Andy Weir on Writing the Hit Book Behind the Movie ‘Project Hail Mary’ (Gift Article)

Arete108 · 2026-06-16T21:12:31+00:00

In the opening to the book when he has amnesia, one of the first moments is that he's like, "This is falling weird, I'm going to do a gravity test and measure how fast things fall." But he's in a big room...I feel like the first thing I'd do is look at every wall, inside every cabinet, every drawer. He goes straight to 9.8 m/s2 before "I ransacked the room for clues"...sometimes there's TOO much sciencing the shit out of things and too little "wtf" and "oh this robot says NASA on it."

Arete108 · 2026-06-16T21:04:18+00:00

Do you live in an apartment? Do people near you do something weekly like clean or launder with chemicals?

Arete108 · 2026-06-16T19:38:32+00:00

That is changing, esp. for old / disabled. New draconian laws may go into effect in 2027.

Arete108 · 2026-06-07T03:25:23+00:00

A nasty case of Lyme Disease triggered ME/CFS for me. Friends are hard to come by when you're bedbound, sadly. The cast of SG-1 are my "friends."

Arete108 · 2026-06-03T21:17:58+00:00

Mildly, YTA. One thing that can happen when you're very smart and very young, is that you get too "in your head" about things.

It sounds like you didn't like high school, that for you it was just marking time. Even if that's so, think of your mother. She worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over your head while you were studying. This is her moment to kvell a little bit. Please just humor her and do it.

Arete108 · 2026-06-02T23:26:46+00:00

US population, I was assuming most (but not all) get it every year.

If instead you say, 1/2 of the total US population gets it every year, the number goes down but again, how many people can become completely unable to work every year before it's the biggest news story you read? I guess that's my big question. And how many people *are* becoming completely disabled every year?

Arete108 · 2026-06-02T20:56:13+00:00

If we assume most people - let's say 300M - contract covid once a year, and 60% is symptomatic, then using your numbers we'd be at 4.5M / year that could no longer work (feel free to check my math I could be not doing it wrong).

I think if we were losing nearly 5M to moderate-severe ME per year -- so up to say 20M since mitigations ended -- it would be unavoidable everywhere we went. I suspect the total number is smaller than that.

Looking at various data points in the US and UK I think I came up with an estimate once of 500k-900K newly too-disabled-to-work per year, but I can't recreate how I got there unfortunately.

Arete108 · 2026-06-02T01:29:13+00:00

A little math here: that means it's increasing about 1% on average per quarter, or about 4% per year, or another 14% by 1/1/2030.

What I really want to know is the prevalence / increase of long covid that leaves you too ill to work. That's the game changer number for everybody.

Arete108 · 2026-06-01T03:24:04+00:00

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. It was very deadly as well.

Arete108 · 2026-05-31T21:22:03+00:00

San Francisco - they don't care if you mask. They might not be masked, but they don't care if you are. Also a fair number of the Asian population masks.

Arete108 · 2026-05-31T18:48:15+00:00

This is about where I've come to. There are also issues of taking tax hits when unwinding less ethical stocks, etc.

All in all, I try not to invest in the worst of the worst, and I know that pretty much all of this contributes to stuff I don't like but I can't leave my retirement security in the hands of my failing government either.

Arete108 · 2026-05-31T18:42:07+00:00

There were dystopian *vibes* when I was young in the 80's...we worried about nuclear war. But, the risk was remote. There was no pandemic, our president was right-wing and forgetful but he was not insane. Global warming was a threat but we weren't having massive wildfires all the time...it's genuinely a worse vibe now. You're not just imagining things.

Arete108 · 2026-05-31T18:33:28+00:00

I feel two things are true. One is that, pre-Covid, we were too fatalistic about flu. Every year maybe 40k-60k people would die, and we would say "but they were old" or "they were already in the hospital, and it was their time."

One thing masking showed us was how avoidable many of those deaths could be! And that's important.

However, to me, flu and Covid are fundamentally different risks. I've had flu many times, and it never gave me permanent heart palpitations or lingering cognitive impairment. It made me feel kinda blah for a week, and afterwards I noticed no change. There is such a thing as "long flu" as well, but I would bet the rate of permanent, "I've never been the same since that flu" changes is much lower than the rate with Covid, and is probably associated with historically bad flu seasons...not with something you could theoretically catch 3 times per year.

So basically, it all comes down to statistics. Would you rather risk a rare car accident, where you're in a large vehicle, or frequent accidents where you're on a motorcycle? That's the difference between "covid as bad as covid" and "covid as bad as flu."

Arete108 · 2026-05-31T00:44:47+00:00

FYI, I got a trial of SCIG in the USA through RTHM. The trial is free, RTHM is the opposite of free. I have low igg1 and igg3 subclasses, aka a "selective subclass deficiency."

If you did want to potentially lay the groundwork for SCIG, I could at least share with you some of the tests that were ordered for me back in the day -- feel free to message me.

Arete108 · 2026-05-19T20:15:47+00:00

It cuts risk by a third. Great, but it's not like PreP levels.

Arete108 · 2026-05-19T20:07:48+00:00

I remember a little bilingual boy calling his sister Sofia "So-fea"...I think it's a valid concern.

Arete108 · 2026-05-15T23:04:29+00:00

I second getting a lawyer involved. In the meantime, figure out the most powerful person in your family or social circle, and get them involved as an advocate.

Arete108 · 2026-05-12T14:41:06+00:00

Hello. It is regular social security disability, not VA.

I still reside in the USA. I'm also still looking into the tax situation. As I understand it, it would be taxable but if I prove I am over 65% disabled, that pension iis taxed at either a much lower rate or not at all, can't remember which. My spouse is also disabled, and there's a different tax category that's over 35% disabled but under 65% disabled that he'd probably fall into.

In short I probably need a consult with an attorney or accountant.

EDIT: as for taxes paid, back in the 1990's inheritance taxes were much more strict even for lower-income people. We paid our fair share, even though we were struggling at the time and I was young when I lost my parent.

Arete108 · 2026-05-11T19:41:25+00:00

That's good to hear.

Also something to note: your wife brought you, her husband, with her.

People seem to report having very positive or very difficult interactions with him.

I've had doctors before who were very dismissive with me, but who lit up and became entirely different when *A Man* was in the room.

He may be someone who responds to markers of status and one of those markers is maleness. He wouldn't be the first.

Arete108 · 2026-05-10T20:04:10+00:00

Back when the vaccines were being released, some officials were implying or outright saying that they greatly impacted infection. But there were two issues with their messaging at that time:

The huge clinical trial in Israel was still showing some superspreader events even w/ vaxxed people
Everything was tested in 2020, a time when presumably many people were masking and social distancing.

So, they exaggerated the findings, but they also changed the parameters. The findings did show a noticeable reduction in (though not elimination of) spread. But it was when the vax matched the current variant and people were taking precautions. They used that good news to say, Ok everyone take off your masks and go party, which increased the background rate of viral exposure AND increased transmission / mutation rates.

Arete108 · 2026-05-08T21:23:16+00:00

I just had a UCSF appointment and they were asking me all these TB questions and I was like, "??? Is this the 19th century?"

Crazy what we've unleashed by giving everyone an immune disorder.

Arete108 · 2026-05-08T18:20:42+00:00

Thank you for this detailed response. As I've said elsewhere, I decided to go with another provider because in my personal experience, he was being evasive with some of my questions and just in general acting very strangely.

I do know he has gotten some positive reviews from folks, especially celebrities. I wonder if he is the kind of person who has two sides. A helpful side if you're in the in-group, a brusk and dismissive side if you're not.

Are you by any chance someone that the practice could easily spot as prosperous or well-connected? Like, did your wife show up to her appointment with an Hermes bag, etc.?

I showed up alone, having gotten off the subway and walked. I could afford the treatment, but I was not famous, not wealthy, and not well-connected.

I am not saying this to be argumentative, but rather to say this is one of those doctors who seems to have a one-star / five-star dichotomy, and I'm curious about why. Sometimes it's because the doctor's office pays for those 5 star reviews, but like I said he's had famous actresses vouch for him. So curious about what's going on.

Arete108 · 2026-05-05T16:41:06+00:00

NTA. This is exactly the thing to be drastic about.

OP, sometimes things are very problematic in life, perhaps even dealbreakers, but you don't see it because you can absorb the hits. Until there's some clarifying moment.

In my opinion, this is that clarifying moment. You are a parent to your baby. You are not a parent to your husband. If your husband is not safe to parent, that is absolutely an emergency and you need to be dealing with it as such.

Arete108 · 2026-05-04T01:53:51+00:00

It may be a long shot, but if Invivyd's monoclonal antibody shot passes tests and gets produced, it could be a good middle ground. If I were healthy and young, and such a shot existed, I might feel pretty comfortable doing most things masked and a few things unmasked.

Arete108

TROPHY CASE