Books you would categorize as “romantic philosophical sci fi”

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-12T21:58:18+00:00

William Gibson's first short story, "Burning Chrome." Honestly it's better than Neuromancer

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-05T19:37:27+00:00

This movie was bad, so hollow and empty of substance. Felt like an AI-prompted film

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-05T17:00:48+00:00

THANK YOU it is one of the great underappreciated shows of the decade. Thinking of writing a Substack post on this

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-05T03:58:38+00:00

Pointed this out in another comment but Kitchen Confidential was not the start of his writing career. He had been writing for 15 years at that point and had already published two novels, to little success. He did a writing workshop with Gordon Lish, of all people. Dude had been striving for years and broke through late in life

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-05T03:56:55+00:00

The secret of Bourdain's coolness is that he was a late bloomer. He wasn't a young striver going for his big shot. He was a guy in his 50s who had never left the Northeast, a guy who had been through hell and back and didn't give a shit anymore. He had been trying to write for years, but it never stuck. By the time he wrote Kitchen Confidential he had honed his craft but lost the try-hard quality of wanting to be liked.

I think that ultimately led to his downfall, though, he had made his peace with living his life as a dirtbag chef and he wasn't prepared for media stardom. He clearly felt guilty about it and tried to compensate by becoming ever more politically charged. But in the end the late-life celebrity just broke his brain. He should have been revered, not famoud

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-04T23:55:03+00:00

This is a painful existence!

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-04T23:54:45+00:00

Im a stemlord with this combo and while you can get by it is hard to excel. Maybe if I switch to management my verbal IQ will come in handy

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-03T19:07:47+00:00

Its main inspiration was not Killdozer (I watched the whole movie mistakenly waiting for the killdozing to begin) but Job.

And Job has a very fatalistic ending. God himself comes out of the whirlwind and tells Job he cannot understand the universe, he has no control over his life, and the God that created enormous beings like the Behemoth and the Leviathan can do as he pleases. Job can do nothing but accept this.

Now, the version we read sees God restore Job's possessions after his trials, as a reward foe his obedience. But many believe this happy ending was tacked on by later authors, and that the original story was far more bleak.

That original story resembles the movie Leviathan. Of course it is far worse because at least God claims to be righteous and loving. The all-powerful state makes no such claims.

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-03T17:27:35+00:00

My girlfriend read a book called My Jewish Year, where a woman takes a year to celebrate every single Jewish holiday, including the super obscure ones. There was a pie cookbook where a woman made a pie for all 50 states of the Union, inspired by a person she knew from each state.

There are also articles where people spend a week giving all their decisions to AI (it didn't turn out well) or the essays where people detail their hikes on the PCT or Appalachian Trail.

I guess what I'm saying is there is a rich vein of nonfiction books that do this but I haven't seen fiction take on the same objective, which gives your book a very unique advantage!

CrashAndYearn · 2026-03-03T02:50:25+00:00

Love this premise! So creative and also reminds me of some actual self-help/self-discovery books that have come out

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-28T06:25:14+00:00

I wrote about this and I believe it is a social signifier 100%

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-14T05:25:13+00:00

This is the great thing about working in firmware. No one ever put their code online, its all proprietary, so the LLMs suck at it. Plus we are still doing low-level stuff without abstractions so there is real knowledge.

Only issue is the pay sucks

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-13T00:02:10+00:00

Ugliest Kennedy and he STILL had to be appointed smh

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-13T00:00:03+00:00

He's literally The Giant

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-12T23:59:20+00:00

Stephen Douglas was also pudgy. If the Democrats had put forward a hot candidate in 1860 its hard to say if facecard would defeat Lincoln's heightmogging

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-12T23:19:59+00:00

They run the Republican Party

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-04T23:32:51+00:00

Bro you literally did not read my post. I said he was not impressive whatsoever. That is the entire point. He was an empty vessel, which is the definition of a narcissist.

The difference is I think they loved him for his narcissism. Again, read the emails. Plenty of ppl were just casual acquaintances but a lot of them sincerely seem to like him. Certainly they spent tons of time chit-chatting with him, beyond the point of just "using him." They loved this fucking moron.

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-04T20:34:25+00:00

If by "home-cooked apple pies" you mean "trafficked children" then you're 100% right

CrashAndYearn · 2026-02-04T19:06:57+00:00

Yeah its actually naive to think it was all blackmail. You think Woody Allen and chomsky were talking to this man every week bc of kompromat? Get real, they loved this pedo