king of nowhere

delvers started just as crazy AIs... but how did they got powerful enough to destroy planets? is that something that any AI could potentially learn? any cytonic? the book does explain how they grew their "personality", but not their power

i doubt detritus can be our moon. first, just like they said it wasn't old earth because they had maps, so they'd have maps of the moon. second, the moon has such low gravity, people can't walk on it, they bounce around and jump like kangaroos. brandon has more scientific consistency than that. unless they completely terraformed the surface, increased the size, and installed higher artificial gravity. which would be a huge stretch, for a reveal that wouldn't be worth much.

seems a lot like the physical-cognitive-spiritual realms to me. the inner nowhere has no time, and connection is mentioned a lot. brandon is using cosmere-like patterns even for non-cosmere stories.

I just bought the cytonics ebook from kobo, and i can't download it. i press download, and instead of downloading an ebook, i am given a file named "urllink.acsm", which is 1.4 kB in size and only contains (apparently) some metadata. any info on how to deal with this? alternatively, can i get a refund? EDIT: actually, i no longer need that. i got a pirated copy [hey, i did pay for the ebook] and i deleted my kobo account. mods can delete

i was teaching when i heard one of my students call another a cretin. "but teacher, he deserved it. he was talking and disturbing" "well, i could never insult one of you students" pause while i realize the implication "did any of you guys ever read the stormlight archive?" [none of them has. not many people know sanderson in italy] "well, it's this fantasy book where there is a king who keeps a wit to insult the other nobles. because the king could not afford to insult the nobles, it would be inappropriate for his role. so he has the wit to do it for him. perhaps you could be my wit"

you know, you are probably right. still, gran-gran suddenly manifesting skills she didn't have didn't feel good. too much like a deus ex machina; the saving grace of that scene is that they could have used one of the known cytonics to extract her and cobb anyway and yet, killing jorgen's parents, now the story has less Weight [ducks] I could practically feel the plot itself uttering "you have outlived your usefulness" in that scene

i appreciated this book much less than the previous one. please stop having human-alien romance. Just because you end up liking and respecting your alien buddy, it doesn't mean you want to shtup them. especially considering the whole race of alanik seems aromantic. and I know too much about astrophysics and astrobiology to accept redawn ecosystem. sorry and gran-gran suddenly being able to teleport felt contrary to established fact. she's a weak cytonic, and her main cytonic ability is to perceive her surrounding to make up for being blind. if she could teleport, she had plenty of times when she could have done it aside from that, i enjoied the book. one thing, with all the stuff about the battle station being still kept functioning with fresh food and beds and everything, I was expecting for there to actually be humans on it. A second group, who managed to hide on redawn all this time. It would have been hilarious.

possibly so. And we know under cobb's leadership the ddf is already tackling most of its internal problems. but I'm missing old FM with her bombastic political commentaries anyway.

i enjoyed the books, but i have to say, FM feels a bit off. not on the big parts; she still is a pacifist who has to fight against aliens who won't accept diplomacy, and some of her shifting there came from having seen the issue from the military perspective. but FM always had a distinctive way of speaking. she used big words. like "“Constantly amazed by the toxic aggression omnipresent in Defiant culture”. And she was impeccably dressed. those parts of her are never mentioned in sunreach. she missed a bit of her unique voice.

No, I don't actually belive this; it would make the whole conflict meaningless. "it was all a simulation", just like "it was all a dream", is not a good plot twist to pull on after a whole book, much less four. But it would just EXPLAIN SO MUCH! In perfect state, real humans have an advantage over the "machineborn". they have something they can do and everyone else in their world cannot. The protagonist could use a certain magic, and he was the only one who could in his world. the woman could see stuff about social patterns, and everyone else in her world could not. Well, in the cytoverse we have the supremacy, treating every "lesser race" like crap, and then they get all aghast when those races react with aggression, or try to steal from them.It's like this whole extremely advanced star-spanning civilization, with scientists, philosophers, and thinkers from thousands of planets, is completely unable to grasp the basic concept that most sapients - heck, even a lot of the smarter animals - will reciprocate the way they are treated. even somebody extremely enlightened like Cuna, who spent her life trying to bridge the gap and is willing to speak to a member of the "human scourge", never makes the connection between human aggression and the way they are treated. What's more likely? That in those thousands of planets, among trillions of sapient beings, nobody - absolutely nobody - stumbled upon this connection? Or that they cannot make the connection because they are not real people and they are artificially blocked from solving the plot for the protagonist? As I said, it's not going to be the case for meta-literary reasons, but it would certainly explain things. On the other hand, Spensa being able to make the connection would point to her being the one "liveborn" in her world, but she had way too much emotional trauma in her youth for this to be her perfect state. This seems a solid rebuke based on in-universe reasons

on the other hand, there is an interesting question underlying this: if a bloody revolution did happen - despite vax best attempts to usher reforms peacefully - and it was not led by the set or other groups that are unquestionably worse than the current establishment what would wax do then? there are enough nuances in this that it could be a great novel by itself. maybe i actually did predict the plot of lost metal

Skyward, page 52: we see the depiction of a Poco fighter, the one used by Skyward flight. The one Hurl was using when she died. The depiction is in the book, so I assume it's official. And we clearly see the cockpit in the back of the craft body. Page 341: Spensa and Jorgen are giving burial rites to Hurl. The crash scenario is described. It said that the ship had broken in three parts, rear, middle and front, and that "a small chunk of the front fuselage - with the cockpit - had broken free". It's unequivocally stating that the cockpit is in the front, as close to the "tip" of the fuselage as possible. this is completely incompatible with the drawing of page 51, where the cockpit is in the rear third. There could be some argument if the cockpit had been stated to have been in the middle section, but no. Look at it, there isn't even enough space to break off two segments behind the cockpit.

yes, i think there's a word of brandon somewhere that equality comes from there being as many mistborn women as men, and the noble houses needed all the metalborn they could get, and could not afford to discriminate

I must also point out that the level of democracy on scadrial is the same that we had on our world when we had the same tech level. Probably it's different from an american perspective, because you've been a democracy since before the industrial age, but in europe, at the beginning of 1900, we still had kings and emperors - and not those we still have in costitutional monarchies, whose practical power ranges from "basically a president" to "basically a figurehead". In 1900 we had already got rid of absolute monarchies, there were voting rights, there were parliaments with actual powers, but kings still were firmly in charge, and nobles still had privileges. most european states became democracies after losing some of the world wars, basically the old ruling class screwed up too badly and was ousted for it. those countries that remained, and still are, parliamentary monarchies, are the ones where the kings were decent and capable, and they never gave the people enough of a reason to kick them out. In that regard, it is much like on scadrial: the nobles houses that still are in charge are those that were not implicated in the worst atrocities of the final empire. The revolution removed the worst elements. Those countries that had peaceful, gradual transition of power from the nobility to the masses now have the same standards of human development as the others, and they avoided violent revolutions and bloodsheds. Wax wants to follow this path, to gradually reform, and I would say history very much vindicates him: where possible, it is the best outcome. Anyway, northern scadrial is late 1800 tech level, and when we had that tech level, we also had nobles and monarchies, so it's realistic. United states were the one exception - though, for all that the constitution stated that all men are equal, slavery still exhisted for 70 more years, and racial segregation remained in the law for one more century. While in backward, "feudal" europe slavery has been abolished much earlier, and aside from the nazi and fascist regimes, nobody would have ever considered istituzionalizing racism. Just to further complicate things, to show that "more democratic" does not necessarily equate to "more progressive" or "fair". Also, both in the democratic usa and in the monarchic european states, the conditions and exploitations of the working classes were fairly similar, and in line with what we see on scadrial. In fact, scadrial having close enough gender equality is incredibly progressive compared to its technological development. Perhaps the lesson to be taken in this is that progress is not linear, and it doesn't work to try and force it into a line; there are many different issues, scadrial is more advanced in some and less advanced in others.

Skyward, page 52: we see the depiction of a Poco fighter, the one used by Skyward flight. The one Hurl was using when she died. The depiction is in the book, so I assume it's official. And we clearly see the cockpit in the back of the craft body. Page 341: Spensa and Jorgen are giving burial rites to Hurl. The crash scenario is described. It said that the ship had broken in three parts, rear, middle and front, and that "a small chunk of the front fuselage - with the cockpit - had broken free". It's unequivocally stating that the cockpit is in the front, as close to the "tip" of the fuselage as possible. this is completely incompatible with the drawing of page 51, where the cockpit is in the rear third. There could be some argument if the cockpit had been stated to have been in the middle section, but no. Look at it, there isn't even enough space to break off two segments behind the cockpit. Is this the kind of thing that they would fix in subsequent prints?

it's a good question. the thing is, while our western hystory and culture gave us the idea that "revolutionary"="good", the revolutionaries that vax fights are even worse than the establishment. none of the people that wax fought ever wanted "progress" in the first place. in fact, even in the real world a lot of revolutionaries have been on the wrong side, replacing something bad with something worse. wax may not be on the right side of the story, but his opponents certainly are not. and wax is at least trying to improve things for all.

do we have some hard numbers on Wayne current age? I always assumed that Wax found him early on, and they are close in age. This would put current era Wayne as close to 40, making the prologue is set 30 years ago. But the coppermind gives his age as closer to 30, so the prologue would be from 20 years ago, and the timeline would fit better. Also,the stuff in the previous prologues was always related to the story. For AoL, of course. But for SoS, it was instrumental for revealing that bleeder was really lassie. And for BoM, Wax sister was introduced as a troublemaker, paving the way for her betrayal later. I wonder, this prologue apparently adds nothing to what we know of the characters. Unless... could it mean that

A lot of shards were lost to the bottom of the ocean, or scattered somewhere and covered in crem. some others were hoarded. but the point stands: there should be more blades than plate, and there is no answer to that. @DougTheRug is the only one that tried to come up with answers, but they are all purely speculative, and not at all convincing.

when you swear the third oath, you get a blade. when you swear the fourth, you get the plate. We know a lot of radiants never swear the fourth.Yet there seem to be an equal number of plates and blades around. before the radiants started to reappear, the alethi and vedens were said to have both some 20 full sets. other nations had less, but always close numbers of plates and blades. why don't we get a predominance of blades from all those radiants that were still at the third oath during the recreance?

i'd point out, though, that allomantic cadmium may not too dangerous anyway. cadmium is most dangerous when small dust is inhaled. this is a major industrial hazard, if you are doing cadmium metalworking you will have cadmium dust all around, but it does not apply to eating the dust. then there are many cadmium compounds that are highly toxic, but the thing is, if it does not dissolve in some way, the body will not absorb it, it will be excreted, and it will not be toxic. toxicity requires that the substance actually enters your body, not that it passes through your guts without being absorbed. now, cadmium is not oxidized too easily, but i'm not sure how it would withstand the stomach. a quick search did not find conclusive data, if the stomach can oxidize cadmium, then yes, eating cadmium dust would get cadmium inside your blood and that would be bad. as for a metalmind, again, there is the whole absorption thing; as long as the metalmind stays solid metal, it should not be dangerous. Still, i would not want to have regular exposure to cadmium without some form of protection

temperature also depends on other factors, like sea and air currents. stockholm and the baffin island are at the same latitude, but the first has a temperate cold climate and supports farming to feed millions, while the second is a frozen tundra with a few thousand inhabitants. from that, i can guess that there could be a circular current around the continent, coming south from the steamwater ocean, warming aimia, then moving westward and getting colder, until it hits aimia as a cold current.

but are they still invested? i may be wrong, but i was under the impression that gemstones would not charge in shinovar. Possibly because of the girl who looked up, that her people lived in the dark

i checked to see if someone else proposed it first, but can't find a reference. the coppermind says that, according to an interview, the misted mountains are an homage to tolkien misty mountains. I do not think brandon would lie to us, but he's used a lesser truth to conceal a deeper truth so, the name tell us those mountains are full of mist. it may be regular weather, what with humid air getting colder as it rises. But it may also be invested. we know from mistborn that mist is one of the forms of investiture. and on the other side of the misted mountains, there are no spren - at least, not visible. highstorms stop there too, and while - again - this is connected to geography and the mountains barring the path to stormwinds, there is also the investiture part; highstorms are invested, and it stops on those mountains. so i'm thinking perhaps the mist on those mountains is a form of investiture, and it is part of what makes shin different from the rest of roshar.

actually, it was this other oneù