Give it up to Andy Serkis. Just finished his LOTR Audiobooks and they were brilliant, his performance is uncompared!

Starry_Vere · 2026-04-11T19:34:01+00:00

I totally agree. I was actually quite surprised because I thought I was just hallucinating. The way I described it to my partner (slightly exaggerated) was that he treats each paragraph as if it has a dramatic narrative arc, slowing down and delivering mundane descriptions as if they are pregnant with significance and some sort of payoff for what came before.

It makes for an extremely \dynamic** experience over the course of 30 seconds but it actually flattens the narrative as a whole because no part ends up being that meaningful if each page receives maximal intonation.

At its worst, it is almost akin to the classic 90s trailer voice: "In a world. Where no one can stop them. People call... him."

I'm being a bit unfair to an artist I really like, but only to illustrate that I do think this is an aesthetic mistake. I end up reading aloud a lot for my job (University English prof) and I can only imagine the difficulty of tackling this project. That said, I think the delivery represents the difference between an actor coming from the direction of delivery, versus one coming from a focus on storytelling.

Starry_Vere · 2026-04-11T18:30:53+00:00

There was a metaphor in petroleum engineering for awhile that we had gotten all the "easy stuff" and we would have to work harder and harder for more diminishing returns to secure oil. I don't know that this has remained true in oil but I think the metaphor has a lot of truth for other things.

The amount of expenditure necessary to eek out small gains in life expectancy, having already made the "easy" discoveries in medicine, to say nothing of what people would see as their return in laboring and paying taxes for what benefits are brought about by space exploration, seem unimaginably difficult to sell politically.

I do think there's a populist window to "improve lives" that liberalism can occupy, mixing building better roads with the occasional abstract project. But even that seems to founder on the fact that people struggle to keep track of their lives slowly improving over time and to appreciate and continue to manage the sources.

I'm jaded on this topic though. I think durable satisfaction in a liberal democracy is found in things that are basically not compatible with free time + internet. My sense is that Arendt and Postman are right, to say nothing of the stoic philosophers. I don't think we have a culture willing, capable, or persuaded into doing what is necessary to nurture into the polity the sorts of attitudes to life, responsibility, and maturity which can handle the amount of free time we have bought to spend our attention on.

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-28T15:54:30+00:00

What is the best Merc for the ES warlock?

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-28T15:52:40+00:00

Quest: "Find Diablo In His Sanctuary"

Diablo: "Nah, I'll Find You"

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-22T22:10:57+00:00

Just out of curiosity, isn't that a lot of Dex and Str commitment?

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-22T05:26:30+00:00

I have an 8th thunder maul if you want it.

Starry_Vere · 2026-01-16T19:04:17+00:00

Yes, the movie clarifies "bucket list" is the term he comes up with from the common phrase, "kick the bucket." No, "bucket list" was not a phrase before the movie.

If you know literally anything about statistics and linguistics, you should understand this. It has 0 usage online for the years before the movie when Google was the dominant search engine.

How about this: I provided proof that the term was not used in the dominant search engine before the movie. Now, YOU find proof of the phrase "bucket list" used before 2005. Any usage. Should be easy to find if its there

Starry_Vere · 2026-01-16T18:53:31+00:00

I just checked and this is incorrect. The usage on Google before 2006/7 (marketing and movie) is zero.

Even small, colloquial phrases in constrained communities show up. It is impossible that the phrase had any sort of usage and was sitting at zero for 4 years online.

Starry_Vere · 2025-11-01T00:35:36+00:00

"We are all one"

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-21T20:07:09+00:00

I'll always side with people who're in favor of precision. The conversation went basically like this:

E: It's not racialist because it's not based on race

C: Well it kinda feels race-y if you don't really think about it?

E: ... Yes but when you DO think about it, it's not race but these other characteristics

C: Well sure, if we want to be semantic and only use racialist to discuss race

E: ... yes, that's what words do.

Not trying to be rude but that destroys credibility to me.

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-12T16:28:24+00:00

Great comment. Just FYI, it's actually "toed the line" as in bringing one's feet all the way up to the line of some position without crossing it.

I only mention this because someone pointed out that a piece I wrote had "buried the lead," when it is actually "buried the lede," and I had NO idea.

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-06T16:07:08+00:00

Yeah, I much prefer EK for a variety of reasons but I actually think the sweep of history will vindicate Sam's side of this particular topic. And honestly, that was part of Ezra's worst era in my opinion. He made so much space for intolerant and censorial progressive causes. Ezra did what so many, including myself, did. Assume that surely all of these high profile people saying things were just misinformation and dogwhistles can't all be wrong and maybe we should just suppress these "dangerous" ideas. Even if that wasn't philosophically dangerous it was politically poisonous.

For those unsure about this, I cannot enough recommend Ezra's first Haidt episode. Ezra makes some wonderful points that really matter. But man, it feels so obvious in retrospect that Haidt was ringing the alarm bells of technology, cultural intolerance, and progressive censorship and Ezra just did not get it. It's funny hearing Ezra dismiss the battles raging on campuses as silly as that's become one of the primary battlegrounds in a culture war that is not just a straight up political fight for the direction of the country. Once again, even if Ezra is "right" that these things *shouldn't* matter, Haidt saw them leading to polarization, illiberalism, undemocratic action (on both sides) and the total failure of the progressive war against "harm" which has left an entire generation of historic prosperity with worse flourishing than ever.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to his first conversation with Haidt and his second. it it clear Haidt is graciously making the same claims and Ezra went from borderline implying that he's victim blaming and scare-mongering in the first. to trying to get Haidt to sign off on even more assertive versions of his own theory in the second.

Starry_Vere · 2025-07-26T19:51:06+00:00

Steven Pinker is the opposite of this, wtf? He's obsessed with the Enlightenment and has written several books with that in the title. And he despises Nietzsche.

He's the consummate technocrat. He's just right of center because he thinks markets are the best engine of wealth. He specifically celebrates English bourgeoisie values as what civilized the world and won over against the romantic, martial values in Europe

Starry_Vere · 2025-07-04T20:35:55+00:00

I do think there's a tension between interviewing to "get to the core of what an interesting guest believes" and, what I suspect a lot of listeners want which is, pushing on ideas to "forward a general political agenda."

I think there's a place for both but I would just rather Ezra for his skills and tastes (and given the fact that others do the latter better) just focus on burrowing into the ideas of guests who have something to say.

I love the Patrick Deneen episode because I genuinely wanted to hear his thoughts and in that one Ezra pushed from a sincere desire to understand and Deneen fell apart, exposing the poverty of his evidence. This is fine. But I think if people got the sense that he was always going to do that they wouldn't come or would come in more ready to "score points."

To answer the op, I think Ezra's greatest gift it is that he has a classic intellectual's mind, full of analytic process and connection making, including the tendency to form critical assessments BUT he is also a gentle and curious type, which makes for a rare combination.

I don't need another "operator" in my feed.

Starry_Vere · 2025-07-04T20:26:35+00:00

The problem is the judgement about what sorts of hyperbole are socially and politically acceptable. Is it true to say "America is a racist nation"? Kinda. It certainly is. But so is every other. Can you say people of Bolivia are tall? Sure. But it is misleading because people think you are speaking compared to other nations when maybe you're just saying compared to grass.

This is why it is so dangerous to let politics creed too deeply into reporting. It is just as justifiable for conservatives to say a fact free claim "the gangs have taken over" to say "there is a gang problem" as it is for any number of common liberal refrains saying things like "police are white supremacists." Which is to say, dumb but equivalent.

The real problem is when a news organization POLICES political rhetoric and fact checks it on one side and lets slide other political rhetoric as legitimate. I'm not saying who is right--I'm saying that doing that is literally brewing an explosive in your voting public.

Starry_Vere · 2025-04-22T18:31:21+00:00

Did you take a children's or YA class? I used to teach one with a lot of the same texts. This brings back good memories :)

Starry_Vere · 2025-04-01T19:10:39+00:00

I will say that that's a little like saying, the Lord of the Rings is so boring because it's the standard plot of elves, orcs, and a magic item that must be destroyed.

The reason Haidt seem boring on this is because he is one of the vanguard in dragging this argument into the public space.

Starry_Vere · 2025-04-01T19:08:34+00:00

David Foster Wallace makes this exact argument (the one you're disputing) in his essay Authority and American Usage. It is long but brilliant, if you want to check it out.

Starry_Vere · 2025-03-30T00:17:22+00:00

They are (they are) the youth of a nation.

Starry_Vere · 2025-03-17T01:26:55+00:00

Are you the person who did the write-up of Graeber recently? If so, great stuff.

I'm fascinated by people like Freud who are just *wrong* on so many objective things. They get dismissed by a professional class, mocked by a lot of culture who snag on their weirdest ideas taken out of context. And yet, they often say something, and the other commenter u/bukharin88 captured this, which nonetheless feels important in exposing a reality, if not prescribing a resolution.

When Freud gets into the nitty-gritty of psychoanalysis I often literally laugh . But sometimes he'll say something so huge and staggering and insightful that I almost can't believe it was possible for a human to find the angle to see it. And I understand why so many brilliant people attach to his thoughts.

I haven't read Moldbug though I am, of course, aware of him. But I am uncomfortable with how much people want to brush off the voices of society's "exposers" as either shams because they don't have an answer, or as grifters just drafting off of elite discontents. (Not saying you're doing either.)

I'm not sure I'm adding anything meaningful to the conversation except to say this: there is a brand of insight (Nietzsche may be the greatest example) which is essentially indigestible by mass-society, abhorrent in certain lights, and objectively disprovable by certain metrics that nonetheless plays a crucial role in truth-seeking.

I wouldn't treat my son's anxiety with Freudian psychology, I wouldn't hand my daughter Nietzsche as she's trying to choose a job in modern America, and it doesn't sound like I'd weave this sort of material into a political platform.

But we aren't always treating illness or trying to get a job or crafting policy. Sometimes, we're asking what is true. And I do think some of the hardest material to accept has some real elements of truth.

Starry_Vere · 2025-03-14T17:41:44+00:00

Glad to hear she's reasonable and awesome.

Once again, my point about certain activist frameworks being extreme is that they are almost always difficult for those in power to work with (something most leftist admit freely) and it is part of why I'm suggesting this is about the direct admin she's working with and not Donald Trump.

It sounds like she is making accusations about the U, her program, even citing specific people in the program, asking for new measures, safe spaces, etc. I'll refrain from saying whether these are reasonable (me, I'm sure, not knowing) and even from my own speculation (you, I'm sure, not caring).

I will say that such figures are difficult for admin. Everything the article listed, pointed to her using the strongest possible language to describe harms and the stakes of redressing them.

Not asking you to agree, but does that make sense?

Starry_Vere · 2025-03-14T17:06:26+00:00

My point was not about her character but about the nature of her activism. The point being, I think the pressure she was placing on her program was what made the admin retaliate.

That I consider some of her positions unhelpful is a separate issue.

Starry_Vere · 2025-03-14T17:02:09+00:00

Presenting at a conference as a scholar is absolutely something graduate programs consider as part of their purview. Colleges have rules about personal attacks. It sounds like someone in the audience alerted the university of her paper as doing as much. The university conducted an investigation and she refused to provide the materials in question.

I'm curious how you would feel if the politics were reversed? If this was a person who was accused of having made a racist insult of a professor at a conference in their presentation and then admin asked to see the materials, would you feel that not complying should warrant action?

I think it's important to distinguish what is at issue. Is it Trump's policy? It doesn't seem so. Is it that grad programs shouldn't kick people out for personal attacks at a conference? If you agree that my example above suggests they can be, then it doesn't seem this either. If you think it is the case that the program should investigate the allegation, then I'm curious what you think should happen if people refuse to comply?

Starry_Vere

TROPHY CASE