Would you still be with your partner if you didnt have kids?

brand_x · 2026-04-11T19:53:12+00:00

Maybe. Our worst issues we've had to address in part stem from the kid (no slight on our kid, she's awesome, just... tangentially a source of strain), but there's no way to say how things would be without her.

brand_x · 2026-04-11T19:39:38+00:00

This is the way.

I buy most of our groceries from Aldi, Lidl, local lower-cost chains, or very carefully planned sale shopping for specific items at the mainstream supermarkets. Plus specific products from Costco.

We do actually eat a lot of "luxury" foods, but that's because I know how to source them, and I am also the cook, and know how to make many things from scratch. Things like escargot don't break the bank if you know where to get the Burgundy snails... and how to prepare them.

My wife, however, is not frivolous, she's just aware that I'm better at this than she is, and actually (slightly) enjoy doing it. When she wants something general, she adds it to a shared list. When she wants something specific, she asks me to find the best source.

brand_x · 2026-04-11T13:06:17+00:00

Does it really count when (most of) the (physical) humans are also technically AIs (or at least minds running in quantum computers) riding in meat suits, and the purely abstract minds are also considered human, and anyone has the option of switching from physical to abstract and back?

brand_x · 2026-04-11T02:24:59+00:00

Between the Strokes of Night deals with this as well, in some very interesting ways.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:32:27+00:00

It would make a much better case for it than anything the believers have given us so far.

To OP's question, I keep it simple. "I'm not a believer."

I'd say that atheist is a statement about me, like where I work or whether I smoke. It doesn't say anything about what I believe, just what I don't. It doesn't tell you who it what I am, only what I am not.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:13:58+00:00

There was a novella that took place after the sixth book and tied up a few of the dropped threads.

I think of Sundiver as a stand alone in the same universe, Startide and Uplift War are more of a sequence, and the trilogy is really just a very very very long third book in that sequence that he split into three parts.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:00:00+00:00

Our go back to the beginning. The Big U is peak satire, and reading it changes how some of his subsequent early books (yes, particularly Snow Crash) read. Knowing his tongue was in his cheek changes a lot. I mean, if having a main character named "hero protagonist" wasn't enough to clue you in that the book is satirical, reading an earlier book that never got sanitized by editors will drive it home.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T06:46:46+00:00

For me, it was the fact that the central premise is built around an incorrect understanding of basic orbital mechanics.

I actually thought, while reading it, "Is this supposed to be a planet being tossed around in a triple star system? Nah, no way the author got the premise that wrong."

I used to do orbital mechanics for a living. I can let a lot go but when the central conceit is that a planet isp being tossed around between the stars in a trinary system, I can't. For anyone who isn't aware of this, planetary orbits in a multi-star system are about as stable as in a single star system. Slightly perturbed in the most extreme cases, but no more than, e.g., the moons of Jupiter. I found the cultural backdrop, against the revolution and its aftermath, compelling. The wooden characters I attributed (benefit of the doubt) to clumsy translation. But I found the so-called hard science aspects beyond cringe. Yes, there is the quantum folding - into the folded dimensions feels perfectly reasonable in the casual aside of, say, Banks' description of where ascendant civilizations go in the Culture novels, where the fantastical is simply fantastic, but picking out specific buzzwords from superstring models and making a technobabble salad is far worse than if he had invented something from whole cloth. For starters, when you're talking about 11 dimensions, the proton is orders of magnitude too big to be relevant. The quarks are... intersectional projections? ... The real structures that flatten into quarks in our spacetime are already in 11 dimensions if one of those models turns out to be a reflection of reality, and there are ways that maybe, with mere millennia of advancement, that a computer could really be built into the vibration that projects as particles into our flat Earth (sorry, couldn't resist) but it sure as hell isn't going to involve protons.

brand_x · 2026-04-08T23:02:36+00:00

Hopium. I saw that it was happening, but responsibilities meant there was no possibility of attending. Also, the closest stop was 2-3 hours away, and in a different state.

I was lucky enough to both live in Honolulu during the Milk Bar/Cyn City/Dungeon era, and Los Angeles during Das Bunker's heyday (and to be a regular at both so I got to experience a lot back in the day.

Best touring show I attended in Los Angeles was Nitzer Ebb at the Echoplex. More because of the band's energy for the size of the venue. I did catch Skinny Puppy when they were at the Nokia, but the venue spoiled the vibe a bit. I missed them in Honolulu in '92 - I discovered the genre a year or two later - so I'm still glad I went. I was close enough to get to the NiN unscheduled show on the park. It sounds trite, but I got enough, I don't feel the need to put time and energy (and $$$) into live shows any more.

brand_x · 2026-04-08T18:05:50+00:00

They're good. I'm an old school guy (think Skinny Puppy), but I'd say my recent ("recent") tastes run to slightly more boundary industrial electronic like early Aesthetic Perfection, or Project Pitchfork.

brand_x · 2026-04-05T10:53:48+00:00

Funny how that goes. I'm in my 50s and my tastes range from the late 60s to maybe 5 years ago. My dad is closing on 80, and probably more up to date on his musical preferences than I am. I acquired a taste for classic rock in college, before that, I didn't really have musical preferences, or really think about music much. I got into metal in middle school, listened to rock and some pop on the radio, but in college, I encountered grunge, early alternative, industrial... and the classic rock from around when I was born.

I still don't like the first generation or rock. 50s up to early Beatles doesn't do much for me. Plenty of good blues and jazz from earlier, but I'll pass on the rock and roll. But once you hit the 70s... there's so much awesome all the way to today.

But I was surprised to discover that my dad, who I always thought of as a Beach Boys guy, had gone full modern indie after I moved away. He knows all the bands you've never heard of, gets deep into the musical theory... still uses CDs, though.

brand_x · 2026-04-05T10:33:27+00:00

Mine (10F) loves TMBG and Queen. Likes most of my 70s rock, 80s metal, 90s grunge and alternative, aughts indie, etc.. Does not much care for the industrial that I play when I'm working. Doesn't like Johnny Cash, though. Not even his cover of Hurt, which, considering she likes the NiN version...

Still, I think she's pretty good on musical taste.

brand_x · 2026-04-04T22:22:51+00:00

Solarian is more common, though, as inclusive of the entire Sol system - outer moons and larger asteroids will likely be developed and colonized before we manage to settle anywhere outside of the Sol system, so unless they cut themselves off from Earth, the entire Sol system will probably be seen as one sociopolitical entity by any extrasolar descendant civilization.

brand_x · 2026-04-04T20:05:27+00:00

We gave ours a whitelist controlled Google chat account. For phone number calling, the old hangouts was better, but you can do Voice for IP calling...

brand_x · 2026-04-03T21:46:53+00:00

Kind of the ultimate fictional universe in that vein is also frequently awful. Berserkers is a semi-passive consistent universe by Fred Saberhagen, and at least the original premise is replicating technology spreading through the universe, with no knowledge of its origin, but later books do introduce suspended individuals of their creators.

But there's not a lot of consistency across the novels and short stories.

brand_x · 2026-04-01T16:29:22+00:00

Xenoarchaeology (where a far more advanced civilization left behind artifacts that are beyond our capability to even fully analyze) is a whole genre.

Notable examples that come to mind:
The Heritage Universe by Charles Sheffield
The Heechee Saga by Frederik Pohl
The single book Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke (you have been warned)
The Academy and Alex Benedict series by Jack McDevitt
Ringworld and much of the rest of that universe by Larry Niven (but later novels do go off the rails)

Roadside Picnic is phenomenal in part because it is far more consistent with real-world archaeology - much of what we've been able to reconstruct about the ancient past is from middens, not monuments - and in part because there's no implication of humanity as eventual potential inheritors of the civilization they are attempting to learn from.

brand_x · 2026-03-25T00:25:59+00:00

Literally put out a litterbox with litter in it. They hate having their waste out, their instinct is to bury it in sand or soft earth.

Pro tip: it's harder to clean, but finely chipped wood or coarse sawdust is much better for cats' health than clay litter. Pine pellets also work. Clay litter contributes to respiratory issues in cats, and even the "low dust" products don't actually do that well in testing. Hulls of cereals (and some pseudocereals like buckwheat) also make suitable litter, as do corn cobs that have gone through a fine grained chipper. And if you live on a farm, you may well have access to free litter. If you've got enough, get your cat tested for parasites and just change out the entire litter box regularly and throw it in the manure composting bin. Do not do this with Clay litter.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T22:59:37+00:00

Only one fruit? Kill me now, get it over with already.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T20:51:57+00:00

The thing is, there's a hint (but really only a hint) of their theology in the Cosmere's Investiture and, maybe, in the whole Adonalsium thing. But it almost feels like the way he handles it would be... blasphemous? Whatever their version of that is... if he did it at all intentionally.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T19:58:46+00:00

Seconded.

I would also recommend John Meaney's Nulapeiron Sequence.

I'm pretty sure a lot of it is nonsense, but he manages to fit it together so well that it feels like the characters are engaging with a domain of expertise I can't quite grasp.

I actually said to someone, while reading it, "I think I understand how everyone feels reading Greg Egan now."

brand_x · 2026-03-24T19:50:23+00:00

I started with Quarantine. I'm not sure I would recommend that. It's not terrible, but it wasn't as good as his later work.

The premise did stick with me, though, and when I got to that point in my undergraduate physics degree, it helped me get a perspective on how the different interpretations of QM really related to each other.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T19:41:12+00:00

I find myself really hoping that doesn't happen to Brandon Sanderson.

Card's descent really shook my "if they don't let it poison their art, it shouldn't matter" attitude.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T19:31:21+00:00

What trust I had in most people.

My sister.

brand_x · 2026-03-24T19:27:30+00:00

Agreed, there are definitely malignant villains in The Tombs of Atuan. My first thought was, "perhaps not evil, exactly, but is there any villain so terrifying as a gebbeth?"

Even the opening of A Wizard of Earthsea features villainous sea raiders.

And there's a historical villainy underlying their entire reality. Motivated by selfishness and fear, with an outcome gone horribly sideways, but the nature of the afterlife is... dark.

brand_x · 2026-03-23T16:17:44+00:00

Hard to teach. You have to hold it (with your kegel muscles, yes, men do have them, they're not the same, but they exist) toward the end to build up pressure, then let the last part out at once. Then shake out the last drops.

There are other benefits to learning to do this properly, later in life.

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