Chris Almeda > Recent Status Updates

Robb said I stormed her fathers castle and she stormed my heart 😭😭😭 you kinda deserved to die for that one lil bro

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ngl I would’ve snitched on her too. Not letting you drag me down with you foh

Omphalos: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Every time she said lord I just thought of the confessions of st augie

The Great Silence: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

😭😭😭

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Finally, one where people are gaslighting each other.

Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This would probably be better if it weren’t so nakedly about iPad kids.

Rue Barre: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

My brother in Christ you broke into that woman’s house! You couldn’t have just sat out there with a bouquet of flowers and threw rocks at her window?

The lifecycle of software objects: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

So far Ted Chiang’s stories are all interesting thought experiments. With any piece of fiction about ai, I have a hard time really loving it when it asks questions such as “to what extent should we treat them like humans” and not “how deep is this box we’ve just opened.” 2001 space odyssey goated forever.

The street of our lady of the fields: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t think I really understood this one. All I can say for sure is that bro is still goth and still horny and that should count for something

The street of the first shell: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oh to be French and in love during the Franco Prussian war

Crazy that reek is just a different guy in the book

The Street of the Four Winds: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Now he has a little cat friend.

The Prophet’s Paradise: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

In the middle of his short story collection which already begins with a 4 part horror episode tied together by a metafictional play this man decided to also add a collection of gothic romance prose poetry??? Brother are you good?

The Demoiselle D’ys: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oh yeah he is just lovesick

The Yellow Sign: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Is buddy just lovesick?

In the Court of the Dragon: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

I’ve actually had multiple dreams like this in the last few weeks.

The mask: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The phoenix program would not have gotten me to admit I went to a man’s house and personally congratulated him for stealing my girl

The repairer of reputations: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Brother I lost my mind when he put on the crown and the robe just to go commit heinous acts

He said “how many Indians would’ve thought to make a flammable river?”

What is expected of us: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The interesting thing about this one is that it stems from other stories in which a joke is so funny it kills people. There are other examples in literature where a movie is so good it kills you or a woman is literally drop dead gorgeous, but the idea of people shutting down because they don’t think free will exists seems… kind of silly no?

Exhalation: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Couldn’t give you any insight on the article this story is based on. Also not really sure how well Ted Chiang gets his point across in the story. Another pretty interesting thought experiment though.

Got to the part where Sam realized he was only attracted to wildling girls

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

He said cultural appropriation off rip this is my kind of book. Also love the little author’s note at the end. He’s such a dork lol.

The Suffering Channel: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Going back and forth on this one a little. It’s certainly an interesting piece of media criticism. And it fits really nicely in the collection.

The section on McCarthyism is nuts. That really does feel like the first time a fascist force put its hand on the wheel of American history.

One of my favorite things about nonfiction is that you also get a catalog of all the author’s sources. I had know idea looking backward even existed but I threw that boy on my want to read list because Howard Zinn made it sound cool.

Oblivion: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

She’s so down bad she’s literally dreaming about arguing about bullshit with her husband.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

This almost feels like a proof of concept story for the rest of the collection.

Tenth of December: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Maybe I’m being harsh because I just read a David Foster Wallace short story that does a much better job addressing the need to self harm for attention but this is honestly the weakest one in the collection.