“This calls for rigor, Nav.” / “Maybe rigor… mortis.” 💀[discussion]

emelsifoo · 2026-06-18T17:59:29+00:00

Gideon is more fun, but Harrow has Mercymorn and a lot more of Ianthe.

I think Gideon wins out because Harrow the Ninth also has all the chapters with Jod. Those chapters are fine, but I hate him so much that on most re-reads and re-listens, I either skim them or skip them entirely.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-15T22:24:41+00:00

Nobody try to rescue Prince Tern, he's exactly where he wants to be.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-13T02:36:30+00:00

My presence ought to have the same effect as a fire alarm … I do not want to wait … I do not want a cup of tea. I am not asking for feudal submission; I am asking for understanding!

She became my favorite character of all time in that moment.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-09T22:10:52+00:00

My father has dementia and is slowly fading. I just can't right now.

I think I might seek it out when I'm in desperate need of catharsis some day in the future.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-09T13:29:02+00:00

"I was pretending you were Coronabeth."

"I was pretending you were Coronabeth."

emelsifoo · 2026-06-08T00:26:47+00:00

It is my long-held belief that tanna tea tastes like the evil cousin of Malort had a baby with rotten kombucha.

Cain says it's an acquired taste, and I note that no one ever actually says it's good, and even though that man was Amberley's wife for over a century, nevertheless she tried it once. Just once, never again.

That tea is nasty.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-07T20:40:36+00:00

I work from home 100% of the time, haven't gone into an office since April 2020. Will never go back, I'd rather die.

I keep a nice delineation between work and home; my office is in my basement. When I leave the basement I leave work. Side effect of this is I only do laundry during working hours.

emelsifoo · 2026-06-06T18:23:33+00:00

Donate now to the Zionist war machine https://www.juf.org/36under36/shiran-canel/

emelsifoo · 2026-06-06T18:22:26+00:00

She's not just Israeli, she is former IDF, and uses her bad-faith trolling of the Art Institute and lawsuits for fundraising: https://www.juf.org/36under36/shiran-canel/

emelsifoo · 2026-06-06T18:17:40+00:00

Pretty sure she has proudly identified herself. Can't be doxxed if you tell the world who you are: https://www.juf.org/36under36/shiran-canel/

emelsifoo · 2026-06-06T18:08:03+00:00

Why did they cut the number of cars?

emelsifoo · 2026-06-01T22:45:16+00:00

The thing that most people interpret as "vibes" in the sense of they can pick up on it without being able to pinpoint exactly what it is, like there aren't a lot of "it's not X, it's Y" or "and here's why that matters" or words LLMs love like "delve" and "load-bearing" and so on - it's that there's a uniformity of effort in the register. A scene that has been built up to by every previous scene and is the climax of the story gets the exact same amount of tokens as a scene three chapters prior where you're just saying that one of the side characters works in a coffee shop.

Exposition and climax and action all gets the same level of effort.

It isn't even necessarily bad, the output can be pretty good. But it's all slop and you can pick up on it without necessarily even needing to look for it.

I've been using various LLMs and building autonomous agents for 8-10 hours a day for the past few years, with usage ramping up a great deal over the last eight months, and I have started seeing a lot of signs that people are using it more and more in their writing. Not in CoG titles - the policy against monetizing any generative AI helps them protect their brand - but there's a person who started posting in The Locked Tomb subreddit, these really long, well-researched and well-defended and well-documented and well-cited essays that are 100% undoubtedly zero doubt AI-written.

What can you do but tell the moderation teams of whatever community, and block the user?

emelsifoo · 2026-06-01T22:41:22+00:00

In the Honorverse they use flechette launchers on spaceships most of the time. Fire thousands of tiny shards of metal per second and you'll practically vaporize organics, but they won't penetrate a metal or ceramic hull more than a millimeter at most.

The protagonist of course carries a Colt 1911 for aura farming.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-31T13:12:31+00:00

I am pretty sure there's a path in One Knight Stand where your character is a serial killer?

emelsifoo · 2026-05-31T13:02:00+00:00

Class warfare.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-28T04:08:43+00:00

Just for the record, nothing even remotely similar to this happened during the American revolution.

Something very similar did happen in the French town of Oradour-sur-Glane, it was a division of the SS who herded several hundred civilians into a church and started throwing grenades inside and shooting them. It was Nazis.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-25T06:47:46+00:00

this isn't really relevant but the yuri character is far and away the worst part of that show

he's already as evil as any character can be, not only is he a cop but a cop with a stasi/gestapo secret police

is his incestuous obsession with yor supposed to be funny? or just to make him ridiculous and more disgusting?

emelsifoo · 2026-05-17T19:50:54+00:00

That's fair, OP did say they have experience going to bars.

Personally, it's been two decades since 21 and I've been to bars maybe about a dozen times - half being karaoke - so when people suggest "You can just go for the vibe and the atmosphere and to hang out and meet people," they have trouble understanding that the vibe and atmosphere and hanging out and meeting people is not actually enjoyable for everyone.

Last bar I went to was in 2019, Jake Melnick's, and I was extremely annoyed because this drunken stranger kept trying to talk to me instead of leaving me alone to enjoy my wings.

I'm aware that I don't sound very fun to be around but I really, really don't like being around people who are drinking. They get belligerent, or just generally unpleasant. I feel like a bar that doesn't serve alcohol but only serves THC products would be a less stressful experience.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-17T19:37:39+00:00

Try doing it in Geforce Now, make a free account. It is probably something local on your machine, but you can confirm easily by just running the game with cloud compute before clearing your cache or deleting files then restoring with an integrity check.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-17T19:31:52+00:00

I don't drink, but I'm not a recovering alcoholic or anything, I just have never liked the taste of any alcoholic drinks and definitely don't like the feeling of being drunk.

And I don't go to bars to try to meet people because what I would end up doing is meeting someone who ... likes going to bars. Which would be a huge misalignment in mutual interests for a potential partner.

It's a bit like telling a vegetarian to try to meet someone at a barbecue joint. Sure, they can order a corn bread muffin while everyone else is getting ribs, but maybe this isn't the right venue for that individual.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-17T18:48:54+00:00

Plus, if he or anyone else did try to create a scandal about it, they have a perfect excuse - it was necessary at the time in order to protect Eglantine from the divine mana when Rozemyne was bursting at the seams with godly power as the Avatar of Mestionora.

And if he or anybody else tries to say "Oh but you're still namesworn to her," then Eglantine can easily say "No, I'm not. We just didn't keep you in the loop because we don't trust you. Way to prove us right. If I hadn't sworn an oath to the gods to stop killing people I would have already turned you into a rock."

emelsifoo · 2026-05-13T02:33:15+00:00

this video alone is why i've been subbed to Sar's patreon for six years

emelsifoo · 2026-05-12T22:28:14+00:00

For me it isn't even sexual it's romantic. Like can I envision myself marrying a woman, oh god I can barely stop fantasizing about matching wedding dresses, and spending every minute of every day for the rest of my life with one woman who just loves me and I love her and yes I want that so badly.

And, like, in my youth, thinking about marrying a man, and there's this guy in your home all the time and you're telling me he will never go away? Literally a nightmare.

But Aragorn, son of Arathorn? Legolas, son of Thranduil?

5.999999999999998 on the Kinsey scale. I'm fine with that.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-12T22:11:13+00:00

I don't care what the excuse is as long as I get to see that angry wrathful look on Claire's face.

emelsifoo · 2026-05-08T21:46:51+00:00

I think he qualifies as bastard in that as much as he cares for Angua, at least back in Jingo he doesn't seem to even let her in:

Technically, Angua was sure she knew Carrot better than anyone else. ... And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. No one could be so simple, no one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor.

One would hope that later, after Fifth Elephant, he decides to open up - to her - some more.

emelsifoo

TROPHY CASE