AwesomeLowlander

joined 3 days ago
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'Hell is the absence of God' by Ted Chiang

SpoilerWell this story was a brain fuck. I really liked the setting of how the world would look if the existence of God wasn't baseless speculation, but undeniable fact. Suddenly, religious fanatics aren't cuckoos but just plain make sense.

And then, boom. Protagonist gets brainwashed and banished to a life of pain. And no real reason is given. The sheer arbitrariness of it brings to mind the nonsense strictures of existing religion, along with the willingness of its adherents to accept and explain away anything.

Just... Damn.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 2 points 2 days ago

Just read it. Man, that story was a brainfuck

 

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

This was an interesting read.

Spoiler

Although in the first half I was expecting actual humans to show up at some point. The analogy to entropy is obvious, but the author manages to shrink the unimaginable timescales of our universe's heat death down into something that we can feel and empathise with.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 6 points 2 days ago

Clickbait PLUS American defaultism. Two for the price of one!

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 1 points 3 days ago

I found Terraformental to be really fun early on, but it really seems to bog down a lot late game.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 1 points 3 days ago

Yeah I installed that one, will check it out :)

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 2 points 3 days ago

Keyword: Incrementals :)

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don't think any of those are incrementals, though :)

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Jeezus, for the amount of good PR they were getting from this you'd think they could afford the spare change.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 31 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's only skipping if your password matches. Otherwise it'll just be a normal file.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sadly, doesn't look like there's much response to the prompts there :(

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 12 points 3 days ago

How would it be detected? It seems like the password detection and decryption is happening at the hardware level, and they take steps to have it show up as nothing more than a standard drive. I'm not an expert on this stuff though.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@quokk.au 16 points 3 days ago

Yes, because shrinkflation wasn't a thing until Ozempic arrived.

Also, the % of the population taking Ozempic is what, a rounding error?

 

Story can be found at: Family Business

Kicking this off with one of my favourite authors, Adrian Tchaikovsky. For all the hype about Sanderson's writing speed, not many people know Tchaikovsky is neck to neck with him in the output department.

I liked the worldbuilding in this one, lots of hints about the lore dropped left and right, while keeping a fast pace. Ironically considering my intro above, it reminds me a lot of Sanderson's Cosmere and the bunch of misfit vagrants travelling through it. I suppose it's a pretty common trope in epic fantasy. The ending does leave something to be desired, it reads more like a prologue than a standalone story.

(This was reposted because the first post didn't federate well due to new community issues)

 

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