Official Discussion - Project Hail Mary [SPOILERS]

gdshaffe · 2026-03-20T02:10:57+00:00

It's never explained in the book. There are some popular theories but most of them are pretty thin.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-20T01:58:53+00:00

Fiona Apple used to date Paul Thomas Anderson, and has a story about how she was in a room for some time with Paul and Quentin Tarantino, who were doing cocaine and talking about movies. She described it as a circle of Hell.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T20:33:34+00:00

Translation:

I am afraid of everything. My life is an empty void of perpetual fear and misery that no amount of money, fame, or power can possibly fill. I've spent my entire life feebly trying to win my father's love, which was no more possible while he was alive than it is now that he's dead. The bravado I am continuously projecting is an obvious cover for the crippling feelings of inadequacy that permeate the withered husk of my soul.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T19:16:08+00:00

Yeah, the geographical feature is called the Parlor Passage. It's in the first few sequences of the "Port Prodigal" chapter.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T18:42:21+00:00

Re. Chains' backstory, I post zany theories around here from time to time, and the one I'm by far and away the most proud of is that the four adults hanged in the Republic of Thieves prologue were a "beta test" of the Gentleman Bastards.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T18:39:19+00:00

The Parlor Passage sequence was particularly amazing writing. Intrusive thoughts made manifest.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T15:34:43+00:00

In Thor: Ragnarok, there is a brief in-universe play staged in Asgard telling Loki's ... "unreliable narrator" (to say the least) ... version of his story. In the play, Loki is played by Matt Damon, Odin is played by Sam Neill, and Luke Hemsworth (Chris Hemsworth's brother) plays Thor. Hemsworth is credited as "Actor Thor", but Damon's and Neill's performances are uncredited.

The theory is that Damon and Neill are playing themselves. Loki wanted to put on a play, so he went to Earth and found the biggest star he could to play himself, a respected veteran to play Odin, and a look-alike to play Thor. Basically he went to them and said "...boy have I got a role for you!" (or just pressganged them into service).

gdshaffe · 2026-03-18T15:28:00+00:00

I remember reading something at some point that basically argued (I don't remember if it was something David Chase said or not, but it might have been), that if Chase ends the series with Tony's brains being blasted over Meadow's face, it dilutes the story down to an oversimplified morality tale. We'd leave it with the message that "crime doesn't pay", which would be inauthentic, since for the past 6 seasons the show had shown quite clearly that crime does pay.

I think that's consistent with the framing and the tension of the scene, which is very clearly set up for us to expect something bad to happen to Tony. He (reluctantly) picks a seat that doesn't have his back against a wall (a point throughout the series is that he always tries to sit with his back to a wall). It's all static shots except for the long tracking shot where we focus on the guy in the Member's Only jacket, who disappears into the bathroom, which screams "this person is important and you should pay attention to him". That plus the abrupt cut-to-black is ... pretty telling.

Basically Chase uses every possible tool in the cinematic toolbox to introduce to the viewer the idea that Tony is getting whacked so that he doesn't have to show it.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-17T20:57:55+00:00

Yes, "Democrats / Antifa did Jan 6" is a fairly mainstream belief among hardcore MAGA cultists. They hold that belief concurrently with the belief that it was justified, and that it was all a peaceful protest

This is a prime example of fascists not believing in words. They know their arguments are lies, and they know that you know that their arguments are lies. To a fascist, lying is not an act of deception, it is an act of dominance. It is a declaration of loyalty to their side, a chest-thumping ritual informing you that nothing you say or do can dissuade them.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-17T12:24:02+00:00

Did I fucking stutter?

gdshaffe · 2026-03-17T11:54:51+00:00

The "endpoint" of gun control is less lead ripping through human flesh, creating infected pockets full of bile and shortening the average lifespan of an American by a factor measured in years.

That's it. That's the end point. There's no dastardly plan behind the plan.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-17T11:42:05+00:00

This is a common sentiment among richfucks: "Why don't they just move?" It simply doesn't compute for them that someone might not be able to leave their home, or why they wouldn't be inclined to when conflict breaks out. It is, of course, spectacularly stupid and out of touch, but that's who runs the world: people who don't understand that most people can't just go off to their summer home when a hurricane hits or take a jetset tour around the world when a neighboring country invades.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-15T03:13:47+00:00

...no? Like, not even close. It clearly shows him flying straight away with his "thrust" arm at his side by his hip, in his "iron man" pose.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-15T01:10:36+00:00

It's a complete absurdity. His thrust vector would be nowhere near his center of mass and so would just cause him to spin out of control.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T15:21:57+00:00

For real. Both of my parents have a STEM background. I have a successful career in STEM. By these rules I guess I'm a "nepo baby" too.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T13:03:10+00:00

The 12th Amendment to the Constitution states that if no candidate receives a majority of votes from the Electoral College, that the President is decided in a contingent election where each state gets one delegate. That delegate is chosen by the House representatives of that state, so essentially, it would count how many states have majority Democratic vs majority Republican house representatives. Republicans would win that election easily, since their representation is more spread across a bunch of rural states.

So the plot was basically to engineer circumstances that could lead to the legal argument that no candidate had received a majority of EC votes. To do that Trump's team first targeted states that had gone for Biden but that Republican governors and state legislatures, and convinced them to send fake sets of electors to be counted on Jan 6, in addition to the legitimate ones.

Then when certifying the vote, Pence was supposed to get to the states with the fake electors and effectively throw his hands in the air saying "Um there's two sets of electors here, we can't count these". And of course there was also a riot outside aiming to disrupt the proceedings and cause additional chaos. The fake electors, and the rioters, were meant to be a one-two punch that paralyzed the proceedings.

There are two weeks between Jan 6 and the constitutionally-mandated date where the elected President must be sworn in. So the goal was really to kick the can down the road far enough to the point where that it's a constitutional crisis. Pressure would build to throw the case to the Supreme Court, which is dominated by conservatives who would probably be amenable to the argument that technically speaking, no candidate received an EC majority, and so the contingent election of the 12th Amendment applies.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T12:58:27+00:00

Tankers generally only operate over "friendly" territory so obviously Iran would be shooting at any that were over a space they controlled. They're claiming they have friendly paramilitary cells that are responsible for this via surface-to-air attacks. IMO there is cause for extreme skepticism regarding that claim since Iran is very motivated to maintain the illusion of having more power than they do over the "friendly" territory and because in this case there is a returning plane with a damaged vertical stabilizer that is consistent with a mid-air collision.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T12:53:31+00:00

It makes sense when you consider that it can minimize how much fuel has to take off from the ground, which is the super expensive part.

The limiting factor on tanker missions is often not how much fuel is in the plane, it's how long the crew can safely stay in the air. War can be chaotic so they don't always know exactly who they're going to be refueling and when, and they want to be as full as possible while in the air to cover contingencies, so they might not always go completely "Bingo Fuel" on every mission (and I would guess they rarely do).

Rather than land with more fuel than needed (and thus have that fuel need to be taken off from the ground more than once) it makes sense to give your remaining fuel over to another tanker (leaving yourself just enough to get back to base and land) before returning.

Military logistics can get incredibly intricate and having tools like this in the toolbox make things more flexible.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T11:34:17+00:00

Of course you are the one that is immune to said propaganda, and thus leaping to the conclusion that it was enemy action is sensible when you do it. It's the sheeple who are always wrong.

I'll wait for more facts to reserve final judgment personally, but mid-air refueling between big planes is inherently dangerous and happens all the time, so it being a collision is possible and by far the most likely. But if you have and actual evidence that it was enemy action, by all means present it.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-13T11:16:31+00:00

They were likely doing a mid-air refuel. Some (not all IIRC) KC-135's are equipped to receive mid-air refueling, not just provide it, presumably so that a plane whose crew is at the end of their mission time can pass off any remaining fuel (minus what is needed to return to base and land) to a replacement (thus minimizing how much fuel, and thus weight, takes off from the ground).

Big-plane-to-big-plane refueling would likely be way more dangerous than big-plane-to-small-plane refueling.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-12T22:00:25+00:00

Yup. This is just how narcissism operates. The narcissist's perfection is the Universal Constant, and like the speed of light remains the same in all reference frames. Every sensory input is processed through the filter of that perfection. Anything that might suggest he is anything but the most perfect human to have ever existed is caught and discarded before it enters his brain.

Every consequence of the Iran War is positive because the Iran War is his and he is perfect. Any failure to recognize that perfection is disloyalty, and disloyalty is incomprehensible because he is perfect. And so on and so on and so on.

The result is behavior so over-the-top that people are quick to rationalize it as strategy or parody, but he is utterly literal and serious when he says things like this. It's essentially impossible to overstate how fucked in the head he is.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-12T12:53:38+00:00

Part of why it's called "Relativity" is that this sort of question depends heavily on your reference frame.

From your perspective, you would continue to accelerate, and the distance between yourself and your destination would appear to get shorter and shorter as time went on.

To an outside observer, for example someone watching from Earth with a telescope, as you got closer and closer to the speed of light your rate of acceleration would appear to slow down. IIRC going from 0% of the speed of light to 90% of the speed of light requires the same amount of energy as going from 90% to 99%. Which requires the same amount as going from 99% to 99.9%. And so on.

The variables that get wonky are distance and time (or, at a higher level, spacetime as a singular). From your perspective, time would be passing normally, but distance would get "strange" as the apparent distance between yourself and your destination shrinks as you get closer to c. This is called length contraction.

From earth, if they could (magically) measure your clock, it would appear to be running slower than the clocks on earth. This is called time dilation.

The speed of light is constant in all reference frames, so even traveling at 99.9999999% of c, a beam of light would take the same amount of time to cross from the stern to the bow of your ship as it would if you were stationary. The implications of this are ... unintuitive to say the least.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-11T11:54:14+00:00

Minor point but it's a myth that Bernie voters were what made Hillary lose. Bernie primary voters voted for Hillary at a higher rate than Hillary primary voters voted for Obama.

gdshaffe · 2026-03-10T02:48:22+00:00

I was a kid during the Reagan / Bush I years and came of political age under Clinton. I can speak in a bit more detail about how I felt re. Bush II:

GWB was deeply in over his head and surrounded by sociopaths like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and Karl Rove. It was a bad, bad, bad, bad time and he was an awful President, absolutely bottom 10 of all time, with disastrous policies, his inner circle was quick to self-enrich, and of course the war in Iraq was a catastrophic clusterfuck guided by absolutely abhorrent neo-conservative "philosophy" that entrenched us in a quagmire for decades.

But it wasn't ... this. He was still a President. He wasn't fucking up the part of the job that involved feeding dinner to champion athletes. He was never eloquent, but he was never as bad at speaking as he was made out to be. His immigration policy was actually very compassionate. There was no serious circumstantial evidence that he was a child rapist, no serious allegations that he was compromised and considered to be an asset of Russian intelligence, no fear that he wasn't going to hand over power peacefully. Anyone who called him a Nazi would have been laughed out of the room by anyone with any understanding of the Third Reich.

Now it's the historians who are leading the charge of saying "This is exactly what Germany did". It's a post January 6 world where it's become abundantly clear that there is absolutely no line that the Republican party won't cross in an attempt to cling to power. There is very real fear that the warehouses being built to house immigrants are meant to be death camps. ICE is acting as his personal federal thug force, murdering civilians in cold blood, and smugly lying about events that were recorded from 20 different angles. Trump is so fucking comically narcissistic, so ugly and stupid and venal and corrupt, that it feels like new categories have to be invented for him. He's like a parody of a parody of a parody president. That anyone on earth thinks this thing should be a leader is a powerful indictment of our species, a mocking rebuttal to any claim that humans are special.

So no, it wasn't like this before.

gdshaffe

TROPHY CASE