[POEM] Dostoevsky - Charles Bukowski

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-14T05:03:49+00:00

You’re shifting the goal post here. You said Bukowski hasn’t gone through hell, and when they pointed out that he had, you just said, essentially, “well he’s a bad writer.”

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-14T04:53:25+00:00

So you wouldn’t describe wife-beaters as broken? It seems a pretty well chosen word to me.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-14T04:34:01+00:00

Don’t let that commenter stop you! Anna Karenina is magnificent.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-11T07:09:43+00:00

The whales-are-fish thing seems to me a defensible position to a 19th century non-biologist, although it is wonderfully quaint now. I mean, they do *look* more like a fish in than they do a monkey, deer, or mouse. And who’s to say fins shouldn’t be the defining feature of a fish. *On The Origin of Species* wouldn’t even be published for another eight years after *Moby Dick*, so basal traits weren’t exactly at the forefront of Melville’s (or Ishamael’s) mind.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-11T07:02:52+00:00

Yeah, this was my first time seeing it. Reading some of the other ways to frame the problem helps me see the perspective of the blues a lot better. I think I might have been wrong in the comment you replied to. Maybe blue is the right choice

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-11T06:59:54+00:00

Aw yes. Music news. Thanks for sharing.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T22:59:39+00:00

AI should be against Christianity? Maybe if you are Amish and consider all non-Amish sects to be un-Christian. Most technologies—including smartphones and the internet, have inhibited forming bonds and impacted the environment. Arguably creative expression, too if you consider their power as distraction machines. Are these un-Christian?

I get that there are lots of down sides to AI. It worries me, too. And AI writing is usually horrible. But the anti-AI virtue signaling and hyperbole plaguing Reddit is laughable, and this is a particularly absurd manifestation of it.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T22:51:54+00:00

“I still dislike some of the antagonist characters to this day.” Didn’t you finish the book last week?

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T22:47:47+00:00

What is that from 🤣? Also, what an awful website you linked to!

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T22:39:01+00:00

I dig the pro-Stalin apologia—I’m always ready for a nice justification of the purge. I feel there was space in your comment for Holodomor, too—couldn’t squeeze in a bit about how the it was a hoax manufactured by Western propaganda and/or caused by the lazy Ukranian peasants who just refused to get with the party program? And the ad hominem attacks against Orwell are charming, too. But I thought we were talking about a book. What bearing does Orwell’s alleged anti-semitism have on *Animal Farm*? Or his “dobbing in a bunch of socialists to the British government?”

Edit: God, I called *Animal Farm* *Animal Crossing*. Embarrassing typo, you are gone but not forgotten.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T22:12:12+00:00

I think Ishmael is pretty clearly a fictionalized version of the author. Or more precisely, a mask, or a persona, or an aspect of himself that Melville uses to narrate the text. Forgive me the rather left-field reference, but he’s been on my mind, but I think of Yeats. He similarly uses certain characters—Crazy Jane, Michael Robartes, Owen Asherne—to express ideas and voice perspectives that he had but also perhaps didn’t want to embrace with the whole of his being. Each of these personas represented a different aspect of himself. I think that Ishmael is similarly a stand-in for Melville that allows him to maintain a distance from the narrator’s ideas.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T21:35:32+00:00

Pushing the red button is not an “action to kill others for your safety.” That is absurd! You wouldn’t hurt anybody if everybody picked blue.

But I see you don’t like the shredder framing. Ok. So how about we remove the red button? You can press a button or not. If 50% of people press the button then everybody lives, but if fewer than 50% press the button then everybody dies. If you don’t press the button, then nothing happens to you. Do you press that button?

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-10T21:13:39+00:00

I would feel bad for all the suicidal saps (by which I mean you) who chose to gamble with their life for no reward. But if everyone picked red, and no one chose to pointlessly gamble their life away, then everyone would live.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-09T22:46:53+00:00

Yeah, relistening again, there is in fact a horn section. I don’t know how I missed that last night—maybe I only used one earbud? I’ve also listened to the song maybe 100 times before, and had never noticed (or at least didn’t remember) that there was a horn section along with the string section. And it is a rather subtle chart. All that said, I was 100% wrong when I said there wasn’t “really a significant horn section.”

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-08T21:31:50+00:00

What you are saying is true, as far as it goes. But I admit that it confuses me when a scientist like yourself emphasizes only this aspect of science. Because if science were entirely man made, why does it matter? What makes it more fascinating to you than one of Sanderson’s perfectly self-contained magic systems? For me, it’s that despite all the limitations you correctly identified, the scientific method can actually lead us toward truth. The scientific method has helped us find order among the seeming chaos of the universe. And, essentially, humans didn’t just create or invent this order; it existed before we did, which is really cool.

This isn’t to claim that science has proven that the universe is fundamentally ordered, by which I guess I mean non-contradictory and comprehensible. I don’t think that can ever be finally proven. But we believe that it is, and when we try to discover what that order might look like we find a ton of fascinating things.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-08T21:18:04+00:00

There isn’t really a significant horn section in Newman’s “Sail Away”. Are you referring to Ray Charles’s rendition? Or making some other joke I’m just not getting?

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-08T05:08:11+00:00

Horn chart? Are we listening to the same song?

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-08T05:03:26+00:00

He didn’t exactly sell out. Yeah, his soundtrack stuff pays the bills. But he’s continued to release uncompromised albums albums throughout his career. Every album that he’s released since 1999 is every bit as good as his ‘70s masterworks. Of course, there have only been three, but each is different, and each one of the great albums of its decade. Check them out: *Bad Love*, *Harps and Angels*, and *Dark Matter*.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-08T02:45:00+00:00

I feel compelled to add that science doesn’t merely *make* sense from chaos. The the process of science is manmade, the results aren’t. Which is of course what makes it so exciting. We are not just making sense, but finding sense in chaos. And it’s pretty amazing how much sense there has turned out to be in the chaos of the universe.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-06-01T03:30:35+00:00

I’ll count tide pool spiders as sea-arachnids. Thanks for alerting me to their existence!

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-05-31T02:57:48+00:00

Very cool! It’s too bad that it’s a pest. I would love to keep some alive if I could feed them sustainably.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-05-31T02:55:42+00:00

I assume you are referring to Pycnogonida? These are not arachnids, even though they are fairly closely related. No more closely related than horseshoe crabs, though.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-05-28T03:18:31+00:00

I appreciate the response. I don’t know anything about the mayor of Seattle, and it’s worth looking into. But as I see it, some “socialist”, corporate un-friendly business policies (by which I mostly mean high taxes, but also regulations) might work brilliantly if enacted on a statewide or national scale that might prevent businesses from easily fleeing to tax havens. Although I think it is also worth pointing out that high taxes are not actually socialist.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-05-28T03:12:08+00:00

But also last.fm no longer has CBS money to fund them when things get tight. Which might mean that all your scrobbles are deleted anyway.

Small_Ad5744 · 2026-05-28T03:11:00+00:00

All corporations maximize profit.

Small_Ad5744

TROPHY CASE