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Where to Start With Ursula K. LeGuin?
  • I posted this comment on a similar topic a while ago, for context it was replying to someone who wanted to pick 2 LeGuin novels to read to essentially get a survey of her work. I've liked her standalone novels as well, but I see them get less discussion generally. I think her work that I see referenced most often is the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

    LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. I've read a lot, but not all of LeGuin's novels. She has 2 main multibook series that I've read, the Earthsea books and the Hainish cycle.

    Earthsea is sort of YA fantasy, but grows up throughout the series. The first 3 are a self contained trilogy, and my favorite is Tombs of Atuan which is book 2, I think would be okay as a standalone title. My other favorite is Tales from Earthsea which is book 5, and is a collection of short stories set in the setting. You'd be missing a little context only reading Tales, but this could also be a standalone.

    The Hainish cycle is scifi, and are only loosely connected by the setting and don't have a too firmly established chronology, or any shared main characters. My favorite from the Hainish Cycle is The Left Hand of Darkness and my 2nd favorite is The Dispossessed.

  • POV: Iceland
  • While the food itself looks a little plain for my tastes, the idea is really cute, and I'm willing to hold a 7 year old's birthday dinner to a different standard than my own cooking. So I'd call this in good taste, and good execution.

  • For edge lovers
  • I don't want to argue

    Is this true? Doesn't seem true.

    I gave you a reasonable explaination as to why a slight difference in pan volume wasn't a particularly meaningful criticism of the less voluminous pan, particularly when it has the other characteristic you want: more edges per volume of brownies.

    This is maybe as plainly as I can say it, you'll be able to fit your standard "pan of brownies" recipe in both pans, without folding space, or having to tune your recipe down by some awkward amount. If your recipe can't fit in one, you probably shouldn't go single in the other even if you physically can, and are in for multiple pans or cycles anyway.

  • For edge lovers
  • Originally bringing total pan volume into it confused me, a baking pan has an upper limit to how much brownie you can bake per cycle in it, but by the time you are anywhere near that limit you are probably already better off using a second pan.

    The example brownies from the picture are nowhere near that limit, so if there was a moderate but significant decrease in the volume of the pan in the change to the squares It doesn't seem like it should be a problem even on a per cycle basis. Even so, the cost of doing an additional cycle of baking is not that high anyways.

    The main factor in how much volume of brownie you make will be the amount of brownie batter you make. Non-euclidean space isn't required to bake an additional 25% or so of brownies by volume in that pan, and so your reply seemed snide, and I responded kurtly.

  • Illicit fentanyl is entering the US at highest rates ever
  • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance_(book) Is the original expose about cia involvement with crack, and still I think a good starting place, even if it has some flaws. It was less about what crack would do to americans, (though they were completely apathetic towards the harm they were doing in the US) and more to do with what the cia wanted to do with off books funding that crack provided, secretly fund paramilitary deathsquads in Nicaragua.

    I think if the CIA is still involved in US drug trafficking, and I wouldn't be surprised, it is probably still for off books funding primarily.

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    I just watched this little documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin. I never heard of her before this. Does the community have one or two books they recommend?
  • LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. I've read a lot, but not all of LeGuin's novels. She has 2 main multibook series that I've read, the Earthsea books and the Hainish cycle.

    Earthsea is sort of YA fantasy, but grows up throughout the series. The first 3 are a self contained trilogy, and my favorite is Tombs of Atuan which is book 2, I think would be okay as a standalone title. My other favorite is Tales from Earthsea which is book 5, and is a collection of short stories set in the setting. You'd be missing a little context only reading Tales, but this could also be a standalone.

    The Hainish cycle is scifi, and are only loosely connected by the setting and don't have a too firmly established chronology, or any shared main characters. My favorite from the Hainish Cycle is The Left Hand of Darkness and my 2nd favorite is The Dispossessed.

  • ‘Like a war zone’: Emory University grapples with fallout from police response to protest | US universities
  • Perception of the vietnam war protests at the time were also very split, and I would be very unsurprised to find that the people most against the student protests now are, or are the children of people who were very against the social movements of the 60s. The 60s were also an incredibly divided time in the US politically. Nixon won the whitehouse in 1968, and the civil rights movement had met extremely bitter opposition.

  • Recommend a game for me to play with my partner

    My partner and I occasionally play games together, but they pretty much only play word puzzle games on their own. I'm not very good at word games though, and they don't have very good spatial skills, so we frequently find ourselves mismatched. We have a switch and a single decent gaming pc, and a pretty old laptop.

    The biggest hit for us has been Baba is You because it is slow paced, and combines words and logic and spatial reasoning. Our biggest problem was that its not actually coop, so we would just alternate who played, which can disengage the other person. My partner also thought its aesthetic is cute.

    Our next positive example is probably Snipperclips is also a pretty slow paced puzzler, is mostly spatial skills, but we could play at the same time. They also liked how interactive the avatars are, and particularly snipping my avatar up.

    The first miss is overcooked, it was a bit too chaotic, and my partner felt a little lost and uncoordinated. They don't remember it super well, so we might retry this one at some point if they feel more at home playing video games.

    The other miss is Mario Kart, which they liked when we played with 4 player, but not just the 2 of us. I'm significantly better at Mario Kart, and they are pretty competitive. If they get more into games they might be willing to put in some time improving, but not so much right now.

    Our worst miss was probably Tricky Towers, I'm decently good at regular Tetris, so I can do okay out of the box at physics based Tetris, but there was too much happening to fast for my partner. Combine that with it the competitive aspect and they didn't enjoy this one at all.

    The games they most fondly remember from childhood are Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, though we have downstairs neighbors under part of our apartment and no dance pad or guitars, SSX Tricky, and the Lord of the Rings movie tie in games.

    They think they'd enjoy a game that does movement as input like ddr or guitar hero but is maybe less bouncy, and are open to action games, or games with a story, but they should be easier to control and not be too chaotic. Cute aesthetics and cats are a plus.

    Thanks!

    Edit: Everybody gave great recommendations! We picked up It takes two and pizza possum. Just finished the first chapter of it takes two and we had a blast, and I might even be able to get another game night in this weekend if we can be on top of chores. I'll keep checking in this thread for more ideas for future games to try! Thanks again!

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    A Dance with Dragons Epilogue and the future.

    Just finished a re-read of the series, first reread since beginning to engage with fan theories and such. A fan observation that I've seen and think is really valuable, is that when characters in asoiaf make plans and we see the details, the events usually go awry. Most of the speculation I've seen regarding Aegon VI has his invasion basically going according to the plan Varys lays out in the adwd epilogue. I understand this because he outlines what seems to be the obvious trajectory of events following Kevan and Pycelle's deaths, and Varys has proven a capable manipulator so we trust him to make nudge things along in that direction further. However I would look at his claims and start a bit of a brainstorm on counterfactuals.

      1. The Lannisters and Tyrells were reconciling, and with Kevan's death they will irreparably at odds, blaming each other, and the dornish.
      1. Binding the faith to Tommen.
      1. Aegon VI's capture of Storm's End will both happen, and draw the lords of the realm to him.
      1. Aegon VI being raised similarly to Aegon V will make him a good king.
    1. It seems so obvious that Cersei will blame the Tyrells, but he also covertly gives another option, could they unite and blame the dornish together? This seems like a possible alternate avenue to me, especially after the business with Myrcella, Dorne keeping their armies in reserve, the Red Viper defending Tyrion etc.

    2. Other than Baelor the Blessed, the Targs have kind of always been at odds with the faith of the seven. If Tommen becomes especially pious, it seems to me that it would take more than Kevan's death to stop the faith from binding itself to him.

    3. Aside from the riverlands and the north, the stormlands seem like the next most depeleted / demobilized of the kingdoms, most of their armies and lords are either with Stannis in the north, or adjoined to one of the Tyrell hosts. If Stannis' lords basically looted their own larders on the way out, holding the stormlands might mainly bring logistical challenges as the golden company needs to organize and start to administer their lands in winter, while facing the logistical might of the Tyrells.

    4. Aegon VI being a king who does right by the smallfolk is appealing to us, the readers, but in universe (with the exception of Jaehaerys I, who had dragons) these kings face a lot of pushback from the noble class and are often embattled and ineffective rulers. Not exactly a surefire recipe for an insurgent king.

    5. Not mentioned by Varys, but related: Jon Connington has greyscale. I don't know that we have enough time left in the story for a grey plague subplot to run its course, but the revelation could doom Aegon's cause. Perhaps Aegon himself too, if he contracts it somehow.

    What do you think? Other ways the Aegon cause may not run smoothly? Other details, for or against what I've brought up?

    4
    gloves of archery + hand crossbows interaction

    Do the gloves of archery work with dual hand crossbows? When I equip them the damage preview doesn't change, but it just calls out ranged weapon damage, so it seems like it should work.

    https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Gloves_of_Archery

    15
    PCIE M.2 adapter cards

    I'm considering adding more storage to my PC, and came across PCIe to M.2 adapter cards. I was wondering if performance would suffer on the adaptor card vs directly on the mobo? The M.2 slot is pretty much a PCIe x4 slot, so a a PCIe x16 should be able to drive 4 M.2 SSDs without issue right?

    6
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)GL
    Glemek @lemmy.world
    Posts 9
    Comments 160