u/Wetness__Pensive

On my digital copy of the books, the chapters are all in the 30ish page range (my font is fairly large). Wolfe seemed to have made a conscious choice not to deviate too much from this.

IMO this lends a very rhythmic, pacy quality to the books. The chapters aren't too short, aren't too long, and regularly come at you at a familiar clip.

Everywhere I go, I now refer to friends and strangers as "goodman" (eg, "thank you, goodman", "hello, goodman", "Are you a vegetable then, or a speaking plant, goodman?").

I have been met with no resistance, so shall continue.

That is all.

>NEWBIE: Hi guys. Loved "Shadow and Claw". Just wondering what I may have missed, though?

>WOLFEEXPERT55: Depends on how much you caught. Did you catch basic stuff like (SPOILERS) the fact that Severian was raised in a defunct rocket ship, that Vodalus gives Severian a fake coin, that Severian brought Triskele back to life, that there are multiple iterations of Severian, that Severian hangs out in his own tomb as a kid, that the narrator of the book is a composite being of torturer Severian/Thecla/all the previous Autarchs, that Jonas is a Korean robot from close to our time, that whenever Severian gets confused about direction he’s time traveling, that the water entities routinely reappear, that Severian is the Concilliator, that Severian actually dies in his duel versus Agilus, that the narrator deliberately glosses over the sexual relationship between Severian and Thecla, that Severian might have killed his own mother in his ascension ceremony, that you meet Severian's grandfather in the second chapter of Shadow but you don't even notice him, that the face of the man engraved in the tomb of mausoleum which young Severian frequented is quite possibly himself, that Severian abolishes the guild, that the alien hierodules are bringing him back from death throughout the story [edited for length]...

>NEWBIE: What?! No, I didn't get any of that. Also, quick question: is Urth supposed to be Earth?

>WOLFEEXPERT55: Author statements and textual clues suggest Urth may instead be a separate, previous universal cycle; an analogous predecessor to our own Earth rather than the exact same physical globe.

>NEWBIE: Ummm. I think I read the books wrong.

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That's a lightly edited/altered convo from the subreddit. No offence intended to anyone (I'm grateful to the ultra-fans over there for explaining things), I just I find it funny how much of a mindf**k the books are. You can read them multiple times and still completely miss what's going on. I, for one, did not notice Korean robots.

Whenever I read studies about empathy and political orientation, I find the choice of language a bit odd.

Studies will point out that conservatives have a smaller emphatic sphere (favouring people closer to them, or smaller groups etc), but then go on to say that conservatives do not necessarily have less empathy overall, they just "focus it differently". But this seems dishonest: to me a homophobe is less empathic than someone who isn't. It seems wrong to equate the emphatic capacity of a homophobe and a LGBT-supporting person, just because the homophobe really empathizes with straight people.

These studies also bend over backwards in their wording (and I see people like Jonathan Haidt doing this as well), to say that all political groups have biases against political opponents, and that all groups are equally guilty of not empathizing with outsiders. But surely a group that extends empathy outward (across cultures, to animals, the environment etc), but hates group X who hate the aforementioned subgroups, isn't behaving the same as group X. This seems like a dishonest comparison to me (surely intolerance of intolerance doesn't make a tolerant person as intolerant as an intolerant person).

It just feels like studies, or the journalistic reporting of these studies, are bending over backwards not to offend assholes.

"Babylon 5" got a good HD remaster, but its CGI shots were mostly left as they originally were (slight reframing).

Would you be okay with "DS9" doing something similar? Or using a quick AI upscaler to juice up the FX shots?

Regardless, it's odd to me that a show like "Babylon 5" got an HD remaster. I'd have assumed its audience was too small to financially warrant this.

Note, in this scenario, the Martians are best buddies with the Photino Birds, the Culture have the ability to sublime, and the Bobs and Xeelee are at the peak of their powers.