Man I remember back when I was young, when anthropomorphized flytrap plants had a damn firm human gender. Dunno what chemicals the govmnt is putting in in the sprinklers these days, but they're for sure priming young Leshies to disrespect tradition and their elders. What a farce.
Shout out to Scarwall, from the end of Curse of the Crimson Throne! A high-ish level dungeon done right, in my opinion. It's huge, filled with interesting and varied encounters, and simply drips with atmosphere. I'm also a huge fan of the Lady's Light, from the second adventure in Shards of Sin. I think it really has this feeling of discovery, alongside some serious highlights, both in traps and encounters.
The Selfish Gene thoughts: It is not often that reading a book would win me a new perspective with which to consider the world. But through excellent and crystal clear writing, Dawkins managed to do that just. The basic premise of his book is one that anyone who knows the concept of evolution just be at least vaguly aware of by intuition - that evolution is a competition between genes, not individual organism, and that the genes that "win" the competition by becoming widespred are those that were better able to exploit the enviornment (composed of other genes) the best. The book offered two major new insights to me: first, that a gene is the only "immortal" component of bioligy (I will be dead a hundred years from now - but exact replicas of my genes will be found in tens of descendants and descendants of relatives), and that the genes can be considered as players acting out repeting games (in the game theory sense of those terms). These insights are well explained and applied in various fascinating examples - like "games" between family members. Since I share half of my genes with each of my brothers, a gene for sacrificing myself to save three brothers would be genetically favorable, as on average is would save 1.5 copies of itsel at the price of sacrificng one copy. Dawkins lays out the science in a way that I believe anyone can undersand, even without any preexisting knowledge of genetics or game theory. He also addreses the moral, philosophical and practical implications of the ideas he's promoting with admirable aplomb. His famous anti-religeon ranting only appears in one chapter towards the end of the book, and even there it is only mildly combatitive. In general his musings on the significance of the Selfish Gene theory on our lives and understanding of the world are precise and insightful. I think is book is brilliant, and would strongly recommend anybody with even the slightest interest in the subject matter to give it a try. The audiobook is narrated by Dawkins and another woman who's name I forget, and they both do a great job, making it a good choice for the format.
Seriously? You disliked the castings for Eddard, Tyrion, Arya and Varys? I thought these were absolutely brilliant, and many others were good.
Finished "The Price Of Valor" (The Shadow Campaigns #3 by Django Wexler) and started on Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan - hoping to finish this one quickly in preparation for the Netflix show. The Price Of Valor thoughts: Another rock solid entry to an already fun series. There's a good mix of military action, intrigue and character development. Magic finally takes a place at the front, which creates a feeling of escalation in the overall story, even though in terms of plot not much advanced since the previous books. The people we came to care about previously continue to do their thing in a reliable and enjoyable fashion, and Janus in particular continues to be the single greatest thing about the series. I have started to form an opinion that the Shadow Campaigns is a perfect example of how the basic techniques of writing a fantasy story should be employed - everything is done with polished competence that makes the story tick along and work well, even if nothing about it is particularly great. This is just very good, very balanced story crafting. For example - many of the characters in these book are incredibly good at what they do - a teenager who has complete mastery in the arts of trade and can earn obscene amounts of money from thin air, a spy/secret agent who makes Bond look like a total wossy, a military leader who can come up with innovative and adaptive tactics easily, a queen with a keen political mind and a pure heart... and then there's Janus, of course, who basically is capable of anything. Compatent characters are likable and it is fun to watch them succeed, but characters who feel too great at everything are boring and annoying, and Django manages to hit the exact sweet stuff where this still works. I can clearly see what he's doing, but I'm also enjoying it a lot. I do feel the series improved significantly since the first book, be it with some truly adrenaline fueled skirmishes, overall pacing and sense of humor. I'm looking forward to picking up the next book in a month or two.
It's the end of 2017, a year that saw the most drastic bunch of changes and my (admittedly short) life so far - I finished officer training and got a new posting as the head of a software development team, started my master's degree in computer science and moved in with my girlfriend in Jerusalem. Certainly a time of change for me, but one thing remains a constant - my reading!
stats:
category 1: how much did I read? Number of Books read: 22 number of pages read: about 9.6k average length of book 435 shortest book: The Forever War (278) longest book: Absolution Gap (756) category 2: diversity
top 5s:
category 3: top 5 books of the year: 5) Touch, by Blaire North: Not quite as incredible as First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but still fantastic - great and highly original idea, excellent writing to back it up. What held the book back was that the introspective, flashback filled style is not a good fit for the story, essentially a thriller. 4) History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari: A thought provoking examination of how human society came to rule the earth by managing to follow imagined entities (such as "God" or "France" or, more recently, "Google") in great numbers for a shared purpose. Very engaging and makes interesting claims about the 21st century and where it might be headed. 3)The Forever War, by Joe Haldman: Another classic that I found to earn the spot. Even if you can feel its age (it would tell you all about homolife) it makes for a strongly emotional read, and combines SF speculation (the realities of a galactic war against another civilization, where you have to plan hundreds of year in advance because relativistic speeds are weird) and social commentary about the dreadful folly of war and the absurd machinations of military bureaucracy. 2)Ace Of Skulls\Small Favor by Chris Wooding\Jim Butcher: Two delightful entries in series I love. Ace Of Skulls concluded the Tales Of The Ketty Jay in style, and Small Favor was crazy fun despite being more action-oriented than any previous Dresden Files, going a little too strongly in that direction for me. 1) King Of Thorns, by Mark Lawrence: Damn that was good. Using a brilliant structure that allowed it to keep suspension up even during its meandering bits (as Jorg is prone to meander - be it in dreams, thoughts or over land), it was action packed, emotionally impactful and a ton of fun. Lawrence is extremely clever in his writing, filling his pages with turns of phrase the tickle the brain. Jorg is at his height here, one of the most fascinating characters I ever read. Bottom 5 books of the year:
Well, that's it. An average year in reading, I must say - a lot of the stuff I read felt just OK. Hopefully I'll have better luck with my choices in 2018!
The comics you linked is hardly a compelling argument. The Force Awakens is almost the exact same Story as A New Hope, and the parts of it that aren't are a mix of things very strongly inspired by bits and pieces of the other Star Wars movies. Abrahams himself freely admits it. The Force Awakens was the first (and so far only) movie in the series that tried to do nothing new. As for me? I don't like Abrahams. He's unlikely to deliver a complete dud but is extremely likely to deliver something shallow and uninteresting that is closer to an action movie than a SF movie. But we'll see.
So first gameplay footage of Anthem, the newest Bioware offering, is now avilable. The snippet, which Bioware used to make a first impression with their game, focuses heavily on two elements: open world exploration and multiplayer (in the form of small group co-op). More and more, it seems to me as if Bioware is reinventing itself in a way that alienates their traditional fanbase. I can certainly say that what I loved about their older games was the awesome focus on story, setting and characters, all told through a tight and well planned narrative with tons of dialogue and tactical combat with group management. With every successive game they released, I watched in horror as these elements faded - sometimes to be replaced by different ones I don't like nearly as much, and sometimes simply to remain as muted versions of their former glory. In ME3 dialogue has been so overly simplified that you'll be hard pressed to differentiate conversations from slightly interactive cut-scenes. Dragon Age Inquisition did away with group management (you can still technically control your group members but the interface strongly encourages you to control a single character in each combat encounter - trying to play Inquisition like I did Origins was a complete nightmare of frustrating camera angles) and introduced a large open world instead of the well scripted and more contained areas of the good old days. Mass Effect 4 I know is mostly meh about pretty much every single element other than combat. And now here comes Anthem. It looks to have a cool setting and some pretty fun gameplay elements, gorgeous graphics and many other likable things. But the choice to highlight multiplayer really scared me - I feel it's a safe bet that like me, a great number of Bioware friends *prefer* the solitary game experience over playing with friends, letting ourselves soak into the story and character we built for ourselves rather than being taken out of the experience by constantly chatting with troublesome *actual* humans. Bioware is losing me here, and that is a real downer since some of their older games fit so perfectly and neatly to what I want out of a video game that they felt too good to be true. Anyone here who feels like me? Or am I perhaps reading too much into the released Anthem footage?
...I occasionally find myself wishing that I had a small book to carry with me...Yeah, whenever the book I'm currently reading is too big to fit in my pocket, I also keep handy a small book that WILL fit, for those situations when I have to go places where I might be kept waiting for a long time. Get a kindle you grognards :)
Couple of things: 1) We (the Paizo community) are responding to a military event that happened in the middle eastern theatre of war, but that is also a strategic move the U.S made on the global scale - mainly due to the presence of Russia in the area. Thus, we can assume that the reasoning behind the move takes into account absurdly confidential knowledge that we naturally cannot access. Therefore, any attempt we make at rationalizing the attack or debunking said rational is bound to be woefully far from the actual truth of the matter. 2) Having said that, here are a few easily applicable rules of thumb that likely apply here. Number one, Russia is involved so nothing is as it seems - in the past decade Russia established a strategy of manipulation and misdirection that proved itself over and over and so they are likely to continue with it. Number two, applying external force on Arabs will not make them budge. An attack against them would be considered an affront to their honor, a crime to be avenged.It may have a short term impact of cowing them into seeking to avoid immediate conflict, such as happened with Hamas and Hizballah after major conflicts with Israel, but it will only deepen their determination to win long term. Number three, the U.S is the one and only true superpower in the world right now and any military move it makes is likely seeking to accomplish some sort of goal we cannot guess at, but which will have an impact in the near future of civilization. Or, even worse, they may have been tricked by Russia to think this will accomplish that goal. Considering the above, it is hard to really know what to think about this attack, but I'm fearful of the event and lean towards disapproving of it. It feels to me like the gas attack was in the first place a Russian manipulation of one sort or another (as Assad has no real gain to achieve from using unconventional weaponry he know will rile the western world against him, so why do it?) and like the U.S is being lead by the nose to make this kind of offensive move. It also seems to me like the move has no chance of actually deterring anyone in the middle east from doing anything - and might in fact even incite more violence and cause more death in the area. Given that decision makers in the U.S surely know this, I conclude that the attack has some hidden agenda that benefits the U.S in some unknown context. Bottom line? I think what we see is strong powers like Russia and the U.S making a chessboard out of the middle east again, with the human population of the place serving as pawns. And I don't like that.
Here's the problem with that, though. If you try to convince me that London is the capital of England and you do it by giving me a link to a Wikipedia article, there's a fair chance I'll be convinced because your argument was reasonable and valid. If instead you would have pointed me to the wikipedia article and to a website ran by conspiracy theorists claiming that London was brought down to Earth by aliens in the 12th century as a gift to mankind, I would be far less likely to trust you on the matter. The reasonable, accurate, convincing Wikipedia article would still be there, but your credibility would be damaged so much by the weird stuff that I'd start questioning even the wiki article simply because you're the one who linked me to it. If PETA is to convince people of anything, it has to stick to arguments that makes sense, it has to pick and choose it's battles, and it needs to rid itself of those fringe elements that alienate the only people who may otherwise have actually listened to what PETA has to say.
So, in previous years I started a "reading year in review" thread to which people usually didn't respond as enthuisiastically as a chance to list things should have prompted them to, so I decided to relegate this to a post here. Essentially: I want to go over everything I've read this year and over-categorize it. Would love to see similar posts from others, just for fun, but anyway, here's mine. Lord Snows' 2016: category 1: how much did I read? Number of Books read: 24 number of pages read: about 10.8k average length of book: 465 shortest book: Nine Princes In Amber (175) longest book: A Memory OF Light (909) category 2: diversity
category 3: top 5 books of the year
Spoiler:
5) books X in ongoing series: I've read several very strong entries in super long series this year, which I lumped together in this category. The two Dresden Files novels, two Terry Pratchett books and the third book in Tales Of The Katty Jay were all among the best of their respective series, but none of them was that different or better than the norm to deserve a slot of it's own in the top 5, despite being incredibly enjoyable and well written. 2) Embassytown, by China Mievelle: a very odd yet engaging story. This is definitely Big Idea science fiction, except the big ideas are less about the usual, cosmological physics related mysteries of the universe and more about philosophical concepts regarding language and meaning and narratives. The aliens and story were fantastic and exotic and my imagination was working on over-drive, and many parts of the book lingered in my mind months after finishing my read. Perhaps the only thing in the book that was lacking for some degree were the characters - never flat or badly written, but not quite as engaging as everything else. Thinking back to it, I remember only vague details about them, while being able to talk quite intelligently about other aspects of the book. Not every story is about the characters (this, in fact, is part of the point in this novel) but still, I like it when the characters stick with me, and these didn't. 3) Downbelow Station: A thoughtful depiction of conflict in a far future society, this science fiction story is very weak on most aspects of science and physics except for a single crucial one - the distances of a star faring human empire, and how physical distance fractures and changes human society. From the lawlessness of Pell and other stations, the independence of the Company fleet, and the outright alien-ness of the Union, humans in the setting of this story somehow live in a much more brutal world than the one we know in modern society today. The story is slow, with tension building tangibly, and cunning politics interposed with clashing with personal passions make for an incredibly complex and layered situation with enormous stakes. Downbelow Station is well deserving of the title “masterpiece”. 2) Senlin Ascends: A wonderful read hampered only by the somewhat overblown hype machine that various blogs and reviewers created around it. Senlin Ascends is a wonderful discovery - a self published work that is easily one of the most interesting fantasy novels of the past few years. Senlin Ascends starts out as an interesting and well written yet somewhat light story, but character development and world building take over soon enough, and by the end of this opening in the series, I am completely invested in the story. Senlin, The Tower, the many side characters - all of them grow and develop in such interesting ways, all twisted about the central and mind boggling mystery of the world they exist in - any fan of the fantastical cannot be anything but joyful. 3) The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August: Even with all the other wonderful books I’ve read this year, none quite surpassed this one. After about 18 years of reading tens of SFF books a year, I’ve seen a lot of what these genres have to offer. So when I come across something completely new, executed perfectly, the sparks in my mind start flying. I’ve never read anything that was quite like First Fifteen Lives. A character study about a man who lives the same years over and over and over again, who by seeking to understand himself and the universe around him, enters a deeply personal conflict that spans hundreds of years. Harry August is dry and reserved but deeply observational and clever. This is a winning combination of a smart SF idea, well thought out to the tiniest details and that has cosmic and emotional implications, with a fresh kind of story. category 4: Bottom 5 books of the year
summary: a very good year as far as reading as concerned, with many new discoveries joining strong entries in series I've been following for years. I also finished reading The Wheel Of Time, bringing closure to this open wound from my childhood. Looking to next year, I think I'll focus less on discovering new things and more on finishing some of the ongoing stories I'm following, and possibly sink my teeth into a new super long epic fantasy or space opera - the need grows in me again...
As one who watched the 1999 Mummy as a child, I have to say this trailer is not what I wanted to see. The 1999 take was a pulp, Indiana-Jones like adventure movie with surprisingly fun and interesting characters. This new thing looks completely bland and lacking in comparison. Like, why is 70% of the trailer a random airplane crush scene? Plus, insert obvious joke about Tom Cruise himself being the shockingly well preserved ancient one in this movie.
I want to highlight a recommendation for Tales Of The Ketty Jay. It is a short and punchy series that gets significantly better with each book and that is very accurately described as "Steampunk Firefly" (referring to the Joss Whedon show). Also, a cautionary word about Railsea - it is a young adult novel. Fun and imaginative and engaging, but optimal for younger readers.
And just to make my point crystal clear - I am not trying to say that asexuality cannot be a source of all kinds of duress to people. I can envision a dozen unpleasant scenarios just as easily as anyone else. By all means, I think asexuals have the right to feel frustrated with any number of daily realities, and I think them forming communities to strengthen themselves is completely acceptable. However, I also think that not every cause of strife for every minority needs to be solved by a social struggle. Not every source of hardship for every group is the result of oppression or the violation of human rights. While I never for a moment doubt the existence of asexuals, I am skeptic about the actual need for the asexual movements I know. From my limited personal experience, they tend to be populated by people who live in spheres where social struggle is the norm - such as the wider LGBT community, for example. In those cases, I found the asexual rights movements to be not much more than people doing the same thing their friends are doing - not because of any real oppression they experience, but rather because this is what people do in our society. And before this becomes a flame war, let me reiterate that I am referring merely to the asexual organizations I am familiar with and am not ruling out the possibility that somewhere out there things are different. I have just not seen any evidence that would lead me to think that's the case.
While the emphasis on sexuality within the current cultural trends has always annoyed me, I think the term "rights" is too strong. "Acknowledgement" is probably closer, and even then, I don't think most folk truly suffer for asexuality, any more than we suffer for the multitude of other quirks and disagreements people find themselves in. It would be good for people to understand the additional depths of sexuality, but it is not a case of meaningful oppression. I think you summed the issue up handily. Not to offend anyone who feels like their right are violated due to their asexuality, but I have always found the struggle to be somewhat overblown. I, for example, don't drink any alcoholic beverage. I also do not use any recreational drug. I strongly dislike coffee and tea, and any sparkling drink physically causes shivers of rejection to run the length of my body. When it comes to drinking habits, I'm pretty much a monk, and I'm quite happy with my glass of cool water.
And yet, I would find it utterly absurd to claim that my rights are violated in any way, or that public awareness needs to be raised in regards to my drinking identity. I have a pretty rare quirk, and there are consequences to that, but... it's just part of being me. I am not remotely oppressed because of it, it is not in any way shape or form comparable to the suffering of any minority, ever. And, to be honest to the bone - I don't see how asexuality is inherently different from my abstinence from alcohol.
I'm now currently reading The Swarm, the first in a trilogy Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston are writing about the Second Formic War, if anyone is familiar with the "Enderverse". I've always enjoyed Card's writing, but some of his ideas (leadership in particular in this book) are becoming more and more explicit in his writing as time goes on. I'm hoping it doesn't reach a point where it takes me out of the story. Reading Card politically is definitely not the best way to enjoy his books to the fullest. He has some... quirks.
it was in the same debate where he fully stood by his idea of destroying an Iranian ship that taunted a U.S in the Mediterranean, claiming it would not have caused a war. For me that was one of the most damning moments. If literal sailor taunts can aggravate a U.S president so much that he'll risk war to respond to them, what happens the next time Putin badmouths the U.S? Or North Korea acts up? How can a person like that be allowed anywhere near an influential position into such event?
I just dont really think Trump not paying taxes holds a candle to, well any Clinton scandle, really. People keep bringing it up, but thats kind of how economics works. If its even true, its just not that much of an issue. Trump was a wealthy person, Clinton a politician. If major tax evasion is just how economics work, aren't Clinton's scandals "Just how politics work"?
I'll pitch in after having watched the debate on youtube last night. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that this is the first time I've actually bothered to watch the candidates speak - so far my opinions of them have been determined entirely by accpeting the aggregate of secondary sources as truth. And even though I am aware that a televised debate is also not exactly a full and comprehensive representation of who these two people are, I do think that in the course of these two hours there was enough to make some get-feeling oriented judgment calls. I'll start with Clinton. I have led to believe that she is a grey, uncharismatic official who made it to being candidate the same way the longest term employee in any company gets chosen to promotion: by default. She was simply well positioned.
Now, as for Trump... for once, I don't think the mass media mislead me about this person. He was violent and abrasive, downright childlike and petulant at times (he literally countered one of Clinton's points by interjecting with a "not" at some point), incoherent and rambling. His rhetoric was composed of a combination of fanning hate against foreigners of any kind and a preposterous self self-aggrandizement. I don't have the time or mental capacity to delve fully into the U.S elections. So far I have chosen not to vote in them, because I don't think I have the right to impact the lives of U.S citizens living in America while I live in another country. However, in this election I'm going to use my privilege as a citizen for the first time to vote from overseas. I have seen Trump and I fear him. I have seen Clinton and was convinced that if nothing else, she's at the very least intelligent and impressive. There is no doubt in my mind to the importance of this election going the right way.
I don't think we can have that conversation, though, if we can't agree that sexism involves a lot more than just the number of women in a movie. The Bechdel-Wallace test is meant to illustrate the overwhelming degree to which movies and media representation in general focus on stories about men and men's agency. It shows that a huge number of films can't meet a very low benchmark; passing the Bechdel-Wallace test doesn't automatically make a movie feminist or not sexist. To be clear, my idea has nothing to do with the bachdel test, which as you say was merely a short cut to illustrate a point, and not a valid metric of anything truly important about a movie. Now as to your main point, and to also answer Kobold Cleaver and TheJeff, yes. I made sure to include the caveat that numbers don't really matter if all the characters are essentially the same. A great example of this is The Wheel Of Time, a book series that gets the numbers right and possibly even tips the other way and includes considerably more women than men (because every single Aes Sedai has to be a named character with lines of text), but they basically all act exactly the same, and you can't help but think that this is how the author believes women to be - while the men in the series have a considerably greater variety of personality types.
Agreed, you need to go beyond the stereotypes - but this is just good storytelling in general. I think it's OK, for example, to have two indigenous characters, one of whom is noble and the other a cannibal - if both of them are otherwise fully realized characters and have actual depth, then adhering to some racial or cultural stereotype is not automatically bad. Imagine you had just a single... I don't know, a single Aboriginal character in a movie, and she is a cannibal. That will make the audience view Aboriginal people as cannibals - or at least, it will signal that this is how the movie makers think of them. But if we the audience see other Aboriginals who aren't cannibalistic, then we can rest assured knowing that the script writers also understand that. I feel like you've hit upon one huge problem and decided, "Well, this is pretty awful, so it must be the source of all these other problems." Yeah, pretty much. I tend to think that if we get the numbers right, the rest of the wrinkles will work themselves out over time. I can be swayed from this belief, but the Chicago-Avengers meter shows me that the principle works on a broad band of examples. you can populate the mid parts of this spectrum with many different movies and see if my case holds up. I say - the more representation in numbers that a group has, the less meaningful an adherence to stereotypes is. It would also help to remember that white straight male characters also adhere to racial and gendered stereotypes all the time, and there are plenty of movies dominated by them in numbers where every single character can be categorized as some stereotype, but nobody minds because there are so many such characters that it is clear we should inspect each of them individually and not as a symbol of their sector. I will point out, though, that the movie does nothing to critique the idea that a woman who can't have children is broken. That goes beyond the character—that's a narrative concept they introduce as being reasonable. Now, an aside about Black Widow and that scene specifically - I'm going to give the benefit of a doubt (going against my own earlier assesment) and say that you did not deliberately misinterpret the scene just to have something to rant about online. From what I know of you I see only a reasonable and level headed conversationalist. So I'll just tell you how I understood that scene when I watched it, and I'm curious to know if you can be convinced on the matter. To me, it seems pretty obvious that Natasha is not thinking of herself as broken because she cannot have babies. We know from previous movies that her self loathing comes from feelings of guilt over her time as a brainwashed assassin for the Soviet Union - see her conversation with Loki in the first Avengers movie as a frame of reference. The memory that Scarlet Witch brought back to the surface was from her most traumatizing part of life, in the training program. The apex of that time happened when her evil masters cut out a part of her, an organ from inside her body, in a brutal manner, pinning her to a cold metal desk and surrounding her with intimidating doctors. And they did all that to their own soldier just because they believe it would make her marginally more effective as a heartless, mindless killer. And in the scene where she recalls what happened to her, she's talking with Bruce Banner, a man also haunted by the knowledge that he spends part of his time as a killing machine he can't control. Natasha knows that from his perspective, she brings order and calm to his life, and he wants to be with her at least partly because of that. But she's telling him she doesn't feel worthy being anybody's angel, that she thinks of herself as a dangerous monster too.When I watched the scene, I thought it was complex and wonderful and flashed out a rare depth Black Widow. It was one of my favorites in the movie. When I emerged from it to find out that so many people interpreted the scene in such a superficial way, I felt like fandom is going nowhere good. You have to ignore everything you know about the characters involved and their relationship, and see only a woman without identity talking to a man without identity, to understand the scene the way people seemed to. At least, that's what it looked like to me.
A while back, when Age Of Ultron came out in theatres, one of these storm-in-a-tea-cup controversies happened, and a group of internet people (including some I otherwise respect) attacked the movie as being sexist because of a single scene that had to do with Black Widow. Now, I thought at the time that the outcry was completely unjustified and that you pretty much had to deliberately misinterpret that scene to view it as sexist. But, in a discussion in these forums, I tried my hand at an argument that attacked the issue from an altogether different angle. I asked people to imagine a situation where Black Widow is a man, but one of the other Avengers is a woman. I claimed that never matter which of the avengers is a female in this thought exercise, you can find a way to interpret the movie as being sexist and relegating the character to a gender role (The Hulk is the embodiment of mockery to a woman in a period, or Hawkeye is obviously hiding "her" nurturing side with a hidden family, or "Ironwoman" is slutty and insecure and hides inside her shell when she fights, etc.). I argued back then that the actual problem, the real gender bias in the movie, was a question of numbers. One female Avengers, five male. The idea kicked around in my head ever since. Essentially, what I believe is that merely by having *enough* female characters, or minority characters, you can actually afford to do what you want with these characters without being insensitive. It's not that every female in a movie needs to be strong, or that every movie needs a well spoken and well educated black person - it's that the movie needs to have more than a token of any one gender or race. Obviously not every movie, no need for absurdism - but if the norm is that there simply are enough of these characters around, then each of them can be viewed just like a white male character would, and not as a representation of the creator's politics or opinions about whatever sector the character belongs to. If there are three female characters in a movie, and one of them is a sexy thing that uses sex as a weapon against men - that's completely fine, because there are two other women who aren't like that. It's even OK if every single one of your female characters fall under some gender stereotype, if they are all different stereotypes - because almost every male character from every movie falls under some male gender stereotype or another. That's fine - stereotypes are the basis upon which most characters are built (that's the literal meaning of the word) and for most real people their gender plays some role in who they are. My perfect example of this is the movie Chicago. It's a story so female-centric that it actually fails the reverse bachdel test. In that movie, just about every female character behaves in a way that in a male dominated movie would surely be considered a display of the sexism of the screen writers - the main character most of all - and yet nobody in their right mind would blame the movie of any such thing. That's because when watching the movie it is clear that every character is just that. A person, a human, not a mascot. This brings to mind a different application of the word "diversity". The way the word is used in public today seems to me to encourage a daredevil competition to get the most types of humanity into your story, as divided by the lowest common denominator type of identity. Get as many genders and races and ages and socio-economic backgrounds and physical/mental disabilities represented, make sure everyone is included. But in this idea of mine, of representation as a numbers game, diversity means something else - get as many different types of actual identities into your movie. Put in people who are lazy, people who are inventive. Include the brave and the curious and the greedy and the attractive, the self confident and the hateful, the friendly and the thrill seekers, the shameless and the overtly sexual, the calm and the weird. Then all you have to do is to make sure no one group of people in your story is represented by a single set of characteristics that they all share - and there you have a it. A diverse movie where all people involved are well represented. Even if some or all of their members are shown in a negative way. Even if some or all of their members are to some extent defined by their gender/race/whatever. Because once no character has to bear the weight of representing the essence of an entire huge group of real humans, each character can become a representation of a single made up human - just like story telling is supposed to work. Thoughts? important sidenote: I should note that what I'm describing is what should be the new norms for representation, the thing to strive for in a big-picture sort of way. I by no means suggest that every single movie or book or TV show or computer game should have more than one of every single minority and gender, just to make sure that these are included and that no single character is a mascot. Some movies need just a single white character, or no male characters, or specifically two old wise chinese men living in a monastery and teaching kong fu. That's all fine, and every story should by all means prioritize whatever is important to it over meaningless representation. However, if we got to a situation where prejudice plays no role in storytelling, I'd expect that over the course of, say, a year, we should see about a realistic distribution of types of people in the books that are published that year or the movies that come out. When trying to get there, we need to have a goal in mind, an alternative reality to the current one that serves as an ideal. I humbly suggest that the one I envisioned in this post is better, healthier and by all accounts saner than the current rush to put a strong female character in every action movie.
Which is why you program the AI to not want to leave the box. The AI does not have to be incomprehensible to be a threat to humankind. It only needs to be ruthlessly utilitarian. Humans are terribly inefficient in use of resources. Super-AI with interest in long-term survival and self-development would be much more efficient in its use of resources so it could either show empathy and provide the humans with more efficient ways of using (and reusing) the available resources... It could deiced to use up enough resources to go elsewhere seek its own place and leave us with our problems and the rest of our resources. Or it could decide to take our current resources and use it for its own development, either eradicating us in the process, or if it was sentimental, keeping us around warm and safe in people zoo (as already promised by Android Dick) at some irrational but manageable level resource expenditure. Answering both at the same time, because the answer is roughly the same. The reason a super intelligence *might* be threatening is the incomprehensible nature of such a being. As long it operates by human rules, we can contain it - keep it in the box, as Krensky described it. However, in a scenario where an AI rockets from sub-human intelligence to super-human intelligence so quickly that we don't even understand it happened, we may find ourselves hopelessly outmatched by something that we have no way of understanind - not it's motivations and not it's means of achieving them. The best example I've seen is this - imagine a spider creating a human. Spider society is not worried because even though the human is much bigger and smarter than a thousand spiders combined, it still needs to eat, right? So all they have to do to contain the human if he becomes a problem is not provide it with webs, and it will not be able to hunt. You just sort of wait it out until the human dies. The spiders are simply incapable of conceiving of the options that to a human are obvious, and when the dude returns armed with a k300 and wipes out the spiders for infesting his lawn, he will catch them by surprise and wipe them out - not only because they never imagined the possibility of poison gas as a weapon, not even because they never figured out humans can find food without using spiderwebs, but also because they never even imagined that them living in the lawn would bother the human, let alone be considered reason enough to destroy them. THIS is the danger that Musk and his fellow AI theorists are worried about. They are worried about what appears like the most convincing iteration of "we might be bringing God to earth, people, and who knows what might happen then" in human history may be happening within our life times. They worry that you can no more contain a super intelligence in a box than a spider can starve a human out by not providing it with webs to hunt with. They worry that we will try to reduce a super-intelligence into human terms like "ruthlessly efficient" to understand its motives, never once understanding why it showed up with its own version of k300 to wipe us off of its lawn. If you believe - truly believe - that an AI could reach this state of superiority to humans, then you view the rise of such an entity as biggest unknown our species has ever encountered. You concede that a time may come where humans are no longer the dominant species on Earth. With such a huge question mark looming ahead, caution seems wise. It is better, perhaps, to be prepared for the worst. Just in case. Everything in my instincts screams at me to just flat out ignore these claims. They are waaaayyy to similar to countless wrong ones made over the centuries. But looking at it this way, I simply can't be as dismissive as I would have liked to. I am far from convinced, but I don't really have a convincing counter other than historical examples. And has any time in history featured anything like the 21st century?
OTOH, hasn't "within the next half century" been the prediction for real AI for decades now? Honestly, I don't know. Notice however that the prediction is not for when a "real" AI will emerge, but when will a "super AI" will emerge. a "real" AI - one that could simulate a smart human - is predicted to arrive considerably earlier, at least by the AI pros who answered some survey somewhere recently.
Agreed. Musk and his other concerned billionaire friends are so far spending only their own money, which is fine, but I would oppose any sort of overt government funding for such programs.
His main concern is that the AI research happening today is completely unregulated. He (and others) claim that since the development in AI capabilities is exponential, the transition from "hey, these human-like computers are cute and kinda convincing" to "Oh, I guess we created a god and we have no way to stop him" can happen faster and more abruptly than is intuitively guessable. This recent SMBC comic illustrates the problem. The way I understand it, Musk mostly aims to regulate AI research to decrease the chances of a super intelligence by some private company that wasn't quite careful enough and allowed things to get out of control in a catastrophic fashion.Not spending money to research AIs is folly, and even those afraid of the technology think so. The impact of a computer capable of surpassing humans in every way could be enormous and do unbelievably good to the world. Besides, this chicken has far been out of the pan anyway - AI *is* being researched everywhere around the world all the time, and no reach person could possibly stop or even slow it. What Musk and his co-thinkers are aiming for is merely slightly stricter (or,as it were, more existent) regulation on the safety protocols on such research.
Any other fans of him around these parts? I somehow never knew he exists until a couple weeks ago, but once I did I was quickly converted. For those as blind now as I used to be, Elon Musk is a man hellbent on making science fiction become a reality. Or, in slightly more grounded terms (it's not going to sound grounded at all, but there it is), he is forcing our society to start taking giant leaps towards a future defined by groundbreaking technologies. He is CEO of two companies: Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla's stated goal is to accelerate the worldwide transition from gas-powered cars to electric cars, while the stated goal of SpaceX is to boost space exploration and colonization forward, to the point of having a million humans living on Mars in our life times. On the side he also oversees Solarcity, a world leader in the installation of solar panels to make homes and facilities energetically self sufficient, and has instigated the idea of the Hyperloop - an incredibly futuristic method of transportation that could take passengers as quickly as 1000 kilometers per hour, without taking a flight. The kicker is, that all of these grand ideas seem to be working great so far. Spacex completely shook up the space industry - not only by being the fourth entity ever to send a shuttle to space ( the other three entities being the U.S, China and Russia) and breaking several other records along the way - but by managing to land back components of a space launch that traditionally were one-use affairs. This is expected to cut the price of space travel by orders of magnitude, and accelerate greatly the process of iteration and improvement on related technologies. Spacex now has a long term contract with Nasa for several launches.
And the hyperloop? Well, several countries and cities are now in talks with a company named "Hyperloop One" to be the first place where a real hyperloop is built, even as Spacex hosted a competition between universities around the world to design the best capsule for such a system. I cannot think of any single other person alive today who is doing so much for humanity as Elon Musk is doing right now. What's so amazing is that the changes his companies vowed to bring are really happening, and I expect by 2030 they'll have had a profound and meaningful positive impact on the world. For more details, you can check out this wonderful blog post by waitbutwhy. It's about a million words long but honestly the subject matter demands close attention. is anyone else nearly as awed and excited as I am?
We have flashlights. Last time here was a darkout, I grabbed a bunch of old toys (Dinosaurs, animals, model buildings, knights and soldiers, etc.) and found a clear section of a white wall. Hence commenced my famous "Shadow show of the apocalypse" which was a ton of fun for a couple of hours. Also, pro tip: if you have a dog, lighting them from below will cast the most terrifying forms on your ceiling ;)
This is not a mathematical discussion. You don't need to build careful definitions from the ground up using elementary building blocks in increasingly complex structures to keep track of what's going on. I think the consensus on this thread is perfectly clear - and previous replies to Irontruth outlined it several times. It doesn't matter what is the precise way in which each correspondent to the thread perceives the concept of classic or traditional fantasy because as long as we all understand that the conversation is about fantasy settings that full under the rather broad definition of "classic fantasy" discussed in previous posts, we can be coherent. Instead, tens of posts in the thread went into the pointless exercise of attempting to pinpoint the exact meaning of a word is. Again, if you are solving a mathematical equation you need to have a perfect, watertight understanding of what each and every word in it means, but that kind of thinking is not constructive in the context of discussions such as this. Imagine a discussion about young adult fiction where most of the discussion is devoted to a long winded argument about trying to figure out the precise age-range that counts as young adult (is it 13-18 or 12-16?) and maybe you'll see my point.
Agreed. I was just pointing out reasons that I think the classic fantasy setting is far from dead. I wasn't trying to write a comprehensive list of everyone still playing, just bring attention to a group that may easily be overlooked in a forum like this, because it doesn't really show presence. I've seen people refer to classic fantasy as "vanilla" when really it is only so in the sense that it's something very familiar that most of us here have experienced a billion times. For a young player, there's a ton to discover in classic fantasy - the first time you steal a dragon's treasure is every bit as spicy as the first time your ratfolk samurai challenged the alien cyborg to a duel. And, finally - as I have mentioned - not all younger players would be inspired by classic fantasy. I do think a majority will, but I don't have data to back this gut feeling by. There are enough awesome genres out there for everyone.
Attacking this from a different angle, I would suggest looking at what's happening in other mediums. There are still plenty of video games, movies and books that focus on "classic" fantasy settings. If people are watching it and reading it, it's a safe assumption that they are also playing it. Another angle is demographics. I'm going to make a safe assumption and assume most posters in the Paizo forums are in the 16-40 years old range. Most of those have already spent years playing the standard fantasy tropes, and so some of them are looking for something new. But for all the twelve years old boys and girls who just watched Lord Of The Rings for the first time and discovered they can play as elves or hobbits and go on their own adventures with friends? Yeah, they are for sure going to give the good ol' classic fantasy setting a stab. They might also be inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy or Harry Potter or anything else, but for those who haven't gone through the process of epic fantasy fifty times like many of us here did, the setting is extremely compelling. I mean, people here are calling it "vanilla", but that is only in the context of those who have tried it many times and want something new. Taken at face value, classic fantasy is a great setting that is sure to resonate with most western audiences - there's a reason the setting caught on in the first place.
Speaking of which, The First Law could make for a seriously awesome TV show. It also seems to be very doable, even with a relatively small budget, since it is mostly character focused and less reliant on epic landscapes and clashing armies, at least for most of it's length. When the giant, expansive scenarios do come up, it's not even that important for them to look impressive because that's not really the point.
The power in the mistborn trilogy is cranked up, but in the Wheel of Time it is a common complaint that Sanderson actually made the channelers much much weaker than what Jordan presented them as. In Jordan's time we've seen that armies are obsolete if there is a significant number of powerful channelers around - numbers were supposed to be close to meaningless. But they weren't in the last three books. By the way, there's an interesting plot thread in the last two books about the Aiel fighting to maintain a purpose and meaning after the Last Battle - when in fact, the Sea Folk have a much bigger problems - their entire culture is centered on ships, which are going to be a thing of the past once gateways become more common. If you can transport goods across continents in seconds, bothering with a ship is an atrocious idea.
The problem I've always had with the series was that the charector growth of the men always seemed to tic upwards while the woman always seemed to tic downwards. With a few exceptions of course. As a matter of fact, I have made a fun little graph of this recently. It pretty much agrees with you ;)
I wonder if they'll change up how the women were portrayed. They were a bit stereotypicaly irrational during most of the books, with few exceptions.TBH all of the main characters were utter morons through the entire series. It's one of the series glaring weaknesses. Wheel Of Time spoilers:
It was much much worse with the women, though. I mean, compare the White Tower with the Black Tower. Aes Sedai kept spanking each other for no reason. Can you imagine the Ashaman doing that? When Men had conflict with each other it almost always felt real, with tension and powerful emotions (except for times when it is played as "comedy", like two manservants trying to outdo each other or two honor guard captains trying to prove only their army is useful). When the women fought? Hell, at one point Nynaeve (one of the most powerful Aes Sedai ever) had a freaking *cat fight* with Siuan, the former Amyrlin and one of the single most powerful and cunning women in the current world. No two male characters in the series ever behaved like that, especially those who were supposed to be powerful or wise.
And of course, these examples are just the very tip of an iceberg so vast and deep it would have given H.P. Lovercraft nightmares for a year. Jordan did a really valliant attempt at being inclusive to women in his books, but sometimes it really feels like he never met one.
Hw's not *actually* Superman, but Allen Moore's character Doctor Manhatten (from Watchmen) showcases perfectly just how interesting an all-powerful being can be.
So if Batman's motivation in going after Superman is "he's powerful enough to kill everyone, I have to pre-emptively take him out" why didn't Batman kill the president of the US because he can launch nukes all over the world? (and every other world leader who has nukes). Haven't seen the movie, and everything I hear indicates that I shouldn't so I'm likely to skip it, but off the top of my head, 1) You can't really "kill the president" - you can kill whoever is holding the position at the moment, but people will just elect a new one. Essentially, violence can never solve this problem, not at the scale a single person is capable of. 2) While a president can theoretically set the world aflame, there's always a chance people around him could do something about it, intercede in time. If superman decides to sink every single landmass in the world, he can probably do it and shrug off any attempt to get in his way. His power is not an imaginary thing bestowed by people who choose to give it to him, it is an inherent trait. That is different, I think. 3) Batman Vs. The President is a far less catchy title. Batman Vs. Trump might have done it, maybe, but I kinda hope we never get to that point, if only because if we do I have a suspicion that Trump would make sure that the script has him winning.
I miss the 30's pulpiness and immersive feel of the older films. CS felt like a constant hood wink to the audience. The entire experience was like one of those craptastic MGM/Universal park rides. Speilberg has made a few of these stinkers in his career but nothing on this level. They completely missed the mark on the experience IMO. They could have taken and run with the "I like Ike" theme but ultimately they just put Soviet skins on the old nazi BBEG schtick and rolled with it....ugh. Oh and it doesnt matter who wrote the nuclear blast fridge ride scene it was fu##$g stupid, yeap thats right the gopher too. Also, vines and monkeys? WTF did you have to make me think of CS again for? Well, not exactly. Indiana Jones is pulp adventure, and other than perhaps the useless shrieking love interest everything in Temple Of Doom (starting by the very title of the movie) is a good example of the genre. Yes, the heroes survive situations that really should kill them, yes, "exotic" cultures are presented in an exeggerated and slightly racist way, and some weird black magic could be involved without making too much sense. What Temple of Doom had for it which Crystal Skull didn't is authenticity. Temple of Doom didn't wink at the audiance, it wasn't self aware, and it didn't play on nostalgia - it was simply a rollicking adventure movie, and that's how I view it. Crystal Skull just can't keep a straight face, and so the flaws are much more annoying to me. Also, Harrison Ford just doesn't give as good a performance, and Shia Lebouf is downright bad, and curiously bad CGI replaced the stunts and practical effects of the older movies. Crystal Skull is not a terribly bad movie, but it is not a good one, and not a continuation that does justice to the originals. Yeah. It's not like you need to setup their origins. "He's a smooth British Spy." or "He's an adventuring archaeologist that uses a whip." are pretty easy concepts for the audience to pick up. Yup. Didn't see the first Bond film, but the first Indy film certainly didn't waste time with an origin story, and even if the third movie had a few flashbacks to set up the story and the father figure, the background of Jones is left mostly vague - and that never prevented anyone from understanding what was going on. His character just describes itself perfectly in a single scene.
Serious Curse of The Crimson Throne spoiler: I've spent a lot of time and effort, as the GM, to make the worshippers of Zon Kuthon into the most interesting and conflicted characters in the campaign. I also swapped the default shadowmage with Isiam from Nightglass (the Pathfinder novel). The characters, and the players, got to know those people pretty well, and they learned that while they do worship an evil god and have some... problematic aspects, they are certainly not beyond redemption.
Meanwhile, one of my players is playing a cleric of Shelyn. I sort of guided him into that. He obviously takes the most interest in the shadow court agents. When the players clear through Scarwall and descened into the Midnight Tower, they encounter the Nightwing and realize someone is going to need to become a sacrifice for them to continue. Used to the backstabbing of their society, Laurie and Isiam turn on each other and are just about to start dueling, when the priest of Shelyn leaps between them, holds both hands out with a burst of light (channeling positive energy) and yells at them to stop. He then takes off his holy symbol of shelyn and puts it around Isiam's neck. He smiles, tells him to do what he knows is right. Turns to Laurie, tells her he believes in her. Approaches his younger brother, one of the other characters in the group, hugs him tightly and promises to see him again one day. Beeds fairwell to the other PCs. He then turns to the Nightwing and offers himself up. Presented with a priest of Shelyn willing to subject himself to the tortures of his master, the Nightwing greedily engulfs him and vanishes to the plane of shadow. The table, including me, was stunned. It was the best bit of roleplaying we had (we usually aren't great at that front), and that was the first character death since the first module of the campagin - and that priest has been around from the very start. Me, I was really excited that I managed to make the NPCs real enough that the players really didn't want to see any of them go, to the degree that one of them decided to take his roleplay all the way to a noble self sacrifice. The player of the priest is now playing Isiam, who is in a journey of redemption as he helps the other PCs attempt to stop Ileosa. Laurie, who has always been a bit more confused, is helping less directly, but she was also inspired greatly by the priest.
Again I wonder why we cannot have Agent Carter replace AoS permanently. I actually enjoy the tie-ins. They weaken the narrative of AoS, but strengthen the MCU narrative as a whole, which is way more important. I mean, let's be honest, if AoS was disconnected from the MCU many of us would have either no bothered or cared way less.
Huh. Japeneese sexuality is seven kinds of weird to me, but if this link is to be believed, the only issue really is that they find gender much more fluid in their anime-type stories and play with it much more. Then someone in America starts spreading misinformation in the internet and bam, controversy. So anyway, seems like there is no anti-lesbian sentiments in this, merely a very different perception of sexuality. Nothing to freak out about.
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