Brainsploosh

Science fiction is in it's essence the exploration of a situation when all the confounding factors have been magicked/scienced away.

Not uncommonly it explores the requirements of the technical solution, what would the machine need to do for this to work out? And/or What happens if it doesn't?

Take for example "Do androids dream of electric sheep" by Philip K Dick, it's about finding androids advanced enough not to know they're artificial and how to identify and relate to them when the only diagnostic is slow, clumsy, and suspect. It's more an exploration of what makes a person than it's around the marvels of The Machine™.

During the 1900s the vehicle for science to magick with had been machines, computers and AI. Remember that space travel, fission power, psychology, modern medicine were all new, hope inducing breakthroughs just this same period.

There's also the issue that the definition of the genre came after it becoming large enough to matter. The edges between scifi, punk/cyberpunk, speculative fiction, isekai and even to fantasy are all made after the fact, meaning modern machines go into scifi, old machines go into steam-/diesel-/etc-punk. The main difference between Science, Magick, and Eldritch horror is how detailed the mechanics of the solution are described, and speak to different people.

But on the topic of the story not being centered around a machine: try the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

Or go the entirely other way with Ring World by Larry Niven. There's plenty of machines-did-it in the fringes, but the central theme is to figure out what would be needed for a Ring World to exist, what would happen on it, and how would it be managed. It's an exploration of physics more than anything - more "what is the machine" than "machines-did-it".

And the Foundation series (Asimov) famously explore the premise "what if sociology works", and the other details solved by throwing machines at them.

You also have The Culture (Iain Banks) series that center on/around post-scarcity society and explore that.

Oh right! I remember this from arrows now. Thank you for reminding us!

Fantastic game!

Similar shapes on maces were to break bones through armor (iirc).

The crescent shape I don't get though, is it for cutting lightly armored targets?

I've checked the video description, I checked the Github description, the documentation, I watched the first two minutes of the video, why is there no information anywhere on what it is, or what it does?

It's scary to me that the daily casualty rate just keeps rising.

Definitely a grinding war...

Aww, I thought we were talking about Rimworld

Thank you, will check it out!

Very nice writeup, thank you!

I came across the topic of AI security, and been reading up on it, but as I have a weak background in Machine learning, I'm not really able to follow the frontier discourse.

I'd very much appreciate any recommendations as to where to find more foundational level materials for getting into it. Any tips?

This is actually a great write up for beginner cooks. Well written!

I'd like to emphasise a thing that I found not as clear as the rest: When planning when to start cooking things, I find that starting from the end and planning backwards is helpful.

I want it done by 18:30. Plating takes 2 minutes, food needs done 18:28 latest. Meat takes 8 minutes, so should start 18:20 latest, veg takes 6 minutes but can be done at the same time - 18:24. Etc.

This is hard when you start out, but after having fried meat and boiled veggies a few times you'll get an idea both of how long it takes, how much you can manage at a time, and how much time is lost in the other things (getting plates, getting burnt, forgetting stuff, etc).

If you're the type of ND that doesn't work backwards, you either use your strategies, or perhaps group tasks in roughly equal blocks. Maybe chopping onions & garlic, browning them and then frying the meat in the same pan takes 20 minutes, which might be the same as boiling potatoes.

On the topic of kitchen cheating/checking.

You can taste things to adjust seasoning, use a spoon (like a teaspoon), dip it, blow/wait for it to cool, and taste it. Start with salt and main flavor, and as you get more experienced you can add more nuanced stuff ("this needs some orange zest" is a ways down the road).

Also: for any meats, eggs, fish, and flour dishes (and some others) you can use an oven thermometer for perfect results.

Look up and print out a temperature chart and you can have your dishes perfectly cooked every time, no dryness, gummyness or undercooking.