alyth

joined 2 years ago
[–] alyth@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Well, I had a 6 hour train ride ahead of me so I decided to finish the book and I'm glad I did.

spoilerI still stand by my criticisms of the book, which are:

  • The cheap "deus ex machina" in the form of Colonel Sanders giving Hoshino all the answers, and Nakata always knowing where to go. It takes the suspense out the plot.
  • The overdone sex scenes. Of course there's the motive of the Œdipus myth, but this goes overboard. Teenagers don't usually end up sleeping with whatever woman crosses their path and I certainly don't need elaborate descriptions given the age of Kafka and the young Ms. Saeki.

Nakata's passing surprised me. After Colonel Sanders' appearance, I'd thought the characters are invinicible. But now Hoshino is thrown into cold water and we get some suspense back.

I think the book gives a deserving end to both Nakata and Ms. Saeki. Until their meeting I hadn't noticed just how strongly they complement each other with both of them being empty in their respective ways. Their end seems to match the theme of closing what was opened after they have undergone their respective journeys.

But one of my favorite parts of the book is in the last chapter: When Sada asks Kafka if he's seen the soldiers. Up until that point, I'd made a distinction between two worlds. There's the real world where we have the library, the cafes, the motorway stops. Then there's the dream world where Kafka meets young Ms. Saeki or where we find the village in the forest. Sada comes into the novel as a more or unless unrelated character dwelling in the real world. With this one simple question he provides (to my judgement at least) the first hard evidence that there is no such distinctions. Both the tangible and the intangible dreams are part of the same reality.

Oh, and Hoshino is just delightful! I wish him well.

spoiler--___

 

I've been reading "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami. I ploughed through the first 3/4 of the book but now I'm on page 478 out of 615 it's very much gone downhill for me.

spoilerNakata is my favorite character in the book and I loved the journey with Hoshino. But since Colonel Sanders turned up, it seems to fall into a repititve pattern where Colonel Sanders tells Hoshino what to do and we watch him do it - no uncertainty, no suspense, just following orders. I'm also bored with how Nakata suddenly seems to know exactly what to do with complete conviction, which seems very much contrary to his childlike mind in the first part of the book.

As for Kafka's arc, I find the philosophical discussions with the other characters anything but engaging. The sex scenes between a teenager and a 50 year old are just disgusting.

Is the ending worth it? I'm reading the French translation, sorry if the characters have different names.

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Most western countries have committed genocide or invasion in very recent history. Either in the context of WWII, colonialism or economic interests. Countries don't magically change over night. Wouldn't it be more surprising if they didn't support their ally?

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Who cares about some billionaire's opinion. I would assume he restructured his portfolio and wants to see some gains.

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ve given up entirely on relationships at this point

Perfect! You'll meet your person when you least expect it. There's a big day coming for you.

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

A lot of them unfortunately, at least in Europe every other news article quotes a politican's Twitter post

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I used Babel for a bit. The quality seems good. There's little to no gamification, it feels like a digital version of a classic language learning textbook. They offer around 12-13 languages up to level B2. If you decide to purchase a lifetime subscription, it's on sale every couple of months for 130-180 USD.

 
[–] alyth@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[–] alyth@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

This sounds like a positive message for people who question their self-worth. However, you will run into people in your life who try to take advantage of you because it's easy. Loving everyone without questioning what you get out of the equation entails a risk of becoming a doormat. So please look out for yourself too.

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key / to open a command palette

645
XDG_CONFIG_HOME (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by alyth@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
 

The template of this meme is that of the man who cheerfully points his hand at a butterfly, asking "Is this a pigeon"?. In this meme, the man has been covered with icons of the applications IntelliJ, VSCode, Chromium and Signal. The butterfly which he points to is overlaid with the caption ".config". He asks "Is this a trash can?" At the bottom of the image, we see the command du -sh executed on the directories .config/chromium/ and .config/Code, yielding file sizes of 1016M and 83M respectively.

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 37 points 9 months ago

YES!!! I recognized it as a Goosebumps cover instantly too! What a blast to the past, I loved those. This one is from book #4 "Say Cheese and Die!"

1
Back to Square 1 (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by alyth@lemmy.world to c/depression_now@lemmy.world
 

Removed, I'm sorry

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I was just lurking, but I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and I like your use of the ^^;; and XD emojis :3

[–] alyth@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago
 
 

Change up your routine. Find new hobbies. Meet new people. Learn new things. 2-6 weeks later, I feel once again that this is a complete waste of energy. Nothing I've ever done in my life has ever amounted to anything. I always return to this point. Just one more cycle, right? Just one more, haha? Just keep trying, right? This is all totally going to get better, right?

 

I'm 25 now. My friends are either 18-19 or 45-60 with nothing in between. It's been like this my whole life.

 

I don't

 

Thoughts?

 

As a kid I would get stung by nettles all the time. Like, how stupid was I?

3
Sarajevo & moi - PILLS (2023, Electropop) (sarajevoetmoi.bandcamp.com)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by alyth@lemmy.world to c/alternativenation@lemmy.world
 

Previous posted to Lemmy as an unidentified song. https://lemmy.world/post/14659357

Known in the Lostwave community as "Find the Switch": Find the Switch on WatZatSong

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