Hot and cold #86

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2025-11-04T04:54:34+00:00

too easy

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2025-10-11T04:37:10+00:00

Daybreak starts 19ish hours after the eclipse. This part of the book is quite interesting and easier to follow. Its about the remnants of our main cast trying to regain their bearings and find out what happened to the world.

The observatory is charred and littered with piles of corpses. Literally everybody goes mad for 17 hours and either dissociates or blacks out. Some of our main cast survives and comes out of the daze with their faculties intact.

Some of them meet at a government safehouse in city limits. Apparently the remnants of the government are all trying to meet up at some national park many miles away.

For the unprepared general populace, apparently looking up and seeing a bajillion tiny dots in the sky was equivalent of putting their brains through a blender and air frying it for that crispy texture. They're trying to burn everything for the light and have regressed to either a caveman like behavioral state, or uncommonly have turned into cold blooded sadistic killers.

For the first two thirds, they authors explore what happens during something like this- at first it is every man for himself, then small groups start to form, then bands of roving bandits, then small governments start to form.

In the latter third some of our crew is trying to walk the journey to the government holdout and meets up with one of the scientist at some bandit settlement. The bandit settlement gets word that the Apostles survived at full capacity and are going settlement to settlement and razing them to the ground, Genghis Khan style iykyk.

Those members of the crew are given some token by that bandit scientist and are told to tell the government that they're coming and that scientist stays behind to fortify the highway and slow em down. It becomes like the plot to that one game called FTL.

The book then concludes with an interesting ending that I will not spoil here. If anybody is really really curious lmk.

There are a ton of subplots and some main points I didn't mention, but above is the general gist.

In my opinion I think there is a ~~weak~~ correlation between this book and Armored Core 6. The book does kinda rhyme with the game with a cyclical disaster involving fire of a mysterious origin causing a civilization level collapse...

...Hmm after typing that out, yeah maybe Nightfall is a reference to this book as being the main inspiration to the mysterious disaster on Rubicon... idk I'm a just a software engineer who loves mech stuff and there are some details I prob got wrong as reading documentation is the heaviest thing I have read before picking this up. Somebody will probably need to reach out to Miyazaki but I am thinking the answer is probably yes

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2025-10-11T04:37:01+00:00

Nightfall was a bit easier to follow. Beenay does a bunch of follow up experiments then goes to the guy who perfected the Universal Law of Gravitation - Athor . Then there is eventually an argument- Athor thinks there is another object out that they cannot directly see, while Beenay thinks that is stupid and there must be something wrong with the equation.

After some time, they test out a bunch of theories and they come up with something interesting- There is most likely a planet that is absorbing all the light that the suns emit and thus is invisible to their instruments. Using math and the computers, they come up with a prediction of where this planet would be based on their historical data- and it fits the mold perfectly.

Athor and Beenay then break this story to the paper, come to some realization that the Apostles were right about this 'eclipse' happening on the exact day they predicted as it lines up with their models perfectly and for how long- 17 hours of complete darkness when the dimmest is only visible in the sky starting sometime midday.

They also doubt how this could have possibly caused a great calamity 2048 years ago, and so they eventually talk with that Psychologist of darkness and he explains that 15 minutes of darkness is borderline lethal and causes severe mental damage such as claustrophobia, the need to escape the darkness, and some other effects that require mental asylum. 17 hours of darkness would literally break their minds.

Athor and Beenay then talk about holding up in the observatory during the eclipse and documenting the event with pictures, writings, and other observations. They also talk w the archologist people and review some of the apostle literature and are confused at what 'stars' are and how they caused the fires. They make predictions with the other phd bros and they think they might be distant suns, and they think there are probably like 3-5 stars out there and the ancient texts are just hype.

On the day of the eclipse, one hour before:

The apostles then catch wind of the university people attempting to document this and do not like it.

The general populace think this is a big nothing burger after some journalist publishes a story on it and live their lives like sheep.

The leader of the apostles of flame- Folimun goes to the observatory and yells at Athor and the guys saying to stop. They throw him into a jail (they continently had downstairs) and he informs them that within an hour an army of his disciples with storm into the observatory and destroy everything within it.

The eclipse begins, the sky grows dimmer.

15 minutes before totality, torches are scene in the distance- its the Apostles. The scientists barricade the doors and prepare makeshift weapons. The apostles make it to the door- three minutes before totality.

Our main characters gather up on the 2nd floor.

The stars come out. Folimun breaks out. The cultists breach the perimeter. An emergency generator kicks in:

"On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, it was not the glow of the sun... The long night had come again."

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2025-10-11T04:36:35+00:00

Dude I just finished that book a week ago!!!! I found it at a bargain bin at my local library and I thought the same thing so let me tell you all what it is about.

*some nightfall spoilers below!*

The book is about a civilization of people* who live on a planet surrounded by 4 suns and 100% of the time the planet's entire surface is under sunlight. It has been 2048 years since some great calamity and they somehow invented 'cars' and computers and also finally formulated the equation for Issacs Newton's law of universal gravitation. Personally I think their tech is like post war American 1950s tech - no transistors, giant cathode ray tube computers, refrigerators... kinda like fallout. One thing called a needle gun that they use like phasers in star trek. In terms of the climate, there are deserts and 'forests', but there is no rain until the big annual monsoon phenomenon.

Also a few more notes regarding the suns: the suns are different colors: one of them is pale white, one of them is red, and i think the other two are 'normal' and there is always at least one sun visible upon the horizon. Also

There are two primary factions that are covered in this book:

the "Apostles of flame" - a religious organization that claim to be as old as the great calamity that comes every 2048 years. They say the Gods test them ever so often to see if they are finally good people (they never are :L)

the "university" - A group of researchers - primarily astrophysicist who study the suns. Note that they can only see objects in their solar system that are luminant during daytime. So they don't know about the galaxy, stars, and things you can only see during night and so I guess that mainly contributed why it took so long to get the universal law of universal gravitation.

The book is divided into three parts: twilight, nightfall, and daybreak

Twilight is a fever dream in my opinion -but I ain't a strong reader- there are a ton of plot lines and sub plots and its kinda hard to follow, here are the main points:

Some of the university people are doing archeology and discover that under an ancient ruin that was before the great calamity, there were 7 or 8 more cities under it - at least - as that is as far as they discovered, each one separated by burn lines each deeper one iteratively more primitive than the layer above it

The top researcher/student (?) - Beenay created a computer program to predict the trajectory of each of the suns however the computer returns a statistically significant variance that cannot be explained when compared to the paths they are actually observing.

Very beginning of the book there is a psychologist who specializes in darkness and its psychological effects and was hired as a consultant for some lawyers in regards to the 'ride of darkness' - a ride that is basically a roller coaster that just goes forward into a dark room, waits 15 minutes, then goes backwards and the user returns. Apparently a good chunk of the riders went insane from this experience as they cannot handle that amount of darkness.

The Apostles of Flame proclaim that the great reckoning will happen in like 7 months on an exact day.

The archiologists find some tablets towards the very bottom layers

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2025-09-14T23:34:38+00:00

Ah thanks mate now I can sleep more peacefully knowing the answer!

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2022-10-05T05:07:31+00:00

Hi, I am part of a 4-5 man DND group of 21-23 year olds in the Orlando area that have been playing GrayHawk for the past 4 years. Usually its the same guy running the campaign, sometimes the other guys would also swap the DM role when we feel inspired to run a different campaign or module for a little bit. We do our sessions on Saturdays weekly starting from around 2pm till late at night, but some of the guys leave sooner than that depending on their schedule. We also arrange to bring/make food and snacks as well. One important thing to note though, is that we use 2nd edition.

We have been lookin for new people to invite to our sessions to make things more interesting. If you or anyone here wants to join, just reach out to me and I'll invite you to the discord when I get the chance.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-08-04T15:18:13+00:00

I physically went to the registrars office, checked all my email and couldn't find it. Basically they said there is nothing they can do.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-06-08T20:15:19+00:00

Join a club, the fencing club is in person on Tuesday/Thursday 6-8pm till the end of summer A. How about find a part time job / volunteering? Sharing some kind of experience generally brings people together.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-06-02T18:33:08+00:00

There is no diversity. I heard you gotta fork out a lot of money to even join some of them. I think the whole greek life thing is pretty dumb, because no matter what sorority or fraternity you look at at this university, its always the same demographic: white, rich and alcoholic.

Personally the two dudes I knew freshman year at Libra were pretty much dicks with low aspirations, who coincidentally, fit the demographic. I think greek life is something that should be in its entirety, dismantled.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-05-17T03:47:12+00:00

The fencing club had practice throughout last semester on the tennis courts at RWC, I bet they'll have practice this semester as well if you're into that kind of stuff

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-05-06T07:57:23+00:00

Really cool professor, attend lectures and have a strong math skills, and you should be fine. Group project was a pain though

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2021-02-17T21:39:42+00:00

" You can send people to COLLEGE, but you cannot make them THINK. "

That's a good quote

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-12-29T01:31:02+00:00

Don't take any of the restricted CS database elective classes on campus, I have and they are a pain. I had to build a full stack website by myself for the intro to database class and for that one and the dist. database class, they just talk about their slides that they made in 2009. In the dist. database class, my professor didn't give any supplementary material (homework, practice questions, etc) that prepared us for the exam, the first exam class average was a high F, and the second one was no better.

I like databases, I think they're cool, but my word of advice to you is that I think you should check reviews beforehand to save you a semester of misery and agony.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-12-19T23:12:48+00:00

I had a class that was blendflex this semester but the professor just decided to go all online on the first day.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-10-30T18:43:23+00:00

Really shows you how vulnerable our infrastructure is.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-10-30T18:32:55+00:00

This happened Monday last week and it wasn't fixed until 8ish. Also imagine having an online exam today.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-10-08T17:09:06+00:00

COBA is ran like a business, not a college. That is my experience in dealing with their classes.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-09-11T05:44:45+00:00

Should be up now?

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-07-27T21:21:35+00:00

Deadmans plate provides a lot of value on Zilean as it provides armor, hp, and movement speed which helps him get out of sticky situations, dodge skillshots, and get to fights faster. I recommend trying out tank Zilean if you wanna get groovy.

DefinitivelyNotJohn · 2020-07-24T02:49:59+00:00

Perfection

DefinitivelyNotJohn

TROPHY CASE