The Sword and Laser discussion

March Madness has begun, so get your votes in now. Plus do we like Alexander Skarsgard as Murderbot? And our final thoughts on Will of the Many and non-spoiler intro to The City and the City.

https://www.swordandlaser.com/home/20...

I really wanted the Murderbot series to be done in the animated style of some of the episodes in Love, Death, And Robots. Oh well.

We’re listening here, real-time reactions…

Ooh, Tilda Swinton as Murderbot! Perfect.

Y2K - Mrs. Trike says NYE 1999 we were at our friends Mark & Pete’s house in Cincinnati and Mark had to leave early to go to the Toyota plant in Kentucky just in case the bug bit. His husband Pete stayed and was a bit tipsy by midnight. This year we were reading books and almost missed the ball drop. Surprised we weren’t asleep.

GRRM opening a tavern means more parties at George’s joint.
Seth Meyers for the win: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_f39D...

Publishers used to blame book prices on the cost of paper and distribution, but then a couple lawsuits about royalties revealed that was all BS. Awkwarrrrd.

Veronica can’t get to the Book Briefing because she’s a working mother. Like she said in this episode, she had to drink and nap until the kid got home. That cuts into your reading time.

While I have you, happy March Madness every one!

Trike wrote: "Veronica can’t get to the Book Briefing because she’s a working mother. Like she said in this episode, she had to drink and nap until the kid got home. That cuts into your reading time."

I feel seen!

I am very surprised that you both had Y2K stories that involved hiding out just in case, and that Trike knew someone who had to go into work for that... Is this like an American thing, that you all know someone who thought the apocalypse was coming?

Because in Canada, it was treated like a silly joke. I know nobody who took it seriously, nor have I heard of anyone in my social sphere who did. I asked my wife who lived between the UAE and Pakistan at the time, and again, nobody cared about the Y2K bug.

I spent Y2K with my cousin watching MuchMusic's* countdown of Best 100 songs of the Century. But it was lame and the top things on the list were just songs that were popular in the moment. I'll never forget that The Offspring's hit Pretty Fly for a White Guy was selected as the #1 song.
Don't get me wrong, it's fun, and I like the Offspring, but song of the century? Not sure that holds up in retrospect.

*MuchMusic = Canadian MTV

While fears of a full apocalypse style event were almost always overblown, the problem was a very real one that could have interrupted, caused glitches, or even crashed all sorts of embedded control systems, financial systems, and lots of similar things. Effects would have ranged from disruptive to potentially pretty bad if an error in a control system ended up turning off something that needed to be on or vice versa.

Nothing much happened because across the board organizations had a lot of us programmers going through everything, fixing any place there was a potential bug and testing and validating that systems would work properly across that shift. I know there were still some glitches that got through all the testing and preparation, but everything I heard about was pretty minor. I wasn't concerned at all on Y2K, but that's because I was aware of everything that had been done to prepare end ensure it was mostly a non-event.

The financial systems, which is where I had the most visibility would have been disruptive, but things would have gotten straightened out. The control system failures could have cost lives, but those mostly try to fail into at least somewhat "safe" configurations. It would have been a lot messier, ugly, and potential caused a few local disasters if nothing at all had gotten tested and fixed beforehand. But I never understood the apocalypse style fears.

Scott wrote: "Nothing much happened because across the board organizations had a lot of us programmers going through everything, fixing any place there was a potential bug and testing and validating that systems would work properly across that shift."

Yeah, it could’ve been catastrophic but companies spent millions fixing it. I worked at Lexis-Nexis at the time and they had tons of people working on the problem. My wife worked at Fidelity Investments and they also threw money and programmers at the problem. That’s why we weren’t worried by the time NYE 1999 rolled around.

Toyota wasn’t worried so much as they were just being cautious. Because Australia, Japan et al had already gone through the changeover, most of the issues were caught. That said, I do remember Mark saying that there had been a nuclear reactor in Japan that almost melted down, so they were aware that something might go boom. No idea what exactly would happen if Toyota’s Kentucky servers glitched but I guess it wouldn’t be that big a deal. 500 fewer Corollas in Q1 2000?

+1 for “I fixed Y2K bugs but all I got was this lousy t-shirt”. Granted in the company I worked for at the time, any issues would have only impacted the company’s bottom line, but we still had a big effort to fix and validate everything. My biggest concern on NYE was how to avoid the crowds on the London Underground.

Paul wrote: "I am very surprised that you both had Y2K stories that involved hiding out just in case, and that Trike knew someone who had to go into work for that... Is this like an American thing, that you all..."

Same, we all treated it like a joke in England, and I don’t recall anyone doing anything different that year, except maybe extra celebrations for it being the millennium and all that. I only seem to hear stories like that from folk in the US.

Trike wrote: "That said, I do remember Mark saying that there had been a nuclear reactor in Japan that almost melted down, so they were aware that something might go boom."

Yeah, that's what I meant by local disasters. A potential nuclear plant meltdown topped that list. Others would have been chemical factory or oil refinery spills/fires/explosions, plane issues in flight, air traffic control systems, railway issues and possible accidents or derailments. A utility going offline. Control system failures are often pretty significant.

But as bad as any of those would have been, none were apocalypse style events. That fear is the one that never made sense to me. But the threat of some pretty significant disasters was real enough that everyone spent a lot of effort, time, and money making sure it wouldn't happen.

When I was 10, I had this idea that in 1999 I would be in Times Square watching the countdown.

Anyway, on the actual day my wife and I stayed in, had some champagne and watched the celebrations around the world. Then nodded off shortly after midnight.

Respect to those of you who fixed the bugs!

I learned that Y2K did have real consequences in the tech world, it was just that IT people around the world got to work and sorted it all out. But somehow the "Y2K crisis successfully averted" update never really got traction, and many Americans (and a few others, I'm sure) determined that in spite of everything, the modern world might still implode. Maybe (like what might have been the case for Tom) a lot of people were like "well we rented this cabin and bought all these canned goods. Might as well put it to use."

Honestly, I think a lot of Americans are just really itching for the apocalypse.

And their voting habits reflect that 😟

An idiot with the button that can destroy the world.

A science denier in charge of health.

Megalomaniac billionaires pushing us towards WW3, while also pissing off their former allies.

What could wrong? 🤔

Rant over. 😜

For those not on Discord, I spent Y2K in a cave. A group of caver friends and I weren't worried about things, but we thought it would be hilarious to spend underground. We called it Y2Kave. Also had a special wine made and special glasses. I wonder if I still have the glass. I should look for that. If I find it, I'll post in Discord hahah.

Looking forward to the March pick if I can ever finish the February one. Been too crazy busy to read enough.

Finally finished Will of the Many and felt like I could listen.

Cheese is good. I hope Murderbot is good. I ended up liking Will of the Many also. I don't think his little buddy needed to die, and I think some more things could have been resolved in the 'real' world (like why did his Viking friend pull out of the Hunger Games?, why did his girlfriend stab him?) and his copies in the alternate worlds would have provided enough of a cliff-hanger to pull people on to book 2. And there were at least 3 chapters that ended with Vis passing out - that's just too many.

Also, wasn't the wolf more like Checkov's dog than deus ex canus? If it hadn't come back that would have been weirder.

Seth wrote: "Finally finished Will of the Many and felt like I could listen.

Cheese is good. I hope Murderbot is good. I ended up liking Will of the Many also. I don't think his little buddy needed to die, and..."

By Viking friend, do you mean Welsh friend? Because that was 100% how I saw that character! Lol

I thought his reason for pulling out was clear. He was offered something he badly wanted if he betrayed our protagonist. He didn’t want the temptation to pit him against his friend, so he withdrew.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "Seth wrote: "By Viking friend, do you mean Welsh friend? ..."

You're right, I think that fits better with the language angle, but there was the icy lands angle too (or maybe not, and it was just hinterlands) that got me thinking Viking.

Also, you're explanation for his behavior makes sense, I guess I just missed it - or I didn't read between the lines very well.

I also think some of those plot decisions were driven by future book considerations. E.g., the stabbing thing setting us up for a friends to enemies to lovers trope. You could waste that trope in a single chapter but that’s worth at least half a book in the next installment.