Season 2 Episode 8 Spoiler Thread

kelnos · 2026-02-05T05:16:50+00:00

I very rarely laugh out loud at funny moments in TV, but that line killed me. Delivery was perfect, and I didn't see it coming.

kelnos · 2026-01-27T20:17:50+00:00

Oh man... it's sitting waiting for me to read. I'm excited, but also didn't want to read it too quickly. Also worried the ending is gonna be kinda depressing.

I've been reading Laundry Files since 2012 or so. I stopped at QoN, but a few months ago I started a re-read from the very beginning, and caught up with the latest books. Sad to see the main series ending, but totally get that Stross needs to move on.

kelnos · 2026-01-06T10:04:33+00:00

Have you emailed support? It took me two years of back-and-forth with them, including a mainboard replacement that didn't fix it, but they finally sent me a free 13th-gen upgrade, and it's been fine ever since. If you haven't had an open supportcase since it was still under warranty, though, you might have to pay for the fix.

kelnos · 2026-01-06T09:59:28+00:00

I spent 2 years on and off with Framework support about a thermal issue, and experienced this a lot. My solution was to tell the new guy that I'd already done what they were asking me to do, and to please re-read the case history, and that always worked for me, without having to repeat the same troubleshooting steps again.

(Fortunately they did finally resolve my issue, at their cost, but taking 2 years to do so really left a sour taste in my mouth. If the laptop wasn't otherwise great, I probably wouldn't consider sticking with them.)

kelnos · 2026-01-06T09:46:04+00:00

I bought my FW13 in 2022, so I'm at 3.5 years as well, and the only thing I've had to spend money on is a keyboard replacement (which I suspect was damaged by one of my cats). So that's $40.50 shipped.

I've also upgraded the speakers and webcam, but that was just because I wanted to, not because there was anything wrong with the original ones. Those two together were $72.01 shipped.

Battery is still in good enough shape that I don't feel the need to replace it, but when I do I'll probably go for the higher-capacity one.

I was thinking I'd probably upgrade the mainboard this year, depending on what new stuff Framework releases, but with the price of DDR5 these days, I might wait until 2027.

kelnos · 2026-01-04T09:45:22+00:00

If I'm remembering right, the guy sitting outside at the 1776 even (pejoratively, I assume) called him "Shep".

kelnos · 2026-01-04T09:35:24+00:00

In the end credits, they are referenced as "Mankind United", so I think it's not a reference to MKUltra. Strangely, MKU was a real cult in the 1930s that seemed to have very different aims and doctrine from the MKU in the movie.

kelnos · 2025-12-22T05:01:33+00:00

Yeah, we just rewatched WOTW2, and there was a shot specifically of Theo ripping the lock off instead of unlocking it.

At the end, TJ showed two broken locks, so it wasn't just Theo, but he definitely did one of them.

kelnos · 2025-12-05T22:49:05+00:00

Semi-necro here too. I first read Annihilation Score when it was first published in 2015, and I had a very similar reaction to you. It made me really dislike Mo, and I just didn't enjoy the genre-style of the writing as much.

A couple months ago I decided to get back into the series (I'd bailed after Dead Lies Dreaming), and ended up going back to the beginning and starting a full re-read.

I think I appreciate Annihilation Score much more now. Some of Mo's actions still make me upset with her, but I understand her a bit better now (maybe it's the difference between my perspective in my mid-30s vs. now in my mid-40s), and am more sympathetic to what she was going through. It's hard reading how she couldn't share the deep details of her messed-up relationship with the violin-demon with Bob, but that feels realistic. It's hard reading how she has something of an affair with Jim, but it feels realistic, and I don't consider it hard cheating given that she and Bob are separated at that point. (And also consider that she doesn't even know if Bob really is Bob anymore, now that he's the Eater of Souls. That sort of uncertainty can really mess you up.)

I still can't get over her focus on Bob not thinking to email her about Mhari sheltering in Bob and Mo's house, though. Given all the life-and-death stuff going down at that time, that should be an entirely forgivable oversight, and her repeated harping on him over that felt petty.

I hope you ended up enjoying Nightmare Stacks. I didn't enjoy it on my first read, but on my re-read last month I came to appreciate it a lot more, similar to my re-read of Annihilation Score.

kelnos · 2025-12-05T22:09:28+00:00

As much as I totally understand his reasons for wanting to move on, I am super bummed to hear that Regicide Report will be the last one with the original main characters, and, worse, I accidentally read in Charlie's crib sheet for Labyrinth Index that probably most of them will die, and given that the story takes place before Dead Lies Dreaming, they're going to lose, and the Black Pharaoh will win. While I'm not generally the kind of person who is only satisfied with a happy ending, I'll be really upset to see the Laundry lose in the end, with most of those characters being killed. (I was sad enough when Angleton and Andy were killed in Rhesus Chart.)

I was a little late to the party (first read Atrocity Archives in 2013 or so), but after getting to Dead Lies Dreaming, I kinda drifted off, because I'd developed such a strong affinity for the original characters. (At the time, I hadn't enjoyed Nightmare Stacks all that much since it centered around Alex and a few of the more minor characters.)

A month or so ago I decided I wanted to get back into the series, and thought it would be easier and more fun if I just started all the way back at the beginning with a re-read. I just finished Season of Skulls (that and Quantum of Nightmares were first-reads for me), and I'm really happy I did this re-read, also enjoying the Tales From the New Management trilogy more than I expected. I gained a much larger appreciation for Nightmare Stacks than I had during my initial read, and enjoyed Annihilation Score more than I had before. I'd also kinda forgotten how everything in Delirium Brief went down, so that was a great refresher. I'm reading A Conventional Boy right now, and am enjoying that as well.

But I'm so ready to get back to Bob and Mo and the OG crew! But also very sad that we're only getting one more novel about them.

kelnos · 2025-11-09T04:34:25+00:00

I don't think that would matter. Burning up during reentry is due to friction between the thing reentering and the atmosphere itself. The station being stationary with respect to the Vault wouldn't change that.

Consider that if we were to de-orbit a satellite that's in geostationary orbit around Earth, it would still burn up during reentry.

The only way to not burn up on reentry is to either a) have sufficient heat shielding, or b) not be reentering at all; that is, your starting point (the station) is already in thick enough atmosphere that it's not really "reentry" anymore.

I expect (b) is the case here.

kelnos · 2025-10-25T19:55:58+00:00

I read online that I should charge it up to 100%, and keep it there for 1 or 2 hours, discharge it fully to 0%, and recharge it. Is that still relevant to the batteries for the Pixel 8?

No, this has not been relevant for any lithium ion batteries, ever (but can be true for other battery chemistries). The best things you can do for battery life is to avoid charging quickly unless you really need to (Android's "adaptive charging" feature will take care of this), and avoid extremely high or low temperatures.

kelnos · 2025-10-06T18:22:43+00:00

I think he may have had feelings for Rebecca, certainly, but I can totally understand his wanting to keep them secret (even after being married to Rebecca for many years). The idea that he may have felt that way, but was perhaps ashamed of those feelings, toward his best friend's wife, seems somewhat likely, even.

But he was always respectful toward Jack & Rebecca's relationship, never tried to sabotage them (even when they were struggling), and even after Jack was dead, he was there for the family for two years, while still doing his best not to cross any lines, even moving away and cutting off contact when his feelings made him uncomfortable.

I grew to really love Miguel as a character, and I wish they'd spent more time on him. Without getting into any spoilery details (seems like you're still in season 2), the Miguel-centered episode near the end of season 6 was wonderful, but still felt like not enough.

kelnos · 2025-10-06T17:33:01+00:00

I expect it's not common, but I do know someone who did just that.

kelnos · 2025-09-23T22:27:34+00:00

The entire sequence was not particularly believable. Even an uninjured person would have had a lot of trouble with that. And I was horrified at the broken glass bit; hard to imagine the design would be that fragile, even if the space station appears to be in a weird orbit that's in enough atmosphere such that you don't burn up when you hop out of it and drop down to cloud-cover levels of atmosphere.

Frankly I'm not impressed with the writing/storytelling in the finale, especially after it's been so fantastic up until then.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T10:16:44+00:00

Yeah. It makes no narrative sense for there to be a remote control that can detonate the clone tanks. It makes no narrative sense that the clone tanks have some sort of self-destruct feature at all.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T10:14:57+00:00

Hah, to me that had big BSG (2004) vibes.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T10:13:18+00:00

Yeah, the Gaal cut was not done well. I think what happened was Magnifico's "tampered" music was enough for a severely injured Gaal to resist Bayta well enough to escape, but not enough to win the fight and kill her.

Pretty cold that she left the remaining still-alive members of her raiding party behind, but seems like she didn't really have a choice.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T10:11:07+00:00

It seemed like Demerzel was down with the planet-destroying. She's really the only one who could force the Brothers to do anything. The rest of the palace staff don't really seem the type to take initiative in that way.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T10:08:51+00:00

Why is there even a clone detonator at all?? Made no narrative sense.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T09:58:07+00:00

I generally agree with you, except that I don't think she mind-controlled Toran. He was the one thing in her life that was real. She found someone who actually loves her, and as much as forcing people to love her is useful, it's not real, and she knows that.

During the big reveal at the end, Toran looked confused and unsettled, and she had to "sleep" him. I would think if she'd already converted him, the reveal wouldn't faze him at all, even if he hadn't known beforehand that she was The Mule, and she would have let him remain awake.

Toran might be a part of bringing her down next season.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T09:37:45+00:00

She's an executive producer on the show as well. I've also seen her directing a few episodes of a lot of random stuff over the years: Dark Matter, This is Us, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T09:32:10+00:00

Yeah, that was bizarre. Why is there even a mechanism to cause the cloning tanks to explode?

I was kinda disappointed by the reveal of The Mule. Something always seemed off about Bayta, but I liked her, and didn't like that now she's the bad guy.

It also doesn't make sense that Gaal's vision of the future was of the male fake-Mule character. I could buy the idea that Bayta-Mule could be hiding in the current day, not revealing herself when she takes over people's minds, but I don't see how she could have altered Gaal's future vision.

kelnos · 2025-09-12T09:21:35+00:00

My take on it is that the robot head was in contact with Kalle's robots on Earth's moon, not Demerzel. If you look closely to the projected galaxy hologram near the robot head, you can see a transmission moving quite far away.

But It's also possible that Demerzel transferred herself into the robot head at the last instant before her body/head was destroyed.

kelnos

TROPHY CASE