The Sword and Laser discussion

More Pratchett TV coming, and more Rothfuss books?  Plus more deep discussion about an Unkindness of Ghosts, including why blurbs may lead you astray.    

https://www.patreon.com/posts/17575677
http://swordandlaser.com/home/2018/3/...
https://soundcloud.com/swordandlaser/...

Thought Tom was bang on with his thoughts about aUoG here.

A timely guest blog by Frank Landis at Charlie's Diary, the blog of Charles Stross.

Solarpunk rising, or how to turn boring bureaucratic meetings into creative fodder

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...

Landis is the author of Hot Earth Dreams: What if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?

I think you're getting Rivers Solomon's pronouns wrong. From their bio in the book and on their website they are using they/them. Maybe make a correction in an upcoming podcast? It means a bunch to have it respected and represented, especially when talking about someone's work to such a large crowd.

One of the things I love most about sci-fi is that people have been exploring gender rep for way longer than it's been reflected in current society. It's rad it's starting to finally work it's way into society right now.

Love this podcast the most and thanks for all you do. It's something I look forward to every week. You've introduced me to some phenomenal queer/gender-bending authors.

Signed, the pronoun police


https://www.riverssolomon.com/bio

Jacqui wrote: "I think you're getting Rivers Solomon's pronouns wrong. From their bio in the book and on their website they are using they/them. Maybe make a correction in an upcoming podcast? It means a bunch to..."

Did they make a mistake during this podcast? I must not have noticed. I do remember in the last podcast Tom correctly referred to the author as they.

Jacqui wrote: "I think you're getting Rivers Solomon's pronouns wrong. From their bio in the book and on their website they are using they/them. Maybe make a correction in an upcoming podcast? It means a bunch to..."

Yes, we do know that Rivers uses they/them. I heard Tom use "they" several times in the show, and other times he was referring to Aster, who in the book uses she/her. If there was a mistake, it was not done intentionally.

Just scratching my pedant itch (which is harder now that I've embraced descriptive grammar rules for English). You mentioned the actress that played Laura, and then said "not wolverine".
Comics spoiler:
(view spoiler)[
In current continuity, Laura aka X=23, is actually Wolverine.
(hide spoiler)]
Movie:
(view spoiler)[ Not sure if the movie Universe agrees, but it seemed to be moving that direction. (hide spoiler)]

That's kind of... a major spoiler for Logan...

Dara wrote: "That's kind of... a major spoiler for Logan..."

Oops. I was trying to be vague enough that it wouldn't be. I haven't posted on Goodreads before, so I didn't think about spoiler formatting.

(view spoiler)[Although, it's hard to really properly tag it. If I preface that there are movie spoilers before the tag, then that in itself is a spoiler, and considering the topic it could be easily guessed what the spoiler was. Personally, when I saw Logan, I went in assuming that Logan was going to die, so I was projecting my own assumptions onto others. (hide spoiler)]

No biggie! :-) I err on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers. As Tom said in a previous podcast, I'd hate to be the person who ruined the experience for someone else. I'm sure the Roberator has thoughts on spoilers here.

(view spoiler)[I'd also put "In current continuity, Laura aka X=23, is actually Wolverine." in spoiler tags. (hide spoiler)]

Yay, my thread is the title for the podcast!

Also, yeah spoiler tags are always appreciated by me, even if it's about something that's been out for awhile.

A funny story on clocks/time changes.

When we fly the satellites, we have 3 clocks - one for Universal Time, one for local, and one for estimated satellite local (important when in equinox season). We were working on a spacecraft during the time change once and one of the guys (an MIT grad, no less) asked if we were going to change the UTC clock, too.


We blame it on him being tired (it was an overnight shift). :P

I haven't finished listening because I haven't finished the book, but I'm team UTC forever.

terpkristin wrote: "A funny story on clocks/time changes.

When we fly the satellites, we have 3 clocks - one for Universal Time, one for local, and one for estimated satellite local (important when in equinox season)..."

Whenever I make a math mistake — as I did the other day, which Tassie D caught — I console myself that actual rocket scientists have done the same, sometimes losing multimillion-dollar spacecraft in the process. (Looking at you, Mars lander. Or should I say “Mars impactor”?)

I recently had an issue at work where a user in the UK couldn't do something, but I couldn't recreate it.

Turned out to be a time zone issue. All our servers are UTC, but the browser uses local time. It turns out the library the UI uses doesn't support dates, just date times, so it was defaulting to a time of 12 midnight which was then being converted to UTC and resulted in a date change in the UK, but not the US.

Needless to say I'd be in favor of UTC for everyone as well.

Back when I worked in finance for a smallish entertainment company, we had a CFO that wouldn't approve 25 hours in a day for a security firm (guarding the CEO) since there could only be 24 hours in a day. The AP clerk involved did a comparison of "spring forward" with "fall back" and still couldn't convince him.

Maybe it was a mental block. I still think he was just cheap, though.

Being based in the UK, I’m definitely in favour of UTC for everyone.

Except I think we should call it by the proper name, Greenwich Mean Time.

Ruth wrote: "Being based in the UK, I’m definitely in favour of UTC for everyone.

Except I think we should call it by the proper name, Greenwich Mean Time."

The English never stop trying to colonize the world!

No to UTC. I like the time confusion ;-)

I love it when Oz goes from 3 time zones to 5 time zones over summer.



My boss in Queensland loves it when we start ringing him at 6 AM instead of 7 AM because we forget they don't switch to DST ;-)

Brendan wrote: "The English never stop trying to colonize the world!..."
That's re-colonise.
If you transatlantic rebel colonists had remembered your proper place, the world would be a better place. (Trump-less, for a start!)

(Only teasing!)

Alan wrote: "Brendan wrote: "The English never stop trying to colonize the world!..."
That's re-colonise.
If you transatlantic rebel colonists had remembered your proper place, the world would be a better place..."

How's Brexit coming?

Alan wrote: If you transatlantic rebel colonists had remembered your proper place, the world would be a better place. (Trump-less, for a start!)."

Not all the North Americans on here are american, you know.

Ruth wrote: "Being based in the UK, I’m definitely in favour of UTC for everyone.

Except I think we should call it by the proper name, Greenwich Mean Time."

They aren't quite the same. UTC is more precise.

Rick wrote: "How's Brexit coming?..."
Coming, going, nobody knows. Nobody at all. Total bloody ****-up

If anyone knows where to find a politician who is both intelligent and honest . . . . I will be bloody surprised!

I want an ARC too..... I reviewed all Divine Cities books! *insert fist shake gif*

Anywho, can we make it a group read? :D

On the Twitter Lambda lit award news, credit goes to Tanya who gave the news here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Interesting list indeed.