Vahid > Recent Status Updates

On the one hand I appreciate the story going back to where it started. On the other …why not just go home the way you got here? Now that you know it works.

I wondered where this was all going…

Still not sure what the main narrative is yet but it’s a pleasant read so far.

In case you haven’t figured out the theme of this book the ranger goes ahead and tells you right here (still really good though). Also I’ve grown attached to these terrible people and am sad they are about to get massacred (probably)

‘That's just how the tech industry thinks. They don't plan for what can go wrong.
They "move fast and break things."’

Look I know this is just a character saying what he thinks at this point in the story but still gonna object. The ‘tech industry’ doesn’t plan for what can go wrong because they have shit tons of money to insulate them from consequences. Not because they are too optimistic. Simple as.

The worst people you’ve met are about to be completely useless and self-absorbed during a major crisis. Bet.

I have met the Bad Ibeji and that’s going to be a fucking nightmare

The plot thickens, also the eldritch horrors just got that much more terrifying.

Kinda glad the Leopard has amnesia or some enchantment he’s getting over because 1) he was being kind of a dick, and 2) this little recap from Tracker helped me remember a lot of the plot elements I had lost track of; I let too many days go by between picking up this book.

One of the cover reviews described this as a “literary MCU” but I am definitely getting more of a LOTR vibe (except just a lot more fucked up)

Here’s the thing about stories set in a near-future post-collapse setting with police beating the shit out of poor people - ALL A LITTLE CLOSE TO HOME RIGHT NOW, THANKS

“There are more than 10 million extremely-low-income renter households in the United States but only 3.2 million rental homes that are available and affordable to them. As a consequence, 75 percent of extremely-low-income renter households spend more than half of their income on housing”

“[High housing prices] creates a sense of social entitlement and financial insecurity that can drive even liberals to call on local governments to “get tough” on homeless people in their midst. My own research has documented the role of social activists with long histories of liberal activism calling for the removal of homeless encampments by police in New York and San Francisco”

What the fuck.

“Special-needs children make up over a quarter of those referred to police (even though they represent just 14 percent of students), leading to horrific results. In spring 2015 ...profiled the case of an 11-year-old boy with autism was charged with criminal offenses by the school’s SRO... the boy was slammed to the ground and handcuffed by the same SRO after resisting being dragged out of the classroom.”

“While putatively under civilian political control, the reality was that the state police remained a major force in putting down strikes, though often with less violence and greater legal and political authority”

“Our entire criminal justice system has become a gigantic revenge factory. Three-strikes laws, sex-offender registries, the death penalty, and abolishing parole are about retribution, not safety”

“In Cleveland, the DOJ got the local police to agree to prohibit shooting at fleeing vehicles unless there was an immediate threat to life. That agreement seemed to have little effect when officers killed an unarmed driver and passenger after firing 137 shots at them, because they mistook an engine backfire for a gunshot.”

Well.

Now that you’re possibly thinking of Paladin as female, does it make it more or less horrifying how casually she assists in maiming Frankie during the interrogation?

Clever. Perhaps you, dear reader, not unlike Eliasz, had started to think of the robot Paladin as a dude, so now you need to ask yourself why you feel a bit weird thinking about it as a female, and ultimately why you’re assigning a gender to a machine at all.

...so the narration here is filtered through the viewpoint of Paladin, a military robot, who is trying to make sense of the world based on his programming and what his neural net has learned so far, but what I think we just witnessed was Eliasz becoming, ah, VERY WORKED UP over Paladin’s automatic weapons blowing apart an empty house.

‘In [this guide] you have found answers to some of the most profoundly life-changing questions humans have ever asked, including “What is the universe made of?”; “How can I live in comfort and not die for a while?”; and “I keep pooping too much and would like to do that less in the future, so does anyone know anything I should do to make that happen?”’

I learned that tapping on the ground can “charm” earth worms up out of the earth, which now tells me how Frank Herbert thought up having the Fremen use “thumpers” to summon the sand worms on Arrakis.

Just finished “Especially Heinous” and holy shit that was intense. I need some fresh air.

Holy shit the Prime Minister is alternate timeline H.G. Wells.

First project done. I definitely don't want to be a game developer, wasn't that into it. On to data science nerd-stuff.

"Just remember," he said. "Maybe these guys are nice, and maybe the ants are mean. But that doesn't mean their fairy tales are true."