Alex Dontre > Recent Status Updates

Page 202 of this multi-system space opera, there is a passage comparing long-term debt instruments to the "red end of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram". Now that is some highly specific astrophysics/finance nerd flexing.

Dune fans: is this whole book just about arguing over who will have Paul's babies? The writing is great but the plot seems more like a soap opera than a space opera.

The description of the monumentally stupid way that Joseph Stalin died is alone worth the read.

It's pretty wild to read a book written 3 decades ago debunking all the same tired old claims of UFOs that I still hear today.

The author used the term "rational gaze" on page 269. Could the Meshuggah song Rational Gaze be named after this book? It certainly reads like Meshuggah lyrics: "The insanity of the human race had reached its historical zenith...In the face of madness, rationality was powerless."

The author used the term "rational gaze" on page 269. Could the Meshuggah song Rational Gaze be named after this book? It certainly reads like Mesghuggah lyrics: "The insanity of the human race had reached its historical zenith...In the face of madness, rationality was powerless."

"Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern."

"Those who avoid the sin of intellectual sloth could be called 'engaged'."

“Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight” (p. 14). That hits hard.

The chapter on accepting uncertainty is alone worth the purchase price of this book.

“Every new generation purports to be more empathetic, and yet every new generation is less forgiving.” Holy shit.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but this book is absolutely fantastic so far.

Whelp. Chapter 69: massive heat wave in southern US kills hundreds of thousands. Real life: record breaking heat wave in southwestern US in June 2021 before summer even officially hit.

"Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications...and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification of their structure."