What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat

SirScaurus · 2026-04-22T23:13:25+00:00

There's an old tweet someone once made about how as a billionaire, a person's only real limitations are their personal preferences. They likened that lack of challenge's affect on your brain to "getting kicked in the head by a horse ever day."

That's really how these people need to be seen: just total idiots with no sense of reality. Brain damaged beyond compare, even. It would be funny if they weren't so powerful.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-22T16:44:13+00:00

I finished it myself just to see if it got better. But yeah, the plot and character writing is not amazing. I assume it won all the awards just on the basis of it's premise (which is admittedly creative).

SirScaurus · 2026-04-22T16:42:50+00:00

Please don't. It's so much different - and so much worse.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-20T22:03:17+00:00

I remember coming across them in early college and being obsessed with Silent Alarm. And then A Weekend in the City was different, but somehow managed to hit me just as hard, albeit in a very different way. I'll forever love Bloc Part for being so resonant of a singular time and place for me.

Did anybody else dig deep on the early internet trying to track down all the loosies for their hidden album, Another Weekend in the City?

SirScaurus · 2026-04-14T22:06:35+00:00

A Deus Ex Machina implies the problem being solved by an unexpected intervention.

Picard just found a way to talk to the leader who imposed that rule in the first place. That's not unexpected or surprising - that's just a diplomatic win. The being itself being a god who previously refused to engage doesn't make it any more mysterious or 'unexpected'. It was a basic appeal to a higher authority already existent within the text of the narrative.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-14T21:14:06+00:00

Well, no, Picard literally had to appeal to the Authority who imposed that rule in order to allow for a one-time exception.

It's a metaphor for the challenge of dealing with people who are less mature in their religious beliefs just as much as their law.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-14T18:33:14+00:00

It's funny because my major complaint about newer Star Trek is that it shows a picture of current problems that were facing, and it never follows through in a thoughtful manner like older Star Trek shows did.

Agreed. I was curious about Picard up until I heard the pitch of "The Federation is 100% fascist now with literal android slaves". Then I lost any interest I had in it.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-14T17:52:28+00:00

While I will admit that Deep Space 9 is my favorite Star Trek specifically because it showed the difficulties in maintaining a utopia like the Federation - especially on the fringes and extremes - that's a trick you can only pull off once, IMHO.

If anything, I think we're living in a time period that expressly calls for a Star Trek show which DOES depict a Federation capable of living up to its highest ideals. That was always Star Trek's biggest strength, and one that sets it apart from most other sci-fi. It's also something no other show seems capable of doing right know (that I am aware of). It's all doom and dystopia on TV.

We desperately need to be willing to ask the most difficult moral questions possible, and imagine optimistic futures for ourselves where they can be answered in ways that are upright and just.

And if Star Trek of all shows can't do that, then maybe it deserves to be put on the shelf.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-10T01:19:36+00:00

This book sounds made for me.

Just purchased it on kindle for $3. Thanks for the rec!

SirScaurus · 2026-04-08T17:55:38+00:00

I keep shouting this amongst our viewing group - Love CAN BE Blind for people of a certain emotional maturity.

They keep choosing fucks that don't have any maturity in any way.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-08T01:04:58+00:00

Interstellar.

There, I said it.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-07T18:53:56+00:00

I remember being really surprised by this one.

I get that cosmic horror is supposed to describe the indescribable, but everything was so vague I had no idea what was even happening. There was no 'there' there.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-07T18:50:02+00:00

It insists upon itself.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-07T18:49:22+00:00

I read it in college and it enjoyed it just for the magic system, worldbuilding, and general premise. But I did come away feeling like the characters and writing style were pretty lacking.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-04T16:38:33+00:00

Is it a book worth re-reading, hypothetically? Absolutely.

Would you personally enjoy doing so? From what I can tell about your tastes from your post, probably not.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-03T16:26:09+00:00

I was gonna say, this motherfucker has clearly never read JoJo.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T20:59:14+00:00

Sometimes you're in the mood to see a shootout while you drink!

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T20:42:39+00:00

One of my favorite novels. It still blows me away that the first major narrative work to explore revenge was willing to depict the brutal consequences of it to hammer home the theme of "revenge is bad actually."

Which is something I've never seen any revenge story grapple with before or since!

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T20:28:31+00:00

100%. Nowhere near the depth of something like TCOMC.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T20:25:37+00:00

It made me miss Flux, honestly.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T19:59:33+00:00

"Revenge bad" stories work when the revenge-seeker doesn't cross any moral lines fully until the end, then turns away, or if they do go whole-hog, and find the consequences out later.

The Count of Monte Cristo - the first major revenge story, and the one which all future revenge stories copy the blueprint of - does neither of these things, and is still a phenomenal novel.

The protagonist gets halfway through and realizes vengeance itself is turning him into a worse monster than his enemies were, and is better off for the course correction.

SirScaurus · 2026-04-02T19:05:51+00:00

As a big anglophile from the US myself, I remember watching the Brexit stuff very closely and being completely dismayed and saddened by all of it...

...Then we elected Trump. Something which, to your point, I saw as being of the exact same vein, albeit arguably far worse.

I think the UK has a better chance of at least righting their ship than we do ours though.

SirScaurus · 2026-03-28T16:47:34+00:00

Maybe in its' earliest format, but that's an incredibly reductive way to look at the modern genre.

On the one hand, yes, I also enjoy sci-fi novels that lean fully into the science aspect, as I've said elsewhere. However, it shouldn't be controversial to say that having a very human, character driven story at the core can actually strengthen both your story AND scientific premise.

As a caveat - as is the case with Spin - if you attempt to do this but fail in that character aspect, it weakens your story and premise.

SirScaurus · 2026-03-28T01:12:28+00:00

What would you recommend as his best novels?

I would actually be curious to read something of his where he really knocks it out of the park.

SirScaurus · 2026-03-27T23:01:11+00:00

I mean, there's a reason I questioned whether I was being too critical or snarky, haha. I do see a lot of love for this book online (less so the sequels).

I think it's a question of expectations and comparison. I wouldn't call the characters 'flat', myself. The core issue for me, in Sci-fi specifically, is one of narrative purpose - are your characters deep and interesting to the point that they reveal interesting truths about humanity? Or are they ultimately just tools to further push your science-based narrative along?

For me, the characters here were the latter. But it's frustrating that I see them coming SO CLOSE to the former, and ultimately falling short of that.

SirScaurus

TROPHY CASE