AKA a totally unthemed post this evening, because all my plans for book reviews, album reviews, new fic, life updates etc. keep getting dragged under by a rolling tide of Fuck That I Don't Have The Energy. I swear I am actually reading, listening, writing and living in healthy measure - just don't ask me to talk about it, apparently.
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fiachairecht recced the album BLACKSHAPE by BLACKSHAPE - self-styled post-mathcore but with strong blackened cosmic drone vibes (to shamelessly steal kimara's description, which is dead accurate imo). Here's my favourite track, with accompanying deeply unsettling music video. Try listening to it while thinking of your starcrossed enemy OTP who can't stop yearning for each other and also can't stop trying to destroy each other it's Reylo, I'm talking about Reylo.
My sister is obsessed with a game called Pathologic 2, and her descriptions of it are tormenting me: it sounds simultaneously so extremely my jam and so extremely outside my cope limits. This video review has 100% sold me on the aesthetics, the plot and the theoretical brilliance of the game mechanics - basically, you're a plague doctor in the world's creepiest city who's trying to help the rapidly dying populace without any of the perks, plot armour or convenient do-overs that most video game protagonists take completely for granted - but the thought of actually sitting down to play something that hard and that grim makes me want to shrivel up. Like, that's my entire stress allowance blown for the whole year, right there. Maybe in some far distant future where life is magically easy and I have ample emotional resources to spare, I'll be able to actually play it. For now I guess I'll just keep making heart eyes at the reviews and meta-essays my sister sends me.
This New Yorker article about the Titan made ... um, interesting reading? If you find senseless loss of life due to farcically stupid, cartoonishly evil rich guy bullshit interesting. I'm a keen enough student of humanity from its less flattering angles, but there's a certain level of sheer delusional narcissism that I find it almost impossible to wrap my head around. He was told it was going to end in tragedy! By everyone! Expert after expert took the time to patiently explain to him that his submersible was definitely 100% unavoidably doomed to implode, and he brushed them all off because he seriously thought his 'I'm an Innovator(TM), I'm special, I break the rules' shtick was going to somehow make him immune to the basic laws of physics if he just committed to it hard enough.
This ACOUP post on international relations is another fantastic (very different!) recent read, about what Devereaux calls 'the status quo coalition' - the informal grouping of prosperous liberal democratic countries with a deep vested interest in maintaining the current global balance of power. His perspective on current events as an ancient historian is really thought-provoking - obviously he's no expert on any given modern nation or conflict, but he picks out big-picture patterns of political organisation over the millennia that aren't really visible the same way at a closer remove.
fiachairecht recced the album BLACKSHAPE by BLACKSHAPE - self-styled post-mathcore but with strong blackened cosmic drone vibes (to shamelessly steal kimara's description, which is dead accurate imo). Here's my favourite track, with accompanying deeply unsettling music video. Try listening to it while thinking of your starcrossed enemy OTP who can't stop yearning for each other and also can't stop trying to destroy each other My sister is obsessed with a game called Pathologic 2, and her descriptions of it are tormenting me: it sounds simultaneously so extremely my jam and so extremely outside my cope limits. This video review has 100% sold me on the aesthetics, the plot and the theoretical brilliance of the game mechanics - basically, you're a plague doctor in the world's creepiest city who's trying to help the rapidly dying populace without any of the perks, plot armour or convenient do-overs that most video game protagonists take completely for granted - but the thought of actually sitting down to play something that hard and that grim makes me want to shrivel up. Like, that's my entire stress allowance blown for the whole year, right there. Maybe in some far distant future where life is magically easy and I have ample emotional resources to spare, I'll be able to actually play it. For now I guess I'll just keep making heart eyes at the reviews and meta-essays my sister sends me.
This New Yorker article about the Titan made ... um, interesting reading? If you find senseless loss of life due to farcically stupid, cartoonishly evil rich guy bullshit interesting. I'm a keen enough student of humanity from its less flattering angles, but there's a certain level of sheer delusional narcissism that I find it almost impossible to wrap my head around. He was told it was going to end in tragedy! By everyone! Expert after expert took the time to patiently explain to him that his submersible was definitely 100% unavoidably doomed to implode, and he brushed them all off because he seriously thought his 'I'm an Innovator(TM), I'm special, I break the rules' shtick was going to somehow make him immune to the basic laws of physics if he just committed to it hard enough.
This ACOUP post on international relations is another fantastic (very different!) recent read, about what Devereaux calls 'the status quo coalition' - the informal grouping of prosperous liberal democratic countries with a deep vested interest in maintaining the current global balance of power. His perspective on current events as an ancient historian is really thought-provoking - obviously he's no expert on any given modern nation or conflict, but he picks out big-picture patterns of political organisation over the millennia that aren't really visible the same way at a closer remove.
