Aron 2 Blue

Stormlight Archive #3 Plot summary mostly for my benefit, with my interpretation. Oh so many spoilers! Flashbacks are all Dalinar, with him gradually recovering his memory of his wife. Kaladin follows some Parshendi, realizes they are just people too.  Dalinar is trying to forge an alliance with other kingdoms, Tarvangan/Karbranth  is first to join, with the assumption that Dalinar would try to conquer them if they didn't join. Tarvangan is following the Diagram, healers help in Jah Keved, and the sick/injured ruler makes T. king to spite the other factions - as the Diagram predicted. Dalinar uses the Stormfather to bring other rulers into the visions, eventually convinces Queen Fen and the Lyft/Gaz duo.  Kaladin flies Elhokar/Shallan/Adolin/bridge 4 to Kholinar, capital of Alethi, to see what's up with the queen. If fabrials (spanreeds) are used, screaming corrupt spren are attracted, and Fused attack. Parshmen army is gathering outside walls. Darkness palpable in palace...

The Stormlight Archive, Book 2 Plot summary follows, my interpretations of course! Opens with Jasnah's experience of Gavilar's assassination, and Parshendi taking responsibility and telling Jasnah that it was because "he was about to do something very dangerous". Jasnah hires Liss the assassin, experiences Shadesmar, sees Szeth walk on the wall. Jasnah has plan to betroth Shallan to Adalyn, to help her house/family. Shallan sees Jasnah's murder on the ship, soulcasts the ship into water to prevent the murder of the rest of the crew. Ends up stranded, and manipulates slaver and deserter bandits into helping her travel to shattered plains. Using Lightweaving to change appearance without really knowing how. Dismisses slaver Tvlakv (who had Kal), saves slaves. Tyn recognizes Shallan as a budding con artist, starts to advise her on how to deceive. Shallan poses as Herdazian when meeting Kal on patrol, takes his boots. Flashbacks are Shallan's history, showing her f...

How long do successful mature games get improvements? Some new features in PoGo: When incubating an egg, now you have the ability to purchase an incubator on the spot. Previously, this element was missing, so you had to back out, navigate to the store, purchase an incubator, then navigate back to your pokemon list and eggs, and incubate. Making purchases like this easier likely increases use of coins, which are the one of the few things you can directly buy for money, and otherwise are limited to 50 coins/day for defending gyms. Incubators cost 150 or 200 coins, so 3-4 days of waiting for someone who doesn't want to pay $. This makes me think the UX team is being encouraged to design for ways to get players to spend $. This is obvious in PoGo's emphasis on paid ticketed activities, up to $15 per event. Free to play still gets some benefit from the event, but early access to new Pokemon is often sold through these tickets. I'm not a game designer, and have mostly played PoGo...

Now on Netflix (sigh). I didn't watch it, I read the English edition. "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. What a weird thing. The start during the Cultural Revolution in China is really disturbing. A wholesale persecution of scientists and social elites that seems crazy. The zither bothered me. Ultra strong molecular wires - nanomaterials - can be strong under tension but not stand up to shear forces. How fast does it cut?  Unfolding a proton from higher dimensions so that it expands to the size of a planet but still has the mass of a proton - I don't think gravity would matter at all. It sorta hangs together, but is also wildly fantastic. Sci-fi, I guess?  I did enjoy the strangeness of the fairly direct translation. I liked everything enough to keep going and read the full trilogy. Recommended if you can overlook any issues caused by translation. 

SPOILERS I wanted to write down what I thought the major events of the first book because I'm re-reading the series so I can read the 5th book with everything fresh in my mind. Opening: Gavilar assassination by Szeth, truthless, assassin in white. Lashing to change gravity, stick objects together. Kaladin: we get his full back story, training as a surgeon growing up, joining the army to protect his little brother Tien, then having to watch him die. Later, he kills a shardbearer to protect his lighteye lord Amaram, then when he refuses to claim the shardblade because it caused the death of most of his squad, he has to watch the rest of his squad killed and is made a slave, so Amaram can claim the shards. This is told in flashbacks throughout the book. The main timeline follows him as a slave, meeting Syl the spren, then being made a bridgeman in Sadeas's army on the Shattered Plains. He despairs and nearly kills himself, Syl convinces him to try to help. He figures out how to tr...

John Green is really startling sometimes. He describes his work as a chaplain in a children's hospital, and that his work was not about questioning or communicating beliefs, but listening, and acknowledging other peoples' pain, without being able to offer a solution. "Don't just do something, stand there."