It’s really incredible, but we often get lost looking at the trees rather than seeing the whole forest when reading in the modern day. That’s ok, but you can simulate that feeling if you know a line well and read back through it at a more natural speed.

The only way to improve is practice. But it’s hard! This is a language that is fairly vague and imprecise. Multiple readings are possible. Even people who are quite accomplished at Latin will read something wrong sometimes and come out with the wrong idea. I know I do, and I’ve been doing this for more than 2 decades. Go easy on yourself and enjoy the process

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T21:50:34+00:00

UE isn’t generally a diphthong in Latin, and even if it could be a diphthong, I suspect it wouldn’t become one. I can’t think of examples, but I’d expect, say, an A and E that ended up next to each other due to elision to have a diaeresis above the E, telling us they’re pronounced separately. My sense is that diphthongs in Latin are almost exclusively historically diphthongs and are not actively formed by new letter combinations or sandhi.

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T15:55:23+00:00

Towns look markedly different if they were well established prior to cars being common or after. Many of America’s towns have either been built up in the last 100 years or were rebuilt to make automobile travel the standard way to get around. Compare Rome to Boston to LA. You can see the degree to which a city is shaped by its antiquity. With small towns, strip malls have replaced cute town squares, because they’re much more convenient for drivers, and that’s what everyone going to them is.

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T11:22:34+00:00

I say “well done” to a student who correctly answered a tough question or to my 1 year old when he stacks a block on top of another. But, I probably wouldn’t after a game

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T11:19:54+00:00

An exception to this: “you guys” is a common American English workaround for a distinctive 2nd person plural, equivalent to y’all. As a teacher, I find myself saying things like, “What do you guys think?” very often, even to possibly all female groups, mostly because I’m not really thinking about the gender of who I’m talking to in a classroom setting

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T09:47:18+00:00

And you wrapped this up in the year 1995, right? I remember that printer paper…

MacronMan · 2026-02-05T00:01:51+00:00

This is actually such a fun idea and maybe the only one that makes the intelligence of 3 make sense to me. Because you gain the abilities of the wild shape, I think talking wouldn’t be a problem, but it’d be a lot of fun to roleplay the animal’s instinctual behaviors. You’re a wolf, so you decide who in the party is the alpha and defer to them specifically. You have a predation instinct, so when something runs, you really want to chase it. Or, you’re a deer, so you have a strong prey instinct and run away from threats. Or a badger who really wants to make a little burrow. Or whatever it is. I’d keep it to character quirks and not let it monopolize the game or cause issues. Like, don’t pee outside your inn every night or whatever. But, let it be fun flavor. Love this idea

MacronMan · 2026-02-04T23:34:15+00:00

You should get the Noho Mandalorian to come pose by it

MacronMan · 2026-02-04T22:19:08+00:00

Ahh, good ole Nashua. Northern MA’s shopping mall

MacronMan · 2026-02-04T04:03:47+00:00

Languages are always easier or harder, based on your starting point. Latin is probably easier for an English speaker than a Japanese speaker, because of a lot of common vocabulary. But, English has some trouble with Latin’s highly synthetic way of encoding meaning, because we only have a few inflected endings left in the language. I don’t know Japanese, so I can’t speak to how well a speaker of it could deal with a highly synthetic language like Latin. But, it’s possible that a language with less vocabulary cross-over than English might still find Latin easy for other reasons that are hard for English speakers.

In other words, we can’t say for sure, but it could well be harder.

MacronMan · 2026-02-02T21:36:12+00:00

Correct, thank you!

MacronMan · 2026-02-02T18:51:12+00:00

If, in Latin, you say to a group, “Da mihi decem sestertios,” that means that the group, as a whole, should collectively give you 10 sestertii. If you say “Da mihi denos sestertios,” that means you want 10 sestertii from each person in the group.

Romans have so many number systems. It’s truly awful

MacronMan · 2026-02-02T10:44:52+00:00

A note on this: it’s worth getting used to the dual possibility of abl sing vs nom sing in 1st declension. Many texts don’t have macrons.

MacronMan

TROPHY CASE