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Post by AnDromedary on Feb 11, 2022 2:00:19 GMT
Because Amazon is currently is in negotiations to buy MGM Didn't Amazon already acquire it for 8.45 Billion last year? Not sure. From this article it seems the deal is done between the companies but it's not through all the legal regulatory stuff yet. Either way, it would be plausible that there is quite a bit of contact between the companies I think. Well there is an idea.
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Post by Obsidian Gryphon on Feb 24, 2022 4:28:53 GMT
Watching The Expanse again. Now on S3, group is on Io. I really enjoy the pretty good realistic depictions of ship maneuvers in space but I still 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 when everyone except Bobbie removed their helmets at the research facility. C'mon fellas, that's a really good way to get one in the head and if there's decompression, I wish you good luck. I know it's for drama purposes so the audience can tell who is who, same as in Band of Brothers where the producers had the main characters remove their helmets when in reality, nobody will do so in a war zone. I thought the helmets are pretty clear. *shrug* Hoping Netfliz would drop in the B5 series again. I'm too lazy to fire up the dvd player.
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Post by Obsidian Gryphon on Mar 18, 2022 14:27:56 GMT
Finished S6 of the Expanse. I was waving bye Marco, see ya. 😄 I wondered what he was thinking, the little bits of his brain that remained, when his eyes shifted to where Filip would have sat and he saw his son wasn't there. Would he realise where Filip was, what he had done? gee, I hoped he did.
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Post by dazk on Mar 19, 2022 0:35:44 GMT
Finished S6 of the Expanse. I was waving bye Marco, see ya. 😄 I wondered what he was thinking, the little bits of his brain that remained, when his eyes shifted to where Filip would have sat and he saw his son wasn't there. Would he realise where Filip was, what he had done? gee, I hoped he did. And if only he could have known Naomi set the trap.
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Post by Energizer Bunny 211 on Mar 20, 2022 22:32:36 GMT
Finished S6 of the Expanse. I was waving bye Marco, see ya. 😄 I wondered what he was thinking, the little bits of his brain that remained, when his eyes shifted to where Filip would have sat and he saw his son wasn't there. Would he realise where Filip was, what he had done? gee, I hoped he did. And if only he could have known Naomi set the trap. Yes that was a good scene, a fitting scene. But my favourite characters (aside from Amos) were "my favourite Martian, 'Bad Ass Bobbie Draper" and Clarissa Mao better known as "Peaches". Those are two FINE ladies
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Post by hoku on Mar 30, 2022 18:09:29 GMT
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Post by dazk on Mar 31, 2022 0:06:49 GMT
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Post by saandrig on Apr 18, 2022 8:52:50 GMT
Just stumbled upon a show called "For All Mankind". And it was freaking amazing, especially Season 2. Felt like a sort of a prequel to The Expanse. I wonder what other great shows I never heard about.
I was watching "Space Force" because I saw Steve Carell and John Malkovich. It was a passable show for a comedy. And from reading stuff about it I saw a recommendation on "For All Mankind".
So you can skip Space Force, but definitely watch FAM. Very strong Expanse vibes in an alternate history version of the USA-USSR space race.
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Post by dazk on Apr 18, 2022 8:57:20 GMT
Just stumbled upon a show called "For All Mankind". And it was freaking amazing, especially Season 2. Felt like a sort of a prequel to The Expanse. I wonder what other great shows I never heard about. I was watching "Space Force" because I saw Steve Carell and John Malkovich. It was a passable show for a comedy. And from reading stuff about it I saw a recommendation on "For All Mankind". So you can skip Space Force, but definitely watch FAM. Very strong Expanse vibes in an alternate history version of the USA-USSR space race. What platform is it on?
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Post by saandrig on Apr 18, 2022 9:02:41 GMT
Just stumbled upon a show called "For All Mankind". And it was freaking amazing, especially Season 2. Felt like a sort of a prequel to The Expanse. I wonder what other great shows I never heard about. I was watching "Space Force" because I saw Steve Carell and John Malkovich. It was a passable show for a comedy. And from reading stuff about it I saw a recommendation on "For All Mankind". So you can skip Space Force, but definitely watch FAM. Very strong Expanse vibes in an alternate history version of the USA-USSR space race. What platform is it on? Apple TV+. Which explains why it ran so easy under the radar.
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Post by hoku on Apr 18, 2022 19:14:06 GMT
Funnily at least 1 major Expanse vet are on board with For All Mankind: Naren ShankarThere is also some Star Trek folks on there too ( Ronald D. Moore, Shankar, the Okudas) Can highly recommend "For All Mankind" it's a retro-space-age-WHAT-IF story with excellent visuals and plenty of interesting characters. Season 3 starts this summer.
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Post by hoku on Apr 18, 2022 19:15:39 GMT
Also, got the Expanse Art book.
It's very nice, too bad it only covers Season 1-3 though. Hope we'll get another or a complete one in the future. Love seeing the design iterations and concepts.
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Post by AnDromedary on Apr 18, 2022 21:59:42 GMT
Also, got the Expanse Art book. It's very nice, too bad it only covers Season 1-3 though. Hope we'll get another or a complete one in the future. Love seeing the design iterations and concepts. If you are into the design process, I highly recommend this video (which is kinda half video, half podcast) where Daniel from Spacedock is talking with Chris Danelon, one of the graphic designers for the show and they look at all the concept art created during the design process of the Rocinante.
As for "For All Mankind", I wasn't a big fan at first. Not so much into those alternate history settings and I thought it focused too much on the personal issues of the astronauts and their families. But it is very well done and I have to admit, somewhere in season 2 it really had me and the season 2 finale was a blast (no pun intended ). So yea, cool show, looking forward to s3.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2022 22:19:43 GMT
As for "For All Mankind", I wasn't a big fan at first. Not so much into those alternate history settings and I thought it focused too much on the personal issues of the astronauts and their families. But it is very well done and I have to admit, somewhere in season 2 it really had me and the season 2 finale was a blast (no pun intended ). So yea, cool show, looking forward to s3. I'm kind of in the same boat. I didn't like the premise, watched it to watch something. (And tbf I give things chances.) Wound up liking it as they progressed things faster and faster in terms of time in universe. Season 2 amped up the pacing and stakes enough that I was enjoying it quite a bit. The twists at the end were interesting too. And, if I'm being honest, when Tracy is onscreen I have a hard time looking away for a couple of reasons.
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Post by Energizer Bunny 211 on Apr 25, 2022 0:30:04 GMT
Pretty lady, for sure. (RE: post above
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Post by dazk on Apr 25, 2022 0:58:33 GMT
Also, got the Expanse Art book. It's very nice, too bad it only covers Season 1-3 though. Hope we'll get another or a complete one in the future. Love seeing the design iterations and concepts. If you are into the design process, I highly recommend this video (which is kinda half video, half podcast) where Daniel from Spacedock is talking with Chris Danelon, one of the graphic designers for the show and they look at all the concept art created during the design process of the Rocinante.
As for "For All Mankind", I wasn't a big fan at first. Not so much into those alternate history settings and I thought it focused too much on the personal issues of the astronauts and their families. But it is very well done and I have to admit, somewhere in season 2 it really had me and the season 2 finale was a blast (no pun intended ). So yea, cool show, looking forward to s3.
I did some skipping but that video was quite interesting.
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Post by dazk on Jul 28, 2022 1:01:50 GMT
Last night started "The Sins of Our Fathers: An Expanse Novella" (The Expanse) A short story post the ending of The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey It has been a bit underwhelming so far, think I am 40% through.It is focused on Filip Inaros/Nagata at this stage
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Post by dazk on Jul 30, 2022 1:10:59 GMT
So finished "The Sins of Our Fathers: An Expanse Novella" (The Expanse) A short story post the ending of The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey I am actually not sure what the point of the book was. It is exciting to find out it is about the fate of a character you don't know what happened to in the main books but whilst you learn something it is left again with a what happened to them after that??? You do also find out what happened to a side character in the stories but again nothing major. Sadly disappointing TBH, hope this is just a building block for future books.
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Post by hoku on Jul 30, 2022 11:24:19 GMT
thanks for the quick opinion I'm in a weird place with the Expanse. It's easily my favorite SciFi Universe after Mass Effect. Love the characters, stories, art-style and most of the cast and crew. I've been really satisfied with the TV Series conclusion (for now or ever) even if it was kinda open ended + "could/should be continued". I know the broad strokes of where the story and character arcs go in the remaining books. When I learned about these broad strokes my reaction was: with the time jump + change of characters and story focus + character fate(s) that weren't to my liking - I don't really have interest to read or actually see it play out. Overall just feels like a jump off point too much into Space Fantasy/Horror territory. (Have similiar feelings about the unraveling of the reapers "mystery" btw.) I actually prefer it this way with the core being a believable "Solar System" conflict and a dash of mystery (Goth/Builders/Protomolecule) + ending kinda open ended.
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Post by dazk on Jul 31, 2022 0:46:30 GMT
thanks for the quick opinion I'm in a weird place with the Expanse. It's easily my favorite SciFi Universe after Mass Effect. Love the characters, stories, art-style and most of the cast and crew. I've been really satisfied with the TV Series conclusion (for now or ever) even if it was kinda open ended + "could/should be continued". I know the broad strokes of where the story and character arcs go in the remaining books. When I learned about these broad strokes my reaction was: with the time jump + change of characters and story focus + character fate(s) that weren't to my liking - I don't really have interest to read or actually see it play out. Overall just feels like a jump off point too much into Space Fantasy/Horror territory. (Have similiar feelings about the unraveling of the reapers "mystery" btw.) I actually prefer it this way with the core being a believable "Solar System" conflict and a dash of mystery (Goth/Builders/Protomolecule) + ending kinda open ended. It's a novella so pretty short, took me probably six hours to read over two nights. I thought the last books were some of the best and the story was great and a fantastic ending to the series as a whole. The time jump is jarring at first but the writers do a great job with it over all and it is kind of necessary for how the Laconia/Duarte story plays out. So I'd be a solid recommend on reading Persepolis Rising, Tiamat's Wrath and Leviathan Falls.
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Post by q5tyhj on Aug 1, 2022 0:02:00 GMT
I thought the last books were some of the best and the story was great and a fantastic ending to the series as a whole. The time jump is jarring at first but the writers do a great job with it over all and it is kind of necessary for how the Laconia/Duarte story plays out. So I'd be a solid recommend on reading Persepolis Rising, Tiamat's Wrath and Leviathan Falls. Yeah the last three books are some of the best in the series (after the first two books, imo). I can sort of take or leave the middle books with the Free Navy/Marco and Filip story arc, but the Laconia stuff is great imo and I found the ending very satisfying. I always thought that the most interesting stuff about the entire series was the Ring Builder/Unknown Aggressor stuff, and that stuff figures most prominently in the last couple books in the series so it would be sort of tragic to read the entire series up to that point and then stop before it starts to get really good.
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Post by hoku on Aug 23, 2022 15:27:00 GMT
EDIT: Current release window is Summer 2023
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Post by dazk on Aug 24, 2022 0:03:10 GMT
EDIT: Current release window is Summer 2023
For others The Expanse stuff starts at 1:45
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Post by q5tyhj on Sept 11, 2022 22:58:28 GMT
Found a couple interesting posts on the Expanse subreddit RE the Ring builder civilization and their plan to defeat the Unknown Aggressors/dark gods (mostly from carefully parsing/analyzing the "Dreamer Interlude" chapters where Cara is interacting with the Adro Diamond), thought I'd post them here if anyone was interested. Warning: spoilers for Leviathan Falls. On the "Roman master plan", i.e. the plan the Ring builders hatched to defend against/defeath the "Goths" or Unknown Aggressors: So, Duarte knew that the human hive mind would be effective because it actually wasn’t his idea. It was the plan of the Gatebuilders all along. He merely thought it was his idea, but the Protomolecule was manipulating him.
It seems like this was missed by a lot of people, so I’ve made a couple posts explaining it, but I’m too lazy to link them so I’ll just write a brief summary here. I can try to find them if you want though as I do think I elaborate more on it than I do here:
The Gatebuilders knew that they were easy for the Goths to kill, as at this stage in their evolutionary history they were no longer hive jellyfish but rather “beings of rich light” who had their consciousness inextricably linked through their gates and all their technology. They also knew that their own weapons harmed their hive mind, as a result of this. And they also knew that “beings in the Substrate (the world of matter) are difficult to refract through rich light”.
So, presumably, prior to quarantining themselves and shutting down the gate network, they set administrative access to ring station to only respond to someone in the Substrate. Why would they do this, when they themselves were NOT in the Substrate anymore? Because, as Holden’s vision in Abaddon’s Gate showed, they “knew that someday a solution would be found”. They knew that someday one of their Protomolecule rocks would miss, and there was a nonzero statistical likelihood that an intelligent alien species would evolve on the world it originally targeted, find it, and survive the encounter with it to reach the slow zone, and then eventually the Adro Diamond. This would obviously take awhile. In fact, it took 2 billion years. But they were a civilization that had already survived for 3 billion years (the age of the Adro Diamond is 5 billion years old) so they would have been fine with waiting an eternity. Now, had ring station’s administrative access NOT been set to respond only to someone in the Substrate, then this would mean that theoretically a species like the Gatebuilders could have found everything instead of a species like us, and then they would be right back to the drawing board. So that part was critical to their plan.
Next, you have the Protomolecule itself. It manipulates the brain chemistry of those that interact with it, literally changing dopamine and serotonin levels to become addicted to it and fond of it - we see this happen with Cara during the dives, and indirectly we see it happen with Duarte as well. From Holden’s perspective at the very end, we see it happen again without him even understanding it is happening. For a moment, he sees the human hive mind concept as “beautiful”, he has a near religious experience of awe with it, and he almost, almost decides to go with that instead of destroying everything. He had been hooked up to ring station for minutes. Duarte had been hooked up for months.
So, there you have it, and there’s more evidence than what I just stated - including several characters, including Holden, mentioning that the Gatebuilder hive mind would be resurrected as a “hive mind of murder primates”. But in closing, I bet a lot of people would wonder just how this would actually be equivalent to the Gatebuilders returning from the dead, right? Well that one is easy:
The Adro Diamond. Once the human hive mind was complete, it would link up to the Adro Diamond, and the hive mind would gain all the memories and knowledge of the Gatebuilder civilization. This would be subjectively indistinguishable from their original hive mind, the only difference is a physical one - the hive mind is ultimately based on brains in the Substrate, and therefore is unique compared to everything they used in their evolutionary history before that point. It’s like running the same software on different hardware.
Once you realize this was their plan all along, suddenly everything about the alien plot of the prior eight books makes perfect sense, if you think about it. (from www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/s7xggd/roman_master_plan_thread/ ) And also a more general (but extremely detailed) analysis of the biology and evolution of the space-jellyfish Ring builders: www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/sbdzu5/on_the_natural_history_and_evolution_of_the_romans/
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Post by dazk on Sept 12, 2022 0:24:58 GMT
Found a couple interesting posts on the Expanse subreddit RE the Ring builder civilization and their plan to defeat the Unknown Aggressors/dark gods (mostly from carefully parsing/analyzing the "Dreamer Interlude" chapters where Cara is interacting with the Adro Diamond), thought I'd post them here if anyone was interested. Warning: spoilers for Leviathan Falls. On the "Roman master plan", i.e. the plan the Ring builders hatched to defend against/defeath the "Goths" or Unknown Aggressors: So, Duarte knew that the human hive mind would be effective because it actually wasn’t his idea. It was the plan of the Gatebuilders all along. He merely thought it was his idea, but the Protomolecule was manipulating him.
It seems like this was missed by a lot of people, so I’ve made a couple posts explaining it, but I’m too lazy to link them so I’ll just write a brief summary here. I can try to find them if you want though as I do think I elaborate more on it than I do here:
The Gatebuilders knew that they were easy for the Goths to kill, as at this stage in their evolutionary history they were no longer hive jellyfish but rather “beings of rich light” who had their consciousness inextricably linked through their gates and all their technology. They also knew that their own weapons harmed their hive mind, as a result of this. And they also knew that “beings in the Substrate (the world of matter) are difficult to refract through rich light”.
So, presumably, prior to quarantining themselves and shutting down the gate network, they set administrative access to ring station to only respond to someone in the Substrate. Why would they do this, when they themselves were NOT in the Substrate anymore? Because, as Holden’s vision in Abaddon’s Gate showed, they “knew that someday a solution would be found”. They knew that someday one of their Protomolecule rocks would miss, and there was a nonzero statistical likelihood that an intelligent alien species would evolve on the world it originally targeted, find it, and survive the encounter with it to reach the slow zone, and then eventually the Adro Diamond. This would obviously take awhile. In fact, it took 2 billion years. But they were a civilization that had already survived for 3 billion years (the age of the Adro Diamond is 5 billion years old) so they would have been fine with waiting an eternity. Now, had ring station’s administrative access NOT been set to respond only to someone in the Substrate, then this would mean that theoretically a species like the Gatebuilders could have found everything instead of a species like us, and then they would be right back to the drawing board. So that part was critical to their plan.
Next, you have the Protomolecule itself. It manipulates the brain chemistry of those that interact with it, literally changing dopamine and serotonin levels to become addicted to it and fond of it - we see this happen with Cara during the dives, and indirectly we see it happen with Duarte as well. From Holden’s perspective at the very end, we see it happen again without him even understanding it is happening. For a moment, he sees the human hive mind concept as “beautiful”, he has a near religious experience of awe with it, and he almost, almost decides to go with that instead of destroying everything. He had been hooked up to ring station for minutes. Duarte had been hooked up for months.
So, there you have it, and there’s more evidence than what I just stated - including several characters, including Holden, mentioning that the Gatebuilder hive mind would be resurrected as a “hive mind of murder primates”. But in closing, I bet a lot of people would wonder just how this would actually be equivalent to the Gatebuilders returning from the dead, right? Well that one is easy:
The Adro Diamond. Once the human hive mind was complete, it would link up to the Adro Diamond, and the hive mind would gain all the memories and knowledge of the Gatebuilder civilization. This would be subjectively indistinguishable from their original hive mind, the only difference is a physical one - the hive mind is ultimately based on brains in the Substrate, and therefore is unique compared to everything they used in their evolutionary history before that point. It’s like running the same software on different hardware.
Once you realize this was their plan all along, suddenly everything about the alien plot of the prior eight books makes perfect sense, if you think about it. (from www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/s7xggd/roman_master_plan_thread/ ) And also a more general (but extremely detailed) analysis of the biology and evolution of the space-jellyfish Ring builders: www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/sbdzu5/on_the_natural_history_and_evolution_of_the_romans/ Great and interesting stuff.
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