Fun little tidbit to tighten your trolling knickers: The finance minister of Israel said they intend to “entirely destroy” Gaza. They are doing this by raining fire upon it, from the White Phosphorus attacks going years before October 7th, to bombing hospitals and schools, and burning aid convoys and covering the ashes with sand so they don’t have to look at their crimes.

Did you know that we have a word in the English language (and most others with Greek roots) that means, literally, “to entirely destroy by fire”?

That’s right, the word is fucking “Holocaust”.

Oh, no, the only ones I haven’t read yet are ghostwritten and number9dream.

And I agree with the order notes. My very out-of-order sequence was Cloud Atlas (the movie introduced me to the book), then Slade House, Black Swan Green, Bone Clocks, Thousand Autumns, Utopia Avenue.

And I agree that reading the bone clocks before thousand autumns didn’t actually make Marinus and the Anchorites make less sense without Enomoto and Dejima for context.

However, if I had read Utopia Avenue without any of the others (except Slade House and Black Swan Green), I think I would have had no idea what was going on. As it stands, the main reason I want to read ghostwritten is because I feel like I’m missing out on the context of “the Mongolian” from Utopia Avenue. I think that, in the same way that Cloud Atlas acted as a bridge into his world, Utopia Avenue was almost a culmination of his works thus far. I think that, without them, Jasper de Zoet’s character and, for that matter, the whole story, would have been nigh-incomprehensible to me.

Absolutely. Since I’m not really into the music scene, I thought I wouldn’t enjoy Utopia avenue, but I honestly think it’s my second-favorite of his works. I am about to start Ghostwritten, though will probably stop there, because I really don’t think number9dream is for me. I’m really not a fan of unsatisfying stories or bildungsroman, and I’ve read that n9d is both. What’s your take?

I enjoyed Black Swan Green, in spite of its bildungsroman plot, but It wasn’t my favourite (though it wasn’t my least-favourite, because that dubious honour has to go to Slade House, which I read before the Bone Clocks, and which I expected to have a MUCH better puzzlebox feel. I felt betrayed when I realized that the alchemical symbology and map of the house on the inside cover of my first-edition copy was all meaningless, especially when the climax was just a deus-ex-horologia before I knew who Marinus was)

• A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Cloud Atlas
• 1984

Especially after he explicitly tells Job that he is the progenitor of all evil and is proud of that fact.

You forgot to defend the conservative ideal of the Roman empire as the supreme fascist state! You need to talk about how the romans allowed the free market (with the guiding hand of daddy imperator) to determine where the money should go! Tell them that the money was used to build roads, not for trade, but to march their very manly soldiers on against the commies and the libs!

I hear there’s a well-known company that started taking tourists down to it a few years back! They were all over the press! Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

🦭💨

🦭💨

Have some more comfort

SHH!! Yes you can, Elon! recursively training your model on itself definitely has NO DOWNSIDES

Yes! We should all wholeheartedly support this GREAT INNOVATION! There is NOTHING THAT COULD GO WRONG, so this will be an excellent step to PERMANENTLY PERFECT this WONDERFUL AI.

I could get behind a Jekyll/Hyde scenario with magical girl transformations.

Nebula has some of the best educational content, especially ever since Tom Scott went on to other things. There are definitely some weird ones on there, as well as a couple which I’m convinced are right-wing shills, but by and large many of the best edutainment channels have collected over there, especially if you’re into writing/world building. HAI/Wendover, Minutephysics, legaleagle, extracredits, nilered, and hellofutureme are the big ones I’m aware of that are also popular on YouTube which publish their videos over on Nebula. It’s well worth it to know that you’re supporting them more directly, and no ads.

Also, dropout (nee collegehumor) is worth it.

Well, history tells us that it is very difficult for a country to do both at the same time. See Russia, Red October vs. WWI

Same, and I only use discord for d&d, though I don’t do Reddit at all.

You incorrectly assume that Trump’s sycophants are any better at reading comprehension than he is.

“Ah, yes, the official numbers are…”

<checks notes>

“Yes, ‘the bigliest numbers. More than ever. Yuge. So much.’… As you can see, we had a record turnout”

There are usually some good scenes or themes or characters that make some of the 99% worth a watch. The Netflix Avatar series was shit that didn’t understand the tone of the original, except for the scenes added for Lu-Ten’s Funeral and the 41st Division. These alone added enough for me to begrudgingly accept the existence of the live-action series. There are usually some things like that in most of the new ones I’ve seen.

When I read this, I thought you were being naive with the first half, thinking that any employer would give a shit, but then you gave me new hope by citing the grim rationale of the corpocrat. Thank you for this breath of fresh, cynical air. A much-needed, realist break from the glitter-bomb hope porn I expected