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The Animal Is Tired

robinhobb.com

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Re: The Animal Is Tired

#341

Post by InitialLastName »

LargeWu wrote: post #297
SunlightEdge wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being downvoted I don't find Brandon Sanderson a very good fantasy writer. For me, The way of kings started well (even if the characters were all pretty 2-D) in book one. Interesting plot with it mixing ww1/dune computer game themes in a fantasy setting. But by book 3 it was an incredible chore to get through and I stopped after about 10% in. I even got bored reading the plot summary of the third book.…

I don't know if it's that Sanderson is a bad writer; I think it's more that he's a bad editor. He is so prolific that he doesn't take the time to cut his books down to the length they should be, which is probably about half the length. Every single novel I've read by him (All of mistborn, 1st 3 Way of Kings, Elantris) has egregious pacing problems. Way too much repetitive exposition that doesn't move the story along.…

Sanderson got too big too fast to develop a relationship with an editor who could say "no" to him. He's built fascinating worlds and interesting characters, but his later writing is full of the kinds of tropes and flaws that an empowered editor would be pushing him hard to streamline:

- Dialogue from adults that has the emotional intelligence of a 12-year old

- Lots of telling, almost no showing. So much "X, the kind of person who takes no bullshit from anyone, says, 'hi'".

- Huge, dragging, Return-of-the-Jedi-style setpiece battles and fights that have no bearing on the plot outcome

- Plots that just repeat on a larger scale with every book in a series.

Dude needs someone who has the ability to say no to him. With the amount he writes though, I have to imagine it's basically a DDOS for anyone tasked with editing his work.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#342

Post by ajmurmann »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #284
Snoozus wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Food is the number one physical measurable input into our bodies. This is the single reason why everyone focusses on food. It is not the biggest lever you have on your health / wellbeing. It is the easiest variable to measure and to play with. From the research it is quite clear that apart from gross errors what you eat does not really matter to any outcome. Quantity matters, but eating more can be compensated by e…

> Quantity matters, but eating more can be compensated by excercising more. Eating a little bit more can be. Eating an extra 1k kcal per day cannot be, especially as you get older. I’m in my 30s and relatively fit, and I can only burn 14 kcal per minute for 45 minutes or so. Maybe I can do an hour if I pushed it, but even Olympic level athletes top out at 20 kcal per minute.

How did you get the 14kcal number? Are there devices that measure this?

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#344

Post by fredophile »

climb_stealth wrote: post #61
autarch wrote: post #33

Robin Hobb is one of my favorite authors. Her masterwork is a series of series (four trilogies and a quadrology) known as The Realm of the Elderlings. She published the first trilogy, which begins with Assassin's Apprentice, starting in 1995. I saw the books when they first came out and I assumed from the title and the cover that it would be a cheesy fantasy by the numbers, so I never bought it. But I kept hearing ab…

Aw man, I just started a comment saying how this sounds really promising and was going to ask about it. Turns out I have actually read them. I might have to read them all again. I would recommend them as well. I'm a big fan of the Malazan series as well. I still think of the hair jacket when I come across someone with a smelly jacket and it never fails to crack me up. My recommendation for epic fantasy that is a bit…

For people who like the character driven nature of Robin Hobb's work I'd recommend the Demon Cycle books by Peter Brett. Across the series you get to see characters from a variety of viewpoints which really fleshes them out as complete people.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#345

Post by maerF0x0 »

> It slept only when I no longer needed its labor at the end of a long day. Day after day of steady work, night sleep sacrificed for more work; It didn't seem to mind

No problem, we can still extract a little more shareholder value. Simply turn them to to glue [1]

[1]: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/section9/

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#346

Post by Ensorceled »

joeberon wrote: post #322
Ensorceled wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no animal you live inside, this is not a meat vehicle for something else, your body is you, it's not some machine you merely inhabit. It always drives me crazy when people take the work of a poet or author literally and then pedantically hound any joy or meaning out of the words. The point is that humans are animals, treat your animal well.

It drives me crazy when people get so upset over any kind of comment too. Why not take it literally? That's a totally valid interpretation of the writing. Also, it's entirely your perception that it is "hounding any joy and meaning out of the words". For me, the idea of myself and my body being inseparable is much more joyful than the original post, which paints the mind more like a mental prisoner trapped inside of…

> Why not take it literally? That's a totally valid interpretation of the writing.

She's a fantasy writer. Do you take her fantasy novels literally as well? Do you think she is actually riding around in her "animal" body like that alien in "Men in Black"?

> Also, it's entirely your perception that it is "hounding any joy and meaning out of the words".

Ummm, yes, of course it is.

> For me, the idea of myself and my body being inseparable is much more joyful than the original post

I also feel my body and mind are inseparable. But I don't think that Robb is proposing mind/body disassociation because I didn't read her literally. And, for all I know, maybe Robb does have mind/body disassociation and this is how she copes.

In fact, because I didn't read her literally, I think she may actually be in agreement with you.

Feel free to express your opinion!

> I'll take the interpretation of the comment you replied to, thanks!

Ok. I'm glad for you.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#347

Post by contradistinct »

xivzgrev wrote: post #41
DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually sounds quite a bit like depression. Some inexpensive meds can make a huge difference. I know from experience.

Agree, but in my experience medicine simply kept me from going too low. Some kind of therapy may also be needed, and a focus / prioritization on things that make you happy.

Yes, meds don't solve the underlying issue. There is no happy pill. They just give you the boost you need to fix your life. This is shown by studies that show depression comes back after discontinuing meds, but not after discontinuing therapy.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#348

Post by lotsofpulp »

ajmurmann wrote: post #342
lotsofpulp wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quantity matters, but eating more can be compensated by excercising more. Eating a little bit more can be. Eating an extra 1k kcal per day cannot be, especially as you get older. I’m in my 30s and relatively fit, and I can only burn 14 kcal per minute for 45 minutes or so. Maybe I can do an hour if I pushed it, but even Olympic level athletes top out at 20 kcal per minute.

How did you get the 14kcal number? Are there devices that measure this?

I assume exercise machines where you can not cheat by leaning on something or pausing are somewhat accurate, such as stationary bikes or elliptical or rowing machines. So my estimate is from experience with those machines over the last 15 years, and all 3 end up averaging me at around the same 14 kcal/minute. But I’m no athlete, although I do have a pretty low body fat percentage.

Also, I misremembered the Olympic calorie amount, according to this NYTimes article, Olympic cross country skiers can do 30kcal per minute:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-cou...

> A typical elite cross-country skier will burn about 30 calories a minute during training — by comparison, a 155-pound person on an elliptical machine burns about 11 calories a minute.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#349

Post by [deleted] »

rzzzt wrote: post #228
hyko wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinach famously was misreported to be misreported to have iron due to the decimal point slip: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127145356... Nothing indicates that the decimal point error ever was made, but the account about it will most likely live a long and colorful life, just like its parent myth

Spinach is a fictional plant, it was described by Linné as sort of a joke but then everyone just went with it. But seriously, you described three layers of misconceptions in this comment thread, how is anyone supposed to know "the real truth" about anything food related, if spinach alone is such a hard subject?

[deleted]

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#350

Post by arendtio »

> ... it is the only animal I have ever treated this way.

I wonder if that is actually true. I am thinking about this video and how we humans are treating all the other animals on this planet:

https://youtu.be/NxvQPzrg2Wg?t=165

Sure the text is about something different, but at times I do wonder how cruel we are and how little we think about it. I like to imagine seeing some aliens doing to us what we are doing to all the animals.

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