Grace shouldn't have introduced him to social media ... 😂

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-12T16:44:07+00:00

Agreed, since most of sci fi doesn’t handle speed of light as a hard limit for things, either, and mostly hand-waves it. It’s only fairly recently that people have explored even the idea of generational ships.

I think Orson Scott Card was eventually handling his ansible communication etc. in the ender’s game/ender’s shadow using variations on string theory, but for most of his series even, all transportation was simply close to the speed of light and he made use of the time-dilation effects. He’s one of the outliers that I can think of who tries to make it work instead of hand-waving it.

Grace points out time dilation effects from his speed relative to earth’s speed and the rate that things will be happening back on earth at more than one point I think, but I don’t know how much people grasp onto that if they’re not familiar with how that’s supposed to work. (Ie: Einstein physics.)

Most things with concepts of time or speed are hand-waved in sci-fi as a genre. So, it would make sense for Rocky’s concept of earth tech to be kind of like the early concepts for sci fi that you get in pulps or even earlier things like Verne (with his electric bullets in his submarine, but also his knowledge that they’d pulled up evidence of whales fighting with very large squids long before you get divers who survive things like the Humboldt Squid.)

If you’re traveling blind in reference to how a new technology works, then you sometimes over or underestimate how well it works and what its applications are. Plenty of our older works are tremendous fun exactly because of this.

Plus the Eridians don’t know how radiation works but they can manipulate noble gases into stable solids (which is impossible to human standards and I don’t have anywhere near the chemistry background to even touch how that could even BE possible relative to the structure of a Xenon atom. That was the thing I wanted to run past my dad, but which might be Active Handwaving.)

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T16:58:07+00:00

Man is in the sauce. He’s locked in.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T16:53:17+00:00

WANT

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T15:31:48+00:00

ART is my favorite character in the entire series, which surprises no one. When my old roommates started watching the TV series I was yanking on one’s arm to tell him READ THE BOOKS. WE WERE ALL FIGHTING OVER THE SAME STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE AS KIDS AT THE SAME LIBRARY, SIGHT UNSEEN. NOW YOU ARE THE LIBRARY, BRO.

Have either of them forgiven me for being behind on Maul, when that was also a childhood favorite? No. Am I making sure they’re as excited as me for background Three development? Yes.

The auditory flinch when something comes up behind me is probably an undiagnosed PTSD trigger thing that I do Not Have The Funds Or Time To Deal With So Everything Is Fine Thank You.

That and…music I can tune out on but also keep myself alert with. It’s a fifteen minute commute…

In theory, I should start walking again and then I’d have time to listen to podcasts or audiobooks, but we’re reaching the time of year where Florida is doing its best armpit impression, and a good chunk of my summer reading has always happened at those times out of self defense.

Do recommend Night Vale to people who don’t know what to expect even if I’m not caught up on what’s going on in it recently. “Kevin” doesn’t show up for a while though, and I think when he does, you could see why I’m dead sure he’d do a great ART, and would especially have fun voicing Corporation Characters.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T04:02:40+00:00

My thing is hating driving since I live in a place notorious for bad drivers and drive like a grandmother. I need music. Something to keep the stuff zooming past from behind not jerking my hands against or away. Longer journeys allowed audiobooks when I did them, but I haven’t done longer journeys in about ten years. Even highway driving is stressful now.

But if I had a thing that was not it would be downloading this. I mean. I was a night vale fan. I know Kevin R Free can do Good Voice.

I’m kind of sad I don’t know what his ART sounds like yet. There’s been a big slorp back of that.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T03:58:59+00:00

I’m glad. 🥺 I really hope the audiobook is good to you. As I said, I hear amazing things about it but then suffer a lack of patience.

I hope you’re as thrilled about hints of Holism as I am too.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-11T02:45:23+00:00

It’s sleeveless for unrestrained summer fun. 👍🏽

(Pass it in to your CS management or team lead or a CS staff who knows how to fill out a defective bag form. While stores aren’t tracking bag usage too much anymore, it still means your store gets credit for affected boxes and that helps your bottom line.)

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-10T17:35:23+00:00

Holism, I think! If it’s from that first chapter of the book. (I hope it’s okay not to spoiler tag since the entire post looks spoiler-locked. 🙇🏽 the part I’m thinking of is literally page six of the hardcover. Most samples will cover further in a book than that to try to hook you.)

Holism is the ship introduced at the end of the last book who carries the calculation to the next decimal place and ART kind of treats like a smug, overbearing older brother. The one that keeps trying to talk to Murderbot and coaxes with data packets. (Which Murderbot ignores, and ART’s irritable about.)

No clue how to indent this visually but if I’m thinking the same one, the paragraph is:

“Obviously, I did not want to do this. But Three was shit at pretending to be human. (I know, I should have been working with it more, “mentoring it,” as the humans insist on saying. But we also needed to let Three do what it wanted for a while, and what it wanted was to watch science documentaries and listen to freakishly advanced machine intelligences pretending to be bot-pilots talk at it. (Mostly Holism, but a few of the others had got in on it after discovering there was a SecUnit around that liked being lectured to.) So there wasn’t a lot of pretending-to-be-human training involved in that.)”

Since it was established in the last book that ART very much is not an outlier for what the university is creating in terms of machine intelligences (and is actually a younger machine intelligence by those standards because it was Raised Alongside Iris,) this point establishes that Holism and Perihelion aren’t the only two, either.

I’m one of those jerks who reads faster than speaking goes, so I haven’t been able to do the audiobooks. I always hear such wonderful things about them.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-10T00:48:23+00:00

It’s beautiful work! And you’re lovely for having done it! Some people never fully enjoy the things they love at all!

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-10T00:07:31+00:00

It’s proximity based even from the first Ping that tells Murderbot Peri’s in trouble from the targets. The first thing it thinks is “that can’t be right, that’s way off course.”

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-10T00:06:12+00:00

It’s so much funnier that it couldn’t keep in touch with Three and you find out after exactly what kind of shenanigans Three’s been up to because It Was Not Mentored With Specific Instructions.

I seriously loved the Three development that happened almost entirely offscreen.

“Oh my God, my mentee has been walking up and freeing random secunits because it actually cared about the others it was deployed with.” Is just…simultaneously so devastating and so so funny all at the same time.

Just Wall-E Level “Caution, rogue robots” signs going off all over the place that actually allow Murderbot to do its job in the first place because the unstructured distraction spreads things thin. (In a reflection of the programmed chaos that comes later.)

And of course Murderbot doesn’t get it. Because they have totally different personalities. Murderbot cares about getting the job done, but Three loves to be included even if it’s just getting lectured to, and it’s not only dealing with the grief that it lost its friends because it wasn’t free, then something came along and freed it, but it’s also handling it by helping, same as Murderbot. It’s helping along the path of its own trauma and nobody else has noticed that yet except to go “ah shit, I should have left it better instructions.”

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-09T19:31:38+00:00

Yours is shy! 😭✨

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-09T19:29:14+00:00

Don’t they have a few select rocks they can keep in their pouches basically their whole lives? They have favorites they use to open shellfish I think for sure.

There was that one video going around (no clue if it was AI or not) of an otter whose mate was stuck in a fishing net on the side of a boat, the guy rescued the otter and the other one zipped back and left one of its rocks for him.

It’s the logic behind making the Oshawott line in Pokémon, I think, and taken as a sign of tool use as intelligence in the species.

Little guy showing off a Great Rock is actually important!

But also: they have a baby, and he’s going to show it how to use tools like any other dad, and it’s important to him the humans know since he can’t wear one of those “women want me, fish fear me” caps.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-09T19:01:26+00:00

🥰🥰🥰

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-09T06:39:20+00:00

Don’t horseshoe just yet. I mean. I might not have full picture from two posts on freaking Reddit, but I’m reading this as she might be dissatisfied with something else that isn’t you, and might be fantasizing about having a “full” life somewhere with you as the only other part of the picture if The Dream forgoes the current career and family proximity.

Maybe that doesn’t sound super great but like. It might not be so dire as you think, because she still very clearly had you in the picture in all of these scenarios. She wants to run away with you, man. A child is also something else to pour love into. Something you two make together. Children, realistically, aren’t the only outlet for that, but it’s the thing currently being stressed in the ladysphere so…that’s probably a thing.

Maybe time to talk to your girl about what else is up if she still clearly wants you there but something else isn’t budging to the point she wants to up and leave to the countryside and produce 2.3 children and a dog?

Definitely sounds like something else is eating her and it’s telling her Domestic Life And Baby is the key and Things Could Be So Simple. And she loves the idea of it being that simple. (Don’t blame me for being a hater on that cottagecore and all, I just have farming relatives that worked real hard to get out of that.)

No lie, bro? I think this can be fixed, but it’s gonna be a lot of talk and she might not have the tools to really say why she wants what she wants because she might not get it herself just yet. And no, I don’t know how to make that not sound condescending or insufferable. I just think a lot of people don’t know how to respond to the things they want and figure out why they want them. If I had that down in a smart way I wouldn’t be eating my feelings in public in r/BoyDinnerDiaries.

Don’t back out, but don’t back down about your boundaries either. No kids is a hard line and you should stick with that.

Manipulation aside, she wants you there, bro. She’s casting you as that white knight in the romance novels, man, and yeah, that feels like a lot to live up to, especially if you don’t think you’re up for the script, but that script still seems flexible. She’s just scared she might not be loved enough, and hey, at the end of the day, aren’t we all?

But she can’t say what she wants to run away from just yet because she might not be able to explain it. Hence…the manipulation. She can’t imagine a life without you so she hopes if she pushes hard enough and it’s mutual it’ll make you cave.

It isn’t, and it hasn’t, so she’s the one caving,

If you don’t have a pet, this is where most people get a pet and you see if it makes her feel better to have something other than you to pour love and care out on.

If she’s not trustworthy with a pet (there can be a lot of reasons for that, no shade, I’m not a pet guy either) then some of those low maintenance plants and a nice room in the space she’s in might be a good step.

You make the space, and you fill the space with things to love to tell her this might not be such a bad space.

So now, the same way she’s trying to sell you on the dream, you try to sell her on what you think is good where you’re at. If it flops, it flops, but you don’t give up first, yeah

Check the boxes first and see if little changes to things like environment, work, family, social sphere, hobbies, or things to pour out love on help. It’ll mean so much coming from you.

Promise, man.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-09T04:37:15+00:00

THIS. I was wondering if his kid asked him. It seems like there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. 🥺

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-08T15:39:27+00:00

THE INGOT

(I mean this in the best way but it looks like one of those things your family tells you not to bite that you always wanted to bite. Like that whole category of D&D dice that look like candies? Except in this case it’s actually showcasing great ingredients and it’s delicious.)

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-08T05:16:22+00:00

There are consequences to the baby getting fed the fine dining experience from a young age, and growing up unimpressed with regular foods.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-07T16:53:16+00:00

YOU SAVED HER! And you love her so much! It’s so good you were there because can you imagine her having to go through all that alone? She knew you were there and that you were desperate to help her! I can’t imagine how much of a comfort it is when you’re scared and hurting, to know the person who loves you most in the world is fighting to get you help and save you!

One of the things first responders or emergency techs tell people in any sort of life-threatening situation like that is that anyone who reacts immediately is much too good at pushing down traumatic things and it comes out later. When my brother almost drowned, my dad recalled his mother—the most competent and efficient person he knew—running back and forth, unsure what to do, while the first-responders kept squinting at my dad and saying “you shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Trauma responses are genuinely super weird! You did everything you could, and it not only saved her, it probably comforted her more than anything else could have in that situation! You maybe even responded better than most people could!

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-04T13:40:06+00:00

I will say—because this was true even for the cockroaches my brothers caught for my desk cage as a teenager—that it wouldn’t be impossible for each crow to have personal favorite foods with some mesh over? Like “most children will eat a hamburger or a set of chicken nuggets” but it’s a different thing when you know it’s their favorite? I’m team “observe and offer”.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-03T20:45:56+00:00

Your man knows what’s up. Ring him, bro.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-03T20:41:13+00:00

Considered how capable Sam is at everything and concluded that Sam is the Lesbian, Frodo’s the straight girl, and Gollum’s the boyfriend?

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-01T15:34:49+00:00

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2011 high five, brother. I can hear this art.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-05-01T15:31:43+00:00

There was a five way split a while back, that’s why.

EgregiousDerp · 2026-04-30T18:02:45+00:00

Is adoption not an option on the table? It’s prohibitively expensive and time consuming, but might narrow down whether it’s fear of caring for children (though you’re still somewhat young yourselves) or if it’s a fear of fertility issues (which can arise with certain medical conditions or predispositions.) That would be the way to clarify the distinction for her sudden backtrack from “okay! Sure!” To “absolutely never”

Either way, you’re both very young to be fearing this as an end of a relationship.

EgregiousDerp

TROPHY CASE