I’ll miss the book reviews as it’s my favorite part of this Substack, but good to know it’s only taking a break this year. This contest sounds interesting too
I'm excited that you chose the "Everything-Except-Book Review" instead of the "Everything (Except Book Review)" interpretation. This will be so much fun! :-D
When Scott posted the 2024 winners last October, he mentioned he'd do an "Everything Except Book Review" contest for 2025. People in the comments were joking over whether it would be a "review, but about anything that isn't a book" versus "literally any type of essay that isn't specifically a book review." I'm glad we're sticking to reviews instead of essays about anything.
I think if you look at publications that specialize in book reviews, like the New York Review of Books, you'll find that a significant fraction (maybe a majority?) are simultaneous reviews of multiple books - or perhaps they're essays inspired by a set of recent books, that incidentally do some reviewing of the books.
Would it be permissible to review one of last year's book reviews? One of the popular ones last irritated me and I think got a lot wrong (or at least rather oversimplified) in a way that I think the review rather than the book itself was responsible for.
Seconded. It would be great to still be able to review books, even books that have already been reviewed. Some past reviews could definitely be redone in a totally novel, and much better, way. (But not by me, no time.)
It seems to be within the rules, but you might do better to just submit your own review of the book to the next book review contest. For a review of a book review to be interesting, you have to show that the book review you are reviewing is not just wrong, but is wrong in interesting ways. Otherwise, the best response to a bad book review is to write a better one.
Most people here are used to having their ideas criticized, but having the whole group read a lengthy critique of their work, and possibly then watching most of the group agree with the critique and add on to is, is going to require a level of tolerance for criticism and disagreement far beyond what people sign up for when they become posting members. Nobody but Scott signed up for that. I don't think we should allow reviews of one person's book review, , and likewise should not allow reviews of individual members as people or even just as posters. I like the idea of everything being reviewable -- this is the one exception I think is legit.
PS except I guess people can review Shankar Sivarajan, because he is so cheerfully remorseless he sounds like he can take it. (No, just kidding.)
I generally think that it should be acceptable to criticize a text with the same level of publicity that the text itself got.
By that standard, me writing a review of your comment would not work, nor would it be ok to discuss it on national TV. On the other hand, me writing this comment seems a reasonable level of response.
I presume that few people would care to make a rebuttal to a book review which did not make it to the final round. This means that the stage in which a book review itself is criticized will be of roughly the same size as the stage it had.
Also, I would have the expectation that the meta-reviews deal primarily with the ideas of a text. It is bad argument gets counterargument, not bad poem gets mocking counter-poem, after all. Criticizing a text for its lack of eloquence or bad structure would seem petty, and I don't see any such criticisms making it to the final round.
<I generally think that it should be acceptable to criticize a text with the same level of publicity that the text itself got.
OK, I agree. I think that's fair.
<I presume that few people would care to make a rebuttal to a book review which did not make it to the final round. This means that the stage in which a book review itself is criticized will be of roughly the same size as the stage it had.
Also, people who made the finals have had the satisfaction of having their say about the book be read by many. And if the critical review of their review makes the finals, they will know that many of those responding to the critical review of the review read the actual review, so they have a lot of protection from feeling unfairly misrepresented. How about if the rule was that it was OK to review an old ACX book review, but only if it was a finalist?
Bear in mind that people who do not make the finals have their books read and reviewed by an average of about 8 people, so their level of publicity is low. If their review is attacked in a review, and the meta-review makes the finals, the criticism is at a much high level of publicity than the criticized text got.
I believe this question has already been asked - is it permissible to do a compare-and-contrast, like an essay which compares two movies, or a comic book and a movie?
I do believe that the similarities and differences between two things are not a book, and therefore part of the things that are permitted to be review. I say go for it.
If you're literally doing "compare and contrast", in the form of "here are some things that are similar between these two; here are some things that are different between these two", it probably won't be very interesting.
But an essay that engages with aspects of two things, says something interesting on the basis of their similarities or differences, and incidentally performs some reviewing service of both, is a perfectly standard form of review.
If you love reading the reviews, I would highly recommend participating in the initial round of voting. Every single year I have read reviews in the initial round, and very few of my favorites end up making the Finalist list.
Just off the top of my head, one of my favorites that didn't make the cut for 2024 was Étienne Fortier-Dubois's review of Egypt's Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti Were Gods on Earth. He has placed in the contest from 2021-2023, and last year decided to just have fun. He reposted the review on his own Substack:
I would rather point to essays like "Meditation's of Moloch". Is that a review of "Moloch"? Probably not, because "Moloch"wasn't really a thing before the essay. Maybe you could've submitted it as a review of "Fowl" by Allan Ginsburg, but that would be a stretch.
I've was considering writing a video game review for this, but was worried it wouldn't be considered. Now I have a mandate! I wonder how much general video game knowledge I should expect the average ACT reader to have. Most nerds I interact with play them regularly, but I suspect many ACT readers regard them with the same disdain that many bookish-nerds have for sports.
Just look at the survey results and the age distribution of the readership. If you're going to talk about video games, do not talk about the gameplay. Unless it's a strategy game or CRPG.
I used to have Generals. The complete uselessness of Chinese and GLA basic infantry (red guards and rebels) is a flaw in that game. They're supposed to represent the most common type of infantry, and yet you have no reason to have them in your army?
Except of course for capturing buildings, but that's not enough to justify mass producing them. It feels wrong that you never need significant numbers of the type of soldier that's supposed to be the most common. It feels like a mistake in game design.
Why are they "supposed" to be the most common type of infantry? The game is clearly balanced around vehicles, both ground and air, so the only infantry you potentially need to mass-produce are the rocket types. The basic gun infantry are, as you note, specialist units.
Are there even any C&Cs where basic gun infantry could to be mass-produced as a game-winning strat?
I may have chosen the wrong words. I'm talking about immersion, narrative credibility, suspension of disbelief. When I play a RTS game, I want to feel like I'm overseeing an army. Of course, the game is very unrealistic, but at least it pays minimal homage to reality. The basic infantry unit is supposed to represent, in *narrative* terms, your basic grunt soldier. It's strange, then, that you end up having only one in your whole army! The single one you make in order to capture oil derricks! What kind of army is that? It breaks immersion.
Obviously I don't expect that you can win with *only* basic infantry (nor you can win with only tanks in Generals) but in other RTS games it's useful to have a significant amount of basic infantry (I mean more than the one or two you need to capture buildings). This is true even in RA2 and RA3 (I haven't played those games, but I know because I've been curious about how the rest of the franchise handles unit balance). In RA2, only basic infantry can garrison buildings. In RA3, only basic infantry can *clear* garrisoned buildings. In both cases, it's useful to have a significant amount.
I remember reading tactical advice for RA3 (out of curiosity to see if the other games avoid the problem, since I've never played RA3) that said something along the lines of: remember, Conscripts die easily, so you need a whole bunch of them, when clearing garrisons!
In fact, in Generals, if you play as the US, Rangers are an important part of your arsenal due to their anti-infantry and anti-garrison ability. They're your best anti-infantry, unless you spend a point to get Pathfinders. And even if you get Pathfinders, Rangers remain your only anti-garrison. If the other two factions had basic infantry as useful as Rangers, I would not have made this criticism.
I would put Total Annihilation over it, in the context of its era. But I spent many, many hours of Generals 3v3 with two close friends and no multiplayer experience has since eclipsed it. PUBG got close.
> Most nerds I interact with play them regularly, but I suspect many ACT readers regard them with the same disdain that many bookish-nerds have for sports.
I think you will find a wide range of attitudes, but with a considerable amount of people enjoying games, and (most of) the rest at least accepting them as reasonable hobbies.
In general, it's better to assume less background knowledge than you expect. If someone doesn't have the background knowledge, then your explanation of the background will enable them to get something out of it. If someone does have the background knowledge, your explanation of the background may still show them something relevant about your different perspective, and might also make explicit some ideas that they had never really considered even though they had something like it floating around in their head already.
There are some things I consider errors - they give Penalty Shootouts 4 stars, which seems much too high for me, and they give Sunsets 5 stars but only give The Human Capacity for Wonder 4 stars, which feels inconsistent. I also think Air Conditioning deserved more than a 3.5.
But their review of The Smallpox Vaccine (5 stars) is a 4.7 in my book. Beaten only by what I'd consider a 4.8, the review of Viral Meningitis (1 star).
Love the anthropocene reviewed, and the smallpox vaccine (5 stars). I’d give your review 5 stars if you’d given their review of the smallpox vaccine 5 stars.
Really enjoyable book, just finished it last week. Really wanted a Dr. Pepper after reading his description of it, and to let the Kentucky Bluegrass grow to see the blue part.
Funny coincidence that this is posted now, I had forgot all about the new review-contest format.
Your name triggers me. Bananas are very underripe as they're sold. Usually when people say that a banana is "overripe" it's because it's either
(1) rotten, because it has been exposed to cold at some point, so it goes from underripe to rotten without ever becoming ripe
(2) just right, or even not ripe enough yet, but it gets mistaken for rotten because many people are used to underripe bananas rotting due to (1) and can't tell the difference between a ripening banana and a rotting one, hence the "overripe" libel against perfectly good bananas.
YES. People will throw away perfectly good bananas just because they have a few brown dots on their skin. Madness. Of course, underripe bananas are pretty tasty in their own way. But that doesn't justify anti-ripe discrimination.
I'll share with you another insight, something most people are not aware of.
ALL fruit, not just bananas, are very underripe as they're sold. The problem is that bananas are in my experience the only fruit that (sometimes) will continue to ripen after having been put on the shelves. Therefore, most people have never been exposed to truly ripe fruit, other than ripe bananas.
My parents grow a variety of fruit in the countryside. Plums, persimmons, grapes, and figs. Each of them have the potential to become much riper than the version you know. You know how truly ripe bananas taste different from yellow ones? Truly ripe every other fruit is the same (or at least plums, figs, grapes, persimmons, and I infer it applies to all other fruit too). It tastes so much sweeter and more delicious than the version you're familiar with. It's amazing!
All you have to do to get them like that, is leave them long enough on the tree. The problem is that my dad doesn't want to do that, because "birds will eat them". So every year I argue with him, begging him to leave the fruit on the trees and only pick them at the last minute. Or just let them fall on their own. If you eat fruit that have fallen on their own, they always taste AMAZING.
The moment you pick fruit, it just stops ripening. My dad always insists that you can get persimmons to ripen after you've picked them by putting them in a box together with apples, but it never worked for me. It doesn't become the same thing. The only way you can get the really ripe, delicious ones is if you pick them at the last minute.
Strawberries are like that too. Many people don't realize they're meant to be red all the way through...
I'm growing a ton of fruit this year, taking care of a plot w/ apple, pear, peach, apricot, plum, grape & pawpaw for an older lady who no longer can (we'll share the harvest), while I wait for my living situation to allow me to plant my own. I'm in Illinois so you don't get a good crop every year due to the unpredictable temperatures, but you can absolutely grow a lot of fruit and people used to. This lady seems to be a sort of holdover... I look around at the lawns in our small town, some of them huge at the edge of town, and I see wasted land when I think of what good, good things people could be getting from it without even that much labor (and which, as you point at, they actually can't even get anywhere else!)... it's just not part of people's thinking anymore.
Anyway. Very much looking forward to the ripeness perks you mention. I've done it with apples, peaches & grapes but not the rest.
BTW bell peppers will also "ripen" after being picked green. As in, they change color... and flavor. A little. Do not roast them. They're terrible. It's like you say--real ripening happens on the plant.
Can someone with some serious political science chops do a review of Yglesias' "American Democracy is Doomed" in light of recent events. Seems like constitutional hardball is progressing nicely.
I think that race is unfair. They should either have man race against unaccompanied horse, or they should have man-riding-man compete against man-riding-horse.
Alternatively they could give the human competitors jockeys of some third species weighing about the same proportionate amount (around 10kg). Perhaps dogs.
If you look at it a cack-handed way, you basically just dared the Sneer Club to write a review that's on something controversial but which plays straight-man hard enough that it's not immediately identifiable as being from the Sneer Club (and thus might actually make it to the finals and get noticed).
I... am tentatively in support of this! The Sneer Club thrives on refusing to engage things on the object-level; somebody trying it might wind up convincing himself.
Book Reviews: Much More Than You Wanted To Know...glad we're at least getting something this year. I'd definitely be down to wade through a 10,000-word restaurant review of a Dunkin' Donuts or some other similar DFW-inflected mundane-made-marvelous.
No disclaimer anymore about you being historically difficult to pitch to? Scott's going soft! (I kid, although in general guest posts aren't something I've been impressed by on any blog really, so the bar should be suitably high.)
While the overall scope of the project is thrillingly grand, I have to admit that most of the mathematical structures were quite uninteresting, and as such could have been omitted without any real detriment to the final production. In many cases it seemed as if they were included only for the sake of completeness, not for their own independent aesthetic contribution to the whole. In several scenes, the producer put little or no effort into making the core principles of a given structure accessible to ordinary folks in the audience. At times I even wondered if this work was originally intended for some quite different audience than the one it was advertised to, as it made little effort to make itself comprehensible to people not already familiar with the ideas motivating the work. The producers should really consider whether there is actually any extra added value in bundling all of these thematically disparate plots together and selling it as a single event.
On the plus side: as fans have noted there are indeed a great many quite provocative dramatic possibilities alluded to at various points in this work. Indeed it is difficult to fully take in all of these allusions on a single viewing. At the same time, several of these ideas might really have been better served by developing them in isolation from the rest of the piece. Similarly, instead of finishing each story-arc in all logically possible ways, it might have been more illuminating to pick just one or two highly probable endings in each case.
Not unlike the recent cult classic Everything Everywhere All At Once, the shear multiplicity of ideas presented here is somewhat dazzling. And yet, in many ways this final product comes across more like a brainstorming session by a committee, then like a thematically coherent work of art. To be frank, some of these ideas should really have been rejected at an early stage in the creative process. It might have been better for the writers to put more of their time and energy into explaining why the main characters are conscious and are justified in almost all of their ordinary epistemological beliefs (except theism of course). These are just a few striking omissions in a work that calls into question every single physical law, and yet somehow at the same time fails to question any of the actual bourgeoisie sensibilities of a scientifically-minded audience.
That said, certain aspects of this work do show some real artistic potential, and I have high hopes that---with a little more pruning and discipline---the next production by this team could be a classic for the ages. 2 1/2 stars.
Have you tried the 2024 update of the 1.04 community patch? Rebalances a lot of units. Only downside is that they add a lot of cut audio files--in my opinion, the files were cut for a reason.
I don't agree, anyway. How are you manning your garrisons against infantry if not with Rebels and Red Guard?
This looks fun! I'm gonna see if I can participate. (I have not participated in any of the prior review contests as either a writer or grader unfortunately.)
Also, Scott: is it ok if my Google account has my real name on it? I'm fine if only one or two people coordinating the contest see it (eg while copy-pasting everything into a huge monolithic document), but not if *everyone* sees it.
Anyone who likes this concept should read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55145261-the-anthropocene-reviewed, a book of essays each of which takes the form of a review of some thing or concept, from the movie "The Penguins of Madagascar" to the concept of "Googling Strangers" to more serious subjects like "Plague".
I mean some prompts like 'Review the book "The Alchemist" using the style of Scott Alexander (astralcodexten.com and slatestarcodex.com)' may achieve in some SSC-level of style and quality.
Does the review have to be written between the creation of this post and the deadline? Or can we submit a review we have written prior into this? I have written a number of reviews on movies, books, games, bikes (lol) that I am at least *somewhat* proud of.
I’ll miss the book reviews as it’s my favorite part of this Substack, but good to know it’s only taking a break this year. This contest sounds interesting too
I'm excited that you chose the "Everything-Except-Book Review" instead of the "Everything (Except Book Review)" interpretation. This will be so much fun! :-D
I'm sure not very much people are aware of this potential interpretive ambiguity. But I guess only a pedant would be confused.
I interpreted it the other way when glancing the title.
When Scott posted the 2024 winners last October, he mentioned he'd do an "Everything Except Book Review" contest for 2025. People in the comments were joking over whether it would be a "review, but about anything that isn't a book" versus "literally any type of essay that isn't specifically a book review." I'm glad we're sticking to reviews instead of essays about anything.
"Everything (except book) review" would have worked too
Can it be a review of more than one thing? Like a combined review of a 2 movies and a TV show that all share a common thread?
I don't think it's any more absurd than reviewing love.
That's how a bunch of the book reviews worked.
That would be an excellent thing to do. George Eliot's review of four books achieved immortality as "Silly Novels By Lady Novelists."
Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes
Collections of "things" can be "things" as well, at least in common parlance. The LoTR trilogy is a "thing" composed of several movies.
I think if you look at publications that specialize in book reviews, like the New York Review of Books, you'll find that a significant fraction (maybe a majority?) are simultaneous reviews of multiple books - or perhaps they're essays inspired by a set of recent books, that incidentally do some reviewing of the books.
A review of ACX would be fun
"It's OK, I guess."
"Guilty pleasure."
"I'll take ACX over a beating."
You go ahead and write one, then I'll write a review of your review of ACX.
Are multiple entries allowed per person?
No.
This is a fun idea! I'm curious to see what people come up with.
Would it be permissible to review one of last year's book reviews? One of the popular ones last irritated me and I think got a lot wrong (or at least rather oversimplified) in a way that I think the review rather than the book itself was responsible for.
Seconded. It would be great to still be able to review books, even books that have already been reviewed. Some past reviews could definitely be redone in a totally novel, and much better, way. (But not by me, no time.)
Technically not a book!
It seems to be within the rules, but you might do better to just submit your own review of the book to the next book review contest. For a review of a book review to be interesting, you have to show that the book review you are reviewing is not just wrong, but is wrong in interesting ways. Otherwise, the best response to a bad book review is to write a better one.
Most people here are used to having their ideas criticized, but having the whole group read a lengthy critique of their work, and possibly then watching most of the group agree with the critique and add on to is, is going to require a level of tolerance for criticism and disagreement far beyond what people sign up for when they become posting members. Nobody but Scott signed up for that. I don't think we should allow reviews of one person's book review, , and likewise should not allow reviews of individual members as people or even just as posters. I like the idea of everything being reviewable -- this is the one exception I think is legit.
PS except I guess people can review Shankar Sivarajan, because he is so cheerfully remorseless he sounds like he can take it. (No, just kidding.)
I generally think that it should be acceptable to criticize a text with the same level of publicity that the text itself got.
By that standard, me writing a review of your comment would not work, nor would it be ok to discuss it on national TV. On the other hand, me writing this comment seems a reasonable level of response.
I presume that few people would care to make a rebuttal to a book review which did not make it to the final round. This means that the stage in which a book review itself is criticized will be of roughly the same size as the stage it had.
Also, I would have the expectation that the meta-reviews deal primarily with the ideas of a text. It is bad argument gets counterargument, not bad poem gets mocking counter-poem, after all. Criticizing a text for its lack of eloquence or bad structure would seem petty, and I don't see any such criticisms making it to the final round.
<I generally think that it should be acceptable to criticize a text with the same level of publicity that the text itself got.
OK, I agree. I think that's fair.
<I presume that few people would care to make a rebuttal to a book review which did not make it to the final round. This means that the stage in which a book review itself is criticized will be of roughly the same size as the stage it had.
Also, people who made the finals have had the satisfaction of having their say about the book be read by many. And if the critical review of their review makes the finals, they will know that many of those responding to the critical review of the review read the actual review, so they have a lot of protection from feeling unfairly misrepresented. How about if the rule was that it was OK to review an old ACX book review, but only if it was a finalist?
Bear in mind that people who do not make the finals have their books read and reviewed by an average of about 8 people, so their level of publicity is low. If their review is attacked in a review, and the meta-review makes the finals, the criticism is at a much high level of publicity than the criticized text got.
Argh, I had 10,000 (very rough) words on my book already drafted…
Save it for next year!
I believe this question has already been asked - is it permissible to do a compare-and-contrast, like an essay which compares two movies, or a comic book and a movie?
I do believe that the similarities and differences between two things are not a book, and therefore part of the things that are permitted to be review. I say go for it.
If you're literally doing "compare and contrast", in the form of "here are some things that are similar between these two; here are some things that are different between these two", it probably won't be very interesting.
But an essay that engages with aspects of two things, says something interesting on the basis of their similarities or differences, and incidentally performs some reviewing service of both, is a perfectly standard form of review.
Here's an essay in the most recent New York Review of Books that has this format for two books: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/03/13/the-price-of-american-safety-afghanistan/
This is a really cool idea and I am going to love reading all the reviews for stuff on each Friday.
If you love reading the reviews, I would highly recommend participating in the initial round of voting. Every single year I have read reviews in the initial round, and very few of my favorites end up making the Finalist list.
Just off the top of my head, one of my favorites that didn't make the cut for 2024 was Étienne Fortier-Dubois's review of Egypt's Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti Were Gods on Earth. He has placed in the contest from 2021-2023, and last year decided to just have fun. He reposted the review on his own Substack:
https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/sun-worship-so-intense-it-disrupts
How many of you clever wags are going to submit reviews of past years' Book Reviews?
I'm going to review this comment
damn it, beaten at my own game.
I rate your defeat of me: 5 out of 5 stars
Other ideas which spring to mind are reviews of themselves or reviews of any reviews which are not reviews of themselves.
Not transgressive enuf.
Interesting.
Well, I was drawing a blank on what kind of book to review, so I guess this'll be a nice change of pace.
I'm writing an overview of René Guénon for my blog, is there a rule that what I submit here can't be posted on my blog as well?
You can post it after the contest I think
I think what you're asking for here is called an essay.
Yep. A non book review essay.
Non-book
No - its supposed to be a review of something (other than a book). It is not an essay on any topic.
Can anybody provide an example of an essay that definitely isn't a review?
Politics and the English Language.
A review of "Politicians' use of language".
I would rather point to essays like "Meditation's of Moloch". Is that a review of "Moloch"? Probably not, because "Moloch"wasn't really a thing before the essay. Maybe you could've submitted it as a review of "Fowl" by Allan Ginsburg, but that would be a stretch.
Can we review a study/group of studies/oeuvre of a researcher? Assuming none of these were published in a book
I've was considering writing a video game review for this, but was worried it wouldn't be considered. Now I have a mandate! I wonder how much general video game knowledge I should expect the average ACT reader to have. Most nerds I interact with play them regularly, but I suspect many ACT readers regard them with the same disdain that many bookish-nerds have for sports.
Just look at the survey results and the age distribution of the readership. If you're going to talk about video games, do not talk about the gameplay. Unless it's a strategy game or CRPG.
Oh damn, now that you mention it, a review of Disco Elysium could be interesting...
Erik Hoel did one. Kind of. https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-future-of-literature-is-video
Gamer of about 3 decades here. Generals is the greatest RTS of all time.
Generals isn't even the best Command and Conquer game!
That's right, that honor goes to C&C Generals: Zero Hour
Based
I used to have Generals. The complete uselessness of Chinese and GLA basic infantry (red guards and rebels) is a flaw in that game. They're supposed to represent the most common type of infantry, and yet you have no reason to have them in your army?
Except of course for capturing buildings, but that's not enough to justify mass producing them. It feels wrong that you never need significant numbers of the type of soldier that's supposed to be the most common. It feels like a mistake in game design.
Why are they "supposed" to be the most common type of infantry? The game is clearly balanced around vehicles, both ground and air, so the only infantry you potentially need to mass-produce are the rocket types. The basic gun infantry are, as you note, specialist units.
Are there even any C&Cs where basic gun infantry could to be mass-produced as a game-winning strat?
I may have chosen the wrong words. I'm talking about immersion, narrative credibility, suspension of disbelief. When I play a RTS game, I want to feel like I'm overseeing an army. Of course, the game is very unrealistic, but at least it pays minimal homage to reality. The basic infantry unit is supposed to represent, in *narrative* terms, your basic grunt soldier. It's strange, then, that you end up having only one in your whole army! The single one you make in order to capture oil derricks! What kind of army is that? It breaks immersion.
Obviously I don't expect that you can win with *only* basic infantry (nor you can win with only tanks in Generals) but in other RTS games it's useful to have a significant amount of basic infantry (I mean more than the one or two you need to capture buildings). This is true even in RA2 and RA3 (I haven't played those games, but I know because I've been curious about how the rest of the franchise handles unit balance). In RA2, only basic infantry can garrison buildings. In RA3, only basic infantry can *clear* garrisoned buildings. In both cases, it's useful to have a significant amount.
I remember reading tactical advice for RA3 (out of curiosity to see if the other games avoid the problem, since I've never played RA3) that said something along the lines of: remember, Conscripts die easily, so you need a whole bunch of them, when clearing garrisons!
In fact, in Generals, if you play as the US, Rangers are an important part of your arsenal due to their anti-infantry and anti-garrison ability. They're your best anti-infantry, unless you spend a point to get Pathfinders. And even if you get Pathfinders, Rangers remain your only anti-garrison. If the other two factions had basic infantry as useful as Rangers, I would not have made this criticism.
I would put Total Annihilation over it, in the context of its era. But I spent many, many hours of Generals 3v3 with two close friends and no multiplayer experience has since eclipsed it. PUBG got close.
> Most nerds I interact with play them regularly, but I suspect many ACT readers regard them with the same disdain that many bookish-nerds have for sports.
I think you will find a wide range of attitudes, but with a considerable amount of people enjoying games, and (most of) the rest at least accepting them as reasonable hobbies.
In general, it's better to assume less background knowledge than you expect. If someone doesn't have the background knowledge, then your explanation of the background will enable them to get something out of it. If someone does have the background knowledge, your explanation of the background may still show them something relevant about your different perspective, and might also make explicit some ideas that they had never really considered even though they had something like it floating around in their head already.
Do you know about "The Anthropocene Reviewed"? Maybe I'll review it
There are some things I consider errors - they give Penalty Shootouts 4 stars, which seems much too high for me, and they give Sunsets 5 stars but only give The Human Capacity for Wonder 4 stars, which feels inconsistent. I also think Air Conditioning deserved more than a 3.5.
But their review of The Smallpox Vaccine (5 stars) is a 4.7 in my book. Beaten only by what I'd consider a 4.8, the review of Viral Meningitis (1 star).
Love the anthropocene reviewed, and the smallpox vaccine (5 stars). I’d give your review 5 stars if you’d given their review of the smallpox vaccine 5 stars.
Really enjoyable book, just finished it last week. Really wanted a Dr. Pepper after reading his description of it, and to let the Kentucky Bluegrass grow to see the blue part.
Funny coincidence that this is posted now, I had forgot all about the new review-contest format.
Your name triggers me. Bananas are very underripe as they're sold. Usually when people say that a banana is "overripe" it's because it's either
(1) rotten, because it has been exposed to cold at some point, so it goes from underripe to rotten without ever becoming ripe
(2) just right, or even not ripe enough yet, but it gets mistaken for rotten because many people are used to underripe bananas rotting due to (1) and can't tell the difference between a ripening banana and a rotting one, hence the "overripe" libel against perfectly good bananas.
YES. People will throw away perfectly good bananas just because they have a few brown dots on their skin. Madness. Of course, underripe bananas are pretty tasty in their own way. But that doesn't justify anti-ripe discrimination.
I'm glad you agree with me!
I'll share with you another insight, something most people are not aware of.
ALL fruit, not just bananas, are very underripe as they're sold. The problem is that bananas are in my experience the only fruit that (sometimes) will continue to ripen after having been put on the shelves. Therefore, most people have never been exposed to truly ripe fruit, other than ripe bananas.
My parents grow a variety of fruit in the countryside. Plums, persimmons, grapes, and figs. Each of them have the potential to become much riper than the version you know. You know how truly ripe bananas taste different from yellow ones? Truly ripe every other fruit is the same (or at least plums, figs, grapes, persimmons, and I infer it applies to all other fruit too). It tastes so much sweeter and more delicious than the version you're familiar with. It's amazing!
All you have to do to get them like that, is leave them long enough on the tree. The problem is that my dad doesn't want to do that, because "birds will eat them". So every year I argue with him, begging him to leave the fruit on the trees and only pick them at the last minute. Or just let them fall on their own. If you eat fruit that have fallen on their own, they always taste AMAZING.
The moment you pick fruit, it just stops ripening. My dad always insists that you can get persimmons to ripen after you've picked them by putting them in a box together with apples, but it never worked for me. It doesn't become the same thing. The only way you can get the really ripe, delicious ones is if you pick them at the last minute.
Strawberries are like that too. Many people don't realize they're meant to be red all the way through...
I'm growing a ton of fruit this year, taking care of a plot w/ apple, pear, peach, apricot, plum, grape & pawpaw for an older lady who no longer can (we'll share the harvest), while I wait for my living situation to allow me to plant my own. I'm in Illinois so you don't get a good crop every year due to the unpredictable temperatures, but you can absolutely grow a lot of fruit and people used to. This lady seems to be a sort of holdover... I look around at the lawns in our small town, some of them huge at the edge of town, and I see wasted land when I think of what good, good things people could be getting from it without even that much labor (and which, as you point at, they actually can't even get anywhere else!)... it's just not part of people's thinking anymore.
Anyway. Very much looking forward to the ripeness perks you mention. I've done it with apples, peaches & grapes but not the rest.
BTW bell peppers will also "ripen" after being picked green. As in, they change color... and flavor. A little. Do not roast them. They're terrible. It's like you say--real ripening happens on the plant.
Somebody should review "fruit".
Yeah I was going to mention that, since it has essentially this premise... though ironically since it's a book we can't review it :'(
Wow, a superspy!
Anyway in my mind it's a podcast so maybe it's ok
I actually forgot it was a podcast first! You could presumably get away with it then : )
Make sure to review the podcast-not the bool-then,
Really looking forward to the Astral Codex Ten review!
Can someone with some serious political science chops do a review of Yglesias' "American Democracy is Doomed" in light of recent events. Seems like constitutional hardball is progressing nicely.
The obvious thing to do is review Google Docs.
> (please don’t review human races, I don’t need any more NYT articles)
Darn, I was going to do one on 5Ks. I guess I’ll have to do one on horse races instead.
Maybe you can compromise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
I think that race is unfair. They should either have man race against unaccompanied horse, or they should have man-riding-man compete against man-riding-horse.
Why not allow all four mount/rider combinations?
Yes, that would be best.
Alternatively they could give the human competitors jockeys of some third species weighing about the same proportionate amount (around 10kg). Perhaps dogs.
Or toddlers.
Looking forward to this. Hoping my expectations are not too high!
About footnotes, can we make them in the google docs in addition to plain text for your viewing experience?
If we've already written such a review elsewhere, can we submit it here as well?
If you look at it a cack-handed way, you basically just dared the Sneer Club to write a review that's on something controversial but which plays straight-man hard enough that it's not immediately identifiable as being from the Sneer Club (and thus might actually make it to the finals and get noticed).
I... am tentatively in support of this! The Sneer Club thrives on refusing to engage things on the object-level; somebody trying it might wind up convincing himself.
Who cares about the sneer club? But if they want to engage, they can feel welcome to do so.
If they can pass the ideological Turing test well enough to make it to the finals, they deserve the spot.
> (please don’t review human races, I don’t need any more NYT articles)
Reviewing Neanderthals or Homo Erectus would be pretty cool, though.
There goes my Boston Marathon review. . .
Book Reviews: Much More Than You Wanted To Know...glad we're at least getting something this year. I'd definitely be down to wade through a 10,000-word restaurant review of a Dunkin' Donuts or some other similar DFW-inflected mundane-made-marvelous.
No disclaimer anymore about you being historically difficult to pitch to? Scott's going soft! (I kid, although in general guest posts aren't something I've been impressed by on any blog really, so the bar should be suitably high.)
Can we use AI to assist us?
You can use it to "assist", but please have the AI do substantially less than half the work.
Get AI to write an entry, and then review it.
Do a daisy chain of asking an AI to review something, then asking an AI to review that review, and so on. Go 100 deep.
At the end, write your own review of the entire AI recursive review saga.
I think reviewing a person could be quite interesting: an ex, a parent, yourself?
Reviewing yourself while sticking to the requirement of not revealing your identity could be tricky.
What about content that exists in written/book form but isn't primarily/exclusively in that format? Eg: Speeches, theater plays, folk tales, etc?
Can I do a review where I compare the thesis of something-or-other that isn't a book with the thesis of something that is a book?
Ideas:
- Review the review you're writing.
- Review the Substack codebase.
- Review the entire Tegmark Mathematical Universe.
- Review the Everything-Except-Book Review Contest 2025, from the perspective of a contestant.
Hard to do before the most substantial part unfolds.
While the overall scope of the project is thrillingly grand, I have to admit that most of the mathematical structures were quite uninteresting, and as such could have been omitted without any real detriment to the final production. In many cases it seemed as if they were included only for the sake of completeness, not for their own independent aesthetic contribution to the whole. In several scenes, the producer put little or no effort into making the core principles of a given structure accessible to ordinary folks in the audience. At times I even wondered if this work was originally intended for some quite different audience than the one it was advertised to, as it made little effort to make itself comprehensible to people not already familiar with the ideas motivating the work. The producers should really consider whether there is actually any extra added value in bundling all of these thematically disparate plots together and selling it as a single event.
On the plus side: as fans have noted there are indeed a great many quite provocative dramatic possibilities alluded to at various points in this work. Indeed it is difficult to fully take in all of these allusions on a single viewing. At the same time, several of these ideas might really have been better served by developing them in isolation from the rest of the piece. Similarly, instead of finishing each story-arc in all logically possible ways, it might have been more illuminating to pick just one or two highly probable endings in each case.
Not unlike the recent cult classic Everything Everywhere All At Once, the shear multiplicity of ideas presented here is somewhat dazzling. And yet, in many ways this final product comes across more like a brainstorming session by a committee, then like a thematically coherent work of art. To be frank, some of these ideas should really have been rejected at an early stage in the creative process. It might have been better for the writers to put more of their time and energy into explaining why the main characters are conscious and are justified in almost all of their ordinary epistemological beliefs (except theism of course). These are just a few striking omissions in a work that calls into question every single physical law, and yet somehow at the same time fails to question any of the actual bourgeoisie sensibilities of a scientifically-minded audience.
That said, certain aspects of this work do show some real artistic potential, and I have high hopes that---with a little more pruning and discipline---the next production by this team could be a classic for the ages. 2 1/2 stars.
Now I'm vaguely tempted to just gush about my favorite underrated indie game for 3000 words and submit it.
You say Brotato, I say Brotahto.
Sounds fine to me?
Is a fanfiction a book? (EG Methods of Rationality.) What if it is not as polished/finished? Webnovels - are they books?
Someone submitted a review of a web novel for the last book review contest, so apparently it's a book.
Have you tried the 2024 update of the 1.04 community patch? Rebalances a lot of units. Only downside is that they add a lot of cut audio files--in my opinion, the files were cut for a reason.
I don't agree, anyway. How are you manning your garrisons against infantry if not with Rebels and Red Guard?
This looks fun! I'm gonna see if I can participate. (I have not participated in any of the prior review contests as either a writer or grader unfortunately.)
Also, Scott: is it ok if my Google account has my real name on it? I'm fine if only one or two people coordinating the contest see it (eg while copy-pasting everything into a huge monolithic document), but not if *everyone* sees it.
duck master isn't your real name...? :(
no
Anyone who likes this concept should read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55145261-the-anthropocene-reviewed, a book of essays each of which takes the form of a review of some thing or concept, from the movie "The Penguins of Madagascar" to the concept of "Googling Strangers" to more serious subjects like "Plague".
Whether writing by AI ok?
I mean some prompts like 'Review the book "The Alchemist" using the style of Scott Alexander (astralcodexten.com and slatestarcodex.com)' may achieve in some SSC-level of style and quality.
Is it kosher to submit something I've written and published previously provided I'm pretty obscure, plus or minus review-contest friendly updating?
Are you going to wait until May 12 to start publishing them, or will you published earlier-submitted ones sooner?
I am also waiting for your published version now. https://geoguessrunlimited.org
Does the review have to be written between the creation of this post and the deadline? Or can we submit a review we have written prior into this? I have written a number of reviews on movies, books, games, bikes (lol) that I am at least *somewhat* proud of.