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Nobody’s even mentioned the fun part of AJ where the avatar can’t keep track of gender and therefore describes everyone as women leading you to challenge your gender assumptions every time some side character does something uncharacteristic of your expectations of a female {whatever} and you realize you live in a society. I’m not being flippant or ironic; I constantly found myself reimagining these described characters and seeing how it changed my thoughts of their actions if they were instead actually male soldiers, male security guards, etc.
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Jan 6, 2024 01:31
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Springfield Fatts posted:Khanstant keep it up these play by plays are like reading it again and I'm loving it. Yeah, this I'm really enjoying it
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Jan 6, 2024 01:35
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Lord Awkward posted:I guess it was a good stopping point, but I still wanted more, yeah. Although I was glad to see Provenance continue that universe, and that she had characters dealing with the fallout from the trilogy in various ways. I haven't read Translation State yet but I'm hoping for more of that. I really enjoyed Translation State, I think it may be the best of the series/books in that setting. It's a look into the very personal nature of gender, expression, self-determination, and how much of a complete and utter rear end in a top hat the Radch ambassador is.
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Jan 6, 2024 02:44
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josh04 posted:I felt like AJ was pretty good but then the author got a little bored of the setting midway through the second book. This is exactly what I meant. the author was like "welp, only a three book contract and I wanna do other stuff so lets wrap this all up" I feel like A hive mind civil war could go for at least 6 books with enough side plots. Its a very good premise for a space opera. Gravitas Shortfall posted:A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace are good books that are very much in the same vein. A lot of exploration of colonialism and empire. thank you! Ulf posted:Nobody’s even mentioned the fun part of AJ where the avatar can’t keep track of gender and therefore describes everyone as women leading you to challenge your gender assumptions every time some side character does something uncharacteristic of your expectations of a female {whatever} and you realize you live in a society. I just figured in Space Future it was now Matriarchy Time and I was extremely there for it. 
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Jan 6, 2024 03:35
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josh04 posted:I felt like AJ was pretty good but then the author got a little bored of the setting midway through the second book. It bugged me how the scope of each book got smaller and smaller, because MRC48B posted:I feel like A hive mind civil war could go for at least 6 books with enough side plots. Its a very good premise for a space opera. That's just not what they wanted to write about I guess. But I want to read about it!
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Jan 6, 2024 09:27
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Reckon to know if you've gone "too far" with your new bad influence friends, just see if they are having you come shoot living beings, for fun. Hunting is gross even when people come up with excuses for it. Immediately punished though, attacked, had to kill new friend, kicked in the rear end by a giant Pokemon. He needed a dino spanking!  3eit: hehe flere-imasho tricking gurgy into speaking the holy American language instead of Barbarian. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 18:09
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The emperor ragequit so hard he crashed the game server. Great book and story, I suspected Marwhen Skrelli was the oddly jovial narrator interludes and even thought maybe Flere was him but once revealed it was a mil drone I figured Marwen was somewhere else. I love the duality of Gurgeh being all "I'm not a champion I'm just here to play the game" and Imashi directly telling him "we are going to beat your rear end in the game and disassemble your pitiful empire." I also like that the little vegetable golems in the board became our players in the game being played by Minds elsewhere. They even fooled me, I genuinely expected him to win a few games, get owned eventually, and then otherwise experience character growth or showing the sham of the empire. I love the emperor in the end going full blood psycho, placing pieces down to trigger/coincide with dramatic explosions and poo poo. Even the deus ex machina was satisfying, well earned to finally see our robopal pop off. Za even made more sense after knowing he was a Merc. I'm glad Marwhen got a redemption in the end. My complaint is I think Gurgeh seemed closer to Chamlis than Yay, but I guess meatbags gonna meatbags. Also they should build the goddamn floating islands what the hell is the holdup. Back of the book had the start of Matter, but the Amazon sequencing has another book up next. I know it doesn't matter but thought it was interesting the conflicting directions.
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Jan 6, 2024 19:42
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The fire planet was really cool. I was imagining a generic lava land type place but the ring of fire ecology and strip of land stuff was really interesting. Culture sleeping on exotic Orbitals. Fire Festival in spaaaace
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Jan 6, 2024 19:45
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Khanstant posted:The emperor ragequit so hard he crashed the game server. Matter is a much later book, I love it but it's very different. there's no real order to them but chronological works pretty well. You could try consider phlebas, that's got some rad set pieces and is probably a good companion to PoG, since it's from the perspective of someone fighting the Culture.
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Jan 6, 2024 20:00
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sebmojo posted:Matter is a much later book, I love it but it's very different. there's no real order to them but chronological works pretty well. You could try consider phlebas, that's got some rad set pieces and is probably a good companion to PoG, since it's from the perspective of someone fighting the Culture. My (unfinished, inelegantly laid out) personally recommended Culture reading dependency order  He took a break between the early novels and the last three and I feel like there's two distinct generations of Culture novels as a result. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 20:19
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Khanstant posted:The emperor ragequit so hard he crashed the game server. 
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Jan 6, 2024 20:29
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It's a good rear end book and when I read it the first time the ending with Yay and Gurgeh hooking up was kind of eye rolling, but on a second read it really hit home for me. Banks makes a point of showing the real affection in the interaction, and even Gurgeh's growth since Yay was in mid-transition where as earlier he was ribbed for being so staunchly hetero in his preferences. It's a sharp contrast to all of the transactional, exploitative or downright cruel connotations that sex has within Azad.
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Jan 6, 2024 21:26
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When you think about it, from a Culture perspective, Gurgeh is a borderline psycho. He's playing games out of a need for domination, and he's prepared to cheat to maintain that sense of dominance. The fact that he's male, super hetro, and never changed sex, is another nod to the reader (who almost certainly grew up in a patriarchal society, thus gets the subtext), but is also just plain weird in the Culture. Dropping Gurgeh into Azad is the equivalent of your parents catching you smoking and forcing you to smoke not just the whole packet, but the whole carton.
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Jan 6, 2024 21:33
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Yeah it was nice seeing Gurgeh changed by the experience. He was a bit of a psycho, which is why he paired so well with Marwen right up until the ambush and blackmail stuff. Was that all part of the plan too? I guess so probably lol. The end mentioned some folks dying from fireworks accidents on Chiark, and like, they really ain't got no backups or clones or anything? Whoopsies still a risk of existence? I mean also they can save a dude with a tongue pill from astronomical distances and whatever, can't do a forcefield for some falling rocks? One interesting question someone grilled Gurgeh about was what if you wanted your own planet. I would definitely be one to want a planet, to build the fictional planet I've been drawing and dreaming up for 15 years, if for no other reason than to get to see it and check how off my sense of scale and distance are. Different sort of thing though going from fiction where its stories and ideas and jokes and bits and free to be stupid, to something physics has to hold and life might end up on. Realistically if they aren't even letting them making floating island orbitals for no apparent reason, they're never gonna let me make my stupid goblin planet. But now I know to just sulk and get obsessed with it too much and they'll eventually run me through the wringer and get my head out of my rear end. Oh yeah I also cracked up hard when Imsaho explained the Limiting Factor was actually a secret double strong warship all along. Especially since they bothered to shuffle random junk around just to make it seem like he was seeing other empty blisters. Actually thinking back, if that was Marwen all along, was he just playing a salty bastard at the start or did he legitimately grow or change in between the blackmail success and arrival to Azad region?
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Jan 6, 2024 22:46
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MikeJF posted:My (unfinished, inelegantly laid out) personally recommended Culture reading dependency order Yeah that's good, it's all p loose though.
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Jan 6, 2024 22:59
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Khanstant posted:Yeah it was nice seeing Gurgeh changed by the experience. He was a bit of a psycho, which is why he paired so well with Marwen right up until the ambush and blackmail stuff. Was that all part of the plan too? I guess so probably lol. You can do backups, some people just don't for various reasons. The same way how people die today doing any number of stupid sports poo poo we've have safe options for just because. I have a relative who free climbs and refuses harnesses or safety lines on principal. A Mind isn't going to infringe on another sentience's choice to be dumb as hell. I don't remember if Player gets into it or of it's later in the series but you could easily make your own Planet Goblin while dreaming in one of the hyper-real shared experiences. I think it's only the truly obsessed or gifted like Yay who want to then do that poo poo in reality. If it's just a "eh gently caress it let's see what happens" impulse then dreamzone would be a way more easier way to scratch that itch.
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Jan 6, 2024 23:11
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I think it's mentioned in a couple of different books that a big part of why the Culture only does ships and habitats is that they view planets as natural parks and messing with them is frowned upon.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:06
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Ah okay, I'm not bothered by it if it's a choice, that makes total human sense. I'm sufficiently obsessed, reckon if I was gifted though I wouldn't constantly be refuddling maps and buildings because I just don't intuitively grasp how big or far things are. I'm staring at a colossal backside of a dead being trying to figure out how big to make the map blob for his city district i've been planning the streets and buildings for. Yay or a drone would know exactly how high this butt plateau is supposed to be and the exact area this district needs to get the rooftop views I need it to have. I would be relegated to the dreamworld anyway for the sheer stupidity of the place, but that is just as well since making it a utopia breaks a lot of the story conflicts intended -- and you really shouldn't do stories and videogames with sentient lives, that's how you get Azad. Most realistically if I got to exist in The Culture I wouldn't be obsessed with making this little fake world by hand and could probably just have a really fulfilling and productive job utilizing my worldbuilding urges for places people want to see and live on. Even being denied floating isles, and pushback against volcanoes, that's the coolest job they've mentioned in the 2 books I've read so far. Most "what if you lived and the Culture and wanted" questions are probably invalidated at the premise. Every artistic urge and instinct anyone has shaped by the culture and experiences and products of the world we got, and so much of that comes from bad or broken systems and pressures that Culture people don't. I just read the wikipedia when looking up when it was written, and this Legacy section is really sad. Deserves more reference than a couple of spacex ships and a really gross Grimes song about musk invoking Player of Games in a way you can tell none of them got any of the points. Last thing, the book spoke to Marain's strengths and adaptability and such, but they didn't mention any fonts of typefaces. I wonder if their aversion to symbols extends to typography. In 88 I doubt anyone was even thinking about it much, but today when you have an ocean of fonts available and sometimes the easiest way to find a font you want is to actually just search for the mood, idea, concept, associations you want the font to invoke. It's a little surprising how rarely authors utilize different fonts despite how much they can communicate. Only a little, because picking even one font can be exhausting and make you wish you simply didn't have a choice in the matter. Haven't decided which to read next, Player and Phlebas done, so probably Use of Weapons or Excision. I'll see how I feel tomorrow and decide then, been reading while walking which has been working well. Seems like e-book-reading glasses should be a thing by now, not glasses to help read, but glasses that have the text to read without making you hold anything or look down. Just floating text of appropriate contrast, turn the pages by winking.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:10
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pygmy tyrant posted:I think it's mentioned in a couple of different books that a big part of why the Culture only does ships and habitats is that they view planets as natural parks and messing with them is frowned upon. Terraforming a planet is something the Culture views as galactic vandalism. I'm not sure how bluntly the reasons are drawn out but I think it's explicitly 'if you can terraform then you can just make an orbital habitat, which is better in every way', and implicitly 'when you terraform a plant to your species' needs then you are reducing the intergalactic diversity and space for species to potentially evolve in/go live on in the civilisational stage before you can terraform things'.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:14
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Khanstant posted:Haven't decided which to read next, Player and Phlebas done, so probably Use of Weapons or Excision. Just if you're looking for input. Excession is great, but Use of Weapons is maybe a top-2 entry in the whole series, and with Phelbas and Games done you're ready for it.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:40
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Yeah I agree with the above, but I’ll put Excession on par with Use of Weapons if you are at all interested in ships over humans. It is the exploration of Culture ships. Re: designing your own planet, if you’re good enough you can absolutely design your own orbital for others to live on. Culture considers planets a waste of mass (you could build a thousand orbitals out of one) but if you just want a huge space to yourself you can have that. Plenty of places in the galaxy that need a token human caretaker. You meet one of these people in Excession, but instead of megalomaniacs like you’re thinking they’re just sad people who can’t socialize. Anyone who’s actually mad with power is gonna need some humans around them to flex on.
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Jan 7, 2024 03:29
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Khanstant posted:Last thing, the book spoke to Marain's strengths and adaptability and such, but they didn't mention any fonts of typefaces. I wonder if their aversion to symbols extends to typography. In 88 I doubt anyone was even thinking about it much, but today when you have an ocean of fonts available and sometimes the easiest way to find a font you want is to actually just search for the mood, idea, concept, associations you want the font to invoke. It's a little surprising how rarely authors utilize different fonts despite how much they can communicate. Only a little, because picking even one font can be exhausting and make you wish you simply didn't have a choice in the matter. The basic digital form of Marain is a 3x3 dot grid (really it's just a nine-bit binary sequence). Marain glyphs are drawn-together lines of the dots but everyone can also read the basic grid version too.   (There's about a dozen pages of random jottings and ideas on Marain in here:  )If you haven't read it, you may want to read a few notes on The Culture, it's a couple pages by banks in 1994 laying down some of the basic ideas. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 07:50
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https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-ambiguous-utopia-of-iain-m-banks interesting article on Banks and liberalism
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Jan 11, 2024 04:42
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^Great article. Some similar points to BravestoftheLamps halfjoking critique of the liberalism inherent in the Culture. Could somebody with archives dig up that post if they remember what I'm talking about?
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Jan 11, 2024 09:43
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Yadoppsi posted:^Great article. Some similar points to BravestoftheLamps halfjoking critique of the liberalism inherent in the Culture. Could somebody with archives dig up that post if they remember what I'm talking about? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&pagenumber=6&perpage=40#post476752092 Like I said at the time, I broadly agree with BoTL (and that article) on this point, but also think that it's deliberate by Banks. Also in general BoTL never argues in good faith, makes assertations that aren't backed up by the source material, and moves goalposts as soon as they're caught in falsehoods or contradictions. That they stumbled upon "The Culture is a reflection of liberal interventionalist actions" just suggests that it's not exactly a complex analysis. I don't think the article is all that revolutionary though, and I had to lol at this bit: quote:but like all Utopias, it contains its dark places and puzzles, and perhaps even the seeds of its own critique like, really my dude? maybe? do you think? Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 09:49
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It was an interesting read but isn't that whole article essentially Horza's ideological reasons for siding with the Idirans? Also what is that guy talking about, Minds harm people all the time.
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Jan 11, 2024 14:27
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Yeah that wasn't a good article for anyone who has read the books, but it's not for people who read the books
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Jan 11, 2024 18:28
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:What I like about the Ancillary books is how much they go into what it feels like to be a sapient warship, and the conflicting loyalties that go along with it. Also, the Justice of Toren has a lot in common with the Look To Windward's Lasting Damage - both are traumatised by acts of war and, both are struggling with identity and loss. I hadn't thought of it this way. In fact, I feel inspired to write a Justice of Toren/Lasting Damage crossover. I'm shipping them 
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Jan 13, 2024 23:22
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I'm surprised to hear people say Use of Weapons is a top tier book, I started it after finishing Phelbas and Games and I'm finding it a slog to get through compared to those. Someone earlier said Banks is good at getting you to like a character and then learn they're a piece of poo poo but the first part never clicked for this one. I genuinely feel like I'm missing something here. Excession sounds like what I really want to see so maybe I'll just skip to that and come back to Weapons in a better mood.
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Jan 24, 2024 12:42
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Maduo posted:I'm surprised to hear people say Use of Weapons is a top tier book, I started it after finishing Phelbas and Games and I'm finding it a slog to get through compared to those. Someone earlier said Banks is good at getting you to like a character and then learn they're a piece of poo poo but the first part never clicked for this one. I genuinely feel like I'm missing something here. I'm with you, tbh. Weapons is a hard read. Some people don't like Excession because a chunk of it is basically chat logs between Minds, but I think that just adds to the charm.
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Jan 24, 2024 12:55
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The mind chatlogs are the good bits.
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Jan 24, 2024 12:57
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Maduo posted:I'm surprised to hear people say Use of Weapons is a top tier book, I started it after finishing Phelbas and Games and I'm finding it a slog to get through compared to those. Someone earlier said Banks is good at getting you to like a character and then learn they're a piece of poo poo but the first part never clicked for this one. I genuinely feel like I'm missing something here. It was me, and I liked Zalkalwe because he was an archetypical dashing rogue. He was charming, dangerous, and I think most importantly self-aware of those qualities within him. Sma seems self indulgent but the scene in the saloon with her drone gives her some nice fleshing out as well as giving you a hint at what these things are capable of. josh04 posted:The mind chatlogs are the good bits. Until you listen to the audiobook and they make the baffling decision to read every single number, period, and computer nonsense before each interaction. It got old fast.
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Jan 24, 2024 14:14
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Just finished Matter, good poo poo. Think overall I preferred it to Surface Detail.
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Jan 25, 2024 00:27
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josh04 posted:Just finished Matter, good poo poo. Think overall I preferred it to Surface Detail. Maduo posted:I'm surprised to hear people say Use of Weapons is a top tier book, I started it after finishing Phelbas and Games and I'm finding it a slog to get through compared to those. Someone earlier said Banks is good at getting you to like a character and then learn they're a piece of poo poo but the first part never clicked for this one. I genuinely feel like I'm missing something here.
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Jan 25, 2024 01:54
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Okay I'm glad I'm not completely off base here. I do think I'll like Zakalwe and Sma more on a second pass but for now chatlogs sound right up my alley.
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Jan 25, 2024 07:59
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The bits about the ship hanging in orbit and "listening in" on a genocide being perpetrated is still some of the best stuff I've ever read. It really made me feel uncomfortable.
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Jan 27, 2024 14:52
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The Meatfucker?
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Feb 21, 2024 13:18
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Megillah Gorilla posted:The Meatfucker? So because Musk named the SpaceX landing drone ships after Minds, I learned about Culture novels from the spaceflight thread. And in one of the threads back in the day someone made this joke (paraphrased): Intern: "Mr Musk, we've been through the books and we're out of Mind names for the drone ships. Except...." Musk: "Except what?" *weeks later* CBS News: "SpaceX has landed its latest booster on the drone ship Meatfucker..."
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Feb 22, 2024 03:53
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I honestly think that Musk hasn't read the Culture novels at all, and at best has skimmed summaries online.
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Feb 22, 2024 19:12
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Megillah Gorilla posted:The Meatfucker? Gravitas Shortfall posted:I honestly think that Musk hasn't read the Culture novels at all, and at best has skimmed summaries online.
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Feb 22, 2024 19:18
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