While searching the archives, I came to this comment of mine:
It's not so terrible, Megan. My brother was also a history major. He graduated in 1994, and went to work for Bear Sterns on Wall Street. There he started doing this neat thing where they would take all these mortgages and roll them up into a big bundle. Then they could slice the mortgages like this, and sell that piece to these bankers, and dice the mortgages like that, and sell that piece to other bankers! It was neat because everyone had a piece of all the mortgages and so nobody was at any risk.
and recently he tells me how they're doing that sort of thing again, except now everything has been commodified. He doesn't answer questions very well, so it was hard to pin down what he meant, but it sounded depressing.
There have been some updates, but still no one knows what's going on. The last thing I read about it was this.
That's some remarkable nerd restraint to not use the phrase "Dyson Sphere".
The simulation has been reprog---
Reality remains the same.
1: Ask him if they're still assuming the risks are uncorrelated.
I distinctly remember a drawing of a planet with a giant bridge. Maybe that's the part I dreamt.
If it was an orange-reddish bridge over some fog, it might have been San Francisco.
7: Was it a bridge that went from one part of the planet to another or a bridge from one planet to another planet?
9: Was it a bridge that went from one part of the planet to another part of the planet or a bridge from one planet to another planet?
That was the question I was trying to ask but I left out a few words.
It seems like the ExoMars lander failed in the final stage of its descent, alas. ESA doesn't have much luck with landers, it seems. The orbiter is working though, which is good news.
The plot summary in 13 is exactly what makes sci-fi unreadable.
13: You just saved me a googlin' to remember what book that was.
Science fiction does mostly suck. Even Dune was only good for maybe two books out of 47 or whatever.
11: The Mars Rover probably shot it down. Mars for Americans! USA! USA!
The link totally fails to do justice to the bridge in question, and to its place in the plot.
Having a bridge between planets sounds so weirdly unnecessary. Space Prince Edward Islanders arguing about the need for a fixed link. Use space ferries, eh.
18: TELL ME ABOUT IT.
Anyway, based on my experience of science, there's somebody with proof of life on other planets but they're too busy writing grant applications to finish the paper.
22: what if it were a tether or anchor? Maybe they're in love.
Stephen Baxter* also wrote a story** where two Jovian moons at the Lagrange points of another moon*** have like bronze age civilizations which build a mud-brick bridge between the moons for the sole purpose of waging mutually genocidal warfare, but I can't find it now. Anyway, Heebie is definitely a British SF author.
*I think.
**Or part of some bigger work.
***Or something.
I"m bummed that the occultation of the moon that happened last night was obscured by clouds; I was actually (almost) awake to see it, and we've had clear, gorgeous moon views for at least6 days straight.
Aren't clouds blocking the occultation of the moon just a meta-occultation?
(Full disclosure: I love cloudy because they make it easier to see my phone's screen when I'm outside and because I have to close the blinds in my office when the sun is bright so I lose my nice view.)
26: Stephen Baxter has some cool ideas when he's not doubling down on the sexism and racism.
27: I did a late night walk on Monday in Frick Park, or whenever the moon was fullest, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Painfully bright. Very un-Pittsburgh.
29: I haven't read anything of his in years, but I seem to remember him going out of his way to have female and POC characters in the Xeelee books. Which were like 30 years ago, so.
30: I read Manifold Time, which was amazing. Then Manifold Space shat upon its female lead in weird ways. I heard enough bad things about the third book, whose name I don't remember so let's go with Manifold Moon Genocide (seems to be a theme of his?), that I didn't even bother.
Manifold#3 was called Origin, and was astonishingly terrible. And also shat on its female (gorilla? I think?) lead in weird ways, now that I think of it. I thought Space was awesome too, if less so than Time, but don't know what I'd think now.
I'm not enormously fond of Stephen Baxter. He would be better if he could write.
29 seems a bit unfair. "Voyage" (what if NASA went to Mars in 1986) rang very true as a description of what problems female astronauts faced in the 1970s. "Titan" has a pair of lesbian heroines and an almost-stereotypically chauvinist/rapey white male astronaut as the villain.
Time had a female lead but I think she was an intelligent squid, and so may not count.
Setting: entire inner solar system intergirdled with supertech bridges/structures.
Paul McAuley is better. Almost every book is in a new setting and they're all great. "The Quiet War"/"Gardens of the Sun" probably best.
I can't read anyone who'd name a main character Bad Baby.
Time had a female lead but I think she was an intelligent squid, and so may not count.
Chauvinist.
I bet calamari tastes better from intelligent squid than regular ones. The way pork tastes better than poultry because pigs are smarter than chickens.
32: Space did have some neat ideas; the human relations were my issue. In that sense he fits well into writing a certain kind of classic sci-fi.
I admit I haven't read any other of his books so I'm probably not being fair to his entire body of work, nor am I putting his older stuff in the proper historical frame.
There's a whole SciFi recommendation thread going on at CT right now. reading it made me realize that I read relatively little straight scifi these days. Most of the speculative fiction I read would fall more into the category of "weird" fiction or horror.
I didn't mean to move the conversation further away from the OP and Tabby's Star. So: the reason nobody's freaking out over it yet is because this isn't the first time we've seen something really, really weird out there that we couldn't fit into our existing models. The first pulsar was labeled LGM-1 for "little green men" in a ha ha of course not (please let it be) sort of way. It's exciting, but who knows.
dalriata, have you read the last of the Three-Body Problem books? I sort of only remembered there was a third a week or so ago and I figure I should get it soon, not that I do a ton of reading these days.
Most Baxter stories I can think of had a female lead/s, usually engineers/scientists/soldiers. He is a technically crummy writer though. I thought his best realized characters were all Silver Ghosts.
No! Crud, I forgot it was out. Or out soon? My problem is that all my favorite authors have sequels that have hit recently: finished up Obelisk Gate (great, surely going to be on the Hugo short list) and I'm reading Guy Gavriel Kay's latest book in his faux-early-modern Europe. Then it's onto either Ken Liu's sequel to his faux-Chinese epic or Tana French's latest Dublin Murder Squad book.
I'm curious where he's going to go with it. The first two books were so wonderfully different in theme and construction.
46: Something's wrong with me, I thought that was going to be a TVTropes link.
Here is a paper about stable polarization in γ-ray bursts. These are hugely energetic events, the bursts would destroy absolutely anything nearby. Stable polarization means a stable magnetic field, so the colossally violent explosion actually has a sustained internal structure-- think of a fountain instead of a volcano, except very much bigger and brighter.
http://rdcu.be/lBf5 for fulltext
Abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24305162
47: Out already, apparently! I don't have any SF going at the moment, but I'm also not really finishing any of the things I am reading. Oh well! And yeah, I can't think of any other trilogy where the bits stand alone so distinctly, at least going by the first two.
think of a fountain instead of a volcano, except very much bigger and brighter
A volcano is much better and brighter than a fountain.
If you're thirsty or flammable, a volcano isn't better than a fountain.
What if it's an ice volcano on Enceladus?
I object to the name. I think they should be called "space geysers."
Wasn't that a Clint Eastwood flick? Space Geezers or something.
That was called "Oldos in Space" in Australia.
If my geyser started spitting icecubes Words Would Be Had with my landlord.
"Words with Landlords" is the worst Facebook game.
I still need to read the second of the Three Body Problem! So don't worry, Thorn, you're not as behind as you could be.
I'm curious to hear what you think of the second Ken Liu book, dalriata. I really, really wanted to like the first, but I just never got into it.
61.1: Me too. I enjoyed the first, but haven't made it back to the series.
You two should read it! I bullied dalriata into emailing me about it when we'd both finished the second, so you're even off the hook for that. It's entirely different from the first but also both interesting and good, I though. Though also extremely ridiculous in some respects, which was true the first time around too.
From 1
"and recently he tells me how they're doing that sort of thing again, except now everything has been commodified. He doesn't answer questions very well, so it was hard to pin down what he meant, but it sounded depressing."
This is the best thing about modern humans, especially in large organizational or cooperative settings--the way they employ high-order rational thinking to overcome their previous errors and avoid repeating the inadvertent (or perhaps advertent) harms they may have caused.
I have a brother in-law who worked for a very large and very much still in the daily news Wall St bank. Coincidentally, he does not answer questions very well either. Maybe it's a requisite line on any Wall St CV. I can only assume that "everything has been commodified" means they've now created ways of tranche-ing and CDO'ing water, school children, and candy bars.
Anyway, I for one am interested in hearing more. heebie, maybe you could wade further into your brother's pool of inability to answer questions and report back what you learn sometime?
63: "bullied into" is Thorn code for providing a delightful conversation that gave me a lot to consider from a different perspective. I really appreciated it!
I'm taking a course on Coursera in derivatives pricing since financial math interests me. Haven't gotten to credit default swaps--mostly forwards, futures, and options so far--but it's clear how much willful ignorance had to be rampant during the financial collapse.
I have a question about technology transfer. NASA has been able to land spacecraft on Mars for decades. The Europeans are our allies, and we are at least able to collaborate with the Russians on space stuff. Why is it hard for ESA/Roscosmos to land on Mars? Can't they just hire the same people and copy the old designs? Are there military secrets used here?
Didn't NASA have quite a few fails at landing stuff on Mars?
I am of the impression that landing spacecraft on Mars is actually quite difficult. Probably there is all sorts of room for stuff go wrong, and usually when it does is in a novel way that hasn't gone wrong before. Its hard to protect against that.
64: I'll do my very best and report back.
65.1: This does not surprise me. I wish I had been bullied!
68: I'm going to violate the analogy ban and compare it to taking a commercial flight. There are many potential failure points. It's so safe now because of the many hundreds of thousands (millions? tens of millions?) of commercial flights we've had to work out the kinks in both engineering and processes. Now imagine how risky it'd be if we only had one every few years. And you were flying to Mars, not Atlanta, where the airport is significantly nicer.
Mars has better weather on the ground during the summer.
I gather Becky Chamber's sequel is also out but I have bought an awful lot of ebooks lately so I am holding off. (I picked up a lot of serious-ish SF when Gollancz had a sale but I am only in the mood for that type of thing once in a while.)
If you haven't read the first one it is really charming and pleasant. I would recommend it to Thorn - maybe to the rest of you too but I don't have as clear a picture of your possible tastes. Some signs of it being her first novel but forgivable.
Has anyone read The Goblin Emperor? for something a bit the same in feel but much more accomplished and with a very different setting.
76: The Goblin Emperor was good. If I'm remembering it correctly, what I liked was how much the protagonist was in over his head; in the beginning he really does come across as not having a clue what he's doing, even if he's a quick study (as he has to be, since Goblins have to be twice as good, etc.). Made him more relatable than if he'd been absolutely perfect in fighting the system.
70 is basically a list of NASA owning everyone else. USA!
In the end, I assume Gandalf stabbed him.
Thinking back on history and the exploration of the Americas, I think I can pinpoint why space exploration hasn't gotten very far along yet. The basic science seems to be there, but we've got no violent, greedy, Spaniards involved.
Getting back to the OP, the latest I read on this suggested that the source of the regular dimming is a huge (maybe even Yuge!) debris field, essentially a solar system sized ring of Saturn. Unfortunately I can't re-find the link. Maybe it was actually on paper! (But I can't find that either.)
As for Mars landers, the failures all fail for different reasons. That is, all happy landers are alike, and all unhappy landers are different. The previous ESA one (Beagle) landed safely but couldn't deploy its solar panels. It was finally found by a photo search, intact on the surface.
Do you know what I just really enjoyed? The Summer Dragon by Todd Lockwood. (I may have his first name wrong.) It was just lovely, with wonderful illustrations. (He's primarily an illustrator.)
I have the Becky Chambers' sequel (A Closed and Common Orbit) and am looking forward to it. I liked the first much better than I did The Goblin Emperor (I think I have previously registered my opinion on it here - nicely written, loved the characters, just felt like nooooooothing happened). In fact, I pretty much loved it, even if I can never quite remember the title - The Long Journey to a Small and Angry Planet?
The Long Journey to a Small and Angry Planet?
David Farenthold's campaign memoir.
I liked and reread Goblin Emperor until I saw it as a very accomplished hurt/comfort fix, which pretty well squicked my own squee.
"Fic", dammit, although the other applies when it works.
I think I read it around the same time as Baru Cormorant, which I probably liked more; I enjoyed the writing style and it serves as Wolf Hall-style competence porn. I know it was controversial when it came out (for good reasons) but I don't recall if it was discussed here.
True about Baru Cormorant. Not as much so as KJ Parker's novels, but not as depressing, either.
Guess whose OkCupid profile I just found?
89: I like 275/276 there:
Someone semi-notable recently said that the WaPo had overtaken the Times for the title of "bestest news thingy", can't remember who though.
Seems relevant now.
So Schiaparelli jettisoned its parachute too soon, and cut off its braking rockets too soon after that (not that it likely mattered at that point). A newly discovered failure mode!
TBH, so sad. I feel terrible for the project teams when these things don't work.
87: I don't think it really was discussed here. I mostly liked it, though it's plenty ridiculous.
It did amp the drama and betrayal up to eleven, often unnecessarily and in a pandering way (that understandably upset a lot of people). But I have solidly lower middlebrow tastes. How could I not love a story about a high level fantasy accountant? (I probably won't see the Ben Afflek movie because I suspect it won't be as interestingly boring as I'd like it to be.)
Ha. If you like the accountant-fantasy, try The Coin and the Dagger series by Daniel Abraham, if you haven't already. I did enjoy Baru as well, but would have personally taken it in a different direction if I had had the idea and written it. Because of course I'm such an accomplished writer.
Fantasy accounting is, like, an established (sub)genre?
I didn't realize that there were so many books where the protagonists are accountants (or bankers or merchants or magical derivatives traders or...), but it does come up fairly often in fantasy in general. For example, in the Guy Gavriel Kay book I'm reading, Children of Earth and Sky, some of the characters come from pastiches of early modern Venice and Dubrovnik; unsurprisingly, they're all about them golden details.
If you're interested in world building and want to make it make at least a little sense, you need to consider the economics. Worlds that don't have sensible economics feel less real, same as if they didn't have sensible politics. Or at least they're dimensions on which an author is asking their readers to suspend disbelief on.
I think what I'm really saying is that I have a copy of Civilization VI laying on this table that I'm dying to play, but I promised I wouldn't open it until my wife comes home tonight. (Grand strategy games are fantasy world narrative generators.) She's become the family Civ fanatic and deserves the first go at it.
And please report back on what you think of Civ VI! I haven't played a Civ game in years, but I did enjoy Civ III back in the day and might be interested in getting back into it.
There's a bit of fantasy accounting in The Lies of Locke Lamora series, too, come to think of it. I totally didn't think of Max Gladstone, but that recommendation is thirded to the max. Great stuff.
Worlds that don't have sensible economics feel less real, same as if they didn't have sensible politics.
Unreal world, this, that we live in.
I assume everybody has read Charlie Stross' Merchant Princes series, economic SF par excellence. If not, rectify the omission immediately.
I hear bad things about that series, and it's insanely long. And I'm kind of tired of Stross throwing anvils at my head anyway.
Like all long series, it outlives its usefulness, but the early ones are tremendous fun, almost as if the pulps had been written by someone with a good command of English.
I'm not sure if you're dissing the pulps or the Stross there.
Are you saying he doesn't have the best words?
His thesaurus is fine, his style guide lacking.
|| Oh Lord, stuck in Miami again... |>
Be careful of mosquitoes and Pitbull.
Although it looks like I'm about to go be stuck in Fort Lauderdale for a while. What is there to do in Fort Lauderdale outside of Spring Break season?
Ponder the inevitability of death, eat carbs.
It works better sitting in uncomfortable chairs.
If you were stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again, somebody might offer you kr750,000.
I'm on the train to Fort Lauderdale. South Florida west of 95 is a desolate wasteland.
Soon no passing traveler's gaze will ever be offended by it again.
Speaking of lost wastelands, is anyone trying Nanowrimo this year? I've silently flaked on it for about 5 years running, and was thinking it might be nicer to flake with company this time.
I'll flake with you Mossy. Been thinking of writing something about my experiences here.
Better today actually. Like I might stick around. But now I have this super rich guy who wants me to work for him. But the base offer could be a lot better. And would probably have to be in order to make it work. I think he wants to keep me a little hungry to go out and sell his inventory (and if it sold, I'd be very well off indeed).
Going to fly to see Chani this weekend.
Having "Map Pimp" business cards might help.
105: On my list but I haven't gotten to it yet!
124: Sounds like you're in a pretty good negotiating position regardless of whether you decide to stay or go.
124: It sounds like you might be turning into Johnny Depp's character from "The Ninth Gate". If the super rich guy's name is Boris Balkan, you should probably turn the offer down.
OT: Making French Onion soup and Tyler Florence is fucking with me. First he says a cup of wine is about half a bottle then he says I should dump the wine on the onions and cook until they are "dry". They aren't getting dry.
If it only takes ten minutes to cook away the "raw" taste in flour, why don't they do that at the mill before they ship it?
It worked. I wonder if it would be good if I added ham?
You know, I'm sympathetic to the need for a thorough security screening prior to boarding an airplane. But the anal probe seemed like a bit much.
I think they were screening to make sure no-one had a rogue Samsung Galaxy 7.
A Galaxy Note 7 is a bit big for that , no? Unless your secretly goatse.
And please report back on what you think of Civ VI! I haven't played a Civ game in years, but I did enjoy Civ III back in the day and might be interested in getting back into it.
So far, I'm liking it more than Civ V, but I'm still trying to get my ahead around the new mechanics and the rather obtuse UI (Civ V's UI was really good, this one feels a bit incoherent and doesn't have enough tooltips). It's certainly the biggest conceptual departure for the series since CTP.
137: I only played it for about an hour. The first thing I noticed was that barbarians are hella stronger. Which I like: it forces your early efforts to be internal, strengthening your first few cities and defining a strategy more interesting than rushing your neighbor.
I don't think I like the art style/design as much; I agree that Civ V's UI was really good (with a few minor exceptions), and it also had a wonderfully art style. This is more cartoonish but not consistently so--it's weird to mix cartoony Teddy Roosevelt with serious serifed fonts.
I like the idea of placing districts outside your cities--should make them feel more unique--but I don't understand the effects of it yet.
Teo, if you haven't played since III, expect a lot of changes. The most obvious ones are spatial--hexes instead of squares, and you can only have one military unit per tile. In that sense it feels a lot more like a board game. There are more ways to interact besides combat: control of city states (minor civilizations), spreading religion, cultural supremacy (they started doing that in 3 but it wasn't really fleshed out yet).
s/wonderfully art style/wonderfully consistent art style/ (art deco)
Civ V was horribly slow on my desktop machine. I think they overdid the graphics at the cost of processor speed. Either that or my computer is too old.
I hear a lot of people making that comment about barbarians, but I can't say they felt any stronger in my one game so far (which is on whatever easy difficulty the quick game option chooses for you - Prince maybe?).
140: If Civ V was slow, Civ VI definitely will be. Turn lengths seem to be unreasonably long in the early game, though thankfully they haven't gotten much longer later on.
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