u/Ruffshots

I wonder if the boys are aware that there's a movie, The Furious, currently still(?) in the theaters, and possibly out when they filmed this episode. It's maybe one of the best martial arts movies since The Raid movies (not coincidentally starring two of the stars from The Raid).

And because the "The" is hidden, I've always called this movie just "Furious" (I mean, not any more, I won't), and if someone told me RLM was covering "Furious," I would've been super excited, expecting Len to come in for a re:View, not this talking pig Plinketto pick (though it's somehow far less worst than the other two). Anyway, here's hoping they'll have Len on for a The Furious re:View one of these days, or maybe combo it with The Raid movies.

Trailer for The Furious, if you're not aware of the movie (though now I'm watching the trailer imagining it with shitty foley, lol). If you can still catch it in the theaters, it's really worth the effort. Likely you'll have the theater to yourself if in the US.

I managed to run through some oppressive heat to keep up my productivity streak, but I finally had to take a few days off due to nagging injuries and a blister. It was a good streak while it lasted, and hopefully I won't slack off because it ended.

I happen to have finished book 2 of Shadows of the Apt, Dragonfly Falling, just as Green City Wars came in at my library hold, so I'm reading these two back-to-back. I'm about 35% through Green City Wars (absolutely phenomenal, may have to post about it separately when done), but there was an interesting piece of overlapping technology in the two books. Bit of a spoiler, maybe a major one for Dragonfly, and probably for the whole Apt series beyond this, so beware, opening the spoiler section below.

>!The pop guns in GCW that seemed very similar to the snapbows Totho develops as they both work on compressed air, and while I wasn't too sure how well the snapbows would work in real life, the pop guns in GCW at least are scaled down, and supposedly only effective to about 30cm, so seemed more realistic.!< Doesn't really mean much, but I thought the similarities were pretty interesting, especially considering how far apart these books are in Adrian's bibliography (though only about 15 years in absolute terms).

I occasionally saw people achieve 4 weeks, meant to post when I hit my 4 weeks of solid green, but kept forgetting on Sundays, so here's my progress at 6 weeks (minus 1 day).

Prior to this, I rarely ever got even a single week of straight green/productive before seeing that yellow, maintaining, status. But after de-training for a bit with a hamstring injury, I've been keeping a fairly low volume, but regular runs and some gym workouts, which seems to be key to at least not over-training, which seems to dump me into the yellow.

Anyway, unreasonably proud of this somewhat silly achievement, and now I'm trying to keep it up to 12 straight weeks, which is again, silly, but a hell of a motivator not to slack off.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not studying every small print, but this is basically saying, "if you don't want them to scrape your content for their AI and other ad services, you can fuck right off," right? No Google Docs, Drive, "sharing" through Photos, reviews on Maps...

I already turn off history and targeted ads, haven't used Google for search in over a year, pay for secure email and file sharing, but I really need to finish weaning myself fully off of Google.

(Digital consumption of services is still consumption so I think this is relevant to the sub, though it's more anti-privacy and anti-corp in general.)

It's probably going away very soon (in the US), but if you can, treat yourself and go see it on the big screen. (I don't need to tell this sub how awesome it is)

Alex's opening to the prize task (S21e5 for posterity), describing "We all know it's easier to conceal things in a person, but these guys know what they're doing." Kumail looks a little disgruntled too (2nd pic), but Amy just isn't having it with this joke, even doing a little turkey neck reaction! Just killed me, right from the start.

I'm catching up on u/AAABattery03 (i.e. Mathfinder)'s video on Mystic Armor, a bit late because I already knew the argument, and mostly agreed with it, but this part starting at about 15:22 has convinced me to stop hoarding gold. Like I already knew that, but Mathfinder makes it very explicit that the paltry sum you may hold onto at lower levels becomes quickly devalued.

Of course, there are times you want to save up for crucial upgrades or key purchases, and not everyone runs a spreadsheet on upcoming magic items and gold costs... but if you did, as an example, I know my wizard needs exactly 2310 GP for 2 crucial upgrades and 1 key item next level. Anything beyond that, spend it baybee!

Artifact Space, by Miles Cameron, is the first in the Arcana Imperii series, which I picked up solely thanks to a previous recommend on this sub. It's one of the better space opera books I've read in a bit. As a frame of reference, some of my favorite sci-fi series of the last decade or so have been The Expanse, Murderbot Diaries, and Children of Time (also Final Architecture) books. The Expanse is a good comparison point, as Artifact Space covers many similar themes, but isn't nearly as grim, and is overall fairly positive about humanity, at least your fellow crew-mates, though not quite as rosy as something like Star Trek (not counting "Nu Trek"), as there are some evil bastards lurking about. This is neither a positive nor a negative, just an observation about the world building. (Also, I just noticed the publisher website claims the third book is, "perfect for fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky and James S.A. Corey.")

Speaking of the world, it's very well built up without over-explaning. You're dumped in a very lived in world and have to follow along a bit, but it's nothing overly challenging, and the science is a bit hand-wavy about the artificial gravity and FTL, but still tries to be internally consistent (lots of mid-to-high G burns). The characters are very compelling, and the journey and character growth Nbaro, the protagonist, is satisfying.

The story reminded me of Hornblower (but in SPACE!), with a super-competent (but with some... issues) middie joining a new, giant trading vessel. Unlike Hornblower, she has immediate support among almost all of her again very competent crew-mates, so this reads a bit more cozy than a lot of other space operas, but there are plenty of challenges and some nice conspiracies (not to mention the aforementioned evil bastards) to untangle.

Small spoilers, if you plan on reading this, I'd avoid it. My only gripe about the book is that one of the evil bastards' identity >!is pretty obvious, to the point where I thought it was a fake out, so when he's revealed towards the end, I ended up being disappointed.!<

4.5* (out of 5).