Band of Brothers
Follows the 101st Airbone as it drops into Normandy on D-Day and fights its way through Europe to the end of World War II.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
10mentions
9people
2014–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Brilliant novel. I was thinking about it recently. Many years after reading it, I can still remember many of the battle/combat sequences as if I’d seen them on screen. Maybe someone could do a big Band of Brothers type adaptation, given how far along VFX have come.
- Our kids, both teens, are beloved by everyone they meet. I'm not exaggerating.
Our oldest, our daughter, has had a few jobs working in her craftland, and both loved it and was loved by her fellow employees and customers.
Our son is an open chess champion who is beloved by his chess club compariots. When he played out of his mind and won the open tournament, the cool part was that his chess club mates were really happy that he won, and a parent of one of his friends excitedly told me how happy they were. Even thought his son was much younger, my son's friendliness and kindness really endeared him to that young Indian boy.
The question is, "Why?"
First off, we're not particularly religious at home. We sometimes pray before meals, but we tend to eat when we're hungry, i.e. not all together, always. We rarely pray together because I feel strongly that religion is a personal affair. I also do not pray in front of them, to prevent putting any kind of pressure on them towards my preference. We Sufis feel there is no superiority in one form of religion over others, and I manifest that most deeply by letting them know that their path is theirs to choose. I'm only here to love them and teach them how to be lovingly kind and respectful to others.
Second, and probably most importantly: they have never had unfettered access to the Internet and we have no TV of any kind, and they do not have or use smartphones or social media of any kind (except our daughter is a good navigator in the car).
We did have Hulu for a minute, but mainly for the powerful "Summer of Soul". We have also watched some Tubi for, for example, "Death on the Nile" and a few select others. And the old Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series are a mainstay, as well as a few select movies, such as the Avengers series and "Knives Out", but it is very minimal, nothing too sexy, and nothing at all too violent.
And ZERO internet or social media. Sure, we might look some stuff up, we watch some stuff like Tosh Show (after I pre-screen it), but stuff more like Veritasium (that they love), and some random YT videos we find interesing. Plus, we watch a fair bit of NHKOnline for Design Stories, 72 Hours, and, of course, Grand Sumo Highlights (just for how entirely foreign and intense that sport is) for maybe a decade now. They have their favorite EPL and Serie A teams, plus Champion's League, as they like to knock the ball around at the park. My son and I follow the NBA through a few pods (while he chesses online on his computer, which is in the living room with this one, our "media computer") and the occasional highlight.
My point here is that I keep their media appetites satiated with interesting, curated content, but they're spared the titilating fiction that I grew up on. The only horror movie they've seen (multiple times) is Jordan Peele's fantastic "Nope". But absolutely no gratuitous sex stuff, whatsoever, not that we don't have the occasional conversation about such stuff. And we watch a bit of comedy, with three of Tom Papa's stand-up specials on Tubi being a big recent hit.
The important thing is that we human beings have a part of us that gravitates towards the lewd and lascivious, and our media is naturally permeated with it, and they just don't need it, and my approach has worked. They help the family around the house because they understand that they're valuable parts of the team and that doing good work is good for everyone. And when they do catch wind of something gross (usually said by a comedian), they appreciate that we'll talk about it but that we screen off that part of the world for them.
I was exposed to porn at a young age (6th grade recycling dumpster "Oui" magazines) and then Playboy Channel and HBO in my early teens. No teenager needs Animal House or Porky's in their lives. Being homeschooled (our daughter's choice because middle school orientation was brutal, and our son to play more chess), they're also not socialized by kids with smartphones who watch "Game of Thrones" rapescenes and whatnot.
My daughter has listened to and/or read half of my favorite author William Gibson's novels, plus Anna Karenina and lots and lots of other literature plus Langston Hughes' own poetry collection plus the biographies of some famous women. We all together listened to 2018ish's Pullitzer Prize-winning 900pg biography of Frederick Douglass (5-6 hours/day for 2-3 weeks, weekends off), so they know how brutal America is to Black folks, and how talented and capable they are. And my son and I have listened to Stephen E. Ambrose's "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldier" multiple times, and we all love his book and Tom Hanks' miniseries "Band of Brothers". My son and I have also listened to a lot of the excellent podcast "Fall of Civilizations".
They understand the importance of love and they know enough of history to understand how brutal most of this world has been and still is, to some extent. We watched Jan6's debacle unfold live on CNN's live website, to our shared horror. That this orange bastard pardoned those fuckers is truly evil, and my kids understand that full-well. We hold no ethnic animus, or consider ourselves superior in any way to others, except perhaps in our worldview that centers on universal compassion, kindness, and mutual respect.
They have NEVER -- and I mean NEVER -- had an ill word said against them by anyone, ever, and that's no exaggeration. A teacher of our daughter's cried on their last day when she pulled me aside to tell me how much she will miss our daughter, and our son was chosen to be in the 4th grade class that spent part of the day mainstreaming ASD kids; he was chosen for his kindness. We love and care for each other, without even having to ask. We enjoy hanging out and we laugh a LOT, with each other, at each other, and, most importantly, at ourselves.
So, when I say that nothing in the universe is more important than we human beings choosing compassion, for one and all, I mean it, and I have the fucking proof. And when I say we're living in a world full of purblind fools who are destroying this world with their ignorant selfishness, I know what I'm talking about.
Wake up to compassion, my friends. Both your and our collective happiness is at stake.
"There's still time to change the road you're on." --Stairway to Heaven
And I've always sworn around the kids and let them swear freely (but only in the house), because that's the only way to learn the difference between profane and vulgar. Fucking is a very useful word, so long as it's not the verb form, but even that rule was broken when, at the end of Bale's Batman trilogy, Ras al Ghoul's daugher betrays him, after having slept with him, my wife asked why she did both those things, our daughter replied,
"She fucked him before she fucked him."
I couldn't be prouder that she both understands that truth and knows enough to not say it in public.
- This year I've put myself to the challenge to read at least one book per week which I primarily could complete by reading in the middle of the night while holding our sleeping baby in my arms. It has been an interesting challenge which gave me a lot of fulfilment and has certainly changed my mind on how I view the world. This comment became quite a long read, apologies for that.
Books I highly recommend:
Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)
A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)
In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)
Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)
Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)
This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.
Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)
This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.
Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation
Biography:
Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +
Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)
Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)
History:
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +
Science, Technology, Mathematics:
Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)
Sport:
Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203)
Fiction:
Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229)
Classics:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (p:104); The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (p:201); The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzergerald (p:180); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (p:139); Animal Farm by George Orwell (p:122) +; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (p:227) +; The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (p:118)
Science Fiction:
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (p:399); All Systems Red by Martha Wells (p:144) +; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (p:462) +; A Psalm built for the Wild by Becky Chambers (p:160); Dune by Frank Herbert (p:658); Foundation by Isaac Asimov (p:244); The Martian by Andy Weir (p:384) +; The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (p:278)
- I hear what you're saying but the problem is that, when retelling the history of a large battle, no foot soldier plays a large enough part to give the reader a good sense of the overall event. An author can try to incorporate the grunts but they run the risk of overwhelming the reader with names that need to be kept track of.
The stories of the foot soldier can be told but they are usually closer to a biography rather than over-arching history. Author Stephen Ambrose was one of the best at it. His books "Citizen Soldier" and "Band of Brothers" (among others) are excellent.
- > Fiction: “The Lord of the Rings” (J.R.R. Tolkien); “Game of Thrones” (George R.R. Martin); “Slaughterhouse Five” (Kurt Vonnegut); “Blood Meridian” (Cormac McCarthy); “The Stand” (Stephen King).
> Nonfiction: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (Tom Wolfe); “Halsey’s Typhoon” (Tom Clavin); “Band of Brothers” (Stephen Ambrose); “Into the Wild” (Jon Krakauer); “Guns of August” (Barbara Tuchman).
about 300 titles (not sure what the proportion of navy specific material, public domain and commercially licensed title are).
Note the high price -- $3k/unit. That is typical in that domain. It is funny because a lot of things they assert to have is actually lack of features -- lack of wifi, lack of cameras. And probably most important -- presumably made in US. In that market there are really ridiculous markups. You just have to know someone who knows someone to get the contract. It (this market) is also mostly immune to being exported overseas -- just due to basic security and trade regulations.
Informally one can say, "a new mac is cheaper than that!". And yeah it is. But this is a mac built to spec, all made in Ohio probably. Interesting what macs would cost in that case if there built to order in smaller batches and made in Ohio, all having strange requirements like FIPS-140-2 compliant crypto libraries enabled and other random red tape restrictions slapped on them....
- > You might thrive there.
Nah, I'm too easy-going for that bs. I'm a thinker, a problem-solver, but I was an athlete who trained myself pretty hard for nearly a decade of American folk-style wrestling.
My thought-train started with simply being able to be able to take the daily bunch, then my imagination just ran wild, like the excellent author of the original post. Combine that with the fact that "Chris" was obviously a psychopath, I went towards figuring out how he could learn why he chose the wrong path -- learn as gently as possible. And, as someone who has watched a lot of MMA over the years, I understand that training the entire body for combat would require more than just a shitton of situps, so the story just kind of just followed the original story's inspiration, as per my life experience.
> Perhaps one can extrapolate that the author is hinting at another dark truth -- the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more MMA-like this will be. Therefore CEOs are, by definition, distilled psychopaths (like the Felon and the Husk in the White House right now).
Hinting or not, he paints a disturbing-enough picture of the such narcissists and their choices to not give a shit how people suffer as a result of their decisions.
If you want to learn a true story that is far, far worse, read David W. Blight's Pullitzer Prize winning 2019ish biography of Frederick Douglass. The audiobook was available as a free download from a reputable site (I forget), and my two teenagers and I listened 4-6 hours/day for 2.5 weeks (weekends off) until we made it through the entire 900+ page book. FD was an extraordinary human being who led an extraordinary life.
As a result, my kids understand the cruelty of the wealthy as best as one can without having actually gone through it themselves.
We are actually also pretty knowledgeable about WWII history (via Stephen E. Ambrose's unabridged audiobooks D-Day, Citizen Soldier, and Band of Brothers) so we are also aware of what our German kin are capable of, as are all human beings.
Peace be with you, friend.
"We gonna be alright." --Kendrick
