You should listen to XFM or whatever they're called this week. They play that practically every day.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 18:28, Reply)
““Oh darling sugar honey
When it was nice and sunny
And when I had some money
We would go and see Echo And The Bunny
…men”
...La la la Lech Walesas...”
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 1:48, Reply)
I think I would be swearing a bit
skip to
1:35 for him going into the sand
2:05 for him starting to panic
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:24, Reply)
Read the fantastic manual. And maybe think about fluid mechanics.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 19:56, Reply)
...eight minutes to sink that far in. To be honest with ya, that's quite a long time. I reckon you'd probably be able to walk away before you go all Artax.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:04, Reply)
And would have smaller lungs etc.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 16:50, Reply)
We could walk over it but if we stayed in one place it would grip our feet within seconds, so kept moving.
The sandbanks and rip currents are more dangerous.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 20:46, Reply)
No, what happens is you sink all the way through, and come out in the caves below where you find an injured snake and a Sith dagger.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:07, Reply)
The tide was out but just on the turn and I took a walk to the water's edge. I soon discovered just how quickly sand can turn quick and rivulets can suddenly appear that can cut you off. I appreciated how those Chinese cockle-pickers died in the same region a few years ago...luckily I made it back to solid ground without mishap.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:16, Reply)
Is that slang for something that will land you on the sex offender register?
Asking for my little friend.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 8:01, Reply)
that quick sands would be more of a problem in my life than they turned out to be
(, Fri 28 Aug 2020, 13:32, Reply)
This is a shame. Could have been interesting. And better as a series than as a film, with more time to go in to depth.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:36, Reply)
I'm late to the Culture party - I just finished Player of Games just a couple of days ago.
I did enjoy it, and I'll continue with the series, but while I was reading it though I was struggling to see how you could visualise it. So much of the description of the actual games seemed intentionally vague, and you just couldn't do that in a visual medium.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:43, Reply)
I'm similarly slightly worried about the forthcoming Foundation adaptation.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:25, Reply)
The science of psychohistory is perhaps more silly than the genetic memory stuff in Dune. Both require a device like the Mule/Siona to paint the story out of the corner, if you see what I mean.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 16:04, Reply)
Psychohistory can be passed off as just applied sociology. No drama there, but not too silly. The problem for me is that the original novels are simply too episodic.
You could do Foundation's Edge or Foundation and Earth as more straightforward dramas - but without the prior stuff, they'd make no sense.
I think.
I mean, it's 30 years since I read any of 'em.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 19:32, Reply)
I understood Psychohistory as extremely advanced mathematics rather than sociology. Maybe I need to read that again.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:06, Reply)
I read somewhere that Asimov considered the possibility that he should have called it psychosociology or something.
It doesn't strike me as all that important. It's still a matter of extrapolating trends to predict the future (though in Foundation it does seem ridiculously precise).
Hari Seldon was basically a Space Actuary.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:43, Reply)
Isaac Arthur has an episode explaining many reasons why it cannot work (black swans, unpredictable quantum events, lack of computing power, stacking errors/random variables, 'free will,' quantum cheeseburgers, etc.)...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uh-VQy24l8
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 14:51, Reply)
Like, once the you're dealing with social organisations of many billions of individuals, then your sociology is predictable with maths.
I always saw it as analogous to chemistry... you don't know what any individual molecule is doing precisely, but you do know how an Avogadro constant of molecules will behave in general.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 10:31, Reply)
Omg did you see Marvel's "Person In The High Castle" last night? That was really good, wasn't it? I proper loved the bit where Captain America came smashing thru and punched Hitler.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 16:58, Reply)
The books themselves were so shallow, hammy, and utterly pulpy sci-fi that a glossy shallow TV adaptation might end up being better than the books.
Obviously with Robert Downey Jr as the lead.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:25, Reply)
I really must get around to reading those. They sound gloriously bonkers.
Edit: found the first two as part of a kindle bundle for 69p. That'll do.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:47, Reply)
looks like Einstien was wrong!"
And so on.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 1:17, Reply)
I was dead into the books when I was younger, so I jumped at the chance to see an animated version. Manga released it on VHS. Even then it was shallow as hell and ignored 90% of the novel's content, but it was fun.
Terrible american dub here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-td8Jp0hJVA
For extra bonus nostalgia points, the first time I saw a clip of the anime, it was being used as a 'aren't the Japanese mental' clip on the Clive James show.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 9:18, Reply)
By which I mean 6-8 hour long episodes, not being dragged out over three series.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:44, Reply)
And might fall foul of various anti-bestiality laws.
I think Niven writes in a very tv/movie friendly way though. E.g. the opening of Ringworld Engineers reads like an awesome kung-fu/action movie.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 14:54, Reply)
Footfall would make a pretty good film, if the basic plot hadn't already been filmed like 20-30 times now.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 17:07, Reply)
Foundation is the sort of thing that just seems too vast to be able to pull off properly.
What I really want to see is a Red Mars series.
That seems much more doable, but apparently it's been stuck in production hell for the last five years or so.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:05, Reply)
It would make a great movie but the sequels drag it waaaaaaaaay down.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 15:00, Reply)
where you have a big board apparently displaying the positions of friendly and enemy fleets in some futuristic abstract way, and just make it so when the the good guys do well it all gets a bit bluer, and when the enemy is doing well it all gets a bit redder.
If you need more detail than that, then early on in the story you show a weird graphical element that is easily distinguishable from everything else and which causes a big red/blue shift and makes the audience gasp (and with ensuing discussion which roughly explains what it represents)... then later you drop that element in at the key moment it is needed, so the viewer can now gasp.
The last thing you'd want to do with the game in The Player of Games is make it actually understandable, I think, since it is basically not understandable in the book.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:31, Reply)
but I like your idea - I think it would absolutely be possible to give visual cues about the progress of the game, without actually spelling out what's meant to be happening.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:53, Reply)
Basically "the game" in this case is the same as "the war" in so many films. The actual positions and movements of all units on the board doesn't usually matter for the story, only a few bits do for a few scenes.
If you want to make a situation look bad in a WW2 film, you get a guy with a croupier's rake to push a handful of swastikas towards a lone Union Jack. You can do the same here.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:55, Reply)
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 16:14, Reply)
I got 11 for the Dutchie joke I posted a month or two back, that seems to be the most popular thing I've ever posted with this account.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 0:00, Reply)
Coming back to this because I've got the ability to concentrate on it at last - you make a good point. You don't have to have all the rules fleshed out and so on. However there's enough in the book that talked about gaining and losing territory and strategic moves that pay off later that make me concerned for how it would work visually. If you have someone stand there and explain it to us, then that's a huge cop-out.
But I suppose you could do it like Cricket highlights, where you don't have to watch all five days to get a feel for how it went.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:52, Reply)
and anyway the budget required to do it properly would be ridiculous
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:47, Reply)
I went to see Ian Banks at a book store and he read out some of his work. His high pitched Scottish voice was so at odds with the sci-fi scene he was describing that it ruined his books for me for about 2 years until I could read them without thinking of the author saying the words.
I cannot help but think the author knew the right way to say the words but it totally did not work.
He has a voice for print you might say.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:22, Reply)
Done well, Consider Phlebas would probably make a reasonable TV series, but even as I was reading that I was groaning internally at all the cliches. Done badly it would be dire.
World on the brink of destruction only just escaped by the heroes?
Ship sinking sequence?
Train tunnel sequence?
Shape-shifting alien?
I mean come on.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 17:56, Reply)
member those synopsis on the back of the vhs cassette tape case from down the video shop back in the day? member?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas#Plot_summary
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 20:36, Reply)
Pretty much.
I mean the only thing that doesn't mention is all the nonsense on the boat while the Orbital is getting Ryan Johnsoned.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 20:57, Reply)
does read like a low budget b movie there though, and i say that as a fan - meaning it could be a hard sell to those who control the purse strings
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:02, Reply)
Not read any of them for a great many years but I seem to remember The State Of The Art being bloody awful. And vaguely Star Trek IV.
Inversions was lovely.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:22, Reply)
i liked the one about the sentient space suit if it's the book i'm thinking of
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:32, Reply)
For what it's worth, the part about the Memorial to The Deportation in Paris has always stuck with me.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:41, Reply)
As it's the first, I wasn't expecting it to be. He was just getting his foot in the door of this universe, so it wasn't going to be perfect. The idea of machine intelligences being vastly smarter than humans and treated as equal members of society was an intriguing one though, and was enough to get me into the second book.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:51, Reply)
It really didn't help that I'd read POG, UOW and Excession first, so after those CP came across as a bit pedestrian and "what was the point". But yes, still a strong foundation for what was to come.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 23:30, Reply)
*Party like the internet was young and the Ginger Führer had his own hair!*
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:25, Reply)
But in some version of reality it would have been really good, and we've missed out.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:49, Reply)
Did some illustration work for The Wasp Factory. Met him in a pub in Edinburgh. Top bloke. Still makes me cry thinking about it.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 18:01, Reply)
Seems like he would have been great fun to be in a Pub with, provided your politics vaguely aligned.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 16:52, Reply)
Great to see so many B3tards are into IMB's Culture books. After years reading hard copies I'm listening to them as audiobooks and reckon my visualisation of them is probably better than any corporate mediacorp's realisation. I'm also relieved at them being cancelled so I don't have to subscribe to Amazon. (I only subscribe to Netflix when there are new series of The Crown or Drag Race, so am a tasteless hypocrite.)
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 18:10, Reply)
Yup, I gots the COVIDS around the 16/8,
detected the 21/08 and confined to my quarters that day.
Isolated with 4 other seamen in a Battered Woman's hospice.
Will get tested again today.
And the 30th, if both negative, then I can get back to the ship.
Feeling good, got food.
We get tested for O2, tension, cardiac rythm, temperature and visible signs of dying twice daily.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:11, Reply)
I'm taking ya out of my Will, ya sicko!
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:25, Reply)
Out of my cold, dead, ooohhh I see what you did there.
Fancy.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:34, Reply)
This is much better song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l62KaMmfA
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:23, Reply)
Please don't spit in the sea - you may cause homeopathic catastrophe
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 20:07, Reply)
No seamen in the sea, we've got your mum for that.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:16, Reply)
Whatever will you do to pass the time...?
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:18, Reply)
As mum used to say.
(Dear Mud face, this is where you offer a retort about Mother and her immoral ways.)
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 8:27, Reply)
I'm amazed at how well these go together. Maybe goes to show that movie trailers nowadays are a bit formulaic.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:09, Reply)
That reminds me of this - How to make a blockbuster movie trailer www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAOdjqyG37A
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:11, Reply)
The fucking beatdown scene. Amazing.
Can't say there's anything in the new batman trailer that's got me excited, frankly.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 12:47, Reply)
It's been nicely done.
I'm just excited because it's Batman, and I love a bit of Batman.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 15:10, Reply)
Why can't we do our own Gamma settings, like at the start of Arkham?
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:42, Reply)
It's like the opposite of the orange and teal trend, but at least the orange and teal trend meant you could focus your eyes on shapes and colours.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 16:10, Reply)
On second thoughts, don't answer that.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 10:50, Reply)
but all I got were little snatches
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:18, Reply)
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 11:50, Reply)
seeing the muppets below took me to this....GC from 2009. don't care.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 4:10, Reply)
Clicked. As should you if you want that racist drivel off the front page.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 8:05, Reply)
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/15/uss-miami-military-submarine-fire-sentence
Oh wait, he's no black, darn, this ruining my plan to become a racist American.
Must drink more Bud light with Bucket Ice Cream while reading gun forums.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 11:04, Reply)
But it goes on much longer than that. Did not watch. Very misleading.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 7:55, Reply)
imagine my disappointment when i was asked to leave after only an hour and a half!
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:12, Reply)
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 9:49, Reply)
He just knew how to self-harmonise and overdub using a tape deck.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 23:09, Reply)
I put 'going up the country' on my girlfriends last mix disc.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 9:41, Reply)
(a) how beautiful was Adam back then?
(b) how fucking short it Toyah?
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:43, Reply)
Since the last Muppet link was a bit sentimental, I’m glad this was recommended to me.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 21:26, Reply)
Steve Whitmire is credited with Bean Bunny, and also “Rabbits” in the viral videos series.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:07, Reply)
twist your melon
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 20:32, Reply)
Some guy was having a garage sale type clear out.
No necks were burnt.
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 11:41, Reply)
until the BBC were forced to back pedal due to popular demand.
The year is 1969.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 19:55, Reply)
I think everyone could unite around this version which would be a fitting end to LNOTP.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 20:47, Reply)
this.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 21:10, Reply)
It is/was just toe curling to view.
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 20:53, Reply)
levelling up the cancel culture class wars
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 20:57, Reply)
(, Tue 25 Aug 2020, 23:29, Reply)
With full chorus of "Kill the Wabbit".
(, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 14:48, Reply)
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