elephantium

Do I sound “schizo”?

No. You sound depressed, not schizophrenic. At least to my ear (well, eye, since I'm reading your comments rather than listening to you!)

I shared this with my wife. She said "It sounds like pangolin programming."

This and the shopping cart test tells you a lot about a person.

Excellent. I'm also partial to this bit in the Drumhead:

With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

I've read most of these, plus the Soldier Son trilogy. She's writing more? Fantastic! I've loved all of her books. Robin Hobb is easily one of my favorite authors.

Curse of Chalion is my all-time favorite book! Paladin of Souls is a great recommendation for this thread.

I mentioned this thread to my wife; she suggested The Bone Spindle.

I read Blood Over Bright Haven fairly recently. Great premise with magic-as-technology, breaking into academia, and some killer intrigue in the background.

If you don't mind a diversion into sci-fi, Unconquerable Sun is one of my recent favorites. It's dense with a good mix of action and intrigue. The point of view characters span both sides of multiple conflicts. I'm greatly anticipating the conclusion to the trilogy later this year.

The whole universe would be around 20 books by now, wouldn't it?

googling

Oh, hey, she has some books out that I haven't read yet. BRB, gotta add them to the list.

I lean towards discounting both rumors. I think the temptation to use said kill-switches would prove too great to resist, particularly for the authoritarian types involved.

We saw this a lot with provisions of the "PATRIOT Act". It was championed as tools needed to combat terrorists and claimed to be reserved for such cases. In actuality, it was used to go after people running fan sites for sci-fi tv shows, among other things.

If such a kill switch existed in computer hardware, I'm sure it would have been used already. I'm less sure about a kill switch in the planes. On one hand, that's a pretty situational tool, and you wouldn't want to play that card until you really needed it.

OTOH, we didn't hear about threats to throw the kill switch during the bluster over Greenland. If they had one, I think it would have been part of that bluster.

I don't think I have that much perseverance. I'm super grateful for cookbooks with easy-to-follow recipes - I'm pretty sure I would have starved under the fail-until-you-figure-it-out approach.

In order to learn how to cook, you must first learn how to cook.

I worked in a group home in college, and part of the job was cooking. When I started, my cooking level was pretty much spaghetti and sauce from a jar. Fortunately for me, there was a set menu with recipes to follow.

I've learned quite a bit since then, but I'm still very much a "mechanical" cook. I'm good at following recipes, but I won't typically be able to improvise a meal with whatever is on hand. I'll take a look at what we have and start searching for likely-looking recipes.