Why vampires live forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Why vampires live forever

#191

Post by mlsu » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #149

mlsu wrote: post #84

Love this concrete interpretation. The symbolic one is maybe more interesting: Vampires: - Consume the life force of the living to sustain themselves - Are totally isolated and perverted from any kind of human community - Have no family, no community ties - Unable to feel love, warmth, connection with any human - Must avoid spending time in the virtuous natural world (daylight, sunlight) and must instead be cordoned…

Yeah. Vampires were conceived as analogies to nobility, and the billionaire class is our new nobility.

Same as it ever was!

Re: Why vampires live forever

#192

Post by RajT88 » Fri, Feb 13, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

maleldil wrote: post #157

RajT88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 months for whole blood IIRC. You can do every 2 weeks for platelets, but I am not sure if that removes the crud or not. There's other donations with varying frequency (red, plasma, etc.).

I'm assuming this is in the US? I'm curious why it's 2 months there but 3 or 4 (men/women) in the UK.

I don't donate whole blood too often (they usually want me for platelets every 2 weeks if they can get it).

https://versiti.org/ways-to-give/about-blood-donation/blood-...

56 days or 8 weeks for whole blood.

It doesn't say why.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#193

Post by Baeocystin » Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 6:28 AM UTC

sgt101 wrote: post #188

Baeocystin wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a heads up, don't go in to Echopraxia expecting it to feel like Blindsight. When I first read it, I was actually pretty disappointed overall, and a few of my friends had similar reactions. Over a couple of years a few re-reads, though, I've come to enjoy it perhaps even more that Blindsight, but in a completely different way. It fills out a lot of the posits opened in the first novel, without coming to specific…

It's the world builder, odd that it comes second but if it had come first then most people would have been put off! I liked that the main character was the least super empowered of any of the characters though.

“I’ve told you before, Daniel: roach isn’t an insult. We’re the ones still standing after the mammals build their nukes, we’re the ones with the stripped-down OS’s so damned simple they work under almost any circumstances. We’re the goddamned Kalashnikovs of thinking meat.”