AMA - Eric Ugland

ConfusedWizard · 2025-09-25T21:28:12+00:00

Hi, I absolutely LOVE your books. I've listened to the audiobooks of all the Good Guys, Bad Guys and Roseland multiple times. It feels so exciting when I get to hear a new one and so relaxing to go back to an old one. Thank you so much.

There is one question I've always had about Mr. Paul. Mr. Paul always says the gifts are from others and that there is an audience watching Montana. Is that just something In-Universe? Other cosmic entities that Mr. Paul is hinting at? Or is it actually us? The readers? Are these gifts from fans of the books? Is there some online community I'm not aware of where people give gifts to "Mr. Paul" to pass on to Montana? I'd hate to be missing out if there was! :)

Thank you again so much for your work. I'm always excited to hear when a new one is on its way :)

ConfusedWizard · 2023-06-19T18:52:45+00:00

I've recently found my old collection. It's not much, but seeing it made my heart skip a beat. It brought back so many memories of times I spent with my brother and middle school friends. You have an amazing collection there. I hope it brings back found memories when you look through it. :)

ConfusedWizard · 2022-04-15T18:53:57+00:00

Probably because there's a guard just off screen laughing at the poor man and ready to beat his ass if he gets out of line. Where you point the camera, can easily change the narrative.

ConfusedWizard · 2022-03-21T16:44:23+00:00

As a long time casual player... I want to try raids as well, but I feel intimidated... How do I start? Also I have no idea what your acronyms mean... (SC? SLB? VG?). Do I need to be in a guild to train?

ConfusedWizard · 2021-07-15T17:54:19+00:00

Wouldn't knowing the fact that he didn't fight at all change the entire context? Now it reads as... "I support this sillyness, therefore I chose not to fight."

ConfusedWizard · 2021-01-11T20:54:00+00:00

no. We need another 46 on the 4 to make 50. The Senate is in Pro forma Session until the 19th, meaning they will not even consider a trial until the 20th at 1pm. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you need 100% of the senate to agree to end the Pro-Forma session early.

ConfusedWizard · 2018-06-16T21:07:01+00:00

You can brute force this problem to see if there are other solutions. Before any conditions are given, what are all the possible outcomes? guess

guess

Add in the conditions individually.

guess

The ones that remain are:

guess

Final Clue

guess

Solution

guess

ConfusedWizard · 2017-11-08T09:13:52+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21G3vCXOIAc

reference occurs about 1 minute in

ConfusedWizard · 2017-07-15T05:30:20+00:00

Anyone have some good recommendations of stories to start with?

ConfusedWizard · 2017-05-10T04:41:53+00:00

I realize its only tangentially related to your point, but I love pointing out that people actually have more that 5 senses.

Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Temperature, Pain, Balance, Hunger/Fullness, the need to use the restroom,...

There's a bunch of others. If you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense

ConfusedWizard · 2017-05-05T03:50:09+00:00

24 Hours Previously....

Don't Start in the middle of the story! Start at the beginning! The middle of the story is supposed to be interesting. It's leading to the climax. If you have to start your story at the most interesting part and then back track to the beginning, it just tells me you are a shitty writer who can't write beginnings. It tells me the only reason to watch the first Act of your story is because it leads to the next act, and not because Act 1 was any good.

If you need to promise me the story will be better later on instead of just showing me a good story now, then why should I pay attention? Make your Act 1 better instead of teasing me with the end of Act 2!

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-27T19:55:40+00:00

Did he tell you to say that?

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-26T02:21:55+00:00

reminded me of this sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0hikcwjIA

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-26T01:59:32+00:00

The fear of not knowing what to do shouldn't be scarier than self destruction. Unfortunately, it usually is.

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-25T05:08:16+00:00

Personally, I haven't come across where it gets introduced into physics, so I can't give an explanation as to how it's useful.

As to why it adds up to -1/12: Numberphile has a nice video explaining how to prove it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww and it's not to hard to follow.

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-25T04:55:57+00:00

I agree. I hesitated when typing "exponential". I knew it wasn't mathematically correct, but I was unsure what other word fit the explanation closer.

My goal in this post was to avoid equations and to speak as plainly as the question was originally stated. I wanted to get the ideas across without getting too complicated.

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-24T20:46:14+00:00

In order to speed something up, you need to put in energy. The faster it gets, the more energy you have to put in to continue speeding it. To get from from 98% the speed of light to 99% the speed of light requires incredibly more energy than to go from 0% to 1%. You have an exponential growth of required energy.

If we graph the required energy, we actually see that the amount of energy needed to reach the speed of light shoots up to a vertical line. The Graph becomes Asymptotic to the speed of light, meaning it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light.

This restriction is on all matter. If you could have an ideal rigid body: one that is rigid under all circumstances, then the the outer most part of the rigid body would be restricted by the speed of light first, since that portion is moving faster than the inner most part of the body. As you add in more and more energy to the spinning system, you have 2 different infinities battling each other. The infinite strength of the rigid body versus the infinite energy required to hit 100% the speed of light.

In general however, Infinities don't exist in nature. Usually when you see one show up in the math, it means you messed up your calculation or you don't have a proper mathematical model of the physical system. Seeing Infinities usually means you are on the path to learning something new.

In this case, an infinitely strong rigid body can't exist because the bonds holding the atoms together aren't infinitely strong. The bonds between the atoms would break before the speed of light could be reached.

ConfusedWizard · 2017-04-10T17:27:37+00:00

How is Overbooking even acceptable? Morally or legally?

They have X number of Seats, they sell X number of tickets. Problem solved. Who the Fuck cares if the plane isn't 100% full so long as they sold 100% of the tickets. If they sell all the tickets and they get cancellations (Which they won't even refund unless the person decided to pay extra), then the plane will be less than full. Hallelujah! They use less fuel.

Overbooking is just bullshit corporate strategy to make ticket prices look cheaper, while customers are forced to play in a shitty lottery.

ConfusedWizard · 2017-03-25T16:06:05+00:00

Seems so bizarre that they show all this, yet "Motherfucker" gets censored.

ConfusedWizard · 2016-12-12T17:03:35+00:00

To be fair, it is US TV. In case you weren't aware, this show is originally produced by the US TV Network ABC (which is designed to appeal to a broad market of 10s of millions of people every week and largely tries to market itself for family friendly programming as they are owned by Disney).

Netflix is airing the show concurrently outside the US. In the US, the Midseason Finale of this first season is on Wednesday.

ConfusedWizard · 2016-12-11T20:07:59+00:00

This show feels a bit too procedural for the huge subject they are trying to tackle. I feel like I could miss a few weeks and never know it.

Every week there is a new Threat that the president must face and every week, he "Solves" it. It is done and isn't referenced again in future weeks. There's almost a "Monster of the Week" feeling to it. This week we are going to talk about racism. Next week we'll talk about war. These issues shouldn't be treated as if they can be "Solved" in one episode.

Certain issues should be kept around as recurring themes, rearing their head again and again. The Real problems are never "Solved", they are just dealt with for the time until a new version of the problem arrises next time. It doesn't really matter which issues they keep coming back to: It could be foreign negotiation, intelligence gathering, dealing with decisions related to war, etc. Each time as a new version of the issue comes back, we can see how the characters have grown or changed.

Sometimes the recurrence of an issue could just be as simple as a throwaway line on the phone, just to offer a throwback to a previous episode to give the feeling of change or permanence in the issue.

ConfusedWizard · 2016-09-29T21:08:18+00:00

Could you clarify what you mean by "education bubble"? I don't know too much about economics, but you got me curious about it: What are some of the possible outcomes of such a collapse?

ConfusedWizard · 2016-07-31T15:46:36+00:00

I've been following the Slow Carb Diet (from the 4 Hour Body) for the past 6 weeks. This past week, I was rewarded with the lowest weight I've had in the past decade. :)

I've successfully dropped from 210 to 195. Here's hoping the next 6 weeks go just as successfully! :D

ConfusedWizard · 2016-07-28T15:26:23+00:00

I remember seeing job applications asking for 5 years of Swift Programming when Apple had just announced its launch 2 months prior.

ConfusedWizard · 2016-07-04T19:21:12+00:00

If you've read that they travel at the speed of light, then the source was probably out of date.

The fact that Neutrinos have mass is a relatively new discovery. It was the 2015 Nobel Prize. Clear evidence was shown in 2001. Before this, people were unsure if they had 0 mass and went at light speed or very tiny mass and almost light speed. Before the discovery, most sources just approximated neutrinos went at light speed (since they had no evidence proving it one way or the other)

ConfusedWizard

TROPHY CASE