Mr. Misting

Cut a hand sized hole in an industrial microwave. While holding a large firework, insert desired arm into the hole, then seal the edges between arm and hole with a copious amount of duct tape. Get high on pain meds. Start microwave for 99:59 minutes. (If body distribution of heat begins to feel fatal, remove the limb with a sharp-edged implement. Bowie knives, sporks or chainsaws are recommended. Make sure to leave enough arm attached to microwave so the seal holds.) Sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

Basically yes. Though this question is meant to be more about what your college class would be like, and not what books should be taught in all classes. Hopefully that this ends up being more interesting than "what are your favorite books?" For example, I chose Nightwatch by Pratchett, which is an incredible and deep book, though I wouldn't be likely to recommend anyone else teaching it, but I personally would so love to dive into the symbolism and the meaning and language of that book. That anthology sounds fascinating. I'll need to get to that. And Shadows Below, I've read that collection but didn't consider how it would work for this question. But yeah, I could imagine the value in teaching writing very high. I didn't consider the danger of people SparkNoting a book. I guess if you had daily quizzes about smaller details or quotes a teacher could discourage that. But I do think many classics can be challenging, maybe not for the thoughts they present, but for the ways in which they are written. Reading Moby Dick was a very interesting experience for me because much of the book I didn't understand what people were saying because of the prose. I had to read many paragraphs two or three times and think about it before I understood what it was saying, and eventually I got better and quicker at following conversations. Training my brain to understand more types of writing, and denser writing, I hope is training me to think better and pick up more detail when I then read other books.

Four is an arbitrary number, but I structured the question as I did so it would force people to make interesting decisions, as parameters breed creativity and such. I know college classes would have a theme, and have many more books, but I choose college as a framework for the question, so the answerer wouldn't have to worry about banned books or books being too long or hard to read. I also didn't specify a theme for the books because that allowed people to pick books I never would have even considered, like graphic novels or very recent commercially oriented works, which lead to me requestioning the purpose and goal of reading books for education. And I've added many books to my reading list because of this question, as it is high praise for someone to put a book on such a short list, as they think the books so meaningful among all the books they've read, or a book they would really love to dissect and better understand. I am much less to impressed read chosen books the longer someone's list goes, though Treamayne, I am always appreciative to the incredible detail you bring to discussions like these. But if you had to slim down your list--to maybe not four, if you still consider that too small, but a more compact list--what books do you think have impacted you the most, and/or could help others learn the most from? Magi, that's a really good list. I hadn't considered Outsiders, though I remember reading it and liking it a lot. I almost chose Gatsby, and shakespeare, but put them aside because I assumed most high schoolers got to them, and I thought it more important to expose students to other literature then drill down on what they've already read.

I've been throwing this question around to my friends and teachers, and been very interested by the answers: you're a college professor teaching college literature, and can pick any four books you've read to teach. You can pick books with no restrictions, as long as you think it will provide the best class experience. My current list is Moby Dick, Lonesome Dove, Nightwatch by Terry Pratchett and The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. I've also had many thoughts about the nature of reading books in class from this question: Is it better to read challenging classics that push people's thoughts or modern books people will enjoy? What should be the goal of reading novels in class? Is a graphic novel literature? Is a graphic novel or non-fiction appropriate to read in English classes? How far should we go to include diversity in authorship, if it's hard to find books written by those minorities that the teacher loves? (All my books are by white guys, the books I considered and loved by women didn't fit the bill as for a few reasons (I'm going to read more books women and non-white people after this (any suggestions?))) So, what books would you guys pick to read and why, and any thoughts about my questions?

Correct

Sliced up stacks of corpses that are branded with people's thoughts

Ok, given that you didn't put a cost on giving a curse, or a distance limit on to who I can put curses on, there are a lot of ways to break this power. The way I would probably do it is send a letter to a rich person with an ultimatum. For each day I don't get x amount of money, I give them a curse that will last forever. If I do this to maybe a 100 people, at least a few will cave to avoid have an ever-increasing number of slightly annoying things, and I'll be rich as long as the law doesn't catch me. Or am really mad at an army, or one person trying to fight me, I can spam give them curses, say two million curses to the entirety of the army until, given the number of slightly annoying things they are not very effective at fighting. You have the power to mentally inflict paper cuts onto people, but for each cut you give you get one as well.

I put a very distinct speck of dust into a bullet, and command that dust to shoot forward. While the increased size would make it lose a lot of acceleration, I'd still hazard that it'd be lethal. Alternatively, based on what a paint flake did the International Space Station (cracked their crazy expensive window), even if the speck of dust is moving roughly 7 times slower than the impact of space station to paint, I think a human skull is 7 times weaker than ballistic space windows. So, grab a handful of dust and machine gun everything. You have a single basic spiral notebook that you have perfect knowledge of everything on its pages.

After some very cursory reading of my AP psych textbook, I think it would be really horrific if I made an invisible incorporeal sphere fly into someone's eye, past the lens, and then have it turned up to a lightbulb level of light. Since the iris, pupil, Corena and lens help modulate, focus and control all entering light, I don't think the person's eye could handle if light turned on past those protections. I'm not sure if it would cause instant blindness, but it would probably, best case scenario for them, make that eye useless or very weird for at least a minute. Repeat with another eye and they are theoretically blind long enough for the user to easily destroy them in a fight. Ability to hear sneezes seven seconds before they happen.

Proof: learning of the future is obviously of Odium. The power loves arguments and questions, though the Rayse hates questions and tries to shut them down by RAFOing them. Theory: Mare was Lift

And little Ajax will stay back

Your families wonder where you've been

Easy number one is Hesina, assuming she's single. Tress, though I don't know if I could live up to Charlie. And Design, but only for a few dates, then hopefully we're just friends. She's a....quirky little one

This was a fairly intriguing for a first draft! I think you could definitely stretch this into a full story, as there are many interesting ways this could go. I won't get to nitpicky, as this is meant to be rough. Your prose was very natural, and the main character relatable, though some of the dialogue was a little stilted. The opening imagines of the pigeon cages were very engaging, and like nothing I've read before. (They made me immediately think of operant conditioning chambers, which, since you seem to have taken AP Psych as well, I was curious if that's where you got the inspiration). The labyrinth helps provides a good hook, and a way to further alienate the doppelganger. Some questions to maybe consider, about the pigeons, if you make this a full story: what is the rational behind the pigeons being there? If the doppelganger is trying to form a rapport with John, wouldn't he want to make him comfortable? And, by the end of the second chapter, looking back, the pigeons felt very incongruous with the rest of the story, also, are you thinking of doing a different trippy thing each time John meets the doppelganger? as I think you could do a ton of cool stuff with that. It was odd how much people knew about John's personal life, both the teacher, and Kayla. But if you were to expand on this, I'm very curious to see what you do with it.

... *Sigh* And my day was going so well to. My streak of maybe even two whole weeks can go die in the corner I guess. It's amusing how many repeat names you have. It's even more amusing how you ping yourself five storming times.

You're looking for episode 79--Let's Talk About Trunk Novels. Excellent bad story idea, that I've almost convinced myself I'd read.

At that point I feel like it isn't water, how dice is always multiple. One molecule of water, should be called a wat or something, it's pretty different from a glass of water. And do you have an answer to the question I asked?

I'm down to play nonsense games, but I'm curious, do you have other arguments as to why water isn't wet? To me, it all comes down to how useful a definition it is. Sure, all color is actually wrong, and it absorbs all light except the color you see, but it isn't useful to define color as such. Sure, you could argue water isn't right, and change the definition, because all definitions are inherently made up, but it would be a less useful definition.

Water is wet. If water was alone by itself, it would still be wet, just as carpet would be fuzzy even if you weren't touching it. Also, the general argument I've seen is that water makes things wet, but isn't it always in contact with itself? So isn't it constantly making itself wet?

I've been thinking a lot on the nature of gold allomancy, even since the rpg kickstarter when brotherwise has hinted at it's usefulness. Here's a general list of all the cool stuff one could possibly do. I believe the nausea effect from burning gold would go away or dimmish, the more practiced you are with it. It makes sense that repeated exposure increases your tolerance. Also, the only three people we've seen burn gold, or talk about having burned it, are Keliser, Vin and Miles, people who all have some loathing for their past self, or for many versions of who they could become. Maybe a well adjusted person, who generally would like most of their shadows, would have a less severe reaction to burning gold. Most reasonable: If you’re a thief, or some profession with a lot of uncertain risk. You want to steal something, and you have full intent of trying. You flip a coin, which decides if you try or you don’t. If you don’t go through with it, wait until when you would have finished the heist and burn gold. Assuming some skill, or luck, summon the gold shadow of the version that attempted the heist, that is either rich, in jail, or killed, in which case they are unsummonable. Write down everything they tried, and that went well. Theoretically, you can even do this in much smaller ways. You’re a gambler, about to make a risky move. Flip a coin, and either make the make the move or go to the bathroom. If you go to the bathroom, burn gold, learn the outcome of the move and act accordingly. If you’re a writer, make a habit of always carrying your recent work on you. Before you write a paper, choose two topics, flip a coin, finish one, burn gold, and read the other paper that the gold shadow should have on their person and copy it. You could also do this with books, though you’d have the keep the shadow summoned for much longer. Drawbacks: we have to make the assumption that given practice, you gain more control over what shadows you summon. Since most metals, besides copper and duralumin and such, increase in possibility the more skilled you are, the same should be true with such a dynamic power like gold. Mostly reasonable: If you’re a copper F, Gold A. Let’s assume you’re a professor. Skill and general knowledge is the product of memories of practice and study. So, summon a shadow of a version of you who majored in something different. You can look at those memories as easily as your own, because you can think both sets of thoughts at once, even if their "fake". So, dump the entirety of his college experience into a coppermind. Stop burning gold, and then tap all those memories into your mind. They’ll fade eventually, but they should stay as long as you normally remember college, which I assume is pretty long. Or just keep a few copperminds, with different possible professions of gold shadows you’ve met, and tap whichever skills you need. Zinc F, Gold A. Burn gold and then store mental speed. You should be able to store it twice as fast, or at least a lot faster. It may be flavored differently than normal stored mental speed, because you’re thinking differently than you normally would, but I would think not. The same principle works with storing electrum, and to a lesser extent tin. Very unreasonable: Anything F, Gold A. So, when you summon your shadow, they should have metal minds on them, because almost all the time you would keep metal minds on yourself. Since you can feel both bodies and think both thoughts, you’re touching the shadows metalminds, and should be able to tap them since it’s your spiritual identity. Yes, it’s a hallucination, but it’s still investiture, and the shadow should have metalminds, that to your perception, you believe you can tap. Since you’re never going to run into the problem of limited investiture thanks to preservation, it seems logical you should be able to burn gold, tap out all the metalminds, store it in your own and repeat. Theoretically infinite feruchemucial stores. Downsides: I can’t think of an issue with this, but it sounds inherently broken and unreasonable. Please tear this apart. Last question: what does flaring and burning duralumin do with gold do?

No, these are all great things to point out. I guess I haven't studied the WOBs on gold as much as I thought I have. Though I feel like my ideas relating to vision and scouting aren't disproven by the blind WOB, just more unlikely. It would make sense that the shadow reflects you, but that doesn't change that the shadow can see behind you.

Interesting point. I think in one of the cosmere rpg brotherwise videos, where they talked about mistborn mechanics, one video talked about how if you got over the nausea of using gold, then you could do a bunch of cool stuff. I don't remember the exact quoting, but that seems to imply you don't need other powers to get over the negative effects, it might require repeated exposure. And since we've never seen someone who consistently burns gold, we don't know if the negative effects would eventually go away. Also, to dump more random gold ideas, if you can touch the shadow, that means it can exert force on you. Can it lift you up to a higher ledge? If you're in a shoving match, can it push you, effectively doubling your force? Also, if it sees separately of you, can it look around a corner and tell you what's going on? Could you summon your gold shadow in a room, leave the room, and use the persisting gold shadow to overhear private conversations? What's the range between you and gold shadow? I assume we could extrapolate from Yumi and Painter's initial range, which only gives maybe 20 feet, but if you could improve that, could you shadow run down a few blocks and see what's going on? Like you said, we know very few of gold's specifics, but all of these seem like very logical and possible uses of gold, based on what we know.

But you you literally share the mind of the shadow. Muscle memory is all in the brain anyway. I would think that if your shadow was a gunslinger, your minds combined would be able to fire a gun very well. That's my assumption, but I don't know how Brandon will make it work. But yeah, just general knowledge should be cheatable with gold shadows.

This is kind of unrelated to the main topic, but it's a logical tangent. Let's say I go to college and major in business, but really considered majoring in art. It'd be probably take some practice in gold usage, but it'd make sense that I could burn gold and use the shadow's mind be able to draw art as well as if I had majored in it. Going further, I technically considered every single major at the college, just much less than the first two. So, if I was lucky, or really skilled at gold, I could gain the skills from any major, and even further, I could gain the knowledge of anything, because I could have done anything with my life. For something much more reasonable, lets say I need to read two books to study for a test. I have the intent to read the entirety of one of those books. I flip a coin, and read one book randomly. With minimal skill I could probably burn gold, to have the knowledge of the book I might have read.

In reference to the last answer, do you always attribute value to size, and if so, give me some examples? If you had ten seconds in front of someone to convince them you were a cool person, what would you do?