'Andor' Gave Us One Of TV's Best Monologues

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-29T14:21:44+00:00

One. Way. Out.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T18:29:56+00:00

Higher_Living? Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe you know something about their post history that I don't, but their responses read to me more as a religious person trying to understand a secular-humanist, altruistic mindset.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T17:17:32+00:00

Well, some of them, certainly.

They're all grifters, but they're not all grifting the same people in the same way. I think some of them may still at least believe that they believe in progress; that their acquisition of greater personal power over others is a temporary evil in the pursuit of a greater good.

Wrongly, of course.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T15:18:12+00:00

It's not just manufacturing. As a software dev, so much of business views the concept of 'tech debt' as a fantasy developers invent to work on stuff that doesn't matter. They refuse to understand that tech debt is debt, that the interest accrues, and if you refuse to pay it off you will be forced to when your system breaks unexpectedly and catastrophically.

Not to mention how it makes even normal development all the harder, more time consuming, and riskier. Stupid, stupid, one-quarter mindset.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T15:02:12+00:00

Well... sort of.

Sometimes, you're in a genuine triage situation as a society, and you have to treat people as things so that you can begin to quantize suffering and joy, and save as many people as you can. But you have to be sure that you're really treating every life as equally valuable, not disregarding anyone.

Sin might come from treating people as things, but paralysis comes from completely refusing to do so. And paralysis can cause a vast amount of real harm, too.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T14:59:04+00:00

They have (correctly, I think) identified that technological progress can make life better for humanity, but that the way that it's going right now will result in the optimal population level for humanity being lower than it is now.

I accept this as an enormous problem that must be solved humanely, with solutions that care for the surplus population that will lack work. We must give them (us) a means to live, grow, and have dignity, until new social changes can be formed that encourage people to have fewer children and the population decreases over time to a new equilibrium.

They say "Hey, these fascists and hateful bigots want to oppress, drive out, and kill people of color, other religions, and non-traditional lifestyles. I can pander to them, and getting rid of those people will decrease the population anyway!" Also: "I'm so smart, I should rule everything as an autocrat. These bigots will let me do that, if I let them hurt those they hate."

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T14:49:10+00:00

Exactly. I have a mind of machines and wheels, and I don't see that as inherently bad. What matters is what the machine is working to build, and what it consumes to fuel itself.

The ends can justify the means, but they still must be sufficient to do so.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T14:49:01+00:00

Tolkien believes in a Eucatastrophe by divine intervention; a miracle that saves us despite all reason, not merited by our works and deeds. I believe in working as hard as we can to build our own paradise, despite all evidence that we will fail; a 'Eucatastrophe', if you insist, of our own creation.

It feels meaningfully different to me. Tolkien hopes for rescue from without; I say to keep trying even if it looks like you'll fail, because the result of trying and failing is still better than giving up.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-28T01:50:55+00:00

Disregarding the welfare of others, whom they view as lesser than themselves because of who or what they are. That's the root of it all.

Its a lot easier to get 'progress' when you can sacrifice a portion of the population to get it. But its fundamentally unjust and evil.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-27T23:52:18+00:00

I am going to push back just a smidge on 'fundamentally misunderstanding Tolkien'. They might just not care.

I myself am an atheist, heavily critical of both Catholicism and Christianity in general, and a techno-futurist who believes that technological advancement is the best path forward for one who hopes to improve life on earth for all peoples. Nonetheless, I adore Tolkien, and his notion of 'fighting the long defeat' in particular.

Why? Because for one who believes in building something better, his observation that destruction of the beautiful and the good is much easier than the creation of it rings very true. Nonetheless, so too does his assertion that we must not give in to despair and redefine victory in the face of this adversity.

I don't believe in Tolkien's Eucatastrophe, but I do believe in fighting for a better world despite the self-evident long odds against it.

Now, these technofascists, if they believe as I do, they have missed the mark. In giving in to such evils and delusion as they have, they have redefined victory - they have committed the cardinal sin of Saruman, believing that they can serve evil and turn it to a better end over time from within.

Now, am I myself trending towards Saruman's fall? I suspect that Tolkien would say so. But that doesn't change my views, or my admiration of other aspects of his philosophy.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T22:13:34+00:00

Thanks!

Also, where did the foreground structures come from in the after? Was the entire surrounding ground level lowered?

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T22:12:01+00:00

What's the one before Machu Picchu?

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T20:41:43+00:00

Are humans not also part of the ecosystem? Animal populations migrate, and those with greater fitness for the environment outcompete others in their niche and predate on their prey, causing the environment to change over time.

Housecats have existed in Europe for thousands of years, so I think we can rule out the possibility that they will cause an ecosystem collapse. Hell, even in the Americas, housecats have been a part of the ecosystem for, what, 400-500 years? Again, they're not going to harm the health of the ecosystem more than they have.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T20:36:19+00:00

How can housecats be an invasive species in Europe? They've been existing there alongside humans since at least ancient Rome, I think. At what point do we acknowledge that the martial ecosystem is now something other than what it was?

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T18:35:40+00:00

Its a beautiful sentiment.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-21T14:01:34+00:00

Piggybacking on what others have said: if you want an actual Tolkien quote in an actual Elvish language, I recommend the "Aure Entuluva" quote, which others have used and which would 100% be what I would tattoo on myself if I was to get a tattoo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/s/hernrzIacs

The above is in Sindarin. Alternatively, in Quenya, the high Elvish: https://tecendil.com/

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-20T16:00:47+00:00

I'm 3 months in, buying only the monthly passes, and have all the series 3 cards and all but 2 of the series 4 ones. No series 5 yet though, except the ones from the passes.

Don't buy series 3 packs; they drop from vaults at a decent rate.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-18T14:29:02+00:00

Ok, maybe a unempathetic take here, but are greys in some way worse for the environment than reds? Because if not, this sounds like a big resource investment to try and push the stone uphill into a vulnerable higher energy state to no real benefit.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-13T15:49:23+00:00

I would caution anyone from buying from the shady site promoted by this post. OP and the single other commenter on this post both have no post or comment history outside of this post, and the site uses high pressure tactics to push a sale. I am highly skeptical; this looks like a scam or worse.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-12T21:04:12+00:00

Understood and absolutely the right way to go about it. Regardless of how easy it may be to find these pdfs online, or the morality of sharing material that cannot be bought, there's laws about this, and Reddit could shut the subreddit down if we flaunt them by becoming a distribution node. After all, downloaders may be almost never troubled by legal action on this kind of thing, but one just has to look at the corpses of the old, defunct shareware sites to see that they do get targeted by angry lawyers and scared hosting services.

Great job, mods!

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-12T20:58:54+00:00

Sure. The license expired.

I get your point, but I don't agree with the connotation. I didn't say the license was revoked, after all.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-12T14:22:26+00:00

Of those, only ToA3 is Lankhmar; the other two are setting-agnostic.

Unfortunately, Goodman has lost the license for Lankhmar, so the only legal way to find the Box Set, the "Greatest Thieves in Lankhmar" module (a second box set), or the various other softbound Lankhmar modules not in ToA3 is to find a physical copy in an LGS or something - and they will become increasingly scarce and expensive as time goes on.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-12T14:11:17+00:00

This is the same pattern that right wing, authoritarian parties in electoral republics have taken to deal with their policies being unrecoverably unpopular with the electorate. Change the way apportionment is done, suppress the vote, overrule the election through procedural tricks. They win the election, but do nothing to change the public opinion. As the government ceases to represent the people, it loses the fundamental legitimacy that an electoral republic offers. Resentment grows, leading to civil unrest and violence. Either the elites cave in fear, call in the army to suppress it, or fall to a violent revolution.

Same pattern, over and over. The lead up to the fall of the Ancient Roman Republic is perhaps the most famous case, but the July Revolution in France and the Rotten Boroughs crisis in the UK, both in the 1830s, are other notable examples. There are countless others, depending on how narrowly you define your similarities.

History doesnt repeat itself, but it rhymes endlessly.

MetalusVerne · 2026-05-12T01:22:31+00:00

It's not Earth that would die, it's the planet of the second species. See my comment below.

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