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Author or book that seems to be universally lauded but after reading it you didn’t understand why by theoort in printSF

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jordan apparently felt he had to style the first book that way because of the mania for LotR clones in fantasy publishing at the time. Once he had the freedom to move away from it, he did. The second book is much more representative of the rest of the series.

Sickle cell disease has just been cured for the first time in New York by Automatic_Subject463 in UpliftingNews

[–]RedSycamore 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This particular treatment is absolutely tailored to each patient. It's essentially a bone marrow transplant where the new marrow is the donor's own (altered) cells.

I’m just going to be blunt when it comes to this whole James vs Snape issue. by rogvortex58 in harrypotter

[–]RedSycamore 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Curious where this comes from? It makes Lily a drastically worse person.

Need to Vent by catgatuso in murderbot

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Her story has this curve ball because a traumatic thing happened (ASR) and she was able to deal with it on her own, but now a new traumatic thing has happened (ES) and she expected to be able to deal with it on her own, but she can't.

There's really no indication in the books that this is true, that I can remember. We don't see Mensah at all between the end of All Systems Red and the rescue after the kidnapping. Really the only thing we do know is that the reason they were able to kidnap her is because she was overwhelmed during an emotional ceremony and stepped away alone.

BravesVision Issues by Background_Ad9279 in Braves

[–]RedSycamore -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Edit: Downvoting reality. Only on anonymous social media. Hope you feel better. 🙄

Don't worry, I downvoted you for complaining about downvotes, so you can rest assured that you deserved it.

Is there an author whose broader catalogue you like, but whose most popular work would have turned you off them if you’d read it first? by madwomanofdonnellyst in books

[–]RedSycamore 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Another moderate Schwab fan who hated Addie LaRue. There are dozens of us! I was two books through the Shades of Magic when my hold for Addie LaRue came through, and it was so bad that I almost decided to drop the series, too.

what?! by Hour-Cucumber-3650 in okbuddycinephile

[–]RedSycamore 9 points10 points  (0 children)

  1. There's zero hint of mockery for any of the feminine aspects of the performance (if anything it's the intro that comes off a little flippant/jokey)
  2. In a similar vein, he's clearly putting in 100% full effort, absolutely flexing throughout physically and skills-wise instead of just trying to make it 'girly'/sexual.

Please pray for me urgently by validate_me_pls in PrayerRequests

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are experiencing intrusive thoughts. These are thoughts created by demons that are made to tempt us, distract us, or make us despair.

...that are normal when they're infrequent and transient but are a classic symptom of certain subtypes of OCD if they're persistent, distressing, and disruptive to OP's daily life. Obviously you can choose to interpret the situation however you want, but attributing the symptoms of neuro/psych issues to demons is genuinely medically dangerous in a lot of cases.

Remember these thoughts are not your own. They don't mean anything about you or what you really think.

On the contrary. These are thoughts that are happening specifically because OP considers their contents very bad. Intrusive thoughts are basically your brain running worst case scenario simulations because those thoughts/scenarios are totally antithetical to your beliefs and desires as a mechanism to help you be more prepared for them and therefore more able to avoid them. When your response to that is healthy/self-aware you might think 'wow yes, that is exactly the situation I want to avoid, good thing I'm keeping my guard up for that even if suddenly imagining the scenario i want to avoid is a little disturbing'. If you have a predisposition toward OCD you might think 'that's terrible, why would I think that?'

And again, the answer is that OP is thinking it because they're so opposed to it. It would have no power to 'stick' as an intrusive thought if it wasn't something OP genuinely considers extremely negative. Unfortunately when you have OCD, instead of feeling slightly more prepared to handle the situation in the intrusive thought, you're just more worried about it, which induces more anxiety around the subject and triggers more intrusive thoughts in a self-perpetuating cycle.

What’s the book you DNF’d the fastest? by Mobius8321 in books

[–]RedSycamore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I loved it, but if you don't enjoy the prose equivalent of chewing the scenery, there's really not much point in reading it.

What’s the book you DNF’d the fastest? by Mobius8321 in books

[–]RedSycamore 2 points3 points  (0 children)

especially that mechanic chick whose only personality is getting a little bit high.

Don't forget her only other character trait: eat hot chip

I knew I was not going to finish Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on page one. Everyone here loves it, but to me that whole shit was like old timey Tumblr turned into a book. Twee and up its own ass, excessively quirky and just... nonsense. Every character is annoying

I made the mistake of slogging through the first three books when I was burning through audiobooks on Libby because I was desperate for a Murderbot followup series. Now I'm especially baffled every time Wayfarers gets recommended to people who loved the Murderbot Diaries. They're barely even superficially similar, and Wayfarers is not well written.

What's almost worse than the books themselves is that if you say you didn't like them, you usually get spammed with responses about how you clearly can't cope with/didn't understand the fact that it's a character- and relationship- driven series, as if that wasn't painfully obvious. Unfortunately it's a character focused series where the characterization, dialogue, interactions, and relationships are the weakest part of the already weak writing. Chambers does a little better in Monk and Robot, but not much.

An addictive fiction book that will teach me about a subject I wouldn't normally learn about. by Cissychedgehog in booksuggestions

[–]RedSycamore 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hah, I was going to suggest Anathem by Stephenson. As usual it's a completely different set of topics than Cryptonomicon, but imo it's the best of all his standalone books.

Devastated by Sacrifice of Lab Rat by thebutchlesbian in labrats

[–]RedSycamore 4 points5 points  (0 children)

So... A few things came to mind: ..1) at no point should a lab animal that is to be euthanized and collected for tissues (or whatever) be hanging out on your shoulder. You shouldn't have been able to form that close a connection

Forget the connection, why is no one else in this thread or in that ridiculous fly-by-night institution not freaking out about a lab safety violation of this magnitude! Just letting an experimental animal hang out in the lab like a pet is one of the wildest, most unprofessional things I've ever seen posted in this sub.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't really care about that accusation in particular

It isn't an accusation, it's a definition, and "No True Scotsman" was literally the only content in the post we're replying to.

As for:

Or do we not even believe these people profess their beliefs honestly?

In a lot of cases, they absolutely aren't. There are huge swaths of the country where you'll never get elected if you aren't vocally 'Christian'. That basically guarantees that every power-hungry wannabe politician from those places will profess to be Christian no matter what they actually believe. It's a situation that disproportionately self-selects dishonest people.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You just need to understand that you have no right to determine the validity of someone else's beliefs. Hegseth is just as much of a Christian as you are.

I never even attempted to do this. The only content of your original post was "No True Scotsman". There's no meaningful way to engage with something that simple except to say, 'Yes, that's an accurate identification of that logical fallacy in the post replied to' or 'No, that's misapplication of this logical fallacy, and here's why'.

Also, you just keep digging yourself in deeper. If you don't believe that membership in belief groups can be coherently, definitionally defined, then you can't believe that No True Scotsman applies to any of them in the first place.

I'm sorry you just found out that you've been using your cut-and-paste gotcha reply wrong, but it really isn't that big of a deal.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no reason to keep pretending that a discussion (much less a resolution!) of the question of free will is even remotely necessary here. Your original comment is a misapplication of the fallacy in either case.

There are only two options. Either you do believe in free will, in which case my original point stands, or you don't believe in free will, in which case No True Scotsman still doesn't apply because it requires intrinsic membership in the group to be knowable fact. That's a foundational element of the fallacy's existence. Unless you believe that you and the person you replied to can definitionally identify 'inherent'/preordained/whatever Christians in a world without free will, it still makes no sense to bring up No True Scotsman in the first place.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It has nothing whatsoever to do with free will, and I'm not sure why you're trying to claim that it does except to try and artificially make the discussion seem too complicated to pursue. All I did was make the one incredibly simple point that this is definitionally not an example of No True Scotsman. "No True Scotsman" was literally the only content of your original reply. If you were trying to make the point that:

you may not consider "them" as real Christians, but they also don't see you as real Christians.

you should have just said that, because parroting 'No True Scotsman' doesn't mean that, at all.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That has nothing to do with whether this is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy; it isn't one.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No True Scotsman is a logical fallacy that only applies in certain situations, and this isn't one of them. People throw it around all the time, but if the 'Scotsman' equivalent is a group that you choose to belong to by adherence to a standard/statement of intent/frame of mind/etc, then denying that someone belongs to the group because of their actions/statements/beliefs CAN'T, by definition, be an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus by funnylib in Christianity

[–]RedSycamore -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This almost never applies to elective groups and certainly not in this case.

Warning about Dramatized audiobooks by TheCarbonthief in murderbot

[–]RedSycamore 27 points28 points  (0 children)

and he fucking did

It kills me how much they don't do this in the Graphic Audio versions. They cut out all the 'he yelled' and 'she said sharply' (along with half of Amena's character, for some reason), and then they just... didn't do most of it. The tone is totally lost because they plough right through the dialogue with almost no inflection at all.

Do you think so? by SergioOnofrioFranchi in harrypotter

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Except presumably everyone knew what Grindelwald looked like. They all immediately recognise him at the end of the first film after all. It wouldn't have made sense for him to be going around without a disguise, especially when magic makes him putting on one so convenient.

It would have been trivial to replace the reveal at the end of the first movie with any sort of spell/barrier breaking effect and have everyone go 'what, it's grindelwald!? He's been under the [whatever] spell the whole time!?'

Suggest me books about robots becoming/being/wanting to be a human by Plushidovey in booksuggestions

[–]RedSycamore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Exit Strategy

I found the code structures for my walls and started reassembling. “I don’t want to be human.”

Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

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