Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly weary of the alien invasion premise. The problem is the level of coincidence. Earth was a sitting duck for 4 billion years, but the aliens wait until the very century when humans are able to mount any kind of resistance. (To the credit of HG Wells, the originator … Continue reading Project Hail Mary
ID-0 is an interesting little series I stumbled across on Netflix. Like a lot of sci-fi anime, it's in the mecha genre (involving giant robots), but with a twist. The premise is that humans can copy their mind into a robot called an "I-machine" and essentially become the robot. A backup copy of the human's … Continue reading ID-0
For years Netflix dangled Knights of Sidonia in front of me as a recommended show to check out. But as I noted several posts back, I was generally resistant to anime for a long time. I did try to take up the show once, but remember struggling with the standard anime female tropes and the … Continue reading Knights of Sidonia
My anime binge has expanded somewhat into a manga binge. A while back, I posted about the movie Alita: Battle Angel. I enjoyed it a great deal and was intrigued by the world that was presented, of a bifurcated society, with an elite living in the floating city of Zalem, and a hardscrabble lower class … Continue reading Battle Angel Alita
Yes, more anime. (For those concerned: no, I'm not turning this into an anime blog. Real life has been stressful lately, which hasn't left much mental energy for intellectual exploration. Rather than go completely dark, you're getting commentary on where my spare time is being spent. But I am slowly making my way through a … Continue reading Aldnoah.zero
The anime binge continues. The latest has been portions of the Gundam franchise. I was a little reluctant to even approach this collection, first because it's vast and it's not at all clear where the best place to start might be, and second because it looks like one of those superhero / toy adaptation series. … Continue reading Mobile Suit Gundam
My anime binge continues. I just recently finished the second season of Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These. The second part of the title means "The New Thesis". This series is a remake of an older anime series which itself was an adaptation of a series of novels and short stories by Yoshiki … Continue reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes: The New Thesis
I've been on something of an anime binge lately. When I was a kid, I enjoyed anime, but as an adult, for some reason, it ceased being appealing. I'm not sure why, but I developed an aversion to it. I made a few attempts over the years to power past the aversion, but with limited … Continue reading Catching up on anime
Last night I finished reading Ada Hoffmann's The Outside, a pretty strange but interesting space opera. In the far future, humanity is ruled by AI gods. Humans invented the gods, although there are hints it was more complicated than that, like maybe there was a singularity event or process of some kind. The gods now … Continue reading The Outside
I just finished watching the first three episodes of the new HBO Max series: Raised by Wolves. Lamentably, HBO made this difficult since they've been in a dispute with Roku, my preferred steaming platform, on getting an app into their environment. I had to watch it on as ASUS Chromebook mini I keep connected to … Continue reading Raised by Wolves
SelfAwarePatterns 