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KapteinB's comments
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KapteinB  ·  994 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

Interesting. I just checked mine, and it says copyright 2004, but doesn't specify a date of printing. I do remember buying it because I didn't want to wait for the later collections to be translated to Norwegian, so mid-aughts sounds about right.

Someone's selling it on eBay as a "rare variant cover", but I can't find anything backing up that claim. Maybe they just use a new cover with every reprint.

KapteinB  ·  998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

If you enjoy Chew, you may also like Outer Darkness. The reason I'm reading Chew is that I loved Outer Darkness so much, I wanted to check out what else Layman had written.

It's kind of what Star Trek would be if everyone was an asshole, and there's some very cool world building. Like, how do you make a starship go faster than light? You trap a god and channel its reality-bending powers into the engine. What do you do when a crew member dies? You chase down their soul, capture it, and force it into a cloned body. Good stuff.

KapteinB  ·  998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

    I have a paperback one volume

This one? 1.330 pages or so. The ones I'm reading now look puny by comparison, but they are a bit more practical.

    Telltale video game

Ah yes, back when Telltale was pumping out games for any IP they could get their hands on, with varying degrees of success. According to Wikipedia they only finished 2 out of 5 planned episodes, and they got mediocre reviews.

    a spin off novel trilogy

Huh, that one I wasn't aware of. Novels, apparently. Guess I'll have to see how conclusive the ending feels now when I reread the comics, and if I feel the want to continue reading.

KapteinB  ·  998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

Good to hear!

Bob the skull and Toot-Toot the faerie are the standout supporting characters for me so far.

For some reason, the potion-brewing scenes are my favourite moments, and the moments much later in each book when he drinks the potions. Probably an odd pick, but it's among the more concrete descriptions of how magic works in the universe, and very creative. Plus, Bob is involved.

Are the graphic novels good? As you can probably tell, I'm very into comics. Are they original stories, or comic versions of the books?

KapteinB  ·  998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

I've been reading comics, mostly.

Beastars volume 2

It's rare that a manga manages to keep my attention, but I've kinda fallen in love with this one. I'm pretty sure the writer got inspired by Zootopia, but because of the different format, she has much more room to really explore and develop the concept. Volume 2 focuses on the high school drama club, and we learn more about its members, especially the charismatic lead actor Louis. But it's not really about highschool drama, it's more about the relationship between predators and prey in anthropomorphic society.

I'm planning to watch the anime at some point, it's also supposed to be very good too, but I want to read far enough first that the anime won't spoil anything.

Billionaire Island

Meant as a biting satire of our late stage capitalistic society, but while there are some good ideas here, the writing and art both feel kinda lazy. Also, I have a feeling I'd enjoy this more if I was better at recognising faces. I recognise a few; Kid Rock (president of the USA in the comic), C. K. Lewis, and Harvey Weinstein, but I think there are many more characters inspired by real-life villains, and I think the jokes would land better if I knew who. And the satire is very heavy-handed, so if you enjoy subtlety, stay away.

Bone volume 5

A small publisher has made a new Norwegian translation. It's a classic, which I've read before, but that was in English, and in black and white. The colours are nice, and the translation is pretty good. No extras, just the comics, which is fine with me, straight to the point. I wish the format was a bit bigger; this edition is somewhere between pocket book and trade paperback in size.

Chew volume 2

The world has been hit hard by a bird flu pandemic, resulting in a world-wide ban of chicken. The comic follows a psychic FDA agent solving food-related crimes, usually by eating parts of murder victims to get visions of what happened to them. For me, that's just the right amount of bonkers.

Volume 2 seems like a side-story in the bigger picture, but a minor character from volume 1 shows up in a bigger role, and is played up to be the big villain of volume 3, so who knows.

Y The Last Man volume 1

Every male on Earth suddenly dies, both human and animal, except the protagonist and his pet monkey. The comic follows his attempt to travel from the east coast of the USA to meet up with his girlfriend in the Australian Outback. Spoiler: He doesn't get very far. I think this comic does a better job of social commentary than Billionaire Island (though this too a bit heavy-handed at times), plus it's more exciting and fun. Volume 1 is 240 pages, but it felt like a breeze to read.

I'm also reading a book-book, which I'm hoping to finish this summer: The Dresden Files - Fool Moon

The second book about wizard/private investigator Harry Dresden. This time, he's up against a band of werewolves. Or maybe several? In any case, it turns out Chicago has a surprising amount of werewolves. This book has some pretty brutal fight scenes compared to the first in the series, but the same pulpy noir style, and I love it. Not exactly high-brow literature, I guess.

KapteinB  ·  1007 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The untold story of the big boat that broke the world

    Who can come up with a relatable animal simile form me for 2,000 blue whales? Or at least better than my pathetic 66,000 elephants.

I think we should stick with aquatic animals, this being a ship and all. But yeah, I don't imagine anyone here has ever tried lifting a blue whale. Neither other big aquatic animals like hippos or crocodiles. How about trouts? By my maths (and Wikipedia's numbers), there's about 10,000 trout to a blue whale, which means the fully loaded Ever Given is as heavy as 20,000,000 trouts.

Or maybe we should stick to floating animals, that makes more sense for a ship comparison than underwater animals. If my maths are correct, the fully loaded Ever Given weighs as much as roughly 250,000,000 ducks.

Maybe more relatable, but those numbers are so big the human brain can't really make sense of them.

KapteinB  ·  1018 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: As Castillo nears victory, Peru prepares for what comes next

From what I understand, he won't need CIA's help to fuck up his tenure; Peru's own Congress will handle that.

Yeah, I didn't even know there was an election going on there until I decided to check the latest international headlines. Figured it was worth sharing here.

Then I got curious why one of the candidates appeared to be a Japanese woman, and it sent me down a rather interesting Wikipedia rabbit hole. Apparently, thousands of Japanese left Japan for Brazil and Peru in the early 20th century. The article went on to talk about Japanese/Peruvian fusion cuisine, and now I really want to taste that.

So the actual news here is that someone did the math for Breakthrough Starshot?

    Scientists estimate roughly 100 million individual lasers will be needed to generate the required optical power of about 100GW.

Oof...

    Where are the LightSail-Probe send to us by Aliens?

Good old Fermi Paradox. On the other hand, if other civilizations sent light-sail probes to our solar system, would we even be able to detect them? And then of course there are some who believe that ʻOumuamua was a light-sail probe. Maybe they pass through here all the time.

Another thing to consider though: Why would they send probes here? I imagine sending probes to investigate neighbouring star systems would be exciting the first dozen or so times, but then there's ever-increasing costs and time-frames, while the public interest wanes and scientists see diminishing returns. At some point, funding for the project stops, and so do the probes.

    This bring me to one question: Why there is so much water on Earth and so few on the moon.

Water is pretty abundant in our solar system, but if a planet is close enough to the sun for it to evaporate, it needs enough gravity for the water vapour not to be blown away by the solar wind.

    Empirically, from the habitable zone with Mars, moon, Earth , we are at 1 in 3 chance to have mass water formation. And the odd, of an exoplanet colliding with one planet in habitable zone must be far less. I guess we're alone!

The Rare Earth Hypothesis. We have found exoplanets with liquid water, but so far they've all been tidal locked, which may make it harder for life to emerge, and harder for it to migrate from oceans to land.

I don't think we're alone in the universe, but I do think we're pretty rare. And I think FTL travel is impossible, which explains why no alien civilizations have been able to explore our solar system.

KapteinB  ·  1070 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: DC could become a State... soooo....

The city is named after a president. Why not rub it in the Republicans' faces and name the state after the president who helped gain them statehood? Biden.

KapteinB  ·  1084 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Greenland election: Opposition win casts doubt on mine

I think I'm in favour, largely for the same reasons you mention.

I believe a mining operation in an EU country would be more ecologically friendly than a mining operation in China or the USA.

This mine would help diversify Greenland's economy, which is currently heavily reliant on fish exports.

And also: Fuck China and the CCP.

KapteinB  ·  1125 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: There's a big gold Trump statue wheeling around CPAC

Huh...

I mean, that's probably a coincidence, right?

But on the other hand...

KapteinB  ·  1127 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

These vehicles remind me a lot of quadricycles which are quite popular here in Norway. They're legally classified as mopeds here, so it's easier and cheaper to get a license for them, in addition to the vehicles themselves being much cheaper than cars. You're in the USA, right? I have no idea if quadricycles are a thing there.

Somehow I don't think I've heard that myth before. It's surprisingly (or maybe not that surprisingly) similar to a local legend describing the formation of several mountains in northern Norway:

The Seven Sisters

The Horseman

The Leka Maiden

The Torgar Hat

KapteinB  ·  1177 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Now That's What I Call Music Commercials

Apparently they're one of Todd (in the Shadows)'s favourite bands.

KapteinB  ·  1178 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Now That's What I Call Music Commercials

We had our own imitators here in Norway. The best known was probably Absolute Music. That brings back some memories!

KapteinB  ·  1180 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Virtual Meetup No. 6

I missed out on the 10-year anniversary meet-up, but I'll try to make it this time!

Huh, I didn't notice before I posted it, but The Washington Post is listed as one of the authors. Odd. Some kind of content sharing partnership maybe?

KapteinB  ·  1197 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: QAnon's Mysterious Leader 'Q' Is Actually Multiple People

The headline undersells it, in my opinion. It's been a popular theory among Qanon "researchers" for a long time that Q is actually a group of people, and not a single individual.

What this article claims is that 4chan Q and 8chan Q are two separate people, which is much more significant. If that's true, it either means 4chan Q stepped down and let another person take over their role, or that 8chan Q is impersonating 4chan Q.

Is anyone here following this lunacy more closely? How are the Qanon "researchers" reacting to this discovery?

KapteinB  ·  1210 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Arecibo Collapse - both Camera Angles Syncrhonized

The Arecibo Telescope was the inspiration for one of the maps in Battlefield 4. The most hyped new feature in that game was "levolution", which meant that the maps could be changed during combat by player actions. In this case players could destroy the supporting wires and cause the telescope to collapse. It's interesting to see the comparison between it collapsing in the game and in real life:

KapteinB  ·  1221 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 'Someone's typing...': The history behind text messaging's most dreadful feature

Most often I feel impatience.

KapteinB  ·  1226 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Once the Disease of Gluttonous Aristocrats, Gout Is Now Tormenting the Masses

Did it disappear completely?

Any significant side effects of the medication?

KapteinB  ·  1236 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski.com calls it. Joe Biden has won the 2020 presidential election in the USA

:-D

KapteinB  ·  1264 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: So getting to know this place

We don't have subcommunities here the same way they have on Reddit. Instead, we add tags to our posts, so if you're in the mood to discuss a particular topic, you'll have to filter by that tag.

So, for example, you can see all posts about music, or space, or the environment. You can search for tags using the looking glass icon on the top right.

KapteinB  ·  1343 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Compassion for Kanye

The news media here in Norway made a few pieces on him deciding to run for president, but they mostly treated it as a curiosity. They weren't mocking him, but neither were they very supportive. None of them mentioned his bipolar disorder, which seems like a huge oversight and/or very shoddy research. Let's hope this all works out before it goes too far.

    Establish Trump knew and did nothing.

I'm pretty sure Trump knew nothing. It's well known he doesn't pay attention to the briefings.

KapteinB  ·  1367 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reddit bans 'The_Donald' forum in crackdown, Twitch suspends Trump's channel

It's been a long time coming, ever since they quarantined it. The main thing they learned from the /r/fatpeoplehate debacle was not to suddenly ban a popular subreddit. Now they've proven that if they starve it for months first until it become basically inactive, they can avoid the massive user uproar they saw then.

KapteinB  ·  1370 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: House Democrats poised to pass DC statehood bill

    During House floor debate on the bill, Republican Rep. Gregory Murphy of North Carolina argued for Congress to cede the land back to Maryland instead of making DC its own state.

    "The move is simply unnecessary when ceding DC back to Maryland is a viable, cost-effective and common sense option," Murphy said.

It's not often I agree with Republicans, but that does sound like a more logical and practical solution.

Anyway, what happens now? Can the Senate choose to completely ignore the bill? Can the Democrats delay it until January, when it might have a better chance to pass in the Senate?

KapteinB  ·  1370 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Saving the Nile"

    simply using the reserves behind the Aswan Dam would account for any damages from GERD if it was filled over a seven-year (or more) period

It's interesting that such a long and serious article ends with a brief list of seemingly simple solutions, including simply using the water in the Aswan Dam. On the other hand, emptying the Aswan Dam will probably lead to its own share of problems, including reduced electricity production during the years it will take to fill it again.

Also, is this an old article that they've updated? I feel like I've seen it before.

KapteinB  ·  1372 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Unintended Consequence; I'm getting a raise

    with his putrid name scrawled on the bottom.

So they really did end up with his signature printed on them? I recall there was a lot of writing online about it in the weeks before the checks went out, but then online attention was quickly diverted to the next scandal.

KapteinB  ·  1384 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Fox News is Photoshopping an Armed Male into CHAZ Photos

Knowing the US this is probably perfectly legal, protected by the 1st amendment, as decided by a moronic supreme court decision. The best we can do is probably to spread the word. Make sure to inform any friends and family you have who watch Fox News, maybe one of them will come to the realisation that the channel peddling literal fake news might not be worth watching.