ess emm arr

Just a home on the web where I write whatever comes to mind. Like we all used to do back in the day before The Algos came and destroyed everything good about the internet.

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Book Review: Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and The Broken #1), by Ryan Cahill

I don't want to spend too much time on this one, so here's the short version: This book feels like if every other multi-volume fantasy series was used to feed an LLM, which was then prompted to output the absolute average of everything it had ingested into a starting volume of a new multi-book series. It is the Applebee's of fantasy books. Absolutely mid, relentlessly derivative and unambitious, yet industrially competent and blandly satisfying in a way that makes you say "yeah, shouldn't overindulge on this crap but once or twice a year is fine". Take that as you will....

December 1st, 2025 book reviews

BABY-SOFT CRYBULLIES

There are many gross features on the current moment, too many to catalog with any thoroughness. That said, one that's really redding my ass of late is the conservative urge to just... have ZERO FUCKING CHILL about any normal-assed thing whatsoever. It's bad enough to be ruled by cruel, fascist shitheads who want to inflict pain on every normal being they can get their greasy paws on. It's somehow WORSE that every one of them just... has all the chill of a small child who just got a raw chicken breast fast-balled at their face. Trump's fucking teleprompter can't just...

September 25th, 2025 hellworld

BEEP BEEP FUCK YOU

You know what needs to go away? Among many, MANY other things that I'm not gonna get into here, may I humbly suggest: the reverse-beep on construction vehicles. How many lives a year were we losing to backing-up construction vehicles before that fucking infernal beep was added to them? 3? 5? (and yes, I've spent a minute or two trying to find that number, and it DOES NOT FUCKING EXIST). FUCK 'EM. I live across the street from what is currently a construction site. I also work from home. All day, all summer, I have heard that beep for >70%...

August 27th, 2025 hellworld

Federalize My Ass, Shithead

So, one of the DOGE dickheads get tuned up by the locals and immediately Trump wants to federally take over DC, a benighted city already stripped of representations every other American takes for granted. Where is this heightened call to action to do the same to, say, that small southern town in MAGA country where the locals were selling their own kids in a fuck bunker for ages with the cops kinda knowing about it and just not giving much of a shit? I know, being surprised by any of this (I'm not) is a mook's game. Expecting anyone on...

August 7th, 2025 hellworld

I Will Allow the Algos to do ONE Thing

i'm known for my hatred of the algos, but I will begrudgingly acknowledge that, when someone famous I like dies, they really deliver. do i want to watch The Offspring do a live cover of Crazy Train that's shittier than any version I've ever personally played live myself? hell fuckin' yeah I do oh, eddie van halen's weirdo kid, whose own music slides off of my ears like red sauce off a noodle, is covering Mama I'm Coming Home live? feed it to me. oh, he sounds like somebody who can't really sing pretending to be freddie mercury covering ozzy...

July 25th, 2025 hellworld