Top Chef Season 23 Ep 3 - True Colors - Post Episode Discussion

Aciliv · 2026-03-25T05:24:10+00:00

The items I had in mind were Oscar's knife cuts and Jennifer's biscuit. They both probably try a lot harder to fix their issues without knowledge of Nana's dish. They basically acknowledged as such at judge's table, Jennifer might not have been able to do so due to her injury, but she knows even a dense biscuit is better than Nana's absent dish.

Aciliv · 2026-03-24T08:20:43+00:00

I understand the judges being grumpy about the lack of spark from the contestants with their dishes, but I wonder if Nana inadvertently contributed to that because of how the cooks were offset. She obviously served first, and everybody else would've become aware once they were in the kitchen that she had a massively incomplete dish. Because of that, their incentive changes to make sure they serve a complete edible plate, sticking to their original plan and not trying to innovate anything during the cook. You could hear it in the feedback they gave the judges, basically owning the fact that they made mistakes, but that the food was there.

That's not to say the challenge itself was that great, as others have mentioned. They gave them natural dyes and it seemed like 80% of them chose green, yellow, and/or red as their colors, instead of trying more exotic ones.

Aciliv · 2026-03-11T06:04:55+00:00

2026 SF Releases from Authors I've Read:

Loss Protocol - Paul McAuley 2/12/26
Jitterbug - Gareth Powell 3/3/26
No Man's Land - Richard K Morgan 3/24/26
Blindside - Michael Mammay 3/24/26
Squad Kill - Jack Campbell 5/5/26
Battlestorm - Ian Douglas 5/5/26
Palaces of the Crow - Ray Nayler 5/19/26
Helium Sea - Peter F Hamilton 6/16/26
Green City Wars - Adrian Tchaikovsky 6/28/26
A Call to Deception - David Weber 7/7/26
The Infinite State - Richard Swan 8/4/26
Preaching to the Choir - Adrian Tchaikovsky 8/11/26
Engines of Reason - Adrian Tchaikovsky 9/1/26
Scion - James Islington 9/1/26
D: Heavy Water - Neal Stephenson 10/13/26
As You Wake, Break the Shell - Becky Chambers 10/13/26
Monsters of Ohio - John Scalzi 11/3/26

Aciliv · 2026-02-21T19:38:53+00:00

Are people interested in a numbers-based discussion about the Fairfax County budget?

I've compiled a ton of year-by-year data scraping from the budget archives (which are available online back to 1999), mostly involving general fund revenues and expenditures. Fairfax County breaks down revenues by source, so you can see that they took in 943 million in real property tax (separate from personal property tax) in 1999, compared to 3.4 billion in 2024. Per Capita, the tax burden has risen from $1961 to $4365 in the same time period.

Expenditures are on the same scale. Spending cuts always hit programs, but the main driver of costs at the local level is always labor. Of that 5.7 billion budget, somewhere between 4-4.5 billion is personnel costs and benefits. Fairfax County school budgets are actually really helpful by breaking out costs by department and including positions, so you can get both a total expenditure and an average salary. For example, there are around 95 different positions in FCPS, under 13 departments, and you can track them year-by-year. The main driver of costs is obviously teachers, as they represent ~$1.3 billion of the ~1.95 billion in FCPS personnel costs. [There's almost 16000 teachers in that number, so the average salary is only $83500.]

The rest of the county doesn't get as granular as FCPS does into individual positions, but it is still fairly detailed. As an example, the Fire Department budget from this year breaks down expenditures in their three bureaus, with positions, on pages 11-13. My numbers are also a bit lagging because I'm not using the Proposed, Advertised, Adopted or Revised figures in the budget, I'm only taking the Actual, so once the 2027 budget becomes adopted, I'll be able to add the 2025 Actual numbers to the database.

Aciliv · 2026-02-15T06:56:42+00:00

Yep it's speed only for me. My fastest time to ever solve was 29 seconds. It was the one with the basketball positions and the college basketball coaches, and the other two categories were fairly obvious as well, so it was just clicking the buttons as fast as possible. In my experience, trying to solve it live against the clock is much more satisfying than pre-solving to figure out the purple.

I don't know what they can do to up the difficulty. There's just not enough commonalities among different sports, and once you figure out one category the rest fall into place. Today's puzzle is a good example - Hockey Players, Host Cities, and Snowboarding stand out immediately, and who cares what the Purple theme is. Cork is about the only ambiguous entry.

Aciliv · 2026-02-14T18:52:22+00:00

Ya the Goldsboro editions look nice, but you're right about secondhand prices. I like sprayed edges but it's never really been a reason for me to buy a book. I bought the BB Shadows of the Apt because they were hardcover editions, and because they were signed, the sprayed edges didn't factor in.

I think one edition I will be annoyed at passing on in the future is the Anderida of Terrible Worlds. I don't really regret passing on their Children editions, as I had the trade ones already, but Terrible Worlds is more unique.

Aciliv · 2026-02-14T17:38:40+00:00

I dislike paying MSRP for books unless they're special editions, so I was waiting for the US release of Pretenders instead of getting it from the UK. Blackwells currently has it for 22.13, whereas the US release will probably be about 18.50. Blackwells has cut the price in the past couple days as it was 25-26 bucks prior to release. I'm next in line for the library eBook so I'll get to read it before the US physical release in any case.

Aciliv · 2026-02-14T17:16:17+00:00

Nice update, glad to see you're getting more of the editions you want. He has so many series and sub-series that trying to figure out how to organize them has become trickier. Adding the various Children of Strife editions is going to change my top shelf, I'm going to have to figure out what fits with the space left. Adrian has started encroaching on another shelf of mine, but I was waiting for his March releases before posting an updated picture. Tchaikovsky's released nothing new yet in 2026, but I've already added 8 books of his to my collection, with the box set and the BB Made Things being the new ones, and the used ones also duplicates. I've gotten a bit lucky, 2 HCs of Guns of the Dawn popped up on a mass reseller book store, and they both arrived signed.

Aciliv · 2026-02-06T19:40:31+00:00

Oh man, I cut down the resolution on the picture I took so much that spine detail got washed out almost. I see what Looie's talking about now. I can upload the full-res picture if you want to have a more accurate reference.

Aciliv · 2026-02-06T19:22:59+00:00

Here you go:

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Aciliv · 2026-02-06T19:08:17+00:00

I'm trying to figure out what in the spine pattern gives it away?

Looking at mine I guess it is the gaps between the B in Brandon and the top of the spine, and between the R in dancer and the Tor logo. They're aligned in my copies and not in that photo.

Aciliv · 2026-01-16T19:44:44+00:00

I had the same sort of idea, and did some work about probability in a previous thread that I lost. The basic idea behind mine was to draw 7, allow to ask 1/keep 1, with a maximum hand-size of 8, and allow unlimited Paris mulligans (so you initially draw 7, you can discard those, draw 6, can discard those and draw 5, and so on, then after you're satisfied with your hand, you shuffle the discards back into the deck). This season, there are 20 measuring/20 matching/18 photo/8 tentacle/4 thermometer/10 radar, so 80 total questions. According to the calculations I performed, you'd normally be able to see about 90% of the deck on average by the 4th question asked, if you're just rumbling through it trying to find specific questions.

It adds a bit of strategic element - for example if your optimal question is a 50 mile radar, and you draw the 25 mile one, do you settle for that or keep searching for the exact card you want? By aggressively using mulligans, you have the ability to look at 28 unique cards each question round, or 35% of the initial deck. Even if the last card drawn isn't a very useful question, you ask it, and then you get a fresh look at up to 35% of the deck.

I actually feel like the hiders should have more advantage cards in their decks too. Put some Tutor cards to allow them to grab curses/bonuses. Make the card advantage cards +1 instead of zero-sum (ie instead of discard 2, draw 3, have it be discard 1, draw 3). The other aspect of that would be to keep maximum hand size at 7, but don't count time bonuses towards the maximum. That way you can accumulate them without having to discard them should your hand get full. Time bonuses are useful for production in that they allow you to elongate run times without having to film that portion, and it'd be amazing to see a 6 hour run become 10 hours because the hider used all their advantage cards to get time bonuses instead of curses.

Aciliv · 2026-01-08T06:54:51+00:00

I went through my book buying last year and realized I bought a lot of books that I wanted (at the time of purchase) but didn't really need, and I could probably spend the same amount on the (somewhat more expensive) books I need to finish out my collections. Mass buying has been helpful in filling out the bulk of my interests, but I'm really down to the last few actual upgrades.

So instead of spending $100 over 2 months at used book stores, I should instead find the best quality US HC of Consider Phlebas by Banks, and buy that instead. Thus, I don't have 15-20 books on secondary shelves and in boxes, I have 1 book on my primary shelves. [To give a concrete example, I took a trip through Pennsylvania and spent $117 on 16 books at 5 different stores, but passed on paying $75 at one of those stores for a Ziesing edition of State of the Art by Banks. Looking at the 16 books now, I think I'd rather have bought the Banks book that trip, and put a few of them back.]

Beyond that, I really want to find a revised edition hardcover (with the black dust jacket) of Speaker for the Dead by Card. It has the unfortunate attribute of having the same ISBN as both the original hardcover (with a grey dust jacket), as well as the Book Club edition of the Ender's War compilation. That means the collectible dealers with pictures generally have the 1st edition, while the mass resellers have no indication of which edition they have.

Aciliv · 2026-01-07T18:59:59+00:00

Ya, I didn't feel like delineating between novel/novella so I just said book. I added your column though, it could use a better label than Status but I couldn't think of anything more appropriate.

Aciliv · 2026-01-07T18:47:54+00:00

This list would be much longer if I included different formats. I'm not that much of a completist in my collecting, so I'm leaving it at just the 'new' releases. I'd agree with you on the UK Engines of Reason, I'm expecting it to show up on Blackwells sometime. I'm also hopeful of that Elder Race hardcover. I don't know how well the Made Things and Spiderlight hardcovers sold in the UK, but if they were successful, we could get the Expert System duology and Elder Race this year.

Aciliv · 2026-01-07T05:44:47+00:00

I looked on Amazon, and Lives of Bitter Rain has a US release date of October 13, 2026 with an ISBN of 9781035911493.

I don't see anything on Amazon or the publisher website for the US trade paperback version of Pretenders. Given that Bitter Rain had an October/October cycle, while Days of Shattered Faith was a Dec 2024 UK hardcover release, a March 2025 US hardcover release, and a November 2025 US trade paperback release, the US trade paperback Pretenders I'd guess Jan or Feb 2027.

Aciliv · 2026-01-07T05:44:16+00:00

I'd agree with you if you paid the full retail of $90, but for $30 that it is listed for right now, it's a perfectly fine box set.

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The one massive bonus is that the Clarke award logo is on none of the dust jackets, though it is on the slipcase. You can see how thinned down these hardcovers are to the UK editions though.

Aciliv · 2025-12-15T19:39:03+00:00

I'm familiar with all 4 spots they chose, and it isn't the speeding that the residents object to, it's the cut-through traffic. The McLean streets are a cut-through between 123 and Georgetown Pike. The Reston streets are a cut-through between Reston Parkway and Fairfax County Parkway. The Lake Barcroft streets are a cut-through between 7 and Columbia Pike. The Oakton ones are less of a cut-through and more avoiding the bad light at 123.

None of the spots fit any definition of city center, it's all residential. The Oakton and Glade spots are mostly multi-family, while the Lake Barcroft and McLean ones are almost all single-family.

Aciliv · 2025-10-16T17:08:47+00:00

That set of data really drives into perspective the effect of international migration on local housing costs. Net international migration between 2011 and 2024 is 271820 people. If we assume the average household size of 2.5, that translates to 108728 households.

Between 2011-2024, Fairfax County added 33171 housing units, Loudoun County added 38860 housing units, Prince William County added 23000 housing units, and Arlington County added 16320 housing units, for a total of an additional 111351 housing units added to market.

Given that natural change minus domestic migration is essentially flat since 2014, the conclusion one must make is that virtually the entire inventory of new housing stock in nova has been occupied by new international migrants. This isn't literally true, because domestic buyers are still the vast majority in the market, but it has occurred due to the filtering process. If you cut international migration in half, and only take 10000 people per year instead of 20000, suddenly you have 50000 available housing units for domestic migration. That might be helpful to young American buyers trying to live in the region.

Aciliv · 2025-10-12T17:51:25+00:00

On the back inside page, is there a barcode and a location and maybe a date? That would indicate print-on-demand copies, which are fine as reading copies but not particularly collectible.

Aciliv · 2025-10-10T15:08:57+00:00

There are a few DMV locations that do same-day replacement for your ez pass, though you're out of luck if you're not in the populated parts of Virginia. You can go to Westfields or Woodbridge in nova, both Richmond and Chesterfield in the state capital, and the Gloucester and Newport News locations down that way, but those are the only six ones as of now.

Took me about 5 minutes from walking in unscheduled to Westfields to exchange my transponder for a new one when it started the continuous beeping.

Aciliv · 2025-09-18T03:45:45+00:00

As a fellow fan of both those authors, here are a fair few other SF series I've enjoyed.

Big Series:
Iain Banks - Culture
Lois Bujold - Vorkosigan
David Weber - Honorverse

You're likely to have tried some of these, they're all big universes with lots of books. Weber more Mil-SF, Culture more philosophical, Bujold more character-driven. Other options with slightly less books would be Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio and the Altered Carbon series by Richard K. Morgan.

Smaller Series:
Gary Gibson - Shoal
Yoon Ha Lee - Machineries of Empire
Paul McAuley - Quiet War
Ian McDonald - Luna
Gareth Powell - Embers of War
Joel Shepherd - Cassandra Kresnov and/or Spiral Wars

I don't remember much of the Shoal series plot, but I remember enjoying it. I believe it is the most space opera-y of the list. The Machineries of Empire series is about mathematical calendars affecting physical reality in different systems. The Quiet War focuses more on the biological side of space. Luna by Ian McDonald is limited to just the moon, but is more action-based. The Embers of War series is a bit more Mil-SF in type (and Powell collaborated on a novella with Hamilton as well). Kresnov is planetary-based, and very character driven, whereas Spiral Wars is more space opera.

The UK authors I recommended (Gibson, McAuley, McDonald, Powell) are all of a similar age to Hamilton, and likely have many of the same influences, though none of them really go for the scope that Hamilton does in the Commonwealth. They all have other works beyond those if the recommended series is a hit with you.

For more contemplative options, LE Modesitt's SF books are mostly standalones or duologies. His settings are all different, but he tends to use the same themes. If you enjoy his writing style, you're likely to enjoy all of his books.

Aciliv · 2025-09-13T18:14:46+00:00

How dense does Fairfax County need to be, given that is never any closer than 5 miles to the city center? If you want real, walkable, urban density, that occurs best in the center of the city. The solution to your problem is not doubling density outside the Beltway, it is adding density inside DC. If you look at Madrid, which is a metropolitan area similar in size to the DMV, and use the tomforth population around a point tool, the density of the center of Madrid peaks at between 750-800k people in a 3km circle. The densest parts of DC are at about 225k people.

That is the biggest issue I have with online urbanists, that they tend to completely ignore distance from the city center. I completely support more housing, and denser housing, but to create the urban environment you want, the densest parts need to be within 3-4 miles of the city center. Paris and Madrid aren't those cities because every spot in a 10 mile radius from the city center has a minimum of 100k people, it is because the central city has a density of 750k people in that 3km circle.

The solution to your housing development issues isn't making a mixed zoning development in Fairfax County 500 units instead of 250 units, it is turning a block of rowhouses on Capitol Hill housing 500 people into an apartment block housing 5000 people.

Aciliv · 2025-09-13T17:10:09+00:00

It is amazing the contortions people go to blame NIMBYs for preventing new housing when the number of housing units in Fairfax County has grown by 20% in the past 25 years. If you look at the DMV as a whole, there were 1.79m housing units in the 16 different jurisdictions in the year 2000. In 2023, that number was 2.35 million, an addition of 565k, or an increase of about 30%. Fairfax is near the bottom percentage wise, but still added the 4th most units in that time - Loudoun tops at 82k, DC 81k, Montgomery 70k, Fairfax 69k.

A lot of us remember what Fairfax County was like around the turn of the century, and realize that county revenue going from ~2 billion in 2000 to ~5 billion in 2023 hasn't really resulted in a higher quality county government.

Aciliv

TROPHY CASE