I’m so thankful the local halal place around the corner from my house is there… and gyro and fries is only like 9 USD. I commented to the owner about how cheap his food is; he said he’s seen a bit of an uptick in business over the summer and he thinks it’s because the chain places have gone mad with pricing.

Jesus Howard Christ… I’m in the market to buy my first house and this is stuff I’m a bit afraid of finding.

Funny thing is that, while a similar principle, they’re safer and more ethical than the Star Trek “suicide booth” transporters.

Oh yeah… the poet’s house was dope as fuck.

I would love a series about an “Interplanetary University” that had its campus setup across several dozen planets using Farcasters. That would be an interesting setting in the Hyperion universe.

It was a bit of “handwave-ium” and sentient AI. Here’s the Wiki for the series if you want to compare your concept…

Here’s an article about the Farcasters themselves and here’s the article about the World Web that AI and humanity ran with them.

I love the Farcaster network of the World Web from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos (for anyone who hasnt read the books, they’re essentially frameless stargates that are always on). Such a cool concept of being able to build a series of them linking the main commercial streets of the biggest cities on different planets together; thus making one gigantic and near endless market across hundreds of worlds… and anyone can just walk from one planet to another across hundreds or thousands of light years.

What I really like about that book series though is that the Farcasters are not the only means of FTL… and that there are sound reasons to use another method over them OR even to oppose your planet getting connected to the Farcaster network. Just seriously good world building.

Computer, show me the warp core!

I’m sure Apple will let everyone know that we’re just holding the phone wrong.

(are they still clergy if they aren’t Catholic?)

Yep, it’s a catch-all term. You can also refer to an Imam or Rabbi as a member of that religion’s clergy.

You’re not my real dad, DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!

Ugh… just bought some new Bluetooth headphones and my god i wish they’d let these little chargers just die already.

Me too! Just replaced my eight year old (and beat to crap) Chromebook with a corporate hand-me-down laptop that I stole got when they ordered new laptops! Just played around with both Mint and Ubuntu for a couple weeks and I’ve seriously loved it.

Lol. Fixed.

I just got back to the states, we also went to that museum but didn’t get the amount of time I’d have liked for the visit. It was family vacation; I was negotiating with like seven other people for what we saw and for how long. Next year, I’ll be back in the UK for about a week (sadly, it’ll be mostly just London) and have already carved out plans for a day trip out to York just for the Railway Museum.

No body:

This Owl: “GLORY TO YOUR HOUSE! TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!!!”

Closed borders do seem to cause a lot more problems than open ones.

I don’t want to hype it up too much, but the Expanse show is really great… IMHO some of the best sci-fi television in decades. I’d say it’s easily up there with “Battlestar Galactica” (the RDM or “re-imagined” series) and “Farscape” as a triumph of what I’d guess you would call “post-9/11” science fiction story telling. Most fans of the books would tell you to read them first, but I think either is fine because both are great (I read them as the show was airing and it was awesome all the same). My favorite character in both the books and TV series is hands down Amos Burton… Wes Chatham is the actor that plays him; he has said in interviews that he read the books before filming season 1, fell in love with the character, and it really effing shows. From the writers and show runners to the actors, costuming, and set design… they took great care to be loyal to the books while creating something new at the same time.

Haven’t seen these mentioned here, but the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi is great as are “The Expanse” books by James SA Corey. I’d highly recommend those to anyone, but especially those looking for grounded and hard-ish sci-fi that doesn’t lose the reader or become overly technical.

I highly highly recommend Old Man’s War to anyone looking to get into sci-fi novels for the first time, Scalzi really takes care of his reader and his writing is a delight. The Expanse books are awesome whether or not you’ve seen the TV series… the show runners really took care with the source material and, ask any fan of the books, it is a great adaptation. The show hits the same plot points of the books while getting there in new and interesting ways. Further, the show created a new character in Kamina Drummer who immediately became a fan favorite of both show and book lovers (she’s an amalgamation of a couple of book characters and becomes her own thing that really adds SO much to the story and world building).

Oh god… and Floridians are just dumb enough to vote him into statewide office.

Well, you see, he was the governor… one of the priorities while being the governor of New York State is to hate New York City.