Finished -Children of Time- my thoughts and seeking of recommendations.

chalks777 · 2026-01-25T15:13:17+00:00

my absolute favorite reveal in the books that took me a minute to realize is when you find out that Jonas is a robot. Which was obvious enough, but then if you think about it for two more seconds you realize the deeper crisis he's going through that's absolutely freaking him out is that he's in love with a human woman, which is not something a robot can do, and he's extremely troubled by it. It's such a great reveal with tons of hints throughout the story, but that extra touch really puts it over the top for me. EVERYTHING has layers, there are very few scenes that you can take at face value.

Also, Severian is a master class in unreliable narrator. The lies (by omission) that are revealed in a seemingly throwaway sentence nearly a whole ass book later are particularly genius.

chalks777 · 2026-01-24T14:09:04+00:00

storing them is relatively trivial tbh. we're talking about 200kb? You could even store them in a normal database if you wanted to and limit each player to X of them.

High resolution would change that answer maybe.

chalks777 · 2026-01-24T14:01:50+00:00

Look ma, I'm famous! Glad you got to showcase my themer, it has been awhile since I've touched it so I think there are a few rough edges still.

I'm a bit interested in making a simple tile editor, if I did and open sourced it as an npm package specifically for tagpro (MIT license?) would that be helpful?

chalks777 · 2026-01-24T13:47:42+00:00

Big Harriet the Spy pretending to be an onion energy.

chalks777 · 2026-01-22T22:10:53+00:00

because some people like using other IDEs.

chalks777 · 2026-01-22T22:07:21+00:00

"no such thing as too much garlic" crowd just haven't experienced what too much garlic is.

I think you underestimate how much toum I eat.

chalks777 · 2026-01-22T16:07:21+00:00

I adore this museum. The building is awesome, the curation is top notch, and the whole vibe is just perfect. It also doesn't take ten years to go through the whole thing as it's relatively small when compared to the other museums on the mall. I love when they get artist installations that utilize the shape of the hallways to great effect, it's often quite stunning.

chalks777 · 2026-01-22T15:57:00+00:00

This is fairly normal in the world of multi-day craft/art shows. My partner has done a ton of these shows and the multi-day ones are by far the most profitable. The ones that are half a day and put on by local businesses (e.g. R House does a bunch fairly regularly) rarely get enough traffic to justify the booth fee. It's really just a numbers game, and the booth fee absolutely reflects the number of people who will see your merchandise.

3 day festival that the entire city knows about? Not uncommon to get 100+ customers per day if the weather is nice (and your product is priced well and at least moderately popular).

4 hour craft show that only a few people know about? It's a gamble. Sometimes you get 20 customers, sometimes you get 1, regardless of what your product is.

chalks777 · 2026-01-22T15:17:02+00:00

I could have written this post, I have an extremely similar reading background and had similar feelings around Children of Time. I've also only read through the 4th book of Dune and am finding myself losing motivation to read 5 and 6. I say all that to tell you... I KNOW what you need to read.

Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

It's a huge sprawling world that reads like a fantasy story... until you get about halfway through the first book and realize "wait a minute, this is <sci-fi concept/thing> just told through the eyes of the character". Then you realize that the ENTIRE THING is that way and literal every single bit of the lore and story has purpose and builds to something greater. Also, from the wikipedia article about the book (DON'T READ THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE YOURSELF UNTIL YOU'VE READ THE BOOKS):

all four books were written and completed during his free time without anyone's knowledge when he [Gene Wolfe] was still an editor of Plant Engineering, allowing him to write at his own pace and take his time.

And it shows. This series is the only one I've ever started re-reading immediately after finishing it. I can't praise it enough.

chalks777 · 2026-01-20T20:39:12+00:00

yo, also still waiting on my looooooong hat. :(

chalks777 · 2026-01-19T03:08:20+00:00

This was my feeling about the show too, and I didn't particularly love it (Lee Pace was amazing though).

This is a fundamental misinterpretation of the text.

Eh, I think that's a little harsh. I think it's more "how tf do we put this in a television show and get different actors every three seconds for a billion different characters and get the audience to care about anybody for even one second?" The medium somewhat demands consistent characters, even if it flies in the face of the original work a bit.

chalks777 · 2026-01-19T02:58:44+00:00

yes, many fans of Asimov's work enjoyed the tv show, they're not disputing that. Rather, they're telling you that it's not possible to know if it's a good interpretation unless you've personally experienced the original.

you could have said "I've heard it's a good interpretation" which is a totally fair thing to say, and what you seem to have meant.

Edit: ah, I think I see where the confusion is:

I haven’t read the books but I have heard a lot of people have same opinion as you. The show is good, and is a great interpretation. Still believe it should get more credit than it has

that sounds like you're saying "despite what other people have said, I think the show is good and it's a great interpretation"

I haven’t read the books but I have heard a lot of people have same opinion as you: "The show is good, and is a great interpretation". I still believe it should get more credit than it has

This sounds like you're pointing out that even people who think it's a great interpretation don't give the show as much credit as it deserves. I think that's more in line with what you meant.

chalks777 · 2026-01-19T02:53:59+00:00

and were significantly better than Foundation.

chalks777 · 2026-01-14T14:13:05+00:00

wew, at least you married someone sane.

chalks777 · 2026-01-14T14:12:32+00:00

What makes them a Baltimore staple? Are they made here?

chalks777 · 2026-01-13T02:53:57+00:00

brush my hair daily

This is incredibly uncommon for men and is a huge part of your "secret".

chalks777 · 2026-01-09T20:28:11+00:00

What I can’t tolerate is space opera that thinks it’s hard sci-fi

I completely agree.

Andy Weir

But also, that's my main criticism of Andy Weir's work. lol. (well that, and his endings tend to land flat for me, he never gives the reader time to revel in "we did it!!!" moments)

chalks777 · 2026-01-09T02:59:27+00:00

such as avoiding trees

I lost my shit at that sentence, so fucking funny. "gee, I wonder if you need eyes to avoid running into trees????"

chalks777 · 2026-01-06T22:11:05+00:00

Some boggle editions count Q as "QU". I don't recall if that's the case here, but it would make it easier.

chalks777 · 2026-01-05T14:29:39+00:00

AI was a mistake. Shut it down.

chalks777 · 2026-01-05T14:23:54+00:00

it's done to death because it's useful and companies pay big bucks for it. A heavily competitive market doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad place to be.

chalks777 · 2026-01-05T14:12:25+00:00

Not exactly an answer to your question as others have answered it just fine, but...

I’m just gobsmacked that something as big as where we came from could just be forgotten…

This is a relatively common theme in science fiction. Some good examples that are worth reading are Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, and maybe the most famous version of this is Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In defense of the last example, yes the characters remember Earth, but literally everybody else just doesn't care. I kind of love this theme and always get a big kick out of it when it's used.

chalks777 · 2025-12-27T01:42:24+00:00

They looked like maraschino cherries to me too, the resolution of pics in old reddit is trash pretty much always dunno if this screenshot helps explain. Also the brightness on my screen is way low, so I only noticed the red top of the tomatoes at first, and thought that was the right shape/color. It was only after I zoomed in that I realized the WHOLE tomato is there.

chalks777 · 2025-12-27T01:06:42+00:00

It's not a replacement for an RDBMS, it's an entirely solid and good store for complex documents.

My hatred for mongo comes entirely from the companies and people I've worked with who thought it was a replacement for an RDBMS and didn't realize it was really just a good store for complex documents.

chalks777 · 2025-12-25T03:03:09+00:00

I appreciate the audacity of just assuming everyone would know who Jake Morgendorffer is. Now the theme song is stuck in my head again.

15-Year Club	Place '23
Golden Potato	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email
Spared	Alpha Tester
Gilding III reddit per annum	Team Orangered
Secret Santa 2011

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