I’ve long wanted to learn more about both. Actually, I’m already moderately familiar with emacs. I’ve actually typed all the blog entries here on emacs. I created and edited the website with emacs. But, I’m not really a programmer. I’ve learned a lot about linux from using it, but I really don’t know that much about programming. I want to learn more about it and create little projects. I’ve always loved working with computers, so I think I’ll be good at it. Specifically, I wanted to learn Common Lisp. I don’t know why exactly, but it always seemed like a beautiful language to me. Emacs is also probably the best editor if you’re going to be doing anything with lisp. I don’t use the regular distribution of emacs, but I just install spacemacs. Out of the box it mostly does everything I want it to. Maybe I could take the time to configure default emacs myself, but I’m satisfied with this right now. There aren’t really any good youtube tutorials, so I went with a book. It’s called “Common LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation”. Many books about common lisp are directed towards those familiar with programming, but this one builds from the ground up. Perfect for me. Let’s see how far I get. I also wanted to learn more about doing things like email, music player, rss, and better terminal use inside of emacs. These things might take a bit to learn about. Too many things, not enough time.

The book The Limits of Power: The End to American Exceptionalism was penned by a man named Andrew Bacevich. Mr. Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and went on to serve numerous years in the army. He fought in the Vietnam war, was deployed to posts in Germany, as well as serving in the Persian Gulf. Mr. Bacevich has a PhD in American diplomatic History and has taught at numerous universities. He has authored numerous book, this book in question is one of them. This book paints an awful bleak picture of American foreign policy and government. It is important to keep in mind, this book was written during Bush’s second presidency. Ultimately, his conclusion is that the United States should search for problems within its own borders instead of trying to fix issues outside of it. Three problems Mr. Bacevich seems to think are of particular importance are nuclear weapons, the national debt, and climate change.

The American Civil War was a conflict between the Northern and the Southern United States. The states broke off individually at first, but quickly came together to form the Confederate States of America. The reasons for exactly why it occurred are debated, course the textbook gives a very one-dimensional answer—slavery. I think why the narrative shifted like that is two-fold, one it serves as a cudgel for the South and whites in general that they should constantly apologize and feed bad for slavery, the second is economic because unified country is better business. Probably more realistically it was a large number of things that came together, economic interests were at stake, cultural interests were at stake, and political interests were at stake. Economic was slavery and tariffs. Cultural was the the mostly agrarian culture the South had. Political was the decreasing political influence the South had as more states were being added to the Union and population growth not as fast as the North. Many of the Southern states also didn’t see the Union as something which they were obligated to be a part of, so it wasn’t thought of an act of treason and treachery, therefore the Northern invasion of the South was unprovoked. Also, I think it’s important to recognize, most Northern soldiers didn’t see themselves as fighting to free the slaves. Wasn’t out of some moral reason the North didn’t own slaves, it was just they didn’t have a suitable climate. I think it’s also telling how willing Lincoln was to reintroduce the rebellious states back into the Union. The North launches an invasion of the South, the war ends up going on for five years and brings ruin to the South for decades to come. South had better soldiers and officers, but the North leveraged its industry. Grant marched to Richmond not through some brilliant tactics, but by making use of the North’s superior logistics. The Confederacy only really had one effective army. Their pride and Richmond’s proximity to Washington D.C. came back to bite them. 

Lol. This is great.

I’ll laugh so hard if Trump is elected again. With Gaza, prices of things in general, Biden’s mental condition, decline of fake news media, decline of idiotic celebrities, considering he’s the incumbent, and the poll numbers, it looks like the odds of Trump being reelected is increasing. I think at this point the leftist thugs of thrown everything they can at him short of arresting and assassinating him. If they cross that line, it’d be tough to return. Some of us aren’t as stupid as they take us to be.

Bocchi:

This is a great anime. Animation is nice. Girls are cute. Songs are catchy. No leftist bullshit. Story is engaging enough. Only complaint is that giving bocchi just a jersey to wear throughout most of it is such a shame. Can’t believe her name is Hitori too.

Kiniro Mosaic:

It’s fun enough, but I don’t think it’s nearly as well written or engaging as others that came before it. Think you can safely skip. Karen literally redeemed this show for me though. She’s a hilarious character. I want more loud, blonde foreigners in anime. She should’ve been an American too. The art is also very mediocre. It would’ve been good enough if the writing was better.

I don’t understand this game. I didn’t think it was very good. The story was kinda interesting but barely. Then there were a number of times I couldn’t even hear the audio because the game threw enemies at me while the character was talking. The two weapon limit was annoying. In the beginning when you don’t get much ammo for the humans’ weapons and you got to pick up from the aliens is so annoying, one because those guns just aren’t very fun to use and two the ammo capacity is stupidly low, so you’re constantly having to scavenge. I’d say the Covenant are decently interesting to fight. I wouldn’t have minded the flood either if it wasn’t for those stupid bugs the game throws at you. Then my favorite weapon in the game was the sniper rifle, but hardly any ammo was given for it. There was the shotgun though which was fun to use. I didn’t like there was no aim down sights. Many of the weapons just didn’t feel very satisfying to use. Then the levels where everything looks the same and the game gives no indication where you’re supposed to go. Think there was plenty of reused assets.

A couple weeks ago now I finished GTA 5. It was my first time ever playing a Grand Theft Auto game. And honestly, I can’t really say I had any serious complaints about the game. The story was good, clever, and entertaining. The missions kept me engaged. The world was huge and had many things to do inside of it. I think it’s a 10/10. I don’t think anything I really have to say about the game would detract a whole point from it. And, mind you, I’m usually not the type to just go around handing games 10s all the time. I just think this game warrants it.

Wow. She managed to say something so stupid that even Democrats aren’t buying it. And that requires a lot!

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1783186070558933411

It’s also amusing in a way how people like her will refuse to say Donald Trump’s name, but they’re always talking about him. Doubly ironic that their slogan with the summer of love was “say his name.“What brave leadership we have in Speaker Pelosi. Think she’s from California too.

Okay, I’ve managed to move over the two urls that I wanted to. I got a bit lazy about it, finally got around to doing it right now. I think it’s the right decision. If you’re reading this, then you probably already know, but I changed the blog to blog.phoebus.club, main site is phoebus.club. I moved over my nextcloud server too to make room for this. Handy that you can just add a word in front of it and suddenly you have unlimited free domains. Migration wasn’t too difficult. Only thing left to work out is umami, that might be a bit of a pain. Overall, not bad. Didn’t irreversibly break anything I don’t think.

I just dropped it. Sometimes things are just so phoned in in visual novels. So generic and tropey, nothing out of the ordinary—it’s just boring. Missing nothing if you skip this one. But that was just this game in general. Safe. It’s not bad, but none of the characters really won me over and none of the action or drama really grabbed it. I don’t even want to read Kanoka’s. That might just be even worse.