It’s often a sign that the person is overweight.

My first thought was “How is this a boomer thing, I see people of all ages doing this.”

I didn’t think so? When I say Iris, I mean the colored ring. When I say pupil, I mean the hole. When I say asshole, I mean the ring, not the hole. I can’t remember ever wanting to refer to the actual hole. Maybe “gape?”

Except don’t we usually mean the sphincter itself when we say asshole?

Pretty good number of them if you count things like intermission. Slit, slot, crack, aperture, interlude, gap, breach, etc. Others, too.

Oh, certainly. In case it’s helpful, here’s a post I made last spring with notes from a year of reading - it’s pretty much all SF and fantasy. Many of the books mentioned in this thread are there. I’ve been reading about the same amount since, and will probably do another post on the anniversary of that one.

I was surprised at how little I liked it given the hype.

I’d love to hear what you think, I enjoyed both quite a lot.

If you end up searching online for that kind of things, “hard science fiction” is the phrase that’s usually used for it.

A lot of good recommendations here. Some endorsements and other recommendations:

• Project Hail Mary by Weir is a no brainer choice if you liked The Marian. He gets the science right.
• Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky is amazing, and the first of a trilogy, so more to read.
• The whole Expanse series, by James Corey is good and he does a good job with the science, especially the celestial mechanics.
• The Uplift series (starting with Sundiver) by David Brin is great, and Brin is will known for hard SF. It’s from the 80s.
• Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, is great and the first of a series as well.
• Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress, is great, with a good science background, though it’s more genetics than engineering. Really cool story though.
• I also agree with the recommendation on Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross. Also the first of a loose series.

On the flip side, I really didn’t care for Three Body Problem, and though the Bobiverse books seem fun, I’m not sure I’d call them firmly hard SF.

I see a lot of recipes that have different temperatures if the pan is black or nonstick. It makes sense that you’d need to reduce the temp for the cast iron.

From your recommendation and others, I’m reading it now. Ten percent in and, yes, it sure has fast pacing.

Machineries of Empires series sounds interesting.

Thanks for the interesting post.

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Okay, I finished We Are Legion (Bobiverse book one). It was fun, and I’ll probably read the next. Nothing especially deep, but amusing. A few things bugged me a little:

Several people have mentioned budgetary restrictions, which is a huge part, but there are practical considerations, regardless of budget. Even with a big budget, it’s only recently that they’ve been able to make convincing non-humanoid aliens that interact with other actors (mostly through CGI). Earlier, there were good examples of movie monsters or aliens that were done with stop motion or puppets, but not in a way that they shared the screen with the human actors in a meaningful way. Can you imagine if, say, the Vulcans on the original Trek series were wildly non-human - how silly it would have looked? The technology just wasn’t there to pull it off.

Also, most aliens, even in books, are some variation of earth life. They’re reptile-people, big spiders, intelligent bugs, or whatever. I think that’s mostly because it’s pretty hard to envision something truly novel/new. So lots of books, movies, and shows come up with some rationale for why everything in the galaxy looks like some kind of earth life to excuse that.

I’d say that’s more of the excuse/rationale for it. The underlying reason is hot much not expensive it would have been to do otherwise.

I’ve read both of those and agree they’re both excellent. Really good books. Very different from each other.

That last bit is interesting and funny. It was really popular in China, too, right?

Yeah, I agree, it’s really good. The sequels are both excellent, too.

One of my reading times is before bed, and I find that the routine of it helps me sleep, plus the escapism helps me stop thinking of everything else in my brain, which is a barrier to sleeping for me.