David Given Schwarm

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fantastic overview of the period. Lots of fun facts and social justice corrections to historical truths I learned as a kid. The stuff on South America was super great & I knew little. Always like learning about…

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lisa and I read this on Sunday mornings during 2020. It was an amazing experience–we stopped a lot and had conversations, which was nice. Lisa and I share general curiosity around most of these issues and the general…

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Joseph Goldstein My rating: 3 of 5 stars Massive reflection on a basic text Ordered lists. There are four noble truths. There are eight paths. We use the number to remember. There is also a tradition that uses numbers to count how many items there are. The four…

There was a production incident on Friday. I fretted and was working on resolution on Saturday. Wednesday, my guess was me just bouncing back from all the status updates I had to provide on Monday and Tuesday. What I find interesting is how impactful an impact is on me–I need to reduce that during 2021.

D&D Encounters Adventure League Living Forgotten Realms from Alakazam Comics continues our adventures in the Ten Towns. We freed the speaker of Caer-Dineval from cultists who had him signing papers. He awarded us membership in the most sacred Cavalier’s of the Red Fish Order. While in the Speakers Keep killing cultists we received a dire…

Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman My rating: 1 of 5 stars This is a legendary Fantasy book. The world building is ok. The writing is overly descriptive, repetitive, and dry. Plot is predictable and bad. The obsessive talk of birds is interesting. The sex stuff, for which this book is notorious, is EXTREMELY light–the…

In what can only be described as one of the longest running Rise of the Rune Lords Pathfinder campaigns of all time, we meet again on Roll20 and Discord to continue to explore the damaged dam. The central structure had stairs down leading to an aquatic pool that contained Grazuul who is some kind of…