Two McMillion

I liked it because of its themes, but I don't think Tomorrowland was a very good movie.

For having a funny title text!

I think team 2 has this. PreRadiance Kaladin and Hrathen are simply too weak, even when supported by Vin, to hold off Denth and Eshoni before Raoden could pull off some truly scary AonDor.

Is this still accepting players?

I graduated college/university a year and a month and two days ago.

On the "boys don't read books for girls" thing: When I was a kid, my mom wanted me to read "good" literature, which to her meant reading newberry medal stuff. One day she went to the library and brought back Caddie Woodlawn, which I at first steadfastly refused to read because it was about a girl. Somehow my mom managed to persaude me that I should read it regardless, and I ended up really liking it, but I always remember that whenever I hear someone say that boys don't read "girl" books.

I say let Pat take as long as he needs. More time means better work. I think Sanderson would be better if he took longer to write. Yes, I said it. Brandon is all about monatization. Pat is much more artistically focused.

Probably so. If that was true I'd imagine Mistborn would be primarily known for having a gay romance element, to the exclusion of all the other things it does. I imagine fandom would view it very differently, for better or worse. BTW, answering questions like this is what fanfic is for.

Well, it would have changed the love story, I'm sure. Brandon has so far avoided writing gay characters, so I doubt male!Vin and Elend would have ended up together. Most likely one of the other crew members would have been female instead.

I do not like toast.

A while back I posted the thread, "What would you do with the Lord Ruler's powers?" I thought the ensuing debate was interesting, so I'm back with another question of the same sort. You just wake up one morning, and boom, you have a shardblade. What would you do with it? Assume it's the good kind of shardblade, the kind Kaladin has at the end of WoR: instant summons, shapeshifting weapon, etc. It's not sentient, though, and you don't get any other KR abilities. For bonus points, describe what you'd do if you had the Lord Ruler's powers as well as a shardblade.

English is my mother tongue; I learned Latin and Koine Greek growing up. I have a smattering of Spanish, Arabic, and Swahili, since I studied those for travel reasons but stopping paying attention after I got home.

How many points is a downloaded copy of everything in wikipedia as of the days the bombs fall?

But wasn't Lerasium created by TLR using the Well? I seem to recall Brandon saying that at some point.

I need to get back on this series at some point. It's beyond ridiculous but I do enjoy it for what it is.

Finished The Blade Itself today. I'm actually kind of disappointed. No real climax, no payoff, just... an ending. I've heard enough good things about the series that I'll probably continue it, but it felt like a bit of a letdown.

It also might be that people like engineers and computer scientists often spend their days in front of a computer with an internet connection.

I'm not allowed to tell you what I do.

I think I will go and write a fantasy novel with a female as the big bad.

Random thoughts that have been floating around in my head lately: 1. If you had the ability to perceive someone's thoughts, emotions, and memories staring at them and concentrating for a second or two, under what circumstances would you use this ability on your children? 2. (same universe as above) If, when your child was six, you discovered that they would soon develop the ability to control other human beings like puppets, and you had the option of either letting it develop naturally, giving them an implant that would delay developing the power (with the possibility of unpleasant side effects as a result), or having the power removed entirely, what would you do?

"Then an experience that perhaps no man can ever have in our world came over him- a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person; but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons as the disposal of of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding out at last what hatred was made for." - C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

The Turing test is vastly overrated, and the number of idiots on the internet has effectively destroyed its usefulness, anyway. I mean, Cleverbot passes simply for the reason that there are plenty of people on the internet who would give replies as inane as it does. When we get beyond Chinese rooms (which is totally what this is), then we'll have something to talk about.

What the book seems to disparage is people making a choice to ignore the truth of suffering in the world. And that's certainly something worth talking about, but in the end Hazel does exactly that. Fundamentally, what is the difference between Hazel's choice to embrace the good she got from knowing Gus despite the sorrow she got from it, and the choice of Gus' parents to do so through the filter of their Encouragements? Both of them are making a choice about how they deal with the same terrible event, and both are, fundamentally, doing so the same way- and yet Hazel's choice is being held up as exemplary while Gus' parents' choice isn't. Hazel can say what she likes, but there's no difference in the underlying ideas behind "You can't avoid getting hurt in this world, but you can choose to hurt you," and "You can't have a rainbow without the rain." Those statements are exactly the same. But the book tries to pretend there's some difference there, and so the whole thing is eventually undermined. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book- I really did, and I think it's exceptionally touching and well-written. But it also seems to profess an answer of sorts to the problem of evil and a criticism to a lot of ways people deal with suffering. Well, I think the criticism is spot on, but the answer it offers instead is exactly the same as what's being criticized. Of course, the book is obviously filtered through Hazel's POV and all that; a clueless coming to agree with something you think you hate is really spot on in a lot of ways for the "deep thoughts" of a lot of people, but it's worth pointing out all the same, I think.

The book and movie are both pretty strongly nihilistic- and by that I mean nihilism as originally conceived by Nietzsche, which TVtropes now calls Anti-Nihilism- that is, the choice to live boldly despite the suffering that's omnipresent in the world. One of the main themes of the book is the problem evil, and how we deal with apparently pointless suffering, and the book levels criticisms at a lot of traditional ways of dealing with it (ie, religion)- for instance, see Hazel's thoughts during the funeral. The main criticism the book seems to level here is that people who choose these ways are simply choosing to ignore truths about how the world is and deal in platitudes, which is probably a legitimate criticism in a lot of ways. But then that entire point is completely undermined at the very end when Hazel chooses to do exactly the same thing. She becomes exactly the person who's just making a choice to embrace a platitude, and somehow this is presented as being superior to the choices the other people have made on how they deal with suffering. It's not- ultimately, Hazel's attitude at the end of the novel is no different that Patrick's or Gus' parents. The only difference is that she's choosing to find her strength is something different from them, but somehow that makes her choice the better one. But that's simply silly. Her choice is presented as transcending the problems she's facing, but it's obvious that it doesn't do so in any particular way.