leah george > Recent Status Updates

“the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state&more efficient at using it once they had…Besides, it left the humans…free to take care of the things that really mattered in life, such as sport, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible problems, and climbing high mountains

really enjoying myself with this book even though it took a sec to get into. sad to learn that big tech tv (amazon prime) is working on a series where they will prob not do the story justice since the themes of this book so are refreshingly antithetical to the dogma of our big ai corporatocracy.

going to follow up with some noteworthy moments all from the same chapter that i would gladly reread a few times

i have paused reading this book because i put the physical used copies of books 1-4 on my christmas list and i’m waiting to see if someone got them for me :-)

i’ve tried to stop reading this book a couple times cause i thought i would enjoy myself more reading something else. so many strange characters and perspectives so far. it’s almost like the book is allergic to a wholesome and likable protagonist. but since otessa is so good at transporting the reader it’s like i have to see each one through

wait i love that frank herbert dedicated dune to ecologists:

“To the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of ‘real materials’—to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration.”

still rings true 60 years later

“Wow. I'm sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation... and I'm bored. Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”

this applies to so many things it’s crazy

“And then again, in a society given over, as that of the First Empire was, to the physical sciences and inanimate technology, there was a vague but mighty sociological push away from the study of the mind.
It was less respectable because less immediately useful; and it was poorly financed since it was less profitable.”

‘Control of self and society has been left to chance or to the vague gropings of intuitive ethical systems based on inspiration and emotion. As a result, no culture of greater stability than abour fifty-five percent has ever existed, and these only as the result of great human misery.’

been waiting for quotes like these cause they describe us so well especially the misery part

"Stop!" The First Speaker was insistent. "You must not say' never' That is a lazy slurring-over of the facts. Actually, Psychohistory predicts only probabilities. A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero.”

“Feet, for tens of thousands of years, had clogged and shuffled in the mud—and held down the minds which, for an equal time, had been fit for the companionship of the stars.”

“…and approached to shake Bayta’s hand with careless pressure. Bayta returned it vigorously, man-fashion.”

for having literally no deeper female characters in the last book, Bayta is a welcome and surprisingly relatable character in this book gj asimov

“‘Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law: no change. Despotism! They know one rule: force. Maldistribution!
They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.’”

shit sounds familiar

“And behind a very sturdily built and staunchly defended facade of practical, unromantic hard-headedness towards life, there was just that little pool of softness that would never show if you poked for it, but could be reached if you knew just how—and never let on that you were looking for it.”

“The gleaming metallic towers that surrounded him and continued onwards in never-ending multiplicity to beyond the horizon oppressed him; the whole busy, unheeding life of a world-metropolis cast him into the horrible gloom of isolation and pygmyish unimportance.”

my nightmares of living in a big city

“Unimaginative enough to face danger without fear, he was strong and agile enough to face it successfully.”

the job requirements for americas fuckboy fighter pilots in trillion dollar failing F-35s

“The man who stood on the threshold was tall and…wore a short coat of a soft, leathery plastic…He stepped in casually, and looked about with calculating eyes. He favored the general with a rudimentary wave of the hand and a half nod. ‘Lathan Devers…Listen, if you're the boss, you'd better tell your hired men here to lay off my cargo’

so this is where Han Solo came from

……But better to be alone during these crippling bouts than to endure the prinking of the courtiers, their lavish sympathy, their soft, condescending dullness. Better to be alone than to watch those insipid masks behind which spun the tortuous speculations on the chances of death and the fortunes of the succession.”

passages like this is why a girl reads Asimov

“The Emperor of the Galaxy and the Lord of All whimpered as he lolled his head backward into the invigorating plane of force about his pillows. It yielded in a softness that did not touch, and at the pleasant tingle, Cleon relaxed a bit. He sat up with difficulty and stared morosely at the distant walls of the grand chamber. It was a bad room to be alone in. It was too big. All the rooms were too big…

“Psychohistory dealt not with men, but man masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball, the reaction of one man could be forecasted by no known mathematics; the reaction of 1 billion is something else again

“When you see a smile that’s genuine, you’ll see beauty. When you see an act of courage or generosity, you’ll see beauty. Most of all, when you look at someone you love, you’ll see beauty. All calli does is keep you from being distracted by surfaces. True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love, and that’s something that nothing can obscure.”

“Beauty can provide just as much pleasure for those who have it as for those who perceive it…”

“Girls have always been told that their value is tied to their appearance… Being pretty is fundamentally a passive quality; even when you work at it, you’re working at being passive. I wanted Tamara to value herself in terms of what she could do…not in terms of how decorative she was, I didn’t want her to be passive...”

i think i’d choose to send my kid to a school where they don’t perceive looks too

“…you can’t isolate your kids from the world; they live in an image–obsessed culture. it was around then that the legal challenges to calliagnosia were resolved…We saw calli as an opportunity: what if we could live in an environment where people didn’t judge each other on their appearance? What if we could raise our children in such an environment?”

“For decades people have been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but they’re still reluctant to talk about lookism. Yet this prejudice against unattractive people is incredibly pervasive. People do it without even being taught by anyone, which is bad enough, but instead of combating this tendency, modern society actively reinforces it.”

completed story 7/8: “Hell is the Absence of God”
- not entirely sold on the premise of this one tbh a world where the most extreme concepts of Christianity are like actually real and experienced by the general population sounds terrible
- felt like a writing exercise
- for some reason the idea of these angel visitations causing miracles while simultaneously causing catastrophic damage is really funny to me

“But while Neil avoided the pitfall of blaming God, he never made the jump to loving him; nothing in his upbringing or his personality led him to pray to God for strength or for relief. The assorted trials he faced, growing up were accidental or human in origin, and he relied on strictly human resources to counter them.”

i mean if i came out the womb fucked up like Neil id love to blame god but good for Neil

“Their nonchalant cruelty, their instinctive ability to locate the weaknesses in a victim’s emotional armor, the way their own friendships were reinforced by their sadism”

i sometimes wonder how many of the adults in my life were like this growing up. did u ever grow enough as a person to acknowledge and regret ur shittiness? u don’t hear many people who are honest about being a bully when they were younger

completed VERY SHORT story 6/8: “The Evolution of Human Science”
- like an abstract for a larger story
- the premise of genetically modified “metahumans” and the divide in society created by them is a fun sci-fi idea
- read like a news article from the time so this honestly just seemed like a little creative writing exercise for him but it was cool cause we love ted and everything he does

completed short story 5/8 - “Seventy-Two Letters”
- i was bored and confused at first, but it ended up being really interesting
- interesting to consider a reality where science is all qualitative and they’re approaching this big existential crisis
- the whole golem theme reminded me a lot of the aspect of my job manipulating words for LLMs to better perform tasks (prompt engineering)

completed story 4/8: “Story of Your Life” 🥹
- goosebumps reading the last words of this beautifully brilliant story
- second story so far to make my head spinnnn thinking about the way we think
- i wish i’d read this before watching “Arrival” so I wouldn’t have any expectations and just be completely blown away. it’s a very different rendition of this story but so good!!!