#525 - The Beans That Wouldn't Burn > Likes and Comments

It’s all about the beans on this Sword and Laser. Chili, chowder, and more. We also find time to talk about books, specifically Mark Lawrence’s book that wouldn’t burn. But we don’t want to burn the beans either.

https://www.swordandlaser.com/home/20...

Cool beans.

Haaa, love the discussion over Teela! Yep, that's Livira's aunt. Incidentally this brings up one reason I like to post as I go on the BOTM. If you wait until the end early details can get fuzzy. I recently read Delta V which as I went felt like a bunch of headlines from Yahoo Science rather than any actual deep science dive, but I'd be hard pressed to give details now.

As for the "two nickels" bit, actually, I was thinking of Poppy War rather than Will of the Many. So that would be three nickels! Also, I guess there aren't a lot of Phineas and Ferb fans here because that's a straight riff of one of their better known bits.

To me it is more like a First Job then a school. Also someone claimed that Mark Lawrence is a Pantser and that could not be further from the truth. Must be thinking of someone else. Having read every book Mark has written there is always a Big Plot twist in the series. Plus Mark put out a new book every year. Pantsers are always bad at that.

Nnedi Okorafor is a pantser yet executed Death of the Author. In her joint appearance with V.E. Schwab (a strict plotter) at the national book festival, Schwab was visibly shocked and awed to discover the basic complex structure of the novel was largely how it emerged for Okorafor rather than the result of editing and revision. Okorafor has also published at least one book a year most years for quite a while.

Stephen King, another well-known pantser, also hasn't suffered from a lack of output over his career.

I don't have any personal knowledge about Lawrence's approach nor read anything of his beyond this one book. But an author's approach to writing doesn't have a ton to do with the sort of works they produce. Their talent, imagination, and skill at their craft are much more important.

Just to let Veronica know, Canada does have 4D theatres. 7 of them, according to Cineplex, maybe more if any other companies do it. The closest one for her is probably in Burnaby. My colleague saw the latest season of Demon Slayer in 4D in Mississauga (giant suburb outside Toronto).

And regarding the Amazon Kindle AI, I expect the main reason you can't copy the AI output is to avoid people using it to cheat on homework and tests and stuff. I work at a university where detecting AI in students' work is a massive topic. If someone needs to write a paper on Ulysses or the Illiad or something, I could see people using this AI feature to do the work for them, rather than going through the hassle of reading literature and trying to understand it. They'll probably use Kindle AI or other AI bots for that anyways, but at least with this feature, it'll take more work than Ctrl+C, Tab, Ctrl+V, and Amazon can say it is taking proactive steps to mitigate the issue.

You could probably copy the text from an image screenshot.