I didn't get to enjoy Lower Decks until yesterday (didn't know it's the last season!), sent all the paperwork, and during the faculty 'party' mentioned to my colleagues I'll be applying for sabbatical. If I get it, awesome. If I don't, then well, I'll just work extra hard on isolating myself from all the bullshit and start leaving unfinished shit at work faster than a Swede at 15:00.

Merry!

As a resident Slav: Latkes 'pair' amazingly well with kefir or sour milk (or buttermilk if these are too much) to drink, or thick goulash and a glob of heavy cream if you want a hearty dish.

I don't even have it in me to re-bitch from chat. At this point, I'd support even literal anarchists, libertarians, and nazis if it'd mean I only have to do a tenth of this paperwork. Bargaining stage, hooooo!

Anyway. There's an idea we play Pendragon RPG sometime after the New Year's, and... man, the mechanics of this game look bitchin', but I just don't give a toss about who wants to duel and/or bone whom with Picts and Saxons in the background. It should appeal to my Crusader Kings-attuned brain, but there's the rub: I like CK2 because there's freedom and challenge comes from that freedom. If I want to conquer Europe as Taoist Hans and introduce bakagaijins to Confucianism and tea, then I absolutely fucking can (try to) do just that. Hell, I even acquired Carolingian and Attila's bloodline along the way while one of my distant relatives converted to Catholicism out of spite, lived 89 years, and crusaded against me twice, spawning a saintly bloodline in the process. It was a wild ride that could have gone wrong at any point, but it didn't despite the overwhelming odds and everyone hating you for being a foreign infidel.

In Pendragon, I can't shake off the feeling you're free to do your little thing, but they're inconsequential because the Legends have to go along the predestined historical way (aka railroading)... and that's just not why I play RPGs? Maybe I'm missing something and it'll turn out awesome, but dang, I'd like to like this game more but currently just don't see how I could.

EDIT/Addendum: Otherwise, gonna binge the last season of Lower Decks this weekend. Looks promising. Gf can't stand Shatner's liberal understanding of diction, but maybe I can get her into DS9 next.

Don't be so down on yourself. A therapist or friend applying dry wit thoughtfully can be invaluable.

There isn't some 'one size fits all' fix. People, regardless of their science literacy, like easy answers and explaining climate change is all but that. You can (and should) still find reasons why people doubt, and even though you'll often find shit that boils down to "teachers spent years calling me an idiot for expressing individual thought, but had nothing but praise for those regurgitators (who are now those so-called 'experts')" it's still worthwhile to recognize their reasons first and not expect change overnight. Some will ponder an argument like "if you're so opposed to citing sources, why are you regurgitating this podcast? can't you explain it in your words?" others will think you've been indoctrinated beyond hope. You could very well be the first person who listens to them, and some people are so accustomed to being dismissed they won't even accept you could be genuine. So, yeah, pick your battles and treat them as people rather than stereotypes. That's so pointlessly general I'm gonna high-five my maths degree.

Me? I thought the above about humanities verbatim, because here I was, a 14-year-old with buncha stories published in a national magazine and some old bag kept telling me I must not have a soul for not liking a book where literal trees had more character development than all the *gonists combined. I didn't need to be traumatized to change opinion, just experience positive feedback and interact with, you know, people who don't immediately equate "I didn't think of this" or "I didn't think of it that way" with "it must be wrong. "

I've been unmedicated for the last six weeks, and although my energy level is all over the place, nothing feels as 'alien' as it did before. Interacting with people isn't grating on my nerves. My hearing isn't overloaded all the time. Random anxieties feel like outside thoughts that can be dismissed instead of taking over like they used to. And seasonal disorder is the real deal; I'm drowsy and yawning all the time without a trace of antidepressants in my body, despite having tweaked every screen to flood my eyes with extra blue light. 'Hazy' is a good word.

This is a temporary, motivated to both check my heart etc while meds-less and gauge mental changes, gonna go back to quetiapine in a couple of weeks, but it's been truly an eye-opening experience.

Ancient post is ancient. I've been flip-flopping on this whole issue of language extinction and preservation, and it's really hard to leave the "if it's so culturally important, how come nobody cared to use it to communicate culture?" position by some point. Maybe this will prompt discussion, maybe I'll get lynched. Let's roll.

Language isn't anywhere near as much of an art form as it once was, and in my opinion, that is a shame.

I agree with you, spirit of the Talk Like a Yoda Day's past, but few people of ability could ever take 11 years to write something, averaging out 40 syllables per week under a lucrative patronage.

Still, Dying Earth sounds interesting, and I prefer it as short stories. Some authors and works are just better that way, and this seems like it'd be the case, going by intuition.

All of a sudden his shit's literature.

You're probably right. Dunno if it's better or worse that I almost never read the stories about the books/authors I read. On the one hand, I can at least argue little bias/influence apart from the source of recommendation. On the other, I guess it ends up with me looking clueless most of the time.

He's a terrible writer and you don't need to read him ever.

"You read Brown, liar!"

"No?"

"Remember that book about NSA being attacked by mutating cryptogram double-teamed by two one-note nerds, with superfluous murderer and 'muahaha'-grade office intrigue in the background that led nowhere? That was Digital Fortress."

"Oooooh. God, I'm so sorry you have to remember it."

"Your rant was the best part of that road trip."

Now we're watching Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Then I'll get back to you once I read Dying Earth. It's not unknown to me, Vance especially the D&D magic system is even called 'Vancian', but iirc his books were nigh impossible to get in Poland. Still are, even though there (apparently) was a 2010 translation reprint.

I mean, Name of the Rose is entertaining up to a point. And it's interesting up to a point. And I'm sure it's all metaphorical and shit.

That's honestly a good summary? I was entertained, but ended up confused by both detractors and praises. I liked it because Eco has clearly put a lot of effort towards authenticity and made the 'heady' meanings of meanings of the book digestible and, for a lack of a better word, plain to think about. Contrast it with, dunno, Salman Rushdie, with whom I honestly don't know if I'm too uncouth and uncultured to glimpse his brilliance or intuitively caught on the wink meaning of 'magical realism' as 'flat, meandering story'.

No comment on Dean Brown; that thing practically fizzled out by the time I was in 4th grade.

I don't know what's more precious: listening to Brits and Americans argue about language, or being Polish in the adjacent table trying to not wince at words like 'inrevokable' and 'nukeelar'. Girls, girls, you'd both fail the exams I need to pass to prove 'adequacy' and 'fluency', so stfu.

Played Star Trek RPG with folks, had a blast. I love that everyone 'knew' what my character concept will be, each had a different guess[0], and they were all wrong. At first, we wanted to play in the TNG era, but it quickly turned out that the only trek we all have seen was Lower Decks, so we're going with that one for convenience.

BTW, thanks kb for recommending 'nu Treks' - I (hopefully obviously) wasn't one of those people averse to it because of 'woke', but a couple episodes of Discovery really gave me a bad taste and overall opinion somewhere between "why everyone's first response is to punch other's shit out?" and "why would you make this wannabe Vulcan as the lead? Even I am more likeable than that ffs!" made me hesitant. Then I started hearing about producers having a hardon for Section 31 and went 'pass' pretty much until I've seen your genuine enthusiasm.

[0] - My favourite one was "Trill, but the symbiont will imbue him with memories of something borderline useless, like five generations of sailing or MS Access."

Recently read some Sherlock Holmes and did get that feeling though- everything was such a predictable trope, but I suppose at the time it was a lot more new

I'm not sure, but it was certainly influential. That's why we see it as trite and need its retelling repackaged.

By the way, if you like British humor (humour?) with commentary on (among others) writers stealing and redoing things, I recommend Upstart Crow.

I didn't say it isn't thoughtful or as thoughtful, just that it doesn't flow as well. I think most people who aren't pretentious literary students would be pro Tom Bombadil's removal, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to find it's a remnant from the time Tolkien wasn't sure if LotR would be a full-on children's book or not. The book could easily lose about 50 pages of descriptions and scarcely anyone would care? I could go on, but to me at least, it's simultaneously polished and rough as hell.

EDIT/Addendum: Maybe to elaborate and add a bit of comparison with GEB (you CS folks love it): GEB waxes poetics about recursion for pretty much its entire body, comparing recursive changes of a structure to fugue and drawing parallels. I have no doubt that, just as SICP, it was mind-blowing at its time. But today? I learned about this shit in high school CS and middle school music classes, respectively. Putting it together is perhaps non-trivial, sure, but with the benefit of GEB doing a lot of the work, people who came after can do it all in a matter of 3 hour lecture. So a lot of their impact is just lost on me: I got it in a refined version before, so the progenitors feel clunky.

I finally read Lord of the Rings in full. Between translations (both Polish and German, back when I could read German) struggling to capture the tone and Tolkien requiring a certain mindset, I still can't blame myself for dropping the book time and time again, effectively reading via spaced excerpts until recently. Still, it's good, but probably suffers from the same problem GEB does: because it's the first one to do its thing, it means a lot of the stuff it inspired have a better flow even if they only tackle one of its themes/aspects. It's appreciated, there's value in reading it as a classic/progenitor of sorts, but it probably will never become one of those books I can just pick up and enjoy. It did deepen my appreciation of the movies, though, and they don't require much of a setup.

Słowo jest w człowieku (The word is in the man/person) by Jan Miodek - a famous Polish grammarian writes about common/public mistakes, word usage evolution, and linguistic oddities in a fun way. I liked his TV program (yes, seriously) as a child, and seeing his name on a prominent place at my local library made my day. Unfortunately, it's one of those books that are not only untranslatable (or at least in a way that'd preserve his flair, cf. Tolkien above) but likely unapproachable without, like, C1 level of comprehension in Polish... which, as in most languages, includes a lot of natives.

I'm also trying to read the Vulgate Bible, and it's an uneven ride. There are whole chapters that go in smoothly only for me to stop and go "holy shit, future imperative outside a textbook or Cicero!" or "which of those comes first?" or be otherwise confused. Annoyingly, even though I was never religious, went through confirmation mostly because 'it can matter to certain people' advice from my priest... I didn't realize how well-catechized I ended up being. There are disturbingly long passages where I don't read Latin but recall Polish, and I haven't been to a mass in, dunno, 12 years?

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Sherlock Holmes in SPAA... I mean, medieval HRE. Though I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the book nearly as much if I didn't have The Autumn of the Middle Ages in fresh memory considering all the 'change in the air and passing/ending of ages' themes. The whole story within a story within a story recursive framind device was a bit distracting, but I can't help but think people focus too much on it? I mean, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein dips down to what, a flashback in a dream in a memoir in a letter in a letter, all as hazy and unreliable as in Eco, and nobody who read Franky bitches about that? Dunno, I liked it.

If you're serious, then before you move to Serbia and get your ass beaten by a random Orthodox incensed you got blind drunk on palinka with a Muslim before throwing rotten fruit at a Catholic: there are many places that'd hire you as an English teacher and you don't even need a teaching degree in a private language school. Your chances of getting hired would probably be higher outside Warsaw, but it's a stable line of work that'd open you a channel for work visa. There are also higher learning institutions opening a) new medical schools, b) degrees done in English. MPH would certainly suffice for research/teaching assistant job at many places. Maybe not ideal, but beggars can be choosers until they get a nice car or something along those lines.

EDIT/BTW: These are just my 'shots from the hip' as far as jobs go, I'm sure there's a lot more. You could probably work as an analyst in quite a few places. My, uch, 'enemy with dubious benefits' basically did your programming/modelling class for a living through EY or something like that.

Here are job application sites (I think they have English option?):

https://www.pracuj.pl/

https://www.aplikuj.pl/

https://www.olx.pl/praca/

Public institutions often don't use those and assume you'd navigate their site, so if you'd need my help, you know how to get ahold of me.

Man, my USA isocube worked even better than expected - didn't get the news until 20 minutes ago. Don't get too panicky, the world isn't ending. Probably won't even suck that much more, just in an even less palatable way. Do something with friends and/or a loved one, just don't let the mood get all the way down to Nevil Shute.

Today I realized that the separate journal I write in Latin is full. It's mostly little things, "here's a soup I made - it was a foul, but filling, random mixture" or "this must have been a bumper crop of wallnuts, my hands are sore from cracking 'em" and similar around-the-house notes. Took almost four years, had many long pauses, most of it looks so bad I don't want to read but still evokes the memories, and the quality graph is clearly a see-saw. Again, not a huge milestone, but it did give me a little bump in the competence department.

Actually, morons are gluons, and therefore already massless vector bosons. In QCD, moron gluon sticks around, dizzy from all that spin and loops, unless made inert with either a barticle, lotto kiosk neutrino, or anything that carries cold beer-flavour.

operator operator

Like it's somehow my fault that capitalism is based on fermions rather than bosons.

any formulation of forklift theory not invoking BAC and distance to nearest accessible bathroom will be rejected by the warehouse technician community.

There's an empirically-confirmed, cargo-independent statistical coincidence of bathrooms and charging stations limiting the forklift's half-life. Both forklift operator and forklift operator operator are confined by the cargo potential anyway, so it's implicitly included in the calculation.

See, that's murky. For a properly defined Hamiltonian, you ought to have potential energy defined as independent of velocity, yet forklift theory allows 'lifting' (a Lie group acting a bit like a ladder operator) whilst moving and even accelerating[0] (left as an exercise to the reader). It's clearly an open system without total energy(t) constraint, though a more realistic model removes infinities by adding finite parameters, like LPG pressure or electric charge.

[0] - EDIT/addendum: It has to be stated that an OSHA-compliant operator can only apply lift/lower operator while velocity is zero. Toy-model (think phi-4 field) is a lot more permissible.