I've never seen a table with 3 players in the goalie position in my life.

3 is tournament play at least in the US if i recall

Image search for “foosball table” shows lots of tables with 3 goalies. The one I played on as a kid had 3 goalies as well.

Except for the weird dogs. "A deepness in the sky" is the epitome for me.

Personally I found the chapters about the spiders absurdly boring. They're just big sentient spiders; nothing novel like a group mind. Fortunately the other half of the Deepness plot more than made up for it though.

> Personally I found the chapters about the spiders absurdly boring.

They're giant sentient spiders living in a 50's sitcom. What's not to like?

I quit that book at the dogs. I understand that it's a great book and I ought to pick it up again, but goddamn those chapters were bad. And to be honest, the glaring similarity between early internet and nntp and Vinge's far future networking was distracting. Perhaps I'm misremembering that part...

True Names was pretty great.

I couldn't buy the audio relaying wolf packs either, but enjoyed the other aspects of his fiction.

It's always a little sad when you can tell the things the author finds the most interesting about their fiction aren't the same things you find the most interesting. I wanted a lot more of the blight and the powers and the zones and a lot less dogs talking to children.

He's intentionally trying to make the superintelligences stay superintelligent by not describing them. I think it's pretty effective. He did the same thing in Across Realtime.

His first book Tatja Grimm's World was also about superintelligent people (or the whole rest of the planet except them was sub-intelligent, or something… it's not clear). That one is, hmm, not nearly as good as his later ones. So I think it's just as well he didn't try.

What?! Blasphemy! A computer nerd created a fictional distributed intelligence, and you were not entertained?

Best aliens ever.

Yeah seriously.

The third book -- while not nearly as good as either Fire Upon The Deep or Deepness in the Sky -- had even more fascinating insights into the practical mechanics of a group mind with physical bodies. Like the fact that romance happens on two separate levels!

For Apple they could just ban iPhones from the market, that should be enough to make Apple comply.

They need a critical mass to satiate their predators, otherwise all will get eaten before they can mate.

I listened to the first season in 2021 and enjoyed it. Seems there is a second season now, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Would reccommend it for Dutch language speakers.

Seems unlikely Iran already figured it out within two weeks of the event.

My wife's niece is from Laos and works for one of these chinese scam shops in the golden triangle. She is there voluntarily because it makes 5 times more money than her best alternative. Morally repugnant of course.

That's his point.

I didn’t really get his point. Is he implying that there is some global conspiracy to keep food shortages in countries allied to the US a secret?

I have the same thing, I feel these high income taxes force me to do repairs and home improvement myself because the converted hourly is higher than my own generous contracting rate.

That is what taxes on trade do, they make trade more expensive. This is why income taxes are counterproductive but they are easy to calculate and enforce so governments rely on them.

If you have high quality transit, you might also have "share" cars available, doesn't that come out way cheaper if you only use it so little?

If I had a car, my yearly distance might have been similar. But that's because a car would give me most utility in areas that aren't handled by the "shared" car systems, i.e. longer trips outside of public transport system, especially with cargo that can't be reliably transported on a personal trip on train and the like.

And I'd probably still keep to taxis in the city, can't be arsed to drive :D