if you like the plot but struggle with reading dense text, i hear the audiobook is pretty good and it makes a decent amount of diegetic sense!

it's incredibly frustrating seeing blindsight, and even moreso rifters, become less mind blowing to the people i recommend them to over the years. what i would give to have been able to read the conversation with the neural net in the late nineties...

even absent infiltration by a stranger - people flip. they betray each other. they leak info by checking their phone on a bus, getting MITM'd, getting drunk, dating a shitbag. if your organization is dependent on perfect security you don't have an organization (even a resistance cell)

reminds me (minus the mechsploitation) of the thread about vekllei's Navy Without Guns: bsky.app/profile/mill...

always love these cool worldbuilding facts of yours ^^

good taste

what's the deal with the exposed skin on the honor guard? presumably connected to the blood transfusion kit?

the conformal fuel tanks still look so good

the first passage on psychogenesis is some truly incredible writing, and particularly enjoyable after reading peter watts led me to seeking out some of dennett's writings on consciousness. thank you very much for the recommendation, and i'd gladly hear any more!

just finished Diaspora. what a uniquely mind-expanding book. gave me a much more intuitive understanding of higher-dimensional geometry, entirely apart from being probably the best piece of digital-sentience fiction i've read. sticks the tricky landing far better than most novels on these scales.

loved mars express, guess i've got to check out eclipse phase?

i think this was kind of the peak of interplanetary vehicle designs, when we had just pulled off a complex system like the shuttle and thought we'd take that experience further. the multi-mission Nautilus-X was the first design to really light a fire in me, ambitious but seemingly achievable.

link to the article? 👀