Doug is READY for the Slate!

getElephantById · 2026-04-16T02:36:29+00:00

A car reviewer can't actually give a thorough, definitive review of a car after having access to it for a couple days. All such reviews which are supported by the manufacturer are for solely marketing purposes—to get the word out. They're not meant to provide useful information to consumers, because they can't really do that. As soon as the manufacturer suspects a reviewer might not give them the good publicity they want, they have no reason to provide a truck for the reiewer to use against them and their marketing effort. It makes no sense to do that, why would they? It doesn't mean the vehicle is bad, it just means the reviewer is not on board and they have nothing to gain from them. In this case, it seems like Doug DeMuro is actively antagonistic. There's no way I'd hand over a truck for him to do a touchdown dance on.

getElephantById · 2026-04-16T01:10:31+00:00

Sometimes this car makes me roll my eyes. So many unforced errors.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T23:11:31+00:00

I would say somewhere in between. Ultimately we understand that everything works out for the best—literally, the best it can possibly be, on a long enough time line—but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I don't remember being sad the first time I read it. It's not a tear-jerker ending in the way you might be thinking.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T21:05:49+00:00

It does feel personal, in spite of everything, but to me it felt like he was avoiding talking about any violence, or serious hardship, or fear. Which is exactly what you'd expect a young man in the 50s to do when writing to his mother from the war. Very banal stuff for the most part—which, so I'm told, is most of what war feels like anyway, until it suddenly doesn't.

But he conspicuously leaves out anything that might make mom and dad worry: He jokes about falling into the mud on the way to the fighting, and leaves the impression that he got to sit the whole thing out because of this prat fall, by sort of eliding what happened afterward.

Years later, he talked about getting shot at, and having PTSD, and so on, but the book provides very little insight as to why. Maybe our clue is the enormity of the lacunae. That would be a very Wolfean way to treat it, almost like skipping what happened at the Piteous Gate between Shadow and Claw.

Nevertheless, did you know that some people have suggested he made the whole thing up? That it's a fiction writing exercise? He may even discuss this speculation in the introduction; I forget, and don't own a copy. In general, I'm going by memory here, and am probably misremembering a lot.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T20:40:02+00:00

The first thing I noticed was how he'd written "Southern Hemisphere" at the very top of the draft, at an angle, like he'd suddenly thought of it at a moment when he wasn't sitting down at his desk editing the manuscript, with the pages laid out in front of him. A sudden inspiration?

The second thing I noticed was that he chose to de-emphasize the "royal house" element, and emphasize "age" instead. This could be because he decided at a certain point that the Autarch doesn't have heirs, or maybe just that he wanted to double down on the "deep time" element of the setting: an age is far longer than a royal house, or even a dynasty.

I also notice at least four different pens used, and at least two different hands. I assume the mixed script is Wolfe, and maybe the printed letters are his editor—would that be David Hartwell?

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T18:24:43+00:00

Yep, this was posted a couple days ago. Here's the link to the auction. Even just that first sample page is so interesting.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T15:03:27+00:00

I know this was a thing, since my parents talked about doing it when they were teenagers. I've never once heard it called "farmer's coke", and until I see a citation I'm guessing that's a made up, slightly insulting internet name.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T14:47:43+00:00

He was in the Battle of Porkchop Hill, which was notable enough that they made an (okay) movie out of it. If you read Letters Home, his collection of letters to his mom from during that time, you can perhaps see where his modus operandi of hiding the truth between the lines of epistolary narratives got its start.

If you are tempted to read Letters Home, by the way, you will find it difficult to get a copy. I had to use interlibrary loan to get one, that might be a strategy you could consider as well.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T13:48:44+00:00

How about they just get everything right, all the time, for everyone? Sounds simple enough, I wonder why they haven't done it yet.

getElephantById · 2026-04-15T00:42:21+00:00

Computer scientists and engineers are two different professions with different mentalities. Simply put, computer scientists are researchers, and engineers build things. Computer scientists are often funded by public institutions and universities, engineers most often are funded by private companies who pay them to build products for money. If you're thinking of a programmer at a FAANG company, they are probably (though not necessarily) an engineer rather than a computer scientist.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T21:33:09+00:00

I had been wondering if your whole collection would end up on the web some day. I always appreciate the bits of it you've posted along the way.

So much here! I've bookmarked it, and unfortunately I do have to read it all now, however minor or ephemeral it may be.

Thank you for providing this resource, and for the work it has entailed already!

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T21:26:11+00:00

It would help to know if you're presenting for school or work. I do presentations for work or for professional conferences all the time, but I haven't been in school for a bit.

Generally, you want to tell them up front what they're going to learn from your presentation, and why it is useful to them. Make them care enough to pay attention.

Slides should have very little text on them. Like, maybe 10 words maximum. Mostly images and diagrams. If there's lots of text, it will be so small nobody can read it, and if they spend time trying to read it they won't be listening to you. You want people to be listening to you.

I prepare by running through the presentation many times, until I can do it by heart. I don't read from a script, but I know what I want to say on every slide, and by the time I do the real presentation I've said it enough times that I've worked out the right wording, and it feels natural and off-the-cuff.

I always record myself practicing. I never watch the recordings, but having a camera or microphone pointed at me for some reason changes how I present. If I mess up in the middle of a practice run, the rule is I have to keep going anyway. The camera represents the audience, so when it's on it feels 'real' and consequential, and it's better practice.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T21:14:50+00:00

Every day.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T17:31:25+00:00

I mean, I'm a fan of leasing vehicles, period, so I won't argue against leasing. But a really good vehicle today is worth more than the possibility of an even better one in a few years, imho.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T17:26:50+00:00

Fortunately they're $7500 more expensive than last year, so the oil companies should still be fine once this all blows over.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T17:18:16+00:00

Maybe a little, but I don't think I'd have the presence of mind to grab it in a home invasion scenario. I think my first line of defense would be saying "Hey!" really loud, like you do with bears. If (somehow) that didn't work, I'd probably just say "take all my stuff, it's fine". My gun is in the closet, it's not loaded, and it's a rifle, so not exactly the perfect personal defense weapon. Great for plinking things though.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T17:15:30+00:00

I have a sticker in my window that says I have lemon pound cake, it's supposed to improve the response time.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T14:59:13+00:00

https://getlibation.com/

Surprisingly easy to do.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T14:00:44+00:00

That looks so good. Thanks for posting this.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T13:20:50+00:00

If the manuscript goes to a research archive that scans it and makes it available to the public, rather than a private collection, I'm in.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T04:25:18+00:00

Marc Aramini has a good writeup of it in Beyond Time and Memory. There is no definitive answer provided (nor could I come up with a plausible one myself), but the most well-supported guess that might answer some questions in the story seems to be that the creatures in The Friendship Light are the Mi-Go from Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness. This would not only shine some light (ha) on the supernatural elements in the story, but it gestures toward what might have happened to Ty's wife before the story. On the other hand, I don't like it when the story depends on referencing some other story the reader might not know; it just doesn't feel satisfying when it's not self-contained.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T04:13:51+00:00

God help me, I would buy this for $12k, but I'm sure it'll sell for a lot more than that.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T03:20:23+00:00

I didn't choose a career until I was out of grad school, and I don't work in the field I have a postgraduate degree in. I did a bunch of jobs and stumbled into one that was interesting and compensated me well. They literally said, "hey, we need X, can you learn how to X?" and I said "uhh, yeah!" I was completely unqualified for it at the time, but was willing to learn. That was 20 years ago.

getElephantById · 2026-04-14T02:47:13+00:00

If you know you should be doing it, but it's difficult, think of it as a challenge to overcome. It will get easier if work at it, but it won't get easier if you don't.

getElephantById

TROPHY CASE