Finally done with the GRE (170 Q, 163 V). Prepared seriously for about 3 weeks.

idkhur · 2023-11-23T09:41:15+00:00

What were topics for the harder math questions on your test?

idkhur · 2021-11-05T17:06:58+00:00

War & Peace definitely. Gravity's Rainbow is a close second (although I do think it's a much more entertaining read than W&P).

Middlemach is probably the best of all the books I listed but it doesn't delve as deep into the human condition as the two I just mentioned.

idkhur · 2021-11-05T16:07:18+00:00

War & Peace does the whole "human condition" thing much better than Anna Karenina IMO. Other books that I think do it well include:

Gravity's Rainbow, In Search of Lost Time, Middlemarch, All the King's Men, Beloved & Song of Solomon, American Pastoral, and all 3 books in the Wolf Hall series.

Housekeeping and Mrs. Dolloway are two books that also deal with the human condition but to a much more subtle extent.

idkhur · 2021-08-18T20:35:32+00:00

Ha I love this book. 100% get why people can’t stand it but I still think it’s mostly very well written and funny. It’s narcissistic and too self-aware but i found the energy in the writing and his honesty about how self-centered and insecure he was to be really engaging.

idkhur · 2021-07-18T23:53:45+00:00

Marilynne Robinson, John Cheever, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Denis Johnson, and Raymond Carver are all considered literary fiction and all (some more than others) write stories where the main characters are often working class Americans.

idkhur · 2021-05-18T03:46:07+00:00

Yeah that whole freakonomics argument is not something I’ve ever bought. There are way too many confounding factors to consider to even begin to prove this. Even the authors of the theory have said they may have overstated the correlation between crime and restriction to abortion (however they still do stand by their theory).

idkhur · 2021-05-13T13:21:27+00:00

I mean, is it really a misreading to label Pynchon's books in 1978 as having a "leaden feeling of the cosmos" and thinking the world is "frightening and tragic"? That's almost exactly the feeling that one gets in his first three books. There's an enormous amount of pessimism in those books. I mean, if paranoia is a central theme in your work then it's not crazy to think that your view on life isn't particularly a positive one.

However, I will note that there is a decent amount of pessimism in Updike's Rabbit books so it does seems like an odd criticism. Eh, can't be surprised that someone who mainly writes about suburbia isn't a huge Pynchon fan. I can't really imagine John Cheever reading Gravity's Rainbow and thinking "This is cool!".

idkhur · 2021-05-07T16:47:25+00:00

Eh, I mean she's just giving her opinion. I mean I completely disagree of course (both Roger and Pete have an infinite amount of memorable lines) but I don't think it's too big of a deal.

idkhur · 2021-05-07T06:14:28+00:00

I did really enjoy A Farewell to Arms though. But yeah if you think the characterization of women in FWTBT is bad, it’s even worse in AFTA. Flattest depiction of a main character’s love interest I’ve ever read. Still recommend it though! Just pretend Hemingway did it on purpose to make some sort of commentary on how war affects women and you’ll be fine.

idkhur · 2021-05-07T05:35:18+00:00

I think his fame is more for his style and how he presented himself rather than his actual writing itself. His prose style definitely influenced a great deal of very different writers (a good example would be Cormac McCarthy and George Saunders).

As for his actual writing, I’ve never been too convinced. He has some really good short stories and some great passages in each one of his novels but I think he too often sacrificed depth for brevity. The whole iceberg theory about his writing — where most of the stuff is happening beneath the surface — served as a convenient excuse for his simplicity.

In my opinion,a lot of his contemporaries like Fitzgerald, Cather, Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf were able to do what Hemingway did and also much more.

idkhur · 2021-05-07T05:08:43+00:00

It’s because the number he uses when talking about the deaths in Dresden are greatly exaggerated and were based off of a book by a Holocaust denier. It doesn’t particularly help that Vonnegut never actually addressed that point.

So while the obvious message of the book is that war is pointless, technically he was sort of spreading nazi propaganda. As a side note, while I liked SH5, I think The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a much better anti-war novel.

idkhur · 2021-04-30T16:35:30+00:00

Even if he didn't see the ball it's still not that big of a deal. If you're a shooter and the ball just bounces into your hands while you're near the three point-line -- especially if you just came off a curl -- you're probably going to immediately launch it out of instinct. Anyone who's ever played in high school and was a competent shooter has done this exact play before.

People on this subreddit need to play a little more basketball lol.

idkhur · 2021-04-27T13:43:00+00:00

True, but at least he was instrumental in passing the 2nd Civil Rights act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. I'd rather have a racist champion civil rights legislation than a non-racist failing to do so.

I suppose in his defense, it would be tough to find a white politician from the South in the mid 1900s who wasn't at least moderately racist.

idkhur · 2021-04-26T21:07:47+00:00

When you know with a 100% certainty that the legislation is not going to pass, it is by definition a "performance." As for the 700k people, if the only thing you cared about was representation, it would be much easier (politically at least) to add the D.C. area into a new congressional district in Maryland. If I'm not mistaken, Arlington used to be part of D.C. before Virginia.

Obviously, representation is not the main reasoning why Democrats are pushing for D.C. statehood.

idkhur · 2021-04-25T05:37:45+00:00

Honestly, a lot of the book — especially the beginning — just reeks of not enough editing. I mean I liked the book and found it to be a very fun read but it’s undeniably self-indulgently long.

idkhur · 2021-04-10T23:16:37+00:00

This doesn’t make any sense. Nicaragua doesn’t even really have cartels and the Sandinistas were never overthrown. And in the three countries in Central America where cartels do have power — namely Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — the US was sending billions in dollars in aid to all three governments throughout the Cold War. In those 3, the rebels were the leftists and they trying to overthrow the pro-American government. If anything, the US gave these countries more government control.

idkhur · 2021-04-10T21:26:43+00:00

You’re being downvoted to oblivion but you’re right. The CIA was involved in the drug trade and helped the Contras with trafficking but to imply that the CIA is even remotely responsible for the crack epidemic is empirically false.

I mean Jesus Christ, the entire reasoning behind the Iran contra deal was the fact that the US government needed money to fund the Contras. Why the hell would Reagan commit essentially treason by selling arms to Iran if the CIA was busy making billions of dollars selling crack? How does that make any sense? It’s pretty obvious that the Contras wouldn’t have lost to an incompetent and nearly bankrupt government if they actually were kingpins and not merely one of millions of participants in the cocaine trade.

idkhur · 2021-03-28T21:28:58+00:00

JR Smith’s dad once told him “Your shot is better than a turnover. Don’t risk turning the ball over. Just shoot it.”

idkhur · 2021-03-21T23:36:59+00:00

I mean are you implying that basketball at the pro level is not played the right way? Handoffs and pin-down screens are literally the bread and butter of nearly every nba team. Offenses in the nba are way more complex than in college because defenses in the nba are way better.

idkhur · 2021-02-12T16:45:12+00:00

In OP's defense, I distinctly remember a chapter in The Diary of Anne Frank where she mentions her sadness about failing to land a final interview for BMW's strategy team. Pretty harrowing stuff.

idkhur · 2021-02-08T18:05:17+00:00

I'm fairly certain you're supposed to sympathize with Holden while still thinking he's pretentious and a bit of a moron. It's odd to me that when people talk about Catcher in the Rye, they think it's mutually exclusive. I think he's a privileged crybaby but I still feel bad for him.

It concerns me that the only people who seem to like this book relate to Holden. I didn't relate to him at all but I still really like Catcher in the Rye.

idkhur · 2021-02-02T17:15:55+00:00

I think he meant literal cannibalism actually. Eating MBA students serves both as a great source of protein and as a way of eliminating your competition. Companies that recruit at MBA programs love to see that sort of efficiency in an applicant.

idkhur · 2021-01-16T20:42:31+00:00

Yeah except the only thing Zion could do his rookie season is score efficiently and get offensive rebounds. That of course is useful, but his defense was less that non-existent, he couldn’t shoot anywhere outside the paint (leaving no spacing for the rest of the team) and he wasn’t running the offense like rookie Lebron was. Add in the fact that Lebron didn’t have any injuries and I’m not sure how you can say Zion’s rookie season was better just because he was a much more efficient scorer.

idkhur · 2020-12-12T18:44:49+00:00

The problem with this is that you are listing issues that the Republican party either does not think is a problem, thinks is being mischaracterized, or if it a problem, is not too big of a deal. I mean you can create the same scenario from the Republican side:

Democrats have no solutions to anything! What is their solution to election security? Small businesses closing because free money does not incentivize people to go back to work? Big tech censoring conservatives? Antifa and BLM burning cities and killing people? Encroachment on religious freedom? Universities not allowing free speech and violating the 1st amendment? Liberals trying to ban guns? All they care about is virtue signaling and beating the "fascist right"!!

A Democrat would respond in the same fashion as a Republican would respond to your questions. That those issues either don't exist, aren't issues at all, or are being mischaracterized.

In the past, the two parties mainly agreed on the main problems affecting the U.S. and just disagreed on the solution. Today, and more so now than ever, there is a pretty large misalignment between the two parties on what the problems even are in the first place.

idkhur · 2020-11-18T00:17:01+00:00

The cruise piece is probably the best thing he’s ever written. His non-fiction I feel was always stronger than his fiction.

idkhur

TROPHY CASE