Notices by clacke (clacke@libranet.de), page 9

@datum I think you're probably right about the Perseids being a threat to dense constellations.

Now that we've passed the Perseid peak, I'm curious of the outcome, and looked around to see if there are any articles reporting on it. So far I haven't seen any.

@kawa

That 20 m of sidewalk ... next to the AIA is the CCB, and they have a direct exit to the MTR in their basement.

C'mon guys, just put a plank across the gap, and Sheung Wan and Admiralty can be fully connected!

#TShirtSpotting

"Pwede ba kitang tawagan? Libre ka ba ngayon?"

I didn't know Filipino/Tagalog was so Spanishified. Not surprised, just that the little I read about it only indicated a language along the Malay-Polynesian spectrum.

The phrase is from an SMS in one of the recent episodes of Wednesday: "[Can I call you? Are you free now?]".

An ad:

Party for old men and women
# oldoldpeople
45+

oof oof ow what the heck

Encouraging a gross mindset, what?

Oh, a *growth* mindset. That makes more sense.

I seldom giggle and chuckle to such an extent. Fascinating.

Strange New Worlds S3E08, "Four and a Half Vulcans", is illogical, yet highly enjoyable.

#StarTrek #StrangeNewWorlds #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds
#StrangeNewWorldsS3 #SNWS3 #SNWS3E08

"plant-based tea bags"
"sachets en fibres naturelles"

They were always made of paper, right? They just added this nonsense to make a clam that everybody should have already known to be true.

A sexbot desperately trying to find a human or something close enough to enjoy sex with is a very interesting starting point from which to explore humanity, love and free will. Where do we biological gene-replicator vessels differ from engineered sex machines?

I'm not a prude. It's got to get a bit visceral sometimes to stay real, and the balancing and re-balancing act between naturalistic yuck and titillation was pretty interesting.

That said, it had a few moments of "really, we're doing this again?", which slowed down the otherwise very action-focused pacing. And the trauma and violation part didn't feel like it received enough care and sensitivity.

The book is a conspiracy mystery and a cloak-and-dagger romp across the solar system with hard-sci-fi space travel so grueling and time-consuming that only robots can handle it. It's also an interesting examination of where capitalism goes at its most inhuman -- when there aren't even any humans. And finally it's an examination of the human condition by entities both trying to be human and trying to stop being so human.

It has loads of cool ideas -- how did we go about making slave androids, what happens to identity when you're an AI and can be copied, how do you create meaning when the people who defined your meaning went extinct? The world-building is creative and plausible. And the mystery has several unexpected twists of identity, allegiances and epic historical shifts.

If you find this intriguing and you're not very sensitive to mental and physical abuse when it's important to plot and motivations, or weird forms and uses of sex that post-human entities will develop in the absence of humans and human morality, I can recommend this book.

#SaturnsChildren #CharlesStross

Now, "Neptune's Brood", it looks at what happens thousands of years later:

Generations of robots making descendants so advanced that they're truly post-human, super-human, the financial and technological structures of interstellar colonization, the societal structures of entities that can clone their minds at will, sects of human-worshipping post-humans that consider de-extincting humans and colonizing star systems with them a holy calling, and a conspiracy, murder and fraud mystery on a galactic scale.

If you're nerdy enough to appreciate heists based on counter-party risk mitigation protocols, this book is for you. In fact, if you're like that, I'd recommend that you read NB first, like I did, and then enjoy SC as a prequel that fleshes out the backstory to some of the societal and technical elements.

#NeptunesBrood #CharlesStross

@thygrrr Glad I could help! Same universe (but more!), but entirely different form.

Apart from the yuck factor and the "wth is going on" factor missing from NB, also the plot and conspiracy in NB, while still a deep and twisty maze, does not fold in on itself in a way that you lose track of how many layers of betrayal they're on.

it is 14:45 on a Wed, and school semester started two weeks ago

"Fantastic Four" refers to not only the movie, but to us, the audience 😁