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OftenBen

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Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Don't take me too seriously.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Cui bono?

Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo


recent comments, posts, and shares:
OftenBen  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Ok.

OftenBen  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

My 'hang up' is the fact that our system is being actively used against us, in front of us, and the best we can muster is outrage when the rule of law is outright ignored by 48% of the country.

I hope MK's prediction of 25 years from now the Anti-Mcconnell reaching the peak of his/her power is correct.

OftenBen  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Ok.

OftenBen  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

I'm waiting with bated breath to see kleinbl00 tell you about how its a non-issue that the supreme court belongs to conspiracy theorists and domestic terrorists.

OftenBen  ·  37 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 563rd Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately"

Tibicon also known as Vietnamese Gunna has been blowing up. He was on Vietnam's got talent or some similar show and got tons of attention.

Chorus: Tibicon

How can a thatched-roofed house be worth a hundred pieces of gold

The stork flew away, the stork brought the card back to him right away

Go-go-home, father, mother, I'd be so happy if you married her

Stork-co-co-fly, fly away, stork

Oh my boatman sister

Why would you do this? ignorant

He brought with him the sound of the stork

His writing was exported into poetry

THE SUN PENT THROUGH THE RAIN, HIS SOUND IS NOT TALKING

THE WIND SWINGING OUTSIDE THE PORCH SENTENCES IN THE WEST, I'M GOOD TO HEAR IT

THE STROKE WINGS FLYING IN THE FAR FAR BRINGING SO MANY SONGS HE SENT TO HER

REMEMBER THE SONG OF HOLY HOUSE, I hope our lives will always be peaceful

OftenBen  ·  74 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 3, 2024

I think I'm in hell.

I am set to watch as every person I've loved goes about their own self destruction with as much vigor as seems imaginable.

My parents keep my rapist brother close and hang out with him because he works maintenance for an airline and gets them cheap cheap flights. I can't even think of how to begin to have a conversation with them about this. 'My brother is a violent rapist and sociopath, who may have tried to kill me by offering to 'fix' my brakes and left the lines open, please hold him to some kind of accountability. Please stop shoving in my face how often you hang out with him because you get to go to Arizona for cheap.'

We took in my dad's old, tubby dog because I have a ramp on my back deck and a fenced in back yard and free time to be with him during the day. He fell on new years day and his hips have been extra fucked since then. He has two rotten claws that my parents either never noticed or never bothered to treat. And yet I get texts from both parents asking me if I'm giving him the pain meds he's on for his hips. We are going to my vet on Monday for an evaluation and plan end of life care because again, I don't even know how to start the conversation with my parents of 'Hey, this dog will be passing away at my house. We need to plan for it, you need to plan on coming to visit if you want to be around before he passes.'

My spouse has decided to once again start fighting with me about stupid daily routine shit, like the months of couples therapy last year we did just didn't happen. And I'm the royal asshole for bringing up 'We have been here before. You did all of these exact things, said all of these exact things before, why are you doing it again?'

Words don't matter. Only force of personality does. Only the ability to coldly manipulate others and have them do what they need to do while believing they came up with the idea themselves. Treating people like self responsible adults only creates more animosity.

The Greeks called Cassandra's Tears a curse. They were wise enough to label the curse of prophecy that, a curse, an affliction. Basic pattern recognition is apparently a miraculous ability.

I feel angry at myself for ever thinking that cattle can be treated like equal, rational actors. People are only as self responsible as they want to be.

I don't know why I bother to push at the dark anymore. The future has no place in it for me or mine.

Edit. I don't expect or want a response. Just screaming into the void and facebook will scream back.

OftenBen  ·  88 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you Reading?

I have thoughts. I will extend this post with them later.

I saw Oppenheimer in true giant IMAX as a double feature with Barbie. This is how those films should be enjoyed IMO, back to back. Barbie has to live in the world Oppenheimer helped create. I'm half joking half serious.

OftenBen  ·  88 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you Reading?

When I say I enjoy the ASOIAF conspiracy theories on youtube as much or more than the actual main story I am pretty serious. The world is rich and deep and fans starved of new content have wrote themselves years worth of filler and fun speculation.

I definitely don't think you're undervaluing Fifteen Hours.

The Horus Heresy and Siege is entirely heavy on Space Marine and Primarch perspectives. The writers are aiming for greek myth down to demi gods and culture heros mixed with historical figures. As we have gotten closer to the end there has been a lot more inclusion of the baseline human or Mortal perspectives. There is a limited throughline from the very beginning of a few very important mortal figures that have carried into the conclusion of the heresy, and those storylines reaching maturation has been overall pretty cool.

Specifically, certain aspects of the Imperium of 40k culturally are directly determined by how the Heresy found its final conclusion. I can point to an immediate small example that on Terra in 'contemporary' 40k specifically there is a population level terror of Adeptus Astartes that was not present in 30k. That bias exists because an entire Legion of traitor Astartes spent a few weeks-a few months turning the entire population of a medium sized country into snortable, injectable, boofable drugs. The process being excruciating and extended for the victims. So a lot of what I find enjoyable about 30k is it gives the historical explanations of many different minutia of the Imperium's culture and functioning.

The second example I would point to would be the formation of the Black Templars, specifically with the ascension of the first Emperor's Champion, Sigismund. As someone who has love for Dorn and his sons, you would appreciate the absolute LOVE shown to the Fists during the entirety of the Siege. I don't want to spoil too much, but in my mind the tension between the Fists focus on the material world and only taking into account the hard truths of things and the open acts of divine intervention that have protected their leaders and line brothers alike is SO. COOL.

The Siege is worth reading alone even if you don't feel like slogging through the entire giant heresy.

OftenBen  ·  89 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you Reading?

For non fiction my diet has been pretty sparse, but not nothing.

American Prometheus - Nothing earthshattering. Gave good context for Oppenheimer I felt. Curious if anyone else has read it.

The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore - A 13 hour telling of the work of Elizabeth Packard exposing the horrors of the mental health treatment system of 1860's era america by the same author who wrote Radium Girls. Mini book club with my wife on this one, she finds it relates a lot to her work in behavioral therapy with very young, very combative children.

Now to the candy and confectionaries

The End and the Death Volume 2 - The second of the final trilogy of the extended Horus Heresy series and the Siege of Terra. There's nothing but brief vignettes in this one, almost all of them so emotionally taxing in different ways the sum effect is numbing. At least if you give a shit. Lots of critique that its dull and unnecessarily long. I enjoy it a lot. The final scene is so bleak it was painful. It's the known, prophesied, long coming, guaranteed outcome of a fight that had its conclusion written in like 1991 in a footnote of ancient sci-fi history. This entire series truthfully is the exposition of about 3-4 paragraphs in a rule book from a tabletop game that almost nobody plays anymore. Wild stuff.

Helldivers XI: Renegades - Absolute pulp, also bleak, but chewy and enjoyable in the same way Phase 1 Marvel was enjoyable. No real surprises but the author has managed to keep my interest over close to a hundred hours of what amounts to contemporary spaceman spiff ray guns and aliens and Thomas A Swifts Electric Rifle saving the day, and that's something. I'm drawing a parallel to the collection of Western pulp novels my grandfather accumulated over a lifetime. I inherited most of them.

A Song of Ice and Fire - Over the summer, I finally half-watched game of thrones while hiding from the sun from extended antibiotic treatment this past summer. Apparently this changed my taste enough that I can listen to the ASOIAF audiobooks and enjoy them. There was some quality to them stylistically that I couldn't really get into when Game of Thrones was popular. But I'm halfway through A Clash of Kings right now and enjoying it a lot. Honestly I think I enjoy ASOIAF conspiracy theories on youtube and reddit almost as much.

OftenBen  ·  89 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you Reading?

Fifteen Hours is so much of what's great about 40k writing. Can't say enough good things about it.

Also I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I have always enjoyed Brave New World. Sorry you're slogging with it. I only recently found that my opinion on George RR Martins style has changed enough for me to do ASOIAF in audiobook format.

OftenBen  ·  106 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 556th Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately"

Relevant.

OftenBen  ·  157 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 11, 2023

Just my chest. Slightly better today. Thank you.

OftenBen  ·  157 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Christians: Jesus is too woke

The slow and agonizing death of the American Church as an institution and social movement is balm to my anti theist soul.

Glad someone other than me posted it. It would have been dismissed outright as screed.

That one Russell Moore interview has gotten so much mileage it qualifies for the Boston Marathon.

Semi-related. My wife's parents pastor wrote a book. I reviewed it on amazon about a year ago and he had to spend three days in a psychiatric treatment ward as direct result. I know because he's preached on it.

OftenBen  ·  158 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 11, 2023

It takes all my effort not to rip strips of faux leather off my steering wheel with my teeth.

I hurt.

OftenBen  ·  184 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 23, 2023

I can laugh at that and also laugh at the fact a guy pulled up to me in orbit and asked to talk about my ships extended warranty.

OftenBen  ·  186 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 23, 2023

Chronic pain sucks and is abrasive to everything one tries to do.

My cardiologist was semi-recently put on the pain medication I'm on for a long term tennis injury and she has expressed a loud sympathy for how bad gabapentin is for ones brain.

I'm 31 and finding myself in need of basically an entirely new social circle. My supposed best friend has decided that he's going to take on the same social habits as his wife, meaning you see your 'best friends' twice a year, even though you purchased houses a 15 minute drive away from one another. I would really like to rejoin my old choir but I don't think I can keep the schedule OR physically manage standing while singing for 2.5 hours.

This is going to sound pretentious and childish and I still think it's true. When I was happiest in my life I was surrounded by people pursuing intellectual pursuits of some kind, or just general excellence in what they did. I was working daily around people who were revolutionizing their fields and actively mentoring younger people. I was receiving mentorship at a high level and was contributing to the education and experience of others. My free time was spent in an auditioned musical group that has literally won grammies and regularly performs with international orchestras, performing pieces of music that hadn't been heard on stage in more than a decade because nobody could bring together a choir that could do it short notice. The lack of peers and people further along roads I wanted to travel is ruining me.

My single effective cope in life has almost always been the idea that I will do whatever I can, as much as I can, to leave the world better than I found it. The inability to do so brings me to tears and frothing rage. If I have made any progress on the psychological front I no longer use a third of my waking hours harassing christians on social media and changing churches to garbage dumps on google maps. A side note, a high rating as a google guide will allow you to do fun stuff like that.

For what its worth, things in my relationship have improved a lot with a lot of hard work and couples therapy. I still don't really feel heard on the issues of communication when things are heated, nor on the idea that I need routine for my basic health and her fighting me on meals and sleep regulation kills attraction. It's not somewhere we got overnight and it won't be fixed overnight but at least things are generally moving in a positive direction. I am able to ask her to cool down and use words maybe 70% of the time she gets heated with me for something stupid.

I'm just gonna keep playing starfield every waking hour and continue my slow, painful gym journey. That's fun at least. I've heard every possible criticism of Starfield and I'm still not bothered by any of the complaints. It's a bethesda game, you like that flavor or you don't.

It's literally taught in med school that poverty is antithetical to health in every way you can imagine, going down to changes in brain chemistry.

Morlocks and Eloi is our future. Cannibalism included.