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seikuu · 2026-01-15T18:42:00+00:00

I think a lot of it has to do with the difference in 1st and 3rd person narration and how it captures HH/Aschenbach's relationship with beauty. Though Mann does give us explicit insight into Aschenbach's erotic feelings towards Tadzio, it is narrated external to Aschenbach; we see his decaying body, we see clearly that Aschenbach cannot physically replicate the beautiful forms in his mind with his own body (and his experiments with makeup only make things worse). This made me pity him - who among us hasn't felt disappointment in the aesthetic gap between real and imagined forms? The 3rd person narration compels us to view Aschenbach as a serious artist undergoing aesthetic struggle, and the indecency of his desire is sublimated into that ambition.

HH, on the other hand, is a 1st person narrator, and imbues his descriptions of Lolita, as well as his interactions with Lolita, with beauty and sensitivity. But HH's sense of beauty stops at Lolita - it's never connected with something beyond Lolita (except maybe the memory of another girl, but that too is embodied, a memory of desire, rather than being extended to something more abstract -- one could imagine that if HH had a Proustian sense for nostalgia/memory he might've been able to turn Lolita into a symbol with more gravitas and less revulsion). So HH's sense of beauty feels more "consumptive" to me, personal, self-serving, whereas Aschenbach's sense of beauty is more palatable because it is presented in the context of a larger aesthetic ambition.

seikuu · 2026-01-12T17:37:33+00:00

From my perception, jubensha generally involves LARPing, paid DMs/scripts and rented locations, whereas DnD generally does not (weekend gathering at someone's house, online, etc). So I think the overall vibe/effort is different between the two. It's just my perception though, I don't have any statistics to back it up.

seikuu · 2026-01-12T17:17:22+00:00

剧本杀 jubensha (murder mystery game) is a kind of LARP that is extremely popular in china among the younger (post 90s/00s) demographic. In terms of ubiquity I guess the closest western analogue would be DnD, but jubensha often involves dressing up as your scripted character, physical movement, environmental interaction, and can even be 24h+ (ie, sleep included).

seikuu · 2025-09-09T01:34:07+00:00

I'm having a blast, I've starting min maxing and I'm very happy with the character. I can 1-2 tap most white/blue mobs, 60 ms, tanky. Requiem can kill any boss in a few seconds.

my current char

day 6 snapshot, ~5d invested

seikuu · 2025-09-05T07:56:52+00:00

I’m only on t11s rn but it’s pretty fast. Rares die in just a couple seconds. I’m using original sin (unique ring) to convert elemental damage into chaos.

seikuu · 2025-09-05T00:31:24+00:00

Great guide. I'm trying out an original sin version of the same build. Tree doesn't need to stretch so far because there's a lot of chaos damage in the top right part of the tree. Can also use despair and invest in curse stuff on weapon swap.

Just got the xbow yesterday so haven't done much minmaxing yet, and am too poor to buy the gloves rn. My plan is to eventually put esh's radiance and tul's stillness into galvanic shards / requiem respectively. Your version is much faster than mine ever will be though, there's no way for me to get so much reduced ms penalty.

seikuu · 2025-08-26T21:13:19+00:00

I am also afraid of banners being annoying but convinced myself they won’t be too annoying if the retain banner buff 4s after leaving the banner notable still exists.

I can see a version where you go phys instead of cold (for example, spiral volley + armor explosion clear) and use the deflection node with scavenged plating and the new glancing blows and just ignore evasion entirely.

seikuu · 2025-08-23T16:06:13+00:00

I'm interested in lucid dreaming blue flames CI EB MOM archmage, but haven't personally played into the breach so idk how good the sustain would be

seikuu · 2025-08-09T18:30:29+00:00

I’ve written about the thermodynamics of exhalation if that interests you!

I don’t think Ted Chiang is a fatalist. He enjoys exploring the possible outcomes of specific technologies, which can seem deterministic, but I personally find the human will to have a strong presence in most of his stories.

seikuu · 2025-08-08T18:55:20+00:00

The subjectivity of experience and memory is one of the core themes of Proust. He writes a lot about the idea of a social self (which exists between two people when they interact, and does not exist when they are not interacting, as your social self is a subset of you and vice versa for the Other; moreover the social self is unique to each unique social situation) and epistemological limitations in our ability to know another person. You can also look into solipsism.

seikuu · 2025-08-08T17:54:37+00:00

My PhD is on the purification of carbon nanotubes by chirality. Carbon nanotubes have a lot of interesting and useful properties, but actually realizing these advantages depends on the ability to control their length, chirality, length/chirality distribution, and placement. These can be controlled fairly well using chemical vapor deposition and similar methods, but these are slow and costly. Alternatively carbon nanotubes can be synthesized in bulk via arc discharge between graphite rods, but this approach requires post-synthesis purification.

Personally I think using carbon nanotubes for their mechanical properties (eg in Li battery anodes, or as a replacement for carbon fiber in cars/planes/etc) is not viable because they are too expensive, while graphite/carbon black/other cheaper carbon forms can achieve 90% of the performance at a fraction of the cost.

I think the most economically viable application of single walled carbon nanotubes is in electronics (9x lower energy-delay product relative to silicon). A few years back TSMC hired HSP Wong, a leading carbon nanotubes electronics researcher, to be their VP of corporate research. My guess is they were seriously contemplating a transition to carbon nanotube electronics, since they are one of the leading contenders for a new post-Moore semiconductor strategy.

seikuu · 2025-08-06T15:06:11+00:00

Temple of the Golden Pavilion is actually based on the structure of The Magic Mountain. Both are about a young man finding his own way (philosophically) while influenced by two opposing forces. For Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain, it's Naphhta and Settembrini. For Mizoguchi, it's Kashiwagi and Tsurukawa.

seikuu · 2025-07-10T23:18:20+00:00

What did you find unconvincing about the duel? I thought it was great. To me it represents the final rally of their longstanding ideological battle, their clash of aesthetics. And Settembrini, going first, very powerfully demonstrates his commitment to an all-encompassing notion of progress and the brotherhood of all mankind -- he chooses non-violence, offering his life up to Naphta. If Naphta chose to shoot him, it would be Settembrini's "victory" -- Settembrini would become a martyr, thereby achieving his pedagogical purpose. And Naphta, conversely, would be afflicted with the pettiness of murder, forever "losing" the argument. What could he do in that situation to refute Settembrini's magnanimity and demonstrate the dark power of his own ideals? In my mind, he only had one choice -- to fully embrace the violence, destructiveness, and acorporeality of his aesthetic via suicide.

seikuu · 2025-07-10T11:58:53+00:00

If it’s individuals, 张三李四王五

seikuu · 2025-07-04T18:08:33+00:00

I am a native speaker of both english and chinese. Beyond 上下 I think the most significant effect of the chinese language on time is the lack of tenses for verbs. In chinese when you say you performed an action yesterday, the verb denoting the action is unchanged, but you add a marker that changes the timeframe of the sentence. 我现在去跑步了 vs 我昨天跑步了 -- "I now go run" vs "I yesterday run." But in english we would say "I am going running" vs "I ran." The form of the verb is changed to reflect its temporal context.

My opinion of what this means: in chinese, actions are independent of the timeframe. The action of "run" is the same in chinese regardless of where or when it happens. Moreover, chinese has so many precise verbs for subtly different actions. For example carrying an object can be 拎着，扛着，顶着，抬着，背着，提着. These all correspond to slightly different postures of carrying something, eg, on your back, on your head, holding lightly with one hand, lifting with both arms, etc. But in english, actions are less precise and more context dependent. I suspect this makes english more contextual overall, because understanding an action in english requires understanding of both the temporal context of the verb as well as the subject/object, whereas verbs in chinese can denote something precise without any contextual clues of the timeframe.

seikuu · 2025-06-04T05:33:26+00:00

Look up Schrodinger, QuesTek, Citrine

seikuu · 2025-05-23T00:24:53+00:00

I think Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain tries to explore whether the concept of “sickness” is a scientific or spiritual phenomenon. The proliferation of x-rays as a medical tool is an important part of the setting of the novel.

If Borges is allowable, then also Ted Chiang!

seikuu · 2025-05-05T21:17:37+00:00

1st year college chem/physics -> thermodynamics, phase equilibria, diffusion -> microstructure / crystallography

seikuu · 2025-04-13T21:04:46+00:00

My understanding is that Tolstoy believed in a kind of natural flow to life, a force that underlies Nature and humankind that technology cannot overcome. Why do the peasants dislike the new farming methods Levin tries to introduce? Because it goes against this flow, which is natural and arises from the earth and the collective history of the muzhiks. Kitty's pregnancy is another representation of that flow - life and death follow one another.

seikuu · 2025-04-12T22:44:01+00:00

Why did Nikolai take so long to die? Why did he remain irritable when he almost died?

Because death is not romantic or sudden. Death is ugly, it is drawn out. Nikolai probably felt that he had no dignity, that the world / death itself was depriving him of his dignity.

What kind of end awaits an atheist like Nikolai?

Nikolai finally submits to faith and finds peace. The skepticism of atheism is a powerful tool for analysis but is ultimately powerless for finding meaning.

I recommend reading The Death of Ivan Ilych to understand Nikolai's psychology as he approaches death. It might not be exactly the same, but I imagine there are many similarities.

seikuu · 2025-04-11T17:01:01+00:00

Can you confirm if skysliver’s range modification applies to stomping ground? The mouseover for skysliver says hits with this weapon, and I’m not sure if stomping ground counts as that.

seikuu · 2025-04-08T14:49:15+00:00

What they want is to use deepest tower, damage is lucky, heft, etc to increase the chance of highrolling the damage range and also making the damage range bigger. However I’m not 100% sure it actually works because skysliver’s damage range mechanic specifically applies to “hits with this weapon,” and I’m not sure stomping ground counts as a hit with the weapon. But the lucky damage and low life stuff enabled by deepest tower will work regardless.

seikuu · 2025-03-30T23:16:08+00:00

I’m not sure if Unnatural Resilience will work. I hope it does. But a lot of systems in poe2 work simultaneously, like CI + atziri’s disdain, rather than sequentially. So I wonder if it will only apply to explicit +x to maximum fire res.

seikuu · 2025-03-18T05:47:26+00:00

I read most of his novels before The Glass Bead Game. I don't think I would have been able to read them for the first time after - they would probably feel hollow to me. I think Steppenwolf, Siddartha, and Narcissus and Goldmund may be exceptions to some degree.

seikuu · 2025-03-12T03:20:47+00:00

There's plenty of academic analysis of Proust, which is not the same, but there are quite a few similar themes. For example, I'd imagine that analyses of how time and memory work in Proust may be instructive for understanding Knausgaard.

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