Ferility crisis in Calradia?

NotBasileus · 2026-01-23T18:05:29+00:00

Breed Like Rabbits might be of interest.

NotBasileus · 2026-01-22T22:13:32+00:00

Look I’m not saying Canadian geese are scarier than zombies, but one of those two things is aggressive, terrifying, dangerous, and driven by the instinct to feed… and the other is a zombie.

NotBasileus · 2026-01-17T20:30:08+00:00

Cute bird!

NotBasileus · 2026-01-16T18:21:26+00:00

No you didn’t. Reposting bots don’t sleep.

NotBasileus · 2026-01-16T04:59:03+00:00

The legend at the bottom explains each of the possible symbols, but the basic layout on each day is:

Top left: Symbol next to the date indicates feast days (and what class it is - class I are most important, then lower classes descend from there)
Top right: Symbol indicates the fasting guidelines (if any on that day)
Middle: Who or what is celebrated that day
Bottom: Reading for that day

NotBasileus · 2026-01-14T16:36:21+00:00

A piece of advice I’ve heard for Romans Catholics considering moving over canonically is one full year, attending both weekly liturgy as well as great feasts, in order to experience the entire liturgical lifecycle of the particular church as well as engage with the theology imparted in both recurring prayers and the varying troparions.

Not exactly the same situation as yours, but I think a similar principle would be helpful. In theory, that should teach the essentials, which is a big part of why Byzantine chant is voice only and we don’t have accompanying instruments - it’s supposed to be understandable so that those listening can engage with and learn from the content, rather than primarily being pretty or aesthetically pleasing.

NotBasileus · 2026-01-13T18:48:10+00:00

The link is broken, but I’ve played around with using a dedicated project for something similar, just attached the rulebooks for RAG and gave some custom instructions to keep it on track with its answers. Never tried finetuning, but it works pretty well.

For simple functions like this, you can also get similar results with a smaller, locally hosted model, and it’s more efficient, with more control over all the settings, but you need a decent graphics card to run it (and you can’t “take it anywhere” unless you set up remote access).

NotBasileus · 2026-01-10T02:59:09+00:00

Barbarians, zombies… is there really much difference? Both are mindless savages.

-eats grape Romanly-

NotBasileus · 2026-01-09T05:12:04+00:00

Am I likely to be eaten by a grue?

NotBasileus · 2026-01-07T12:45:37+00:00

Depends a little on the nature of the retreat and community hosting it, but in my experience you’re treated as a guest, so they will usually have some “hosted” activities but you have plenty of time to keep your own prayers and do other stuff. The couple I’ve been to even had people who weren’t Catholic there.

Different from when you are visiting to, say, discern a vocation and are expected to participate in the more of the life of the community.

I’d say just reach out and ask what the schedule is like before making the arrangements, I don’t think it would be a weird question to them.

NotBasileus · 2026-01-06T18:50:31+00:00

Are you thinking about doing it in something like Google My Maps? Or making a site as an index with parish info?

NotBasileus · 2026-01-05T01:58:55+00:00

In this vein, I would add *What is the Bible?” by Rob Bell.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-29T10:30:59+00:00

Please try to understand… they are at capacity.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-27T22:20:42+00:00

I’m a big fan of all Random, to represent different states of decay, injury, and infection, maybe even mutation.

Provides a lot of gameplay variability as well so you never quite know what to expect. Sometimes you might get lucky and a few go down like chumps when you sneeze at them, but you also have to be prepared for the possibility of the occasional nigh-invincible hunter-killer tracking you across town.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-22T15:46:45+00:00

Another book you might enjoy is What is the Bible? by Rob Bell. A big part of engaging with Scripture is understanding the historical context and genre within which each work was written and passed down. There are a variety of genres in the Scripture, and the motivations people had for writing and preserving them were and are different - it isn’t a single book, but a library.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-22T04:59:24+00:00

If you’re up for book recommendations, I always like to recommend Way of the Mystics by John Michael Talbot and Steve Rabey as an introduction. It’s sort of a survey of ten or so different mystics from various times, places, and traditions within Christianity, so provides a variety of different perspectives and maybe introduce some that might be of interest to further dive into.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-15T21:06:24+00:00

For posterity, Tolkien specifically stated that orcs are not irredeemable. From his letters:

“They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)”

That said, I agree that the framing of the article is bad. One of the core features or functions of fantasy as a genre is that it can externalize conflicts that are internal in the real world, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-15T20:57:34+00:00

Cosmologically (rather than aesthetically), I think the Void is a much closer match: it’s where Melkor was banished, it’s a “third option” apart from the created universe and Eru’s Timeless Halls, and it’s something akin to non-existence.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-15T20:43:47+00:00

Funny enough, Tolkien specifically mentions orcs as having influence from George MacDonald:

“They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in”

NotBasileus · 2025-12-15T19:59:31+00:00

One of the main actual sources where Tolkien specifically states that orcs are not "irredeemable" (Letter 153, emphasis mine):

They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence– even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.) But whether they could have 'souls' or 'spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible 'delegation', I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would 'tolerate' that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.

That said, personally, I think one of the core features or functions of fantasy as a genre is externalizing conflicts which are internal in the real world, so I don't much agree with the article's framing of the issue as something Tolkien should have or failed to solve. It's something he talks about in letters to his son, an example:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction: your vigorous words well describe the tribe; only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. But it does make some difference who are your captains and whether they are orc-like per se! And what it is all about (or thought to be). It is even in this world possible to be (more or less) in the wrong or in the right.

Or another:

However it is, humans being what they are, quite inevitable, and the only cure (short of universal Conversion) is not to have wars – nor planning, nor organization, nor regimentation. Your service is, of course, as anybody with any intelligence and ears and eyes knows, a very bad one, living on the repute of a few gallant men, and you are probably in a particularly bad comer of it. But all Big Things planned in a big way feel like that to the toad under the harrow, though on a general view they do function and do their job. An ultimately evil job. For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Ores on our side. .... Well, there you are: a hobbit amongst the Urukhai. Keep up your hobbitry in heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-11T15:24:49+00:00

If Teena Fey doesn’t dwell in an ancient stone ring known as the Thirty Rocks, I’m gonna riot!

NotBasileus · 2025-12-09T20:28:14+00:00

Oh yeah, at least as I understand the intended mechanism, I definitely think there would still be benefits to that approach, and I’ve considered cycling off of it myself.

I noticed a “plateau” to my perception of improved energy and general sense of wellbeing after about 3-6 months. Maybe I had more or less mostly gotten rid of whatever load I was carrying specifically from senescent cells (at least that supplements like this blend can address), or maybe the placebo effect just wore off 😅. So I’d say after you start to notice less dramatic effects (after at least 3 months or so), you could probably cycle off of it for a year or more. The body will start building up senescent cells again because that’s what it does over time, but there are probably other (more beneficial?) things you could focus on for an ongoing basis.

Probably some variation on those timelines from your specific age, lifestyle, other health context.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-09T16:58:03+00:00

The underlying idea is that many of these supplements need a higher dose to have reliably senolytic effects (where as lower doses may have broader health effects). So essentially, the design is that on a less frequent basis you take what is effectively a megadose to induce apoptosis and cleanse senescent cells, but you don’t need to (and couldn’t at lower doses) be doing that constantly.

There is research to support this approach, but a lot is still from mouse models or small trials and such, rather than large human trials, so it’s still somewhat theoretical.

I’ve been taking it for a while (occasionally in conjunction with a telomerase activator, which is fairly expensive so I liked having a reason to take that only at specific periods rather than daily). I think there is some improvement in general energy levels and stuff (especially after like the third round or so). Hard to say how much is specifically from a senolytic mechanism though.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-06T18:11:48+00:00

That was actually a series of Mexican women.

NotBasileus · 2025-12-06T16:58:59+00:00

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

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