Posts made by Arkandel

@auspice No, and it could be one of his favorites. It means little assuming the instructor plays favorites.

@faceless You're gonna love that series. Bonus points: It's going to be a Hollywood movie (because of course it is), so you might as well read it before everyone else does, then you can be a hipster about how you were into it before it was cool.

@faceless I have a great one for you. Written by Pierce Brown, check out the Red Rising trilogy.

Set in the future, humanity is colonizing the solar system and in the process trying to mirror the golden days of Rome while viciously oppressing the population of entire planets to exploit them as cheap labor for their conquests. It's really engaging, the characters are great, the plot is full of twists and turns and if you're into that sort of thing I loved the strategic/tactical aspects of its warfare.

The first novel in particular is an offspring between Ender's Game and Hunger Games, but better than either.

@kanye-qwest Are your doctors/physiotherapists at least trying to figure something out? Sometimes they are just shrugging their shoulders and pushing painkillers/anti-inflammatories over like they're going out of fashion.

I don't know if it's the consensus but I can't watch Flash any more. It's really bad. I find myself rolling my eyes at the dialogue (especially anything involving Iris...) and twiddling my thumbs waiting for the predictable plot to unfold.

In the latest episode I just stopped some time in the first twenty minutes and switched to something else.

When I got my Amstrad 6128 my only experience with games was through the arcades, and it was supposed to just be a coin-less one-time investment to let me play the same stuff at home; instead it launched by programming career, but I didn't know that at the time and it's not relevant here.

Back then I didn't even know you weren't supposed to pirate games. It wasn't frowned upon, it just... all the kids like me used to go to one of several computer stores, where they had these big lists of titles, and for a (pretty affordable) fee you could get any of them copied to a floppy disk and take it home with you.

That meant I had a huge list of titles within a few months and I barely played most of them, but the ones I did... man. Taipan! comes to mind, Gauntlet of course (for so many hours), Bard's Tale, every single thing Sierra online was putting out but special mention needs to be given to Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail, end those text-only adventure games... damn. I still remember how I finally solved a riddle in Gnome Ranger 2; Ingrid's Back and it's been like... twenty five years ago since?

Oh and Loom. Loom was so good.

Then once I got a PC, I still remember the original Wing Commander on my VGA which was like... 11 floppies? But I had a hard drive to copy it to, guys! All 40 MB of it ("what are you going to do with all that space man? That's for professional computers" the person at the store had counselled me) and my friends were marvelling at the graphics. One of them went, "holy shit, it looks just like Star Wars!".

@saosmash said in Book Recommendations:

The first series of hers that I picked up was the Broken Earth trilogy, and this is a very hard series to read -- especially on audiobook which is how I do a lot of my reading

I hope I'm not ruining @Auspice's thread (she can make sure I don't if so ) but I just wanted to ask... as someone who's not tried audiobooks, how is the experience compared to eyes-on-the-page? I'm thinking about switching up my commute routine a bit, and while podcasts work they're not the kind I need to pay constant attention to.

@ghost What's genuinely shocking is that in at least two cases so far (Spacey and Hoffman's) they didn't even try to deny it. It was sort of... really lukewarm. Wtf.

As for Ratner, apparently he whipped it out and started masturbating in front of them? Also, wtf, who does that?

@saosmash Give more details! Plots for particularly good books, reasons why she's awesome?

On a way more serious issue, what the fuck has been happening in Hollywood? Dustin Hoffman is now apologising for sexual assaults he 'may have' committed?

Damn. I mean I figured things weren't great in that industry but damn.

@auspice What bugs me is that every time I get into one of those debates I start coming up with logical arguments ("so why if you are on a plane and you keep flying you don't ever reach the end of the Earth?" "if butterflies are that light why do they go down again when they stop flapping their wings?"), which is useless because it's not really something anyone will be convinced by.

Plus there are always those folks... I forget what they're called, the kind who claim they just know things and thus science only gets in their way?

@ghost

@auspice Ah, yes, the people who think the Earth is essentially a flat elevator always moving upwards (and at an accelerated pace, of course) which accounts for why we don't just float into space.

Awesome.

I would have put this in the Basketball thread but it's too good and too... wtf.

So, Boston point guard Kyrie Irving believes the Earth is flat. There are some real gems in this article.

An little taste:

"The whole intent behind it wasn’t to bash science and be seen as this insane individual. When I started actually doing research on my own and figuring out that there is no real picture of Earth... the intent was for people to open up and do their own research."

And of course

"Why is it that the footprints that they saved - What’s his name? Neil Armstrong? I don’t even know - Why is it that the steps, in terms of the pictures that they say he stepped on, why do they look completely different than the [boots] that are actually in the museum that he walked with?""

I guess it's not as bad as the Moon deniers. Note those aren't Moon landing deniers; they think the literal Moon does not exist.

Anyone else thing the Dunk and Egg series by George R.R. Martin is actually better than A Song of Ice and Fire? Somehow he's managed to put just as much complexity, grey areas and mysticism in there but it's just... easy to miss.

The overall plot surfaces powerfully but sporadically, major pieces like the Three-Eyed Raven are set up for the future, but at its heart the series is about a young idealistic hedge knight and his squire adventuring in Westeros. Really great stuff.

@deadculture You know what's funny, kinda? After a while in this hobby when I read a book I really like there's always a moment when I go "hey, maybe a MUSH about this would be cool..."

That's never happened with Kay's novels. I love them but I don't think the settings are anything that would work for a game because they are only engaging because of the specific situations and the particularly intriguing characters and relationships between them he's woven. Take those away and most of his worlds... well, they are just worlds. Kinda okay, fun even, but you'd be hard pressed to make something else out of them.

The guy just knows how to create, well, people using words.

@deadculture said in Book Recommendations:

Song for Arbonne

Tigana and the ending to The Lions of Al-Rassan broke me. Guy Gavriel Kay is one of those authors who really knows how to get under your skin and make you care... then the motherfucker does something horrible to these fictional characters and I can't even.

@tempest Yeah, that was a great series too.

Have you tried the Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron? Another favorite of mine - fantasy once again, humanity is fighting a losing war with nature - and they're losing, badly. The forests are reclaiming the world, creatures of the Wild are pushing civilisation back into their castles... very cool, occasionally grimdark stuff. Excellent depictions of battles, too.

Oh also! The Broken Empire series is currently in its third trilogy - but they can be read mostly in any order since they're about different characters. That's the most underrated stuff most people should know about since the author is crazy creative - there are so many ideas and wacky notions in there, from characters whose minds are getting read locking the memories of their own plans into boxes so they can't be stolen by their enemies, a reality cracked by nuclear explosions in the past besieged by horrors trying to break in, super-intelligent rogue AIs attempting to hijack control of the world... and it's fantasy. The protagonists are fighting back with swords and bows.

@olsson Opinions on that vary (but I don't want to spoil why here), but it doesn't matter too much because Patrick Rothfuss is engaged in a game of chicken with George R.R. Martin about who publishes their next book last, and they both refuse to lose.