I mean, think what you like, but please don’t quote The Hogfather as a basis for your disagreement with non-STEM fields of study. That would be silly.

Give in to the ‘stache!

A genuine compliment on the internet is worth more than a thousand pointed arguments. I thank you for the detailed discussion, your level head, and a gracious reply.

I am kinda obsessed with photosynthesis hacking. Here’s something I wrote a while back on whether we can hack it into humans: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/human-pho…

Yup, intensive indoor farming is another great idea! The MIT City Farm has been honing these techniques for a while. Here are a few relevant posts:

Yes, Kinja’s lack of direct threading (or more correctly, showing us all the posts we’ve made without indicating directly the path of the active comment thread) is annoying. That said, here’s the primary comment to which I think I was replying, confirmed by referential phrases; emphasis mine. Although, I had read the…

And when you realize no one clicks on the links on your blog, you’ll realize it’s not so easy and you’ll go back to pushing carts in a copper mine.

I like to think this is temporary, that the availability of new tools to filmmakers results in an explosion of its myriad uses, until they get more comfortable with them and relearn restraint. We’ve already seen the backlash in kickstarter funded lo-fi films, or JJ Abrams attempt to use more conventional effects in…

This is why, despite all of its flaws, I kind of enjoyed Cloverfield. The way the monster was only ever seen from the POV of a character made this movie stood out for me.

Right. I think once the filmmakers get a handle on how to better transition from large scale to small/human scale and back, the CGI won’t be as jarring.

I strongly disagree. I haven’t been happier in my life than when effects started to be more impressive, more detailed. I see a movie that is pure FX (2012, Transformers, Avengers, Jurassic World, Avatar, San Andreas, Interstellar, 2000-s StarWars) and i glee in delight of the FX and CGI used in it. It could be that Im…

My thoughts exactly, it just looks like a party costume. She’s meant to be an Amazonian/Kryptonian warrior... where is her armour??

Hot.

Right there with you, bud. Consider Phlebas had massive issues, pacing and characterization being the worst of them. If I had read Phlebas and nothing else, I would not have understand the love people have for the Culture. Player of Games was what made me a lifelong fan of Banks, and in fact gave me the patience to…

Here. :P

So, there’s another problem that you’re not really mentioning, especially on a small garden farm: at the end of the day, you’re not getting rid of the lead/contaminants, you’re just moving it from one area to another. Or simply put: now you have contaminated leaves! And disposal of the plant material still has to go…

An extreme case of phytoremediation. And if the plants don’t get you the bugs will.

It does pick up, and many of the books do have at least a happy-ish ending. If you liked the world, I'd recommend continuing. Read Player of Games. If, after that one, you're still nonplussed, you can probably quit, since they aren't your cup of tea.

I’m a huge fan of the Culture novels, and I find Consider Phlebas to be basically unreadable. I wouldn’t say the other books are happy, and there’s certainly a fair amount of futility in them, but they give much more room for the characters to actually exist, not merely be bounced around from one pointless horror to…

Grumpy middle-aged SF writers grousing about minorities and “lit’r’y” fiction have been around forever, or at least as long as the early ‘70s (which constitutes “forever” for me). But back then, the SF community was much smaller and self-contained, as well as whiter, older, straighter and more male. As Chip Delany…