u/foxwilliam

I thought it would have been confirmed by now. Could it just be that there is nobody at the wheel in the front office right now to get it done?

I just finished reading the Commonwealth Saga (meaning Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained...I know there's other books in the universe, so no spoilers please!). I thought it had some aspects to it that were SO good. Searching through old posts here, I'm glad to see I'm not alone in thinking MLM is one of the scariest villains like maybe in any media ever. The scene where it examines Bose and Verbeke was so scary and it wasn't because it was some kind of gruesome body horror torture (it wasn't really), it was because of the ultra-chilling way that MLM *thought* about what it was doing. Just S tier writing.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, we have the sex. I want to be clear that I do think *some* of the graphic sex stuff in here did serve a purpose in that it sets up a kind of raw humanity that is a good counterpoint to MLM. But it goes way overboard imo. Still, I wouldn't mind so much except that it's concentrated in one character, Melanie. She really had a lot of potential to be an interesting character as someone who starts out really naive and then is put in this awesome position of responsibility as a link to the SI. But she ends up just like a ridiculously tropey vehicle for lots and lots of author-fantasy sex. This old post I think summarizes it much better than I could: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/ytf2jp/commonwealth_saga_women_specifically_melanie/

So to not repeat that, I'll critique how Melanie was written from another angle which is that I found it totally unbelievable how EVERY man she encountered immediately wanted to have sex with her, often sidelined their own other goals in service of doing that, and just generally couldn't control themselves around her. Yes, obviously men do this a lot in real life, but in such a diverse society, you'd think she would encounter even ONE guy who maybe just had a lower sex drive, didn't find her to be his type, or was just not in the mood with the whole alien invasion issue to worry about (or gay for that matter--there are a couple of minor gay characters, but she never runs into one). Not to mention that this is a future where everyone is genetically modified to look their best and doesn't age past 50 without being rejuvenated, so, especially in the circles she was running in, people shouldn't be so flabbergasted by seeing an attractive woman.

It really stood out honestly because the rest of it was so good and the characters were generally written in a believable way, with a cool universe, and a good overall story. I just always dreaded reading when I would get up to one of her chapters (I'd even rather be out with Ozzie on the paths as much of a tangent as that was!).

What did others think of these two books? Happy to chat about it!

Basically the title--there's one playmat I like more than the others and I'm wondering if there is a way to select that one to always be the one I see. I'm guessing that's not possible but wanted to check just in case I was missing something.

I still liked Quarantine, but it wasn't what I expected at all after reading the other two a few years ago. The other two books are very dense and technical (not meant in a negative way), while Quarantine is more story focused--the science that's there is a bit on the softer side of sci-fi and mainly seems designed to move the story along (again, not meant in a negative way). Did others feel that way? And, if so, which side is more representative of his other work?

Basically the title. My kid accidentally went through a bunch of videos and I'm trying to accurately track my watch time! I realize it's a little OCD but it bothers me that there's time on there that isn't "real." I can't find a way to manually remove watched time though so maybe it doesn't exist? Thought I'd check here first.

This is now perhaps the most important thing this offseason other than a possible Kawhi trade. If we keep him on the roster, Ty is going to play him over Wagler and we can't be having that. Not to mention that his inclusion in the rotation could also take away minutes from Kobe Sanders depending on how things are shuffled.

Beal was not good in the five games or so he played in before he got hurt last year so he's pretty likely washed anyway, but the amount of games it would take for Ty to accept that is probably very high.

Trade or just waive or whatever but we got to get him out of here to save Ty from himself.

Maybe we should look for this in the draft, we certainly won't find it anywhere else!

I thought it would be interesting to go back and look at some recent(ish) number 5 picks--I decided to start at 2023 instead of last year to exclude people where the jury might still be more out on that player. Here they are:

2013 - Alex Len
2014 - Dante Exum
2015 - Mario Hezonja
2016 - Kris Dunn
2017 - De’Aaron Fox
2018 - Trae Young
2019 - Darius Garland
2020 - Isaac Okoro
2021 - Jalen Suggs
2022 - Jaden Ivy
2023 - Ausar Thompson

A few notes

- It's kinda crazy that if we keep this pick, we'll have 3 different players all drafted with the 5th pick on our roster (Dunn, Garland, +new guy).

- For this pick, it seems like the floor is bust and the ceiling is like fringe-all-star.

What do you think? Does this list make you more optimistic, less, or the same?

I'm nervous!