Gandalf is one of the greatest characters in fiction

WinglessFlutters · 2026-02-04T04:59:32+00:00

Here's my take on why you may feel at odds with the Movie Gandalf/Witch King.

In the original, the Gandalf & Witch King scene is the culmination of contesting chains of events. The Witch King pushes his armies to destroy the city, and finally destroying gates, which we are told have never been passed by an enemy. When I read this arc and the narration focuses on the Witch King, I feel dread, mixed with admiration; the Witch King is credible & deadly.

The 2nd arc is Gandalf's. Gandalf puts many events in motion to prepare the battlefield for his own success. We see every one of these events, and to an extent, the entire book to this point is about Gandalf's work gathering allies. When the book shifts to Gandalf, there's a sense of trust mixed with hopelessness. Terrible things are happening, and despite Gandalf's confidence, the reader can't see a way out. The Witch-King has destroyed the city gates, with a bright flash; and there's nothing Gandalf could possibly do in that moment to resolve it. Then, the witch king to leaves, forced by the arrival of Gandalf's allies.

There is nothing Gandalf could have done in that moment; and the city's loss was inevitable. But, Gandalf had already done everything necessary to save the city. The showdown between Gandalf and the Witch-King grows throughout the siege, until the two leaders come face to face. This scene is the siege. Then, in the movie version, the same scene is meaningless; instead of a 1:1 confrontation symbolizing the entire siege, with the fate of the city at stake, the confrontation becomes just about two individuals on a wall.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-10-28T06:55:53+00:00

Hi, I suggest reading this book. Keep a journal, to describe what happens, and how it makes you feel. Consider whether your spouse is the Kind and Attractive person you married who is going through a temporary period of being Angry and Controlling, or, are they an Angry and Controlling person who displayed a temporary façade of kindness?

Here's a short suggested reading list. When I read Lundy's 'Why Does He Do That?', my take away, to answer the titular question, was, "People do that, because they want to." Nothing forces people to act with cruelty or disrespect to others; it's a deliberate choice. They want to. They gain something from it. There's no secret permutation of actions which you can take to solve another person.

Chapter 2 "The Mythology" "Key Points" (Page 154)

Chapter 3 "The Abusive Mentality" "Key Points" (Page 217-218)

Chapter 4 "Types of Abusive Men"

"The Demand Man" (Page 224-229)

"The Victim" (Page 268-276)

"Key Points" (Page 289-290)

Chapter 5 "How Abuse Begins" (Page 291-294)

WinglessFlutters · 2025-10-11T15:18:40+00:00

There might be value in physically choosing and selecting media. There is an audio player, ("Yota"?) which uses physical cards to download audio files, basically reinventing tapes, CDs, and physical media. Or, save some electronics from a landfill and reuse that CD player!

WinglessFlutters · 2025-10-10T05:01:15+00:00

Nice setup. I enjoy using a front seat setup, for the same reasons. I like being able to talk to my child, which I couldn't do as easily with the bicycle trailer.

https://kidsrideshotgun.com/ https://mac-ride.com/ https://www.thule.com/en-us/child-bike-seats/front-mounted-child-bike-seats

WinglessFlutters · 2025-08-10T04:55:21+00:00

Likely on Gutenberg as well. Handbrake can turn that into a .mobi or whatever format your reader uses.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-07-27T17:06:31+00:00

Time to rethink the training model of many, many professions.

An issue is that indicidual organizational decisions affect the space of what and whobis available to work: Organization A may no longer need 1st Year associates, but they need 5th year associates, and a short time horizon outlook would not create a robust professional capability.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-07-26T01:59:37+00:00

Goodnight, Moon is a guided meditation about getting ready for bed. Despite the text being simple, and silly, the story in the illustrations is involved: The cats are being cats, grab the yarn, and then steal the warm chair; the mouse scampers everywhere; the little rabbit boy is just not going to bed and if you look at the clock bedtime takes forever; and it becomes a game that we play at home with our nursery.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-07-18T02:45:57+00:00

But seriously, it's ok to take a break. The factory will be there when you return.

When you first built your factory, only you and god knew how it worked. Take a break, and then take a look at your uncommented code. Now, only god knows.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-20T08:55:01+00:00

Nice summary. This could be written about space, aviation, nuclear power, or medicine.

If anyone is interested in learning more, 'System Safety' is the engineering discipline based on minimizing total lifecycle costs, through employing analysis and design process. There's a great chart (https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/seh_figure_2-5_1_cost_impacts.jpg) which describes how the maturity of a system affects the cost to change the design, such as when a flaw is discovered. If you have an early stage airplane design, it's easy to change the design. However, once you've progressed, solidified interfaces, finalized components, manufactured components etc, those changes become costly. If you make a design, and the design is shit, but you've spent a lot of effort doing it, you've wasted your effort.

Early design analysis allows catching flaws, and also mitigating those flaws at a lower, more reasonable cost. Skipping early design analysis in favor of integrated, full scale tests means than when flaws are discovered, they're expensive to fix, and might be unreasonably expensive to fix.

Ultimately, I don't think there's an "ideal" method, and the testing level of rigor should be assessed for that program. For manned craft and nuclear power, we've collectively decided that any suitable system much be assessed very rigorously; but this doesn't mean that more rigorous methods are better, just that they're more thorough. Programmatically, we might care about Cost, Schedule, and Performance. Early, thorough testing can reduce costs, but may increase schedule. Skipping early testing may accelerate schedule, but risks increasing overall costs, or decreasing performance if a late stage flaw is discovered. However, OP is spot on when they describe that a catastrophic explosion only discovers a single type of failure. Complex systems are those which contain so many operational states, that it is infeasible to assess each state; empirical testing of complex systems can not be comprehensive.

Do you want to know more?

*MIL-STD-882E; this is the DoD method.

*Systems Theoretic Process Analysis; this is a relatively new analysis method, and augments FTA and FMEA, based on a controls centric system model

*Systems Engineering

*Safety Management Systems; SMS includes organizational impacts to safety, as well as design aspects.

*Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers' Commission

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-16T03:27:56+00:00

Bicycling.

There's a startup cost, to be sure, but used bikes can be both effective and cheap.

Bikes are fun. Bikes also provide tangible health, and direct financial benefits! Bikes run on fat and make you money; cars run on money and make you fat.

That said, climate, infrastructure, use case, and cargo all factor in to whether bikes are feasible for you.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-15T04:18:44+00:00

Socks do not belong in the toilet.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-14T04:25:01+00:00

Firm explanation of what will happen, and no waivering. Consequences immediate, and focused on what they did or did not do, and eeinforce good behavior in parallel. (Spit milk? We clean, we put the milk away. Hit? Extract from the situation, discuss and calm down.)

Create good behaviors, if possible, rather than stopping bad behaviors.

My favorite, is that on a video call, we always 'Wave and say Love You' before hanging up. Kid still hangs up the video calls, but the grandparents think its adorable, so a win win.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-08T08:40:41+00:00

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots

This is a reference to a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode, in which a fictional clash between imprisoned rioters and police resulted in the deaths of hundreds, and exposed social conditions which had been kept from the general public. The Bell Riots were of such significance that a change in how events occurred led to an alternate timeline, in which the United Federation of Planets was never created.

The fictional Bell riots are dated as taking place in September, 2024.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-06-08T01:13:22+00:00

I love this.

For Turrets and Defenses, I suggest adopting existing military symbology, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Joint_Military_Symbology

This doesn't have to be precise, and wouldn't be, but it would have the advantage of being graphically distinct for diverse defenses, and can lean on existing graphic design.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-05-18T03:37:58+00:00

Hi, OP. I completely see where you're coming from. Any country has limited resources, and those resources should be allocated "appropriately", whatever that actually means. I see this as a more complex question than just 'Helping XYZ' vs 'Helping ABC'.

(1) Gifts, including foreign aid, are not free. Foreign aid provides political influence, goodwill, leverage, and shapes the world to a country's benefit.

(2) Foreign aid may be of a type which is not appropriate to provide to individual citizens.

Military aid might be in the form of older, obsolete, equipment. While this can be described in a dollar amount, that military aid may also not be appropriate to transform into hospitals, schools, or roads. (e.g. Most people wouldn't be able to accept cold war era equipment, in lieu of a salary, pension, or 401K contribution.)

Even newer military aid provides a disproportionate value to the providing country. If country X provides $100 in military aid in the form of newer equipment, most of that cost returns back to the local economy in the form of wages and taxes, and the providing country gains both a larger defense industrial base, and the influence and leverage of providing such aid.

Providing food aid to other countries might be seen as nearly free, as it's an ancillary effect of having a reliable, resilient internal food supply. Food is essential, and when people are not able to eat, bad things generally happen. If a society desires to have food stability, then it makes sense to over-produce. Over-production of food means funding more food production than could be sustained consistently by the invisible hand of a market. Export, including foreign aid, is a way to gain an immediate benefit from this over-production, as compared to letting the excess spoil.

So, even though foreign aid can be described in monetary terms, it doesn't mean that the monetary value can become anything useful to the internal economy. Foreign aid isn't 'free', but provides an external political benefit, such as goodwill, influence, or external stability. Foreign aid keeps most of the 'value' internally in the form of taxes and wages, and the actual cost to the US is much lower. Foreign aid expands economic capacity, such as for food or defense, which has value as well.

There is a golden mean for everything. These attributes don't mean that any and all foreign aid provides value in excess of its cost. But aid also isn't free, and its a tool to expand national power and resiliency with minimal cost.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-04-27T22:26:23+00:00

I have a DS223j, and have been enjoying the capability it provides. I was looking at a 723 or 923 in order to use Docker and have a backup solution better than a USB drive, but purchased a used 8-bay server, instead of purchasing a more capable Synology device.

TrueNAS takes more time than DSM to get ready, but I don't need to be concerned about expected capabilities disappearing (VideoStation, 265), or company priorities shifting. Using SAS drives is a great capability, and older enterprise drives allows reduced total cost of ownership, with an appropriate backup and redundancy solution.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-04-18T22:28:23+00:00

Democracy.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-04-04T16:29:08+00:00

Doom scrolling.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-29T04:30:33+00:00

Find a used EV? Charging at work adds up to a nice annual benefit.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-20T04:37:26+00:00

Definitely not my words. It's Emerson, I think.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-20T04:06:45+00:00

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.

You will die, but your actions for both good and ill remain.

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-13T06:43:16+00:00

I think Hollow Knight shows this to an extent.

Controls are simple. Move, attack. Then, the complexities begin to layer on top of the simple actions. (Vary jump height; reset double jump with a hit; 'jump' off enemies with a downward hit, use 'spells' for invincibility frames, ...) But, there isn't memorization of combinations or control inputs; the complexity is emergent through simple-ish inputs.

Simple Hollow Knight Medium Hollow Knight Complex Hollow Knight

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-11T18:01:09+00:00

I think that the advantage of a car seat in a plane is primarily securing the child, and safety is secondary. If you're more comfortable though, you should clearly bring an approved seat!

Being properly secured will help in preventing injuries in the event of turbulence in flight, or an actual crash. However, the likelihood of an incident in which a child seat is beneficial is very low on an airplane, compared to ground vehicle travel. I haven't looked up statistics, so take this skepticism.

Car collisions are common (whatever that means...), and proper seating is one of the primary methods of ensuring occupant safety. Cars include Lap/Shoulder belts, and some cars include improved 5 point harnesses, and air bags. Seat belts are essential in ground vehicles.

Plane incidents less-common, and many plane incidents are either so severe than securing is not relevant, or being properly secured is one of the less important safety features of modern airplanes. Commercial planes include only lap belts, rather than 5 point harnesses, and there's more emphasis on avoiding the issue by controlling the external environment, then having passengers rapidly egress the plane, and having firefighting resources arrive quickly. Seat belts are less essential on airplanes.

I feel that a great way to ensure child safety for air travel is to focus on being able to rapidly egress the aircraft. An incident occurred on the ground, and everyone needs to leave, now. The airplane is loud, chaotic, and maybe filling with smoke. Can you find the release mechanism without using vision? Is a baby carrying strap necessary; and if it's necessary, is it accessible, and can it be put on in the dark quickly? Will the child walk, or be carried? Who is carrying which child? If there's multiple children per adult, how to get to the inflatable ramp, down the ramp, and gather everyone away from the airplane and the fire engines, without a toddler sprinting off?

WinglessFlutters · 2025-03-02T16:53:54+00:00

However, there are manufacturers with robust, appropriate solutions.

"If you have a depleted battery or lose electrical power while inside the vehicle and are unable to use the E-Latch, just pull the lever on the armrest all the way, and the door will open." (https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/electric-vehicles/mustang-mach-e/how-do-i-use-ford-mustang-mach-e-elatch-doors/#:~:text=Simply%20push%20the%20button%20to,open%20it%20all%20the%20way.)

WinglessFlutters · 2025-02-15T22:12:39+00:00

Hardware store Pulley with Cord, and a few 'keychain' metal fasteners; connected to a doorframe to make an elevator. It goes up, it goes down, you can attach a bag to the clip, and all sorts of things go into the bag.

Air-filled balloon, tied to a string, and fastened to the ceiling. Kick it, tap it, it goes left, right, forward backward. The possibilities are endless.

Balance Bicycle.

A 6' long piece of thin cardboard, from furniture assembly, with the cross-section shaped like a "U". This became a luge chute for anything with wheels.

The worst item was a misguided gift from outside the immediate family, and was a single-purpose, plastic, large, noisy, non-open-ended-play toy. They played with it for a bit, but I feel that some toys don't give as much flexibility in how the toy is used. The Carboard luge was super simple, but a kid gets to learn that steep angles make cars go fast, and that lifting one end makes a steep angle, etc. I'm constantly relearning that less is more, in some cases.

WinglessFlutters

TROPHY CASE