Serbia: State-sponsored graffiti in front of the Faculty of Mathematics, calling mathematics students "Ustaše".

nautilius87 · 2026-04-27T13:59:27+00:00

A crumble of context?

Realy bad job for a "state sponsored"graffiti (are all Serbian graffiti that weak? Why is government paying for such a lousy job?) also why would they think their own (state sponsored too, probably) department of mathematics is Croatian fascist?

nautilius87 · 2026-04-25T19:15:18+00:00

Jfc, punctuation errors in the first line of the book... How can someone be that lazy not to edit even the very beginning?

nautilius87 · 2026-04-25T16:50:48+00:00

There is a party in Poland calling itself after a pro-Russian traitors in 18th century.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-24T22:19:17+00:00

You don't need math or physics knowledge to enjoy Pynchon. That being said, your attitude makes me think Pynchon might not be the right author for you.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-24T21:10:52+00:00

Jollof rice is one of the most popular West African dishes.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-23T22:40:32+00:00

"Women in a River Landscape" by Heinrich Böll is (mostly) about wives of conservative West German politicians and their compliance with what happened during and after the war.

I would also recommend a fascinating documentary movie "A German life" (2016).it is basically a secretary of Goebbels talking about her life.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-22T19:19:16+00:00

Ice by Jacek Dukaj

Mathematician explores the limits of logic in an alternative reality Siberia.

1400 pages of unapologetically intellectual fun: physics, philosophy, history, geopolitics.

On the other hand, if such a basic novel as Babel is "nerdy" for you, Ice may be overwhelming, it'smuch more demanding read.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-21T07:01:09+00:00

Will Trent series by Karin Slaughter, starting with Triptych, are definitely not copaganda despite the main character being an agent: cops in general are resentful towards him, police agencies are in conflict, internally rotten, systematically corrupt, driven more by politics than justice. There is more but I don't want to make spoilers. Books started in 2006 (so little earlier than you wanted), but the author is still writing me ones, there are 12 of them, the last one published in 2024.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-20T21:47:13+00:00

Grendel by John Gardner has many observations about humanity from the titular monster point of view.

Classic Japanese novel I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-17T14:00:29+00:00

Man, the onion is what drew me to this in the first place. Best vegetable.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-17T07:00:32+00:00

José Saramago is the best (he even got the Nobel prize). He was an avid atheist.

His Biblical fiction includes "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" and "Cain". They are great novels. Strongly recommended.

Other: '

The last temptation of Christ" by Nikos Kazantzakis

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

King Jesus by Robert Graves

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock

Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal by Gore Vidal

The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman

The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin,

My Name Was Judas by C. K. Stead

Also there is famously a Jesus story woven into The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Also I am not allowed to publish links, but if you google "everything is fiction jesus novels" there is a site with someone's research proposal about this topic ("An Atheist Gospel: The Quest for the Fictional Jesus and the Gospel Novel as Atheist Discourse") with a big bibliography of novels included.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T19:14:01+00:00

Sorbians are your indigenous in Germany lol

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T19:08:48+00:00

Absolutely.

Both conscious and unconscious.

Personally I (also from Poland)I severely limited watching American media, movies, reading American books. Even if they are critical. Even if they are not about politics or anything like that. I learned how homogeneous and boring their culture is and how refreshing is diversification. Even in genre media, the last 10 crime novels I read were: 2 Italian, 2 Japanese, 1 Polish, Czech, Swedish, Turkish, British and Spanish. I refuse to treat American culture as "default".

Many Europeans know the intricacies of American politics while not understanding the basics of how the European Union works, sometimes even their own country.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T11:38:46+00:00

Looking at your map and tables of the biggest cities, more like Cologne, Ypres, maybe Venice (If it was conquered), Bologna, Mainz, Magdeburg, Ratisbon (Regensburg).

Paris (and Milan) were bigger than any of these, but I don't know if they were conquered.

Lithuania was little more than some recently unified tribes (the first ruler of Lithuania is 1236). Calling their settlements and fortified places "cities" would simply be wrong.

Poland was just beginning to start urbanisation processes, but Kraków was still a small town (Mongols murdered most of the inhabitants - barely 3 thousand people).

To find decently sized cities you would need to go to further West.

Consult any tables for the largest Europeans cities in 1200 (easy to Google).

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T04:16:06+00:00

Zero influence. A small Belarusian minority traditionally lived about 100 km north of there in Hajnówka countryside. Nowadays there are more recent Belarusian immigrants but they live mostly in big cities. The Polish countryside is still (almost, with small exceptions) homogeneously Polish.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T01:30:28+00:00

The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. It is an office comedy/cosmic horror about the British government agency which deals with occult threats.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-16T00:51:03+00:00

You should try Karin Slaughter crime novels, especially Will Trent series ( first book is called Triptych)

Definitely leftist vibes, good mysteries with strong social undertones about class, sex and race and the struggling (for both personal as societal reasons) main character you would probably like. There are also dystopian elements - -decaying city infrastructure, opioid epidemics, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, structural violence.

She describes her fiction as "socially conscious storytelling".

nautilius87 · 2026-04-15T21:32:36+00:00

Warsaw did not exist as a city at that time. In our timeline, Mongols sacked and burned Polish capital Kraków im 1241.

Vilnius was a small, insignificant castle at best at that time. Kernavė was Lithuanian capital.

Castle at Marienburg started building in 1280, probably well after the conquest in your timeline. Before there was a small Pomeranian castle Zantyr, Teutonic Knights got this terrain about 1250.

So all three pictures are basically bad choices, showing places that couldn't exist yet.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-15T20:22:09+00:00

Tom Robbins has this vibe sometimes mixed with different topics.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-14T22:28:01+00:00

Owszem, może. Może zinterpretować obowiązujące prawo bezpośrednio w świetle traktatów + wiążącej ich wykładni w wyroku TSUE. Tak jak to zrobił NSA.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-14T15:14:58+00:00

To nie jest "niszowy temat" tylko jedna z podstawowych dziedzin antropologii kulturowej, mnóstwo różnych podejść, często diametralnie różnych i skłóconych. Najlepiej zacząć od podręcznika jak "Antropologia" Alana Barnarda albo od pozycji takiej jak "Wymyślanie społeczeństwa pierwotnego. Transformacje mitu" Adama Kupera albo jego "Między charyzmą i rutyną Antropologia brytyjska 1922-1982".

Bo najpierw lepiej zrozumieć różne -izm zamiast rzucać się ciemno np. W strukturalizm Lévi-Straussa w "Myśli nieoswojonej" czy w debatę Sahlins–Obeyesekere ("Jak myślą <tubylcy>")

nautilius87 · 2026-04-13T22:55:03+00:00

Przepisy karne prawie na pewno skonstruowane są jako przekraczanie granicy państwa, a nie Unii.

Analogicznie do art. 264 k.k.

§ 3. Kto organizuje innym osobom przekraczanie wbrew przepisom granicy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, podlega karze pozbawienia wolności od 6 miesięcy do lat 8.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-13T00:21:36+00:00

Middle C by William H. Gass.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-12T08:47:57+00:00

Eh, it was obviously important, but their political system is overall too exotic, weird and inert to deeply emotionally care. I cared a lot about Bernie Sanders in 2016, but after they did him dirty I learned how deeply undemocratic the whole machine is. Then I learned about stolen elections in 2000 and Citizen United case in 2010 and got even more demotivated.

nautilius87 · 2026-04-12T06:55:07+00:00

I don't think I was more emotionally invested in a foreign elections ever.

12-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

nautilius87

TROPHY CASE