Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sirus]

Gaunt's Ghosts is pretty awesome. It's nitty-gritty military sci-fi featuring ordinary humans instead of power-armored demigods, immortal aliens, all-powerful demons, or whatever other OP thing is running around the franchise universe. Lots of named characters drop like flies as well, and no-one is truly safe.

[Lightningfalcon]

Gaunt's Ghosts is pretty awesome. It's nitty-gritty military sci-fi featuring ordinary humans instead of power-armored demigods, immortal aliens, all-powerful demons, or whatever other OP thing is running around the franchise universe. Lots of named characters drop like flies as well, and no-one is truly safe.

This.   I've only read a few of his books so far, due to mentioned problems, but when I read them I never felt that a character would get through a situation because of plot armor.    Sometimes they survive against impossible odds, and sometimes they die suddenly to something like poison.

[DeKaFu]

Reminds me of when I looked into buying an out-of-print manga series off of Amazon...

People love gouging for that stuff, so you'd see prices like this:
Volume 1: $10
Volume 2: $14
Volume 3: $95
Volume 4: $29
Volume 5: $50
Volume 6: $5
etc.

Totally random. They all sold for $10-15 when new.

[misko27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in their later years.

That whole article blew my mind.

[Sergarr]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in their later years.

That whole article blew my mind.

"Vomiting was not a regular part of Roman dining customs.[1] In ancient Rome, the architectural feature called a vomitorium was the entranceway through which crowds entered and exited a stadium, not a special room used for purging food during meals.[2]"

Well, damn.

[Flying Dice]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in their later years.

That whole article blew my mind.

"Vomiting was not a regular part of Roman dining customs.[1] In ancient Rome, the architectural feature called a vomitorium was the entranceway through which crowds entered and exited a stadium, not a special room used for purging food during meals.[2]"

Well, damn.

Yep. "Vomitorium" because the crowds were being spewed forth. Basically the exact same thing as the entrance ramps at any modern stadium.

[Lord Shonus]

So... yeah.    Several hundred dollars for a new paperback book.  I can't even find either of them in Books a Million, and the price is the same for Barnes and Nobles.   Used they are around twenty five dollars, but the last time I ordered a used book online it was missing five pages that contained some fairly important plot material.

As long as you buy from a company (not an individual seller) on Amazon, and don't go below Good condition, you'll usually be OK. With novels, the main problems that you run into at Good or Very Good will be stress lines on the binding or cosmetic cover damage. The bigger companies genearlly price at the mean level for a given conditon, so you're not going to overpay, and the profit margins on used fiction are low enough that there's not a huge amount of "LIST EVERY LAST COPY" pressure (as opposed to textbooks, where there's so much money to be made that they tend to be very, very forgiving of condition issues in the knowledge that profits are high and buyers are very likely to take "good enough" rather than go through a time consuming return process (returns are very expensive to a company.))

[Yoink]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in their later years.

That whole article blew my mind.

"Vomiting was not a regular part of Roman dining customs.[1] In ancient Rome, the architectural feature called a vomitorium was the entranceway through which crowds entered and exited a stadium, not a special room used for purging food during meals.[2]"

Well, damn.

Yep. "Vomitorium" because the crowds were being spewed forth. Basically the exact same thing as the entrance ramps at any modern stadium.

Wait, so... it was a slang term? 
That's pretty awesome, if so.

[Arx]

IIRC, Greeks used the word 'Saurus' (lizard) as slang for Penis.

Meanwhile, in Latin, Saurus means treasure.

Take that how you will.

"I've got a lizard in my pants!"
"Really? I've got treasure in mine."

Edit: even better:
"I've got treasure in my pants~"
"Really? Looks like a lizard to me."

[tahujdt]

My WTF for the day: I made a 'Silence of the Lambs' reference at my little brother's birthday party yesterday, and my grandmother was the only one who got it.

[Yoink]

I'm WTFing more at the use of such a reference at a birthday party, but oh well.

[Siquo]

I'm WTFing more at the use of such a reference at a birthday party, but oh well.

"It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."
"Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me. I'd fuck me hard. I'd fuck me so hard."

Definitely children's birthday material.

[kaijyuu]

So there's this crazy Californian cult that's actually kinda awesome.


I fully believe someone said to themselves, "lots of people make religion to manipulate people into doing bad things, so let's make one to manipulate people into doing good things instead!" So now we have people worshiping UFOs, donating to feminist causes, saving the environment, and promoting peace and understanding.

[Sirus]

So there's this crazy Californian cult that's actually kinda awesome.


I fully believe someone said to themselves, "lots of people make religion to manipulate people into doing bad things, so let's make one to manipulate people into doing good things instead!" So now we have people worshiping UFOs, donating to feminist causes, saving the environment, and promoting peace and understanding.

Sounds like the sort of thing that would get started in my state

[Jopax]

Facebook had another interface change. Once again they moved the chatbar to the other side of the screen. Where it was a year ago when they last changed it.

I really have no idea why they pay anyone to do this shit since pretty much all the changes so far have been "Move chatbar to the other side"