I have a spider phobia, and struggled not to put the book down at first!
But the concepts and writing are excellent... really engaging stuff. And by the end of the book I'd learned so much about spiders that I honestly felt less scared of them! Definitely not cured by any means, but a year on and I still fear them less than I used to.
I think humans and spiders and octopus and viruses are for him just a background for the object he wants to narrate. In difference to many other fiction where the persons are the objects. I also missed a human part of it.
If you want more spiders from him (actually, a spider-man), in a fantasy setting, I recommend Spiderlight. Just a fun novella that feels like a D&D campaign, works great as a palate cleanser.
I find his writing style really enjoyable, to the point that I really need to dive into his entire repertoire now.
The first time I was in Scotland (from the US), the folks I was there to visit though it would be amusing to send me down to the pub below their flat to order dinner for us all. Off I went. But after accusing each other of not speaking English, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to communicate with the guy behind the bar. My friends laughed uproariously when I tucked tail and came back unsuccessful.
Funny thing is, I remember it being as bad in the other direction - first few times I went to Texas with work, almost everyone seemed to struggle to understand me, seemingly no matter how "properly" I tried to speak!
I used to work with a woman from Scotland, and relatively soon we pretty much came to the understanding that I would only understand 1/3 of what she said, but it was okay because she just spoke 3 times as much...
I used to live at the other end of Aberdeenshire, right out in the countryside. I never get up there now. Not even Aberdeen although I plan to visit some time. Haven't been in years.
Because that's plainly not what they are always doing. And the aggressive, racist unprofessional, downright dangerous way ICE are going about things is simply shocking.
That 12,000 number is utter make believe - an X account (you can guess who backs it) make this claim, got boosted and got over 1M views... and then they deleted the post. But the damage is done, of course.
Absolutely all your comments are shilling for Iranian dictatorship. Are you paid by Iran? Sorry I have a bad news for you, you will probably never receive the next paycheck since IRCG and terrorist mullahs regime is probably falling in the next weeks
They did just after the protest started, and there is no evidence that's actually happening but it's kind of the point since we are not receiving information from Iran since the government blocked them out from the internet
There are alternative explanations. For example, foreign agents may have been using Starlink, and the security services may have used the shutdown to find the Starlink terminals.
Wow, are there actually people on here shilling for the Iranian government? Recent reports have as many as 12,000 Iranian civilians gunned down by their own government during this blackout.
FWIW, your comment is untrue, and against HN rules.
People are allowed to have different opinions here, such as not supporting genocide or not believing western propaganda regarding yet another government overthrow.
FWIW, your comment is untrue, and against HN rules.
People are allowed to have different opinions here, such as not supporting genocide or not believing western propaganda regarding yet another government overthrow.
They are attempting to find the Starlink terminals so they can machine gun protesters without accountability or documentation, not because they have a regulatory issue with SpaceX.
This is the third uprising. They have so far followed the same recipe. People raise up. Internet is turned off. People are arrested and killed by the authorities. They are using the death penalty to teach the Iranians that raising up will get you killed.
While I dislike trumpism, I do hope that the Iranian authorities will get bombed. They deserve to die for how they treat their own people.
I wouldn't know why they are burning things. I suppose they burn the religion of peace symbols of their oppressors.
I imagine that Israel supports a regime change in Iran, but I don't think that they can run this on their own. They probably support whatever goes on with covert agents.
Since little gets out of Iran let's not speculate any more. :)
I was really surprised too - our family (with electric car and a lot of tech) uses only a third of the energy used in TFA!
Still, even with our lower usage, solar still makes sense (especially with a South-facing roof) because electricity is so damned expensive in the UK :(
After publicly shaming NameCheap on Twitter, NameCheap backed down a little. They've still de-platformed genocide.live, but released the DNS name so the owner could transfer it out. IIRC, they are using a "free speech" provider in Estonia now.
x2048 is a lot though! Maybe we should let the robots figure out their own solution, rather than trying to make every atom on Earth individually addressable :)
But the concepts and writing are excellent... really engaging stuff. And by the end of the book I'd learned so much about spiders that I honestly felt less scared of them! Definitely not cured by any means, but a year on and I still fear them less than I used to.
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