It's a meaningless distinction. A solid is defined by a 3D shape enclosed by a surface. It doesn't require uniform density. Just imagine that the sides of this surface are infinitesimally thin so as to be invisible and porous to air, and you've filled the definition. Don't like this answer, then just imagine the same thing but with an actual thin shell like mylar. It makes no difference.
Oops disregard this, by "has to be identical" I thought you were objecting to the non uniformity of the surface, not the incongruity of the sides' shapes, so that's where my comment was coming from.
The incongruity of the sides certainly makes it not a Platonic Solid, though the article doesn't actually assert that it is. It just uses some terrible phrasing that's bound to mislead. Their words with my clarification for how it could be parsed in a factually accurate way: "A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid (when it's a regular tetrahedron). Mathematicians have now made one (a tetrahedron, not a Platonic solid)...".
It's a dumb phrasing, it's like saying "Tesla makes the world's fastest accelerating sports car. I bought one" and then revealing that the "one" refers to a Tesla Model 3, not the fastest accelerating sports car.
In some ways it's a shame because I love the finesse game as a counterbalance to the focus on power that seemed to peak around the time Brad Jacob's crew was dominating the scene. I don't follow curling quite enough to know what the impact will be on the meta game though. More guards? Fewer? More takeout attempts? It's interesting because finesse and power both have critical roles in both scoring and defending so it's not obvious to me where the negative/positive impacts to the game will be.
> In some ways it's a shame because I love the finesse game as a counterbalance to the focus on power
The relatively recent ban on takeouts before the 5th rock [0] has pushed the game back towards finesse, so if you haven't watched curling for the past few years, you might find it to be a little more interesting to watch now.
> I think we could solve that problem by removing Jupiter. If we drop it into the Sun, we can gain all of its orbital energy in the process.
How did you come up with dropping Jupiter into the sun being a net energy producing operation? You have to cancel out around 10^35 J of kinetic energy to drop it from its orbit, and that is real work. How do you get that 10^35 J back? (Ignoring that from your own math, that E35J is around 100,000 years of the sun's total energy output).
I don't know, but Jupiter has that kinetic energy now, and if you slow it down until it falls into the Sun, it won't have it anymore. The energy has to go somewhere.
Maybe you scoop up big balloons of gas, slingshot them to Mercury with a tether, catch them with another tether on the dark side of Mercury to decelerate them (thus generating electricity which you use to make some kind of fuel), and toss them Sunwards from there.
Or maybe you use an electromagnetic mass driver in the Asteroid Belt to launch an unbelievable number of small rocky masses to a gravitational slingshot around Jupiter back to the same mass driver again, but at a higher velocity, so they generate electric power when it catches them before launching them again. Each mass goes through this circuit tens of thousands of times.
Pulling an object "down" (ie towards the gravitational focus) doesn't lower the energy of its orbit, it just changes the eccentricity. To lower its orbit you have to slow it down.
That's the thing about sci-fi: almost all good sci-fi stories are really sci-fi + X, where X is some other genre. Often adventure or mystery, sometimes horror, and in this case political thriller / spy story.
I'm trying to figure out what sci-fi not crossed with something else even means. Even most of the great works of classic sci-fi of the 20th century draw tropes and plot points from other genres.
I guess like with all categorization, genres are reductive generalizations. And I'm saying the sci-fi generalization is much less descriptive of Andor than the political thriller generalization is. You could transplant Andor to WWII historical fiction and it would be less of a change than changing the mood and story to fit what most people's preconceived notions of sci-fi is.
I guess in short, I'm saying that you really don't have to be open to the sci fi genre to enjoy Andor.
Interesting, I would not consider mood and story descriptive of sci-fi at all. Rather sci-fi adds speculative and fantastic elements to a world still populated by humans / beings of relatable psychology.
And once you have relatable psychology you also get politics and weaponization of information (what the show was mostly about) - political thriller. Agree, those elements were damn good ones. And I loved the utilization of WW 2 analogues - French resistance, Spanish civil war, Wansee conference etc etc
I would say the show was very _grounded_ in that the high stakes were about humans doing human things.
What sets Andor apart is _excellence_ and (partly budget driven) restraint.
Not only was the acting superb, the script was intelligent.
But then the attention to visual detail was next level as well. The sets and costumes were mind blowingly good. For example I was convinced they had to had found some real life location for the Ghorman plaza (nope, built set + CGI). I would love to have a plaza like that. Not many shows have so good fictional architecture you would love to see the real thing.
So I was totally impressed with the show. But in my books it’s still sci-fi. It’s probably the best recent serialized sci-fi show in the last decade along with the Expanse.
If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.
> If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.
Nope not at all, for example I personally would put the Expanse firmly in the genre of sci-fi. The major themes it explores centre around its setting; it doesn't happen to exist in a futuristic space setting; the entire show would cease to function as a concept without it. Major plot lines exist specifically to explore the "what-ifs" of that fictional future. And honestly, while I acknowledge it's intelligent and extremely well loved by its fans, it's one that I'd have trouble recommending to people that aren't big into sci fi, for that reason.
But compare that to something like Firefly, where's it's basically a heist/western that happens to be set in outer space.
Personally I have very hard time predicting why someone would enjoy _some_ fictional elements but not others. If someone does not like ”made-up” fiction then Andor still has many ”fantasy” elements to potentially put them off.
IMHO the idea that humans will colonize the solar system one dat is much more mainstream nowadays - so the setting in Expanse is in many ways much more grounded than in Star Wars where the latter is pure cinematic fantasy.
But maybe viewers don’t care about the milieu and just want relatable plot lines? There Andor is more familiar for sure.
They did a really good job tying Andor into Rogue One, but yeah Andor is just far better in terms of pacing, etc. And because they have to rush the plot in R1 (meet Jyn, she doesn't care about the rebellion, oops never mind now she's leading the rebellion) it ends up seeming much shallower emotionally. They also seemed to have to have a bit of fan service.
Rogue One was my favourite Star Wars production before Andor, now I wish they could throw it away and remake it as Andor Season 3. It deserves to be told in full.
Not referring to that actually, I think that was actually a great bridge to Ep 4 that helps put the story in context for casual fans.
More the presence of the Force and Jedi lore. They were so close to not having that be part of Rogue One but were still forced to include the mystical super beings in some way. Andor was able to fully detach from that baggage, focusing on the little people doing their part. And when they did bring in the Force healer in the second season, it was exactly how you'd expect average people to respond to a mystical power that you didn't directly witness. Hope, faith, skepticism, denial, rejection.
As far as Vader goes...it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
> it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
I disagree.
If you set aside the difference in special effects capabilities, Vader is clearly being cautious in the light saber fight with Obi Wan on the Death Star. And we know that's because Obi Wan kicked his ass on Mustafar (THE KENOBI MINI SERIES NEVER HAPPENED I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT). And then Obi Wan never actually intends to fight Vader in earnest. He intends to become a force ghost all along. Still one step ahead of Anakin's understanding of the force.
Rogue One was the first standalone movie in the Star Wars universe. There was a lot of uncertainty about how it would be received. I don't blame them for ham-fistedly shoving in there some extra linkage to the main canon... and even with that, it made much less than the "regular" sequel trilogy.
Parks for a novel game design, gorgeous artwork and tactile pieces. Mid complexity.
Pandemic Legacy for one of the best experiences you'll have with the same group of friends over months (cooperative, play through once over 12-24 sittings). The game builds in complexity as you play so it starts reasonably simple (though the first season starts with the basic ruleset of Pandemic so if you've played that it's a head start but not necessary).
Kingdomino and Cascadia for quicker terrain building games, I consider these fairly similar though Kingdomino is quicker and simpler. These I can play with anyone.
Paperback if you already like word games like Scrabble etc, and want to dip into playing a deck building game.
The Crew if you like trick-taking card games, it's a co-op variant to games like Bridge or Euchre.
Carcassone is an oldie but goodie. Very social compared to many competitive games, as though it's turn based everyone wants to have their say for what you should do with your piece. Compared to e.g. Wingspan where you're largely ignoring/out of the loop for what's going on with everyone else all the time.
It wasn't entirely prescient...the OG SARS virus in 2002 followed a similar path (with a much more terrifying fatality rate). But that game and the movie Contagion certainly felt a little on the nose once the pandemic hit.
I'd read it as requiring the Pope to renounce his title if he wanted to be President of the US unless congress votes that it's OK.
But also the emolument clause is effectively unenforceable and the whole "insurgent" ruling basically made it impossible to challenge a presidential candidate. If Trump wants a 3rd term, for instance, I'm not sure what mechanism would prevent him at this point.
> Sadly, the movie really shows it's age when the "cultural attaché" starts lecturing Robert Redford's character that "our countries are friends now". It's hard to suspend disbelief watching it nowadays
But it's set in the past, when relations between the countries were much friendlier. Do you have trouble suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII, because the U.S. and Germany are now allies?
>But it's set in the past, when relations between the countries were much friendlier. Do you have trouble suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII, because the U.S. and Germany are now allies?
Ostensibly they were much friendlier than before, sometimes even collaborating on a project here or there. I think if you listen carefully you can hear a little bit of humor in Greg saying it.
It's interesting to me, the shift I've had to co-op games over the years (both board and video games). With one group of friends, we play exclusively cooperative games, whereas another only wants to ever play competitive games. For me, co-op is just so much more relaxing. It's also far more social, whereas playing competitive games the socializing usually happens outside of the game itself. You can definitely be over-competitive in cooperative games too though.
Unless the game designers specifically accounted for it, cooperative games can rob the autonomy of less confident players. One overbearing player can hijack the whole game. To them to win the game as designed it feels correct to do.
In competitive game it's possible the less skilled player may never win (not true for party games), but at least only they are personally invested in their win so no one can righteously take over.
reply