Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Well, here's a reason - my work has a tight control over our computers. So, when inevitable boredom sets in, I write.

The irony is that most of what I write at work is programming to put in when I get home...

 

Does anyone still use Cursive? I was told in 3rd grade that that was all we would use later in life. Only one class in HS required it.

 

Yeah, but he's Don. He'd still have it on silent when he's at the movies and he'd always ignore it and be like, "Oh, sorry, I was in a meeting," all the time. Technology cannot solve the Don Draper problem.

 

I remember learning cursive in elementary school, and knowing we were never going to use it once we got out of school. I was right.

 

I am horribly disappointed. I have this image of you at a desk writing with a quill pen that's ruined forever.

 

Funny thing about cursive: I outright refused to learn it. I've always been incredibly stubborn, and in third grade I felt there would never be any use for cursive and didn't want to put forth the effort to learn it (though I suppose I was right in the end, wasn't I?). The teacher kept trying to get me to learn it, but eventually I won out, even after she started taking points off for not writing my assignments in cursive (but later stopped as she realized it would not do any good). It was the principal of the matter.

God I was a prick.

 

They don't really teach cursive writing in school anymore. You know, because it's not on those federal and state mandated tests, so why bother...

 

I don't know if this is still the case, but as of a couple of years ago they forced you to handwrite a confidentiality statement in cursive for the GRE (for those not of the US -- the "graduate record examination" standardized test required for most graduate schools). It was sort of a silly formality, but if you refused or wrote in print you risked inuring the wrath of the examiners.

 

Yeah, I bought a quill and ink set years ago over a decade ago) and tried to maintain some correspondence with it. I was an American history major and I was enamored with the idea of using stuff from the Founding Period. I had visions of myself maintaining deep, thought provoking correspondence with friends far away. I imagined myself sitting at my desk, quill in one hand, a glass of Maderia in the other.

Suffice to say, they are messy, hard to write with, and require patience. I did end up using to sign letters for awhile, but once I ran out of ink I never bothered to buy anymore.

--Adm. Nick

 

Ha ha lol. I only use it to sign Checks and other legal document things.
I remember that my 3rd Grade teacher kept stressing that fact. Freaked me out a bit. All for nothing.

 

Ugh you barbarians. Respect cursive. It is perfectly useful, and moreover it would be silly not to be able to read things that are in cursive. No respect for the past or elegance these days. Damn kids.

 

My normal handwriting looks like mangled illegible cursive. Does that count as using it?

I never actually learned to write in cursive. I was having surgery while the rest of my 3rd grade class learned it, so I got to write normally on any assignments that required cursive, which stopped being given after 5th grade anyway.

 

So, the Carthaginian early game on R2 is far more intense than that of the Romans or the Ptolemies. Within 10 turns all of the North African nomadic tribes are overrunning your client colonies, your economy is in the tank, Lilybaeum is on the point of revolt, Carthaginian troops are quite frankly inferior to the Celtiberian and Roman units, and mercenaries have insane upkeep costs. It makes surviving all that and persevering all that much more satisfying. Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam!

 

Only thing that struck me as outright strange is that there really seems no reason to build the secondary Army camp as Carthage, as all you get out of the whole building chain are better spear throwing skirmishers. Rome by contrast can get just about any unit type there is building Auxiliary camps in certain regions.

 

Yeah, the secondary camp is useless. Then again, so is most of the Carthaginian military tree. It's a pity- if that merc camp let me build Iberian units instead of having to trek over to Hispania to recruit them as mercs, I would probably forgo the Hoplite Barracks altogether. Celtiberians are unholy terrors in combat- and they're nerfed compared to what they were in the Europa Barbarorum mod.

 

Oh the higher level Hoplites are pretty good and of course you get War elephants, but yep I had initially also hoped that you get different Mercs in different regions just like Rome gets with the Auxiliary Camps.

 

Reading in cursive is one thing, and is an extraordinarily easy thing to do (I'm not sure one really has to learn to read cursive). Writing cursive, though? I suppose it's useful if you just really like the look of your own name

That said, cursive is one of those things that's easy enough for practically anyone to do without being taught (even if in my case it looks like the scrawl of a serial killer), so it's no big deal when you occasionally need to break it out for standardized tests or job applications or any similar situation.

 

Saw RIDDICK last night.

Decent, rather than great, but the first third is probably the best adaptation of REH's Conan (in terms of general theme) I've seen. And I know most dudes are raving about nude Starbuck, but I was way more into the Frazetta tribute shot.

It. Was. Beautiful.

 

Uh. Not what I expected from a first glance at a general Lit forum thread, not going to lie.

I know nothinggggg of literary criticism but I end up in Star Wars books more than anything else in the franchise hello there please don't ostracize me.

 

The upper-level hoplites are passable- granted, I haven't recruited any Sacred Band yet- but they aren't comparable to, say, Ptolemaic Egypt's Hellenic Royal Guard or Thorax Pikemen.

I'm rather iffy on elephants. I virtually completed a Ptolemaic campaign earlier this week (until it started CRASHING WHENEVER I TRY TO GO TO TURN 170, ARRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH), and my elephants tended to just kinda drop like flies in combat.

It's rather fun to watch the other areas of the map and see how wildly ahistorical they get. Right now, Cimmeria (Crimean Hellenes) controls most of the Black Sea coast, while Media Atropatene has taken much of the western Seleucid territories. AI Rome and AI Carthage tend to be hilariously inept, although now I understand why AI Carthage dies so quickly.