Timmy's House of Sprinkles

Dearth and Famine

2026-03-31T20:05:00.000-07:00

All right! I'm now partway through ~~the latest steampunk epic~~ Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. As stated in my first post, I'm breaking this up into multiple blog posts because it's just so dang big and I can't fit all of it in my head at once. This post covers Book III, "Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations", and Book IV, "Of Systems of political Economy". In my edition this is roughly pages 350-650.

One of several things that has surprised me about this book is how much of it is a deep dive into history. He gets into here through his discussion of economics, and draws economic conclusions on the way back out, but has some pretty long passages that are almost purely about the history of Europe or colonialism with almost no direct economics. I'm not complaining! While I'm already familiar with much of this, it's really well-told and interesting stuff.

I was particularly struck by his discussion of the history of Europe after the fall of Rome. As security deteriorated on the continent, the feudal system emerged, with local warlords claiming protection over a geographic region. The larger the region, the more swords at their call and the better chance at resisting invaders, so there was a strong incentive to have a few large duchies versus many smaller ones. This led to the dominance of the law of primogeniture, which passed the entire estate (land and wealth) to the eldest son and nothing to daughters and younger sons.

This helped for security, but led to large landed estates whose owners weren't motivated or necessarily skilled at improving the land. A warrior who inherited a large area full of serfs could easily have all his needs met without particular effort. Smaller farms tend to put much more effort towards improvement than huge inherited estates: if you own a small patch of land, you want to make that patch as productive as you can, and will work hard to dig up stones, drain swamps, clear trees, study crop rotation and otherwise make it yield as much as it can. So as the Middle Ages drew to a close and the security situation improved, there was more of an advantage to countries that divided up estates, either directly among heirs or by transfers to unrelated owners. He continues on pages 362-363:

Entails are the natural consequences of the law of primogeniture. They were introduced to preserve a certain lineal succession [...] to hinder any part of the original estate from being carried out of the proposed line. [...] But in the present state of Europe, when small as well as great estates derive their security from the laws of their country, nothing can be more completely absurd. They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago.

I get a kick out of it when Adam Smith describes something as "absurd", it feels like the ultimate diss from him. I also really love him pointing out the injustice of previous generations' wealth determining the fate of future generations; there are surprisingly strong shades of Thomas Piketty in here!

He follows up on this topic later in discussing how inheritance laws impacted the growth and prosperity of new colonies started by European nations. In Pennsylvania, all children inherit equally, so large estates are divided up, and the smaller estates are more rapidly improved. In Spanish and Portuguese colonies, primogeniture rules, so large estates remain intact and are only slowly improved. In France, the eldest child gets a double share of the other siblings, so French colonies perform worse than the English but better than the Iberian ones.

Smith also writes a lot about the town and the country. I've heard the phrase "Town & Country" all my life, and it was fun to think about what that actually means. From page 356:

The great commerce of every civilized society, is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists of the exchange of rude for manufactured produce [...]. The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence, and the materials of manufacture. The town repays this supply by sending back a part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of labor is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is subdivided. The inhabitants of the country purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods, with the produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labor, than they must have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves.

He's describing a symbiotic relationship, where the town buys surplus raw goods from the country and provides useful tools and manufactured goods back. The country is the original source of economic activity, but Smith stresses that the gain of the town does not imply the loss of the country, and their trade is mutually beneficial. While not exactly the same thing, this made me think of Donald Trump's absurd framing that the United States "subsidizes" other countries when we run a trade deficit with them. When we import more from Canada than we export to them, we are getting useful things from them (electricity, auto parts, furs) and giving them IOUs. Likewise, when the town imports from the country, there has to be some exchange, which is some combination of finished good and money.

On page 392 he writes: "It is thus that through the greater part of Europe the commerce and manufacture of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country." He pretty persuasively argues how Europe evolved from the dark ages and middle ages to the modern era. There used to not be much of anything worth buying or investing in, so nobles and wealthy landlords would just spend their money on maintaining large retinues, directly supporting perhaps 1000 people. I imagine a rural castle keep occupied with court jesters, hunting buddies, extended family and so on.

As manufactures developed, nobles could start to spend money on trinkets and goods from the burghers. The burgers could accumulate some wealth, and eventually get long-term leases from the nobles. Burghers would then spend their money to improve the land: because they have long-term leases with rights to keep the profits from production, they stand to benefit from the improved productivity of the land, which serfs did not. Smith notes that nobles were just chasing after shiny baubles, and burghers were just looking to turn a penny; neither of them explicitly thought about the good of the country as a whole, but their activities eventually led to great improvement in agricultural efficiency and the overall wealth of the nation. Overall, this is an interesting but pretty persuasive inversion from the naive thought that the country reached a certain level of development and then the surplus flowed into urban development; instead, the generation of urban goods led to the breakup of large unproductive estates and the improving development of the country.

Earlier, on pages 388-389, he uses more colorful language to describe this development:

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufacturers gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus production of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority of what it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the more ancient method of expence they must have shared with at least a thousand people. With the judges that were to determine the preference, this difference was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority.

I really love that writing. "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." I love this based, red-rose-emoji flavor of Smith. This passage also puts me in mind of the story from the Old Testament of Esau bartering his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Greedy and short-term-oriented people will usually lose out to frugal and patient people.

Smith seems to really admire David Hume and quotes him fairly frequently in this book. I think of Smith as being the first "real" economic writer, but based on these quotes it does sound like Hume also write a lot about commerce and related topics. I remember really enjoying Hume's writings when I read him way back in my freshman philosophy class, and it would be fun to pick him up again.

Starting in book IV, Smith argues strenuously against laws that encourage particular industries, such as prohibiting imports, heavily taxing imports, banning exports, and so on. He uses a simple analogy: in any household, you shouldn't pay more to create a thing yourself than you would pay for someone else to make it for you. It's silly for the tailor to make his own shoes when he can pay the cobbler to make them; it's silly for the cobbler to make his clothes when he can pay the tailor to make them; it's silly for the farmer to make either one, he should focus on growing crops and then buy his clothes and shoes.

Likewise, for nations, it's silly to pay more to produce domestically what you could more cheaply import. He grants that protectionism can be successful in establishing domestic industries, but argues that in the long run this isn't helpful. The nation has lost money in all the intervening years compared to what it would have spent from buying cheaper imports, and hence there is less capital available to invest in those domestic manufactures, which limits their strength and competitiveness in the market. He thinks that over the long run, either domestic industries will naturally spring up (taking advantage of the lower freight costs, the preference of domestic investors to invest close to home, and so on), or else you're better off focusing on your nation's natural strengths (earning more money at the thing you're good at making and cheaply buying the things you're bad at making). I think even today this is still mainstream economic orthodoxy. Paul Krugman has been writing many similar posts in the wake of "Liberation Day" and other extreme tariffs.

The main counter-example is when an industry should be domestically based for national security reasons, like steel, or because it is so essential to the rest of the economy that it could be a natural pressure point for rivals, like petroleum or rare earth metals. Smith gets to this, too! His own example, interestingly, focuses on the merchant marine - uniquely for England, because its defense depends on a strong navy, and they were rivals with the Dutch who also had a strong navy, so they forbade Dutch traffic to English ports, thus encouraging the development of English sailing skills.

Besides national security, there are two other cases where Smith supports taxing or blocking imports. One is when a domestic industry is subject to a tax. In this case, the tax on foreign imports should balance out the domestic tax, so domestic producers are not unfairly penalized. This basically just prevents a distortion of the market. Finally, import restrictions can be a useful tactic to retaliate against another nation's own import taxes. He cites several historical examples, like France forbidding importation of English hardwares, which was followed by England taxing French wines. There were similar disputes with the Dutch of tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs. Interestingly, many of these cases escalated to full-on shooting wars as a result of the trade dispute, and the peace terms generally rescinded both the original offending tax or ban and the retaliatory one. Once again, Europa Universalis IV has proven to be very accurate to history, in this case with its Trade Dispute Casus Belli!

Book IV includes a very long digression on the corn trade, which I actually ended up really loving. (Quick term check: I didn't learn this until embarrassingly late in life, but the word "corn" has historically meant a cereal/grain crop grown primarily for human consumption, like wheat or oats.) Smith rails against this law banning corn merchants, who were basically wholesalers who bought from many farmers and sell to many consumers. The sentiment behind this law makes sense: we want food to be cheap, so we should cut out the middlemen and have the growers sell directly to the consumers.

But as he shows, this law had the opposite effect: it did not lower the price of food, and hurt overall food security. The jobs a corn merchant would have to perform (storing the grain, transporting it, meeting with buyers, etc.) still had to be done, but were done by the farmers instead, so their prices had to go up to account for the non-farming work they did. And the merchants performed a very useful role. It's in the interest of the corn merchant to sell corn for the maximum price he can get, but no more. If he sells for less, then he'll sell all of his stock from this year's harvest and leave potential profit on the table; worse, people will consume all of the grain before the next year's harvest, leading to widespread famine. Smith makes a great analogy to the captain of a ship on a long ocean voyage. If it looks like the ship is in danger of running out of food, the captain will put the crew on limited rations. The crew will hate this and will blame the captain for being cruel; but it's for the good of the crew, and by imposing the "dearth" of hunger, he prevents the "famine" of starvation.

As the book goes on, Smith spends more and more time recounting history. He describes ancient Greek and Roman governments, their distinct systems of colonies, the collapse of empire, the rise of the feudal system, the riches Venice acquired by having a monopoly of trade from the Mamluks (who were their mutual enemy with the Turks) in selling goods from the East to Europe, how Portugal and Spain tried to find their own direct trade routes to the East, the conquest of the native Americans, the establishment of various colonies, and so on. Once again I'm amazed at how accurately and with how much detail Europa Universalis captured the history, economics and power systems of these centuries.

Smith also performs a good analysis of trade-offs in policy, looking at the plusses and minuses and judging the overall net impact. One particularly compelling case studio is the monopoly on trade Britain had with its colonies, with England the sole allowed importer and exporter to the North American states. On the surface this seems like an advantage to Britain, as it got all of the profit available from this trade both coming and going. But Smith looks at the alternative and argues that it was ultimately disadvantageous to both parties.

First, the monopoly stunted the development of the American colonies. Its produce was sold more cheaply and its imports were more expensive than would have been the case if it could freely trade with all countries (perhaps charging more for tobacco sold to the French or more cheaply buying plows from the Dutch). So the total value of trade with America is lower than it would otherwise have been: if America had been more profitable, it could have invested more profits back into its land and grown its economy more and had more to sell and been able to afford buying more. Most trade would still naturally have gone to England, and it's likely that England's share of a larger pie would have more value than the totality of a smaller pie.

But Smith also makes a more complex and nuanced argument. By making trade with the Americas so lucrative, English merchants poured most of their own capital into trade with the Americas, and so did not compete with other markets such as the Mediterranean trade. Because England had such a great navy, it was capable of being a major player in intra-European trade. But because it withdrew from that market, its rivals were able to capture higher profits. And so goods that were not originally sourced from the Americas ended up being more expensive to import to England because they were carried by foreign vessels; and British goods that were not destined for the Americas sold for less than they would otherwise. There's an opportunity cost here: giving up the monopoly on American trade would not just have meant a loss in in that one particular area, it would also have meant a corresponding gain in other areas as British resources and activity were reallocated into more profitable pursuits. Smith firmly believes that the result would have been a net gain for Britain.

Smith gets very detailed and particular in a lot of his analyses like this one: not just drawing an abstract model, but talking in detail through a use-case. That can make the book seem more dated, and in fact, this was arguably dated when it came out: the first edition couches all its discussions of American trade with phrases like "before the late disturbances," as Smith evidently believed the revolutionary sentiment would have eroded by the time his readers had the book. But I think that specificity is a strength, as he can make empirical arguments through presenting evidence of real-world activities, not just inductive reasoning based on theories.

Smith's general and repeated opinion tends to be that government policy distorts the economy, and almost always harms it. In trying to encourage a particular activity or industry, they generally hurt other parties (like the consumers or suppliers of that industry), and often don't even particularly help their intended target (due to rising costs, flat demand, currency devaluation or other issues). There are some particular cases where it may still make sense for the government to interfere in the economy, as with naval supplies for Britain's national security, but his default position is that a hands-off policy leads to the best outcomes.

It isn't that he dislikes government, he just sees it as occupying a largely different sphere from commerce. Jumping ahead a bit, at the very end of Book IV (page 651), he writes:

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom of knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

So much interesting stuff there! First, there's the well-known laissez-faire mindset, that a politician or bureaucrat in the capital doesn't know your situation as well as you do, so the government/sovereign should avoid interfering: even if they're trying to help, they may cause harm. Then there's a positive enumeration of the things government should be involved in. The first two, national security and internal justice, are self-evident. The third is very interesting: "erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions" that will broadly benefit society but are not profitable. I'm really curious if he'll go into this in more detail in Book V. In Smith's day I can see this including things like public highways and ports, but maybe also universities and hospitals. In modern times you could include, well, almost anything in there: some that come to my mind are childhood nutrition, childcare, universal education, universal healthcare, high-speed rail, etc. And that closing reference to "great society" makes me very curious if there was a conscious link between LBJ's ambitious anti-poverty programs and The Wealth of Nations. (Probably not! But kind of fun to think about!)

Earlier in Book IV, he also calls out a really interesting case with slavery. While he generally favors the liberal laws of England over the absolutist laws of France, Spain and Portugal, he notes on pages 553-554:

The profit and success of that which is carried on by slaves, must depend equally upon the good management of those slaves; and in the good management of their slaves the French planters, I think it is generally allowed, are superior to the English. The law, so far as it gives some weak protection to the slave against the violence of his master, is likely to be better executed in a colony where the government is in a great measure arbitrary, than in one where it is altogether free. In every country where the unfortunate law of slavery is established, the magistrate, when he protects the slave, intermeddles in some measure in the management of the private property of the master; and, in a free country, where the master is perhaps either a member of the colony assembly, or an elector of such a member, he dare not do this but with the greatest caution and circumspection. The respect which he is obliged to pay to the master, renders it more difficult for him to protect the slave. But in a country where the government is in a great measure arbitrary, where it is usual for the magistrate to intermeddle even in the management of the private property of individuals, and to send them, perhaps, a lettre de cachet if they do not manage it according to his liking, it is much easier for him to give some protection to the slave; and common humanity naturally disposes him to do so.

I'll write more about this below, but I really love Smith's moral voice here and throughout the book. He's describing the world as it is, where it's legal for one human to own another human, but also makes clear that this is outrageous and immoral. Anyways, reading this passage put me in mind of George Washington's Newport Address - as I've written about previously, that's possibly my favorite bit of writing from the Founding Fathers. In it, Washington promulgates a vision where a strong federal government can protect minority rights against the tyranny of the majority. I think Smith is describing something similar here: a strong government can better protect individual rights than a weak government which must follow the will of the wealthy.

That said, I do wonder about this specific example Smith gives about the colonies. I tend to think of Haiti when I imagine French slave colonies, and I don't think of the Haitain slaves as being treated well. I wonder if treatment was better in other French colonies besides Haiti, or if the English were worse than Haiti but managed to emancipate their slaves before a rebellion. Or maybe the Haitians were better treated, and that treatment better positioned them for a successful rebellion than more ground-down slaves could have pulled off.

Continuing that moral vein: I was pleased to see some great passages where Smith acknowledges the horrific ways the Europeans treated native Americans and African slaves. There seems to be a modern belief that anti-imperial sentiment is a "woke" concern that started in the 21st century, but Smith was writing in the 1700s and very righteously and sternly denouncing European exploitation of the Americas. Of course, people in the past also had morals and sentiments, and could recognize cruelty and injustice. It may have been even easier for them to see it, as they lived closer in time to its occurrence and lived even more directly in its shadow. From page 416:

The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began to take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proven as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

I like how "savage" is applied to Europeans here, opposite its more customary usage to describe the natives. But "savage" is indeed how the Europeans treated the Americans. On page 528:

In consequence of the representations of Columbus, the council of Castile determined to take possession of countries of which the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending themselves. The pious purpose of converting them to Christianity sanctified the injustice of the project.

And on page 555:

Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those colonies; the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality.

Smith is really interested in the colonization of the Americas generally and of English North American in particular, and it's pretty amazing to see Smith frankly admitting that within 50 to 100 years the American colonies could be larger and more prosperous than the homeland of England. This turns into a very long historical and political passage that doesn't have a whole lot to do with economics, he just segues in from an economic discussion, but it's really fascinating. He even gets into armchair psychology, musing over how to convince the rebellious American leaders back into the loyalist British fold. From pages 587-588:

Instead of piddling for the little prizes which are to be found in what may be called the paltry raffle of colony faction; they might then hope, from the presumption which men of the great prizes which men naturally have in their own ability and good fortune, to draw some of the great prizes which sometimes come from the wheel of the great state lottery of British politics. Unless this or some other method is fallen upon, and there seems to be none more obvious than this, of preserving the importance and of gratifying the ambition of the leading men of America, it is not very probable that they will ever voluntarily submit to us; and we ought to consider that the blood which must be shed in forcing them to do so is, every drop of it, the blood either of those who are, or of those whom we wish to have for our fellow-citizens. They are very weak who flatter themselves that, in the state to which things have come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone. The persons who now govern the resolutions of what they call their continental congress, feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen, and attornies, they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.

This and the surrounding passages lines up very well with my understanding from The Men who Lost America. As both books point out, Americans paid almost no tax to Britain but benefited enormously from British spending, particularly its large and expensive army and navy that defending the country against French, Spanish and native American attacks, as well as repelled pirates and kept sea lanes safe for shipping. It wasn't politically tenable to ask British taxpayers to continue footing the bill to support America, especially since American colonists had the added benefits of better wages and cheaper land.

Smith takes seriously this question of how to resolve the intensifying animosity over taxation. He doesn't think that American assemblies would willingly impose British taxes, as doing so would destroy their local credibility. And Britain can't directly collect taxes themselves as an outside non-local force. Again, as both the above passage and The Men Who Lost America comment, Britain saw Americans as British subjects, and hated the idea of killing their own civilians.

Smith ultimately lands on absorbing America into Britain, giving the colonies proportional representation in Parliament. The biggest selling point here is the American ego: people had been raised from shopkeepers and lawyers to American statesmen, so they wouldn't willingly go back down to shopkeepers, but might willingly rise up to Member of Parliament. He thinks that eventually the seat of Parliament is likely to move to the Americas once their (our) nation grows large and rich enough. Which is kind of what happened in Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series!

The last part of Book IV describes and critiques various economic systems: a commercial-oriented one, a mercantile-oriented one, and finally what a hypothetical agricultural-oriented one would look like. The last case is interesting: he's writing in the voice of a proponent of the system while describing and explaining it, which goes on for a good run of many pages. You could very easily quote something out of context to make it sound like Smith believes the opposite of what he actually believes; even for a whole page, he isn't couching in terms like "Some believe" or "They say". I do like how he writes this, just staying in this particular voice and register while he patiently builds up the system he's about to tear down, but it's an example of why books like this require a lot of focus while reading. If you were to just drop into that section you'd get the completely opposite impression of what he's trying to say.

As with the first two books, I jotted down notes about passages that particularly struck me - even more than the first two books! I don't think that's necessarily because these ones were more interesting, more that I was in the habit of doing it. I tried to fold some of them into the main part of the post, but here's the cavalcade of Thoughts!

From pages 398-399:

A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. For some time after the discovery of America, the first enquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighborhood. By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering. Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the king of France to one of the sons of the famous Gengis Khan, says that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France? Their enquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards. They wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering. Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of values. Wealth, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards, it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth.

That's a fun paragraph. Throughout all of The Wealth of Nations Smith keeps pooh-poohing the obsession Europeans have with gold and silver. As he points out here, while obsession with gold is considered "civilized" and obsession with cattle is considered "primitive", cattle actually benefit a nation while gold, by itself, does not.

On page 407:

Money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which every thing is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in exchange for every thing. [...] His profit arises more directly from selling than from buying, and he is upon all these accounts generally much more anxious to exchange his goods for money, than his money for goods. But though a particular merchant, with abundance of goods in his warehouse, may sometimes be ruined by not being able to sell them in time, a nation or country is not liable to the same accident. [...] And though goods do not always draw money so readily as money draws goods, in the long-run they draw it more necessarily than even it draws them. Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods. Money, therefore, necessarily runs after goods, but goods do not always or necessarily run after money. The man who buys, does not always mean to sell again, but frequently to use or to consume; whereas he who sells, always means to buy again. [...] It is not for its own sake than men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

I found this passage interesting for a couple of reasons. First, while for most of the book Smith treats money as absolutely equivalent with the thing you can buy or sell for that money, here he observes that it is not perfectly fluid. Basically, if I have $1000 I can very easily buy a computer; but if I have a computer it can be very hard to sell it for $1000. But, by the end of the passage, he notes that a computer (e.g.) has intrinsic value, while $1000 has no intrinsic value. So in the long run it's much more important for you to be making and selling useful things, than to hoard money. His example here is a micro-economic merchant, but the point he's making is macro-economic national policy.

Page 408:

But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them; that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there. [...] To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families, by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils. As the expense of purchasing these unnecessary utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the quantity or the goodness of the family provisions; so the expense of purchasing an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver must, in every country, as necessarily diminish the wealth which feeds, clothes, and lodges, which maintains and employs the people.

I should say here that I think I'm quoting literally every time Smith uses an analogy in the book, so they aren't actually as common as you might think from reading this blog post. Some of his analogies are better than other. I mostly love his voice here: yes, it would be ridiculous for the government to force everyone to have more pots and pans in the mistaken belief that having more utensils than they need would make people happier. Likewise, it's dumb to force more gold into a country than it needs to carry on its business. Doing that just makes gold less valuable and prices more expensive.

Page 435:

To judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislature, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs.

I love that shade. I'm still not totally sure what he means here, but I think he's saying that politicians should not interfere with markets, and if they do try to interfere, it's a sign that they're trying to curry favor with special interests and not serving the greater good of the nation.

Page 463:

And France is a much richer country than North America; though, on account of the more unequal distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one country, than in the other.

I perked up at this mention of income inequality. There are a handful of times he references inequality in this book, and it's usually more of an aside, not a major focus like in Piketty. But I think worth observing the assumption that inequality is bad.

Pages 475-476:

So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life, must either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some augmentation of their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it operates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of the country. So far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the ability of the employers of the poor, to employ so great a number as they otherwise might do, and must, so far, tend to restrain the industry of the country.

Similarly here, his sympathy seems to be aligned with the poor working folks at the bottom of the economy, not the wealthy merchants at the top. Again, different from my pre-existing image of Adam Smith as either promoting the interests of the wealthy or of prioritizing the national wealth over the wealth of individuals. Here he's arguing against the taxation (direct or indirect) on food, which is a basic necessity of life.

Page 478-480:

When you dam up a stream of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the dam-head as if there was no dam at all. The prohibition of exportation cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their land and labour will allow them to employ [...] When they have got this quantity the dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over. The annual exportation of gold and silver from Spain and Portugal accordingly is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very near equal to the whole annual importation. As the water, however, must always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal must, in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater than what is to be found in other countries. The higher and stronger the dam-head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of the water behind and before it. [...] The cheapness of gold and silver, or what is the same thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them for at home. [...] Open the flood-gates, and there will presently be less water above, and more below, the dam-head, and it will soon come to a level in both places. [...] The loss which Spain and Portugal could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver would be altogether nominal and imaginary. The nominal value of their goods, and of the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before: but their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to maintain, command, and employ, the same quantity of labour. [...] Those goods would, probably, the greater part of them, and certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions, for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption. A part of the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been employed before. The annual produce of their land and labour would immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would, probably, be augmented a great deal; their industry being thus relieved from one of the most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under.

Phew - apologies for the long quote! Again, I perk up any time Smith tries to make an analogy, so I had to pull that one in here. This kind of continues the water-based metaphor for money that he deployed in the earlier books, but here, instead of a stream that carries things along, he's focusing on the depth of the water; and here more water is bad. The Iberian leaders naively think that having gold and silver will make them rich, so they import as much as they can and try to block its exports; but it can't fully stop the exports, it's so easy and profitable that most precious metals leave anyways. But the fact that more gold and silver remain in Spain makes everything more miserable: their currency is worth less than other nations' currency, so it's more expensive for them to import useful machines and supplies for manufacturing. He's pointing out that, if everything cost half as much, then on paper it would seem like a loss but in reality it would be a wash, and in the long run would be better for them.

Page 497:

Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situation they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.

There are a couple of phrases like this that are close to but not quite what I'm used to. I think of "master of none" as being a general comment on expertise, while "never be rich" seems like a more practical assessment that a specialist can command a higher wage than a generalist. The second part of this quote is a good restatement of Smith's general belief, that the people engaged in some enterprise understand it better than the national government will, so they should generally be left alone as even attempts to "help" them may prove counterproductive.

Page 507:

The laws concerning corn may every where be compared to the laws concerning religion. The people feel themselves so much interested in what relates either to their subsistence in this life, or to their happiness in a life to come, that government must yield to their prejudices, and in order to preserve the public tranquility, establish that system which they approve of. It is upon this account, perhaps, that we so seldom find a reasonable system established with regard to either of those two capital objects.

That's a really interesting comparison. The kind of arch tone here is another thing that reminds me of David Hume's skeptical writing on religion. I am a little curious what Smith's own religious beliefs were; from some very light online research, it sounds like it isn't generally clear, and various writings of his make him sound more like an atheist, a deist or a religious man.

But anyways, yes, I think Smith's point here is solid. To me this falls in the category of "grandstanding". If you can say that you're protecting American farmers and/or making food healthier and more affordable, you'll probably get a lot of easy support for your law, but you might end up with ridiculous situations like subsidizing high fructose corn syrup through the USDA while recommending diets without added sugars through the FDA. And pandering to local religious prejudice can be a big vote-winner, but the resulting laws tend to be dire.

On page 532, while discussing America:

Every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate. He has no rent, and scarce any taxes to pay. [...] He has every motive to render as great as possible a produce, which is thus to be almost entirely his own. But his land is commonly so extensive, that with all his own industry, and with all the industry of other people whom he can get to employ, he can seldom make it produce the tenth part of what it is capable of producing. He is eager, therefore, to collect labourers from all quarters, and to reward them with the most liberal wages. But those liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheapness of land, soon make those labourers leave him, in order to become landlords themselves, and to reward, with equal liberality, other labourers, who soon leave them for the same reason that they left their first master. [...] In other countries, rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one. But in new colonies, the interest of the two superior orders obliges them to treat the inferior one with more generosity and humanity; at least, where that inferior one is not in a state of slavery.

My first thought on reading that is that this dynamic sounds a lot like Silicon Valley and startup culture. For decades, there has been a pattern where a company starts, it makes a lot of money, then the workers leave and start their own competing companies, who often go on to make even more money. I think you could generalize Smith's colonial farmers and Silicon Valley founders: when an economy is rapidly growing, there is much more demand for labor, which is better compensated and better treated; and the opportunities from that rapidly growing economy also creates conditions whereby workers can become owners themselves.

Which, of course, once again restates Thomas Piketty. When there is a high rate of growth, inequality tends to decrease. While Adam Smith was writing, America had a high rate of growth, England a lower rate of growth, and France lower still, which pretty directly and clearly predicts the differences in inequality between those nations.

Finally, this potential for the best of all worlds (rising individual fortunes, rising national wealth, and lowering inequality) is only realized in systems of liberty where workers have the freedom to come and go as they please. Silicon Valley happened in Silicon Valley because, unlike most of the country, California bans non-compete agreements between employers and employees. And New England became an economic powerhouse where the Caribbean islands did not because most English colonists were freemen while nearly all Caribbean workers were slaves.

Page 537:

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatsoever.

I love how blunt and direct that is. Smith prefers a separation between government and commerce, but when there is an alignment, one where the businessmen are in charge is the absolute worst. He was writing about the various East India companies, but I think it's also applicable to today's oligarchies, petrostates and banana republics.

Page 576:

But above all, that irregular and partial administration of justice, which often protects the rich and powerful debtor from the pursuit of his injured creditor, and which makes the industrious part of the nation afraid to prepare goods for the consumption of those haughty and great men, to whom they dare not refuse to sell upon credit, and from whom they are altogether uncertain of payment.

Again, we see Smith's sentiments in favor of the little guy (here, the petite-bourgeois tradesman) over the "rich and powerful" (most likely a landed nobleman). This briefly touches on one of Katharina Pistor's big ideas in The Code of Capital, that any system needs to explicitly prioritize the rights of stakeholders. Over centuries, at some times the common law has protected the rights of debtors over those of creditors, and at other times it protects the rights of creditors over those of debtors.

Page 602-603

But a company of merchants are, it seems, incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such. Trade, or buying in order to sell again, they still regard as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity, regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchant, as something which ought to be made subservient to it. [...] It is the interest of the East India company considered as sovereigns, that the European goods which are carried to their Indian dominions, should be sold there as cheap as possible; and that the Indian goods which are brought from thence should bring there as good a price, or should be sold there as dear as possible. But the reverse of this is their interest as merchants. As sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. As merchants, their interest is directly opposite to that interest.

Yet again, Smith sees commercial and government interests as diametrically opposed, and he doesn't necessarily see the commercial interests as superior to governmental ones. While reading this, I was musing on how the idea of public-private partnerships has really taken off in recent decades, and in the US is often seen as a centrist "third way" that combines liberal and conservative values. I get the feeling that Adam Smith would recoil in horror at public-private partnerships. The parties' interests are opposite.

Page 609:

They endeavor to buy the work of the poor spinners as cheap as possible. They are as intent to keep down the wages of their own weavers, as the earnings of the poor spinners, and it is by no means for the benefit of the workman, that they endeavor either to raise the price of the complete work, or to lower that of the rude materials. It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and the powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed.

Adam Smith channeling Karl Marx! The owners of capital will always seek to maximize their profits, which necessarily comes at the expense of the workers.

Page 625:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.

This actually contradicts my thought from my first post, that historically we focused more on producers when considering economics and politics, and that our consumer-oriented mindset is a more modern 1970s-and-on invention. I guess that's not true! Smith's statement does make a ton of sense though. There's no purpose in producing something that nobody wants to consume. Similar to money running after goods, production runs after consumption.

Page 626:

A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers, all the goods which these could supply them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home-consumers have been burdened with the whole expence of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the last two wars, more than two hundreds millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted over and above all that has been expended for the same purpose in former wars. The interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit, which, it ever could be pretended, was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods, which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies.

Again, I love this DSA-flavored Smith. It's a pretty striking anti-imperialist statement from back when the British Empire was just getting off the ground. It's a strong denouncement of how government policy and martial force are used to prop up special economic interests, which is not only immoral but ruinously wasteful; there are endless examples from our own nation's history we could add to Smith's here.

Page 642:

In representing the wealth of nations as consisting, not in the unconsumable riches of money, but in the consumable goods annually reproduced by the labour of the society; and in representing perfect liberty as the only effectual expedient for rendering this annual reproduction the greatest possible, its doctrine seems to be in every respect as just as it is generous and liberal.

This particular passage is describing the French œconomical philosophy, but highlighting the elements that most align with Smith's own view, and I think is a good 10,000 foot view at the book's thesis. What is the Wealth of Nations? It isn't the number of gold and silver coins in your vault. It's how much your nation can produce: growing crops, building things, providing services. How do you increase your nation's wealth? By making your people free to pursue their own best interests.

Phew! Okay, that's it for this entry! I have one last book coming up in The Wealth of Nations at about 300 pages, so I will likely see you back here again in a couple of weeks!

Wealth of Nations

2026-03-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

So! As previously noted on this blog, for a little while now I've been planning to tackle "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. I've grown increasingly interested in economic books over the years, and TWoN is by far the single most influential book in the field, as the book that almost single-handedly established economics as a distinct area of scholarship. My parents generously gifted me a cool old volume from the 1930s for Christmas, and I've been taking my time reading through and absorbing it. I had assumed I'd write one post after finishing it, but I've been reading for well over a month now and am just up to page 350 of a 950+ page book, so I figured I'd treat this like an epic fantasy RPG and write multiple blog posts as I proceed through it. I've finished the first two books: "Of the Causes of Improvement in the productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order according to which its Produce is naturally distributed among the different Ranks of the People" and "Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock." I am taking a mild risk in writing "early", as later books may change my understanding of the previous one, but that's a risk we'll all have to take!

Some minor technical notes first: this book's text was taken from the fifth edition but was heavily footnoted by the editor. I skipped over almost all of the footnotes, I find that they break up the flow and usually don't add much value to the discussion. But when I did read some notes, they could be interesting. In particular, the editor points out places where Smith was mis-quoting a source or misunderstanding something he had read. For example, Smith recounts a charming but apocryphal story about how a major innovation in steam engine design was created by the lazy boy who was paid to attend to the machine and rigged up a contraption so he could go goof off with his friends instead of tediously resetting a piston.

That error of Smith's is a good reminder that great authors aren't gods, and their work can be valuable without everything in them being literally true. I'm reminded a bit of China Mieville writing in A Spectre Haunting about judging authors based on what they're trying to do. To the degree we judge Smith as a historian, he's doing a good job for his era but a very poor job by modern standards. But to the degree we judge Smith as a teacher, he's fantastic, picking examples that stick in your mind to illustrate the concepts he's trying to get across, even if those examples never actually happened.

I had earlier slightly bemoaned reading all the way through his Theory of Moral Sentiment before starting on The Wealth of Nations, but I can see now where this builds on the earlier work. Where ToMS started on a biological level in the course of explaining ethics, here Smith is starting on a zoological level to explain economics. Man has an innate drive to "truck, trade and barter." If I'm good at picking apples, I'll pick a ton of apples, and then trade you a portion of my apples in exchange for a portion of the meat you get while hunting. According to Smith, this is unique among the animal species. We don't observe a dog trading a bone with another dog. And while different species of dogs have varying advantages (some dogs are fast, others are good at ferreting out rodents, others are good at guarding), dogs don't cooperate with one another to combine their distinct strengths. As in The Theory of Moral Sentiment, Smith emphasizes that man is a social animal: our strength is not in our individual bodies and minds, but in our ability to cooperate together.

The division of labor is the supercharging source of prosperity. He describes a team of people making nails, with each worker focusing on one part of the task. One man melts the metal, another draws it out, another pounds it into shape, another affixes the head. This team of four men can make many times more nails than they could if each of the four made each nail from start to finish. But being able to have this division of labor requires a critical mass of workers and materials, so in Smith's day you only tended to see prosperity in coastal towns and along navigable waterways, where large numbers of people could find and collaborate with one another. In remote inland areas, like the Scottish highlands, there are fewer people and it's harder to connect with others, so there each person needs to do many things: instead of a person being part of a team that makes nails, one person might make all the nails used for miles around, as well as all the horseshoes and repairing broken doors and building fences. In that environment, each person needs to do many things, so there's less specialization, and thus less efficiency, and thus less prosperity, as every hour of labor results in less output.

It's interesting to see this flip side to the discussion of the alienation of labor. Smith positions specialization as a positive: you can develop a deep skill and expertise in some activity, can take pride in being particularly good at that activity, and your skill leads to a macro benefit of increasing overall productivity and prosperity for not just you but the society you are part of. But I think more modern commentators focus on how specialization separates the worker from the product. If you're one of seven people who worked on a nail, then it isn't really "your" nail. You've been reduced to one monotonous and repetitive task. There's still a macro benefit, but your hourly experience probably feels worse since your job is more dull; and much of the macro benefit will flow to the owner of the nail factory, not to you.

This discussion of wealth requires an understanding of value, and Smith's argument is that ultimately labor is the only true standard of value. He acknowledges that "labor" can be somewhat amorphous and hard to attach a specific number to. For example, an hour of work from a highly skilled professional, like a doctor who has spent a decade studying medicine, may be worth much more than a week of work that does not require any particular training. But he thinks that throughout nations and centuries labor is really what we're ultimately measuring with our money. I'm spending my time in labor to get money so I can buy goods and services that others have spent time laboring to produce.

He looks at other possible baselines for measuring value. Commodity prices, like for wheat, can vary a lot from year to year, although they vary much less from century to century. If there's a bumper crop of wheat in one year and a drought the next, the price of wheat will vary a lot. But the average real value of wheat in one century will be very close to its value in another century. On the other hand, the value of precious metals like gold and silver vary little from year to year, but can vary a lot from century to century. In the short term there's a fairly small and limited supply of precious metals and a constant demand for them; but over the long term new mines are discovered that expand the supply of metals, and sovereign states tend to debase existing coinage which drives down the real value, so over the long run the real value of precious metals consistently declines. And Smith notices that the declining value of precious metals and currency benefits existing debtholders, typically the state, in much the same way that inflation does today in the 21st century.

The first book has a long discussion on the history of money, including barter systems, mediums of exchange and measures of value (cows were often used in trade, but it's hard to make change with a cow), metals and minting official currency. Reading this reminded me that I've wanted for years to re-read The Baroque Cycle; I still remember a great scene where someone wants to make a purchase and the prospective customer and merchant spend many pages debating the provenance and value of the coinage being offered. I now think that Stephenson may have written that fictional exchange immediately after reading this passage in The Wealth of Nations. Unreliable currency, with lower gold or silver mixed in by the sovereign or the edges shaved off by citizens caused much chaos, angst and friction for even the most routine commercial transactions.

Smith identifies three components that make up a price: labor, land, and capital. I think modern economists would consider land a form of capital, but for his era land made a lot of sense, especially since agricultural production still dominated the economy. Later in the book he spends a lot of time analyzing the role of rent: stepping a bit further back, I think in his time the owners of land tended to be the landed gentry and nobility, who he refers to as "the country Gentlemen", while the owners of capital were the merchant burghers. At the time he was writing, landowners seemed to have the upper hand over capital owners, and they would extract maximum rent. I think this is basically in line with Marx's analysis, as Smith was writing in the waning days of the aristocracy and the dawn of the bourgeoisie.

Smith writes about the "natural price" a good might command, which I think correlates to what I learned as "pure competition" back in primary school. With many buyers and sellers, it's very hard to make a profit, so things will tend to sell for what they cost to make: the rent to the landlord, the wages to the laborer, and the minimum upkeep on capital to replenish depleted supplies and replace durable goods. On the other hand, if a market is a monopoly with only a single seller and multiple buyers, things will cost as much as the market can bear. In this scenario a large profit will be possible, although Smith thinks that will tend to favor the landlord more than the owner of capital.

It's really interesting to see Smith dive into the competition between labor and capital, which I associate with Marx but is central to Smith. I was fascinated to read Smith say that, at the time he was writing, the law forbade "combinations" among workers, but not among owners. The opposite is true today, and thank goodness! It's wild to think of a world where labor unions are illegal and price-fixing cartels are legal, but that was the reality just 150 years ago.

Smith notes that we don't tend to notice the collusion among owners to depress wages, but that is because it's so common that it's unremarkable, just a silent background to our economic activity. In contrast, combination among workers tends to be very noticeable, as they loudly demand and agitate for higher wages. As Smith explains, this is because workers are coming from more of a place of desperation: they badly need help and can't afford to wait a long time to receive it. In contrast, owners have accumulated wealth, and can patiently wait out for more favorable conditions. Owners also have the civil magistrate on their side and can wield the law to drive the workers back. So owners will always have the upper hand.

But despite that, there is a minimal floor for wages: workers need to be able to make enough to support themselves, and enough to reproduce and replenish the workforce. Smith estimates that this roughly means one wife and four kids per worker, assuming only two survive to adulthood. So owners will pay workers enough to raise a small family, but no more than that. This keeps the working class the working class: stable enough to continue existing, but not earning enough to accumulate their own capital and rise into an upper class.

Smith observes that wages can be offered above the subsistence level, but only when there is an increased demand for labor. Interestingly, this isn't based on the absolute wealth of a nation, but rather by rapid growth within the country. He observes that England is far wealthier than North America, but North American wages are substantially higher than English wages. The population of England is estimated to double in 500 years, while the population of North America is expected to double in 20-25 years. (Apologies for the odd tense, I keep going back and forth on whether to write this in Smith's present voice or my past voice.)

England has a sort of stasis in the late 1700s: it has a lot of wealth, but that wealth is held by the owners (landlords and capitalists); there is a stable labor force that is large enough to fill all the jobs required in England, but not a lot of room for new jobs to be demanded or created. In contrast, New York has much less wealth, but a rapid increase in jobs: it wants men to dig canals, to build ships, to establish new fisheries, to clear farmland, and so on. This raises the demand for labor above what the current pool of workers can provide. And goods are cheaper in North America, so wages go a longer way, and because prices are lower less profit flows to the owners. It's a really interesting use-case.

Oh - and now that I write all that, I can see that it's just another formulation of Thomas Piketty's observation that inequality will decrease in economies where the rate of growth is greater than the rate of return on invested capital, and inequality will increase when the rate of growth is less than the rate of return on capital. Again, it's amazing how much we knew about the economy 200+ years ago.

On page 73, Smith writes:

The difference between the genius of the British constitution which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot perhaps be better illustrated than by the different state of these countries.

North America, with cooperation and rights for citizens, has rapidly increased the standard of living. But the East Indies, with a harshly capitalist corporation maximizing profit over all other concerns, is overseeing an empire of misery, starvation, and extreme poverty. There is tons of money being made in both hemispheres, and arguably more money to be made in the East Indies with its lucrative spice trade, yet only in one hemisphere is a rising tide lifting all boats. Anyways, I deeply appreciate Smith's look at the structures and frameworks that economies operate in.

Moving back to price: there are a lot of points where Smith seems to be thinking about something fundamentally differently from how I'm used to thinking about it. This isn't to say that he's wrong, or that I've been wrong, but they're kind of opposite. As one example, when Smith looks at a price, he sees the various components that compose it: wages paid to the laborer, rent paid to the landlord, the cost of replenishing your supplies, and your profit. Sum these all together and you get the price. He observes that in, say, North America, the wage input to the price may be a good deal higher, but the profit demanded is lower, which allows the good to be sold at a price where it can compete with goods produced from other countries with lower wages. But personally, I'm accustomed to thinking of "profit" as the amount that's left over once you've collected the price and subtracted all of your inputs. Profit is the solution (an output) to the mental equation in my mind, Price - Cost = Profit. But for Smith, profit is itself an input to the price, something the investor/owner/operator demands as compensation for the use of their capital. To Smith, Cost + Profit = Price. Those two equations are mathematically identical, but imply very different levels of agency, cause and effect.

Based on other readings of mine, I'm curious if this is a change in mindset as a result of the "consumer revolution" that started in the early 1970s. As I understand it, earlier generations tended to focus on the business side of the economy (workers + owners), and consumers picked from whatever the producers produced. But particularly in the United States there has been a shift to a mindset of "the customer is always right," which has gradually but inexorably led to a monomaniacal focus on the cheapest goods and the fastest, easiest shopping. I've grown up in this consumer-oriented regime so it's all that I've known. Anyways, that might be why my mental model starts with the price (the thing the consumer pays) rather than ending with the price (the thing the producer charges).

Throughout the early part of the book, Smith uses the word "Stock" frequently, and in most cases I mentally substitute "Capital" wherever I see that word. It isn't necessarily a 1-for-1 substitution, and again, he probably thought about things in different ways than I would. This is a tangent, but this kind of makes me think of the difficulty of translating an ancient Greek text into modern English. For example, we would say that the word "πνεῦμα" (pneuma) is ambiguous, since depending on the context we might variously translate it as "breath", "spirit" or "wind". But to an ancient Greek, it wouldn't be ambiguous at all: it was a single thought in their mind, a breath/spirit/wind. They just saw the world differently from how we do. For Smith, I'm reading about "Stock," which is an English word and I'm a native English speaker, but we do think about things slightly differently across the centuries.

Tangent aside: Smith writes in the abstract about how pricing should work, in a system with perfect competition, and then about how it does work in practice in the real world. Particularly in mainland Europe, and to a lesser extent in England, the skilled trades are dominated by what he calls "corporations" and what I think we would call "guilds." He explains the system whereby the number of practitioners is carefully limited, including a system of apprentices and journeymen. After a fairly dispassionate explanation of how the system works, he argues strongly against it. He notes that the reform would hurt both the masters and their apprentices, but it would help the public to a greater degree by making their production more affordable for everyone else in the nation.

It's interesting to consider the argument against guilds alongside the more modern (post-industrial-revolution) unions. It seems like guilds and unions cause an almost identical effect of organizing and limiting workers in order to demand a higher price for their labor. Free-market economists would almost certainly agree that we should avoid unions and let anyone do any work for anyone else at whatever price they agree on. I do think unions are different: in the guild system the masters occupied a role more like self-employed small-business-owners in charge of their own destiny, while in the post-industrial economic landscape the ownership class has almost all of the power. So Smith's argument against guilds might be closer to an argument against cartels than to an argument against labor unions.

Smith doesn't use some words that are common today in economics, like "inflation". But he does talk about those topics, either using different language or just describing them without naming them. I actually kind of like that, as it really forces you to understand the concepts. He embarks on a very long discussion about the changing value in the price of wheat over multiple centuries; as he patiently unpacks the reasons for the changes, he isn't just describing inflation and deflation, but explaining why they are occurring, including the expansion of the supply of silver from the discovery of the Potosi Mines in Peru, alongside the steadily increasing wealth and productivity in England, and so on. But Smith also uses some terms, like "nominal" versus "real" money prices, which are still in use today, even though I think those are slightly more esoteric in economic discussions than "inflation" is.

Smith uses the word "Stock" a lot early on in the book without defining it. Heading into Book Two, he starts going into much more detail on what he means by "Stock". He means many different things! A "circulating stock" might be like the goods in a merchant's store: he buys them, stores them, sells them, and replenishes them, gradually making more money over time from his profit. A "fixed stock" might be a machine, which costs a large sum to create, and an ongoing price to maintain and operate, but that enables the generation of new goods much more efficiently than without such a machine. And the "money stock" is the money available for investment, and so on. Smith also introduces the word "Capital" around this time and increasingly uses that word instead; it kind of feels like he changes his mind about what terms to use midway through writing the book.

Many of the concepts and arguments in The Wealth of Nations reappear a few years later in Alexander Hamilton's reports as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and I think Hamilton generally does a better job of explaining things than Smith does. Which does make sense: Smith is explicitly writing for an audience of men concerned with business, while recognizing that the book might also be read outside of that circle. Hamilton was writing for politicians, which included some businessmen but also many farmers, lawyers, clergy and others with only a layman's grasp of economic ideas. Smith has a few good and memorable turns of phrase, and comes up with a few good analogies, like picturing the flow of money as cutting channels into the land, or as a highway that enables trade in goods but does not itself generate any goods. But I think Hamilton's analogies are better and his writing is clearer.

The book contains many references to topical concerns of the day. I'm sure I'm missing a lot, and I'm missing many nuances of the ones I do recognize, but he will periodically weigh in about particular bills Parliament is considering or has passed that support certain forms of trade, and Smith will argue that such intervention is unnecessary or counter-productive. He references recent market disasters like the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi Company bubble. He seems to be arguing against a line of thought that Britain should make an effort to grow its "carrying trade" capacity, which its wealthier rival Holland dominated. The proponents believe that the carrying trade is the source of Holland's wealth, while Smith believes the opposite, that the fact Holland has fully invested in its domestic agriculture and manufacturing means that the only place it can now place surplus capital is in international trade, and so the dominance is a result of its wealth and not its cause. So if Britain wants to compete, Smith thinks it should fully invest in its domestic capacity as well instead of chasing after the international carrying trade. I think history proved Smith to be correct. This is another of the many (though not universal) cases where he thinks markets lead towards the best solution: left alone from political interference, people will invest in the activities that grant the greatest reward, and the "invisible hand" will guide them to those activities that provide the maximum benefit to the nation as a whole.

It is amazing to see how many things repeat over the centuries. He describes the process of "redrawing"; as I understand it, it's essentially like taking out a loan to pay off a previous loan. In the late 1700s, this would usually happen by drawing on funds from Bank A in Glasgow, then before that came due drawing on funds from Bank B in London, paying back Bank A, then before the Bank B note came due drawing new funds from Bank A, etc. This could continue for quite some time, and would give the appearance of a profitable commercial activity, but was based on a nihilistic ouroboros that would inevitably lead to calamity. When one bank stopped participating, the whole house of cards would collapse. Anyways, this immediately made me think of one of the many schemes that were revealed by the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Basically, there was one institution (I think maybe Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers) that would continually execute electronic trades between two departments. Because the trades were continuously ping-ponging, they never "settled" and so didn't appear on the books. When the company went bankrupt, one of the servers got unplugged. Then the other party was stuck with those bad debts on its books. So where from the outside it looked like nothing at all was going on, in reality there was this enormous debt that was just suspended in midair. Anyways, this reminds me of Investing In US Financial History - almost everything that happens has happened before, each generation recreates the financial crimes of its ancestors. In my opinion, only robust and enduring regulations will save us.

One other random note: probably the hardest problem I've been having with this book isn't the language or the historical references, but with the currency. He writes very specifically, which I appreciate, but when he's rattling off shillings and pounds and guineas and farthings I have no idea what he's talking about and can't follow the math. I should probably take a detour to memorize the pre-decimilization currency regime so I can follow that very important element for the rest of the book.

I've been jotting down notes about some passages that particularly struck me, because I thought they were insightful or ridiculous or intriguing. Here they are!

Page 11-12:

What a variety of labour too is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the workmen who attend the furnace, the mill-wright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next to his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and the other utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing these different conveniencies; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.

Phew! This is a really stirring and dramatic passage, that both explains a lot and gives a strong sense for why this is such an important topic. I really like how he centers the importance of cooperation and community: any single person's life is made much richer by all the other lives that have indirectly touched it. He also hammers on specialization, which recurs throughout the first book as kind of the central key in unlocking prosperity: the shepherd isn't digging coals out from the bowels of the earth or smelting ore or making glass windows. Experts are doing all of those things. And the shepherd in his turn is expertly shearing his sheep, producing a steady stream of wool far more efficiently than a miner or a glazier would be able to make.

This end of this passage also calls back to an analogy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that I had issues with, where Smith said something like "The lowliest beggar sunning himself by the side of the road possesses that same security which kings are fighting for." I think he overstates the similarity of the rich man with the poor man, but I agree that there are conveniences in modern life that everyone benefits from regardless of their class. Smith is contrasting the poorest people in a "civilized", modern, industrial nation from the members of a "primitive" hunter-gatherer society like those in North America or certain areas of Africa. I do wonder how his time is different from ours. I feel like we are less "on a level" within a given society than was the case in his time. That difference is absolutely quantifiable in dollar terms, comparing those with billions of dollars in wealth with those who have negative wealth. But it's harder to quantify on a "conveniences" level - poor people have access to common public goods like roads, parks, and libraries, as well as free private goods like Instagram and Google.

Page 50:

The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command.

I discussed this above, but I do like how Smith brings everything back to labor as the fundamental unit of value.

Page 72:

In any neighborhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence.

Yikes! Every once in a while Smith drops a casual but jaw-droppingly racist passage like that. It does kind of call into question his other research when he blithely repeats something like this. He periodically references China throughout the book; in his telling China is actually much more wealthy than any European nation, but its people are more desperate and poor. I forget if he directly draws this connection, but it may be related to his argument elsewhere that wages rise when an economy is growing and shrink when it is stagnant; because China has been so wealthy for thousands of years, its workers may be less well compensated than North American workers who occupy a rapidly growing economy.

Page 87:

Profit is so very fluctuating, that the person who carries on a particular trade cannot always tell you himself what is the average of his annual profit. It is affected, not only by every variation of price in the commodities which he deals in, but by the good or bad fortune both of his rivals and of his customers, and by a thousand other accidents to which goods when carried either by sea or by land, or even when stored in a warehouse, are liable. It varies, therefore, not only from year to year, but from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. To ascertain what is the average profit of all the different trades carried on in a great kingdom, must be much more difficult; and to judge of what it may have been formerly, or in remote periods of time, with any degree of precision, must be altogether impossible.

This matches my experience too! I kind of know what profit I made in a given year just because I had to pay tax on it, but I couldn't tell you what my "average" profit is, or what I might expect in the year to come. It's all incredibly variable for the reasons Smith describes.

Page 107:

There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents of which the possession commands a certain sort of admiration; but of which the exercise for the sake of gain is considered, whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. [...] The exorbitant rewards of players, opera-singers, opera-dancers &c. are founded upon those two principles: the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner. It seems absurd at first sight that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other.

This passage is so funny to me. I don't know why Smith thinks opera-singing is so scandalous and despicable.

Page 142:

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.

I think that's a really keen insight, and very applicable to today as well. Whenever Congress is considering labor laws, business ownership and management are always well-represented in lobbying. Whenever a law seems to favor workers, it is fair; but when it seems to favor owners, it may not be fair.

Page 160:

The food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat. [...] Should this root ever become in any part of Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, so as to occupy the same proportion of the lands in tillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at the present, the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people, and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes, a greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock and maintaining the labour employed in cultivation. [...] The common people in Scotland, who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong nor so handsome as the same rank of people in England, who are fed with wheaten bread. [...] But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters, and coal-heavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of human constitution.

I just love this full-throated adoration of potatoes!

From page 170, while discussing the laws governing ownership of new silver mines in Peru and new tin mines in Cornwall:

In both regulations the sacred rights of private property are sacrificed to the supposed interests of public revenue.

I kind of chortled when I first read that: "the sacred rights of private property" sounds sardonic to my ears. I can imagine Smith rolling his eyes as he writes that. On further reflection, I started wondering if he was being sincere - he definitely is a very strong proponent of private property (which he contrasts with the preceding feudal system, not public ownership). Smith isn't usually very funny, but there are a couple of moments where I read him having a playful or sarcastic tone. This may or may not be one of those.

On page 238, Smith observes that the price of gold and silver has declined at the same time that the wealth of Europe has increased. While most contemporaries argue that these changes are correlated, he says that they had very different causes, which just coincidentally occurred around the same time. The decline in the price of gold and silver was driven by the discovery of massive new mines in the New World. And:

The other from the fall of the feudal system, and from the establishment of a government which afforded to industry the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labor. Poland, where the feudal system still continues to take place, is at this day as beggarly a country as it was before the discovery of America.

I think that first sentence is a great summary of Smith's overall (but not complete) political/economic philosophy: laissez-faire. Government should provide security (I presume from foreign invaders, domestic bandits, and local criminals), and leave business alone, which will then thrive. This ties in with Bernstein's Birth of Plenty thesis, although per Bernstein private property rights are necessary but not sufficient for prosperity.

Page 276:

That revenue, therefore, cannot consist in those metal pieces, of which the amount is so much inferior to its value, but in the power of purchasing, in the good which can successively be bought with them as they circulate from hand to hand. Money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade, though it makes a part and a very valuable part of the capital, makes no part of the revenue of the society to which is belongs; and though the metal pieces of which it is composed, in the course of their annual circulation distribute to every man the revenue which properly belongs to him, they make themselves no part of that revenue.

That's a nice little analogy and explanation, and makes me think of Hamilton's description of money as "vibrating" as it moves throughout the economic system. Further on page 276:

Every saving, therefore, in the expence of maintaining the fixed capital, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, must increase the fund which puts industry into motion, and consequently the annual produce of land and labour, the real revenue of every society.

Also nodding to Bernstein here - if, say, an invention allows someone to do their work more efficiently and with less expense, they will earn more profit, which will then give them more money that they can use to expand their operations or invest in other businesses, leading to the virtuous cycle of a steadily growing economy.

Page 297:

The difficulties, accordingly, which the bank of England, which the principal bankers in London, and which even the more prudent Scotch banks began, after a certain time, and when all of them had already gone too far, to make about discounting, not only alarmed, but enraged in the highest degree those projectors. Their own distress, of which this prudent and necessary reserve of the banks was, no doubt, the immediate occasion, they called the distress of the country; and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spiritual undertakings of those who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve and enrich the country.

Again, Smith can be funny - I read the latter part of this with a very arch, sardonic voice. Like the use of "sacred" from page 170, the word "spiritual" feels out of place in what I think is a comedic sense. Like so much in this book, this is a reminder that nothing has changed in the last 250 years: when financial charlatans are exposed, they claim that The Fate Of The Country is at stake, and blame their woes on sound financial practices instead of their own excessive risk-taking and bad decisions.

Page 305:

The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of wagon-way through the air; enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures and cornfields, and thereby to increase very considerably the annual produce of its land and labor.

I kind of laugh at how bad that metaphor is, but I also kind of love it. He's imagining a Jetsons-style world where we can fly above the ground, which means we don't need roads on the ground, so we can use that land for growing more crops. In context, he's arguing that the paper money circulated by the banks for domestic commerce frees up metallic currency for international commerce, leading to higher overall utilization and a growing economy.

Page 308:

To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.

Passages like that are part of what piqued my interest in reading this book. Adam Smith has a reputation as the ultimate in libertarian free-market ideology. As noted above, he does favor free markets; but in contrast to today's free-marketers, he also is a firm believer in rules that support the greater good, even when they limit the activities between willing participants. I think his analogy here is really good: it isn't perfect liberty to demand people protect their homes against fire, but it's important for society as a whole to impose its will on everyone to limit the risk caused by a few reckless individuals.

Page 318:

In the progress of improvement, rent, though it increases in proportion to the extent, diminishes in proportion to the produce of the land. [...] In the ancient state, the little trade that was stirring, and the few homely and coarse manufactures that were carried on, required but very small capitals. These, however, must have yielded very large profits. [...] Though that part of the revenue of the inhabitants which is derived from the profits of stock is always much greater in rich than in poor countries, it is because the stock is much greater; in proportion to the stock the profits are generally much less.

This is very insightful, and very true today as well, in all sorts of situations. It's possible to make a very large profit percentage-wise by investing in a small business; but there is a limit to how much investment a small business can absorb. A large business with larger revenues will generate a larger total profit, but a lower rate of profit. Looking at global investing, the developed world's GDP generally chugs around at about 2% annual growth. The developing world may experience much larger growth rates, but they have much smaller economies. Once they grow large enough to "catch up" to the first world, their growth rates inevitably slow. Piketty describes this mostly in terms of technology, but I think the size and level of capitalization plays a major factor as well.

Page 336:

As capitals increase in any country, the profits which can be made by employing them necessarily diminish. It becomes gradually more and more difficult to find within the country a profitable method of employing any new capital. There arises in consequence a competition between different capitals, the owner of one endeavoring to get possession of that employment which is occupied by another. But upon most occasions he can hope to justle that other out of this employment, by no other means but by dealing upon more reasonable terms. He must not only sell what he deals in somewhat cheaper, but in order to get it to sell, he must sometimes too buy it dearer.

Similar to the previous quotation, this describes how as the total size of investment in a country rises, the rate of return falls. This feels especially prescient here as Smith was writing before the Industrial Revolution fully kicked off. One of the defining aspects of that era was a fully-capitalized Britain that ran out of domestic projects to invest in, which led to massive British investments in the United States, paying for canals, railroads and other major undertakings. Many of those projects eventually went bankrupt, ruining the British investors but leaving America with a robust infrastructure paid for by foreigners.

Page 354:

When the capital stock of any country is increased to such a degree, that it cannot be all employed in supplying the consumption, and supporting the productive labour of that particular country, the surplus part of it naturally disgorges itself into the carrying trade, and is employed in performing the same offices to other countries. The carrying trade is the natural effect and symptom of great national wealth; but it does not seem to be the natural cause of it. Those statesmen who have been disposed to favour it with particular encouragements, seem to have mistaken the effect and symptom for the cause.

I wrote about this passage above - Smith is addressing a contemporary discussion about the government setting economic priorities, but in the course of this he is making some profound observations about the overall course of economic development. On a metaphysical level, I think it's so important to properly establish cause and effect, and Smith is really good at that, disentangling different factors and explaining when one produced the other, or when two things coincidentally happened around the same time but were unrelated. On an economic level, I really like his bottom-up, inside-out view of the economy, which makes intuitive sense and is well supported by the data he shares.

Okay, that's it for this entry! So far I'm loving this book. The language is of course archaic, but I find the odd spellings ("cloaths", "justle" and such) to be charming. While many passages are dry, he's capable of very vivid and compelling prose. So far he's given a magisterial overview of how human beings come to trade with one another, how money facilitates those exchanges, how specialization in labor increases the overall efficiency and wealth in a community, and how banking increases the resources available to private enterprise beyond what gold and silver currency can support. He's also given a great overview of stock/capital, the different forms it can take and the jobs it can accomplish. There is a slightly-askew, out-of-time sheen to some of his writing, as I'm peering 250 years into the past to try and understand if he's saying some things slightly differently from how I would, or if he's accurately describing a world that's different from the one I inhabit. In any case, this has been one of my favorite economic books I've read, and I'm eager to continue through it!

Does It Never End?

2026-02-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

I wasn't planning on making another post on Blue Prince, but I've gotten another fun month or so of gaming out of it, and wanted to capture a few odds and ends of thoughts that didn't make it into the first post.

Before diving into spoilers: it really is amazing just how deep this game goes. Now that I'm poking into more online community things, I'm seeing that fans describe the game as having various "layers". Your initial goal of finding Room 46 and seeing the end-game credits is really just the first "layer". That's a perfectly fine and reasonable place to stop, you've solved a ton of puzzles by that point and had a really satisfying story. But you can keep playing and find a deeper layer of story and secrets. And keep playing after that and find a still-deeper layer of more esoteric story and more obscure secrets. There are periodic beats where you get to watch a cool cut-scene, which seems to be designed as a graceful off-ramp to say "This was fun, I think I'll stop playing now, thanks," but you can also choose to continue on to the next layer.

But one thing about those deeper layers is that they are more obscure. In my initial post I mentioned that I never felt "stuck" - there were always multiple things I was trying to make progress on, and there are multiple channels of hints that can guide you towards what you should be doing next. That's less true in the deeper layers. Which isn't inherently bad, just different. The deeper parts of the game start to feel more like an ARG, where it's more about the community as a whole pooling their knowledge and sharing discoveries to collectively advance. There are still some aspects where things are fairly sign-posted, and I'd never want to just follow a walkthrough, but I've also gotten to a point where if I'm feeling just stuck-stuck I'll feel good about looking things up online. 90% of the time I'll think "Oh, yeah, there's no way I would have figured that out." And as I mentioned before, the online communities are really good about managing spoilers, with individual spoiler sections and gradually expanding levels of hints and nudges rather than just "Here is the combination to open this safe."

For communities, I've found Reddit and Steam to be best; the actual articles from proper games websites are more like standard walkthroughs which is less fun. For the wiki, I strongly prefer blueprince.wiki.gg over the Fandom wiki, mostly because I hate Fandom in general.

I've also learned via a friend who plays this game that the creator was inspired by an old book called "Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle." Now I want to read that book! It's been out of print for a long time and it looks like used copies are selling for $100-$200. I'm hoping that the success of Blue Prince helps bring that back into print. In a very cool tribute, the developers commissioned Christopher Manson, the author/artist/creator of that book, to create new artwork that appears within this game. It looks like Maze has a community of its own online, and I'd be interested to dip my toe into that world as well.

MINI SPOILERS

I have a few thoughts on mechanical tips and things for playing but game, but also want to note that a surprisingly large number of these tips can be found within the game itself.

It's best to prioritize drafting "tight" floorplans with few or no unused room slots. So if you're drafting past an area, try to get a doorway in to any spaces that don't already have incoming doorways. Conversely, if a slot already has a doorway coming in, it's slightly wasteful to "spend" another doorway getting into that same space. You'd be better off spending that doorway further north, avoiding getting trapped in a dead end. So ultimately, if I am choosing between a room I really want but that has "bad" doors (blocking off my last chance at a slot or drafting a door into a wall or something) versus a mediocre room with "good" doors, I'll almost always take the mediocre room. I'll still be able to draft the "good" room later, will get the "mediocre" room out of my deck, and have more options for doors in the future.

I'm a big fan of the Ornate Compass, a fairly expensive item from the Showroom (I think 30 gold) that lets you rotate the first set of cards you draw each time you draft from a given door. Mostly because this helps with the above paragraph - you can optimize the use of a room. For example, Dining Room is always useful; it might initially present with one wasted door going into a wall, but you may be able to flip it around so the other two doors open into unexplored space. These days I usually keep the Ornate Compass in my Coat Check so I can use it from early on. It isn't usually usable on the edge rooms since you can never draft doors out of the manor, but it can be super-handy in the middle.

Speaking of gold - I think I mentioned this before, but you do eventually get to a point where you don't really need to worry about it. I'm now on Day 80 and I start each day with 90 (and counting) gold. There's another black-floorplan room that is now giving me another 50+ gold. All that to say, when you get Upgrade options, the ones that boost Gold are the least useful since it ends up being a very abundant resource.

There's a point in the game where you can use something called The Axe to completely remove the Gem cost from a room. This isn't communicated in-game, but you can only get The Axe a total of three times on a given playthrough, so do be very thoughtful about what you spend it on. In my case, I spent it on the Trophy Room (so it now just straight-up gives 8 gems, which is usually plenty to see me through a whole day), the Attic (which gives a large and random variety of items, including resources and usable items), and the Throne Room (an unlockable floorplan that includes a lever and is an important part of some later-game puzzles).

I very rarely worry about Gems these days - I start the day with 2, usually have another 2 from the previous day's Morning Room, and that's usually enough for me to find additional sources like the Trophy Room, a Sledgehammer'd trunk, some Digging Spots, the Courtyard, the Morning Room, etc. Keys are usually fine too - I often don't start with any, but since I methodically try to fill out my southern rooms before progressing north I'm usually able to pick up keys through chests, trunks, Metal Detector drops, Garage, etc. I've also made the Foyer common, which unlocks all hallways doors (including the Great Hall, which in turn usually has some keys behind a locked door); I've also made the Kennel common, which unlocks doors when you dig in a room. So it's a mix of finding keys and pre-emptively unlocking doors without keys.

I rarely get stuck these days, but when I do, it's usually because of running out of steps, or rarely keycard issues. Both can happen when I start the day with a Trading Post, as I'll typically spend a lot of steps up front gathering and trading in some starting items. I usually don't care about food much until I'm further north, but every once in a while I get stuck (often having passed up a Kitchen or Dining Room earlier) and without enough steps to retrace to another drafting area. Between the Break Room, Security Room and Utility Closet I usually don't need to worry about security doors, but sometimes I'll do something boneheaded like cut security door power when I have a keycard but haven't drafted Security yet, or trade in my Keycard and not get it or the Security room back before hitting security doors.

Oh, and just straight-up drafting myself into a corner can happen sometimes, though as I noted above I usually avoid this by making "tight" floorplans. Redraws help a ton too. I've gotten some upgrades that help with getting Dice; once you get over 50 Stars you can redraw more or less at will; and the Study will let you spend Gems to redraw (and I'm often swimming in gems by the middle of the manor). But I will sometimes get greedy and take too many dead-ends early, then be forced into final dead-ends before I have rerolls available.

At one point you can start adjusting the rarities of rooms. This is a very gradual process, you might get the chance to change up to three randomly-selected rooms on a given day, but it can be very powerful. I'm following a strategy I'd read about online which has been working well for me. Make rooms "Common" if you specifically want to draw them early in a run, usually because they cheaply give you resources or help you set up the rest of your run. For me this includes rooms like Security, the Coat Check, my axed Trophy Room and Attic, the Kennel, the Foyer, etc. Other rooms that you like but don't need early in the run should be "Standard". This includes most multi-exit rooms (hallways, courtyards, boiler room, etc.), rooms that you want to get later in the run (Great Hall to follow the Foyer), or good rooms that aren't run-defining (like a maxed Planetarium, the Mail Room, etc.). "Unusual" is for rooms that you want to get late in a run like the Freezer, or rooms that are expensive or mediocre, like the Pantry and Laundry Room. And "Rare" is for bad rooms that you almost never want to draw, like the Maid's Chamber, many Bedrooms, the Furnace, the Closet, etc. The main thing I still want to adjust is the Showroom - now that I have such a generous Allowance, I'd love to draft it early in my runs so I can use the Silver Spoon from early on, and maybe also try to get the Compass from there and save the Coat Check for an advanced item like the Jack Hammer.

ANYWAYS - All of that is a lot of strategy thoughts. But what I meant to say was, one tricky thing especially as you get further into the game is that there are some specific situations where you then need to unlearn things that have almost become muscle memory. There's one particular puzzle where you need to have zero gold, zero gems and zero keys - so don't automatically collect that Allowance, and figure out how to spend exactly 2 gems to get rid of your daily start!

MEGA SPOILERS

I've been spending a good part of the last month going through more time-consuming, or maybe just slower, parts of the game. Like trying to draft all of the Blue Rooms into Rank 8 and then looking for their Blue Tents notes. In many cases those will reference puzzles I've previously solved, other ones appear inscrutable and/or for future puzzle. I've been working through the Treasure Room notes; I did find the True Treasure of the Trove (after an online hint), but am still learning more about the Memo System, which may or may not be useful for future puzzles. And after an online hint for bringing the Satellite Dish online I've been gradually removing crates from the Tunnel. While slow, those have been pretty satisfying tasks, as I can usually make at least some progress on at least one of those each day.

The most recent milestone I hit was Reclaiming the Throne, which was very cool. I had seen an online reference to that some weeks ago, but have been naturally playing through the game and managed to figure out a lot of the prerequisites by myself without more detailed hints. I got to a point where I had separately gotten to the Blue Door at the end of the tunnel, then realized I was a bit behind where I should be for the Throne Room. I hadn't been able to open the Cursed Coffer, having tried several different keys in it for a while, and had assumed that a key in the tunnel would open it. So I finally looked that up, and had a head-smacking moment: there is no key to open the coffer, you have to smash it open with a sledgehammer. Just like what happened in the book! Sigh.

But anyways, it did feel really satisfying to finally get that, and I was able to Reclaim the Throne on that same day. I've gotten pretty good at maximizing movement and minimizing steps, such as quickly figuring out when to enter or exit through the Entryway versus the Basement Foundation. In this particular case, I had the Garage open so I had that option as well.

Where I'm at now: I still need to open the Blue Door, I think I should be able to do that soon as the Throne Room is Common and I still have the Royal Scepter with me. I'm not sure what lies beyond that, but I suspect it has something to do with the Numeric Cores - I think I've solved the MCCXXIII one (it's 8, because of course it is), but it seems like there should be something more there. I also just reached 100 Stars, which ties in to Her Ladyship's writings, and I'm very curious about that message. But it sounds like whatever comes next will be even slower than this most recent layer, so there's a very good chance I'll pick this as my personal cue to gracefully duck out and move on to the next game.

END SPOILERS

And, that's that! I think that will probably be my last post on this topic, but Blue Prince is surprisingly good at fostering obsessions, so I may be wrong about that!

History of Money

2026-02-02T21:13:00.000-08:00

Continuing my eternal exploration of financial books, I recently finished reading "The History of Money: A Story of Humanity." I think a few people had recommended it to me. I enjoyed the book, but it also served as an indication of just how thoroughly I've been reading in this area. Some years ago every financial fact was new to me; now I find myself increasingly saying "Yes, I know that already... oh, that's another way of looking at it, I suppose... Hm, this seems a lot like this other thing..."

In contrast to some of the wonkier and more tightly focused books I've been reading lately, The History of Money is definitely aimed at popular audiences and doesn't presume any prior knowledge. It's a little bit like Investing In US Financial History in that it takes a chronological look through the history and evolution of economic topics, but this book spans roughly 5000 years in time and most of the globe in space, as opposed to just 250 years and one country. It doesn't go into huge depth on any particular incident, but I think its most valuable characteristic is for putting things in context. As one random example, I'd previously read William Bernstein's description of the importance of grain imports to the Athenian economy, so that wasn't a new topic for me; but in THoM you can see how that evolution fit in with the Lydian invention of metallic currency and Roman taxation of the provinces, as one stepping stone on a centuries-long process of evolving money.

This book is mostly a collection of stories, early on stories about nations, later on stories about individuals. I was most familiar with the content earlier in the book and just sort of glided over a lot of it. But as it gets into the 1700s or so I started learning a lot more. In particular, I don't think I've ever read about Talleyrand's role in the creation of French livres and the assignat system. It's very germane to this book, and the author David McWilliams talks through how the confiscation of church property gave the state a solid basis of value for the livre initially (a land-backed as opposed to metal-backed system), but after the revolution the radical government excessively printed paper money which led to hyperinflation. Again linking back to Bernstein, from "The Birth of Plenty" I was familiar with France's lack of faith in banking and how that caused a competitive disadvantage in their conflict with England, but THoM gives a gripping story about particular people and the sequence of events that may make this period more memorable for future recall, as well as directly illustrate the related financial ideas.

The book also kind of normalizes and contextualizes random things I've read or heard over the years. For example, I was already familiar with John Law, but I think that was from some on-off podcast or NPR program I had listened to, while other stories are from economic books I've read. So now I have a better understanding of how John Law fits in with Talleyrand and others.

When picking up this book, I had assumed that it was going to be focused on money in particular: what it is, how it's used, how it's valued, etc. It turned out to be a lot broader, and a lot of the book is about more general economic growth and development. To be fair you can't really write just about money unless you're purely talking about numismatics. Money exists for a reason, it is influenced by the economy and it influences the economy, so you can't easily separate the two. I think the book ends up being roughly half about money-as-money, and half about the economic (and political and social) world growing in a symbiotic relationship with money.

McWilliams mentions that similar developments were occurring simultaneously and independently in the Fertile Crescent, China and central America, but he focused on Western culture like I remember from World History class, with the story beginning in the Middle East and gradually migrating into the Levant, the Mediterranean, and eventually western Europe.

Like I said before, this book is aimed at a popular audience: the language tends to be pretty casual, and overall this doesn't feel as rigorous as other economic books I've read, for better and for worse. He seems to often note correlations and imply causation without demonstrating it. For example, with the decline of the Roman Empire in northwest Europe, metal coinage became very scarce and was replaced with a more primitive bartering and tithe system. He notes that small-denomination currency is required to support city living, and thinks that the decline in the physical supply of money contributed to the de-urbanization of this area. But I think you could just as easily argue the opposite: with the decline of great cities, there wasn't as much demand for small coinage, so people would be more likely to repurpose them for trinkets or jewelry or just reclaim the copper or silver metal from the coins and put them to practical use. Or the decline of cities and the decline of coinage could both be side-effects of other forces (raiders, plagues, etc.). It's interesting to note the correlation, but I wish he would more explicitly question the cause and effect instead of just generally implying that money was responsible for changes and not the result of those changes.

On page 191 he writes "Could Law, with his alleged accomplice Spencer, have encouraged not one but two revolutions?" His theory is that John Law helped inflate the South Sea Bubble, Charles Spencer and other highly placed British nobles corruptly benefited from the bubble, and outrage from the fallout was one of the precipitating factors of the American Revolution. But this is the kind of vague circumstantial suggestion that irritates me, implying something without proving it or thoroughly arguing it.

Or on page 204: "It could be said that suspect money - rather than suspect politics - greased the guillotine, in an environment of food shortages, denunciations and worthless currency." "It could be said that" is one of the classic weasel-word phrases. Is McWilliams saying that the Terror was primarily caused by an unstable currency? No, he's implying it without really standing behind it.

Overall this feels like a book designed for chatter at a dinner party. There are lots of interesting little anecdotes and factoids sprinkled throughout the book. He really loves giving the etymology behind various common words, which were almost all new to me and made me say "Huh!", but they also aren't really important. The stories tend to be sensational whenever possible, focusing on the wilder aspects of peoples' sexual scandals or rivalries or duels: he'd rather repeat some salacious hearsay than a boring fact. Sometimes these stories' connection to money feels extremely tenuous, but the stories do tend to be very entertaining.

The author is Irish and loves featuring Irishmen. I really liked that, it adds good color and personality to the book: I feel like I'm being told an entertaining story by a particular person with their own passions, not a dry account assembled by some committee.

I liked the book more the closer I got to the end, mostly because I learned more stuff that I hadn't known before. McWilliams is a professional economist with experience in both central banks and commercial banks and does know his stuff. This passage from page 266-267 may have been my favorite:

Gold has a fixed supply; if the economy grows, meaning the economy produces more things, the price of those things must fall in gold terms, because the supply of gold doesn't rise in response to the rise in the economy's output. Tethering a currency to gold is inherently deflationary. Falling prices sounds good, doesn't it? We are conditioned to think about prices in this way. It is good if the price of things you buy falls. But this cuts both ways. What if the things you sell, like your labor, also fall against gold? In a period of deflation, whose standard of living rises? The people with gold, of course. That means people in finance, people trading money or speculating on other commodities, those with access to money - the already wealthy. Currencies linked to gold will reward people with savings. Who in the late nineteenth century had savings? The same people who have always had savings: rich people, of course.

I really like the detail and cogent explanation there of how metal-based currency is inherently deflationary. I also really love the connection to the real-world class system. We aren't just discussing some abstract mathematical model, but a reality that has a social impact on our lives. He spends some productive time in this area, including describing how nations have realized after centuries of experience that it is much easier to recover from inflationary periods caused by fiat currencies than from deflationary recessions caused by gold-based or silver-based money.

While less wonky, I also really loved this passage from page 290:

Artists and entrepreneurs are blessed with similar outlooks; the type of minds that make art are also the type that create businesses. Sometimes artists don't see this similarity, schooled in an erroneous worldview that money is bad and poverty is noble, the artist expressive and free but the businessperson boring and conservative. In fact, both artist and entrepreneur see possibilities where others see limitations, bringing the previously unimagined into being. Both artist and entrepreneur have skin the the game, performing on the public stage of jeopardy. The creative - businessperson or artist - has strong opinions and is courageous enough to risk the ridicule of the crowd for their opinion to be heard. Success can only come after the effort has been made, making their entire existence inherently unstable. For both entrepreneur and artist, failure can be brutal and success is often a prelude to future disappointment. But they are driven by self-expression; it's in the DNA of these independent, sometimes unreasonable, often difficult sorts. Both the artist and the entrepreneur can suffocate when shackled by a boss, a wage, or an insurance premium. From a macroeconomy perspective, artists and entrepreneurs both create demand where no demand existed previously. The new products they offer create their own demand - and this is the key to all economic evolution.

The context for this passage is McWilliams' description of James Joyce's time living in Trieste, and how Joyce started a business to open Dublin's very first movie theater; we think of business and art as opposites, and I love how this passage draws them together. I think it's overstated: he uses "entrepreneur" and "businessperson" interchangeably, I think the argument applies to the former but not the latter. But the idea that "creation" is the main thing really resonates with me, as opposed to expanding or reproducing some existing thing.

This kind of reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's observation that entrepreneurs in particular and successful people in general tend to be more optimistic than the general population, and that optimism is not founded on a rational basis but can influence events towards a good outcome. Passion and a reckless risk-taking attitude can be ingredients for success in starting businesses and creating new art.

And, one last random quibble: on page 358 he writes: "When you buy the shares of a company, the understanding is that your money goes to the company and might be used to buy equipment or finance the expansion into a new market, from which you hope to profit." I don't think that's true. When you buy shares in, say, Microsoft, none of that money goes to Microsoft or can be used by it for anything. Your money just goes to the previous owner of those shares. What you are buying is the right to a portion of the future earnings of that company. (The one case where your money would actually go to the company is in an IPO event, but when is the last time you or anybody you knew bought shares in an IPO?) McWilliams' description here is closer to purchasing a bond issued by the company, in which case your money is going to the company and can be used for expansion; you aren't participating in the share of that additional profit, though, you are only collecting the interest due to you for the loan.

The book ends with a "further reading" section, I haven't read any of those books before and a lot of them sound really interesting. I get the impressions at least some of those are more rigorous scholarly books, so they may be less readable but more satisfying to me.

So, yeah! I had slightly mixed feelings about this book. I think that for general education and entertaining economic stories it is excellent; for people like me who have already spent way too much time reading about financial topics it has value as a high-level contextualization of the broad sweep of economic and monetary development on planet Earth, which necessarily involved retreading some familiar ground but doing so in a pretty breezable and readable, though sometimes overly light, way.

Sad Scion

2026-01-29T20:07:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning for a while now to write about Blue Prince, a fantastic puzzle game that I've grown increasingly obsessed with over the last month. I had initially planned to do an early-game checkin (once I realized that there was an early game and this wasn't just a small stand-alone experience), then thought of doing a post once I reached the credits. I'm now a ways past the credits, probably more than halfway through the content but it's hard to be certain. In any case I think I've experienced enough to pass a very positive judgment on it.

I've heard good things about the game, but otherwise had avoided any details about it prior to being generously gifted it by my brother (no, not that one: the other brother). When I hear "puzzle game" I tend to think of something like, say, Myst: a game you explore and figure out and solve. You might get stuck on something for a while and may ask for help or keep banging your head against it until you solve it. If you know what you're doing, the actual content tends to be on the light side, and a subsequent replay will go much faster than the first one.

MINI SPOILERS

The most important aspect of Blue Prince is that it is a rogue-lite. Each run consists of one day inside the mansion that you have inherited. The key mechanic of the game is "drafting": every time you open a door in the mansion, you are presented with three randomly selected rooms, and pick one of them to be what lies on the other side of the door. Other than the entryway and maybe one or two other rooms in the 45-room mansion, nothing is fixed, so every day the layout of the mansion is new. Unlike something like Diablo or Sunless Skies where the game decides the layout, here you get to pick, re-architecting the house anew each day.

The main goal of the game is to reach the 46th room of the 45-room mansion. There are several obstacles in your way, most of which come down to resource management:

Keys. As you move further north in the mansion, doors are increasingly likely to be locked. You can find keys as you explore, but each key only opens one door.

Security doors. These are un-openable to begin with, unless you can find a Security Card or another means to bypass them.

Dead ends. Any given door might lead to a hallways that branches in multiple directions, or a corridor that continues straight on, or a room with no other exits. You can always backtrack, but if you run out of doors, you can't draft any more rooms.

Steps. You have a certain amount of energy each day. You spend one point each time you move between rooms. There are plenty to reach the end of the manor, but not enough to carelessly backtrack back and forth multiple times. Once this reaches 0 you are forced to call it a day.

Gems. Certain valuable rooms will cost one or more gem to select and draft. These might be rooms that contain many exits, or useful tools, or additional resources. If you don't have enough gems, you can't select those rooms and will be stuck with others that may not take you where you want to go.

So, a lot of the mechanics of gameplay revolve around managing these resources. For example, drafting a Patio will spawn Gems in all existing Green Rooms in your house, so you can go back and collect those; but doing so will consume a fair number of Steps. You can spend Gold Coins on Food that will give you more Steps; but there's an opportunity cost since you could have instead spent Coins on Keys or other tools. A frequent quandary is whether to take a Dead End that will give you a lot of items but block off further exploration along this corridor versus a hallways that doesn't have any immediate rewards but opens up more space to explore. This resource-management aspect reminds me positively of the Sunless Skies / Sunless Seas games, where you were often trading off resources like Crew, Fuel and Terror as you tried to make progress towards your destinations and goals.

As with those games, though, this is a rogue-lite, so even though you almost certainly won't reach Room 46 on your first day, you also will almost certainly unlock some permanent rewards that will improve your chances on subsequent days. One early example is the Observatory: each time you draft it, a new star is added to the sky. The more stars there are, the more and better constellations you can see, each of which gives you special abilities for that day (like making apples extra delicious, or increasing the odds of drawing rooms with four exits). You can eventually unlock an Allowance, which can gradually grow over time, giving you a tidy collection of Coins at the start of your day. This can become a big help over the long haul, as you can just buy tools as you come across them, as opposed to waiting until you have collected enough coins on a day or debating between tradeoffs.

As I said up top, though, this isn't primarily a strategy game: it's a puzzle game. This game is filled with puzzles, of all kinds, from the smallest factor to the largest. Some puzzles are self-contained within a room: there's a Parlor that poses a logic puzzle which you can solve to earn Gems, and a Billiard Room with a math puzzle you can solve to earn Keys. A lot more are abstract and require careful observation and thinking, various riddles and word games and allegories. It's common to notice one thing, think "that's odd", then days later see something else, realize "Oh! That's what the first thing meant!", then try to get back to the first thing now that you know what to do. And the game as a whole is also a huge puzzle, trying to work out what it is you're doing and why.

The biggest risk with puzzle games is frustration: it stinks to get stuck on something and not be able to progress, berating yourself for being dumb and/or the designers for being obtuse. Considering the density and difficulty of puzzles in Blue Prince, I'm astonished by how pleasurable the puzzles felt. There are a few great things going for it.

First of all, while a particular puzzle may stump you for a while, there's just so much to do that I have never felt stuck on the game as a whole. Even if I don't know how to, say, get into a particular locked safe, I still know that I want to light the candles in the chapel, and that I want to take the Basement Key to the Foundation, and so on, so I can keep making progress towards those other things while I mull over the puzzle. Sometimes I'll encounter something in the game that clarifies things for me, but I also often have the experience of, say, walking down the sidewalk or taking a shower in the real world and getting a lightbulb moment like "Oh! That's March as in the month, not March as in the musical piece!" Which just makes me all the more excited to get back into the game and try it out.

Secondly, most of the puzzles have multiple solutions or multiple trails of hints. I'll often have the experience of coming across a diary or something in the game and quickly realizing that it's a hint towards a mystery I've already solved. But that's great: if I was still stuck on the mystery, finding that diary would have given me the nudge I needed. And they seem to generally be sequenced pretty well, such that the clues you're likely to encounter early on are the most opaque and challenging, while the latter clues are much more explicit hints or directions.

Finally, on the rare occasions I've felt compelled to seek outside help, I've found the community extremely helpful. I'm lucky enough to know someone else who has played the game and can give appropriate non-spoilery hints, but even more impressive, searches through Reddit or the Steam Community reveal that other players are highly respectful of the process and journey towards discovery. They won't just use spoiler tags: the spoilers themselves will contain hints and clues and rhetorical questions, not directly revealing the answer but guiding you to make the discovery yourself. Which feels great!

MEGA SPOILERS

Other than the scope of the game, the biggest surprise for me has been just how much story stands behind it. I had initially assumed that this was a quirky English manor or something. After some time exploring, though, you eventually realize that this is an entirely different planet, with its own continents and history and culture and religion and mathematics and everything. And that itself becomes yet another puzzle, as you must understand this new world to progress in the latter area of the game.

In terms of my overall progression: I did reach Room 46 on day... hm, I think 20 or thereabouts. I really lucked on on a run where I was almost out of rooms, then managed to get the Secret Garden Key and open the Garden just before the end.

I haven't looked this up yet, but it seems like some rooms may fall out of the rotation once certain conditions are satisfied. I haven't drawn the Bookshop once since I purchased all the books in it, which makes sense. I also haven't seen the Rumpus Room in ages, which makes me think it may disappear once you've heard all of the fortunes.

At this point I think I have all of the permanent outdoor unlocks (orchard, gemstone cavern, Blackridge). I usually start the day with 2 gems and around 60 coins. I probably have about a dozen Upgrade Disks loaded.

My most recent big accomplishment last night was opening the back area of the Blackstone Grotto. Pretty cool! I love the view back there. I haven't drafted the Throne Room yet but am curious to check that out.

I keep a list of my outstanding goals nearby while I'm playing, and will jot down notes as I find new things or cross them out as I accomplish them. I'll usually have some idea of what I'm going for, but will pivot early in a run based on the outer room and early stuff I find: maybe hoarding Gold for a Trophy, or trying to draft a ton of Mechanical rooms for the Mechanarium. There are still a bunch of things I want to do.

So far I've opened... I think four or five Sanctum doors. I've added quite a few new floorplans but I know there are still a good number left in the Drafting Studio.

END SPOILERS

You'll hear this everywhere, but this is definitely a game that benefits from having a notebook and pen nearby. There's a lot of stuff worth jotting down. Since I'm playing on Steam I also get a good amount of use out of the F12 Screenshot key - it can be really handy to come back later and re-examine a book or picture that I had found earlier.

The music for this game is gorgeous, typically very minimalist and atmospheric, but highly effective.

Overall production values are surprisingly good. It looks like a walking simulator, and you'll never see yourself or another human in the game, but there's a lot of pretty and thoughtful animation and sound effects sprinkled throughout. There are a handful of cut-scenes in the game which all feel very meaningful and well-done.

My one major complaint with the game is the save system, or lack thereof. Once you start a new day, there's no option to pause it and come back: quitting the game ends the day and resets your daily progress. At this stage of the game, it isn't unusual for a single in-game day to last me nearly two hours: I might come across new books to read, spend time mulling over a new puzzle, flip through my notebook in search of a name, and carefully trace my steps back and forth through the mansion. There's no harm in keeping the game running, so I'll sometimes leave it up over dinner or dog walks and come back to it later, but there are also some nights where I've gone to bed later than I would have liked due to a frustratingly productive run.

That's really my only complaint, though! Blue Prince has been such a delight, a nice change from my standard RPG-and-strategy-game diet and a real pleasure to explore and absorb.

Pandaemonium

2026-01-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

I finished reading "The Secret Commonwealth," the second entry in Philip Pullman's new trilogy follow-up to His Dark Materials. I was originally thinking of waiting until finishing the third before writing up my thoughts, but I have some time now so I thought I'd go ahead and pop them in now!

MINI SPOILERS

It's been a while since I read the original trilogy, although I did watch the excellent TV adaptation not too long ago. From what I remember, I think that this second book "feels" like HDM more than the La Belle Sauvage did. LBS had a more folkloric and dreamlike quality to it, while TSC feels more like an urban fantasy. Traveling through Europe, trains, daemons, the Magisterium, the Alethiometer, spies, politics and more.

The most striking aspect of this novel is the separation between Lyra and Pan. It starts off with their emotional separation: there's a lot of coldness in their relationship, fraught silences, explosive arguments, mutual frustrations. Eventually this leads to a physical rupture and they spend most of the novel apart. This all ties back to Lyra's abandonment of Pan back in the Land of the Dead in the earlier trilogy: that was a brutal betrayal at the time, and it's great (though very sad!) to see that decision continue to reverberate all these years later. It adds even more weight to that action.

In the original series, it seemed like separating was extremely unusual: only witches could do it, and the ability to "sever" is a major plot point. In this book, it seems like tons and tons of people can do it: we keep bumping into people who have separated, sometimes due to infatuation or deception or accident or physical constraints. The greater occurrence of separation is just as surprising to Lyra and Pan as it is to us as readers: what seemed like a metaphysical law is actually only the most common type of relationship.

Lyra in particular is less sympathetic here that in the first series. I think her main character flaw in His Dark Materials was deception ("Liar"), but it never felt like Pullman really judged her for that, and her falsehood is usually a sign of cleverness that she deploys to achieve good ends. In my recollection, the original series ultimately comes across as an ode to reason: its heroes are scientists and explorers devoted to rational experimentation and discovery, while the villains are clergy devoted to upholding a system of belief. Lyra wins by being clever, and her happy ending is becoming a scholar herself.

But in this series, her rationality has kind of curdled into a meanness and pettiness. Pan says that she has "lost her imagination." She's developed a sort of sneering contempt towards abstract ideals. Her mind has been poisoned by a pair of books. One initially seems like a Nietzschean work of philosophy, though once we learn the details it is more specifically unique to Lyra's world. The other is a comedic novel that mocks idealism. Much of the emotional arc of this novel is Lyra reconnecting with non-rational things: the Secret Commonwealth of the title, the hidden world of jacky lanterns and will-o-the-wisps and other folkloric creatures. The novel seems to be arguing for a balance between rationality and creativity/imagination. Rationality is still important but does not stand on its own.

I do need to say that I felt a little bit of squick from the supposed attraction between Lyra and Malcolm. In the first novel she was a babe in arms and he was a boy; now she is 20 and he is 30. The relationship as written makes me immediately think of Charles Stross's phrase "Sad Boner Professor", the literary sub-genre of older male teachers who are drawn to their pretty young students. Pullman directly addresses this in the preface, saying "They are both adults!", which just highlights it and makes it more weird.

On the other hand, very late in this novel Lyra does directly address her "lying with" Will near the end of His Dark Materials and clarifies that they only kissed, which clears up something that had been bothering me for a while about that book.

Moving on: some of this book felt like direct commentary on contemporary issues. In particular, there's a scene later in the novel where a boat full of migrants and refugees from North Africa and the Middle East is accidentally destroyed, leading to a tumultuous scene as they try to rescue as many survivors as possible, care for them and ultimately resettle them. That definitely seemed to me like a clear parallel of the Syrian refugee crisis in particular, and more broadly the topic of European assimilation of immigrants from Muslim countries.

Ultimately this felt like a highly episodic novel. Particularly in the second half, each chapter is almost its own stand-alone story where Lyra, Pan or Malcolm travel to a new location and have an encounter there before moving on. There's the magician who turned his son into the element of fire and the son's daemon into the element of water; there's the princess whose daemon left her for an exotic dancer; there's the blind girl who reads romance novels written in Braille; there's life among the Untouchable daemon-less Tajik nightsoilmen; and on and on. It's fun, and feels a lot like an episodic TV show or something.

END SPOILERS

Oh, I also should mention that this book is a LOT longer than the first one. I was surprised when I checked it out at the library, noting it clocked in at over 600 pages. But of course it's highly readable and moves along quickly. The story definitely rambles at time, but I think that's part of the charm, as we get to explore more of Lyra's world, especially the areas controlled by the Magisterium.

I'm pleased to see that the third and final book came out fairly recently, I hope to track that down and wrap things up before too long!

Piece of Cake

2026-01-05T18:51:00.000-08:00

Some time back my dad recommended to me the book "A Walk in the Park" by Kevin Fedarko. Having just finished it, I can see why - it's an alternately funny and gripping memoir of a long-distance desert backpacking journey. In particular, Kevin and his hiking/photographer buddy Pete resolved to hike along the entire length of the Grand Canyon: not a north-south rim-to-rim jaunt, but an east-to-west hike following the course of the Colorado River throughout the entire length of the canyon.

In some ways, they seemed like natural fits for a journey like this: Kevin had worked for many years as a volunteer for the oar boats that travel down the Colorado River rapids through the Grand Canyon, and he and Pete had previously collaborated on a variety of adventurous photojournalism assignments, including foreign mountains and wintry tundras. But the book by far focuses on their incredible lack of preparation or suitability for it. Neither of them were particularly fit, especially the special kind of fitness needed for long-distance hiking. And more severely, at least as depicted in this book, they were cocky and sure that they wouldn't need to prepare for such an expedition: they could hike it "from off the couch," not needing to spend a lot of time researching the route, planning supplies, or talking with previous hikers.

I don't read a ton of hiking books, but enough for some elements to sound familiar, in particular Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" and "A Blistered Kind of Love". It would be pretty boring for someone to write "I spent a year carefully reading and planning for a trip, and it all went smoothly without any unexpected developments, the end." It's far more entertaining to read about some disaster striking - ideally not life-threatening, hopefully humorous but bearable, providing a sort of cosmic rebuke to hubris but giving people a chance to recover, learn and grow from their experience. A Walk in the Park felt very much in line with that tradition.

One specific thing that comes up in all these books is people overpacking for their trip. As novice backpackers, they will bring along all the creature comforts that they think they need. And sooner or later they are lovingly set straight by a more veteran hiker who methodically goes through every item in their pack, asks "Do you need this?" "Do you need ALL of these?" and discards anything inessential. (There's a great depiction of this scene in the Reese Witherspoon adaptation of "Wild.") In A Walk in the Park, this comes even earlier, on the night before the hike begins. Kevin and Pete have acquired a quartet of guardian angels, much more experienced hikers who are embarking on their own journey and have lovingly but foolishly agreed to take this inept pair under their wings. As Kevin and Pete haven't yet actually hiked with their loads, though, they fail to appreciate the ritual, and sneak those heavy items back into their packs when they have the chance.

I found the description of their route really interesting. The naive way to do this hike would be to follow the course of the river. But there is no trail through the canyon, and you would essentially need to bushwack through a solid mass of vegetation to do it, much like through a thick jungle; and the ground itself is treacherous, as the river frequently floods and recedes, leaving behind a lot of scree and sand and various unstable surfaces. Hiking along the rim, or even at any point of the rim, is frowned upon: it's perfectly level and not "in" the canyon at all. In between are about 5500 feet of vertical space, essentially compressing climates from Canada to Mexico within much less than a single horizontal mile: the weather at the North Rim might be icy and have huge snow banks, while the weather at the river could be sweltering hot. In recent years, most through-hikes have picked their way along the middle elevations of the canyon, mostly for speed purposes: hiking over rock is vastly faster than through vegetation or sand. But it's also considerably more treacherous. Falls are a real risk, and people can and do fall to their deaths while hiking the cliffs. You're also far away from water - well, as the crow flies you're close, but it might take a whole day or more to descend to the river and refill your water bottle. This is where local knowledge becomes incredibly important. Depending on the area of the park, there might be some reliable springs, or unreliable springs, or "potholes" that retain (scummy) water for some time after rain, which you can use an eye dropper to painstakingly collect.

One upshot of all this is that the hike ended up being even longer than you would think, which was long to begin with. While hiking along the rock was faster, it also adds a lot more miles as you need to navigate into and out of the side-canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon, and you also need to vertically ascend and descend (using ropes!) to navigate between the layers of geological strata. All very hard! Not something to do "off the couch"!

The injuries and indignities they pick up on their journey are painful to read about, and I frequently found myself wincing in sympathetic pain: blistering feet, cactus prickers stuck in skin, grains of sand wedged into tear ducts. It sounds absolutely miserable. In addition to their physical pain, the duo felt emotional guilt at how they were slowing down their companions' own long-planned-for and ambitious hike. It eventually gets to a point where Kevin and Pete need to call it quits: they are dehydrated, depleted of electrolytes, feverish, miserable, sick. But this is only a temporary setback - I don't think they had ever intended to do the whole hike in a single go, but like many people tackling long journeys like this or the Pacific Crest Trail, they planned to hike it in sections until they traversed the entire thing.

I kind of idly thought about technology and "purity" while reading this. Rich and his friends are very prepared for their hike; in particular, they have access to satellite phones and can send and receive text messages even from within the remote backcountry of the canyon. This is life-saving, as they can summon help and evacuate injured hikers. They also make use of "caches", plastic buckets that are securely placed within the canyon by helpers in advance of their trek, that they can use to resupply along the way. Obviously, these are huge conveniences that wouldn't be available to "true" explorers traveling this way for the first time. I suspect that older veteran hikers would scoff at this and say it invalidates their accomplishments. And they in turn might scoff at someone who, say, floats down the river or hikes along the rim for a section of the hike (or rides a tram into the canyon bottom).

In my trip through the Southwest national parks, the rangers emphasized that the National Parks Service has a fundamentally contradictory mission: "To preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations". If you want to "preserve unimpaired" the resources, the best thing to do would be to close off the parks entirely and not allow any humans to enter them. If you want to provide enjoyment for this generation, you should let as many people as possible into the park and use it as many ways as they would enjoy: driving, helicoptering, offroading, hooking up an RV, etc. In the early years of the NPS they leaned more on the "accessibility" part of their mission, building great hotels and train lines to the parks. More modern parks have focused more on the "preserve unimpaired" aspect, trying to keep a minimal footprint and minimizing human impact on the natural lands. That tension will always exist.

Anyways, back to the book: there are a few storylines that get woven together throughout the book. The first and the narrative spine is the journey itself, the description of the terrain and obstacles as they gradually move from east to west. In parallel is the change in themselves, physically and mentally, as they adapt to the challenges of the canyon: growing stronger muscles, thicker calluses, but more importantly a deeply-seated sense of caution and respect for the dangers of their journey.

Later in the book Kevin also begins to weave in social threads of environmentalism and native history. Quite a few distinct native American tribes have historically lived in various areas in and around the canyon, and those tribes have followed different roads as they seek to preserve their lives and culture in the 21st century. In some cases these are congruent, as the tribes advocate for maintaining the serenity of the canyon, but in one case they are strongly opposed, as a western tribe allows an unlimited number of helicopter tours to descend into their area of the canyon, inflicting immense damage on the peacefulness of nature (but also providing a livelihood for their tribal members for the first time in 150 years).

The final major storyline is a more personal one centered on Kevin Fedarko's father. He grew up near Pittsburgh in a horribly polluted town, and was introduced to the Grand Canyon as a child thanks to a paperback book. Many decades later, the father is dying of terminal cancer, which casts a pall over... well, everything. Kevin deals with some guilt - in all his years living near and working in the canyon, he never invited his father to visit. In between the major sections of the trail, Kevin checks in with his father, tracking his decline or traveling home for a visit. In a touching account near the end of the book, Kevin flies his entire extended family, including his dad, out to visit the canyon. They're doing more of the touristy thing, remaining near the rim, but it's still an amazing chance to witness the beauty of the place in person.

I had a sort of personal connection to the book since the Grand Canyon was the last place where I went on an honest-to-goodness backpacking trip, back in 2019. Mine was orders of magnitude shorter and easier, just a thru-hike along defined trails from the North Rim to the South Rim, with a couple of nights at Bright Angel Campground and a pretty gentle hike up the length of the canyon. But having those memories helped me connect with Kevin's descriptions of the amazing colors of the rock, the elusiveness of the (enormous!) river, at least some of the impossible-to-communicate sense of the scope and size of the canyon.

So, yeah! I liked this book a lot. It looks like Kevin has written a few other things, including books and quite a few magazine articles. I enjoyed his humor, vivid descriptions, well-crafted storytelling and broader awareness of the context shaping an adventure, so I'd be interested in seeing more of his work in the future.

Xatu, I Choose You!

2026-01-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

I just finished my first-ever playthrough of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. This was a very generous gift from my youngest brother, not tied to any birthday or holiday, just "Oh this is a fun game and you should play it." And he was right, I should!

It has been on my radar for quite some time. I played the original X-COM back in the 90s; I don't think I ever owned it, but have vague memories of playing it at a friend's house, where I thought it was (1) very fun, and (2) extremely hard. The series has evolved a lot since then, adding a vertical dimension and a lot of new features, but those two points continue to be true.

More recently, it's been adjacent to my interests in strategic and tactical games. In particular, there's a sort of second-cousins relationship to the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun Returns series. They are fairly different - Shadowrun is primarily an RPG that also has a turn-based tactical combat system, while XCOM 2 is a tactical turn-based strategy game that has a strong story and character customizations but isn't really an RPG. There's a pretty strong overlap in the fandom, though. Over the years I've collected quite a few Steam Friends solely on the basis of my Shadowrun campaigns, and a good 40 of them are also XCOM 2 players.

Shadowrun and XCOM 2 share some visual similarities, like an isometric camera and a near-future grimy cyberpunky aesthetic. But XCOM 2 has much more elaborate maps, true 3D environments that you can rotate, vertical movement, and just overall higher production values with a lot more animations, clutter in the environment, vocal barks and dialogue, and so on. In terms of gameplay, they share some elements like Action Points, Overwatch, grenades, hit points, armor, cover, flanking and critical hits. Shadowrun ultimately goes broader, with its arcane spells, shamanistic spirit totems, cyberware and Matrix, while X-COM 2 goes deeper, with destructible environments, fall damage, weapon modifications, teamwork bonuses and more.

All that to say, they are very different games, but I felt like my many hours in Shadowrun gave me at least a bit of a head start in XCOM 2. I debated what difficulty mode to play in; my initial playthrough of an RPG will usually be in the "Normal" difficulty, but I haven't played any XCOM for nearly two decades so I opted for the easiest "Rookie" mode instead. I also played without Ironman mode; if I do another playthrough at some point I'll probably both bump the difficulty and turn on Ironman, but while learning the game I was really thankful to be able to reload. I didn't do it very often, but there were cases when, like, I was right-clicking to close a submenu and accidentally issued a Move order, and I don't feel bad about reloading for essentially a mis-click. Overall I felt like the game was still pretty challenging for the first couple of missions on Rookie mode, with at least one or two casualties for every mission. After I got multiple promotions, though, it got a lot easier - of course, my growing familiarity with the game mechanics must have helped a lot, too. I don't think I had any deaths after the first in-game month (though, again, I did reload a couple of times).

Having knowledge goes a very long way. Whenever I encountered a new enemy for the first time, there was a really high chance of things going sideways. Usually, when you get an enemy down to 0HP, they die and are removed from the field... but a Codex may split in two when near death, creating an additional body that may last into the Alien Turn and cause you mischief; and an ADVENT Priest will always survive one "death" before being revived on the following turn. One of the roughest encounters for me was a Gatekeeper, and I swore out loud the first time it unleashed a MASSIVE AOE attack that did high damage to my entire squad, dispersed over a large enough area to avoid grenade clusters but not enough for the Gateway. But once the swearing ends, I figure out how things work, and eventually all the enemies end up feeling fair. If you know what's upcoming (thanks to a Shadow Chamber), you can equip and plan for the enemy appropriately, and have a counter up your sleeve that can neutralize the threat or at least manage it. In the case of the Gatekeeper, I started to have my Grenadier pack in one or two EMP Bombs. These have an enormous radius, so you can launch them towards the Gatekeeper from far off; they will often disable the Gatekeeper for multiple turns, letting you ignore them entirely while you plink off the rest of the enemy pod; or worst case take off half their health, letting you finish them with a second EMP Bomb or focused fire from the rest of your team. Once again, it comes down to the strategy layer (research, investment, and equipping) and the tactical layer (holding items in reserve, keeping your grenadier close enough to the front to react to a new threat).

Your soldier classes all feel pretty balanced. I think that at the max promotion Grenadiers shine the best, with multiple AOE attacks and multiple attacks per turn. Sharpshooters are also great once they get Death From Above for a kill-shot action refund; this also makes for a a good pairing with the grenadiers, as the grenadiers can soften up a pod with their bombs, and then the sharpshooters can take down all the survivors. Specialists are really important early on to keep people alive, later on they're more situational. Skullmine and Haywire are very useful, and you can extract more rewards from some missions via hacking. Their weapons tend to be the first to be upgraded, so they are often better fighters than you would expect. Rangers are very versatile, good for scouting and combat. In retrospect I shouldn't have mixed my upgrades between sneak attack and melee since you lose stealth while approaching into melee range. Bladestorm can be amazing though, I've parked a ranger near a door and killed 4 enemies during the alien turn as they run past.

Of the War of the Chosen faction classes, I think I like the Reaper the best. There's huge utility from being able to scout ahead - for most units, enemies' vision range for concealment is just slightly shorter than your units' vision range, so it's very easy to accidentally get spotted even if you're making cautious advances. But the Reaper needs to be standing right next to an enemy to be spotted, letting you much more freely range ahead. I gave as many Mobility upgrades as possible to my Reaper, so she can reveal much of the map in just two turns or so, letting me properly set up ambushes or whatever with the rest of my units. The flip side is that she doesn't engage in much combat, and often is never revealed during the entire mission. Because of that, she lagged behind my regular XCom soldiers for promotions. I never used her Claymore much.

The Skirmisher (Pratal Mox in my game) is also fantastic. Right off the bat he can attack twice in one turn. Unlike other units, attacking doesn't immediately end his turn, so he could do two regular full attacks, or fire and then run behind a wall. He also has great utility, including a Grapple ability to quickly reposition over a wide area, and can use the hook to drag an enemy to him and then deliver a strong melee attack. He's basically Boba Fett.

The Templar was probably the weakest of the three, but also the most fun to play as. Mostly melee, he feels kind of like a Monk class. He builds Focus, which is kind of like Chi, and can use it passively to buff his attacks or spend it on powerful abilities. Melee can be dicey in this game since quite a few enemies can explode on death, but it's a lot of fun.

Narratively, XCOM has an interesting mix where all of your soldiers, the characters you actually control in combat, are all randomly generated: different names, personalities, gender, nationality, appearance, etc. But you do get really attached to them over the course of multiple runs. Key moments where, like, "Rooster" managed to use Haywire Protocol to take over a scary mech that was about to wipe out the team, or Elena Drugova consistently staying in Reaper stealth through to the end, shepherding the team to their objective and then landing a killing blow. The voice lines for combat barks are short, but great for establishing just enough personality for you to hang a mental image of the soldier off of.

MINI SPOILERS

Other than your soldiers, the characters on the ship are all fully written, animated and voice-acted NPCs. They're great too: Shen, the whiz-kid engineer who manufactures equipment, is probably my favorite, but I also like Dr. Tyson, who claims to be squeamish but seems to tackle alien autopsies with great gusto, and who researches all of the weapons that Shen will then build. The various faction leaders and the Chosen also get a good amount of screen time, have vivid personalities that clash with their supposed allies and lead to the sense of complexity in the two opposing sides.

I really like the after-mission reports where you hearing the propaganda broadcast from ADVENT. It makes me think of a Paul Verhoeven film.

MEGA SPOILERS

As noted above, this isn't an RPG, and as far as I can tell there really aren't any branching plotlines or story-based decisions to make. You can make a lot of gameplay decisions, like which soldiers to risk in a given mission and how long to put off the main storyline and whether to focus on taking down the Chosen or race to grow your contacted Resistance regions; but the story itself is always the same and will play out the same no matter what route you take to reach it.

My X-COM memory is fuzzy, but I think this is essentially the inversion of the original game. You were originally a global defense organization, fighting against the stealthy aliens attempting to infiltrate and corrupt Earth. In X-COM 2, the world government is now essentially a Vichy collaboration with the aliens. The main global defense organization is ADVENT, a Human/Alien genetic hybrid, serving the will of the alien masters. X-COM is now a global insurgency, with local resistance cells using infiltration and targeted violence to fight back against the alien invasion. You're also more mobile, zipping around the globe in a souped-up captured UFO, while ADVENT operates from fixed bases, again an inversion from the original.

I enjoyed the story, but honestly it wasn't the highlight of the game for me: the combat was. Much like, say, the Divinity Original Sin games, this is essentially a really fun and challenging tactical puzzle to overcome, and the story is an entertaining side-course along the way.

END SPOILERS

Super fun! X-COM 2 nicely scratched that tactical/strategic itch, and with a refreshing near-science-fiction setting that's a fun break from my fantasy standards. If I revisit this in the future, I'll be interested to try a higher difficulty and Ironman setting. I'm sure that the hard-earned lessons I've learned in my rookie playthrough will come in very handy in future outings.

Wild Beauty

2025-12-28T13:53:00.000-08:00

Just a short li'l post to note that I've started reading Philip Pullman's "new" trilogy, "The Book of Dust." The first book, La Belle Sauvage, is a prequel to His Dark Materials. I read those books many years ago and loved them a lot, and more recently was impressed by the very good HBO adaptation (featuring my favorite Ruth Wilson).

I'll probably pop in a longer post once I finish the trilogy, but for now I'll observe that I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It's fun to return to this "world", but it's also been a surprisingly fresh experience so far.

MINI SPOILERS

Sequels and prequels are really hard to do well. Usually people love the initial works because of how creative and original they are. Star Wars is a great example: space magic, wow, so cool! And the Empire Strikes Back with betrayal and family drama, how surprising. But then, when you want to make more Star Wars, you either keep repeating the same tropes as before - more space magic, yawn. More betrayal and family drama, yawn. Or maybe you do something genuinely innovative, as with Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi: corrupt arms dealers in the Republic! Slavery and oppression! That rekindles some of the original surprise and exhilaration of watching the movie for the first time; but fans tend to hate those new entries as they don't have the things they had decided they want. That isn't the space magic I like!

All that long preamble to say, La Belle Sauvage is set in Lyra's world, not another alternate dimension, and builds on the worldbuilding we've already seen: daemons, the Magisterium, witches and Dust. But it also mixes in what feels like an entire new strain of storytelling, one which feels more folkloric than fantasy. The peak of the novel comes as the hero Malcolm and his frenemy Alice rescue the baby Lyra in the midst of an apocalyptic flood, their canoe hurtling them down the Thames as they flee those who are trying to kidnap or murder her. Once the flood starts, though, things get very strange in England... or Albion, as it is increasingly referred to as. There's a lot of fairy-logic, glimpses of strange realms, riddles and challenges. It feels like a lot of Neil Gaiman's work, or really just folktales in general.

Prequels are also challenging because we already know the future, which necessarily limits that available tension. We know that Lyra won't die because she has to be the main character in the future books. Again, though, Pullman does a good job here. Lyra is present, but she's just a baby and won't remember any of this. I don't think we know either of the main characters Malcolm or Alice at all, so we still feel a lot of concern for them: will they survive or won't they? Lyra will definitely end up at Jordan College in Oxford, but will she be delivered there by her rescuers, or by someone else?

Finally (for now), I'll say that Bonneville is a REALLY creepy villain, probably the scariest one I've read in some time. He's deeply charismatic, and even the omniscient narrator seems to be taken in by him. He seems friendly and charming and harmless, but the presence of his deformed and blasphemous hyena daemon immediately casts a feeling of ominous concern around him. But he's so convincing that we find ourselves wondering about him: maybe this is the one case in this world where a good man is joined to a bad daemon. Much later, when Bonneville croons and attempts to seduce the children, it's scary and frustrating to see them falling under his spell; but we've also experienced his spell, so we can't blame them too much.

Bonneville is also another aspect where this feels like something mythic or folkloric. In a normal fantasy novel, once he was killed, he would just stay dead, or else there would be some systemic prophecy thing about the rules around his resurrection and final death. Here, it's just unexplainable. He keeps coming back, like the monster in a story told around a campfire. And he's finally killed for good, because that's where the story ends. You get the feeling that if he had been killed before the flood he would have just stayed dead; but once the flood started, he was lifted along with the others into the realm of dream logic. Which feels pretty different from His Dark Materials, and fresh and fun to be carried along for that ride.

END SPOILERS

So far, so good!

Luckiest Tooth

2025-12-13T16:36:00.000-08:00

As promised, a follow-up to my initial post on Hades 2!

I'm loving this game. I went ahead and got all the achievements for it. I almost never do that, even for games I love; with Hades, by the time I hit the epilogue I had fewer than ten achievements left to go, and I was still enjoying playing it, so I went ahead and powered through the last set. I could play the game forever, but I think this is a great pause point to set it back up on the shelf.

MINI SPOILERS

As with the original Hades, I gradually amped up the difficulty as I was pursuing Nightmares (the new Titan Blood) to fully upgrade my weapons (which I was upgrading so I could take on more Fear and earn more Nightmares...) My memory of Hades 1 is slightly fuzzy, but I feel like Hades 2 is a bit more generous with Nightmare and you don't need to run as high of difficulty for as many runs as you did for the first game. Thanks to the Bone economy and Charon's Ledger, you can earn a fair amount of Nightmare through standard runs, and many Prophecies give a good amount. My Grave Thirst was pretty uneven, but I think I hit something like 16-20 Fear on a few aspects, and just 4 Fear on others, by the time I essentially had all the Nightmare I needed for weapon upgrades.

After I hit that point, I switched over to focusing on my remaining achievements. One of the longer ones was "Bearing Dark Gifts", which requires beating a run with every weapon aspect. Once Grave Thirst came up on a weapon I needed, I would generally do a 0-Fear run with that weapon. I would pick Underworld or Overworld based on which one had the most outstanding NPC missions or other prophecies at the time. If I had clears on all of a given Grave Thirst weapon, I would switch to Chaos Trials: either the Grave Thirst weapon for an uncleared trial to get Stardust, or one of the Chaos Below ones for those achievements.

Before diving into stories and characters, some closing mechanical thoughts:

My favorite weapon type: Probably the torches.

Favorite staff: Circe (take the ferret, try for a full Omega Cast build, ideally with Apollo and Demeter)

Favorite daggers: Artemis

Favorite torches: Moros

Favorite axe: Charon

Favorite skull: Medea

Favorite coat: Nyx

Default arcana loadout: Sorceress, Wayward Son, Huntress, Eternity, Moon, Furies, Persistence, Messenger, Swift Runner, Death, Centaur, Origination, Boatman, Divinity. Lovers if I'm playing with Rivals, otherwise Artificer.

Favorite region 1 keepsake: Jeweled Pom

Favorite region 2 keepsake: Either Aromatic Phial or Calling Card

Favorite region 3 keepsake: Aromatic Phial or Calling Card or Fig Leaf

Favorite region 4 keepsake: Knuckle Bones or Luckier Tooth or maybe Blackened Fleece

Favorite route: They're both great, I might give the edge to the Surface.

Favorite biome: Olympus

Favorite arena: Either Eris or rivaled Scylla

Favorite status curse: Freeze

Favorite Olympian deity (personality): Hestia

Favorite Olympian deity (boons): Hard to pick one; Apollo, Demeter and Hera are always great choices

Favorite cast: Rapture Ring

Favorite rush: Nexus

Favorite gain: Any of Born, Lucid or Flood

(Not listing favorite Attack or Special as they are so weapon-dependent. Passion is great on slow melee weapons, Flame is great on fast weapons, Ice always comes in handy...)

Favorite duo boon: Sun Worshiper

Favorite legendary boon: Sanguinary Savor (assuming Wounds on my main attack, otherwise Shocking Loss)

Favorite NPC: Dionysus

Favorite NPC offering: Howling Soul

Favorite ally: Artemis

Favorite guardian: Eris

Least favorite guardian: Rivaled Polyphemus if playing melee, otherwise Rivaled Hecate

Favorite Vow: Time 2

Favorite romance: Eris

Favorite song: So hard to pick one! Maybe Song of the Deep?

Favorite Crossroads outing: Hot springs, but they're all pretty fun

Favorite Crossroads activity: Gardening

Favorite upgrades: Chibi figurines

A few more details on progress:

Overall, the number of runs ("nights") I had roughly matched the number of hours of playtime in Steam. I think this makes sense - a given run is almost always less than an hour, but there's plenty to do in the Crossroads between runs.

I think I first beat Chronos probably somewhere around 15 hours into the game, hit the main ending around 60 hours in, reached the epilogue around 100 hours, and hit 100% Steam achievements at 116 hours. I wasn't gunning for any of those in particular - I wasn't focusing on the epilogue, for example, just progressing towards it when it was convenient to do so.

There's still a bit more left to do if I wanted. I haven't deepened my trust with Circe or Icarus. I have two weapons that are at Level 4 instead of 5. I have maybe 5 or so Minor Prophecies left to go: I'm missing one Chaos boon, one Dionysus boon, several Duo Boons, probably a couple of other things I'm forgetting. Slightly more than half my Keepsakes are maxed out, but I haven't done that for most of the Olympian ones, or a few like the White Antler that carry extra risks.

The third-to-the-last achievement I got, and the one I was most concerned about, was Great Chaos Below, which requires a full clear of an Underworld run with a randomly-assigned weapon, randomly-assigned Arcana, 20 points of randomly-assigned Fear, a randomly-assigned Familiar, and a random Keepsake at the start of every region. I'd failed it a few times, then finally succeeded on my third. I started with Death, then lost all 3 Death Defiances in the Rivaled Hecate fight. I rebought a Defiance in the Erebus exit well, then last that in the Rivaled Scylla battle. I was randomly assigned the Hephastus keepsake heading into the Mourning Fields, and lucked out with a nice 75 Armor boon, which let me regenerate health and make it through the Cerberus fight on my one life. Then in Tartarus I got Athena's Gorgon Amulet - suddenly, having no extra lives was a good thing! I got an Epic boon from her to become immune to damage for 2 seconds after getting hit, recharging every 9 seconds. I had nearly full health by this point. I also had the Strength arcana, which had seemed like a waste at the start of the run, but it came in handy here. In Hades' chamber, I was offered Darkness, which I usually take; but it seemed redundant with the Athena boon, so instead I opted for boosted damage from the number of times I'd used Death Defiance this night, which translated to a sweet 40% universal damage boost. I was very nervous heading into the Chronos fight, as a single bad step in the second phase could one-shot me; but my loadout ended up seeing me through.

The last actual achievement I needed to get was "Voice and Vanity", resolving the Echo and Narcissus quest. Like everything else in the game, it mostly comes down to RNG: how often do you see the NPC chamber, and is there another doorway that's too tempting to pass up? This one required a lot more visits than I was expecting, and I kept getting Echo visits without any content while waiting for the Narcissus ones to catch up. It eventually fired, though, and it felt very satisfying to see the back-to-back grants for this one and the "All Other Achievements" achievement.

Some light-spoilery thoughts:

I like Melinoe, but she's a lot less interesting than Zagreous from the first game. Zac was defiant and sarcastic, with some deep emotional hurt that he channels through snark. He's also very funny, both with his words and his super-dry delivery. Melinoe is a dutiful daughter, raised for a mission and mostly single-minded in her pursuit of it. When Hecate attacks her at the end of Erebus, she basically says "Thank you, mistress!" Overall a yes-woman goody-two-shoes is just less interesting than a defiant rebel, even though I always choose to play as a goody-two-shoes when given the choice in a choice-and-consequences RPG.

There's a line from Chaos where he says something like, "Your brother used to visit me. I found him amusing. It is interesting to see how different siblings can be." Which is a really sick burn. Good on Chaos!

I really did love the "Silver Sisters" sense of camaraderie, and the good-natured wheels-within-wheels plots of Hermes and Artemis essentially working as double agents but for a common good. Hades 1 similarly had Hermes and Charon essentially playing this role, but there it didn't become clear for quite some time. I like how in this game Melinoe already has established relations and warm friendships with so many characters.

MEGA SPOILERS

While the protagonist was very different, the main story felt a little same-y compared to the original Hades: a scary patriarchal figure opposes you, you fight him a lot and eventually reforge a family bond. It isn't a bad story at all, I'll take it any day over "Save The World From An Ancient Unstoppable Evil," but it was less interesting the second time around.

The main ending is great. I loved spending time back at the House of Hades, including brief chats with old friends like Achilles. The custom art is incredibly rare in the context of this game and felt like a really meaningful award. The absolute highlight for me, though, was spending time with Artemis, my favorite goddess, over the closing credits. Art and music are the Supergiant crown jewels.

As with Hades 1, the epilogue (which I think is what they call the "true ending") is a lot less impactful than the main credits ending, but I had lower expectations for this after the first game so I wasn't disappointed here. It is really funny to actually meet the Three Fates in person, they're a lot different than I expected. The big-picture story they're setting up is interesting and cool, basically outlining the transition from the age of mythology into the real-world timeline in which we're playing this game. The epilogue is a lot lighter on new art and music compared to the main ending, just enough for it to feel a step above an NPC conversation.

The biggest reveal of the game comes after the epilogue. The dialogue isn't super-explicit, but as I understand it, Hecate is Melinoe. In another timeline, Melinoe attacked Chronos, and was cast far back in time. So she has spent millennia studying magic, preparing and training. She positioned herself to be a servant in the House of Hades so she could take Melinoe away when Chronos attacked, then essentially raised herself to accomplish what she wished she had been able to do herself. Learning this adds a new color to so many things we've seen throughout the game. Hecate kept emphasizing "I am not your mother" - in the moment it seems like she is mostly distinguishing herself from Persephone, but really she's distinguishing her from herself. And her trial in Erebus feels a lot more appropriate: it isn't so much a teacher testing a student as a person testing themself. She's very insistent that Melinoe not reveal her existence to Chronos, which makes all sorts of sense, as she needs to keep the possibility of her survival open. After getting to this point, I realized that the main title screen features Hecate's face looming behind Melinoe's figure, which isn't spoilery on its own but feels like a huge revelation once you know their relation.

END SPOILERS

What a blast! The original Hades left big (fiery) shoes to fill, and Hades 2 more than fills them. Every new addition to the game is an improvement: the new resource economy, the crafting system, new combat mechanics like magic and armor. The story feels less revolutionary than the first game, but it's still a good story, and blessed with vibrant, compelling characters. It's also just fun to play: the combat feels good, the weapons are solid, the fights can be tough but always feel fair. Some games keep me playing because I want to see the ending, but the Hades games keep me playing because of how fun they are.

One Guinea vs Minorca

2025-12-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

Phew!

I finally finished reading Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Some time ago I resolved to read his book "The Wealth of Nations." As the book that essentially started the field of economics as a discrete area of study, it looms in the background of all the various economic and financial books I've been devouring over the last decade-plus. Like most people, I just kind of vaguely associate Smith with the "invisible hand of the free market" and a patron saint of laissez-faire. More recently, I've read ancillary posts and side-notes noting that the actual source material is more progressive than its general reputation. I've also heard that TWoN builds on Smith's earlier work with TToMS, and reading the earlier book gives a useful prism for understanding the later work. So I decided to read them in chronological order, as it were.

Now that I'm done, I don't necessarily regret having read this book, but I also kind of wish I had just jumped straight into The Wealth of Nations. When I first checked the book out of the library, I quickly flipped through it and saw that it was about 250 pages long. "That's not so bad," I thought. I read it... and kept reading, and reading, as the weeks stretched into a month. I got past page 100, and noticed that I seemed to be much less than halfway through the book. "That's odd," I thought. I took a closer look, and then realized that TToMS was originally published in two volumes, and this particular book resets the page numbers between the two volumes. It strongly reminded me of defeating the final boss in a video game, and then discovering that he has a second health bar. So it's basically a 300 page book, immediately followed by a 250 page book. Much longer than I had planned! And, as something written in the 1700s, the language is a little archaic, and tends to feature wordy, run-on sentences with lots of inner clauses and digressions.

I should also note that my particular edition seems like a public-domain reprinting. It didn't have an introduction, endnotes, or commentary. It did have huge margins, like 50% of each page just big ole' white space. I'm curious if it was intended for use in a college course or something.

It is still a good book, and I feel better for having read it. But I also could have read a lot of other books in the time it took me to get through this one. So, y'know, keep that in mind if you ever consider reading it!

The book starts out really strong, and the beginning kind of reminded me of the more modern book Thinking Fast And Slow. Smith starts off with the observation that we can never really know what another human being is feeling: we only know for sure what we ourselves feel. When we observe another person in pain, we aren't really feeling their pain: we imagine what it would feel like to feel that pain ourselves. If we have previously experienced a similar situation, we can recall what that felt like; even if we haven't personally experienced some event, we imagine ourselves in their shoes. If we see a person bump their head, we might cringe, even though we ourselves don't feel the injury.

Smith was writing when public executions were still common, and he notes that when people see a corpse hanging from the gallows, they will shiver and twist, almost mimicking the movement of the body. Anyways, this makes me think of Daniel Kahneman's technique of having you do an exercise to demonstrate some point that he's making. I immediately recognized in myself these sorts of reactions (puckering up my mouth when someone describes a bad taste from something they ate, crossing my legs when I see a football hit a groin), which pulls me on-board for Smith's points.

I think that some of what Smith writes about is universal, and other observations are unique to his culture, but in this book (especially the first volume) he presents them all as being timeless and unchanging. One example is his writing about how some expressions of sentiment must be muted. Restrained mourning is famously important in English society, while in other cultures people are encouraged to express their grief as largely as they can honestly maintain. I don't necessarily fault him for this: much like, say, Freud at the start of psychology, early practitioners can mistake anecdotes and small sample sizes for revealing universal truths. Any one of us only knows what we know.

As another example, it's clear that Smith's culture is obsessed with honor. Life, property and reputation are all co-equally valuable to him, while I think that for those of us in modern America they would be valued in that order (life over property, property over reputation). The details vary by sub-cultures, but I think we tend to admire people who "rise above" false accusations and can remain cool in the face of adversity; to Smith, though, that would be unmanly, and every gentleman is responsible for challenging every slander sent his way. He mulls over the problem of a man who promised riches to a highwayman in order to escape death: should he deliver on his promise made under duress? For Smith it's a conundrum, but I don't think modern readers would feel obligated to fulfill terms imposed by a crime. Anyways, for Smith the covaluing of life, property and reputation are equally as timeless and true aspects of human nature as the reciprocity of sentiment; for me, with the benefit of intervening centuries, I consider one of those as a culturally-determined set of values, and the other as a truly universal human experience.

At one point Smith goes on a long multi-page description of how, if someone comes into a fortune, they will feel the need to appear modest and humble, but over time they will inevitably pull away from their former station, grow arrogant, and lose their old friends in favor of new hangers-on. By the end of this I was thinking, "It sure feels like you're writing about one particular guy you know here, not an abstract law of human nature."

But despite these quirks, you can see how he's sort of developing a general theory of public ethics. Starting with almost axiomatic and empirical observations about our individual human experiences, he moves on to observing how those almost instinctive responses to witnessing others' emotions then inform our close relations (with friends, family members, lovers and so on), and then broadly builds up from there to how we are conditioned to act as individual members in a society. This kind of analytical framework built up from empirical observations feels very in keeping with other writing of the Enlightenment era.

I was reminded of how wide-ranging peoples' interests and expertises were in that era. Almost everyone I read about is a Renaissance man, doing all sorts of different things in different fields: Isaac Newton discovered the theory of gravity, laws of physics, invented calculus, was the Master of the Royal Mint and instituted the modern monetary system. Benjamin Franklin was a scientist and inventor and publisher and statesman. Adam Smith wrote treatises on moral philosophy and economics. It's a big difference from today, where people are either experts in a single field or tourists in many fields. One of the few counter-examples I can think of is William Bernstein, which I think is part of why I enjoy him so much: even when I'm reading his writing in a particular area, it's coming from the same mind that deeply understands and is interested in seemingly uncorrelated areas.

Shifting gears a bit, I wanted to briefly describe the experience of reading this book:

The language is slightly challenging, but not too bad. Like other books of the era it tends to use very long compound sentences. If my attention drifts, I'll need to go back and re-read a paragraph. But the actual vocabulary is very accessible. The edition I read uses the original spelling, so you see words like "connexion" and "publick", but those are trivially recognizable.

He frequently uses the word "peculiar", which reminds me of other writing from around the same era. As used in this book, I think "peculiar" means "specific" or "particular", as opposed to its more modern meaning of "strange". He also uses "nice", which doesn't have the modern meaning of "friendly" or "pleasant", but more like "precise".

Smith does have some slightly grating tics. He'll frequently insert "if I may say so" or some other kind of throat-clearing phrase in the middle of a sentence. This would feel perfectly natural in verbal speech but in this book it feels like padding. It isn't terrible, just different from the more efficient writing styles I'm used to these days.

This is the type of book that loves categorizing things. I started parodizing it in my mind: "There are two types of things, things that exist, and things that do not exist. Of things that exist, there are three types: things that existed before, things that exist in the present, and things that will exist in the future. Of things that existed before, there are things we know existed, and things we merely surmise existed. Of things that we know existed before, there are living things, previously-living things, and things which never lived." It's the same structure I encounter in lots of modern books; I tend to associate it with Malcolm Gladwell, but you see it frequently. It's very satisfying for my brain, although over the years I've grown slightly wary of too-neat categorizations like this.

I found myself frequently thinking of Naomi Kanakia's somewhat-recent post on her Great Books project. She makes the interesting assertion that reading the Great Books increases the diversity of your reading - yes, they're largely written by white men, but they lived in a different world than we do and (even in translation) they write differently than we do. Jane Austen remains popular today, but no contemporary writer writes prose like Austen does. Anyways, that's something I like about reading "old books" like this one. There's a strangeness, both in the language and in the world that they came from, the things they assumed or took for granted and so never explicitly spell out, but that deeply inform their writing. It's like stepping through a time portal and immersing yourself in the culture of 18th-century educated bourgeois Scotland.

As an example, I was struck by how Smith asserts that, say, there is a universal craving for individual vengeance: if you suffer a harm you wish to see the guilty party specifically punished for that specific harm. I think that the psychological portrait he draws here is much closer to modern America than to modern Europe.

As the book goes on, though, Smith does begin to specifically address differences in cultures, which he calls "fashions and customs". Smith notes that if someone follows the standards of the culture they occupy (such as showing the appropriate amount of gratitude for beneficence received, or the appropriate reaction of resentment for harms suffered), then our evaluation of that person is neutral. We reserve our praise for people who go above and beyond what we consider "normal" given their circumstances, and our condemnation for those who fail to respond appropriately to some good act, or who overreact to some bad occurrence. I think this is a good insight: just "following the rules" isn't virtuous, doing better than the rules is.

Smith also highlights the function of reciprocity in society. If a person is consistently generous to others, we will want to show generosity to them as well, even if we didn't personally receive their earlier generosity. And if someone has been miserly and cruel to others, we will approve of misfortune that befalls them. And if someone only does the absolute minimum to exist in society, we'll just leave them alone.

I was brought up short by this sentence: "Naturally the sensation of pleasure was much less pungent than that of pain." That's one of the key observations of Thinking Fast And Slow! It's interesting that that was a groundshaking observation at publication (establishing the behavioral-economic fundamental that loss aversion is a more powerful force than the reward drive) when it was also at least hundreds of years olds, and that it shook up the field of economics... which was itself founded on Smith's work! And, to be fair, Smith in this passage and many others is explicitly reiterating the work of the Greek Stoics, so really these are millenia-old bits of wisdom that we seem to lose and re-discover over and over again.

One previous reader left some light pencil commentary in the (very wide) margins. The reader seemed to take issue with Smith's argument about the extent of sympathy. In one passage, Smith posits a scenario where an Englishman reads in the newspaper about a terrible earthquake in China that resulted in thousands or even millions of dead. He would exclaim at how terrible it was and might express some sympathy to a nearby companion. And then he would go about his day, not very bothered at all. On the other hand, if he sprained his finger, he would be annoyed and upset about the injury for the entire day. The injury close to home feels much more keen than a distant one. Smith rhetorically asks, would a man be willing to condemn thousands of Chinese to death in order to avoid a sprained finger? He asserts that no, any decent man would be horrified at the thought. Anyways, this anonymous notator seems to feel that Smith is heartless to imagine someone wouldn't have genuine pity for the plight of the Chinese.

Near this point, Smith also asserts, without basis, that for every miserable person in the world there are at least twenty who are happy. Once again, I think he is taking his immediate social circle of educated and fairly wealthy Scots and Englishmen and assuming that they are representative of all of humanity.

Later in the first volume, Smith notes that many people will act in a moral way because they are driven by sentimental feelings: they feel genuine warmth in their heart that leads them to reward kind deeds, and they feel genuine outrage that leads them to punish wicked deeds. Other people may not have those same genuine feelings and don't have a real emotional reaction; and yet, because we as a society judge each other by our reactions, those people will tend to still go through the motions of responding in an appropriate way. And that's a good thing! There's a momentum behind our social mores that doesn't require 100% alignment in order to be effective. This dovetails with an area I've been thinking about recently. Studies say that something like 5% of people are sociopathic. But that doesn't mean that 1 out of every 20 people you meet are just waiting for an opportunity to rob and murder you. Most sociopaths are rational and know that they need to act as if they felt things even if they don't. That's "fake," but it's good, allowing us all to live in a society with empathetic values even if not 100% of the members of the society actually experience the feeling of empathy.

In the second volume, Smith starts writing about fashion and custom. Unlike the first volume, where he seems to universalize his arguments, here he emphasizes the differences between different nationalities, and how local standards and mores can vary. Similar to his original argument regarding sentiment, here he starts on a biological basis, noting that, for example, we all have an idea in our head of what an "average nose" looks like. It's very rare for someone to actually have the "average," so we'll say that some people have large noses, others small, some narrow, others wide, some crooked, and so on; but we're judging in relation to essentially the average of all the noses we've seen.

Likewise, in a given culture, there will be an average expected mode of behavior, and people within that culture will be judged relative to that average. He heavily leans on stereotypes here, which I actually enjoyed; most of his examples are pretty harmless and amusing. A Russian is expected to be severe, an Englishman less so. A French noble would burst into tears in front of the entire court upon being denied a commission, and he is expected to show that emotion; but a native American is expected to be stoic, and even if sentenced to the gallows would not shed a tear. The same gift that would make a Polish nobleman appear too stingy would make a Dutch burgher appear too generous. And within a nation, different professions have their own local standards of conduct. Smith says that, since soldiers constantly serve under the shadow of death, they tend to carry a gaiety and bawdiness with them, which seems appropriate to observers; but we expect police officers to be sober and stern. We expect priests to act like a "typical" priest, and bankers to act like a "typical" banker. But Smith thinks that, in "big things" like key moral choices, decisions should be based on universal principles; fashion and culture are what tend to drive minor, less consequential actions. So, one profession or nationality might shower affection on a child, while another profession or nationality might be more reserved; but everyone would act to save that child if its life was threatened.

Smith holds some fascinating beliefs. One thing that made me sit up straight and cock my head to the side was an assertion along the lines of "The death of a young child is always a terrible tragedy, but nobody cares very much when an old man dies." Smith is taking that as a baseline fact, and in seeking to explain why this is so he goes into how a child has so much potential in front of them, while an old man has already accomplished most of what he will. I don't think that statement is at all true in modern America, though. Obviously, for the parents the death of a child is devastating, but on the whole I think old men are mourned far more in our society than young children. An elderly person has touched so many more lives, left so many more memories behind, leaves a far greater hole when they pass. Smith's analysis makes sense as a proto-Darwinian argument. For things like this, I'm curious if I'm catching a glimpse into a profound difference in attitudes and mores across a distance of 250+ years, or if Smith was just a quirky guy and not necessarily in line with prevailing attitudes of his own day.

I do often find myself thinking of this book as a work of cultural anthropology at least as much as a work of philosophy, both implicitly as a side-effect of Smith's revealed assumptions and prejudices, and explicitly in his categorization and description of the mores of various groups of people in his time. At one point he observes the widening and flattening of society, with dramatic changes occurring from one generation to the next during his life. He notes that the Scottish highland clans had traditionally been very family-oriented, and would have a much stronger sense of loyalty and obligation to even a distant relation who they rarely saw, more than they would feel towards a neighbor they saw every day who shared no blood. But as people increasingly moved to cities and professional identities grew, those newer bonds of society grew stronger, and conversely those clannish family ties weakened, such that now a man might feel more affinity with a business associate than with a distant blood relation. Smith notes that this transformation started earlier in England and was further developed there than in Scotland, and meanwhile in the developing world family units still dominated social and national allegiances.

Smith seems to really love the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers. He spends a great deal of time describing their philosophy in detail and recounting what specific Stoics said and did. He seems to admire their beliefs and bases a great deal of his own system on their observations. This makes me think of modern people doing the same thing with Adam Smith: quoting him, admiring him, building on top of his ideas. That's the nice thing about a canon: you have these conversations that occur across temporal distances of hundreds or thousands of years, finding existing valuable things to use or improve instead of starting from scratch with each new generation or person.

While very wide-ranging, the overall tone of the book feels to me like a letter that an uncle would write to a favored nephew. There's a mixture of encouragement with admonition, seeking to pass along valuable wisdom in the hopes that it will improve their life; he doesn't expect all of it to be acted on but feels like he has to provide all the wisdom he can in the hopes it will do some good. Especially in the second volume, quite a few parts feel like Benjamin Franklin's writing.

While I wasn't super-diligent about this, I did jot down a few passages that I found particularly interesting. (These are based on the page numbers of what I think is this edition).

Page 114:

It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made. All the members of human society stand in need of each other's assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. [...] All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices. But though the necessary assistance should not be afforded from such generous and disinterested motives, though among the different members of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. [...] Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affection. [...] Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.

I found that pretty powerful. Like many of these other quotes, and as I noted earlier, I have been struck by how strongly and frequently Smith invokes the importance and value of collective participation in society, over selfish individual pursuits. As America enters some increasingly dark years in 2025, this speaks to concerns about the fraying of the fundamental fabric of our country. I think that in the past, when we've passed through illegal and immoral acts, whether Watergate or Abu Ghraib or Carnivore surveillance or the January 6th insurrection, we have an instinctive reaction towards appeasement, forgiveness, "moving on". But when, time after time, the most powerful villains escape consequences for their actions, participation in the system seems increasingly untenable. This is sort of a variation on Machiavelli. Love and amity are great, but they must grow out of stability, they cannot replace it.

Page 167-8:

Mathematicians and natural philosophers, from their independency upon publick opinion, have little temptation to form themselves into factions and cabals, either for the support of their own reputation, or for the depression of that of their rivals. They are almost always men of the most amiable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony with one another, are the friends of one another's reputation, enter into no intrigue in order to secure the publick applause, but are pleased when their works are approved of, without being either very much vexed or very angry when they are neglected.

It is not always the same case with poets, or with those who value themselves upon what is called fine writing. They are very apt to divide themselves into a sort of literary factions; each cabal being often avowedly and almost always secretly, the mortal enemy of the reputation of every other, and employing all the mean arts of intrigue and solicitation to preoccupy the publick opinion in favour of the works of its own members, and against those of its enemies and rivals.

Mr. Fontenelle, in writing the lives and characters of the members of the academy of sciences, a society of mathematicians and natural philosophers, has frequent opportunities of celebrating the amiable simplicity of their manners; a quality, he observes, was so universal among them, as to be characteristical, rather of that whole class of men of letters, than of any individual. Mr. D'Alembert, in writing the lives and characters of the members of the French Academy, a society of poets and fine writers, or of those who are supposed to be such, seems not to have had such frequent opportunities of making any remark of this kind, and nowhere pretends to represent this amiable quality as characteristical of that class of men of letters whom he celebrates.

This passage is very funny to me given what I know about the feuds between Newton and Leibniz, as well as with Robert Hooke and others. I can't say that writers don't feud, but (at least in my niche) I don't know of any quarrels or controversies as serious as those the Royal Society members engaged in. And those dramatic confrontations occurred just a few decades before Smith wrote this book. I don't know of those feuds weren't widely known at the time, if Smith just wasn't aware of them or what.

Trying to make sense of this, I guess that maybe part of what he's getting at is that you do tend to see distinct movements (which you could consider factions) among poets and novelists, like transcendentalism versus naturalism, or modernism versus post-modernism, or visceralism versus magical realism, and so on. In contrast, at least from my layman's understanding, scientists and mathematicians tend to just identify as scientists or mathematicians: there's more of a sense that they're all on the same team and working towards the same goal. But anyways, Smith's specific examples here seem laughable to me.

Page 249:

The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, through the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among its inhabitants; and thus, without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferiour to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

Very, very interesting! There's a ton to unpack here. First, continuing in the vein of being a time-traveling cultural anthropologist, it's interesting to see an assertion that, at least in 1700s Scotland, the rich "consume little more than the poor". That may actually be true when it comes to literal consumption in the sense of "eating" - a rich man won't eat, say, 100 times as much as a poor man. I can imagine a time when a rich man was thought of as someone twice as wealthy as the average man, and not someone with many orders of magnitude more wealth.

This is also an early appearance of the "invisible hand" analogy, which Smith uses a couple of times in this work and will develop further in The Wealth of Nations. This is ultimately an argument about the efficiency of markets, and that individuals pursuing their self-interest will ultimately lead to an efficient allocation of resources. Smith here is writing about what I think is essentially an agricultural society. The lord/master/owner seeks to improve his own income, so he invests in the lands and provides equipment and introduces improved farming techniques. The thousands of laborers he employs are poorer than he, but they all share in the increased productivity.

The last sentence gives me serious pause. Did Smith really believe that a poor man was just as happy as a rich man? Were poor people in the 1700s just as happy as rich people? (Obviously, money can't buy happiness, but at the same time, we have ample empirical studies showing a strong correlation between income and happiness, up through about $125k/year or so.)

And it seems ridiculous to say that a beggar with no possessions "possesses that security" which kings are fighting for. A beggar has no security! But, much as with "consumption" in the start of this passage, this does make sense if you take "security" and "fighting" literally. The role of a king is to defend the realm, to protect its inhabitants against the ravages of invading armies; so in that literal and narrow respect, yes, the beggar is safe from marauding Frenchmen thanks to the efforts of the king.

I remind myself that Smith wrote this immediately before the start of the Industrial Revolution. I want to go back and cross-reference this with Piketty, I believe that this is right around the time where inequality started soaring.

Page 260-261:

There is many an honest Englishman, who, in his private station, would be more seriously disturbed by the loss of a guinea, than by the national loss of Minorca, who yet, had it been in his power to defend that fortress, would have sacrificed his life a thousand times, rather than, through his fault, have let it fall into the hands of the enemy. [...] In these and in all other cases of this kind, our admiration is not so much founded upon the utility, as upon the unexpected, and on that account the great, the noble, and exalted propriety of such actions. The utility, when we come to view it, bestows upon them, undoubtedly, a new beauty, and upon that account still further recommends them to our approbation.
[...] If it was possible, therefore, that a person should grow up to manhood without any communication with society, his own actions might, notwithstanding, be agreeable or disagreeable to him on account of their tendency to his happiness or disadvantage. He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance, and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour. [...] Even though they should occur to him, they would by no means have the same effect upon him, antecedent to his connexion with society, which they would have in consequence of that connexion. He would not be cast down with inward shame at the thought of this deformity; nor would he be elevated with secret triumph of mind from the consciousness of the contrary beauty.

The guinea-versus-Minorca duality mirrors the sprained-finger-versus-thousands-of-dead-Chinese exercise from before. Smith notices how both things can be true: we feel a more genuine and profound reaction to our personal experiences than to grander events; and yet we will act to prioritize those grander outcomes over our smaller personal ones. Smith sees this as coming out of our connection with society. We are conditioned to seek the approval of others, which can often cause us to sacrifice our narrow self-interest and act for the good of society as a whole.

Page 262:

All such sentiments suppose the idea of some other being, who is the natural judge of the person who feels them; and it is only by sympathy with the decisions of this arbiter of his conduct, that he can conceive, either the triumph of self-applause, or the shame of self-condemnation.

This closes out the first volume with a pretty clear and succinct statement of Smith's theory of moral sentiment. All that we really know is what we experience ourselves; when we witness the experiences of others, we instinctively imagine what it would feel like for us to experience those events ourselves. We seek to be kind to others because we know how good it feels when others are kind to us; we punish cruelty because we sympathize with the victims of that cruelty, not wishing cruel acts performed on ourselves or others. And ultimately we conduct ourselves in our family, city, church, profession, social class and nation based on the standards we observe. We become aware of how others perceive us, and seek to act in a way that others approve of.

The page numbers reset here! Moving on to volume 2, page 35:

The violence and injustice of great conquerours are often regarded with foolish wonder and admiration; those of petty thieves, robbers, and murderers, with contempt, hatred, and even horrour, upon all occasions. The former, though they are a hundred times more mischievous and destructive, yet when successful, they often pass for deeds of the most heroick magnanimity. The latter are always viewed with hatred and aversion, as the follies, as well as the crimes, of the lowest and most worthless of mankind. The injustice of the former is certainly, at least, as great as that of the latter; but the folly and imprudence are not near so great. A wicked and worthless man of parts often goes through the world with much more credit than he deserves. A wicked and worthless fool appears always, of all mortals, the most hateful, as well as the most contemptible.

This is something I think about a lot. The Sackler family will never see a day in jail for the millions of people they killed, while a street dealer may face life in prison for a vastly smaller crime. People live in fear of petty robbers smashing a window, while ignoring the CEOs who drain tens of thousands of dollars from us with their monopolies, price fixing, deceptive advertising and usurious financing. Nations who launch immoral wars are immortalized in song, violent drunks are sneered at in disgust. This has always been the case, even though it is profoundly unjust.

Page 62:

The wise and virtuous man is, at all times, willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the publick interest of his own particular order or society. He is, at all times, willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part; he should, therefore, be equally willing that all those inferiour interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe, to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and director. [...] He must consider all the misfortunes which may befall himself, his friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for the prosperity of the universe, and, therefore, as what he ought, not only to submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he had known all the connexions and dependencies of things, ought sincerely and devoutly to have wished for.

This seems to be arguing the opposite of the "invisible hand" passage above: here, instead of saying that a rich person pursuing their own greedy interests results in inadvertent social benefits, he is saying that a "wise and virtuous" man should sacrifice their interests for the greater good of society. Maybe the earlier passage is more descriptive and this one more proscriptive: how most people act versus how they should act. This passage segues into a kind of fatalism near the end: I read it as essentially saying that God is ultimately in charge and wants what's best for us, so we should be happy with whatever happens, even if it seems bad in the moment. Whatever is happening is the right thing for the right reason, even if we don't understand why. Which is interesting, and also not an argument I would have expected from the Wealth Of Nations guy!

Page 117:

Nature, too, has taught us, that as the prosperity of two was preferable to that of one, that of many, or of all, must be infinitely more so. That we ourselves were but one, and that consequently wherever our prosperity was inconsistent with that, either of the whole, or of any considerable part of the whole, it ought, even in our own choice, to yield to what was so vastly preferable.

Again, this seems like a more explicitly collectivist sentiment. He isn't describing doing what's best for you and having it happen to work out well for society as a whole, but deliberately choosing actions that will create the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Page 191:

Against every account of the principle of approbation, which makes it depend upon a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every other, I would object, that it is strange that this sentiment, which Providence undoubtedly intended to be the governing principle of human nature, should hitherto have been so little taken notice of, as not to have got a name in any language. The word moral sense is of very late formation, and cannot yet be considered as making part of the English tongue. The word approbation has but within these few years been appropriated to denote peculiarly any thing of this kind. In propriety of language we approve of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, of the form of a building, of the contrivance of the machine, of the flavour of a dish of meat. The word conscience does not immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience supposes, indeed, the existence of some such faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably or contrary to its direction. When love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, with so many other passions which are all supposed to be the subjects of this principle, have made themselves considerable enough to get titles to know them by, is it not surprising that the sovereign of them all should hitherto have been so little heeded, that, a few philosophers excepted, nobody has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name upon it?

It was interesting to encounter this near the end of the book, as I'd been thinking about words and language during much of my reading. I must say that the word "approbation" doesn't seem to have taken off like Smith thought it would: it's still a valid word today, but doesn't occupy the cornerstone position he believes it deserves. It's really interesting to see him consider his then-contemporary vocabulary options, trying to map concepts onto available words. Obviously language is a living thing, English even more than most. Words that were new to him may seem archaic to us now, and other words ("nice", "peculiar") have shifted their meanings over the centuries. Even without translating through another language, there is a slightly alien experience of speaking to someone who lived centuries ago.

As I said: Phew!

I'm glad to have read this book. I still intend to move on to The Wealth of Nations, but I will be taking a break before doing so! The Theory of Moral Sentiments took a lot of effort to read, and I wouldn't have stuck with it if I wasn't getting so much out of it. The core philosophical argument he's making is striking and compelling, noting an almost biological reflex we have and extrapolating from that to how we form societies based on mutual respect. It's also a trip into a time machine, and useful both for catching a glimpse of the British world in the pre-dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and more broadly for seeing how many things have changed in the intervening centuries: our language, our culture, our economy, many (but not all) of our mores and values. There are glimpses of the Adam Smith of libertarian fame, but far more of an unrecognizable one, who believes in sacrificing individual fortunes in favor of the greater good. As I grow older, I increasingly recognize that the complex picture is almost always more true than the simple one, and I'm enjoying this complex picture of Adam Smith that's coming into focus for me.

So Mote It Be

2025-11-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

Looking back, Expedition 33 was probably my sweet spot for posting-about-a-game. It was a game that I really enjoyed, but wasn't obsessed about. I'd play for a while, hit a good story beat, take some time to collect my thoughts and jot down a post, then move on. Sometimes I just don't really click with a game and it languishes in the backlog without me ever feeling motivated enough to write about it. Or, on the opposite side, I have way too much fun with a game and would much rather play it than write about it.

Hades 2 falls squarely into the latter camp. I'd intended to have a good two or three posts up by now, and haven't even started writing about it, despite having put a good 60-ish hours into the game and reaching the credits. It's somehow even more addictive than the first Hades, to the point where I'll strategize to squeeze in a run before dinner or during a load of laundry.

I do wish that I'd written those earlier posts, because the game does change a good amount over the course of playing it. The early part of the game is focused more on unlocking things and mastering the basic mechanics, while the point I'm at now is more about overcoming challenges and optimizing builds. I haven't been playing by that long as the calendar goes, so I remember those earlier parts all right, but it isn't where my focus is on today.

First things first: Hades 2, like the prequel, is a modern action roguelike with strong RPG elements, much like Diablo, but blessed with a fantastic, deep, rich storyline and oozing with atmosphere from its Greek mythology setting. I blogged a lot about the original Hades, but hadn't mentioned here that I replayed it two years ago or so on the Playstation 5. I was slightly wary about picking up Hades 2 - I am getting older, and my reflexes probably aren't what they used to be - but it's been pretty smooth. I feel like I've retained a lot of my Hades skills, and recently playing a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate with my youngest brother has also helped keep my skills sharp.

Supergiant has done a fantastic job at evolving the original game. This isn't just a re-release of the original engine with new maps and monsters: they've reworked fundamental aspects of the core gameplay. It's the perfect kind of sequel: you aren't going in cold and can reuse some of your skills and learnings from the previous one, but you're also kind of in the same boat as new players in figuring out how systems work.

To pick one example nearly at random: in the original Hades, Dashes were probably the single most important skill to master. You're briefly invulnerable during a Dash, so being able to dash frequently is a huge help for survival, and prioritizing everything that helps your Dash is a smart move; Dashing also forces enemies to hesitate and re-orient to your new position, further helping you out. Hades 2 still has a Dash, but you only have a single Dash: unlike the original Hades where you could upgrade to have three or more dashes you can fire off in rapid succession, in Hades 2 you need to wait for a bit after only a single dash. But Hades 2 also adds a Sprint - or arguably upgrades it, as previously it was only an uncommon Hermes boon. You aren't invulnerable during a Sprint, but you move MUCH faster than your normal speed, can get around slow enemies, and can further upgrade your Sprint for more abilities (like leaving a flaming trail behind you, or gaining a temporary barrier that blocks incoming damage). So you no longer dash-dash-dash-dash all the time, but you still have a Dash, so... yeah. It's a learning curve, but a fun one.

The big-picture progression feels fairly similar. Each run progresses through a fixed sequence of Regions, and each Region contains a random selection of Locations for that biome, the end of each Region has a powerful Boss, and so on. In between runs you return to a home base where you can relax, chat with NPCs, upgrade equipment and so on. One major change to Hades 2 is a much more complex resource system, which I've really been loving. Hades 1 had a few basic economy currencies (gems, darkness), some rare resources (diamonds, titan blood), and very late in the game you could catch Fish as a resource to exchange for Gems. Fishing was one of my favorite parts of Hades, it's kind of just a dumb minigame but I really enjoyed it. Fishing is back in Hades 2, unlocks earlier, and is only one of a lot of new resource-gathering activities. You can also aid Lost Shades in returning home, dig up seeds, mine ore veins for metals, and so on. There are a lot more resources in Hades 2: Ashes, Psyche, Moondust, Silver, Glassrock, Lilies, Nightshade, Lotuses, Olives, Fated Fabric, Poppies, Cinders, Pearls, Golden Apples, tons and tons more. In Hades 1, the Gemstones were the core of the economy, and basically everything else upconverted from those. Hades 2 has Bones, which are kind of equivalent to Gemstones, except they aren't used for anything, just a currency for buying a few select types of things. For the most part you need various combinations of different ingredients in order to unlock things. It's complex, but I love the complexity, and it's managed really well in-game. You can clearly see the requirements, there's a handy screen for seeing where items can be sourced from (once you discover them the first time), and in-game you can set a "Reminder" that will track the items, even showing you during a run when a given chamber will have a resource you need for something you're tracking.

One side-effect of the complexity is that, once you get as late in the game as I am now, you will certainly have surpluses of some types of items and deficits of others. I could use a lot more Nectars and Stardusts and Golden Apples; but I'm drowning in a ton of Rubbish and Ashes and Psyche. Ashes and Psyche were super-useful early in the game, but not so much now. But, once you get to that point, you can recycle any items you don't want into Kudos, which are then used to unlock cosmetics at your base. In Hades 1 these were done with Gemstones, so there was a tradeoff between spending Gems on things with a mechanical reward and spending on visual/audio/story cosmetics; here, there's a clearer demarcation between currencies with mechanical rewards and the sole currency for cosmetic rewards.

One very minor niggle is finding resources. In smaller chambers you'll easily be able to see everything. You can unlock an ability fairly early in the game that will additionally notify you of nearby resources: a chime will sound, and a glowing light will float from you over to the resource (maybe a patch of dirt containing seeds or a lotus floating in a pool). But a particular late-game region has some huge areas, which look cool and have good gameplay, but can be annoying to thoroughly sweep for resources. You'll either need to spend a previous minute backtracing your steps to look for items, or press on and risk missing something you could have collected. That's really my only complaint though, and even that doesn't have a massive impact. On the whole there's so much more stuff to get than in Hades 1 and I'm really loving getting all the stuff.

As far as the actual gameplay, everything feels a little different, not just from things like the Dash/Sprint changes but the core weapons themselves. Early on I kept catching myself trying to map the Hades 2 weapons back to the Hades 1 ones, like thinking of something as "like the bow" or "like the fists", but none of them are directly comparable. For example, the skull is a little like the gun in how you load it and then shoot it, but there's much less ammo and you need to collect it back after firing. My favorite weapon in Hades 1 was probably the base Zagreus Fists; nothing in Hades 2 feels quite as fast as that, but the Flames have a somewhat similar playstyle in that you are constantly attacking the whole time, but now at mid/far range rather than melee.

Keepsakes are back, and at first glance they are the same: you get a Keepsake the first time you offer Nectar to someone, they go into your Cabinet, and you can eventually swap them in between Regions during a given run. But they all work differently this time around. The biggest collection are the "god keepsakes". In Hades 1 this would increase your odds of seeing a god and give better rarity. This time it guarantees seeing a god, but only once; and you can elect once to manually increase the rarity of a specific Boon before choosing it. Overall the game seems to much more strongly urge you to swap out Keepsakes in between Regions. Lots of them have a single-time effect (similar to Charon's Purse from Hades 1), and it will warn you in the Cabinet that the effect has expired.

Before starting to touch on some story stuff, some general tips and thoughts to share:

Don't sweat resource prioritization too much. You'll eventually need a lot of everything. If you don't have an immediate need for something, that probably means you'll save time in the future when a new requirement pops up. That said, this is where I personally would focus for early-game items with all else being equal.

Nectar. It's a lot more limited than most other items, and is critical for getting Keepsakes that will aid your runs and unlocking Prophecies that will provide more permanent resources. It's also used as an ingredient in many recipes.
Psyche. Increasing your Grasp lets you run with more Arcana cards, which is a huge power boost.
Ashes. Unlocking more Arcana cards gives access to more stuff. In particular, getting the Healing and Death Defiance abilities is huge for making it further into the run, which in turn provides more resources.
Bones. These will always be useful, but in the early game are less valuable than directly getting Psyche and Ashes.

Unlocking weapons should also be a high priority, though it's slightly less important here than in Hades 1. Unlike Hades 1, you get valuable resources from Guardians no matter what weapon you beat them with. If you're going to maximize your runs and/or enjoy a challenge, you'll want to use whatever weapon has Grave Thirst, which is roughly equivalent to Dark Thirst in Hades 1. Ideally you'll want to find a weapon you like within each category, then focus on upgrading that weapon; the base weapons use standard reagents to upgrade, while the unlocked ones all require Nightmares, the new equivalent of Titan's Blood. I've found this post a useful resource for prioritizing weapons, though of course it's important to try things out and see what feels best to you.

As a general comment, like Hades 1, you don't need to worry about making bad decisions in terms of story or dialog or build or resources or anything. The story progresses as you play the game, but it isn't possible to branch in different directions or anything. You will see a bit more story for things you invest more time into, so if there's a particular person you like or are interested in, you may want to give them more Nectar and be sure to chat with them as much as you can; but doing that won't lock you out of anything else, and not doing that now won't prevent you from doing it later.

Be aware of the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, and take options that help fulfill prophecies whenever they come up, but (in my opinion) don't go out of your way to fulfill a prophecy. Like, if you just need one Demeter boon left to finish her prophecy, just wait until you naturally see her in a run, don't take her Keepsake just to try and get that prophecy. You'll eventually fulfill all of them anyways, and I think it's more fun to achieve them as a side-effect to trying to beat the game.

As is unfortunately the case for a lot of games these days, there isn't a great single resource for information. The Fandom wiki is active and relatively up-to-date, but not always current, and more importantly is Fandom and trash. I've been prefering the fextralife one, which feels a bit better, but has some very outdated data. (Hades 2 was in Early Access for years, and the wikis still talk about things that were changed or removed long ago.) I think a lot of the community is on YouTube and maybe Twitch, but I loathe watching videos for games; that said, the one time I did watch a video to try and understand how to use a particular weapon I found it far more helpful than any amount of reading I could do. The r/HadesTheGame subreddit is probably my favorite overall resource, but again, it's important to look for information that's relatively recent, since older posts may have obsolete advice.

MINI SPOILERS

Some notes on my current loadout and preferences:

I always run Grave Thirst. I'm kind of all over the map when it comes to Fear (the new equivalent of Heat); I need to run 12+ Fear on some weapons, while others only need 2.

I usually take whatever run is lit up for my Grave Thirst weapon. There are a couple of points where I might really want to do an Underworld or a Surface run in particular, and if GT is going in the wrong direction, I'll instead do a Chaos Trial. This resets the GT weapon and gives me another shot at a target. This is also kind of a soft reset of the Crossroads. You can talk to everyone again, but they only have very brief canned responses. But you can give Gifts again, and may see some people who weren't there previously, which can be nice for advancing relations. You might be able to grow some plants, get a quick delivery or finish a quick recipe while in the Chaos Trial, so it's worth setting any of that up before popping in there.

This took me way too long to figure out, but Grave Thirst also applies to Chaos Trials! So it, say, the current GT weapon is the Staff, doing a Chaos Trial with any Staff will give you the bones and gems for completing it.

My current favorite weapons are:

Circe Staff. I like to run with Gale, which stays very close. This means I don't get much use out of the Soul Link thing, but it does mean it's pretty easy to lay a double Cast down on someone. I'll try and get as strong a Cast as possible, ideally including some Apollo and Demeter.

Artemis Daggers. This feels a little like the Zag Fists in that I end up zipping all around the battlefield, punching bad guys. I don't intentionally try to get hit to trigger Riposte, it's more like a freebie bubble that saves some health when it procs but I'm happiest if it doesn't proc. I prioritize everything that speeds up my Omegas, then stack Attacks.

Melinoe Torches. I want to try some other torches, but so far these have been super-fun. I'll usually trigger my Special, then just spam Attack nonstop, firing off a lot of Omegas. Getting a good Selene ability is great since I'll be burning through a ton of magic; the time-slowing one is usually my favorite, but anything besides Health is good. Getting something like Zeus or Hestia on attack is great, then some status curse on my Special. This is my one build that doesn't use Cast very much.

Charon Axe. Kind of the opposite of the last two, this build is slow but very powerful. At first I would run in, cast, run out, and detonate; these days I try to stay in the cast circle but still back away. As with Circe, stacking Cast boons is great, though here I prefer the one-time-damage casts like Poseidon over the DOT casts like Demeter and Hestia. This weapon rocks against Typhon.

Medea Skulls. Probably my least-used weapon. It's another zip-around build like Artemis Daggers, doesn't need nearly as much Magic, is a little squishier but seems to take enemies down quicker. I mostly just load up the Attack as much as I can.

Nyx Coat. Another one I haven't used very much, my first full clear was with Poseidon on attack, but I realized afterwards that this was kind of a waste since he doesn't proc on the split attack. I need to play with this some more. On the various aspects I often end up using the Specials, which are probably the best kiting attack in the game, a little like the Chiron Bow from Hades 1: you can line up some attacks, fire off, and then run away while they chase the enemy.

For keepsakes:

Like with Hades 1, I almost never bring god keepsakes. I head into a run with an idea of what type of god I want to see, and usually will find someone I can work with during the first region: I might prefer Aphrodite, but Demeter is totally fine, for example. If I somehow got through the first region without getting my primary boon I might take a god to fill it, but that's very rare.

I currently have my default/favorite keepsake set to Circe's Crystal Figurine. This is kind of a lottery ticket. If I'm very lucky, I will get Judgement after the first Guardian, which means that I'll get all of the Arcana by the end of the game. I'll often end up with mediocre or irrelevant arcana for my build, which is also okay.

I'll situationally take the Aromatic Phial from Narcissus after the first or second boss, if I'm low on Health and have a common Boon. It can actually be great if I have exactly one common Boon that I really want to rarify. I discovered that it doesn't work on Chaos Boons, but if you don't have any eligible boons when you first get it, you can still use it on the following Fountain and it can rarify one you've picked up in the meantime. Remember to equip the Phial before drinking from the first fountain and unequip it after drinking from the second one.

Early in my campaign, I really liked using Arachne's outfit if I was running low on health after a Guardian. The first few locations in a region tend to be easy, so I could get a lot of health refills from entering locations while keeping my armor intact. It's still a good keepsake, but I have better ones to use these days.

Echo's Concave Stone is another fantastic one. I'll try and take this after I have a boon from a god I really like. I did once shoot myself in the foot though, when the stone triggered on a Zeus boon and made me take the ranged Cast ability. This totally threw off my style and led to a Typhon defeat. Since then, I've spent rerolls if I have an unexpired Stone and see a Boon I definitely don't want.

Charon's Purse is always a great choice. In the past I would start a run with it. These days I don't, but I will grab it if I have Chaos and/or Hermes boons to boost Gold, as those will apply to the purse and can lead to 300+ gold.

For the final region, I'll usually take one of the Luckiest Tooth for the free revive, the Evil Eye if it applies to Chaos/Typhon, or the Knuckle Bones.

I've just recently picked up the Jeweled Pom but haven't used it yet, and I think there are a few other Keepsake slots, so I may have to revisit this list in the future.

Moving on to Arcana:

My must-have cards for every run include:

Health when leaving a location
Increase max health and magic at start
Increase max health and magic as you progress
Death Defiance
50% damage to enemies with 2 curses

Lately I've started taking the lower-left corner for more rerolls and starting gold. It's been making a bigger difference than I thought it would. That does mean giving up some things I would otherwise want, though. I'll consider my weapon playstyle and decide what I can best live without: some Cast benefits or faster Omegas or something else.

I've had all my cards unlocked for a while. I've prioritized upgrading the ones I use the most, but it will probably be a while until I have everything fully upgraded. Moon dust is expensive!

Moving on to story:

It's pretty cool to be in uncharted mythological territory. Hades 1 is a new story, but feels like it is woven in the space between existing tales. Hades 2 is completely new, though: the idea of the Titans returning and overthrowing the gods is really shocking and as far as I know has no precedence in the literature. But once again, the story is focused on the characters, and the characters are fresh and believable interpretations of their recognizable mythological origins.

Having Chronos as the main antagonist is a brilliant move. Hades 1 was great for a roguelike because of the in-universe explanation of why you keep coming back after dying. Hades 2 has a great explanation in its pocket for the alternate question, why enemies keep coming back after you kill them. So much can be hand-waved away with a being who can control the flow of time, and fortunately the Greeks already had one of those!

I like how the returning characters seem like evolutions of their previous appearance, or seeing different sides of them. Artemis in particular stands out: in the first game she was the most standoffish and reserved of all the Olympian deities, and it took a really long time for her to begin to warm up to Zagreus. But here, she and Melinoe are friendly and warm from the very start. But that makes a lot of sense, both from what we already know about Artemis and the kind of people she likes, and the "Silver Sisters" backstory to this particular game.

It was pretty fun to eventually see all of the original Olympians. I think Ares was the last one I made contact with. Dionysus might be my favorite here, just the perfect embodiment of who he is and what he would be doing in this situation.

Random note: the omniscient narrator seems to be the same voice actor as the original Hades. In an early flashback sequence Melinoe directly addresses the narrator as Homer and I went "Oh..... duh!" I don't recall him ever being identified in the first game, but it's perfect.

END SPOILERS

No mega spoilers this time, I do have some (positive) thoughts on the overall storyline, but I'll probably save those for the next post. If this is like the first game, I'll probably keep jamming on this game until I reach the epilogue; plenty of people keep playing for fun after that, but for me that will likely be a good point to pause and wind things down.

Camera Obscura

2025-10-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

I've finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and really enjoyed it! I actually beat the game almost a week (edit: two weeks) ago, but have been finishing up a few side-quests and optional boss fights. I'll be talking about that more in spoiler-town below, but for now I'll note that it's been a fun and nicely-shaped game. According to the in-game timer I've spent nearly 70 hours in the game; I think I was probably around 60-65 or so when I beat the final boss. I probably could have wrapped up a lot earlier if I'd just beelined the main story, but I'm glad I took my time.

I don't think I have many technical notes to add to what I had in my earlier posts. The game has been extremely stable for me, I didn't encounter any crashes or freezes for the whole time. I don't think I've called out the music, but that has been especially great: I find myself constantly listening to the tunes in my head when I'm not playing the game. They're really catchy, and really diverse: there's a lot of vocal music, piano, modern-pop-sounding, jazzy themes. They seem very comfortable letting the music take center stage, adding drama and flair to the proceedings, not subtly supporting it in the background.

Overall I'd say this game has a nice combination of feeling familiar (Final Fantasy vibes, standard progression mechanics like XP, gear and currency) and feeling original (very French aesthetics, a unique story, innovative battle system). It probably won't convert many RPG-haters to the genre, but it is a breath of fresh air for people who already enjoy it and are interested in trying something new.

MINI SPOILERS

Some notes on my final loadout:

For the most part I tended to have the same Luminas on everyone instead of specializing. As noted in my previous post, since I rotated party members periodically I kind of needed them to be as interchangeable as possible, so I didn't have, say, a dedicated buffer like many other players do. By the end of the game the loadout looked something like:

Painted Power to exceed 9,999 damage
Cheater to go twice in a row
Rush on Start and SOS Rush to proc this buff
Then chain with Shell on Rush and Powerful on Shell to get all the buffs
Energizing Turn for +1AP each round
Energy Master for an extra AP each time you get an AP
Base Shield to get a Shield if you don't already have one. This is pretty huge, you can shrug off one hit per turn entirely, which neutralizes some fights, makes others much more survivable, and gives a better chance at learning attack patterns against a new foe
Dodger - I never really did Parries, and the extra AP comes in handy

Those were the cores, I think. I gave Maelle Burning Shots so she could proc Burns to get back into Virtuose Stance. Sciel or Lune would sometimes get Energizing Starts to hit AP thresholds for their openers. Maelle and Sciel got Inverted for damage boosts. If people had spare Lumina points I would pick up things like Greater Powerful.

My team was mostly built around Maelle and Sciel as huge damage dealers. I really liked Lune for utility, but she tended to feel pretty weak. Monoco was usually in my party as my Pictos-learning mule. I would swap Verso in occasionally to make sure he wasn't too underleveled.

Maelle would try to stay in Virtuose stance as much as possible, using Fleuret Fury. With the right Luminas and periodic Dodges she could usually stay in it for a while. Being able to Break is a huge bonus. If she got low on AP, she would Pyrolyse to inflict Burn and switch into Defensive, then Swift Stride to get back into Virtuose. In Act 3 most boss fights would end once we built up to Gradient Level 3 and she unleashed Gommage.

I built Sciel for damage. She wielded Tisseron, which extends Twilight and lets you play again on entering Twilight (very helpful before getting Cheater). She needs to start combat with 9AP, then opens with Final Path to apply 10 Foretell. Then Twilight Slash to consume all the Foretell, refill her AP to max, and enter Twilight. Re-apply Final Path and Twilight Slash again for double damage. When it works out, it's worth spending one Gradient Charge on Shadow Bringer, which adds 10 Foretell without costing any AP; then follow up with Twilight Dance, a 9AP finisher that does huge damage boosted by the (hopefully doubled) Foretell. This is another boss-killing move.

By the end of the game, I had Lune running with Colim, which helps you get more Light Stains and boosts damage while holding Light Stains. My end-game rotation was opening with two Lightning Dances to generate a lot of stains and soften up targets, then Terraquake to start doing ongoing passive damage for 5 turns. Depending on my stain RNG, I might then start a Typhoon to do still more per-turn damage and heal my party (except the inverted Sciel and Maelle). Lightning Dance is also a great one when I have the AP and the right Stains.

Monoco ran with Ballaro, which rotates the Bestial Wheel order. My primary rotation was Braseleur Smash for damage and burn, then Ramasseur Bonk for huge Break damage (especially clutch against bosses). From Almighty Mask I would use Chalier Combos if I had enough AP, otherwise Rocher Hammering. If I started off the track for Almighty I would also work in Stalact Punches to get back on track.

I didn't use Verso a ton, but I did run with Confuso, another Light-aligned weapon that can generate a lot of Burn. If any enemies had Weaknesses I'd try to use him to Free Aim shoot them. He would otherwise use Speed Burst to get up to rank B, then either Assault Zero (low AP, many hits) or Perfect Break (can break, and jump to rank S if you do). Passing through A tends to be quick, Light Holder makes it quick and cheap. Once in S he spends most of his AP on free-aim shots, then Ascending Assault. In long fights, this can be yet another boss killer.

MEGA SPOILERS

As I often do after beating an RPG, I want to jot down my personal impression of the plot as eventually revealed throughout the game. I am not certain about all of this and haven't correlated anything with online information. If I were to replay the game, I would be interested to see how well this stacks up with lore as described within the game.

The game is set in a different world from ours, but does share some recognizable similarities. There is a structure that looks darn similar to the Eiffel Tower, and some familiar ideas and vocabulary.

Within the "real" world lived a family called the Dessendres. They are Painters, who have the ability to sub-create realities within a Canvas. For the most part beings within a Canvas cannot affect beings outside it, and usually are not even aware that there is a reality outside the Canvas. Painters can work outside the Canvas, but to be most effective they must enter into it. Doing this is tricky, as they may lose awareness of their real existence and only remember their lifespan as a painted being inside the Canvas.

The family matriarch, Aline, is an incredibly strong and talented Paintress. She taught her husband Renoir; I have the impression he had latent Painting ability that Aline helped him develop, but maybe it's a skill that can be taught from scratch, I'm not sure. They married and had three children. Clea, the oldest daughter, was even stronger than Aline: she's the one being who is talented enough to paint over someone else's creation. The middle child, Verso, was sensitive and fun-loving, and enjoyed creating whimsical creatures like the anthropomorphic paintbrush Gestrals, the silly creatures Monoco and Esquie, and the enormous Grandis. The youngest daughter was Alicia.

There is another group in the real world called The Writers; I don't think we ever learn much about what their deal was, other than their enmity with The Painters. Alicia befriended The Writers in some way, which allowed them to access the Desendre Manor. They set a catastrophic fire. Verso was able to save Alicia from death, but her face was badly burned in the flames, and Verso himself perished.

This shattered the family. In her grief, Aline entered into Verso's canvas. She painted a new Verso inside there, in the image and personality of her son, and let him continue playing with his childhood creations. While the real Verso was dead, a part of his spirit lived on inside the canvas, taking the form of a faceless boy.

Renoir was upset by Aline's withdrawal. Verso was dead, and nothing she could do would bring him back; and by retreating to the Canvas, she was abandoning her living family. So Renoir took it on himself to erase Verso's canvas: if he could get rid of all the memories of Verso inside there, Aline would have no reason to stay and would return to the real world.

Clea was irritated: now both of her parents had abandoned her and Alicia, locked into a silly struggle inside the Canvas, while nobody was doing anything about the Writers. Clea decided to help Renoir: since he was the weaker Painter, he wouldn't be able to overcome Aline, and the sooner the canvas was erased the sooner the parents would come back. So Clea began to paint the Nevrons: monstrous creatures who ate up the Chroma within the canvas. (I think Chroma is a bit like soul-life-force, and also just pigment: there's a finite amount of material within the Canvas at a given time, a Painter can dissolve a painted being and turn it into Chroma, then use that Chroma to paint a new being, or to enhance another being.)

The creatures within the Canvas had no idea any of this was happening: they don't know they're in a Canvas at all. They experienced this as an event they call The Fracture, which separated the human inhabitants of Lumiere from the rest of the Continent. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact sequence here, but: I think Clea painted over the version of herself that Aline had made. In the first Expedition, she beguiled an expeditioner named Simon, tricking him into entering the Abyss, an underwater area far beneath the Monolith where Aline lived. This helps limit Aline's power. Clea also creates the Nevrons who populate the Continent. Renoir is trying to undo the painting, which the humans experience as an event they call "The Gommage," where people just dissolve into chroma petals. The Paintress opposes this, but her strength is steadily growing weaker against both the in-canvas Renoir and the painted Clea, so each year more humans are gommage'd. This starts with all people age 99 and over dying; the next year, everyone 98 and older, and so on.

After some years, the citizens of Lumiere kind of figure out what's happening, at least what to expect each year. The Continent is dangerous, but is also the source of the Gommage. Unfortunately they misunderstand the Paintress's role: they think she is the one killing them, when actually she's the one holding back total death. One or two Expeditions figure out the truth, but aren't able to return word to Lumiere.

An Expedition is a group of Lumierans who go to the Continent to try and stop the Gommage. It primarily consists of those who are due to die in the next year, but anyone can join. Each Expedition chooses its own leaders and spends a great deal of time preparing, and each one usually tries to focus on a particular strategy. One Expedition tried focusing on stealth, disguising its members as Nevrons. (This did not go well.) One focuses on traversal, leaving behind handholds to aid future groups in scaling difficult walls. One consists entirely of naked people. (This one actually was relatively successful!) And so on. Each Expedition knows that it is extremely unlikely to triumph, hence their enduring mottos: "So we continue." and "For those who come after." Each Expedition records their successes and failures and learnings, leaving behind a record so future Expeditions can learn from their mistakes and, hopefully, eventually triumph.

The painted Verso is part of the initial Expedition. At some point he learns the truth: that he is not real, just a copy of a dead boy. But, to be fair, he is as real as everyone else inside the Canvas. He has sort-of company, too: Aline has painted versions of Renoir and the deformed Alicia, who are also aware that they are not real. Verso generally tries to help the Expeditions when he can, while Renoir and Aline generally oppose them. But keep in mind that the Expeditions are trying to destroy the Paintress, so in aiding the Expeditioners Verso is trying to kill off the Canvas, while (painted) Renoir and Alicia are trying to preserve it.

Back in the real world, Alicia and Clea have a chat. Alicia has been wracked with guilt for what has happened to Verso and their family. Clea is very matter-of-fact about everything. Alicia has managed to hide Verso's canvas, which Clea approves of: if Aline does leave the Canvas, she will want to jump right back in, so it's best to delay that as long as possible. Alicia volunteers to enter the Canvas to appeal to her parents to leave. While they struggle in there, Clea is single-handedly trying to hold back the Writers. Clea is a bit skeptical that Alicia will succeed, but also doesn't really care, and thinks that at a minimum she can't do any damage. Alicia enters the Canvas, but as she is less strong and experienced than the rest of her family, she quickly loses her identity. She is born into the Canvas as an infant girl named Maelle.

Many years pass. The game starts here.

Expedition 33 comes around - it's now been about 67 years since the Fracture. Maelle is only 15, but determined to join the Expedition: her parents have died so she is orphaned, and she has never really felt deeply connected to other people her age. One of the leaders of the expedition is Gustave. The big innovation of Expedition 33 is the "Lumina Converter". Previous Expeditions have discovered "Pictos", special powers that can be obtained by defeating particular Nevrons. With Gustave's converter, a Pictos can be studied and analyzed, and eventually learned by anyone else. They hope that this will give this new expedition a new edge.

There are several other Expeditioners; other than Maelle, most are in their early 30s and nearing their own Gommage. These include Lune, a brilliant scientist whose parents were also famous researchers; and Sciel, a widowed schoolteacher.

When the Expedition reaches the Continent, they are swiftly ambushed on the beach by the painted Renoir; he knows who Maelle really is, and is concerned that she will upset the balance of the Canvas. (And I think that if Maelle dies in the canvas, Alicia will wake up in the real world, slightly weakened and dazed but otherwise unharmed.) Maelle is saved by the real Renoir, who manifests as a faceless man known as the Curator. He takes her into a painted version of the Manor, the mirror image of their real-world home. Most of the rest of the expedition dies. Overcome with grief, Gustave nearly commits suicide, but presses on and discovers Lune, then Maelle and Sciel. Together they agree to press on.

They start going on adventures, including finding the whimsical Esquie and the various Gestrals. But the painted Renoir is still out there. Maelle starts having visions where she sees Renoir and Alicia; I'm not sure exactly how this works, it makes sense that the faceless Renoir could interrupt the flow of time in the Canvas but I'm not clear on how the painted versions can. Renoir murders Gustave, but the rest of the party is rescued by the painted Verso.

Verso takes the place of Gustave, leading the party on their quest to destroy the Paintress. There are a lot of trust issues here! The others eventually learn that he is Renoir's son, which is devastating for them to discover; he says "Family is complicated" multiple ways multiple times, they can see that he doesn't get along with (painted) Renoir so they figure that he's really on their side. Which he is, but they don't know that their side is misguided.

The Monolith is protected by an enormous invisible forcefield called the Barrier. The real Renoir tells them that to get past it, they will need a special weapon, the Barrier Breaker, which will require an enormous amount of Chroma to create. They can't collect that much Chroma from mere Nevrons: they will need to defeat Axons, who are Titan-esque beings. (I'm not totally sure how Axons fit into the Canvas cosmology; I sort of head-canon that they were preexisting beings painted by the real Verso, but I could be wrong.) The party dutifully does so.

They proceed to the Paintress. She recognizes Maelle as Alicia, but immediately starts to doubt herself. After all, there are other painted versions of her family running around, and she knows Renoir is trying to trick her. They succeed in defeating the Paintress. For a little while everyone is happy: they fly back to Lumiere where there's a big celebration. But with the Paintress gone, the real Renoir can proceed with erasing the Canvas, and so everyone gets gommage'd.

Except Maelle - she came from outside the Canvas, so she still has an existence independent of it. And Verso still survives as well. I forget now why that is - Maelle may have sheltered him, or it may be because of his connection with the real Dessendres. Maelle has regained her memories now. She knows that she is Alicia, but she also remembers being Maelle, and crucially, she wants to be Maelle. She feels more connected to the experiences she's had over the last fifteen years in this world than her life in another universe.

Maelle now regains her Painting abilities. Like the real Renoir or Aline, she can directly affect the Canvas while she's inside it. Among other things, that means she can bring back the "dead" / unpainted beings. By collecting Chroma, she is able to restore Lune, Sciel, and Verso's old friend Monoco back to life. As a side note, I think this is one of the purposes of the Nevrons: when loose Chroma becomes available, Clea can capture it and lock it up in a monster, keeping Aline or anyone else from using it to their own ends.

Maelle wants to meet the painted Alicia, and they do. This is a really interesting scene, as the painted Alicia looks like the real Alicia, while Maelle is the real Alicia but doesn't look like her. Alicia is mostly unable to speak due to the damage from the fire: her painted form was unkindly created. Alicia asks to be unmade. Maelle accepts, and this leads to a big argument between her and Verso: Verso is torn up at losing her, enraged that he didn't get to say goodbye. This Alicia isn't "real", but she is as real as this Verso is, and they've been through a lot together. Maelle is adamant that Alicia should get to make her own decisions, and it would be cruel to deny or delay her.

The party collects a lot of Chroma with the goal of resurrecting the Expeditioners so they can take on Renoir. They eventually return to Lumiere and do this. (I was overlevelled for this fight and one-shot him.) Now both Aline and Renoir have been kicked out of the canvas, and only Maelle/Alicia is left.

At this point, Verso has an urgent request: he wants Maelle to unpaint him. I'm not totally sure why! In my game he was having a nice time with Sciel, he seems to genuinely enjoy goofing around with Esquie and going on adventures with Monoco. It might be that he's just tired: he's lived for many years and won't age and die like others. It might be that he can't stand the ongoing awareness of being the shadow of a dead person. Maelle is aghast at the suggestion: she has been doing all of this to preserve her friends' lives and bring them back, not to kill them.

There aren't many choices in this game, I think the only big ones are who to romance and whether you side with Verso or Maelle at the end. I automatically picked Maelle: not because I'd deeply thought through the ethical issues raised by their disagreement, but because she's my strongest fighter and I always pick her when I have the chance. She instantly annihilated Verso.

This led to an ending where everything seems happy again. At the opera house you see Gustave and his girlfriend smiling, Sciel reunited with her dead husband, Gustave's apprentices running around. Verso comes on stage to begin performing. He looks much aged; unlike everyone else, he isn't smiling. As he begins to play, the "camera" shifts back to Maelle's face. She has paint over her, which we've seen just a couple of times before, notably with Clea. Once again, I'm not sure what to make of this. It might mean that Clea herself is steering events: she somehow painted over the incarnate Alicia/Maelle. Or it might mean that Maelle is following in Clea's footsteps, enforcing her will on others. It's an interesting juxtaposition, the happiness of everyone in the scene set against Verso's tightly-wound despair and a possibly sinister twinge from Maelle.

I do think that the meta-question posed by the ending dilemma is really interesting, though. After beating Renoir and seeing the ending I reloaded and did the remaining content; I had already beaten Clea in the Flying Manor, and after seeing the ending I did the Painted Love fight against (seemingly) the real Aline and Renoir, talked with the real/shadow Clea there, then fought Simon in the Abyss and listened to his journal. These scenes add a lot of context that may have flown over my head if I hadn't already seen the ending, and I suspect there's other earlier content that likewise would scan differently once you understand the overall cosmology. Anyways, the root ethical question has to do with the proper mode of grief (whether to dwell in the past or "move on"), with Maelle joining Aline in arguing for the value in indulging in fantasies that comfort us, while Verso joins Renoir in ending those fantasies. Now that I write this, it feels almost like a reversal of their reactions to the painted Alicia, where Verso wanted her to continue while Maelle allowed her to end.

Anyways, I thought the story was really intriguing; like many JRPGs, I love that it embraces ambiguity and impressionism, leaving you to chew over the implications of sparse lore instead of fully exposing everything.

Let's do a random roundup:

Favorite party member (combat): Maelle
Favorite party member (non-combat): Sciel
Favorite mechanic: Foretell
Favorite weapon: Medalum
Favorite NPC: Golgra
Favorite battle arena: Paintress, with a close runner-up for the Abyss
Favorite biome: Cliffs
Favorite boss: Paintress
Hardest boss: Simon. (I had to look up online how to cheese him.)
Most skipped: Gestral Beaches
Favorite historical Expedition: The naked guys, both for the VO and their successes. Runner-up is the climbing team.
Favorite Lumina: Energy Master
Favorite Nevron: Stalact
Least Favorite Nevron: That speedy guy with blade hands
Favorite gimmicky fight: Mimes
Favorite Petank: Green-smoke guy
Least Favorite Petank: Parry guy

END SPOILERS

Like I said up top, this was a blast. I haven't done any online reading yet, I'm already curious whether this new studio is planning some sort of follow-up to this game and world or if it will remain a one-off. It definitely stands on its own, but also feels rich enough to support more games within it. It's nicely scratched that Final Fantasy itch but in a way that feels like a loving homage and remix and not like a rip-off. I'm not sure if I'll ever replay this, but if I do I'll be very interested to see how the early story can be more deeply examined through the prism of later revelations. In any case, I'll likely be thinking of this game for some time to come.

Proof of Life

2025-10-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me a month or so ago that I might want to officially note here that I'm no longer on the major social media platforms. I've personally had the experience in the past where I can't find someone and my mind quickly jumps to "Oh no, did they block me?! What did I do?!" I never announced I was leaving or anything, so I wanted to reassure anyone else whose mind might work in the same way that, no, I definitely didn't block you!

I've had a hate/hate relationship with most social media for quite a few years now. It wasn't always that way. Just now I was looking through my archives for social media references, and stumbled across some posts from many years ago. There was a moment when I was a big fan of Facebook: a way to keep in touch with my friends from college after we all moved to different cities! But I soured on Facebook in particular fairly early on, mostly because I couldn't trust them. They aggressively rolled out new changes and features that didn't give you any options or required you to explicitly opt-out, and always in the direction of less privacy and less personalization. There was a period back in... 2007 or so, I think, where I was doing some early mobile software development with the Facebook API, and I was shocked at how much data I could see from other people on it. This was in advance of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and in retrospect I wish I'd complained loudly about how cavalier Facebook was with user data. For a long time I kept Facebook as a site I'd log into once every couple of months and scroll for a couple of minutes: the saving grace was that their algorithm did a decent job at putting important information at the top of my feed (new births, new careers, new moves), and I would just log off again for a few months once I got past that stuff. But after the last election and the announcement about revising their content moderation policy, I was out and felt compelled to vote with my feet. Zuckerberg's fawning obeisance at the White House reassured me that I made the right choice. I opted to straight-up delete my account, not just suspend. Facebook (and the other networks) do have an option to download your data before deletion, which I did; it's hanging out on my hard drive, I kind of doubt I'll do anything with it but if I ever did want to see my old posts or photos they'd be there. I went ahead and deleted my Instagram too to make a complete break with Meta; I don't think I ever posted on Instagram, and hadn't been viewing it much recently, so that wasn't a big move.

I'd deleted my Twitter even earlier. I was never very active on Twitter; I mostly saw it as a replacement for my beloved Google Reader, as many people and organizations I was interested in deprioritized or removed RSS content. I think I made a handful of posts around 2010 or so, including a couple of Game of Thrones memes, but for the most part just followed people I found funny and/or insightful. I should have removed Twitter shortly after the Musk takeover, instead I stuck around until the actual site performance started tanking. As with Facebook I did a full account delete, but I'm sure nobody ever noticed. I'm really glad that I got out when I did, it sounds like things have gotten even more miserable since, with the addition of paying for viral tweets, Grok, and the increasingly violent and unhinged agitation of the owner.

I guess that's it! I still use a couple of social-y apps but don't really post anywhere. I've been enjoying Bluesky as a straight-up Twitter replacement; it feels a lot like Twitter did back in 2010, which is nice. I'm sure at some point it will stop being fun and I'll get rid of that too. I've had a Reddit account for ages, but Reddit doesn't really feel like social media: nobody follows anyone, it's all about community discussions. I rarely post there, when I do it's in very niche subreddits about obscure video games and podcasts. And I still have LinkedIn, which feels a lot like Facebook used to, in that I'll log in once every couple of months to see what people have been up to.

This blog is kind of a social presence for me, I suppose, though I very rarely post personal things on here. If you'd ever like to catch up, please shoot me an email or text! I feel like our species' experiment with social media has largely ended in disaster, I'm curious if we will find an improved path going forward (possibly via the fediverse or some other innovation we haven't heard of yet), or if we'll RETURN to more old-fashioned analog ways of relating.

Expedition 33.2

2025-09-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

I just reached Act 3 of Expedition 33, so I suspect I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through the game. I'm still loving it. The storyline continues to intrigue: it's answering a few questions but raising even more. I now feel comfortable with the overall combat system and am mostly enjoying it. Overall it's scratching that Final Fantasy itch that I hadn't realized I'd had.

I'm mostly enjoying the game, but I wanted to open up this post by rattling off the things that annoy me about the game, mostly to get them out of the way.

I wish you could mark up the map. From the start of the game you find high-level areas that you aren't yet ready to visit, but 30 hours later it's hard to remember whether you already did The Cliffside Caves or not. I loved the Elden Ring map, where you could drop a few types of icons yourself at any point; I would use one to indicate "There's a boss here that I'm not powerful enough yet to beat", another for "There's a new area here that I haven't explored yet", etc. As another example, when I went through Esquie's Nest the first time I wasn't able to beat two optional mini-bosses, a Mime and a Petank. I knew I wanted to come back, as these often have particularly valuable rewards, but I had to just keep that outstanding task in memory, there's no way in-game to remind myself.

I wish there was a journal or quest log. You get a few random quests, which often are very vague. I know that I've started multiple side-missions, and I know that I've finished very few, and I can't remember where the remaining ones are, who gave me the quest or what they (vaguely) asked for. I think one or two are in the Gestral Village, but there are like a hundred NPCs there spread over a huge and sprawling area. I do kind of like not having the Big Flashing Arrow Telling You Where To Go, but it's annoying to just have a vague idea that someone somewhere needs something. In retrospect I should probably be keeping notes with a pen and paper, but I can't think of the last time I had to do that in an RPG. Elden Ring also didn't have an in-game journal, but it also had a lot fewer quests and only a handful of NPCs in the entire game, so there wasn't the needle-in-a-haystack feeling I'm getting here.

I like the overworld, but map traversal gets a little annoying. Even with the faster movement from your "mount", it takes a long time to move from one side of the map to the other; combined with not being sure about whether I've already visited a place or need anything from there, I feel like I'm burning time in transit. Sometimes I do stumble across a lost Gestral or find a beach I haven't explored yet, but I do wish there was a true fast travel / waypoint system. (Maybe one will come later!)

Zone traversal can also be a bit annoying. Once again, I'm comparing it to Elden Ring, which is unfair since Elden Ring has the best movement of any RPG (or probably any game) I've played. But, for example, sometimes you'll be able to scooch along a narrow ledge around a pillar and find something interesting on the other side, and other times you won't be able to move onto the ledge. You won't know until you try. Sometimes you can climb over chunks of rubble to find a path forward, other times an invisible wall will block you. Again, you won't know until you try. This isn't the end of the world, but it's mildly annoying. I also really wish there was a map for zones like there is in the overworld. Some are fine to navigate, but others get really confusing. Even if you do the whole zone in one play session it can be a bit disorienting and hard to remember whether you've already explored a particular path or not. As the game goes on I'm getting a better sense of the map design philosophy so I have more of a spidey-sense for the best way to traverse, so it's less painful than it was, but still not great.

Pictos are really overwhelming. I do like the "use to unlock" mechanic, that's a neat idea that gets you used to their mechanics, but the sheer number of them are a lot. It also doesn't help that I'm regularly swapping around party members to keep XP gain evenly distributed. I think that if I had a consistent loadout (like Maelle, Lune and Sciel) I could be a bit more tactical, like having one focus on buffing, one on breaking, etc. But over time I've shifted towards having almost the exact same Luminas on everyone: ones that gain AP like Energizing Start, Dodger, Energizing Pain, etc., as well as a few like SOS Shell for survivability. I'm curious if the pace of new Pictos will ever let up, so far it's been relentless.

There are also many skills and too few slots. The limitations make sense mechanically with the gamepad, but kind of kills the joy of leveling up since you're unlocking things that don't fit into your loadout. Some things could be useful with micro-management, like Maelle's shield-breaking attack, which is really useful in a few fights and completely useless in all others. Maybe replaying the game at a higher difficulty level would justify the time to micro-manage skill assignments. But with my playstyle, I've just stopped buying new skills once I have a solid rotation and just let my skill points accumulate. (The only minor change so far has been adjusting from low-AP rotations in Act 1 to higher-AP rotations in Act 2.)

MINI SPOILERS

I have mixed feelings on Monocos' feet mechanic. From a game design perspective, it's pretty brilliant. There's a well-documented tendency towards "stickyness", particularly in RPGs: people tend to stick with their initial party members and rarely incorporate later additions. So requiring Monoco to be in your party in order to unlock new abilities for him is a great way to urge you to get to know him and his unique fighting style. But that ends up meaning you only have two people to pick from to travel with him. For a while he was a bit under-leveled compared to everyone else so it didn't really matter, but now he's at parity with everyone else and will probably soon suprass them. I'll occasionally take him out if I see that we're mostly fighting the same Nevrons over and over again, like in Sirene's hideout.

That seems like a lot of annoyances, but they are VERY minor and not really diminishing my enjoyment of the game, only occasionally making me wish I was playing Elden Ring instead. Let's move on to the things I like!

The camp is great. It's almost identical to what we had in Dragon Age: Origins and Baldur's Gate 3, and it works as well here. Narratively it doesn't make a ton of sense to have the same geography no matter where you set up camp, but the mechanics and convenience are huge. It's great to have a safe area to chat with companions and other NPCs, deepen relations, do some crafting-type activities, and advance the storyline.

I'm so glad that there are romances! For whatever reason I wasn't expecting that, and I'm so glad to see them. I was starting to get that vibe a bit in Verso's conversations with Sciel and Lune but wasn't sure if it was real or not. More romances in all of our games please.

I'm loving the plot and storytelling technique. It's very much "show don't tell"; every once in a while you get exposition from a witness like Verso, but even that may be unreliable. The characters are trying to figure things out, and you as the player are trying to figure out even more things since at the start of the game you don't even know what, like, the Gommage is.

Your characters can get really strong. Maelle in particular is a beast. It's very satisfying to start consistently churning out 9,999 damage per hit in a multi-hit combo.

Combat is fun. I didn't like the idea of quick-time events over pure tactical execution, but it's been really enjoyable. Like in Elden Ring, it feels rewarding to learn attack patterns and git gud. Fights can have some fun puzzle aspects too; there's one Petank fight where you need to free-aim shoot a teleporting orb, which sounds annoying but ended up being a blast.

The gradual unfolding of the Manor is fun. I was kind of thinking you could use it as a crossroads to fast-travel between distant areas; it doesn't work like that, but is still fun to open up more areas of it, always get a couple of nice little upgrades and also get to explore some of it, get some environmental storytelling and build out your mental map.

The humor feels great. This is another thing that makes me think of Final Fantasy, where you'll have some intense melodramatic scenes, and then immediately follow it up with some goofy moogles and chocobos. Here, Gestrals look and sound and act and speak so silly, which is great comic relief to the darkness.

Let's talk about plot!

MEGA SPOILERS

In yet another Final Fantasy-esque move, the story so far has felt pretty impressionistic and ambiguous. At the very end of Act 2 we get a bunch of lore dumps. I'm still rearranging my understanding inside my head; here is what I currently think the story is, but I'm almost certainly wrong about at least some (and possibly most) of this:

The game up until now has taken place in a world-within-a-world, where people think that their reality is real but it's actually contingent on outside forces. (In our own world, this idea has recently gained traction in the "We are living in a simulation" meme, but it's been around for a while, including Berkeley's Idealism, and my favorite example of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.) I'll call the "main" universe "prime". In Prime, there are at least two groups/families, the "painters" and the "writers". We don't know much about the writers yet, but they seem adversarial to the painters. The painters we know are all members of one particular family, including Aline, Renoire, Clea, Verso, and Alicia.

The Painters each have a Canvas, which they can paint on to create their own world. The things they paint within there have their own reality: they don't know they live inside a painting. They are born, grow, love, live, have families, and die. A Painter can choose to enter their Canvas or that of another, but doing so has risk, as they become bound to the rules of that world.

There was an incident some years ago where the youngest daughter, Alicia, foolishly made some sort of contact with the Writers. This resulted in a serious fire; Verso was able to save Alicia's life, but she was permanently disfigured in the flames, and Verso himself died.

This produced a lot of strife within the family, with various people blaming or defending others. This either led to or intensified a major rift between the mother Aline and the father Renoire. In their grief, they took two different responses. Both immersed themselves into Verso's Canvas. Aline wanted to undo her loss and so she painted a replica of Verso into existence. The canvas was already filled with things Verso had created and loved, like the silly Gestrals and the buoyant Esquie and the imaginary friend Monoco.

Renoire was aghast at Aline's seeming to slip into delusions and fantasy, favoring a harsh, cold reality. Where Aline (The Paintress) sought to create, Renoire sought to erase. The two of them have been locked in a struggle for decades. The main sufferers have been the (imaginary) people of Lumiere: humans who were exiled from The Continent. Renoire has been trying to erase them; Aline has been holding him back, but her power grows steadily weaker, so every year more of the people perish.

The people of Lumiere haven't understood this situation, though: they believe that the Paintress is responsible for them dying (their "Gommage"), and so they have been undertaking Expeditions to the Continent to try and defeat her, not realizing that doing so would doom themselves.

After several years of this, Alicia talks with her sister Clea and decides to enter Verso's canvas. I'm not clear yet on exactly why this is; I think she might be trying to get her parents to leave the canvas so they can focus on the threat posed by The Writers, but I'm not sure. Alicia loses control while entering, though: she loses her Painting ability and enters the world as a painted being, a baby named Maelle. She thus begins a life incarnate in this fantasy world.

In the game til now, Maelle joins the rest of the doomed Expedition 33 as they set out to the Continent. They are met there by Renoire who annihilates most of the expedition. I think this is because Maelle as a latent Painter poses a threat that no other Expedition has before. I'm not clear on this yet, but I believe that the version of Renoire we've seen in the game is a fiction that was painted by Aline, and not the real Renoire, so she's channeling her own warped impressions of him.

Maelle, Gustave, Luna and Sciel all survive the initial onslaught. Maelle was rescued by the Curator - I think this might actually be Renoire, but I'm not sure. Together they progress through the Continent, finding the evidence of previous expeditions - fictional from the perspective of the Painters, but real to the members of this party. Gustave is killed by Renoire while saving Maelle, and then Verso rescues Maelle. Verso recognized Maelle as Alicia, but shelters her from the knowledge of who she is; the rest of the party gets very suspicious once they learn that Verso is Renoire's son. But Verso isn't really Verso, remember, this is the illusion of her son that Aline painted.

So, where I'm at now is that Verso and Maelle and the rest of the party succeed in killing the Paintress, but this has broken her protection, so everyone in Lumiere dies, seemingly including Maelle. But even though Maelle is gone, Alicia still exists, coming from a higher plane of reality. And Verso continues to exist as well, I think because he was painted by Aline (whereas I believe the Lumierians were originally painted by the original Verso). I'm expecting and hoping that we'll get to reconnect with Sciel, Lune and Monoco; it definitely looked like the first two at least died in the mass Gommage, I'm curious if there will be some time-travel shenanigans or if Maelle will be able to Paint them back into existence or what.

END SPOILERS

So, that's what I think is going on! It's been a cool story so far, with some head-expanding moments, along with a hefty dose of ambiguity and uncertainty. I'm looking forward to seeing where the game ends up. Since this is the first entry from a new studio, I have no idea at this point if they're hoping to usher in a new franchise or making a one-and-done stand-alone universe, I could see this going either direction.

I'll probably be pounding away at this for a while longer. I'm feeling very compelled to play, mostly because it is fun, but also because Hades 2 just came out and I really want to try it!

Think Fast!!

2025-09-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've ever written this about a book before, but I believe that everybody should read "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. It's a book about how we think and why we make the decisions we do, and since everybody needs to think and make decisions, it could improve the life of literally anybody who reads it. I personally found it very eye-opening, immediately recognizing cases and patterns where I have made or continue to make poor decisions, as well as getting a better understanding for how I might recognize those situations and do better in the future.

There are a lot of books on thinking out there, and one unique advantage of TFaS is that it's written by a direct expert in the field: Daniel Kahneman was a psychologist and a founder of Prospect Theory, which revolutionized the models used by psychologists in evaluating decision-making. His work led to the triumph of Behavioral Economics, which has overturned a half-century of largely misguided models and explanations for how people behave in markets. This gives him a huge leg up over popular writers like Malcolm Gladwell who can write engagingly but don't have direct experience with the science behind their books and need to rely on the information provided by professional scientists or untrained enthusiasts. Fortunately, Kahneman is also a great writer. The book is a bit long but very compelling and highly readable, spending enough time on each concept to make it stick without overstaying its welcome, and using lots of vivid and memorable examples to prove his points.

Possibly the most remarkable aspect of this book is that it contains its own proof. I'm used to non-fiction books saying "A study shows that X" or something like that, and I'll just kind of nod and glide over it. TFaS will do something like challenge you to solve a particular multiplication question in your head, then note what you probably experienced while working it, and I'll be like, "That's right! That is what I experienced!" I become the living embodiment of the proof of what he's writing, I can test the assertions on myself in real-time. I know that isn't applicable for every type of book, like WW2 strategy or the history of debt, but it does work for this type of book and works really effectively.

I'm going to jump around a little in capturing a few (probably long) thoughts and responses to the book, so this post will almost certainly feel more disjointed than the actual book. I definitely won't get to everything he writes about, just focusing on the ones that resonate most with me at this time.

The titular "fast and slow" of the title refer to our two main modes of thinking, which he refers to as System 1 and System 2. System 1 is automatic and effortless, our immediate perception and analysis of a situation. Some examples he gives include hearing someone's voice and detecting whether they're angry, driving along a freeway with light traffic, noticing the one black sheep in a flock of white sheep, or answering what two plus two equals. System 2 is effortful thinking, which requires our focus and attention: when engaged in System 2 thinking, our pupils dilate and our pulse quickens. Examples of System 2 thinking include being asked to recall an example of a certain incident from our past, merging onto the freeway in heavy traffic, explaining why a black sheep might be in a flock of white sheep, or answering what thirty-six times twenty-four equals.

We spend the vast majority of our lives following System 1 thinking, and most of the time it works great. Occasionally we encounter a situation where System 1 can't provide a satisfactory answer, and we need to marshal our System 2 to decide what to do. Often times our System 1 will offer up one or more possibilities, and our System 2 will evaluate and analyze them; other times our System 2 will need to do all the work, as in the multiplication example. System 2 is lazy, and thinking slowly is hard, so often times we will stop as soon as we arrive at a plausible answer and get on with our lives. Through the examples he provides to the reader in the book, Kahneman shows how even supposedly bright people like me will often answer a question incorrectly or make a less-optimal choice, whereas if you spent the time to fully think through a problem you would make the opposite choice.

Much of the first part of the book focuses on how System 1 operates, what it can and cannot do. Examples include the importance of framing: we tend to judge things relative to what is "ordinary". We're primed to respond to differences more than to absolute amounts. He also looks at ways our System 2 tends to be reliably lazy. We rely on "anchoring", where we find a number (or value or action or whatever) and then adjust up or down from there, instead of working out the best value from scratch. We're satisfied with answers being merely "plausible" rather than being "correct": if something our System 1 proposes sounds reasonable, or if we arrive at a reasonable-sounding answer quickly, we'll accept that without checking and verifying it.

I'm tempted to say that System 1 is "bad" and System 2 is "good", but that isn't at all the case, they're just different. There's a lot that's amazing about System 1, including its ability to quickly derive meaning from scant information. We need to be cautious about evaluating that meaning, but it's remarkable how much it can collect. Kahneman references an old animated film in the book, which I subsequently looked up on YouTube, and it's pretty amazing. An animation from the 1940s, it just shows two triangles, a circle and a few lines; and yet, over the course of about 90 seconds, you can infer a really powerful and emotionally compelling story from it. There's nothing in the real world that looks like these abstract shapes, and yet our minds are able to immediately supply compelling information about what they're doing.

While our thinking can get us into trouble, there is a very good biological and evolutionary reason for why we think the way we do. For example, we're quick to notice outliers and unusual situations, because in the past that was often a sign of danger: if we notice that there are more lions than usual on the savannah today, we might want to go and hide in the jungle. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lions are planning to attack - there's a natural ebb and flow in the number of lions - but a species that consistently acts on the potential of danger will out-perform a species that is less likely to act. As with so many other things in psychology, our mental tools that were helpful in prehistoric times aren't nearly as useful in the modern world, but we're stuck with the machinery we have.

I think the first part of the book that really wowed me was his discussion on reversion to the mean. RttM has been a big part of my economic reading over the last 20 years or so, but Kahneman's presentation is pretty eye-opening for me, in particular why it's critical to have control groups in scientific studies. The literature I follow most closely these days closely relates to nutrition and health, where an experiment might ask something like, "Does eating almonds help reduce cataracts"? If you run this experiment on a population of people with cataracts, you will see that many peoples' cataracts do diminish or disappear over the time they're eating more almonds. But the thing is, you would expect for some portion of those cataracts to disappear anyways: the population as a whole has some base rate of people with cataracts, and if you have a population of all-cataract-havers, they will tend towards the base rate of getting fewer cataracts; and if you have a population of no-cataract-havers, they will tend towards the base rate of getting more cataracts. We construct causal stories ("The almonds cured cataracts!") when there might not be any causal relationship. In the past I've thought of the "placebo effect" as an almost mystical force, that just believing that things will get better can make things get better. That mental effect is relatively minor, though, the bigger impact is simple mean-reversion. I can't believe I'm finally understanding this so late in life!

Mean-reversion is a great explainer of so many things. One that immediately comes to mind is my business. Over the years, I've noticed that when we have a very successful year, it's usually followed by a less-successful one; and a less-successful year is usually followed by a better one. This has seemed abnormal to me - why do we swing so much from year to year? - but it's very well explained by reversion to the mean. Luck plays a huge part in business, with "luck" defined as "things outside of our control": how the American economy as a whole is doing, how much investment money is available, whether we happen to meet the right person at the right time to kick off a project and have the right people to make it succeed. Nobody is consistently lucky or consistently unlucky or even consistently middle-lucky: we all fluctuate over time, so of course there are inconsistencies: you should expect them! You can still infer long-term trends; even a less-successful year now will generate more revenue than an above-average year did a decade ago - but the short-term movement is random (as Burton Malkiel predicted). And that randomness is not weird, it is normal.

My experience is also an illustration of the "Law of Small Numbers". We're a small company with relatively few projects, so we'll tend to have more extreme results from year to year compared to a much larger company. Or, to put it another way, we'd expect more variations from the base rate. If the economy as a whole does poorly, we'll have a higher chance of doing well, or of doing disastrously, while a larger company would be more likely to more closely match the overall average.

I like how Kahneman mathematically represents this, with a formula like "Company performance = Overall economic environment + Unique factors". I think we're an especially talented and skillful company (I'm biased!), so I think we have an "edge"; but we don't completely control our own destiny. It's very tempting to attribute our success to causal factors: "We hired a lot more people and we did worse, so hiring was a mistake" or "We focused on large clients and we did better, so we should continue focusing on large clients." We did get some evidence from our actions, but we should approach them with skepticism, compare with the base rates, and not draw too strong of conclusions from circumstantial evidence. Over the long term, we want to continue making good decisions even if they lead to poor outcomes, and not get complacent if we get good outcomes even after making poor decisions.

I found that many of the subjects in TFaS are adjacent to a lot of other reading I've done in recent years. One example is William Bernstein's "The Four Pillars of Investing," with one of the pillars being the psychology of investing. Bernstein writes similarly there that we as a species have evolved to trust stories over data, which was evolutionarily beneficial but mal-adaptive for the modern world generally and for investing in particular. Kahneman's example is a CTO who told him "I went to a Ford auto show and decided to buy stock in Ford - they make great cars!" Whether they make good cars isn't really relevant in an investment decision, what matters is whether Ford's current stock price is over-valued or under-valued.

TFaS also shows how our tendency to focus on anecdotes instead of data drives mass misunderstandings and leads to bad political and social decisions. This paragraph really resonated with me:

An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability entrepreneurs," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a "heinous cover-up." The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background.

That's a great description of an ever-increasing phenomenon, which I often pair with George Saunder's excellent essay "The Braindead Megaphone": we end up talking about the wrong things because it's what everyone is talking about. The example I think about most often these days has to do with crime rates. In polls, people overwhelmingly believe that crime is worse now than it's ever been before, even though statistics show that crime is lower than it's been in the last 60 years. There's a very simple reason for this: the media (both mass media and social media) loves lurid and grisly crime stories, people love reading them, our brains soak up those anecdotes and come to the conclusion that the world is a dangerous place. Interestingly, Kahneman's examples are about environmental disasters rather than violent crime: supposedly "minor" environmental incidents like the Love Canal became major causes that drove a lot of attention and responses.

I'm definitely personally biased more towards cleaning up environmental issues and punishing polluters, so that was a more challenging example for me than crime. Cleaning up toxic waste is a good thing to do. Kahneman's point is that, in a world with limited resources, we should direct those resources based on some rational metric (like the number of life-years impacted per dollar of remediation) rather than who can most effectively muster public outrage. But Kahneman also notes that in a democracy we need to respond to the reality of people's feelings, even when those feelings do not reflect reality. The alternative is rule by an unaccountable technocratic elite, which will destroy trust in the democratic system. I think that's the tension we've broadly seen in the EU during this century, with populist reactions against Brussels bureaucrats. Still, the problem Kahneman identified has exploded into overdrive in recent years, as outlying incidents are used to whip up widespread hatred among the populace and demonize vulnerable minorities for political gain.

Shifting gears, later in the book he describes "Prospect Theory," which is a basis for behavioral economics. I've encountered behavioral economics a ton in my adult reading, but its findings still feel slightly surprising, and it has been a huge revolution in the field of economics. Kahneman talks about how economists may talk about one of two species of people. The first are what he calls "Econs," who are perfectly rational and absolutely selfish, and will act in the way that maximizes their utility (money and/or happiness). The other species he calls "Humans," who are not always rational, who are capable of altruism, and who can and often do make mistakes. Needless to say, studying "Humans" will probably benefit us more.

Traditional economics (I'm not sure if he uses this term, but I think it's the mode that was dominant after the Red Scare up through 2000 or so, building on earlier work) evaluates based on states, looking at how much utility a person has - for example, how a person with $20k in wealth would or should behave when faced with a profitable but risky gamble. Kahneman's great discovery was that people are influenced by changes more than state. Someone who started with no wealth, and then received $20k in wealth, will tend to be risk-averse: they will want to lock in their gains and stick with the sure thing rather than take a chance. But someone who started with $30k and dropped to $20k in wealth will tend to be risk-seeking. They won't want to lock in their loss, and will be inclined to gamble in hopes of returning to their previous baseline, even if it means losing even more. An Econ would behave the same in both situations since it only cares about the present state and the probability of future outcomes, while a Human is deeply influenced by the past.

We have a baseline and we make evaluations based on changes to that baseline, whether we are measuring salaries, vacation days, food quality, social interactions, or anything else we care about. This is true when evaluating our own situations and decisions, but also when judging the actions of others. For example, we perceive a merchant as greedy if they raise prices to increase their profits; while a traditional economist would say that the merchant should raise prices to what the market will bear, in the real world customers may well be upset and punish the merchant by not shopping with them, even if doing so pains the customer. This also explains why employers almost never reduce salaries, as the change to existing pay is perceived as painful, while hiring a new employee at a lower salary is acceptable to everyone.

We are more sensitive to losses than to gains. I've read that statement a lot, but it's a relatively new discovery in the field. Kahneman and his collaborators have been able to quantify the degree over multiple experiments, and discovered that we feel the pain of losses about twice as strongly as we feel the pleasure of gains. This segues into a great practical primer on the benefits of long-term investing. For any individual gamble we're likely to want to play it safe, but over the long run we are far better off taking (reasonable) gambles, and we should take the long view. (For example, imagine offering to play a game where you flip a coin, and if it comes up Heads you win $120 but if it comes up Tails you lose $100. Many of us would be reluctant to play, because losing $100 is more painful than winning $120. But if you have the opportunity to play that game 100 times in a row, you should absolutely do so, since you are almost guaranteed to earn a fair amount of money at a very low risk. That's essentially what we do in the stock market: in the short term we can gain or lose a large amount of money, and we feel those losses keenly, but over a long period of time we are far better off than if we'd kept the money in our mattress.)

Prospect theory feels pretty applicable to political and economic ideas I've been reading about lately. Reading about income inequality makes me feel outraged, and it's hard for me to understand why everyone isn't up in arms about it. But people are more sensitive to their reference points. If there was a widespread decline in the standard of living, people would get up in arms, but so long as the broad status quo stays similar, it makes sense that people aren't thinking about the big-picture allocation of resources. TFaS also ties in directly by explaining how we have a hard time evaluating extremes, either very large or very small amounts. Mathematically, a billionaire is insanely more wealthy and powerful than a millionaire; but our primitive brains collapse the two into a single "very rich" category.

And on the other hand, I think it also helps get at the much-discussed and often-maligned "white working class" resentments we've been talking about for the last decade. It's tempting to look at the absolute standard of living, or compare that standard of living to other groups, and say that WWC households are far better off than non-American households or non-WWC households. But people aren't comparing their wealth to global standards (as an Econ might), they're comparing to their own reference points, where they were raised or earlier stages of their careers. So declines in things like well-paying union jobs are devastating and cause a great deal of anger and resentment, while at the same time outsiders would judge those people are comparatively secure.

Of course, Kahneman isn't saying that these attitudes are good or bad, right or wrong, he's just describing how our brains work. But that's very useful information. And it can be used for bad! In particular, he has studied how our brains process unlikely occurrences. If you say "There is a 0.0001% chance a parolee will commit a violent crime six months after being released", then people will be inclined to grant parole, but if you say "1 in 10,000 parolees will commit a violent crime six months after being released", people will be inclined to reject parole. The two statements are mathematically identical, but emotionally, the second statement primes your mind to visualize that specific incident of the violent crime, which makes it feel more immediate and likely. Anyways, you see this being used relentlessly in political discourse now - it definitely dates back at least as far as Reagan and the Willie Horton ad, but is omnipresent in 2025. It's bad, but it works!

Back to prospect theory: He illustrates what has been called the Four-Fold Pattern, a two-by-two matrix describing risk tolerance for both high-probability and low-probability events, and gains versus losses. For the most part these make intuitive sense: if you're pretty sure you'll achieve a good outcome, but not 100% sure, then you would feel great disappointment if you fail to achieve that outcome, so you'll want to protect getting a positive outcome even at the cost of a less-positive outcome (as in someone who is likely to win a $1,000,000 lawsuit being willing to settle for $950,000). On the other hand, if you're unlikely to achieve a good outcome, you'll be more inclined to take risk: you aren't expecting a good outcome anyways, so you won't feel too disappointed when you fail.

The scenario that's most surprising is the upper-right. Given a 100% chance to lose $90 or a 90% chance to lose $100, people will pick the 90% chance; even if the choice is a 100% chance to lose $90 or a $90 chance to lose $130, people will still tend to take the gamble. We give disproportionate weight to the sliver of hope of not suffering any loss, which we experience as more than 10% of the difference between the 0% chance and the 100% chance. I think I'm a little less likely than most people to fall into this trap in my investment life; but reading this book I'm struck by how that's absolutely the case for me in personal matters, including relationships and commuting (very different domains!). If a relationship is going poorly, and I can choose between ending the relationship now and suffering certain awkwardness and sadness and pain; or can choose to continue the relationship into the future, knowing that I'm very likely to experience even more awkwardness and sadness and pain, I'm inclined to irrationally continue it, as it keeps alive the (small) possibility of a positive outcome.

Actually, now that I think about it, commuting is probably the opposite for me. In a commute, I'm gambling with losses, which is how much time I spend waiting for my bus or my train to come. I know approximately when the train or bus will get to the stop, and I know approximately how long it will take me to reach it, but there is risk involved; the vehicle could be early, or (more often) delayed, or canceled; my own journey may go a little quicker or slower as well. The worst feeling for me is arriving at a stop and seeing my bus or train pull away, which means I'll need to wait another 10, 15 or 20 minutes for the next one to come. Because of this, I time my arrivals to include a good amount of buffer, often aiming to arrive 5 minutes or so early. Even if I'm running a little late or transit is running a little early, I won't "miss" my trip; of course, if I'm running early or transit is running late (both of which are more likely), I'll wait even longer than usual. I haven't modeled this out, but I'm almost certain that my current approach results in more time spent waiting for vehicles than it would if I aimed to only get there 1 minute before: every once in a while I would miss my ride, but most of the time I would save several minutes , which would more than make up for it. But again, we feel losses more keenly than gains, and the "I missed my train" punishment feels more severe than ten "I saved five minutes" rewards. Anyways, I've thought vaguely in the past about how my commuting strategy probably isn't optimal, but I think this book has given me more precise language and models for thinking about what I'm doing and why.

Returning once more to the four-fold pattern: it also provides an explanation for the phenomenon of people in poverty seeming to behave irrationally. When people are poor, often the only choices they have are losses: they may be trading off between smaller or larger losses, and deciding where to allocate their losses, but their only decisions are often bad ones. So they end up occupying that same upper-right quadrant, of a high probability of losses leading to risk-seeking behavior. An example of my own: suppose someone needs $100 to buy enough food, but only has $75. They can buy that $75 of food, knowing that they will still be hungry; or they could buy $70 of food and $5 in lottery tickets. They will almost certainly end up hungrier than they would be otherwise, but they keep alive a sliver of hope that maybe one ticket will be a winner and they won't need to be hungry at all. It's easy for people like me with enough security to judge and say that people with the least resources need to be the most careful in how they use them; reading this book has helped me understand why that isn't always the case, and connect that to other decisions I might make.

The book ends more strongly on economic topics. The last few chapters would make a great standalone Boglehead book. They build convincingly on the earlier chapters on psychology to come to strong practical and logical investment advice, somewhat in the same way that Malkiel's conclusions derive from mathematics of Bernstein's conclusions derive from history.

There's a really interesting section on optimism. As Kahneman describes them optimists are kind of defective: they are unaware of the risks they face, feel indifferent to the risks, or fail to properly measure the impact of risk. Optimists are strongly drawn to entrepreneurship. It's gutsy to take on risk to start a new business, and their particular foolishness or blindness leads them to do so. The most successful people are optimists, since people who take big risks can earn big rewards. Of course, most optimists and their businesses will fail, but optimists will also tend to bounce back more robustly from hardship than pessimists, largely because an optimist tells themselves a story where the failure wasn't their fault, but the fault of external factors. In most cases people would be better off selling their labor to someone else than they would be working for themselves, but optimists won't stop to think about that. This is bad for them individually, but in aggregate it gives us a dynamic economy with many more businesses started and greater overall growth and wealth.

There are many fine qualities of optimists: they tend to be more cheerful, and as a result are better-liked, which can also lead to more success as others are more drawn towards optimists. They're likely to live longer and be in better health. In my own life, I think my natural temperament runs more towards cautious conservatism than optimism, but in my adult life I've kind of become a "learned optimist", in large part as a side-effect of my career. I've definitely observed that projecting optimism can lead to more successful business outcomes, plus life is just more fun if you go through it with an optimistic mindset: looking for good opportunities, and appreciating the best parts of mixed experiences. I think optimism is a mode I can push myself to inhabit, and I find it's usually a good mode for me to be in.

This is a side-note, but on a recent rewatch of the Lord of the Rings movies, I was struck by the contrast between Theoden and Denethor. Both of them are leading a group that needs to defend against a much larger and more dangerous foe. Theoden's dialogue seems unduly optimistic: he talks about how the fortress of Helm's Deep has never fallen, how Rohan has survived every invasion in the past, and so on. Rohan has also never faced so dangerous a threat before or been so poorly prepared, so his words seem a bit delusional. But when Aragorn questions him, Theoden snaps for a moment, and you can see that he's deliberately projecting this optimism for the benefit of his people: if they give up they're doomed, but if he can inspire them and instill hope then they'll fight harder and have a chance at survival. In contrast, Denethor has completely given up hope. He doesn't think there's any chance of Gondor surviving, and as a result he fails to take even basic defensive actions. This culminates (in the movie, not the book) of him telling his men to throw down their swords and flee. That's terrible! Between Theoden's optimism and Denethor's pessimism, Theoden is clearly superior.

That in turn reminds me of China Mieville's "A Spectre, Haunting", in which he writes about the "manifesto" as a particular mode of writing. An impartial journalist should just report facts, an impartial analyst should just present probabilities, but someone who wants to achieve a specific outcome should use rhetoric to inspire their audience. "We will fight them, and we will win!" may not be justified by the cold-blooded statistics of the situation, but those words are deployed to change reality, which I think is what Theoden is trying to do. Ultimately Aragorn steers more of a middle ground but much closer to Theoden, saying that he does not know if they prevail, but exhorting his men to battle nonetheless.

As a side-side note, I've been meaning for well over a year now to write a blog post on Denethor and the palantir. I still hope to write it one day!

Back to TFaS: near the end of the book he writes about our experiencing selves versus our remembering selves. Our experiencing selves are what we actually experience from second to second, minute to minute and month to month: how happy or sad we feel in a given moment, how much pleasure or pain we experience over the duration of an episode. Our remembering selves are how we evaluate previous incidents and judge them as positive or negative, painful or pleasurable. These are two very different selves!

The big illustrative example he gives is the "cold hand" experiment, where participants placed their hand in a bowl of extremely cold water, cold enough to cause pain without physical damage. Each participant was told there would be three trials. In one trial (which half took first and half took second), they endured the pain for 60 seconds before being allowed to remove their hand. In another trial, they had the same temperature for 60 seconds, then a small amount of warm water was added to the bowl to raise the temperature by 1 degree: still painful, but not quite as painful. They waited an additional 30 seconds before removing their hand. Then the participants were asked which of the experiences they would like to repeat for the third trial. Regardless of the order they took them in, almost everyone preferred the 90-second experience to the 60-second one. But from the perspective of the experiencing self, that's absurd: every moment of pain in the 60-second one was repeated in the 90-second one, and the overall experience was 90 seconds of pain instead of 60 seconds. And yet, because the end of the longer trial had less intense pain, the subjects' remembering selves preferred that one.

Kahneman has further studied this phenomenon and drawn a few conclusions from it. One is what he calls the Peak-End effect: when we remember an experience, we tend to remember the most intense moment during that experience, as well as how we felt at the end of it, and essentially average those two. So during a surgery, peoples' impressions are mostly derived from how painful the worst part of it was and how painful it felt at the end; a much longer surgery with a less intense middle or an easier end will get a better review than a quicker surgery with less total suffering but a moment of intense pain or more pain near the end. Kahneman mostly focuses on suffering in this section, but it applies to pleasure as well: if we're listening to a beautiful symphony performance, but there's a harsh note near the end, that will diminish our remembering selves' impression of the symphony, even though that note can't possibly undo the hour of pleasure we got from listening to the rest of it.

Another aspect is that our remembering selves are indifferent to duration. We feel about as positively about a three-week vacation as we do about a two-week vacation, even though we experience 50% more total pleasure over the course of the three-week vacation. Going back to the cold-hand experiment, people didn't seem to mind suffering the same amount of pain over a longer period of time.

Overall this seems like a mistake on our part, that we should prioritize our actual experiences over our memories, our life-as-lived over our life-as-recalled. But the remembering self is what's responsible for making decisions: when we draw on our past to decide on a future course of action, it's our memories we marshal, not an integral function of total pleasure and pain over a period of time. We need a balance, mostly for our own lives but also when thinking how our actions impact others (such as doctors picking a course of treatment for their patient, or a musician arranging their set list).

Near the end of the book, Kahneman aligns rational Econ thinking with the Chicago School of libertarian-style economics. Under this worldview, you don't need to worry about people (Econs) making mistakes, because they're making the right decisions for them. Maybe they aren't saving for retirement because they plan to die before retirement age, or because they have decided that pleasure in their 30s outweighs pleasure in their 70s. But in the real world, people often don't think at all about the choices they make, or don't think them through thoroughly. Sometimes that's OK, but often it results in regret and suffering. Retirement savings is again an example, where people made impulsive decisions (cashing out a 401k) or no decision at all (not contributing), and feel profound regret later in life. Kahneman likes what sometimes is called "Paternalistic libertarianism," where individuals are still free to make their own decisions (so long as they don't harm others), but society frames those decisions such that the easiest decisions to make are the ones most likely to lead to a good outcome for that individual.

TFaS was published in 2011, and I think it captures a lot of the optimism of the first Obama term, with competent managers viewing the government as a force for strategic good. Near the end of the book Kahneman lists the successful applications of his research, including allowing employers to default to opting-in to 401k contributions and auto-increasing contribution amounts, which build on what we now know about the importance of framing, reference points, and how we respond to foregone gains very differently from losses. I don't have nearly the same optimism today about this research leading to improvement in peoples' lives. I think that government and business leaders still are aware of the research, but are using it to grow power instead of to benefit people, whether addicting people to social networks or dismantling civil society or normalizing corruption.

Anyways, for all sorts of reasons I think this is a great book and people should read it. As Kahneman notes early on, we can perceive flaws in others' reasoning much more than our own. I'm sure that I'm guilty of that even while I'm writing this - "Yes, other people have a much harder time seeing the flaws in their own reasoning!" But I did walk away from this book with a lot to chew over on my own thinking and decision-making, past and future. And even if all you take away from this book is recognizing how others process information about the world, that's valuable too. It helps us predict how people will respond to given situations, how we might influence others, and so on.

The writing style is fantastic. I'd noted earlier that it contains its own proof, and in addition to that it's very anecdotal and story-driven, even though the book as a while is saying that we rely too much on anecdote and story. He's acknowledging what's effective, and saying that's what he's doing, showing his work while also making it clear that, say, System 1 and System 2 are just shorthands and not empirically-existing entities.

I think that's all I have to say! If I could buy everyone I know one book, I would probably get them this one.

Paint Brash

2025-09-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

I sometimes feel like my entire life is playing RPGs: by the time I finish one up, there's another one I want to play lined up and waiting for me. I'll sometimes force myself to take a break, to play another genre or stop playing games altogether for a bit. But I almost always enjoy whatever massive RPG I pick up next.

The latest entry for me is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which I received courtesy of my brother for my birthday (thanks, Andrew!). I've been hearing about this game for a while, including from a co-worker who said it's her favorite RPG of the last several years, and I've been looking forward to experiencing it for myself.

MINI SPOILERS

The one-sentence summary of Expedition 33 is basically "A French JRPG". It has a lot of the game structure and feel of a Final Fantasy game. Your main character and party members are all predefined characters. At least thus far in the game, there aren't any dialogue choices or branching plot points. You assemble your team into an active party of 3 combatants, and face off in turn-based battles against 1-3 opponents. You fight enemies to gain XP and money ("chroma"), level up your characters, pick abilities, get weapons and equipment.

But, everything about the game's style oozes French: the haircuts, the clothes, the art style. Accordion music everywhere you turn. You fight mimes, for crying out loud! The characters aren't accented, but most of the proper words are French: Gommage, Petank, Lumiere. About the only thing missing is characters taking long drags on cigarettes.

After playing the game for a while, though, I've been surprised to learn that a lot of it actually feels more like Elden Ring than anything else. (Though this may be more about Dark Souls influencing the RPG landscape in general.) Some examples:

"Bonfire"-style save mechanics. You can discover Expedition Flagpoles, which work similarly to Sites of Grace in Elden Ring. If you choose to rest at one, it completely heals you and refills your consumables, but also respawns non-boss enemies. After you've unlocked one it becomes available for fast-travel, although in Expedition 33 you can only fast-travel from a Flagpole to another one in the same zone (there isn't an Open World or the ability to fast-travel from anywhere).

Consumables regenerate, which is great - no more saving 99 mana potions in your inventory because you might need them one day! Like Elden Ring there is a healing potion ("Tint"), as well as one to generate AP and another to revive a fallen party member (revive was not relevant in the single-character Elden Ring). You also upgrade them similarly, discovering materials that you can use at the Flagpole to increase the potency or quantity of your potions.

Petanks are like Teardrop Scarabs: they aren't necessarily tough, but you have to take them down quickly to acquire their treasure.

Finally, but most importantly and most surprisingly, combat is like Elden Ring, despite being squad-based and turn-based. In particular, both games have combat that heavily relies on Dodge and Parry ability. The actual flow of combat is turn-based, with you issuing commands to attack, use an item or use a skill; but during the animation, you can intervene to change the outcome. For your party's abilities, you can press A at a certain point to increase the strength of the attack (or heal or whatever). More importantly, when an enemy attacks, you can press Dodge or Parry at the right instant to evade the attack and completely avoid any damage. So there's the same sort of "git gud" philosophy as in Soulslikes: you're learning enemy attack patterns and timings and animations, and if you can reliably dodge or parry at the right times, you can whittle away any enemy or even boss, regardless of your level. And, like in Elden Ring, if you're having trouble with a particular boss you do have the option of going elsewhere, grinding XP and resources, getting more HP and attack power, and then coming back with more of a buffer to soak damage during the battle.

I should hasten to note that this game isn't as hard as Elden Ring, though one of my few complaints is that difficulty varies wildly during the game: you'll be in a zone where you can just brain-dead take down all opponents and shrug off any damage, and then face an optional enemy who can one-shot your entire party and who takes fifteen minutes of flawless execution to defeat. I haven't yet resorted to looking up mechanics online (except for one "Tricky Shot" attack that was giving me conniptions), so if I fail a fight a few times in a row I'll just make a mental note of where it was and move on.

Oh, and back to dodge and parry: early on I was focusing on parries, which are strictly superior to dodges: in addition to avoiding damage, you also execute a free counter-attack, which is incredibly helpful. However, the timing required for parries is significantly harder, so I've given up and just focused on dodges. I'm decent, not great, at them. Each enemy has their own distinct timing to learn, so there isn't one universal cue to look for. Usually after a few attack rounds I get to the point where I can reliably dodge, and probably a bit more than half of the time get a "perfect" dodge; with the 1-point "Dodger" Lumina equipped, you gain an AP on a perfect dodge, which is a nice advantage. My understanding is that the window for a Perfect Dodge is the same as the window for a successful Parry (with a Perfect Parry being a further subset), so if I ever get to the point where I'm reliably hitting that Perfect Dodge I may switch back to parrying.

For my team: it's been a pretty slow process of gathering my party, with just Gustave for a while, then adding Lune, then some time later Maelle, and more recently Sciel, so there hasn't been a whole lot of choice in party composition thus far. I've been equipping new Pictos on whoever seems like they might synergize with it or who has open slots; at some point I'll buckle down and do a proper optimization pass with all the Lumina I've learnt, but for now I just periodically revisit that when I reassign Pictos.

I've been loading up Gustave with Free Aim-related Pictos and Luminas; I don't know if he has any particular advantage with them, it's more that I wanted to focus those abilities on one character and he happened to be it. Early in the game I would often do a combo to open battles where he would Mark enemies and then Lune would unleash a fire attack on them for some extra stacks of Burn. For most trash mob fights he plinks away at enemies and we win before he can charge up his arm. For boss fights, I can usually charge it, then need to do basic attacks for a round or two to get enough AP for the lightning attack; this usually finishes off the boss (probably with a good amount of overkill, though I'm not sure if there's a way to track that.)

Lune feels like a caster/mage type, with a much bigger collection of abilities than Gustave. Her abilities revolve around environmental damage: Earth, Electricity, Fire, Ice. These are all pretty different. Earth tends to be more for AOE attacks and healing. Fire inflicts DOT Burn status effects. One consistent aspect of Expedition 33 is that you are strongly encouraged to rotate between attacks instead of just spamming a particular ability. For Lune, the incentive is to essentially create "combos" from multiple abilities; in a departure from how much games work, though, combos aren't triggered by status effects on the target, but rather on the caster. If you cast a Fire spell, you'll gain a Fire "stain"; some other (non-Fire) abilities will then consume that "stain" for an additional bonus, which might be more damage, a free attack, a free turn, some healing, etc. I really like Lune's abilities, but she is chronically short on AP, so I end up needing to do Basic Attacks with her a lot of the time. I should do some theory-crafting research and see if there's a better way to use her.

Maelle is probably my favorite combatant so far. Her fighting style revolves around "stances", like Gaichu in Shadowrun Hong Kong. Whenever she finishes a skill, she will end in a particular stance, which will give some bonuses (and possibly penalties) in the following round: Offensive deals more damage but also receives more damage, Defensive increases resistance and AP regeneration, Virtuoso gives high damage. Like Lune, you are strongly encouraged to switch abilities since you can't remain in the same stance for more than one turn. Unlike Lune or Gustave, I never seem to need to worry about AP with Maelle. She has some really nice sequences that alternate between stances, do a good amount of direct and DOT damage, and keep her AP high. Most of her attacks inflict Fire damage, so she can be weak against enemies who are resistant to Fire; occasionally I'll swap her out during a fight like that, but she also has a few abilities that deal Physical damage, as well as a useful one that converts Burn stacks into straight Physical damage.

Finally, Sciel is the most recent person I've picked up. Once again you're encouraged to alternate between skills. In her case, some of her abilities give "Sun Charge" and others give "Moon Charge"; somewhat like Maelle's Stances, each charge gives a passive buff for the following turn. If you get both Sun and Moon, you then unlock Twilight for two turns which gives even larger bonuses. Sciel's straight damage feels a little lacking, but she excels in multi-turn setups. Some of her abilities apply stacks of "Foretell" on an enemy. By itself these do nothing, but subsequent abilities will consume "Foretell". The most straightforward will convert it to damage, which is very powerful; other abilities will convert to AP for your teammates or healing for yourself. Sciel's AP situation is even better than Maelle's, and I'll often start her turns with 9 AP. I'm thinking of turning Sciel into my gun bunny, since she has AP to burn.

Moving on to the story:

One thing I love about Expedition 33 is the almost complete lack of exposition. Nobody ever explains what's going on. You can gradually piece it together from dialogue, which as in all speculative fiction is more rewarding that being spoon-fed the backstory. Here is my current understanding of the situation, though I could definitely be wrong about many things:

I believe this is set in a separate world, not Earth. About 67 years ago, a godlike being called The Paintress removed humanity from The Continent and exiled them to the island of Lumiere. She also created a large clock tower with a number on it, originally 100 and counting down by 1 each year. Each year, everyone that age or older undergoes the "gommage", basically immediately winking out of existence / dying. So the first year everyone 100 or older died, the second year everyone 99 or older, and so on. At the start of this game, the 34-year-olds all died, so everyone left alive on Lumiere is 33 or younger.

Every year, Lumiere mounts an "expedition" to the Continent to try and stop the Paintress from doing this. The expedition is often largely filled by people who are facing the year of their gommage: if they fail in the quest, they will die anyways, so they might as well try. It's up to the individual, though, and lots of people will spend their last year with friends and family.

MEGA SPOILERS

I think that's the main stuff so far. Your particular expedition starts off very badly, with an ambush on the beach that results in mass slaughter. I am a little suspicious about exactly what's going on: characters seem to die, then wake up, which makes me wonder if they might actually be dead / in some sort of afterlife or something.

Life on the Continent is very strange, which I think is largely due to the influence of the Paintress but may predate her. The main life forms you encounter are "nevrons", who are mostly enemies although you run across a couple for side-quests who seem friendly or at least passive. Nevrons all look very different and very strange, sometimes made from geometric shapes and other times more monstrous-looking.

There are also the Gestrals, who are probably my favorite thing in Expedition 33 so far. They're basically anthropomorphic paint brushes, usually about knee-high although some are much bigger. They talk in a weird language that the human characters in the game can understand but I can't; fortunately subtitles are provided. They are pretty childlike: enthusiastic, excitable, kinda dumb. Oh, and they love fighting, and will eagerly engage in a friendly duel at any opportunity. They're also really bad at fighting! I think those are the easiest fights I've had all game, even though you're usually facing them 1-on-1 and not in a party.

END SPOILERS

I just reached the end of Act 1, hence this blog post. I'll likely check in twice more as I proceed through the game. I feel like there's a lot more story to uncover and I'm looking forward to seeing what else is in store.

The Company We Keep

2025-09-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "The Sons of Heaven" by Kage Baker. It is an entry in her series often referred to as The Company; it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized that it is, essentially, the last book in the series. From some light online research, it sounds like she did publish subsequent works after this, but The Sons Of Heaven definitively wraps up all the major plot threads and character arcs she had been working on up to this point, and I think the later novels are a fresh start.

It's been a long, leisurely and enjoyable journey through these books. Looking back through my archives, I started with the first book just over a decade ago. These have become sort of comfort books to me. Not in the sense of being soothing books - there is a fair amount of violence, heartbreak and tension throughout the stories - but they're very readable, fun, with great characters, good worldbuilding and a nicely twisty plot. For a while I was reading them in tandem with Charles Stross's Merchant Princes books, and more recently with his Laundry Files. Just, y'know, a good series! I think we all want some of those.

MINI SPOILERS

I haven't been blogging about each entry; I think I have a hard time writing up stories that end in obvious cliffhangers with the next entry waiting for me to read. Because I've been reading these over such a long period of time my memory feels a bit hazy at points, but I'm also surprised at just how clearly I can remember a lot of things, particularly the supporting characters: Literature Specialist Lewis, Regional Director Suleyman, Labenius, Chatterji, Billy Bones and more. The Sons of Heaven doesn't spend a lot of time recapping things or re-introducing characters, so I was glad to have retained as much as I did.

MEGA SPOILERS

I am impressed that she was able to wrap everything up so neatly. I'm used to other series, fantasy in particular, that sprawl out exponentially as they get further along, to the point where two new plot threads get introduced for every one that gets resolved. The complexity of The Company has definitely expanded over the course of the series, as we've learned that some of the core axioms are actually flexible and gotten to know various vying factions among the immortals. But by this point all the pieces are on the board, and she can focus on making them move in a satisfying manner.

The one big introduction that felt "new" here was the literal Dr. Zeus. That's been one of the odd things about the series. In the first couple of books, you have the vague impression that the human members of The Company are incredibly intelligent, not just in their scientific acumen but as incredibly talented schemers, planners and manipulators. Then you eventually get to meet the humans, and they're... pretty lame. Childish, peevish, picky, easily startled, lacking in culture or grit or just about any redeeming virtue. How did these dummies get to run everything?

We eventually learn that, at the behest of one of the (secretly disaffected) servant cyborgs, the humans opted to make The Company's database (the "Temporal Concordance") into a self-aware artificial intelligence. This parallels Captain Morgan, the Pembroke Playmate given to Alec some books ago that turned into an incredibly powerful (and humorous, and caring) AI. Because Dr. Zeus has sprung from the time-traveling historical record, he doesn't just turn into an AI: he's an omnipotent and omnipresent AI that, after he has been created, has always existed in the past and has been responsible for all the actions and decisions taken thus far.

Physically, Dr. Zeus manifests as a lifesize statue of, well, Zeus, in his Artemision depiction. This is a fairly chilling character, who SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS and seems to know what everyone is thinking before they say it.

Jumping ahead a bit (well, a lot), Captain Morgan and Alec's several-books-long plot comes to fruition, as the various bombs and things they've hidden throughout space and time all erupt into a massive assault on Dr. Zeus. He ends up not getting a whole lot of "screen time" or putting up much of a fight, at least from what we can see, although it does sound like the Captain has his hands full dealing with him.

The most interesting part of this book, to me, are the various cabals among the immortals. I get the impression that most cyborgs aren't really affiliated with any of them and are just on the sidelines watching. There are two "bad guy" factions, one that wants to enslave humanity, the other that wants to exterminate them, led by Labenius and... hm, I'm blanking on the other guy's name. Then there's the "good guy" faction, led by Suleyman, that wants to free the cyborgs from human control but to coexist peacefully with them.

Outside of them are the core characters of Mendoza and the various manifestations of Nicholas Harpole / Edward Fairfax / Alec, along with the Captain and his lackeys. Mendoza has usually been one of my favorite characters, but these sections of the book were relatively less interesting to me. The concept of what's happening is pretty stunning: in the previous book, Edward succeeded in tricking Nicholas and Alec, stealing Alec's body and partitioning away their minds. In this book, Mendoza and Edward wed, Edward becomes immortal, and then Mendoza becomes pregnant with two cloned children bearing the full consciousness of her former lovers. They are born, and a lot of the book is given over to raising this very strange family.

There are a lot of other plot lines as well. I was particularly moved by the plight of Lewis, who had been cruelly sacrificed to the Kin, who seem to be a race of aliens / gnomes who have created most of the actual inventions of The Company. He was experimented on and left for dead as part of a plot to develop a means to permanently destroy the immortal cyborgs. He is found, rescued and eventually rejuvenated by the unlikely named Princess Tiara, one of the Kin. This seems like an homage to Arabian Nights, and I really enjoyed how it played out.

Oh, and there's also Budu, one of the ancient Enforcers who fought the Great Goat Cult, and Joseph, who is helping Budu in his quest to take down the faithless mortal masters. This plot line surprisingly also includes William Randolph Hearst. This isn't the first time a historical figure has entered the story - we've already met Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson and lots of other folks - but Hearst is unusual; apparently he figured out about the existence of the Company, approached them, and became the only person from the past to become a Company shareholder and the only adult to become an immortal cyborg. Watching Joseph and Hearst interact is pretty interesting; Joseph is playing a very particular role, like a 1920s newsie, all "Gee whiz, mister Hearst!" even though they both know what Joseph is. Budu and Joseph fill in Hearst on "the silence", the plot of the mortal masters to destroy all cyborgs in 2355, so Hearst comes over to their side and proves invaluable in collecting equipment and information for their scheme. He's one of the few new characters to be introduced and make a major impact in this novel. (At least I think he's new, I don't recall him from the other books, but it's been a while.)

Everything comes to a head on Santa Catalina Island, and again, it's a lot of fun: good action, scheming, plans executed or thwarted, betrayals and double-betrayals, redemption, catharsis. One of the core concepts for the entire series is that nobody knows what happens after The Silence, so there's a lot of genuine tension and drama heading into the climax. I suspected that the series would have a happy ending, but it really could have gone in any direction and felt meaningful.

One last note: the epilogue is narrated by Joseph, and man, I'd forgotten just how much I love his voice! He hasn't been very present lately, and it's a shame, he has such a wonderful point of view: cantankerous, world-weary, sarcastic, but with a grudging deep-seated love for humanity. It did make me wish he could have narrated more of this book, but that wouldn't have worked with all the different storylines and perspectives on display. It does kind of make me want to go back and re-read Sky Coyote, though.

END SPOILERS

So, yeah! It's been a great journey through The Company novels, and I'm glad to see them through to a proper conclusion. I know that Kage Baker has written some other novels, including a few in The Company's universe; I also should go back and finish her House of the Stag series, which is where I first was introduced to her. Sadly she's no longer with us, but I'm glad she left such great books behind!

Hawkmoon! Hawkmoon!

2025-08-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

I tend not to blog about the more pulpy books I read, but I thought I'd drop in a quick post about "Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff". This is a volume that collects four books in Michael Moorcock's mostly-fantasy series about Dorian Hawkmoon. They're pretty breezy quick reads, which ended up being a good background book to have around.

MINI SPOILERS

I picked up this book as part of my continuing meandering through a list of sci-fi and fantasy works recommended by China Mieville, a contemporary writer I particularly enjoy. Moorcock is a giant of the speculative fiction field, and I was mildly surprised and impressed to learn that he's (1) still with us, and (2) still publishing new work. The Hawkmoon books were written back in the 1960s, and I think they fall into the category of works that were seminal at the time of publication; they're still enjoyable today, probably not as earth-shattering as they would have been at the time, but that's because people like me have previously read, watched and played newer works of fiction that were themselves inspired by it.

The books are very firmly in the sword-and-sorcery side of the fantasy genre, contrasting with the high fantasy style of other writers like Tolkien. I haven't read much Conan the Barbarian but these books read like how I imagine those books go: there is a lot of action, lots of fight scenes, very visceral passages describing how, like, someone stabbed someone else and what it sounded like and looked like. I just now opened the book to a random page, here is a representative excerpt:

The first came flying down on Hawkmoon, naked body gleaming, sword raised. Hawkmoon's own blade rose to skewer the man as he fell; another twist of the sword and the corpse dropped down through the narrow gap between the ships, into the sea. Within moments the air was full of naked warriors swinging on ropes, jumping wildly, clambering hand over hand across the grappling lines. The three men stopped the first wave, hacking about them until everything seemed blood-red, but gradually they were forced away from the rail as the madmen swarmed onto the deck, fighting without skill but with a chilling disregard for their own lives.

Hawkmoon became separated from the comrades, did not know if they lived or had been killed. The prancing warriors flung themselves at him, but he clutched his battle-blade in both hands and swung it about him in a great arc, this way and that, surrounding himself with a blur of bright steel. He was covered in blood from head to foot; only his eyes gleamed, blue and steady, from the visor of his helmet."

It can be a bit cheesy but is enjoyable, and I do really appreciate the very unique monsters and other creatures introduced over the course of the books. There's a lot of fighting, so it's impressive that the fights can all seem so distinct, even though it's always the sole hero or a small group of good guys fighting a huge number of bad guys.

The characters are pretty likeable (or hateable for the villains), but thinly sketched, usually just one or two character traits to define them. Characters, dialogue and plot mostly seem to service the action, which is not the case for most books I read but is exactly what this book wants to do, so that's great!

There isn't usually much worldbuilding in sword-and-sorcery books, and this series doesn't devote a ton of time to it, but it actually is a pretty interesting backstory. While I think of these books as fantasy, they're actually technically science fiction, set on Earth a thousands years or so from now. Like many fantasy books, this one has a map of the world near the front; but the map is a map of Europe, with the names slightly changed. Turkia instead of Turkey, Kyrus for Cyprus, Espanyia for Spain and so on. Further away and unmapped are the distant continents of Amerehk and Asiacommunista.

We eventually learn that there was a period of time referred to as the "tragic millennium" that separates our time from Hawkmoon's. The books never describe exactly what happened during this time, but it does seem apocalyptic: perhaps a nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, a bio-engineered plague, or some combination of things. In the resulting world, things seem generally low-tech: people ride on horses and fight with swords. But, unlike in our world, there is also magic, a strong tradition of sorcery. The magic system is never really fully explained and seems to just serve the needs of the plot. There are also many new and unfamiliar creatures, ranging from giant tameable flamingos who serve as aerial mounts to unnamed Lovecraftian tentacled horrors lurking in the water.

Alongside magic, there is also science. Much of this seems to be previously-created artifacts that are uncovered and used; this reminded me of the Numenara from Monte Cook's RPG setting. But there are also modern scientists who research and invent their own new machines; fittingly for this genre, these are invariably Bad People. The most common piece of technology is the "flame lance," which seems to be some kind of phaser or blaster weapon that's wielded alongside swords in combat. The bad guys also use "Ornithopters", which are flying machines; interestingly, they seem to fly by flapping mechanical wings, not via thrust or spinning a rotor.

The socio-political situation is that Europe has been an unruly group of warring states for a long time. However, there is a great rising power in the form of Granbretan, the updated form of Great Britain. Granbretan has the world's leading scientists, and the most ruthless generals, so they have been able to carry on an unprecedented campaign of expansion. Typically they will seek alliances and influence where possible, but when the time is right they will mercilessly attack and annihilate their conquests. The entire nation is portrayed as bloodthirsty and insane.

Hawkmoon is the last Duke of Koln (which I think is Cologne?), who before the start of the first novel was captured by Granbretan after a hopeless battle to resist the invaders. The first character we meet, though, is actually Count Brass, the ruler of Kamarg, in our present-day Provence. Brass is a slightly aging hero who did great things in his day and has decided to settle down to protect a land instead of venturing forth in search of adventure. Brass starts off the novel actually rather sympathetic to Granbretan: while their actions are harsh, he does think that the unification of Europe will be an improvement over the regular warring between small states and will lead to a better future. His resident philosopher Bowgentle, daughter Yisselda and others all disagree with him, having seen evidence of Granbretan's sadism.

I don't want to recap all of the plot in this post, but the narrative shifts over to Hawkmoon fairly early on and mostly stays with him through the rest of the series, though we do get occasional point-of-view chapters from other characters, both allies and enemies, to learn more about what's going on. The action keeps escalating higher and higher, and I can see Moorcock periodically fiddling to keep things manageable: for example, Hawkmoon will find an artifact that gives him superhuman power and able to slaughter an entire army with ease, which is a very satisfying conclusion to a particular arc, but then the author will need a reason for why he doesn't just use that artifact for all of his other fights in the future.

While I think these stories were published as regular novels, they definitely feel like serializations that would have originally appeared in magazines, with regular cliffhangers and recaps. I believe that's an homage to the style of Robert E. Howard and similar writers of the past who actually did serialize, though.

One random note: late in the novel, there's another worldbuilding-ish allusion when Moorcock describes a Granbretan ship:

Gilded figureheads decorated the forward parts of the ship, representing the terrifying ancient gods of Granbretan - Jhone, Jhorg, Phowl, Rhunga, who were said to have ruled the land before the Tragic Millennium

I puzzled over that for a while. Jhone was probably King John, and Jhorg was one of the King Georges, but who were Phowl and Rhunga? It took me a minute to clock that, oh yeah, it must be John, George, Paul and Ringo, the Beatles. That's funny, and especially striking since this book was published back in 1967, when they would have very much been an of-the-moment cultural phenomenon. It would be a little like a sci-fi writer putting, I dunno, Sabrina Carpenter into the backstory of their science-fiction epic.

The passage continues:

Chirshil, the Howling God; Bjrin Adass, the Singing God; Jeajee Blaad, the Groaning God; Jh'Im Slas, the Weeping God and Aral Vilsn, the Roaring God, Supreme God, father of Skvese and Blansacredid the Gods of Doom and Chaos.

"Chirshil" was previously referenced as the subject of the play "Chirshil and Adulf", which must be a WW2 reference to Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler. I don't recognize (or can't parse) any of the other names in this list, I'm curious if they are other Prime Ministers or other folks I would recognize if I was more familiar with British politics. Some or all of them may be purely made-up names, bridging the gap between our time and the onset of the Tragic Millennium.

END SPOILERS

This was a pretty light read, but a lot of fun. One of the more visceral things I've read. It definitely makes me think of old-time-y radio serials and pulp magazines. Part of me wonders if those styles have grown less popular partly as a result of the rise of television, cable and streaming movies: we can watch Hollywood action movies any time we want, which might satisfy our urge for raw-knuckled kinetic violence, while previous generations would need to get it from the printed word (or by entering the boxing ring!). In any case, I'm glad to have read it. Moorcock has been a very prolific writer and I'm not about to set on a goal to read everything he's written, but I would definitely be interested to read more from him in the future, particularly knowing that he's been active across several different genres and mediums over the course of his career.

Playful Date

2025-08-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

This is a slightly odd post for this blog, but I wanted to note that earlier this year I got a Playdate handheld console and I've really been loving it. It's a unique piece of hardware from Teenage Engineering and Panic. The design feels a bit like an original Game Boy, with a monochrome screen, D-Pad and two action buttons, but the most notable twist (heh) is the addition of a pull-out crank, which is a great nod to the analog design that Teenage Engineering is best-known for.

As part of buying a Playdate, you get free access to "Season One", with two free games released every week for twelve weeks for a total of 24 games. I'll chat more about these below. Games are delivered over WiFi, but other than that and a handful of leaderboards this is an entirely offline device. They recently released "Season Two" that you can buy, and there's also a curated game store where you can buy games (generally ranging from around $1 to $12), as well as side-load games you purchase or download for free off sites like itch.io.

One of the things I like best about the Playdate is that it is not backlit and it looks best when played in natural sunlight. This is the opposite of how I normally feel about video games: I'm usually playing on my PC, or occasionally on my PlayStation, which feels great if it's a dark winter night or a drizzly weekend afternoon, but I feel bad about being glued to my screen when it's beautiful outside. With the Playdate, though, I love sitting out on the balcony or lying on a sun-drenched couch and gaming for a bit. It's really been a perfect summertime gaming system.

I've had the Playdate for several months now, but had fallen pretty far behind on the weekly releases of Season One, and just finished trying the last couple of games today. I really love the variety: different genres, levels of polish, length. Some are pretty basic tech demos, others look like they'd be at home on a (grayscale) Switch. There are a bunch of different action games, puzzle games, music games, some RPG-adjacent games, and some that defy a genre label. My personal favorites include:

Casual Birder. This was one of the first games I played, and I still haven't finished it, but it's really fun. It reminds me a lot of Earthbound / Mother. Kind of a top-down RPG-esque view, but no combat. Simple conversations, item collection, puzzle-solving, with a cute story.

Saturday Edition. My favorite game of the collection. I'm reluctant to write too much about it since it was such a fun experience to uncover; it felt a little like Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, but more of a drama than a comedy.

Sasquatchers. Another RPG-ish game, you lead a team of cryptid hunters trying to capture photos and videos of various elusive creatures: the Sasquatch, Chupacabra, Swamp Creature, and more. This is kind of my holy grail of a game that uses RPG systems without any combat.

Pick Pack Pup. Really fun and cute and surprisingly varied matching game - I think like Bejewelled or Candy Crush maybe, though I'm not very familiar with the genre. You generally need to line up certain types of products in order to collect and ship them, which earns you money, but there are a lot of creative challenges across the various missions. It has a much stronger story than you would expect from a game like this!

Those are my faves, but there are several others I enjoyed a lot. Some games just weren't for me, and that's fine! That was a fun thing about getting 24 games, you just kind of expect that you won't love all of them.

I've already picked up a couple (literally two) of the Catalog games, I'm looking forward to checking those out. I'm also intrigued by Season Two, which apparently includes baffling video content in addition to more good games.

Oh, I should also mention that there's a proper development kit for the Playdate - actually, multiple kits, including a low-level C API (and apparently bindings from other languages that can cross-compile to C), a Lua API, and an integrated editor called Pulp that you can use for RPG Maker-style games. There's a simulator and you can side-load binaries to the Playdate, and you can share games any way you want, including releasing for free on your site or (if approved) selling on the Catalog. I haven't personally tried out the dev kit, but I think it's amazing that there's such a sizeable and passionate developer community around an indie project like this.

I received this Playdate as a gift, but I think I would have been happy buying it for all the entertainment I've gotten from it. Like I said before, it occupies a different niche from the games I'd play on my PC or PlayStation, or even from mobile games. It's been a fun summertime companion, and I feel like I'll be cranking it for years to come.

Retire THIS!!!!

2025-08-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

After reading Jane Bryant Quinn's "How To Make Your Money Last," I thought I would be done reading retirement books for at least a decade or so: it was a nicely authoritative, comprehensive and readable book. Since then, though, I learned that one of my favorite money writers, Christine Benz, has written her own book, simply titled "How to Retire." I think I first learned about Christine through her work with the Bogleheads conference and as a presenter, but since then I've read quite a few of her articles for Morningstar, and I really like her: she has great principles, a combination of curiosity and directness, and focuses on what matters, which tends to be very rare in the financial press.

The book ended up being a pretty nice kind of companion piece to Jane's. The structure is interesting: instead of a "normal" book, organized by subject, it's a collection of twenty interviews Christine has had with various experts on retirement-related subjects. These include some of my favorite people, notably William Bernstein, Wade Pfau, Mike Piper and Maria Bruno, as well as many others who I was only vaguely familiar with or who were completely new to me. The interviews mostly focus on a person's area of interest and expertise, such as Mike Piper talking about taxation while others might address subjects like estate planning, steps to take in the years leading up to retirement, living situations, finding a new sense of purpose, and so on. The interviews aren't rigid, so the conversation naturally flows and you get some overlap or digressions, but I really loved those - you get a sense for peoples' values and priorities, which in turn helped me process how to apply their ideas to my own life, much like how you might interpret a film critic's recommendation differently based on their point of view.

So in some ways, this ends up being kind of an opposite book to Jane's. What I loved about "How to Make Your Money Last" was that it had some good, strong opinions and gave direct advice: do this, don't do that. The world of financial writing is overflowing with discussions of different options and too little guidance on which options are good or bad, so Jane's book was a breath of fresh air. The reality, of course, is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone: we all have different backgrounds, resources, goals and futures, and a certain option might be good for one person and not another. Christine's book ends up being sort of a survey of what good, smart, respected and thoughtful people think about retirement, and they don't all agree with each other! This ends up having a powerful effect. Over the course of the book, you hear many different people agreeing with certain ideas, which gives them extra power: for example, that most people should usually delay taking Social Security until they turn 70. A few people raise the possible caveats and exceptions to that, while others just touch the main principle and move on. Other topics see more sharply divergent opinions, most notably annuities: some strongly dislike all forms of annuities, some like one or two types in specific situations, others think various types of annuities could be helpful for people in a variety of situations. I think a person reading this book will walk away with a good understanding of the areas of expert consensus (holding a portfolio diversified across risk levels), areas of legitimate debate (annuities, long-term care insurance), and what charlatans to avoid (crypto).

Is that good or bad? It depends! I think someone who wants to get a survey of the field and is interested in doing a lot of additional reading and mulling through things could end up with a really great and highly personal strategy for retirement. People who are more indecisive by too many options or feel overwhelmed may be better served by Jane's book.

I should also mention that "How To Retire" seems more timeless to me. The subjects Christine writes about are evergreen and pretty big-picture. There are a couple of discussions related to specific elements of the tax code that have changed in recent years and may change again in the future, like Roth IRAs not being subject to RMDs or IRMAA surcharges for Medicare Part B, but for the most part these conversations would have been as relevant in the 90s as they are in the 2020s. "How To Make Your Money Last" has both the big-picture and the granular details: Jane rewrote it after the TCJA to incorporate the latest changes in the code, and has a lot of good, specific tactical advice. So Jane's book is more directly applicable, but also may not age as well as Christine's.

Oh, and a final general comment: I've been focusing mostly on the financial aspects of retirement, both in this post and as my focus in reading, but both books put a strong emphasis on the non-financial aspects as well. "How To Retire" in particular is probably more than half about emotional and social topics, including motivations behind retirement, keeping a sense of purpose, the difference between how men and women define themselves, sources of happiness, finding ways to keep busy and fulfilled, how to talk with loved ones about end-of-life issues, and many more. Partly because of this, I think "How To Retire" is probably especially useful to people like me who are still a ways off from retirement, as it's geared to prompt thinking about subjects that many people don't consider until much later.

All in all, I wouldn't say this is essential reading, but is definitely worth picking up if you or a loved one are in or nearing retirement. It would make for a great conversation starter, as an early warning for potential blind spots or "known unknowns" lurking in the future. It doesn't serve as a complete solution to retirement planning, but would make for a great introduction to that journey.

How the War was Won and Where It Got Us

2025-08-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "How the War was Won" by Phillips Payson O'Brien. I think I first heard about this during an interview with Paul Krugman, and was sufficiently motivated to pick it up. The book's main thesis is that World War 2 was primarily won by the US and the UK applying overwhelming naval and air power, and not so much as a result of large land battles. The book ended up being more technical and less narrative than I expected: there are a lot of tables and charts, and long paragraphs in which O'Brien rattles off facts like the numbers and prices of pieces of equipment produced by different countries in various years. I'm not complaining: the book is really good, just written a bit differently than I was expecting.

I do appreciate when he tells illustrative stories, which are a smaller part of the book but placed well and generally help reinforce the data-based arguments he primarily focuses on. One example is Saburō Sakai, a very talented Japanese pilot who was wounded in combat, redirected to training new pilots, pressed back into service due to a shortage of experienced pilots, and tried to lead a squadron from the home islands into combat. Bad weather, training and equipment kept them from making it in time for the battle, and many planes were lost along the way. This neatly lines up with O'Brien's arguments about the danger of deployment and the loss of material: throughout the war, and increasingly as it went on, far more equipment was destroyed off the battlefield than on the battlefield.

I think the author is writing to people towards the upper side of the Dunning-Kruger curve, while I'm to the left of that. As an American who has a middling grasp of World War 2 from secondary school and erratic reading as an adult, I tend to associate the war with events like Pearl Harbor, D-Day and Hiroshima. O'Brien isn't so much writing to me: he's writing to address fellow professional historians, who have the view that WW2 was largely decided by fighting on the Eastern Front, particularly battles like Stalingrad and Kursk that caused massive casualties for Germany and the Soviet Union. O'Brien spends quite a bit of time at the start of the book summarizing the arguments and citing experts who disagree with his thesis, which I actually hugely appreciated, as I was personally not very familiar with the dominant thinking. I've read other books (Erik Loomins's "A History of America in Ten Strikes" comes to mind) where I feel like I've wandered into the middle of a long-running argument and I have no idea what people are talking about or why.

It seems like the push for massive investment in air power was mostly driven by the political leaders of the countries (Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler) and not so much the military establishment, which I thought was interesting, and does line up with other things I've read like Erik Larson's "The Splendid and the Vile." It also makes me think a little of Abraham Lincoln, who didn't have a military background but studied military topics thoroughly and ended up with a better understanding of strategy than many of his generals. Part of this may be the tendency of militaries to fight the last war, applying the lessons of the past instead of anticipating the effects of more recent technological advances. I got the impression from this book that generals and admirals didn't necessarily disbelieve the power of air, but it took outside political pressure to take resources away from existing services and put them towards the new ones. (Of course, many would say that the Air Force learned this lesson too well!)

A crystallizing statement O'Brien makes is something like "The United Kingdom essentially traded expensive equipment for human lives." Throughout the war, the UK lost something like 47,000 members of the RAF, either during offensive and defensive missions or when being targeted by the Luftwaffe. That 47,000 sounds like a huge number, but it was fewer men than the UK lost in the first two days of the Battle of the Somme in World War 1. The UK was fighting for survival: not in the abstract sense of remaining an independent political entity, but in the literal sense of letting the human beings on that island continue to live past the war. So, by building expensive airplanes and bombing factories making tanks, the UK ensured that those tanks wouldn't face British soldiers on the battlefield. Likewise for the US, many pilots and sailors lost their lives attacking merchant shipping in the Pacific, but one result of that was that only a handful of Japanese tanks made it to the Philippines, and most of those were bombed before their first combat, so when American ground troops did land they had a much easier time fighting than they would have otherwise.

I was surprised to learn that Germany had about as many civilians working on aircraft construction as the US did. But Germany produced far fewer planes, mostly because of the hostile conditions generated by the RAF. Germany had to disperse its factories into smaller installations scattered throughout the Reich so any single bombing run would be less catastrophic; later, they moved factories into caves and even hollowed-out mountains. That let production continue, but much more slowly, and less reliably, with far more flaws in the finished aircraft. In contrast, America could build huge, sprawling industrial complexes, organized rationally and optimized for speed, without any concern about the defensibility of their factories.

O'Brien acknowledges that there were many acts of heroism in WW2, but also argues that heroism didn't win the war: the fact that the Allies were able to out-build and out-deploy the Axis won the war. Another crystallizing nugget for me: the Battle of Midway was one of the most consequential engagements of the Pacific Theater, with about 250 Japanese planes destroyed during this battle. And yet, at this time Japan was building approximately 100 planes each day, so this great battle only set them back by about three days. What made far more of an impact were the planes that America denied Japan from even constructing in the first place: by destroying shipments of bauxite and oil while being shipped on the seas, by bombing factories that were assembling planes, by picking off finished planes while they were deploying en route to their forward operating bases. These actions were less exciting and heroic than Midway, but had a far bigger impact in defeating Japan.

For most of the first part of the book O'Brien is persuasive in arguing for the importance of equipment, but he does not look at alternative arguments, about the importance of territory and manpower. He explicitly says at one point that this book doesn't take manpower into account, but I think you do have to consider it if you're arguing that equipment is more important. Conceptually, I can see how one human being in the cockpit of a bomber has more destructive power than one human being holding a rifle, and I can kind of intuit how looking at the armed forces through the lens of expenses versus enrollment is valid. But at the end of the day, you do need a pilot in that plane: in the 1940s they weren't flying themselves.

For most of the book O'Brien kind of erases humans from the picture altogether. This does change more later in the book, as he not only looks at the role of people, but also acknowledging hat they aren't all interchangeable. One great example is Japan: they had many talented pilots early in the war, later on Japan still made a lot of planes (even more than before, as they gained access to bauxite from the Dutch East Indies which allowed them to make more aluminum and thus more planes), but they had considerably fewer experienced pilots, and as a result most of these brand-new planes never even made it to the front. O'Brien doesn't seem to really look at the experience of Allied forces, other than the implicit contrast with the poorly-trained late-war Axis forces.

Turning back to the question of the Eastern Front, O'Brien shows how the Reich was forced to deploy most of its air force on the western front to defend against RAF raids, which significantly lightened the air pressure it could deploy to the Eastern Front. This kept Germany from achieving air superiority during battles like Stalingrad and Kursk, which immensely helped the Soviets. But I think you do need to look at the counter-argument as well: 80% of the German army was fighting on the Eastern front, and if they weren't there, then they would have been available for other operations in places like North Africa, the Middle East, and possibly even the UK. O'Brien does eventually address this question of the significance and utility of ground forces, but not until much later in the book.

Outside of combatants, he does write a little bit about human resources. For example, large numbers of German workers had to be redirected to repairing the damage from "strategic" bombing of industry, which made those workers unavailable for new production. Also, Hitler ordered a large increase in the manufacture of anti-aircraft flak guns, which he thought were more effective than fighter planes; these new guns required large numbers of people redirected from factory work to manning AA guns. Later on, as we get into 1944 O'Brien talks more explicitly about the manpower demands on the German population. Men were being taken from factories and put into military service, which caused a spiraling decline in German production, which further harmed the effectiveness of the military, increasing their losses and requiring still more manpower (which was taken from the factories, and so on and so forth). It took a while to get here, but I did like this zoomed-out look at allocation of human resources between military and industrial roles.

Later on, he gives a strong focus on transportation and maneuvering, which contemporary writing confusingly calls "communication". After D-Day, Germany had divisions earmarked to rush to the French coast to repel the invaders; but even groups stationed in France often couldn't get to the front for nearly a month, due to Allied destruction of railroads and bridges, and aerial bombing during the day forced the movements to move during the (short summer) nights, often on foot or occasionally with nearby vehicles. In the last chapter O'Brien colorfully writes that, while Germany had a large number of well-trained troops with superior land equipment, who in theory should have been able to drive the Allies back to the sea; but without maneuverability, they weren't able to meet their opponents in force, and instead were slowly fed into a meat grinder that slaughtered the Axis soldiers. For me, this finally kind of closes the circle on how air and sea power were more important than land combat in the war: if land units can't maneuver, they are kind of irrelevant to the outcome of the war, even on top of the reduced power land units have from lacking material, ammunition, vehicles, fuel, and other resources they were deprived of by the air and sea war.

I really liked the look at personalities driving strategy in the war. Ernest King, the head of the US Navy, stands out for being particularly obstinate and bull-headed. He single-handed caused disaster at the start of the US entry into the war. King was determined to focus on Japan, while all the other military and political leaders wanted a Germany-first strategy. King also deeply distrusted the British, so he wanted the US Navy to operate independently of them. Because of these biases, King kept a huge naval presence in the Pacific, which in turn allowed German U-Boats to operate directly off the American East Coast, causing enormous losses in shipments of vital war supplies to the UK. There were only six U-Boats operating along the coast, and they had a field day, which they called the "Happy Time."

King refused to bring destroyers back from the Pacific, so the problem wasn't solved until enough new ships were constructed to defend the coast; even then, he directed the majority of new ships to the Pacific. King even brazenly lied to the UK during their conferences, stating that 15% of American force was in the Pacific and needed to be higher, when it was actually more like 80% of the Navy.

But in the end, the Navy did prove extremely effective and were able to accomplish their goals, including the smart "Central Pacific" strategy: instead of the original plan of gradual land battles through New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and China before attacking Japan, the Navy island-hopped to come within range of Japan; because of this, they could cut off all support for the deployed Japanese military forces to the south, and not need to fight them at all.

There are lots of things in this book that are probably well-known to people who have studied World War 2, but are pretty new to me personally. One is the difference between US and UK aims in the war. The US had a very clear plan for action - they wanted to defeat Germany and Japan as quickly as possible - and only a hazy idea of what they wanted after the war, just a general sense of a more peaceful and democratic order. In contrast, the UK had a very clear goal for what they wanted after the war - maintaining the power of the British Empire - and were relatively vague and ambivalent about what actions to take during the war, but always kept that goal in mind. That's a big part of why Churchill was so reluctant to commit to a ground invasion of France, and also why he opposed Roosevelt's suggestions to give India a freer hand.

The Americans were pushing hard for a 1943 invasion of France, while Churchill argued strongly for a Mediterranean mission instead. O'Brien seems to suggest that invading France in 1943 probably would have been better. The Allies did occupy more territory in 1943, but gained no land that was really critical for the outcome of the war against Germany. They managed to destroy a decent amount of German production, but production remained high, peaking in 1944. Ultimately the Normandy beaches were far more strongly fortified in 1944 than they were in 1943, so the delay probably hurt at least as much as it helped.

While the Mediterranean fighting had little influence on the ultimate outcome of the war, the Battle of the Atlantic was very impactful. O'Brien says that, when Admiral Doenitz withdrew his U-Boats from the Atlantic, Germany lost any hope of winning the war. They could still make offensive movements and win battles, but after that time they could no longer deny the production and deployment of enemy war equipment, so it was inevitable that the Allies would succeed. As O'Brien writes, "The Germans would continue to fight for two more years, inflict a huge amount of damage and, at times, mount successful operations - but all it was doing was forestalling the inevitable."

In the course of reading this book, I cam to understand how World War 2 required an entirely different conception of war. One fairly straightforward example is the ability to destroy or divert material outside of traditional combat: instead of blowing up tanks while the tanks are trying to blow up you, you can sink the boat that's carrying the tanks into theater, or bomb the tanks while they're in the maintenance yard, or bomb the factory that's building the tanks, or bomb the railroads carrying iron into the factories. But another conceptual shift was requiring the enemy to build up a certain kind of defense, requiring an investment that diminished their strength in other areas. For example, the Germans directly sunk a lot of cargo in the Atlantic early in the war. Later on America built up the Atlantic fleet, stemmed the losses thanks to their escort system, and eventually drove out the U-Boats. That's all great. But building up the escort fleet was very expensive and took a ton of resources that could have gone into aircraft or other production.

The Allies ended up over-shooting their needs, laying down many more destroyers than ended up actually being needed (remember, this all started due to a mere six U-Boats operating off the coast). This is particularly tricky for ships, since they are so capital-intensive and require such a long lead-time compared to other material, so if you turn off the production faucet at some point you still have years' worth of investments that are just lost. So, while the Allies won the battle of the Atlantic, it was also one of the most effective battles that the Germans waged, in terms of requiring big investments from their adversaries.

There are lots of other examples of seeing the war through the lens of expense and investment rather than casualties and territory. The Allies hammered U-Boat pens for years, and never damaged any of them because they were so well constructed. This seems like a sort of victory for the Reich, as they denied the Allies their war goal. But, the pens required massive amounts of concrete, and the concrete used there was concrete not used in beachhead bunkers or factory fortifications. So by making those targets "hot", the Allies drew resources away from other targets they would pursue in the future.

The strategic bombing of German industrial centers incurred huge costs: in some missions beyond the range of fighter protection, something like 30% of bomber craft were shot down, which was seen as an unacceptable loss and led to the canceling of those missions. But having those factories become vulnerable forced the Germans to disperse their production, which led to productivity declines of around 50%. The response to the bombing caused inefficiencies that ended up doing more harm to their production than direct losses from the initial bombing had incurred. Once again, making your opponent respond in a certain way had a bigger impact than the action itself did.

These frequent raids also meant that the Germans had to put all of their air investment into fighter planes to help defend German airspace, which meant they couldn't go on the offensive in the Eastern Front or in North Africa. Anyways, this is an interesting conception: where a traditional analysis would say that one side lost due to incurring more casualties or destruction of equipment, but in the new conception the enemy's response to defend against that action results in an overall superior outcome to your side.

The prose in this book can be a bit dry at times, so I really appreciated it when something punchy lands. Hidden away on page 259 is one of my favorite sentences: "Fighting on water, a substance upon which human beings cannot walk, has always made sea warfare technologically more sophisticated than that on land." Ha!

MacArthur isn't mentioned at all early and late in the book when O'Brien is introducing the key figures in Anglo-American strategy, but he towers over the chapter on the war in the Pacific. O'Brien really slams MacArthur, who seems bad all around. He has political ambitions, and uses political threats to extract support for his military desires, threatening to torpedo Roosevelt's re-election if he doesn't get free reign (and human lives) to do as he pleases. O'Brien bluntly says that MacArthur was "not fit for command" at this time, due to his self-declared top priorities being personal vindication and honor: these are not appropriate priorities for generals in a constitutional democracy.

The big debate in this chapter is a three-way argument between the navy, army and army air force. The navy, under Ernest King, wanted a Central Pacific thrust that would take islands in basically a straight line from Hawaii to Japan. The army, under MacArthur, wanted a Southern Pacific thrust that would liberate the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. And the army air force wanted to liberate China and start bombing Japan from the mainland. Since the US is a democracy and all of the services had large egos and political constituencies, and since the US had the luxury of lots of resources and manpower, Roosevelt never selected a single strategy and all three ended up being pursued simultaneously.

MacArthur's insistence on the Southern Pacific thrust ended up being extremely costly in American lives and didn't achieve any strategic gains. The long duration of this campaign gave Japan plenty of time to reinforce and fortify their positions, making the invasions very challenging, even with strong sea and air superiority. And it didn't gain anything: American already had access to the Japanese home islands through the Marianas and had severed access to the Philippines and other southerly imperial holdings. The death toll of Filipino civilians was much greater as a result of the fighting than it would have been under uncontested Japanese occupation, even considering how brutal the Japanese were.

This book gave me much better understanding of the context behind the rise of kamikaze pilots. At the start of World War 2, Japan had arguably the best planes and the best pilots in the world, and they were extremely effective in combat. It's rational to use these planes and pilots conventionally, so they can fly many missions and do a great deal of damage over time. By late 1944 and through 1945, though, extreme shortages of fuel meant that Japan had to cut back on flying missions, and in particular they slashed the amount of time new pilots had to train: there just wasn't enough fuel to fly as many practice flights as they wanted to. Inexperienced pilots going into combat are very unlikely to survive their first mission, so in this context kamikaze is rational, since it will at least maximize the damage they do in their one and only mission.

I like that O'Brien has a point of view. He never covers the underlying issues in the war or ideologies (other than the UK's desire to preserve the empire), but he will casually use phrasing like "fortunately" when describing a way in which the Allies gained an advantage, or "sadly" when describing where they fell short or where the Axis advanced. He is an American living in the UK, so it's natural that he would be aligned with the Anglo-American powers, and I would think that people interested enough in World War 2 to read a technical book like this already understand why the Nazis and imperialist Japan were bad. (Of course, I'm also saddened to think that a pro-Roosevelt, anti-Hitler bias may become controversial in the not-too-distant future.)

O'Brien avoids ethical discussions for most of the book before finally addressing them near the very end. This is specifically raised by the firebombing campaigns such as Dresden and Tokyo in 1945, as well as the decision to use atomic bombs, but he briefly looks at ethics as a whole. He recounts the various positions people have taken, both contemporary and modern: interestingly, even major figures within the strategic high command such as Leahy opposed both the use of atomic weapons, seeing them as a barbaric throwback to Genghis Khan-era terrorization of civilians, and invasion of the Japanese home islands, which would cause huge losses for both sides.

O'Brien seems to believe that the most ethical course is the one that ends the war most quickly. It's debatable whether dropping the atomic bomb was necessary to end the war, but if it was, the 100,000 direct casualties were certainly fewer than the indirect casualties that would have been incurred if the war had continued for many more months.

He has an interesting brief aside comparing the end of WW2 to WW1. In World War 1, once Germany realized that it had no hope for victory, it surrendered, which saved an enormous number of German lives that would otherwise have been meaninglessly lost. In World War 2, O'Brien thinks Germany lost all hope for victory after withdrawing from the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943, and by late 1944 it was overwhelmingly obvious that it had no hope of winning. Japan had lost any hope of victory once the Marianas islands had been taken, as its high military commanders all recognized. And yet Hitler and the Japanese military insisted on continuing to fight. The ultimate ethical responsibility lay on the side of the Axis for failing to accept reality and making their own soldiers and civilians pay the price for their leaders' hubris.

The book closes with a conclusion that is brief and excellent, recapping the big strategic ideas of the book and the various personalities who shaped the Anglo-American war effort. His last sentence is very clear: "Only by stopping an enemy's movement can you hope to win a war." I think that's a great summary of his rejoinder to the traditional land-centric understanding of World War 2: the Allies won the big battles because they were able to prevent the Axis from moving, thanks to depriving them of fuel, vehicles, bridges, daylight passage and so on. The Allies were able to accomplish these things thanks to effective domination of the air-sea super-battlefield, destroying equipment on the battlefield, en route to the battlefield, while being constructed and as raw materials being shipped.

This focus on movement is also a nod to the challenges the American military has faced in the asymmetric wars we've mostly fought since World War 2: we can win every traditional land battle we engage in, but we can't keep our adversaries from falling back, regrouping and attacking again, which kept us from politically winning wars like Vietnam. That's a whole huge other topic that O'Brien references in this last section but doesn't even begin to explore, and which could easily be its own book

So, yeah! This book ended up being much longer and a little drier than I expected, but I still found it fascinating and persuasive. The reams of data O'Brien presents make it more authoritative than an opinion piece, and he does a good job at finding illustrative vignettes and some colorful personalities that bring home the visceral reality of the war, beyond the abstract spreadsheet-esque focus on production. It looks like O'Brien has written a few other books on aspects of World War 2, and is regularly commenting on current topics like the Ukraine War, and I'll be interested in checking out more of his writing in the future.

Seven Original Sins

2025-08-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't take (too much) long(er)! I've enjoyed jamming on Divinity: Original Sin and cruised through the final act. To summarize up front: it was a lot of fun. I think D:OS2 is better, but this prequel is already a great game, and they already had really strong systems that would later be perfected in the sequel. And the unique mechanics in D:OS1, particularly the dual-protagonist design, let it breathe and be its own thing, so even playing this after D:OS2 doesn't feel like a step backwards.

As usual, let's start with a few technical and gameplay notes before venturing into plot-land!

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post was a change that had a big impact on my experience playing the game. I've whined in the past about fully-voiced isometric RPGs. The "classic" ones like Baldur's Gate were partially voiced, so if a character spoke a paragraph, you would hear the first line voiced, and the rest were merely printed in the dialogue box. This was almost certainly a financial and technical constraint: those games shipped on CDs, and the audio files were competing with space against the pre-rendered backgrounds. But I really like the effect, since the voice gives a strong impression of the character, while you can still read at your own pace. In more modern AAA games like Dragon Age Inquisition, all dialogue is fully voiced, not printed in a box, so it's more like watching a movie than reading a book. Some of the recent resurgence of isometric RPGs like Divinity and Wasteland try to combine those streams, with both full voicing for all lines and on-screen dialogue boxes, and... I kind of hate it. The voice acting itself is very high-quality, but I can read more quickly than I can listen, and I just get so impatient, so I'm either waiting for the dialogue to catch up or I'm awkwardly skipping through the audio.

ANYWAYS, I kind of resolved this in D:OS EE by opening the Controls menu and dragging the "Voice" audio slider all the way to the left. That effectively turns off the voice-over dialogue, which noticeably improved my enjoyment of the game, making it more like a low-budget-but-well-written CRPG. It isn't perfect; in particular, I would have appreciated continuing to hear combat barks and ambient dialogue while just skipping full conversational dialogue, but I'm very happy with my choice regardless.

A correction to my previous post: I had mentioned that when crafting you can only have upgrade one of each type of "slot" for a given piece of equipment. This isn't necessarily true. I think I'd gotten that impression since, if you try to add a Tormented Soul to a weapon that already had a Tormented Soul it will consume that second Soul but not upgrade the stats on the weapon again. But if, say, a piece of armor already has Water Resist on it, and then you add a Ruby, the ruby will add to the Water Resist in addition to the other elemental types, not replace/overwrite the existing Water Resist. It's probably more accurate to say that you can only add each specific upgrade once... or, rather, you only get the benefit the first time you add it. There may be some other exceptions, I haven't done extensive testing around it.

But speaking of upgrades, I will say that you're probably best off upgrading equipment whenever you have the opportunity. I'd been saving Tormented Souls for end-game gear, but I finished the game with maybe 8-10 or so spare Tormented Souls, and I'd stopped buying new ones from merchants when they randomly appeared in stock. It's a mild bummer to upgrade a piece that you know will be replaced, but on average I was probably only upgrading pieces maybe every 4 levels or so, so you will get a lot of use out of an upgrade (and you won't for surplus inventory that never gets used). The one potential exception that comes to mind are rubies: they do seem to be genuinely rare, I hoarded them all game and only had maybe 4-5 at the end, which I slapped onto my Level 19/20 equipment heading into the endgame. But most other things will show up eventually at vendors, so go ahead and use it.

As I mentioned previously, I followed a very useful GameFAQ on profitably crafting and selling to get a lot of money. It worked very well, perhaps a bit too well, and by the end of the game I probably had around 400k pieces of gold, despite buying everything I wanted, even expensive pieces that were only marginal improvements over what I already had. Looking back over the game, I think my time would have been most usefully spent crafting equipment for myself in the early levels (like making my own belts, amulets, etc. maybe around levels 2-10); then following the guide to craft for sale in the medium levels (maybe 10-17 or so) and buying all the stuff I wanted along the way. By the final act, you're finding tons of Legendary and Divine pieces that aren't useful to you and sell for a lot of money, and you have really good equipment already that doesn't necessarily need to be upgraded, so it's probably best to just focus on selling loot and ignore crafting new items. By then the shopping/crafting/selling loop was a deeply-ingrained habit that I was unable to kick, though.

I don't have hard measurements for this, but based on my impressions, this is how my time in this game was spent, ranked from most time to least time:

Traveling back to places I had previously visited
Futzing around in inventory menus
Futzing around in vendor menus
Futzing around in the crafting interface
Exploring/looting new places
Combat
Dialogue/plot
Leveling/outfitting characters

And here's how much I enjoyed these aspects of the game, ranked from most enjoyable to least enjoyable:

Combat
Exploring/looting new places
Dialogue/plot
Leveling/outfitting characters
Futzing around in vendor menus
Traveling back to places I had previously visited
Futzing around in the crafting interface
Futzing around in inventory menus

None of this was bad - I felt more resigned than exasperated about inventory management, and got into a sort of zen rhythm with the crafting and vendoring that, while not exactly fun, was at least relaxing. But still, I'm struck by how much of the game - or not even this game, more RPGs in general - is spent doing things that I personally don't find very fun. Which is probably part of why I have such a soft spot for Disco Elysium and the Harebrained Shadowrun games, as they completely eschew some of these complex systems and focus on doing a few things very well.

I avoided any walkthroughs for my playthrough, but did generally follow the build guidance of the GameFAQ, and so had a kind of min-max-y build. I tried to do all of the sidequests I could, but probably had about a dozen left in my log at the end of the game - I think maybe half of those were basically complete but not removed, while the others were things I just never figured out. I think I hit Level 21 shortly before the point of no return; from what I've seen online, you can finish the game at Level 23 for a totally completionist playthrough (which includes a lot of unnecessary slaughter).

Anyways, with my min-max-y build combat was feeling really easy in the final act of the game. The tipping point is getting access to Master-level Skills. Casting something like Meteor Storm or Hail Storm can completely obliterate a whole group of powerful enemies. You can't always do this, but if you have multiple Master-level abilities odds are you have something that can ruin your opponents, and even very powerful bosses tend to go down after a couple of these skills. Which, if you have high enough Initiative, means that boss fights end up being underwhelming.

I generally have mixed feelings about this. It does make the game feel a bit more boring; after so many well-tuned battles that require careful thinking and strategy and that feel risky and exciting, you start to feel like you have a "Click To Win" button that just deletes enemies and ends battles. But, I mostly have myself to blame for that: nobody forced me to pick a min-max-y build (or, really, four min-max-y builds for my entire party). And I'd been doing all these side quests, and spending time earning lots of money and buying the best gear. The whole point of getting XP and gold is to be better at combat, and my dreams were coming true in a spectacular way, just not a way that felt especially fun.

Without going too deep into spoilers, they do a good job at mixing this up in the finale. While some early bosses still go down easily, later boss fights have phases of invulnerability, or multiple waves of enemies, or other mechanics that force the battle to stretch out over multiple turns. I really appreciated this, in no small part because it's a good excuse to use things like Haste and summons that are kind of pointless in one-turn fights. Interestingly, there isn't much of an environmental angle to these late fights. Quite a few other RPGs lean on you figuring out some puzzle aspect to beat enemies, like destroying pillars or venting poison gas or lighting crystals or whatever; and earlier battles in D:OS often benefit heavily from making use of nearby water or poison or other surfaces. Here, the last battles have mechanics but (at least from what I saw) they're all based on the characters and not the environment, which, again, I kind of like: it doesn't feel at all gimmicky.

It did make me think back to my own Shadowrun campaigns and the occasional criticism I get about them - in particular, multiple people are annoyed at the use of multiple waves of enemies in CalFree in Chains. I think playing D:OS has made it even clearer to me why these sort of turn-based games with cooldown-based abilities almost demand the use of waves, since otherwise you'll just pop all the abilities on your first turn and end the combat before it starts.

The final fights also gave me a chance to use a couple of the hundred-plus scrolls and potions I'd hoarded over the course of the game. This is partly because of phases where all the enemies were unreachable and I still had AP to burn, but I still appreciated the opportunity. I also got to use some to clear negative status effects, although that surfaced an annoying micro-managing issue: while I split Healing Potions and Resurrection Scrolls between party members, otherwise my lead character ended up carrying all of the party's scrolls and potions, so if, say, he got petrified or stunned during a turn, none of the other characters would be able to restore him.

Not specifically talking about plot, but plot-related: I'd alluded to this before, but while there aren't many branching-plot decision points, you are constantly making choices throughout the game, which get reflected in your character's Traits. These are things like Independent vs. Obedient, Romantic vs. Pragmatic, Cautious vs. Bold, and so on. There are direct gameplay effects as a result of this, like Cautious boosting your Sneaking while Bold boosts your Initiative. Later on in the game, there are indirect influences as well: the game recognizes your characters' traits, and the solutions to certain puzzles will vary based on your prior choices. You are "playing a role", and rewarded for how consistently you follow that role and how well you recognize the role you're playing, regardless of what specific role you've chosen for yourself.

MEGA SPOILERS

I was a little surprised by just how puzzle-heavy the latter part of the game is. There are puzzles scattered throughout the whole game, but most of them are optional or have alternate solutions, while the ones in the Temple of the Dead, the Source Temple and the nightmare King Crab Inn will absolutely block your progress. I peeked at a few hints online when I was feeling stuck; I was able to get most of them figured out, but didn't have endless patience. In a few cases I felt silly - "Oh, yeah, I totally can teleport someone through that portcullis" - but in a few cases I knew there was no way I would have figured it out on my own.

I have mixed feelings on the use of Perception in this game. If your character has a high enough Perception to spot something, they'll say "I see something!" and it will be highlighted on your screen, along with a label if you hold down Alt. This could be a trap, but also could be some valuable treasure (like a diamond), or a hidden button or switch to progress in a puzzle. That thing is still visible on the screen and interactable if you don't have the Perception; I, and probably most players, won't notice it, but if you've played the game before or are following a guide you can manually sweep your mouse over it to disable the trap, pick up the golden goblet, open the exit door, or whatever. So it feels like you're playing the old game of Hunt The Pixel with low Perception, and having a streamlined experience with high Perception.

That all feels good and balanced to me for traps and treasure, but did annoy me when it comes to puzzles. By the end of the game I had gotten in the habit of manually inspecting walls and floors when I felt stuck and was unsure how to proceed. Again, if this was one of several ways to proceed (like opening a locked chest via lockpicking, bashing, or searching for the key) then it wouldn't bother me, but often times it seemed like a hard gate.

Going back to choices: I said before that there aren't many branching choices, but you do have quite a few as you approach the end of Act 3 and throughout the finale. As a side note, I'm not really counting whether to complete a quest or not as a choice, but that's another thing that can impact the progress of the game. One of the first real branches I noticed was deciding what to do with Arhu after he had been imprisoned by Cassandra. I opted to use the spell to keep him in cat form, and defeated Cassandra. I am curious what would change if you went another way; presumably he wouldn't show up at all in the finale if he was still in her cage; if you turned him human, perhaps he would appear in that form, or maybe Cassandra would join you in a revenge/redemption arc over the wrongs done to her by Braccus Rex?

Somewhat similarly, near the end of the game you choose whether to trust Icara to restore the Soul Forge between her and Leandra, or follow Zandalor's warning and keep them separate. I opted to restore the bond. I really liked how this decision played out. The reunited twin is more powerful, and she helps you out during the battles in the First Garden; but during a particularly long and challenging fight against various Death Knights, Leandra takes over for a few turns and transforms her from an ally into an enemy. I really like how this choice resulted in a gameplay impact, but not a clear "superior" solution: indeed, as Zandalor warned, it's risky to forge them together, but that risk comes with some strong advantages as well.

The meta-story as a whole turned out to be one of redemption. Your dual protagonists are basically the reincarnations of the Guardians, who millennia ago failed in their duty and allowed the Void Dragon to escape. You put that wrong back to right by defeating the tricky Trife who unleashed the chain of events (after a particularly nightmarish and suitably creepy sequence - Larian does pretty darn good horror when they put their minds to it), freeing the goddess Astarte, and working with her to defeat the Void Dragon, re-chain him and return him to the Godbox.

I was a bit surprised by just how directly the storyline ended up adhering to Judeo-Christian theology. As you learn more of the backstory, a lot revolves around a trickster convincing an innocent to release evil upon the world; that's the Adam and Eve story, but also the story of Pandora and other mythologies. But there's a lot about The First Garden, and you see that it's explicitly labeled "Eden". I'm not sure exactly what to make of that, it kind of reminds me of 90s Japanese anime and RPGs lifting names and tropes from Western religion in the same way we lift names and tropes from Norse and Greek mythology. But, again, Larian is Belgian, so I don't know exactly what to make of it.

After posting this, I'll probably poke around to see what variations are possible in the ending. I do like how all of your companions show up to briefly chat in the end, and it was nice to see everyone, even Bairdotr and Wolgraff, acknowledge having done their personal quests. At the very very end, Zixzax says that the two Redeemers parted ways and never spoke to one another again; I'm curious if that's just based on our very last dialogue (where Rion said that he wanted to relax while Noor wanted to hunt and crush evil), or if it tracked the overall divergence in their traits, or some earlier plot decision, or if that's just a fixed outcome.

END SPOILERS

I did have a blast with this game, and am really happy to have finally returned to finish it after all these years. Larian has been tight-lipped on what they've been working on since Baldur's Gate 3, but most people suspect that one of their games is Divinity: Original Sin 3, and if so, playing this makes me even more excited to see that come true. There aren't really any major plot or character continuities between DOS1 or DOS2, which tends to be my main motivation in following a sequel, but these games are so well-crafted, with such extremely entertaining combat, amazing environments, a unique sense of style and humor, that I can't wait to see what would come next in this series.

The Awkward Middle Part

2025-07-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

I just hit what I think is probably about the 2/3 mark in Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition, so I thought this would be a good point for me to pause and capture my thoughts and feelings thus far. Bottom line up front: I'm having a blast, enjoying this game a ton. I recently got back from a nice week-and-a-half-long vacation, and an embarrassingly long part of that vacation was spent daydreaming about getting back to play more Divinity.

Party and mechanical updates first:

I just gained access to what's probably the last major zone of the game, and semi-coincidentally just hit Level 17. I've been taking a mostly-completionist playthrough, exhausting all the side-quests that I can and taking nearly all of the optional fights; but I'm not following a walkthrough so I'm sure there are at least a few quests that I haven't discovered or have failed to complete. I'm also not squeezing out every last bit of combat XP (such as by attacking friendlies).

I'm mostly following the build guide from the excellent FAQ, particularly where it comes to attributes, talents and skills. Recapping my particular loadout here:

Rion is my party face and archer. As the guide notes, archers don't synergize as well as other classes so you'll likely have spare ability points; I've given him an extra point in Bartering, several in Leadership, and recently even a little Charisma. He has relatively high Perception and Initiative so he usually goes first in combat, and with some Loremaster he can inspect the enemies to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Combat tangent: once you get a few levels into the game and have multiple combat skills on your characters, it's pretty much always worth activating things like Melee Power Stance or Ranged Power Stance. These boost your damage at the expense of your chance-to-hit. But importantly, your activated Skills can never miss, but they are boosted by the Power Stance, so there really isn't a tradeoff. (For Archers, you furthermore have the many special Arrows, which also can't miss.) You should have a few low-cooldown skills like Ricochet or Crippling Blow that can come off cooldown every turn or two, and enough other skills to use your Action Points on guaranteed-hit skills.

Back to Rion: I now have Rain of Arrows, an amazing Level 15 Master Skill, which does insane damage to every enemy in a large AOE: incredibly, even if there's only a single enemy I'm better off using this skill (even in damage-per-AP calculation). That's one of the fresh and surprising things about the Divinity combat engine: in every other RPG I can think of, archers are single-target damage dealers, while in D:OS:EE they are probably the best AOE damage dealers, more so than mages.

Other skills Rion has, in roughly descending order of coolness:

Flurry unleashes a huge number of arrows in a 45 degree cone. This is incredible against large bosses: if you can make them all hit, even the strongest enemy is likely to go down in one turn. It's also good against a group of enemies, again if they are positioned well enough so not too many arrows are wasted.
Splintered Arrow is a versatile attack that does high damage which is divided over every enemy in an AOE. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it is usually better to position the arrow so only a single enemy is struck. Unlike Rain of Arrows, which does the same damage to every enemy depending on how many are present, Splintered Arrow will do more damage to a single enemy than to multiple ones, and prior to getting the Master Skills it's probably the highest single-target damage you can deal. There are some times where the AOE is better though, if you're facing a large number of weak foes. I think that due to how armor works in the game, though, the results can be disappointing if you divide the damage against just a couple of high-armor enemies.
Ricochet is a great bread-and-butter attack. It can bounce between multiple enemies if they're close enough. Even if there's only a single enemy, though, it does more damage than your basic attack, and is guaranteed to hit.
Barrage fires three arrows against a single enemy. Pretty good, though again I feel like the armor system means it does less total damage than a single 3x attack would inflict.
Special arrows can be really helpful, though honestly I'm not using them very much at this point of the game. Early on arrows like Knockdown can be huge for crowd control. Quite a few fights have gimicks where specific arrows could come in handy: enemies being very vulnerable to a particular damage type, say, or a fire that needs to be put out, or some wooden furniture blocking an exit that you'd like to blow up.
Fast Track is a generically useful minor Scoundrel Skill. You basically give up 2AP in your current turn to gain 2AP in each of the next two turns for a net gain of 2AP. Worth toggling for longer fights, or if you just have a few AP left and nothing to spend it on.
Conversely, Adrenaline will give you 1/2 of next turn's AP immediately, but take away 3/4 of the AP on your next turn. This is a net loss of AP... but taking actions now is much more important than taking actions later. These days I often finish entire battles on the first turn, often before the enemy gets a chance to move. And even if a battle does stretch on to multiple turns, getting to completely eliminate an enemy (via death or CC) can make up for essentially skipping your next turn.
Outside of combat, Walk in Shadows is very useful. You can steal anything without getting caught while you're invisible. You can also interact with forbidden (red) object, enter forbidden zones, or walk by (potentially invincible) enemies without being noticed. I rarely use it in combat, but it does allow you to avoid attack-of-opportunity if you ever need to relocate while next to a foe, and makes it a lot easier to Escape if you need to flee a combat for some reason.
Other skills that Rion has which I almost never use: Doctor (minor heal and specific status effect clears), Farseer (boosts chance to hit - as noted above, skills can never miss), Infect (haven't tried it yet, maybe it's good), Wildfire, Firefly, Burn My Eyes, Oath of Desecration (very useful but I usually cast from another character), Summon Undead Warrior, Malediction.

I've prioritized taking the Traits that relate to Archery, including ones to reclaim special arrows (which I regret - I'm swimming in special arrows) and Elemental Range.

Rion's Leadership has been extremely helpful. With gear he is now at Leadership 6. This gives big bonuses to everyone else in the party, including enough Initiative that we always get to go before the enemy, deal extra damage, avoid negative status effects, etc.

My second PC is Noor, a mage who has mostly specialized in Pyrokinetic and Geomancy magic, although she's also skilled in Witchcraft and currently advancing her Aerothurge and Hydrosophist skills. She knows a lot more skills than Rion, and her role in combat varies more depending on the enemy and the battlefield. Her top priority is typically CC, though. Most often she will use something like Blitz Bolt to close the gap with enemies, then try to follow that up with Static Touch on anyone nearby who isn't stunned yet, followed by Freezing Touch and Bitter Colt. She'll also use Burning Touch to try and inflict a flame DOT. But again this is all situational, obviously if we're fighting fire monsters who are healed by fire damage then she won't do that.

There was a point in the game when Summons were feeling really strong, so she would often summon a Poison Spider or a Wolf or something. Just having another body on the battlefield could be really helpful, as enemies will waste their limited abilities on that summon and leave the rest of us to do our thing. More recently, though, I haven't really bothered summoning in most battles. It feels like I'm better off just dealing direct damage.

As mentioned above, one of the surprising things about D:OS is that mages generally have less AOE than archers. That's definitely true at the Novice level, and even mostly at the Adept level, with a handful of exceptions like Fireball. Once you finally get to the Master level then this opens up and you do get really powerful AOE spells, like Hailstorm (which does huge damage and has a great chance at additionally freezing enemies) and Meteor Shower (also huge damage, likely to inflict Burning, and creates a big fire surface that will inflict more damage when enemies path across it).

I do really love how different the various spells are. As one specific example, many ranged spells like Flare will travel from your caster to the target. These can be obstructed by the environment, so even if you can see them and are in range you may not be able to hit them. Different spells have different paths, with some traveling in straight lines and others arcing, so if one spell can't path another one may. Then there are some spells like Headvice that don't path at all, and just require you to be able to see the target - but if you had previously hit them with Fireball and they are now standing in a cloud of smoke or steam, you won't be able to see them to target them! But then there is good ole' Boulder Bash, a novice Geomancer spell that sends a big ole' rock crashing down onto a point on the ground. Since this drops from right above, it can't be blocked; and you can unleash it even if you can't see the target. It is somewhat balanced by doing less damage than other elemental spells of the same level. Anyways, it's great to have such a big toolkit of options for fightin' in this game.

Gosh... I wasn't going to list all of Noor's abilities, but I'll go ahead and shout out some of my favorites:

Blitz Bolt. Fantastic combination of caster mobility and enemy CC. Would be great even if it didn't do damage, and the damage is respectable. I put this on my fighter as well.
Headvice. Great for straight-up damage. Blindness is a surprisingly great status effect - it isn't technically a turn-skip like Stunned or Frozen, but blind enemies almost always end up not able to do anything, so it accomplishes the same thing.
Burning Touch, Shocking Touch, Freezing Touch. All great, low-AP, decent damage, quick cooldowns, can inflict great status effects.
Bitter Cold. Can disable an enemy for 3AP at range. Crazily cheap spell. (A lot of Aerothurge ones in here!).
Boulder Bash. As noted above, this is really useful for getting at hard-to-reach enemies; can pair with Fire to set the oil surface on fire for more damage. Great when an enemy is almost dead and needs to be finished off.
Rain. Used more out-of-combat but sometimes during a fight. Incredibly useful spell, cheap way to disable a bad status effect on your dudes, and can wreak havoc with a lot of fire-themed enemies. I love the huge range, too.
Regeneration. Heals are great! Again, used more out of combat, but can be handy inside it. Remember that healing magic damages zombie enemies - not every undead is a zombie, but there are quite a few, especially at the start of the game.
Vampiric Touch. I always forget I have this, but it's great: a rare non-elemental damage type, and you get a free heal as a bonys.
Oath of Desecration. I'll put this on my warrior, either for fights where mages aren't much use, or if I have spare AP. Great damage boost for them.
Destroy Summon. There seem to be fewer summons later in the game, but they still happen, and this is a custom-made counter.
Mute. Silence an enemy caster. Incredibly helpful against some powerful bosses.
And, more recently, Hail Storm and Meteor Shower for insane damage. I have to admit I've cheesed a few fights lately by casting one of these as an opener - they cost 11AP, so typically you would have to save points and wait for the second turn to cast, but if you cast out of combat they are essentially free.

One non-magic skill I like on Noor:

Winged Feet. This is only useful in a couple of places, but is very useful when needed. This lets you completely ignore any surface, including lava as well as fire, snow/ice, electrified water, etc.

As my Gamefaq guide notes, due to the limited number of Ability Points in the game, if you were to bring your magic schools up to 5 then you would be able to learn 2 Master spells from those schools, but would only be able to max out 2 schools; if you go to 4, then you still can learn 1 Master spell, but can cover 4-5 schools. That gives you the same number of Master spells, as well as all the Adept and Novice spells, giving far more versatility. So anyways, that's what I've been building towards.

Noor is also my go-to for Pickpocketing and Lockpicking. I think I've pickpocketed a single person in the entire game, which was necessary to solve a quest. She got the required points from a Trait and temporarily swapping in gear. Likewise, she carries some rings to put on when we need to pick a lock, which is basically never. There's almost always a key you can find nearby to open the lock, or you can bash it open or otherwise bypass it.

I'm also usually traveling with Jahan, another mage who starts off with Aerothurge and Hydrosophist skills. I'm building him very similarly to Noor, but focusing on the opposing skills. Jahan is also my dedicated crafter; this only required a couple of Ability Points, he starts with the Scientist trait and the rest can be handled from gear.

In combat I use him similarly to Noor. It is really nice to have two mages - if one of them fails to inflict Stun, I have another chance from my backup mage. Or if we have enemies coming from multiple directions they can split up and handle things on either side. If one of my mages gets CC'd, I have a fallback who can try to clear status effects, and so on.

Finally, Madora is my melee fighter. I continue to use her like I did in my first play-through. She'll activate Melee Power Stance for the above-listed reasons, then usually close the gap with Battering Ram or Thunder Jump, ideally incapacitating a couple of enemies but at the least inflicting damage and saving AP on movement. For a follow-up she will Whirlwind if there are a bunch of enemies nearby, or else Flurry or Crippling Blow if there is only one.

Thanks to her high Strength, Madora is also the packmule for the party. She lugs around a couple of barrels that may come in handy (Ooze, Oil and Water), and on longer excursions she'll schlep back the heavy armor and large weapons I want to sell. (Rion, as my main character, usually ends up carrying most items, but he'll offload pieces as needed. Jahan gets all the raw crafting ingredients, except for heavy ores that get sent directly to the Homestead or that Madora carries. Noor carries some specific items like keys, plot books, and all the grenades I carry and never use but that Might Come In Handy One Day). Madora also has items for Telekenesis, which like Pickpocketing and Lockpicking is almost never necessary and isn't worth investing Ability Points in but sometimes can be handy.

Let's chat about crafting!

I've written a lot already about my mixed feelings about crafting in D:OS. It is much much better in the EE than in the classic version, with discovered recipes automatically added to an interface. It's an activity that can feel tedious - you need to collect a ton of random low-value items, hold onto them in your inventory, then spend time doing stuff with them. You'll likely need to adjust gear along the way too; it isn't worth maxing out your Crafting and Blacksmithing abilities, so you'll probably just invest a few points and get the last with gear, but that does mean more micro-managing before and after crafting sessions. And not everything you can craft is worthwhile. Crafting isn't really required at all for the game; outside of maybe a couple of quests where you need to craft a unique item, it's mostly an add-on.

All that said, crafting can have really significant benefits, and for me it has been worth the investment of time. The main advantage is money. There is a finite and limited amount of XP in the game, but there is an infinite amount of gold available, if you buy raw ingredients from merchants and craft profitable recipes. Infinite money in turn lets you buy top-notch gear, which in some cases can be even more meaningful than additional levels. I've been following the crafting guide in that one Gamefaq, with the caveat that I don't really bother with the Magic Needle and Thread or its constituent ingredients, since it isn't consumed on crafting. My recent habit has been to do a crafting cycle each time I reach a new level: travel back to my crafting station, craft everything I can, then do the circuit of visiting merchants to sell my wares, buy additional raw ingredients, and window-shop for worthwhile gear. I mostly do this on level-up since all the gear you craft will be at a higher level and thus more valuable; also merchants reset their inventory on level-up, and you'll see higher-level gear from them.

While I don't spend as much time doing this, crafting can also be useful for making a few specific items to use. The main examples I've found are magical amulets and belts. I recently made Rion a whole set of Charisma-boosting items so he could more consistently complete some persuasion minigames without reloading. At lower levels you'll be able to craft magic amulets long before they appear in loot tables, so making them makes a noticeable difference.

While it feels a bit different than the making-new-items form of crafting, you also use the crafting interface to enhance existing gear. The main things I do are:

If I have a really good sword for my fighter or bow for my archer, add a Tormented Soul to set +2 STR and +2 DEX to it. These are fairly rare, but they do periodically show up in merchant inventories, and rarely while questing, so don't hoard them all for Level 20.
Add Metal Scraps to good metal chest plates you want to wear for an extra +10 armor. Similarly you can add leader scraps to gambions and so on.
Use a metal chest piece at an Anvil to remove the movement penalty and turn it into a slight speed boost.

There are a few other things you can do, like using Essences to change the elemental damage bonus of a weapon, or using Nine Inch Nails to make boots slip-proof, but I rarely do those.

A quick note on crafting that wasn't immediately obvious to me: I think that each piece of gear has a potential "slot" for each available type of modification. You can do different types of modifications on an item and those will stack, but different instances of the same type of modification will overwrite the previous one. For example, if you add Air Essence to a sword it will add Electrical damage; if you add Fire Essence to that same sword it will remove the Electrical and add Fire damage. If you then add a Tormented Soul you'll keep the Fire damage but additionally gain the STR and DEX stat bonuses. The crafting UI will happily let you overwrite an upgrade with the same upgrade, so you could burn all of your Tormented Souls on a single Sword and still just get the basic +2 effect. Just looking at an item's stats doesn't reveal which "slot"(s) have been used.

I mentioned before about how I go through a crafting/selling/buying circuit on each level-up. I think I only started doing that around maybe Level 10 or so, though it probably would have been better to start earlier. The great thing about buying gear is that you get a lot more looks at good items than you do from loot. You'll definitely be able to find good gear while questing, but you're very likely to see better gear while shopping.

Making gear decisions is pretty decent in D:OS. In some RPGs it's really straightforward, with a single stat like "Armor" to max. In some games you can just look at something like the Gold Value to judge the relative worth of two pieces.At the other extreme, some games have extremely specialized and situationally useful stats, incentivizing you to hold on to everything in case it's useful; or they surface mathematical values without clear underlying formulas and leave you to figure it out (are you better off with an item that gives +10 flat damage, +10% critical hit chance, or +20% critical hit damage?). D:OS has a pretty wide range of available bonuses and stats, but also a comprehensible system, so after putting some time into the game I can now pretty quickly and easily judge whether a particular gear item improves on a previous item. Without further fanfare, here is my priority list for gearing:

Attribute boosts are the most important. These are usually prioritized before anything else.
Within this, your character's primary attribute is the most important: DEX for rogues, STR for warriors and INT for mages. These have huge impacts in your chance to use skills successfully, the damage you do, and the cooldown of your skills. These linearly scale up with benefits until 23, and any excess over 23 is wasted. I'm finally starting to bump up against 23 at level 17 so it takes a while to get there.
Once you're finally able to reach 23 in your primary stat, next focus on Speed, then Constitution, then Perception. All of these boost your Action Points which are the main economy in combat. Speed gives additional AP each turn, CON limits the maximum number of AP you can have (so if your CON is too low then your high SPD is wasted), and PER boosts your starting AP in the critical first turn. All of these have very useful secondary benefits as well: movement for SPD, vitality (hit) points for CON, initiative and spotting secrets for PER.
You can ignore (not value) other attribute boosts. STR is basically useless on a rogue or mage.
Next, relevant abilities that you use in combat. These are actually pretty rare, but occasionally you will see something with +1 Bow; more often you might see a bonus to Willpower or Body Building or something.
You'll probably want to carry, but not necessarily wear, gear with boosts for out of combat, like Crafting, Blacksmithing, Pickpocketing, Lockpicking, etc. These aren't worth buying from shops, you'll find enough while questing.
Armor value on chest pieces or damage numbers on weapons. Higher is better, natch.
Bonus (elemental) damage on weapons. Having is better than not having, higher is better than lower.
Higher item levels. It's better to have high attributes on a low-level item than low attributes on a high-level item; but particularly for weapons, damage can scale off the level, so higher is better.
The rarity tier by itself isn't important, but higher tiers will have more stat bonuses, which can result in a better item, but other times only adds more cost. It isn't worth buying a Divine Belt for your mage that boosts Shield, Lockpicking, Stealth and Dexterity.

Let's dip into the story a bit!

MINI SPOILERS

So, this game is all about "source" and "sourcery". Your two PCs are "Source Hunters", members of an organization devoted to finding people and monsters who practice Source magic and eliminating them. Kind of like the Inquisition, I guess. In the first few hours of the game, there are quite a few times that you run across a person who practices Source magic and seems harmless: genial, pleasant, maybe a bit apathetic. There may be some dialogue along the lines of "I'm not bothering anybody, why are you persecuting me?" which seems like a very reasonable question. In every single case, though, the Sourcerer turns out to be A Very Bad Person, and in-game you are always better off attacking them ASAP instead of trying to use diplomacy. This felt a little jarring at first, as I am the nice guy who always wants to be nice to the nice people, but was also very effective, as it communicates "Sourcery = Bad" far more effectively than mere exposition would. You know Sourcery is bad, because every Sourceror you have met has tried to do bad things to you.

It's a bit surprising when much later in the game you finally meet up with Icara the White Witch and learn that she also practices Sourcery. There have been a whole bunch of times up until now that we've heard "Maybe Sourcery isn't as bad as you thought it was", but now it seems like that may actually be true. I'll probably write more about this in my final blog post, but my current understanding is that Source is very dangerous but not necessarily inherently evil. Like, I dunno, maybe nuclear fission or something. It nearly destroyed the world years ago so everyone is understandably very leery of it.

As a side note, the word "Sourcery" keeps tripping me up. It is not "Sorcery". Confusingly, "Sorcery" and "Sorcerer" are also used in the game, but far less frequently, and they have their standard meaning of an individual with innate magical talent. I am mildly curious if all this makes more sense in the original... I presume Flemish?

I appreciate the level of lore in this game. I've complained in the past about being overloaded by encountering a brand-new fully-fleshed-out fantasy world every time I want to play an RPG, with a complete new history, list of deities, unique races, nations, system of magic, etc. The series Divinity has its lore, but it's mostly lurking in the background, not demanding your attention like Elder Scrolls or Pillars of Eternity do. There are various books you can find in libraries, like in many of these games, but they're just as likely to have a funny little story or a slice-of-life vignette as a bit of history. And those books are usually just 1-2 pages long, exactly what my attention span is these days for RPG lore.

One thing that did catch my attention is a reference to all of the gods disappearing thousands of years ago, and nobody knowing how or why that happened. I think that might be a callback to one of the previous Divinity games, or possibly a call-forward to D:OS 2. These games are all set thousands of years apart, which is pretty great, since they don't need to worry much about continuity between them. I imagine that in some game you can make a big decision about What Happens To All The Gods, and that all gets collapsed into this pithy little sentence sitting on a shelf in this game.

Jumping around a lot: I really love the End of Time, which serves as your main base of operations in this game. It's a bit like the Pocket Plane in Throne of Bhaal or the Labyrinth in Torment Tides of Numenara: it's a location out of space and time that you can travel to at will. It's visually really cool, suspended amidst a beautiful star field. It has great mechanics too: throughout your quests, but especially as you advance the main plot, you discover Blood Stones that turn into Star Stones. Each time a Star Stone is reclaimed, a medium-sized new area will unlock in the End of Time. These new areas are all useful in unique ways: access to limitless storage, a character redesign and respec, a convenient place to stash companions out of your party, a way to hire new mercenaries, a variety of new shops, a crafting forge, and so on.

As noted above and in my previous post, I've been traveling with Madora the fighter and Jahan the mage, the same as in my original Classic Edition game. In this go-round, I went ahead and recruited the other two companions Bairdotr the archer and Wolgraff the thief, just so I could do their companion quests. I think I've now completed Bairdotr's and gotten a ways into Wolgraff's, and... it doesn't really feel worth it. Per the guide I've peeked at, there are only maybe 3 or so plot points that advance their personal quest. The dialogues can be interesting, but your mechanical reward is really just that one quest that might give something like 3000 XP, which is trivial in the scope of the game. I think the quests would feel meaningful if you were traveling with them all the time, but since they aren't usually in your party, you're missing out on the far more common reactive dialogues that occur during main-plot story beats and exploring areas. I don't regret doing their quests, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to others: it's more fun to just stick with your core party and not micro-manage swapping people in and out. It's probably better to save the other two (whoever your other two end up being) for a potential future playthrough.

Some other quests have really weird pacing. In Silverglen, which is around level 11 or 12, you get a quest from Brandon to get some Tenebrium ore from the Troll King. But getting access to the Troll King requires going through Maradino's hideout, which is much much much further into the map. By the time you do that, you will almost definitely have already reached Sacred Stone, which has a ton of Tenebrium, as well as a book that teaches you Tenebrium, which is the main reward from Brandon's quest. When you do get access to the Troll King's real lair, everyone is Level 15. It's just weird - I do appreciate the game's relentless flexibility in progressing in any order you like, but it does feel like something was changed during development that still feels awkward. I felt similarly about the SparkMaster quest from Act I.

A few other quests are odd or underwhelming. It doesn't hurt the game, though. There is so much going on, and I never felt like I was wasting my time or not being rewarded.

For the main plot:

For the record, I'm considering "Act 2" to basically be everything in Lucella Forest and Hyberholm. (Having an "Act 1.5" now seems like it may be a marquee Larian thing, like Lathandar's Monastery in BG3.) It basically picks up after defeating the resurrected Bracchus Rex. Some of the main story beats I remember are:

Searching for the White Witch, who you eventually learn is Icara. She is the sister of Leandra, aka The Conduit, who seems to be the main villain(ess) of the game.
Along the way you encounter the Immaculates, a sect that eventually proves to be more of a cult, all cheery and helpful on the surface but with some sinister stuff underneath.
The Immaculates have converted much of the town of Silverglen, a small hamlet in Lucella Forest that has historically supported nearby mines. These days most of the mines are overrun by goblins or trolls. There is a particular interest in mining Tenebrium, a unique ore that is in high demand but causes a high physical toll on humans who come into contact with it.
As you infiltrate the Immaculates, you come to learn their philosophy. It's essentially that lower beings should serve higher beings. For example, a human is higher than a chicken, so it's right that a human eat the chicken to support and strengthen himself. As initiates rise higher in the cult, they learn the extrapolations of those teachings: that some people are better than others, and it's right and good to sacrifice lesser humans to support greater humans. And ultimately, the Immaculates should sacrifice themselves to support the greatest being, the Conduit.
This ultimately ties in to bigger plot stuff. I'll probably cover that in my next post.
But I'll note that Leandry/The Conduit has been using Tenebrium to create immortal beings named Death Knights. Originally designed by Bracchus Rex but "perfected" by her, they will form an unstoppable army that will conquer and then destroy the world.
The Conduit and her cohort seem to ultimately be nihilists. They want to unmake the universe, to return to an original state of amorphous void.
Leandra and Icara were both sourcerers and used to be close. It seems like all of this may have started over jealousy - Leandra loved a man who loved Icara. This led to a rupture in their relationship, and may have sent Leandra down this dark path.
I'm trying to remember now what the big story beats in Hyberholm were. There's a subplot where the King of Winter took control from his seasonal siblings and covered the land in snow and ice. (Bring solid footwear!) There's something to do with imps, and parties of Immaculates searching for something, and I think Leandra is trying to make something in the Elemental Forge but I can't remember now what it was.
You eventually find a way to disable the Death Knights' immortality, thanks to exploiting a failsafe Leandra built into them when she designed them. You also learn that the mage... Maradino, I think? ... should know Leandra's whereabouts, which points you in the direction of the Phantom Forest and Hunter's Edge, where I'm going to say Act 3 kicks off.

END SPOILERS

That's probably a good point to hit "Publish" on this post! It's been hard to refrain from playing this game for long enough to write this up!

Alexandra Petri Slept Here

2025-07-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

And another excellent birthday book: Alexandra Petri's US History! I've been a fan of Petri's work for several years now. During my time as a Washington Post subscriber I consistently got kick out of her humor column, and she's been excellent whenever she flits across my social media feed.

While I hadn't thought about this before reading it, the conceit of the book reminds me strongly of Dave Barry Slept Here, a book my parents had that I devoured many times while growing up. Both are satirical looks back over the history of the United States, which are really funny on your own but become even more funny if you're already familiar with the subject matter, as there is usually a deeper layer to the jokes. Both books also bear covers with the classic scene of Washington crossing the Delaware but with the authors added to the boat - I imagine this is a deliberate homage.

The structure of the books turn out to be very different, though. I haven't read DBSH in years, but as I recall it's written in a sort of faux textbook style, with chapters covering discrete eras, occasional graphs and illustrations, and pop quizzes or discussion questions. Petri's book, in contrast, is a collection of faux "original" documents. Each one is basically a riff off an existing item, but presented as a first draft or alternate version or something. For example, there's an outline of The Federalist Papers using Hamilton's original idea to keep readers' attention throughout the serial by making "Publius" a three-dimensional character the audience would root for instead of an aloof narrator. There's a letter from Coronado in which he excitedly writes to the king describing what's very obviously a lie. There are transcripts of Nixon's tapes but only the parts involving Checkers the dog. And so on.

The other surprise was that, despite the title, it ended up being more about American literature than US history. I haven't counted, but I'd guess that about 2/3 of the sections are purely literary: riffs on Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, Sontag, Wolfe, Thompson, and tons more. That isn't a complaint! I love literature, and am probably even more familiar with these stories than I am with the history, which again adds to the delight as there are more in-jokes and subtle references to capture.

One advantage of this document-based approach is that the form and voice changes constantly throughout the book. There are letters, articles, Yelp-style reviews (of Ford's Theater!), screenplays, diaries, pitches, and more. It's all funny, but sometimes the wit is elevated, other times very blunt; sometimes it's mostly the concept that's funny, other times the concept is rote but the wordplay is hysterical.

There were multiple points where I had to stop and put the book down and ask myself, "How did she come up with this?!" The example I'm thinking of now is "Shirley Temple Jackson," which (why not!) mashes up the child actress Shirley Temple with the psychological horror author Shirley Jackson. It's deranged, a really bizarre idea and also a shockingly good imitation of Jackson's writing.

All in all, this is a perfect book for just about any occasion or setting. I enjoyed reading snatches from it while relaxing on vacation, but it would also be perfect for commuting, as a pick-me-up after a hard day, or really anywhere. Each "document" is nicely bite-sized, typically just a few pages, and stands on its own, so you can dip in and out at will. They're arranged chronologically and it makes sense to read that way, but there wouldn't be anything wrong with jumping around either. In any case - I had a blast with this book; I don't get to read Petri's columns as often these days, but I'm glad to see that she has published some other books as well, and I'll look forward to checking those out as well!