Episode: 1762
Title: HPR1762: HPR Audio Book Club 10
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1762/hpr1762.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:03:09

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This is HPR Episode 1762 entitled HPR Audio Book Club 10 and is part of the series HPR Audio Book Club.
It is hosted by HPR Audio Book Club and is about 170 minutes long.
The summary is in this episode, the HPR Audio Book Club Review Revolution Radio by S. Kenlon.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Radio. Today we have for you the 10th episode of the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club,
and we're reviewing the Book Revolution Radio by Seth Kenlin, a Homicide Pirate Radio. Again,
it's not Pirate Radio. It is Revolution Radio by Seth Kenlin.
I'm Pokey, and with me tonight is Taj. What's good, everybody? And X1-1-1.
Howdy folks. And 5150 isn't with us tonight because he's had his recent tragedy, so I just,
I know by the time it's air, it's probably going to be a little too late, but if you could spare
a thought for 5150 or even a couple of bucks towards the fundraiser that's trying to do our best
to make him whole again. It'd be nice if we could, and it'd be nice if you had that in your heart
to do. But anyway, moving on. There's three of us tonight. Usually we have a few more, so that
means that you want to come on with us next time we record. Revolution Radio. What did you guys think?
I have to admit that the first chapter or so, I really didn't like this book. It took till
probably the third, fourth, fifth chapter in before the hook really set, and I had to finish it.
So definitely a slow start, partially because of the two different kinds of styles of audio,
and the little snippets were really hard to hear, and I'm like, oh man, if the whole book is going
to sound like this, I'm barely going to be able to struggle through this. But then it switched to the
more majority type audio, and you know, I slugged through the first double chapters,
wondering how it was going to be, and then it finally picked up.
I unabashedly love this book. And I get that like it's not, especially at the beginning,
it is kind of slow, and it's a very kind of exposition heavy right out of the gate. It's trying to
explain this whole kind of brave new world, you know, that they've created from what's left of
society. But there's so many things in this that just tickle specific, I can't talk specific
things in my personality that I just cannot not love this book. The story is great, but I'm
almost more in love with the world than I am with this particular story. Like I'm happy with the
story. I think the story is cool. It's nice to follow. It's got some cool characters in it.
But really, I just really in love with that world.
Oh, that's really cool. Because I really liked the story, but I had a lot of problems with the
world. I could not get into it, which took me out of the story sometimes and I had forced myself
back into it. And I always forget to do this at the beginning of the show, but for the new listener,
the way we do the book review is for the first part of our show here, we won't do any spoilers.
We'll talk about the book in general terms. Won't go too far into the storyline past maybe the
first chapter or whatever, but we won't do any spoilers. Sometime after we're done reviewing as
much as we can without talking about any spoilers, we'll take a short break where we each review
a beverage of our own choosing and then we'll get into spoilers at the end of that. So if you haven't
listened to this audio book or haven't decided yet, whether you want to listen to it, the first
part of the show, we'll try to convince you to listen or not depending on what you think of our
opinions of it. So I always forget to do that right up front. I should, but near that side of the
way. But yes, I really did like the story. I like what happened, but the world I had a problem with,
I still am not able to decide whether this book is set in a utopian future or a dystopian future.
And I think it depends on which character you ask. I also think it depends on your perspective
of what a utopian future is versus what a dystopian future is. I think that's one of the reasons I
like it is because it's neither, but both. You kind of have the ideas of a utopia that are developed
now and how those play out and how those don't actually play out the way you think it would.
I think the story very much contrasts the book we did last month down and out in the magic kingdom,
giving a very, very alternate future if things were to go only slightly differently.
Yeah, one of the things that makes them different is one of the things that I, I don't know,
this one there was a revolution. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that. And
well, I don't want to say it. So this is the result of the world being violently destroyed,
and now it's sort of being rebuilt. Whereas down in the magic kingdom,
materials and energy and free time seem to be limitless, and they could do whatever they want.
The world was a play thing to them. Whereas here, there's still the, there's some sense of struggle,
but there seems to also in this book, be an unlimited
quantity of supplies. It's transportation that seemed to have trouble with. And that,
you know, throughout the book, I was having trouble with where like,
several times they're reading canned food. Well, if there's a revolution,
and it seemed like it was some time ago and everything was destroyed, where's all this canned
food coming from? Because I didn't hear anything about factories or that kind of thing, you know what I mean?
I got the impression it was all leftover canned food.
Yeah, which would imply that they should run out at some point, but they just kind of,
you know, asked for what everybody needs. And it seems to show up.
Yeah, I kind of felt like it just, they never say, I'm trying to do this without
spoiling anything. They never say the age of some of the characters, but I guess in my brain,
I'm imagining them to be a little younger than maybe they are. Because in my mind,
even though the world has changed drastically, the revolution in my mind didn't happen that long ago,
that like it may, there may still be things around from that time pretty easily.
Yeah, they do, they do a very good job of painting a canvas with very general strokes and
allowing the reader to fill that in as kind of they, they're predisposed to do.
Can you reward that for me just a little because I'm feeling dumb and also watching this
etherpad work is fascinating? There are kind of broad strokes and general ideas, but some details
are left out for kind of you, the reader or listener to fill in the blanks.
And people's even physical descriptions are kind of vague. People's ages are vague, distances,
general geographic location, how far things are apart is given in relative terms, but never in
any kind of empirical way that we could measure and say, no, for sure, okay, this is in this place,
it's this far away from here. This is how far they traveled. This is how old they are. It's
fuzzy. Yes, yes. Yeah, I agree with that. And in that, a lot of the things that at least the
narrator seemed to not care about and universe the things that the narrator did care about,
and she seemed to imply that the whole world thought somewhat similarly to her,
if not exactly like her, but a lot of it seemed against human nature to me.
It's no spoiler to say that there was a lot of sharing going on in the book and the people
took care of one another, and at least that was her view of the world. But as she went through
the story, there wasn't quite as much as that as I think she thought there was maybe. I don't
know. Did you get that impression? Or am I? I don't know. Now, I think her world view is very
trying to do this, but that's what it's hard. It's very informed by her ideals, and I think there's
several points in the book where those ideals are just pretty openly challenged by the world around
her. And she's kind of taken it back by it almost like she lives in this version of
not an activity about that she thinks the revolution went in one way, and it probably did,
but then people have moved past that point where she's still stuck in that point in some ways.
I guess that's kind of what I meant by whether that's a utopia or a dystopia kind of
defend depends on the starting definition of utopia. So you can't really tell someone
it to utopia unless you know what they think utopia looks like.
Right. There's a big like thread through this whole story of anonymity and knowing the author
that I understand why that's important to him. But I think that that plays into it too, because
the certain characters are very really want to keep their own feelings secret and not let them out,
and in doing so it's almost like they're creating this world where people may not remember the
ideals that started this world. And both of those things make perfect sense to me. It's only been
just recently that I think anyone in our community learned that Klatu had a real name at all,
let alone was willing to publish it. And now I guess he's he's kind of out there as Seth
Ken Linney's claim in some of this work that he's done. He's done a lot of work too. So I can
I can I can see what you mean about that. But also yeah it's like the the revolution is over
and they're rebuilding the world, but the struggles not over there are there is still human nature
to battle. And I think we see a lot of that in the book, even though even though people
seem to profess the the the the community ideals, there's there's there's a lot of it that just
doesn't go away. It's a lot easier to make a large societal change one big time that it is to
maintain it. And I think that that's kind of where this story happens is after the big change
and it's that maintenance period and everybody's kind of asleep at the wheel. Okay so first off I didn't
know that this was plateau. So that make that also adds some depth to the story.
I just heard your light bulb go off all the way over here. I did do I saw it happen. It was a
flash out my window. So one of the things in the book that I'm not so sure I mean I liked it
as part of the story, but I'm not sure I was comfortable with it is all the lying that everybody
does. I mean nobody tells the truth about anything because they're just constantly trying to hide
their their motives as well as their identity. Now I understand hiding your identity, but
you just never and it's not the fact that everybody was lying. It's the fact that everybody was
comfortable with everybody else lying and they just kind of went on about their business
as if as if that didn't matter and I think it does matter you've got to be truthful with people
to have any kind of real relationship with them and if you don't have a relationship with people
you're on your own and I just don't think people were meant to live that way. So that's one thing
about the author's perspective or that not the author excuse me the narrator's perspective
that I just couldn't bring myself in line with the way I accepted it in the story I got to that.
I can see that the world they were living in made them feel like that was necessary,
but at the same time I'm gonna add my own to what you were just saying they're poking that
I don't think you can ever have a real community of people when the whole basis of every
relationship is based on lying and false information and withholding information it's only by
you know openly collaborating and sharing yourself with the people you want to be in community
with the community develops. And I think it's the world view of the people who are dealing with
these the specific characters that we're dealing with deal with the world in a certain way and
that's very representative of the way they deal with it. I'm gonna cross the spoiler line for like
two seconds because it's not really important but it is totally this backwards where everybody's
kind of metacognitively thinking about everybody else. I mean there's literally a point where a
character says well I know that they killed that guy and they know that I know that they killed that
guy but we're gonna play it cool like nobody knows what's going on because you know that's just
gonna make this go easier. I mean that's just kind of the world they live in. Yeah and I can get that
in the context of their mission but it seems like everywhere everything was more like that.
I'm not sure how much of the outside world we've really got to see because pretty much everybody
we need has something to do with that mission. Yeah that is true even though the narrator didn't even
well I guess I can't talk about that but you're right and the narrator's world view was
extraordinarily local. I mean she was very much focused on the extent of her senses so when she
wasn't at her console it was as far as she could hear and as far as she could see was all she was
really concerned with and she was assuming that everybody felt and acted that way and that the
world was taking care of itself because of it. Yeah she's the epitome of in my mind of an
unreliable narrator. There are things that I don't trust the narrator of the story and what she tells
in the story she's telling the viewpoint she's telling it from I just don't trust it and I think
that's what makes it interesting to me is gonna kind of try to judge what is real and what isn't real
what's her you know reality that she's looking at versus what reality really is and I think that's
pretty interesting to just kind of break apart. I also I'm just throwing it out there because nobody
said it yet can I get a what's up for a strong female lead character because that's what this book
has and it's awesome. Oh yeah for sure but also I didn't even think of it that way and I'm glad
you pointed out maybe I have to relisten and think of it that way as her being like unreliable.
My my whole presumption with her just based on the way that she executed her duties
is I figured if she's telling this story she was telling it for posterity and therefore
would be entirely truthful about it. I never occurred to me that that she could be lying
or even be wrong about stuff it just didn't occur to me but you're right she could just
have gotten something wrong or could even be intentionally deceptive to the listener but it
didn't occur to me but thank you. And see I guess I didn't so much not trust her to be truthful I
I kind of saw this as the lead's internal model log and so I assumed that she was truthful to
herself but not always accurate so she is you know saying to herself and you know by proximity to
the listener what she truly believes is the way the world is whether or not that has any bearing on
reality. I kind of my my head can and I guess if you kind of call it something I kind of
imagine this whole story because this is the second time I've gone through it. I kind of
imagined it as without spoiling something she would leave in her console to help somebody else
just even though they would have an idea of what happened to maybe lay it out and and the main
characters terms I don't think it she would be untruthful intentionally like deceptive. I think
it's just you know you hear too I mean it's the Rochelle Mon syndrome you hear two people tell
the same story they're going to bring their worldview to it and I just think that the main
character's worldview is so strong that it would be hard for her to tell a story without that
just completely saturating the whole story. Yeah and that's another thing that made me think that
you know while I was listening it made me think that she was being honest as a narrator
was that she was pretty good about saying when she didn't know if something was the truth or not
or didn't care whether it was the truth or not or or didn't understand or didn't know
something I thought she was pretty good about that. She as the narrator didn't seem to make a lot
of assumptions. No I don't think she seems like the type a engineer hacker type I don't think she
would make a lot of assumptions just as a person I think she would try to you know root out everything
if she could. I see her worldview is very much a lot she looks at the world's inputs and outputs
so everything has kind of a logical flow to it and it seems like she tries to figure that flow out.
Yeah I definitely get the kind of hacker engineer vibe from her and that does very much
color someone's worldview a specific way. I wanted to talk briefly with you guys to see if
it was just me or if anyone else had some significant technical difficulties actually
accessing the book like getting the files digging into it. I know I grabbed
Poke had re-encoded it to mp3 and then I ended up grabbing that and writing a little bash script
that read in all the files turned it into an XML file and then I pulled it down from my own web
server as an RSS feed so I can continue to listen to the episodes in my RSS pod catcher because
that's the way I prefer to consume them. Yeah there seem to be a significant technical difficulties
from the people on the HPR mailing list getting and listening to this one which I was completely
unaware of you know at the time that you picked it. This was your pick wasn't it X1-1-1?
No I think it was Taj's pick. Yeah it was mine I probably should have looked at the site and
checked it before I recommended it. No no it's totally cool I'm not trying to assign blame I just
couldn't remember who assigned it. Did had you heard it or read it before you picked it?
I had read the ebook and I had downloaded the audiobook and my intention was to go back and
listen to the audiobook at some point anyways whether we did it for the audiobook club or not.
Once I opened it up I realized that like some of the files were corrupted and so I went back
and tried to download it again and I got it and some files were corrupted and I did it like three
times until I got all of them corrupted except for one and what I wound up doing is just taking that
one it was only like two paragraphs of the end of the chapter and so I just opened the ebook and read
the last paragraphs and moved on it was not worth my time to try to download it again.
Gotcha okay yeah when I downloaded it the first let me see how did it go. I downloaded it using
down them all which seemed to grab them without a problem but it did seem to take a little bit of time
and then I extracted them okay so yeah I downloaded them on my old EPC I mean like it's a 701 it's
the first gen EPC and I extracted them directly to my SD card my micro SD card that I use in my MP3
player and all the files were there and they all had data they were all were of you know significant
size then when I went to play them they just didn't work they just didn't play and I took those
files and what did I do I think I read downloaded it on another computer and extracted them right on
the computer and then tested them and they played fine it probably an M player I think is what I
had installed on that one might have been VLC but they played fine in there so I copied them over
to my MP3 player and again they did not work so whatever the problem with them you know M player or
VLC whatever I had going was able to just chew through it and it was okay other that's because that's
because that was a play anything yeah well other people couldn't even get the the tarball untard they
they couldn't you know uncompress it so yeah I just one by one converted reencoded them from MP
because they opened in in Audacity just fine as well and I reencoded them to MP3 and what I suspect
is the problem that my MP3 player had with them is that the he I think he used an unconventional tag
in the metadata to add a the art the album art to it and maybe he used something that iTunes wants
but AUG does not because it was not it was not the the AUG the standard AUG tag for album art
yeah I did a similar dance with mine I had I downloaded the AUG because you should if you have
the choice between AUG and AAC definitely go with AUG yeah and so I tried to I put it on my computer
tested it out okay blaze so I threw it on my my clips it but I have rock box on it was like
not having it so I have a bash script to like change things from AUG to MP3 and it breaks my
heart every time I have to fire it up but I did to reencode it and so what I ended up doing was I
took the poke was kind enough to throw out his recon reencoded versions I grabbed that I initially
tried to use socks to speed them up in the file and then listen to them and that was horrible don't
anyone ever do that unless you're much better at using socks than I am it was bad and so I ended
up just creating that XML file throwing it all up onto my web server and then using the native
application to change the speed instead yeah that makes sense and I'm I'm still I'm curious and
I may try it just to see I don't think that the AUG encoding was done wrong I think it was just
that tag I mean it those are the only two things I changed were reencoding it to MP3 and changing
that tag but I didn't know about the tag until after I had already decided to to change it to MP3
so I just kind of went that route and I made on have had to reencode I didn't even think of a tag
or even look at it I just reencoded it and worked so I just dropped it there I wonder if you're
uh script that reencodes does it strip the tags out of it I would have to go back and look I'm not
sure it's not actually on this computer that I'm on right now until my laptop yeah it'd be
interested it was definitely an interesting adventure in just getting to the book and then
you know I still very much enjoyed listening to it and looking forward to you know our monthly
chat about a book I just thought of it maybe it's like this huge like alternate reality game like
you have to hack your own audio book to be able to listen to it to to get into the world
that's that's kind of what it felt like and uh I wasn't too worried because I I kind of figured that
you guys would figure it out and I also figured if I didn't get it figured out I'd still be okay
because I have a paperback version of it on my bookshelf so I was going to be okay either way
we're persistent enough a lot I figured one of us would figure it out and overall I think it was
worth it it was it was the story itself was worth you know that work to to hear it I completely agree
one of the things I forgot to mention earlier and and I think it's another thing that just kind of
if you if you know caught you it just kind of makes sense that to me reading this was very cinematic
like I could see this being turned into like a short film like really easily um and I don't know why
because it it almost seems like it would be not get it that because it's very internal dialogue
that I just it was very visual to me for some reason short film this has got more content
on a better story than most you know full-length films that are now produced that's why it would
be a short film because nobody in Hollywood would think that anybody smart enough to actually go
watch two hours of this oh yeah I was gonna say this is this is way too heady to be a movie nowadays
this might have been made in the 70s but not today like see if Michael Bay made this into a movie
there would be four or five times the explosions aliens and or robots bonus if it's robot aliens
and some romantic interest thrown in there for good measure exactly and this to me this is more
of like a Logan's run like hey check out these concepts think about these things while I tell you
a story in your Michael Bay list you forgot turtles with teeth and nose holes
I hope they've always had that and I'll get off yeah that one I don't blame on Michael Bay
and I was like if I was like eight or nine that movie would scare the other little bit Jesus out of me
so what do you guys think about that though like does this just remind you more of the genre of
like the 70s style of movies like I don't know if you guys ever saw the illustrated man or Logan's run
or there's a couple others from that era that were you know had way more silence and background
noise than dialogue yeah I kind of like the vibe I got we just said Logan's run yeah kind of I
get that like the 70s like kind of I don't want to call it independent but just sort of like
that kind of vibe of sci-fi movies like I'm thinking like the first Mad Max like where a lot of
it's the silent movie like you're just kind of watching the scenery and and letting Matt tell the
story I did totally get that kind of vibe I agree it's not a movie that would be made today but I
can see it being done very almost like an art house kind of deal and I'm way too young to have
seen any of those the only 70s movies I've seen there's some Bond films and Star Wars and neither
those really fit the description that wasn't a lie for it but I've seen yeah yeah same here
I've gone back to watch a few of them that were you know recommended like Logan's run is is
worth a watch but you can't watch something like that expecting the Michael Bay movie
well I'll add it's a list yeah that and if you've never seen oh help me out here touch THX I
always get the number wrong 1138 I think maybe yeah probably as George Lucas's first I think it
was his first film or at least his first major film that that movie's incredible I thought
America or graffiti was his first film I if I remember correctly THX is like I want to say it was
a student film or something you had to do with his film school stuff and then I just kind of turn
into a movie if I remember the story correctly oh okay either way put that one at the top of your
netflix queue because it's really good I am not a Star Wars fan but I am a fan of that movie
all right so is anybody got any other pre spoiler the things to say anything about the reading
or the sound quality or anything like that well as I mentioned earlier there's almost I don't
think it's too much spoilers to say they almost sounded like pre-recorded broadcasts or propaganda
pieces and the sound quality on those was really hard to digest it could be because of the fact
that I listened to everything at like 1.8x and that might have ruined it for me and so that
could very well be my fault but when I initially thought he munged those intentionally I'm certain of
that okay those were really hard to to hear but it did feel kind of on purpose hard to hear and
but the actual narrative of the story I thought the audio quality the production quality was very good
yeah I think the especially the the little interludes with the revolutionary catacasem
I don't think he is a ham radio operator but I know he talked to a bunch of them to write this
book that is definitely like a sound you get used to because ham radio is never clear it's always
kind of that static you think you just kind of get used to listening through it almost and so it
kind of headed um a little bit of I want I guess authenticity to it be kind of like this is
something that would would be broadcast on on their network that probably the the commies would
listen to and it's sort of like they're just passing around amongst themselves I want to come
back to this after the spoilers because my opinion of it changed yeah the the commies I thought
that was an interesting word every every time that came up I thought it was kind of neat that
you know the the communicators called themselves commies not necessarily because they were
communist but because they were communicators if I thought that was a really interesting dichotomy
there because you want to think communist every time you hear that but really the whole world is
a commune and the word communist wouldn't have the same meaning yeah yeah I assumed that it was a
very intentional word choice and I think it's one that would turn off a certain kind of person someone
who wasn't you know willing to to change their mind about preconceived notions I think that would
be a big turn off I don't think you know I think there's a certain type a certain kind of person
that wouldn't get through the first chapter of this book well and I mean how many times have
have deep proprietary software industry label people who use the gpl is commies I mean like it's
almost I kind of feel like it's almost taking it back a little bit like okay you know that's fine
we'll use that insult and kind of turn around and use it I'm not sure if that was before or after
we were called un-American cancer I don't I don't think it holds the same meaning uh in the free
software world as it does in the uh cold war world the most deep bomber we already miss you
but to your point pokey I think the same people who wouldn't be able to remap that word or
wouldn't be willing to are the same kind of people who hear the word hacker that we use in very
much one way that mainstream media uses in very much another way and cannot distinguish the difference
yes thank you and I have to say I really enjoyed her reading of this I don't think she was as
polished as a lot of the people maybe who read on on potty of books it's almost as if they
pre-read you know each each paragraph or each page and then go through it and are a bit smoother
and and she might have been reading this maybe not for the first time that she read the book but she
wasn't reading it for the second time in in 10 minutes I didn't get that impression but it's almost
like it should have been read that way it almost it felt like that's the way this should have
been narrated I completely agree that almost not quite unpolished feeling gives a little more
authenticity to the world that's been created yeah that's one of the reasons why I think reading
it the second time I kind of popped into my head that this might be something she was leaving
inside the console to to leave for somebody else is that because there were mistakes left in and
I have a hard time believing glad to let a mistake slip do if you found it if it wasn't intentional
oh I found one or two but they were more editing mistakes than
uh or actions they had any editorial mistakes than technical ones there were not many technical
mistakes and this there was a couple of double reads and there were a few of them in like the same
episode towards the end so I it felt like maybe that episode might have might have got rushed but
I think they were like three in one episode and one in one each and two other episodes for
double reads which is a really low count um for any audio book at these days it seems
I can only remember one being noticeable but I am still fairly new to the whole audio book
world I've not done that quite so much but I only noticed one where it was well noticeable
well you also doing it at like super high speed and I think they're less noticeable when you speed up
the audio like that I also thought just like the tone of her voice was very relaxing like
yeah it was almost um because she is the voice of this character it kind of told you
what her headspace was a little bit that it was just a so calm and just kind of even keel
like the veneer and her never gets excited it's just all very matter of fact and very
very stable but very pleasant at the same time like it's not something you listen to and it
runs on it was it was very it was just a nice voice to listen to I think
pleasant and stable but she'd still shoot you if she had to right she's totally we keep going
back stores on the show she's totally the Han Solo like you know I do it because I have to I'm
not gonna get excited about it I mean I'll shoot you in your face if you ever make a deal
it was weird because she reminded me a lot of clat 2 I think if clat 2 had read his own work it
would have sounded just like this but less female you know not female I haven't read his other
book yet but it definitely like the the writing has the same cadence as his speaking and you could
totally tell like if you put that in front of me it didn't tell who it was and said somebody on
in the hacker public radio community wrote this I'm about 90% sure I'd be able to nail it down
to clat 2 yeah yeah I think so see I didn't but again I'm fair I'm still new word to the community
haven't listened to a huge amount of his work but there was an odd familiar to the whole thing
and now that I now that those dots are connected it it seems a little more obvious like Bob
just keeps getting burned oh yeah I went from incandescent to see a CFL and now I'm burned
into melee easier it was I liked another thing I liked about this one was that there wasn't opening
in closing music and credits and advertisements or whatnot at you know at each episode I had no
idea what chapter I was listening to or what or what actually she announced the chapters but I
had no idea what episode I was listening to because they flowed pretty seamlessly into one another
and now only once did I ever notice a difference in sound quality that made me think it was a
different recording session it was only one time to that happen I really liked that I like being
able to breeze through the book like excuse me breeze through the book like that I kind of felt
that way just reading the written one too like it's not we were just talking about a book before
we started recording it's not like that where it's like you know leave you on the edge of your seat
kind of like have to read the next one I gotta get my next hit this is just like a slow steady
roll that like was just easy to keep going it wasn't I could put it down but I didn't want to like
I just wanted to kind of keep going to see what happened I wasn't pressing it wasn't a big pulse
pounding thing I just kind of wanted to see where it was going yeah did have a different draw but it
was the same result of I want to keep listening to this until it's over yeah and I was neither stressed
about listening or not listening the the pace was relaxed enough that I it never felt cliff
hangry if I ever had to put it down or walk away from it I wasn't like oh man I can't wait to
get back but then while I was listening I was never like I wish I was doing something else either
right I just it was very comfortable pace and and just you know no cliff hangers really to speak
of it just pleasant I don't know about you all but I'm starting to get thirsty yes yes me too
I concur so I'm gonna step away and acquire mine if you guys want to start chatting about yours
or if you want to wait for me whichever uh silences seamless in the output file so we'll wait
for you and no one will even know man's got a big house all right gentlemen thanks for waiting
I am back cool would you come back with you you uh got what's probably the most exciting beverage so
why don't you go first I have been searching for with the last six months or so for this beer
and I finally found one on Sunday completely by chance and I absolutely had to pick it up so
that I could you know drink it and share it with all the lovely people I found a dogfish had 120
minute IPA and for as much of this cost me it had better be amazing oh really they got those on
the shelf at the store that I'm at I never thought to try one because I don't really usually care
for IPAs well if you don't care for IPAs I can't imagine you'd really care for a 120 minute IPA
so how many minutes or no that must be how many minutes the hops are allowed to soak or something
yeah dogfish head does a 60 a 90 and a 120 I've had 60 and 90 already 60 is not really
happy enough for me 90 is very good and this 120 smells amazing cool so it's got some giving it a
sniff here it's got some citrusy and hoppy notes to it maybe a little bit of pine but not not
overwhelming yeah hops always kind of remind me a pine or juniper well you you might like this it's
almost got a it's got the same kind of creamy silky texture of like a stout or a porter the hops are
not at all overwhelming I've had hopier but I've not had better hopier oh I like creamy and silky
it doesn't look like it would be it looks like a mid amber color but the texture is very much
got that that silkyness going on that's very nice cool is it real sudsy or stingy on the tongue
going down or is it kind of mellow that way it's very very mellow it's almost got a little
smokiness to it as well it's it's got a lot going on and for 830 for a 12 ounce bottle it had
better yeah yeah a lot of times the IPA seem to be like almost over-carbonated to me where is where
the carbonation tries to kind of sting the tongue you know what I mean yeah last night I had a
a backstress stowaway IPA and it was very it had a very large head on it this is there's no head
at all it's not overly carbonated it's it's very nice cool touch about you would have you get
in your in your glass tonight well I'm a little disappointed but I would went to the store right
before I came home from work today and I was going to buy some lemonade to make some of my fantastic
homemade lemonade that I make and no joke I get there and there was a sign that literally said
and it's best like it looked like Sharpie no lemons today so there were no lemons to make lemonade
so I actually bought some pre-made lemonade and it's just not as good it's a little too sweet
oh that is sad is it got high fructose corn poison in the ingredients list is it like the first
thing I'm sure it tells us I don't know it's not bad it's just I I like my lemonade a little more
tart and less sweet and this is just like almost so much sweet I feel like I'm just injecting
sugar water straight into my veins oh yeah I know what you mean I don't like overly sweet drinks
people get mad at me when I make the like coolator whatever whatever drink they get mad at me when
I make it in oddly I like a little bit of coffee with my sugar I'll take my coffee with coffee thank
you I second that opinion yeah so what was the was there a particular brand you got or is it just
a jacks brand or a hackney brand lemonade what do you got it is simply lemonade and I'm looking
at the nutritional facts and you don't want to know there is 11% lemon juice in here that's all I'm
gonna say and it has lots of natural flavors but they don't say what those are I love that I love
when they just write natural flavor I'm told it we got it in nature we promise what what does
nature taste like I still haven't figured that one out I'm drinking it right here apparently a lot
of chemicals I'm I'm totally putting this nutrition label in the show notes excellent oh and I have
got it it's fairly mundane for this time of year I've got a Sam Adams summer ale and I don't
know I think it's pretty drinkable it it falls a little flat on the the flavor you know the flavor
profile it kind of fades quick it doesn't last long but I think that makes it a little more drinkable
and a little more generally acceptable for instance my wife bought this six pack and took one out
and opened it for herself and she never drinks beer but but she drank one of these so I think it's
a little more acceptable to everybody else but it's by no means bad it's fairly citrusy it's
got some lemon in there it's I don't taste any hops whatsoever which you know I don't like no hops
so it could stand to be a little hopier to be honest with you um it's a little little sweet
little citrusy and too bubbly it's a summer ale it's it's real drinkable it goes down really easy
and it's uh it's fairly refreshing really what beer couldn't stand to be a little more hoppy
there are several that I've had that I just I couldn't take it man when when the IB use
go up past I don't know maybe 65 I think it's you're good you can stop I think passed about
45 or 50 it starts making the beer less enjoyable but yeah you get up to about 65 and the IB use
and it's little too much the label says this has grains of paradise in it and I have no idea what
that is or what that means I've been it's healthier for you than natural flavors
you could be very right about that I've been it's more natural and more flavorful than natural
flavors I love when it says natural and artificial flavors and still won't tell you what any of them are
so are we ready to spoiler the crap out of this book yes let's do something that I noticed
after I listened to the book or I kind of started to think about it while I was listening to the book
but really kind of connected afterwards was all of the locations that the main character visited
sounded like radio station call signs to me rather than actual town names
yeah in the written book they actually she says them like she phonetically sounds them out to
trying to make a word out of it but in the book it's like like she says KCAG it's KCAG
so like it's it's a lot more obvious in the written word than it is in the audio book
okay see I guess the what I had pictured was you know they had started out in the old world as
radio station identifiers and had become the names of the towns where they take KCAG
and turn it into KCAG as the name of the town me getting super nerdy and just kind of knowing
about this it seems to me like they're these radio towers are not broadcast towers because she
talks about the range of them and it's not very far it seems a lot less than your typical
broadcast towers so I'm thinking it'd be something like a two four two meters or 440 centimeter range
basically your average local repeater for him radio so you're you're looking at you know maybe 10
miles something like that and I may be grossly overestimating that but you know good reception
and that's why because at some point she talks about that's why the settlement sprung up where
they did it's because that's where they had to put the towers oh and see I got I guess the the
way I had pictured was everything except KCAG had been repeaters but KCAG was an actual
signal tower it could be I know they mentioned other cities that have call signs and that may be
the case maybe there's like a higher argue of you know big repeaters and then smaller or big
you know signal generators and then smaller repeaters that spread that out
yeah and I know very little about radio but you know a little bit about computers and what's
going on and a couple of things that threw me off when it came to that was the date of births
that came at the end of all the transmissions that was like a compressed and digitized
form of everything that got transmitted and they were supposed to archive everything
everybody has their own local archive and that's good for redundant backups but where they
get all this storage you know I mean that's that's a lot they're gonna they're gonna fill
what they have fast and it doesn't seem like they've got you know a whole big storage array and
this unless this is so far in the future that you know technology has just progressed but then
again it doesn't sound like it has because they're still able to solder and repair circuit boards
you know even though those were fairly you know generic circuit board which I mean at this point
most circuits on anything useful are really not designed to be user repairable
not that people can't repair them but you know it not from experience but from people's anecdotal
evidence 20 years ago you know you could repair your own circuit boards and now you know it's
cheaper just to replace them it's way more specialized skill and as far as the data I'm thinking
if you were going to store because I'm thinking about you can send data as far as text data over
with audio tones pretty easily as you took those audio tones and converted them into text files
that would probably be a very efficient way of storing that stuff but I don't know it seems
like with the technology they have they'd be able to do that I mentioned earlier that
there was like an editorial thing here and there and I don't remember there was only two of them
that I really noticed while listening and one of them was kind of in the first third of the book
and I forgot what it was but towards the end of the book something that the narrator said
uh when she set the charges and uh exploded the charges she said in real life explosions go like
this and then you know describe it and that felt really out of place because everything in this
story was in real life there was no more that didn't appear to be any more fiction there was no
TV no you know radius there weren't any books she talked about the there being a waste of paper and
it didn't seem like anybody had you know electronics other than the the comies so that was that seemed
seemed like a very weird turn of phrase from this particular character in this particular setting
yeah I actually didn't catch that um yeah I mean that's interesting I mean it's feasible that she
would remember before the revolution and maybe as a kid having seen that stuff and maybe
that's her just saying that but I would think after living in this room for a while she'd
probably purge that over brain pretty quick yeah and and also it doesn't seem like you'd have to
explain to someone how explosions happen in real life if everyone had lived through a whole bunch
of them and it seemed like everyone had yeah and especially if the the other people that you're
talking to are where revolutionaries are a part of the same revolutionary group they probably
not have a pleasant stuff up yeah exactly and that was something if we could go back to the the
thing we were talking about the the transmissions that were I think x1 101 was saying they were kind
of hard to hear is yeah yeah they were hard to hear so at the beginning of the book I thought
that those were kind of I thought that they were transmissions they had the feel of a short
wave radio transmission they they had that same kind of like tube radio sound to them
and and I kind of thought that maybe these are something archival or something to be passed on
but later on in the book I kind of changed my mind about that and I thought this was more of her
repressed memory I mean it might have been indoctrination it might have been the kind of propaganda
that she would have studied to become the the revolutionary that she had been at one point but I
I thought of it you know the reason that it was static it was not because it was being transmitted
but because it was deep in her memory and she was trying to put it behind her trying to forget it
because she at the end of the book she was not comfortable with blowing up the station with
living people in it whereas like you know in her past you know not occurring in the book but you
know flashback passed she would have done it without hesitation yeah I never I don't think I ever kind
of took it as literally being part of the recording I always kind of assumed it was just sort of like
setting the the scene a little bit but I mean that does make sense that would be like far back
in the back of her head just kind of like a brainwashing kind of come before that's a cool way of
looking at it and I've had a very 1984 propaganda announcements type feel to it I remember at one
point reading the history of that that actual book that he quotes in this and it was interesting
and then I promptly forgot it where did you read that I remember when I read the book I'd never
heard of that and so I looked it up and I think it was just like Wikipedia as far as I got because
you know that's research and it had a history but I kind of forget what it was it it's a historical
document oh okay that's pretty neat I have to go look that up that does sound interesting
well we now that we're spoiling it I feel like I have less to say about it than before we were
spoiling it most of it that was particularly intriguing was kind of the setting and the idea behind
the little thing whereas the the plot itself was you know kind of slow and I feel like I almost
feel like we've already discussed it just in talking about the the setting and everything well I
found it really interesting I'm agreeing with you and I'm finding things that I still do want to
talk about is one of them was how appalled the main character was that the the handyman that she met
how to stash of things that she kept all to herself and I was really telling of the social attitudes
of the time right or at least her social attitude which something you guys convinced me of earlier
was that maybe the whole world does and act like the ideals that they they claim to believe in
well one of the things I found another thing I found really fascinating was the use of
free software licenses as social contracts for you know land use or you know community management it
was it was very fascinating yeah but even that was kind of it was odd in the way that it was used
because I mean she clearly took part in the revolution that created the world that she's living
so it happened within the span of a human lifetime yet no one could remember what GPL stood for
in the GPL land you know what I mean oh see that's not the story that I got it all I got that she
was part of a post almost a post-revolutionary cleanup group where she was raised in the post-revolution
period but where they were still the revolution had happened but they were still sweeping away all
the vestiges of the old world okay because she always referred to it as the old world like it had
always been before in my brain I did the happy medium I just assumed she was really young when the
revolutionary and the revolution happened so like I'm imagining her being on that cleanup crew
and probably being like 13-14 and doing like this ridiculous like mass destruction and that
just sort of formats who she is later in life so like the whole child soldier thing yeah for sure
because I think like we were talking about when we were talking about the narrator how like
calm and cool she is because she lived through all the craziness and she had to become and like
that's what she was raised in and so like all this craziness that's happening on their mission
you know the backstabbing and even when they come out and say hey guess what were this new
you know revolution based on your revolution and we want you to help us do this she's very
still even keel like she never gets excited about it she never gets mad about it she's just like oh
this is happening I almost got the idea at some points that it wasn't calmness but shell shock that
you know she went through all this destruction and caused all this destruction and you know now
she's like okay well we destroyed all this for a certain set of ideals so why wouldn't everyone
be living for those ideals I mean all this destruction happened didn't it right almost like
post-traumatic stress disorder and she I see herself as isolating herself because if she goes
out in the real world she's going to realize that nobody actually cares about that revolution and
what they stood for they just they're living in the world that they have to live in it's not about
principles it's I've got to eat I've got to find a place to live and while she spouts all these
principles in her head especially like the first chapter is all about like the principles of
you know why we make things and stuff in her head that's very important but I think to the rest of
the world is just you know how am I going to eat today yeah and then she was stunned by the guy
I think it was a guy might have been a woman but I think it was a guy who hadn't heard a radio
broadcast in several weeks because he hadn't bothered to listen to one she she thought that
the commies had the world's undivided attention I think and I think if you kind of like extrapolate
the the revolution if you kind of take like the I don't know like crypto anarchist kind of
bent and push it to its very extreme if you you know anybody that's kind of into that world that
is their world that's they they obsess about that structure and that framework and so it makes
sense that she would yeah also ham radio operators seem to have the the the notion
whether correct or incorrect that you know when it all falls apart they'll be operating they'll be
the emergency workers I don't know if I'm using the exact right words there but
and they may well be I'm not saying that they're not going to be but this this certainly is
reminds me of ham radio operators see all of that still depends on a certain level of infrastructure
being physically intact and usable which is a fairly big assumption if something is so bad that
the only people who can get in communication are the hands well there's kind of two sides of
that going I agree ham radio people in general greatly over us to make their importance to the
point where if you go to like ham organizations and they're dealing with the emergency responders
the emergency responders are like no literally just pick up your cell phone to call us because
that's more reliable and we're not actually listening to your radios so you could talk all you
want it doesn't matter but at a certain point there's a activity that most hands do once a year
called field day and what that is is basically everybody gets together and emulates a complete
infrastructure collapse and and make sure that your stuff will work in that situation so I can see
where in some ways that would work in some ways it wouldn't but yeah they people get fanatical
about it and so that that definitely sets their world view of how important they perceive themselves
to be when we're talking about worldviews and stuff I thought it was a little
both presumptuous and a little preposterous that she was speaking about well this is how commies
behave when what she really meant was this is how I perceive that commies behave and so I'm going
to behave that way I kind of got the impression that she may be one of the only people who
was a commie that actually was in the revolution or around during the revolution now that
if we're kind of going depends on where you place her in the timeline if she's after the
revolution then it doesn't count for her but in my world the or in my head cannon we'll call it that
because that's a great phrase she she was there and I don't think all the commies were there so maybe
she feels like she has this place of importance for she can just kind of say what all the other commies
do oh see I don't think she felt that she was very important I think she was intentionally trying
to take a sideline role by operating the repeater tower and she even kind of made mention of
that later but the other thing that you just said about how she assumed that this was how all
commies behaved because she behaved that way and nobody said anything about it I find that highly
relatable because I spent two years riding motorcycles with with another guy most of my miles
on a motorcycle I put on with another guy you know him on his bike me on mine and we didn't have
any kind of communication except for hand signals or occasionally at stoplights and stop signs we
would talk and I assumed that we were thinking the same thing the whole time until one day very late
in this two-year period that that I was riding with him he made a hand he made what I thought was
a hand gesture I thought he was pointing at something that I found very very amusing some oddity
of road construction and then he turned off the road real sharp and he was telling me he was
signaling a turn later and I thought he was making a joke and I was laughing out loud and I almost
crashed into the back of him when he turned and he did not it was not a conventional turn hand
signal for turning either so it was not just a mistake on my part it was it was a miscommunication
and at that point it occurred to me that you know maybe we haven't shared as many jokes as I
assumed we had over this past two years that's kind of the problem with presumed communications
I signal something you receive it and interpret it and we both assume that we're on the same page
you and I both being figurative terms here were for two people right of course assuming that
they're on the same page about something without ever being explicit about it and you know both
parties act like they're both on the same page until it becomes painfully obvious that they're not
well and I mean I if we look at our community um just sort of the HPR like Linux
open sourcey podcast community and IRC world that we all kind of are part of um we all have these
people that we've built up that we've heard we've talked to online and we get snippets of their
life and we kind of construct what we think those people are like um and it happens every once in
a while I'll hear somebody on a show or talk to an IRC and they'll say something I'll be like
but that doesn't sound like that person at all and and I have to think to myself like I don't really
know what they're like really at all um a lot of this don't even go by our real name so like we
we kind of have created this personality that we represent ourselves in this virtual space um a lot
of us never have and probably never will meet in the real world and so I could see where the
commies would kind of have that network and completely miss the mark on what each other really were
like I take issue with I agree with most of what you're saying but I take issue with it could just be
how you've said a couple of things you've said uh first of all the whole concept of a real name
the only how does the name you guys see me as x1101 how is that any less real than the name my parents
chose to give me it gave chose to give me I wrote on my birth certificate this is a name I've chosen
for myself that has meaning to me arose by any other name would still smell as sweet exactly uh
and in most circles where I've chosen how to represent myself this is how I represent myself
I'm not obscuring who I am at all I'm just I mean people who've met me in person
you know I I have a hat with my name on it this name on it and then I'll introduce myself by my
first name because I don't need to go by this name meeting someone in person it's not about anonymity
for me but this is it's not even a persona this is a name and a personality that I completely
have constructed myself and so I don't see that as any less real than the legally sanctioned official
name that I have written on my birth certificate right but it's still possible for someone to chat with
you an IRC and then meet you in real life and find that you didn't meet their expectations
oh completely and then the other and you just did it as well the other
very kind of coral I have with that is how is this life any less real I mean I consider you guys
as good of acquaintances as people I may you know work with even though you know we only talk to
each other through our computers via you know voice chat or instant messenger and we see each
each other maybe once a year just because we don't live in close proximity and we can't
hang out on a Friday night doesn't people a lot of times trivialize these relationships
I think unnecessarily I agree with you there when I if I use the terms meet in real life or online
friend that's that's a carryover from having to talk to people in real life every day who just
don't get it but yeah yeah I totally agree with you it's it's no less real just because it's
through IRC or anything yeah and when I'm talking about like real names it's not like a valued
judgment of one is better than the other it's just sort of actually I I tend to appreciate people's
chosen names more than I appreciate their given names I think it's it's more important that you
chose this name I've always had a problem with the fact that we get named before we are
conscious of ever making any kind of decision and how that could impact like our whole being so
yeah I totally it's not a value judgment the ones better than the other it is there are some people
and I don't think it is much in our community I think it's more the internet is large there's some
people who will create an identity just to act the way they can't act normally to call trolls touch
well I haven't I have an identity to act a way that I can't act but that's because I'm not always
at liberty to act on personal preference you know with this name and this community I can express
opinions and beliefs that you know I can't or I have no use for expressing you know in my professional
life no one cares that I'm a I'm a free software evangelist I'm going to use what I'm told to
use and it's going to work because it has to my preference for free software is completely not
important but it is important in my personal life right and I think me and Pokey were talking
about this one time before because he was asking me how how I wound up living in Indiana I wound up
at the name Taj and I you know I told him you know that's not actually my birthday that's a name
that it actually comes from a D&D game years ago because I'm that kind of dork but what I decided
I put out some music because I'm I was a musician I still am but I don't do this much and I put out
some music and I wanted people to judge it solely based on the music because I knew kind of in my
community people knew who I who knew who I was and knew what I was doing and I wanted to get a
totally separate read I didn't want people to read it based on oh well this guy that I've heard
do other things has made this and so I use it for everything online not because I'm trying to hide
anything it's just that's the name that happens and there are people in in in like meat space like
the real world that come up to me and have no idea that I have another name like it's just they
call me Taj because it just that's my name so it's not a name sort of tricky thing just in general
actually just to tie this back into claw to if anybody's ever heard what's that podcast that he did
with deep geek and lost in Bronx what was this information something they only ran for if you
have underground information underground yes that's the best podcast I've ever heard and I've never
been more pissed that it doesn't go on anymore but they had a whole episode about like names and
identity that was basically the conversation we're having now and it was awesome and you know
I've I've never heard any of them together but you know those three names that sounds like you know
the All Stars episode yeah I kind of wish either they would start it up or like another group of
people would do the same show because the format was great you just get three people in a room and
just say this is what we're gonna talk about and just let them go it's just a great format for a show
I can't believe I know they're all they're all super busy people so I understand what they
shut it down but if I could that's kind of my one card if I could have one podcast come back
from pod fate it would be that one you know one of them is kind of half the world away now
howdy forks fake Ken Fallon here sorry to interrupt but I wanted to remind all of you to
check the show notes for a link to Taj's album good day carry on you are so bathing me
well you have to put the link in there now because fake Ken Fallon said it would be there
if if fake or real Ken Fallon hears what I was saying about him and his accent on uh
Linux like Cassie he might be upset with me
sure just point him at the the incriminating evidence why don't you
I think they cut it out but how can we go it's like I think I'm going to cut some of these out
and put them out as hpr episodes are you okay with it and I was like yeah as long as I wasn't
insulting anybody and he's like well I think remember you saying something about not being able
to understand a word can Fallon says would you speed things up and I was like no that's cool you can
keep that in that's funny I speed everything up and I can still usually understand Ken
he is the only person that it doesn't work for I don't know what it is it's something about
it's where we can as an awesome person he does great work for the community I cannot understand
his voice better for some reason it's crazy uh the only person I ever have issue with it not
so much in our community nothing is not but not as prominent stew at language listen to bad
voltage everybody else I can follow and then him I'm like I almost want to slow it back down just so
that he sounds normal because I think he talks fast because well he gets excited about things
the same way everyone else does and then I have a really hard time following him so I just
hear this you know mad ranting Brit and I'm like oh Stuart must have said something I have trouble
at normal speed with any New Zealander or South African I just I don't know I couldn't speed those
guys up does that include clunting I should say native and he native I don't know he's
eating pidgeon right now so I think he's native wow is that even food I hope you decide
to get a tattoo in his face I would so pay to see that because those are really the natives to
New Zealand yeah it's like saying we're actually Americans right on Jazza if you're listening to
this I know you've got to give skills make this happen make clat to a Maori not a Maori for anyone
who's only ever read the word a Maori he would be the smallest one I've ever seen in my life
something I just had a thought pop into my head actually repop into my head this popped into my
head a few minutes ago as well but we're having the discussion about names and online relationships
versus to use the popular term even though I don't agree with the real life relationships
really does remind me of here we go again the the kori doktro book eastern standard tribe
which I mean just about how the people you're in physical proximity with don't necessarily
represent the same people that you are in you know ideological or you know social proximity with
and how how those relationships kind of play out yeah if I was reduced to having to find
geographically local people into things I'm into I would set it home alone a lot
yeah I kind of do that I don't know I can I mean I've got friends I've got very close friends
who shared none of my ideological beliefs as far as software and stuff goes they could care less
you know they they're not like they're it's not like they're at the opposite end of the spectrum
and we debate you know all the time it's just they just they could care less you know and I'm
fine with that I just talk about other things with them it's just that you know all the all the folks
that I that I you know talk with online and stuff it it kind it usually comes from there I mean
I'm part of different communities online but I think that's natural when you when you go online
and you you join the communities with the the communities you want to join it's like you're not
forced into them and and you're not limited by any you know what now seems like an arbitrary
limitation such as physical proximity um you mean like living in the great northern wastes
yeah I mean it or anywhere you know I mean anywhere other than like a big city where you're going to
get you know what a healthy sample of every uh everything the whole spectrum wide um you know online
I mean you're you're not going to find me on a white supremacist website because I have no
interest in in what those people have to say you know just that kind of thing so online it's just
kind of natural that you flock towards uh people of like mind what is this big city you speak of
I've traveled many many years to many many miles to get to one of those well you're you're uh shared
hosting is probably in one yeah probably I live not too far from a really big one and they're not
all that great to be yeah I don't think that by most standards the state that I live in has a big
city yeah Portland's a small city anyway back to the book we're we're pretty rad old here in the
closet book club don't we always do that yeah I don't know if we've ever gone this far off track though
I say that almost every month we're awesome like that word the book inspired discussion club
that's actually pretty accurate I think but hey we pick books that make us think and then we follow
those thoughts to wherever they take us yeah well certain books that we've reviewed do that
they're thinkers and then other books um you know or more a story based I think and then of course
others have been more character based so you know it's all there's different kinds of stories
but we hit we're talking earlier I did find it really interesting that they were using
these free software licenses to map onto social contracts and
being the little bit of a license nerd that I am I would have found it really interesting to see
how exactly they mapped those because in GPL and also the BSD Berkeley style licenses almost all
of those those rights or responsibilities are triggered on distribution and I would be really
interested to see how they're triggering that as far as you know land usage goes that would be
really fascinating I'm glad you brought up the licenses thing because while I read that the first
time my little like nerd hard exploded in happiness like I probably audibly squeed but at the same
time I'm like this is really on the nose like anybody who's picking this book up is going to be like
nerds yeah it felt a little contrived in that sense like like it was aimed at the target audience
you know laser focused um but it wasn't it wasn't unexpected or unwelcome at the same time you
know what I mean in in the setting that it was in um I thought the cranks were really interesting
uh because to me it seemed like if there was a total societal collapse most of society would be the
cranks whereas in this story the cranks were the exception but once again going back to
is that just the narrator's perception that most of the world is civilized and most of the
McCranks or is it really mostly cranks and she just lives on a hill well and again that
assumes that you use a given definition for civilized and cranks I mean the whole world could
be by some standards uncivilized but by their standards they were a functioning society that had
a few outliers who chose not to participate and there was a distinction made between cranks
and troublemakers and it seemed like the distinction really was well troublemakers do it for money
and cranks just do it because they just do it or fun well I think the cranks were I guess the
distinction I had were troublemakers were there I haven't a hard time articulating the troublemaker
side things but the cranks seemed like they were doing things out of greed they wanted to take
what you had and the troublemakers weren't so much doing that as well disrupt be just being
generally disruptive and doing overall dangerous things they were like the worldwide 18 or something
yeah the cranks were NPCs and the troublemakers were PCs bringing it back old school I like it
yep exactly yeah the cranks lived that way because that's how they lived that's how they got by
the troublemakers they seemed to have their own job they were just always down for a little bit
of adventure a little bit of fun you know for whatever reason whatever their motivation was they
still wanted to be part of what our narrator called society so but they didn't mind going on an
adventure that's why they kind of reminded me of of you know PCs player characters so in my mind
I'm kind of thinking like if we're if we're thinking hacker and like the broad like I didn't know
nothing about computers hacker terminology if that's the basis of the society so like the troublemakers
are kind of like the black hats they just go out to stir up some trouble I saw the Moritz gray hats
they're they're curious as to what trouble is gonna gonna arise and why not be part of it because
at least we'll have a story to tell hey what's this button do oh shiny somebody's gonna blow
something up it might as well be me I think that's their kind of their attitude I got nothing but
respect for that attitude especially the blowing stuff up part who doesn't love blowing stuff up
as long as no human beings are harmed in the action it's gonna say it depends what stuff there's
plenty of YouTube videos of fingers getting flown up nobody I know doesn't like that and then
towards the end of the book you know I thought it was I thought it dipped a little too utopian to
be believable when she was describing you know like she was imposing the Unix philosophy
on to human beings like find one thing and do it well and then you know specified a few things like
planting seeds where someone else would harvest them I just don't think that would work where
somebody gets to sit around for 11 months and then you know for one month plant some seeds
and then well somebody else likes picking stuff more so I'll let them do it I that I just
you know I couldn't follow that line of the story in it and it kind of hurt that it was right
at the end that it went there hell Unix doesn't even follow the Unix philosophy particularly well
why would people be able to yeah I think out of necessity humanity has had to be good at
multiple things to survive because even though we built communities a lot of the time and the not
too distant past people were pretty much a land on themselves so you may have a small group of people
who are more valuable in certain areas but really you kind of had to be good at a lot of skills to
I kind of feel like this world would be going back in that direction to where you have to be
more of a generalist to make it yeah I think I think we're more specialized today than in
than in the world that that I saw in this book um now that description at the end was a bit too
granular from my own comfort but in general the rest of the book I I thought that people were
good at everything whereas nowadays okay you find your your one thing that you're good at and
you do it well okay that becomes your task at work or you know maybe you're good at grocery shopping
so you do that at home while your you know domestic partner does the cooking or someone else does
the cleaning or maybe you're good at sharing those tasks so you do that so I don't know just to
me it felt like we were a little more specialized now than than in this story yeah I'm all for
specialization I focused on the thing I do well and then when I need something else done I find
someone who does that well and I ask them to do it because they know a lot more about it than I do
but pick one thing I can't pick one thing there are two or three things that I do well enough
that I do it well and I enjoy it and I couldn't just do one thing that sounds really boring
yeah and I don't think it was meant to be a rule either that you know hey listen if you're the
guy that plants seeds that's all you're allowed to do I don't think that's quite what it meant either
but it just it felt like it got too granular there well and I mean it that's one of the I guess more
utopian ideals is that you could have sort of an artist in society where everybody was super
talented at one skill that they did because they enjoyed it instead of you know just have to
make do I think we have to be a generalist out of survival not in this world the way that she's
looking at it your survival needs would be met and you could do what you wanted to do almost the
same conversation we were having last month about you know sort of that post scarcity what do you
do when you when your basics are covered and you can do whatever you want I think it's it's a
really cool idea I think in practicality especially with the society that they're in it's just
probably not doable it's a good thing to kind of work towards but not practical but they were almost
trying to map that post scarcity lifestyle into a hyper scarcity world even more scarce than we
live in now yes yeah that that I noticed several times and I mentioned it earlier as you know all the
the canned foods seem to be limitless it just as soon as someone found it everybody got it almost
like you could have your cake and eat it too I wanted to break up something nobody's kind of hit
on yet the quasi religion of the god stream and like that whole thread is fascinating to me
and dev know yeah those are both pretty interesting um it felt like dev know was a concept
whereas the god stream was something uh well I hesitated to use the word tangible but I can't
think of a better one at the moment it was an actual like frequency rather than the idea of a
death know right I kind of like mapped it to once again no one to my experience um you can
actually set a receiver to kind of tune in between channels and a lot of that noise is either
directly or my understanding of it and I'm not a physicist is is literally leftover signals from
the big bang like the cosmic background radiation um and so I thought that that was cool that
if that's what it is that they're talking about that somebody was trying to hijack that to
kind of store data in or or or move data across to kind of almost um kind of like
sell out your god to to get something done I mean I guess that philosophical thing the selling out
your deity of choice to get something done was very much there but it was almost like
trying to hide or store data in in in pie which is I read this really interesting thing at one
point that pie is infinite and that infinite non repeating and that means everything
that has ever happened or ever will happen is somewhere in pie and that's really kind of
mind-bending but so I mean if you kind of take that idea and map it to the god stream everything is
there if you can find it and then trying to add a carrier signal of data that be both really weird
and really difficult that and just the fact that to me it's that she's so um reverent towards it
and that she she cannot help but like be a human being and like try to pattern recognize it and
pull pieces out and try to recognize things like she says it sounds like the rain and then it
you know this and really it's probably just her you know mind-playing tricks on her but like
for her like she says she just keeps going back to it and she finds something in that and you know
what does that mean is is that you know just her self alone time and her kind of contemplating
things or is there some meaning there that she's finding well I mean that's like actually is
their meaning in in the white noise because that's really what their god stream was is just
atmospheric white noise and who's to say there is or isn't right it's like saying is does god
have any meaning you know you can ask a thousand people and you're gonna get different answers
from every single one that's really amusing because I'm reading in addition to all the stuff I'm
doing with book club and listening to I'm reading a stranger in a strange land by Robert Heinlein
and it's the the interpretation of god in that story is really really peculiar and I fascinating
I'm just fine like to me I think about once again going back if this kind of business is
extrapolation those kind of hacker culture um you know I not all of us I don't want to generalize
the great deal but it seems like a lot of us are very rational skeptical people um there are a lot
of people who are just blatantly atheist on not one of those people but there are a lot of people
who subscribe to that but even in the society that's based on that that like even then there's still
people trying to find meaning and something is interesting to me and it's almost like they're trying
to create a spirituality out of the the technical logical world because of the complete lack
thereofs in the rest of society yeah and it's like when you start thinking about like emergent
AIs and things like that it's like you know is there a point where things are so ordered that
they become disordered and what comes from that so was the god stream a specific thing was it a
real thing or was it just her imagination in the in the pattern recognition that X1101 just mentioned
I got that it was a little above it was untuning the radio tuning it to a
non-frequency something where there wasn't transmitting so you were picking up
background radiation and calling it the god stream and finding
meaning there was the humans looking for meaning where there may or may not be one and I think
it's a thing like I think other people know about it because the characters had mentioned it to
each other so I think it's an actual physical thing I think she reads more into it than others made
because obviously Riker is definitely like this is a thing I can use like he doesn't have that
reverence for it that she does like to her it's almost this adulteration of something that's pure
it's it's almost like literally like a religious hate crime to do that but for him it's just
okay I can do this and it's just an object that I can use to get done what I want to do
yeah I was confused as to how he was encrypting his signal and embedding it in there
was he mimicking the god stream was he look I didn't get that but I just kind of took it for granted
and moved on if you've ever heard like data over like radio transmissions a lot of them can sound
like you know static or chirping or something and I guess if you came up with your own encryption
you could make it sound similar enough to where it would be pretty hard to distinguish it from
the background unless you knew what you're really important yeah okay take a text file and then
cat it to like dev speaker or something the equivalent to your audio device and listen to what
it sounds like and I think that is the idea huh because that's one of my actual like interest in
radio is more data like I'm I'm very rarely get on and actually like voice talk to people
what I find interesting is getting in and you can find these data streams and you just kind of
jump in and start talking to the people in the data stream and it's kind of cool I mean it's
literally like IRC without any wires which you know it's just a fundamental law of nature just kind
of cool so IRC over ham radio similar you know you you basically get into a text chat with one
person and then you know you could get multiple people in there I guess if you wanted I've never
actually done that myself but just the idea that you can make those contacts and just sort of
you know and chill out and you know if you wanted to meet a certain group of people at a certain
frequency at a certain time there's no I don't see any reason that I know of and that could be my
lack of experience just getting into the hobby the last couple of years you could literally
just spin up and kind of a real quick chat room on on radio waves which is kind of cool well the
only thing I see there is there's not the facility unlike with IRC to give someone the permission to
manage the best word I can think of manage that you know if in IRC if I am in a specific channel
not behaving by the established rules the channel moderator can kick me out I can't imagine that
there would be a similar analogy in you know the ham radio other than people just ignoring
sorry touch is there a way to tell whose signals coming from who so that you know
collisions would be you know automatically separated out or is there anything like that too
that would have to do so like what you're talking about doing is a net and I've not done any kind
of digital nets I'm sure they exist but like in a voice net you have a net control and that person
literally says okay this call sign go this call sign go this call sign go you could
int you could do the same thing with digital because every time you send a message you you know
should probably be sending your call sign with that just so you can keep it straight if it was
just you and somebody else I think you only have to ID every 10 minutes but I know when I do it
I ID every time just in case so I mean if you had a group of people who wanted to do that you could
set up a system to do that but it has to be agreed upon by everybody else the only kind of enforcing
entity that is there's the FCC and it's just you know I have my opinions about the FCC I think it's
ridiculous that I have to apply for a license to utilize a fundamental fundamental law of nature
but I guess they do serve a purpose in some way well I mean you can copyright you can
patent software which is just math so why shouldn't you we have to register for a license to use
the radio waves because I don't agree with that either yeah it was being cynical and sarcastic
sorry if that wasn't obvious devil's advocate I hate to devil I really need a k5 tux on here to
like straighten me out on some of this hand radio stuff because he's much better at it than me
he's got a credit in this book too and I forget what exactly he's credited as but I think his
voice is in there at some point yeah it's in there so I don't I could not find I actually kind of
actively listen for it and I don't know where it was or even would venture to say where it would be
I heard Mrs. 64 though she's right at the end I was told to look out for her and I
I forgot that I was supposed to but then I picked it up right at the end and heard her
that's Peter 64's wife yeah I don't know what she sounds like so I would never know that
was her if I heard it she sounds Australian and female well that online there's a down to a
couple million people yeah but only one in this particular audio book fair enough so how about the
I guess the antagonist in this book the the pirate radio tower that seemed weird like that they
could move that many resources to that spot now I mean maybe they found some of it there but they
I didn't get the impression that they found all of it there they must have moved some of it to
where it's at and and if you look at radio towers that exist nowadays they're all at the peaks of
the mountains they're not like halfway down the mountain so this isn't something that was left over
they this is something they they put there and it just seemed odd that they moved so much equipment
and so many you know power stations and transformers over there it seemed like there was a whole
separate group that was interested in and what was going down there but yeah it does seem like
a lot to put together for especially in this world where everything is pretty separated out and
far distances like at a radio transmitter like like a broadcast radio transmitter that's not
something you're gonna move around without a car or a big truck that and they
talked about how the cranks that were protecting it must have been hired hands and and what was
the the currency how were they paid for you know it just doesn't seem like the the army and charge
at that station would have you know acquired much in in terms of you know physical goods some some
sort of barter currency to pay for their time and all that material and you know them lugging it
all there as well that was a little a little odd for something that isn't you know it's an
tangible his his goal his ultimate goal was was pretty esoteric as far as these people are concerned
you know they were kind of let it's but I think his goal was to create and that work of basically
it seemed like wanted to eventually go worldwide and once you do that you start to open the world
of globalization and trade across large distances that it seems like it's not possible at this
point so maybe saying hey look we're gonna start another revolution and you can get on on the ground
floor this one and you might come out looking pretty good at the end of this
yeah I don't know the cranks didn't seem to be the the kind of folks that appreciated the concept
of delayed gratification but maybe now I'm just nitpicking that's what we do it's a curse and a gift
almost a curse I think yeah I I don't like that it often seems like I'm nitpicking these
stories so much when I actually like them you know what I mean and and maybe it sounds like I
dislike the story but I didn't I really did like this one well just kind of sharing something that
you had sent out to the people on the the audiobook club we've had one author come on and we've
had two authors respond and it seems like everybody has been fairly happy with what we've said
I think most people take it all right well I would I would hope if you're to the point where
you're authoring something and releasing it you can you've already gotten past the editing phase
and can deal with critiques and criticism and different interpretations and other people kind of
mentally exploring the world you've created because if you're writing a story you're creating
this world for other people to explore right I mean and I think we all understand you can be
critical of something and and not be mean about it I don't think anybody is openly said like
God's books sucks they'll never read this like don't waste your time you could reach
toilet paper and it's more interesting like that's not how we roll no yeah we did though there was
a book that we we kind of did that too okay it's not how we roll since I showed up so yeah blaming
on Bogey you can blame it all I mean it's fine well it's weird though because it's like
I don't know maybe it's just me but it's easy for me to find the things that I was critical about
but then when I try to find something that I like to to talk about I usually went up talking about
you know some some I usually went up going down some rat hole instead of talking about the actual
thing the piece of the story so I think that's just me though well maybe that's because the things
you like are the things that made you think and consider and send your mind down those rat holes
into the things that you like are the things that make you think about other things
rather than the specific story that it's telling yeah that's true it does I do like a story that
that makes me wonder about you know second and third and fourth order ramifications of things
and and where's the author going with this or what what C did this sprout from I I do like those
kind of things about a book but I also do like a good story and this was a good story you know
the character interactions while they were all just lying to each other the whole time it was
kind of a neat adventure that they went on you know walking from city to city and and you know wander
in the countryside and up mountains and downlands like that it was all you know a fun story to go
through and just the different people that they met and and how all that related to the world that
they lived and I liked all that too yeah I think this is a book that for me is much more about ideas
than it is the the the plot narrative I think the plot narrative sets up the world that that it's
in but like I said at the beginning I I find myself much more interested in the implications of the
world than I am the particular characters because I think the characters go from a beginning point
and they go to an ending point like if you came to me and said hey would you like a sequel to this
book that deals with Ender I would say no if you came to me and said would you like a sequel set in
this world that had nothing to do with those characters I might be open to it but I think just the
story of those characters is done and I'm cool with that like it's a very easy not I won't say easy
to write but just like a very very finished story like it goes from point A to point B and it's
it's pretty much settled up I mean it's open that she's gonna go out and do this but I don't need to
see it like I've got to that point of kind of catharsis like okay she's dealing with her past and
that's cool and I'm sure she'll have great adventures but I don't need to see them to be okay
that's kind of what I meant by that's part of what I meant rather when I was saying that the world
is painted with broad strokes where there's all of this rich detail it's kind of hinted at just
enough that you can put it together yourself in the way that makes the most sense to you to flesh
out the world and give it you know the rest of its skin and bones to make it a little more whole
without the story actually being missing anything at the same time right I would love to see
somebody play in this world that isn't somebody attached to the revolution like to just follow
like a regular dude or you know anybody and just see what the world's like to them and just see
the alternate perspective of what this looks like I think that would be interesting like a story about
a crank maybe yeah just something like I don't even think you should do like another novel I think
you should just be like I think a short story set in this world would be really interesting to see
from a different perspective just because we kind of keep coming back to that that's kind of a theme
we've all three of us have talked about and kind of gone back and forth about is you know what
of what we are seeing in this book is reality or whatever is framed by the beliefs of the characters
yeah I think running the text chat here he's asking if anybody's got anything else to say and I
think I think we're all talked out on this one overall we seem to have liked it seemed to all have
been a little bit confused about it but everybody seemed to enjoy the confusion as well so yeah
definite thumbs up now that we're done with it and if anyone listens all the way through this
episode and didn't listen to the book I'd still recommend you do because there's there's
plenty left there yeah I mean I would definitely say that we all enjoyed it and that it was very
thought provoking and I think if you listen to our spoilers and you haven't read the book and you
go to read the book I think you'll be surprised that how it probably plays out very different from
what you are expecting based on this spoilers because I don't think we spoiled the plot that much
as in so much dug into a lot of the questions that the plot certain plot points asked
yeah and none of us is telling a story like Seth tells a story either I mean in a way we all got
to to play in the world he created that's a good way to look at it because we all seem to have
a different experience with it as well and even though we we all delved down rat holes at kind
of the same point we we came up with different what treasures or whatever and all those rat holes
and what you get out of them are very much based on what perspective you have coming in much as the
the narrators perspective informs her worldview so does the reader slash listeners perspective
inform their own view of the world's creator that's a very cool way of thinking about it
yeah it makes sense to me all right so for next audiobook club we're looking at a recording date
of September 9th 2014 7 p.m. Eastern time in the the mumble room in the hgar mumble room
those details can be found on the that public radio webpage are in the mailing list and I don't
know them we're off hand so I'm not going to attempt to repeat them here yep and the next audiobook
that we'll be reviewing is street candles by David Collins Rivera who is also a hacker public
radio community member that's lost in Bronx is his online handle and I've heard this whole thing I
listened to it all before it was suggested and I love it I can't wait to do a book club review of
this one if I get finished with the street candles is the first portion star drifter is that good
enough that it's worth listening to as well oh yeah for sure I kind of figured based on how good
street candles has been so far I actually want to go back as soon as I finish street candles because
I think I know more about e-joc from the second book that's going to make that first book a whole
lot better if I reread it I wonder if his rss feed works because I know that one of the one of
the davids on the mailing list and I had to work with lost in Bronx to get the rss feed working for
street candles before that it was not correctly set up some of the enclosure tags weren't right
the last post I saw on the mailing list was lost in Bronx saying that it was now fixed
and even before it was working 100% correctly if you had any problems getting it
g-potter downloaded it just fine if you added it as an rss feed down them all I believe worked I'm
pretty sure I grabbed I don't think I grabbed the whole thing with it but portions of it and
there was another pod catcher that was eating it just fine I forget what that was I think dog catcher
had a problem with it which is the end one of the android clients yes as I think I've said almost
every month on here I use pocket casts and pocket cast was just choking on it because only like
three or four of the entries had enclosure tags which is the official way that rss
can handle media files a lot of the other ones seem to have some smarts built into them
that if the enclosure tags are missing it simply provides the audio file located at the link tag
but david fixed and I tested out his fix for it that corrected so that all the the files
pointed at the enclosure correct excellent thanks for helping out with that well I had meant to fix it
but you know all those people in the UK who get out of work before I do got to it first
and I would like to thank everybody who helped me straighten out my show notes for the last show
and I basically just we've used them as a template for this show I knew nothing about HTML but I just
kind of you know copied and pasted and and interpreted and learned as I could and I had some help
from plenty of people x111 you helped real helped david helped who's now I can't remember which
david that was but yeah lots of people helped me out straighten out my my HTML even though it was
very basic HTML I managed to screw it up really badly at first but it seems to be working pretty
good now and looking good for the show notes so our show notes look better than they used to for
this episode in the previous one and I just want to give a shout out to Taj for providing the
is that ether is it an etherpad instance or some kind of collaborative editing we've all been
writing the show notes as we do it and that's been fantastic yeah um I threw up etherpad on my
server at home and that's what we've been using and I want to thank kwisher because um we were
talking about the other night and I couldn't get it to configure out why it wasn't facing outward
and I'm not going to say why it isn't because it's the dumbest mistake in the world and it
makes me look like amateur but he definitely taught me doing it got it fixed.
Forward forwarding.
Damn it.
Which is just a function of netting.
It etherpad is awesome we have to do an episode on this I would really like to do a collaborative
episode with you if at some point if you don't mind because this is really cool.
Both do.
Behind the scenes.
Special edition.
Maybe we can use some like that our Christmas time.
That'd be cool.
Yeah I mean we've used etherpad before someone had one I think it might have been Kevin
Wischer's I think it was his that we used at the um the last New Year's Eve show the 24
hour show and that was really fun too.
I can't get over how useful it is for something like this.
Yeah it's um I originally put it up to do that once again go into the nerd place um doing
role plane games at my house and so everybody at my house would get on the collaborative document
and kind of edit it as we went along and add stuff and it was kind of like a history of what
we were doing um but yeah this is this is fantastic and uh we can my server's always on because it's
basically how I sync things because I don't want to use Google um so it's it's it's open to us
whenever we need it and now that you know that it's good for RPGs I might have to set one up.
Dude it is fantastic yeah it's like you make up those NPCs and you can't remember the names you
could totally just go back and look it's awesome.
Yeah see that what are you applying like give them names.
You're a bad GM.
Thug 1, thug 2, thug 3.
That dude with the face in the bar in that one place.
If the NPC's name is not relevant it's thug 1.
Doesn't that kind of spoil his role just a little bit if you weren't sure yet?
Nope he's just a thug.
You just don't be like uh you walk up and talk to thug 1 and he says
Well that's awesome.
All right I want to thank everyone for listening for making it all the way through this episode.
We rat hold quite a bit but I think the story is one that lended itself to that
and uh you know good company does as well which which we've definitely had here tonight.
Please as I said before join us September 8th no 9th September 9th at 7 p.m.
Eastern time on on on mumble for the review of street candles by David Collins or
Vera or Lost in Bronx feel free to go purchase the ebook version of that one as well if you
want to help support him that's that's always something fun and cool to do.
You know with pals of ours in the community it's it's one that we've all enjoyed.
Thank you so much for listening um thank you guys for being part of this again you know
it's not something that would be any fun to do alone nor would it be any fun to listen to
so if you guys make the show and it's it's awesome for you to do that.
Now where is I enjoy doing it?
Yeah I mean this is I look forward to this the whole month.
It's literally become a thing in my family where my wife is like so when is the audio book club?
I mean for me it's an excuse to get a nice interesting new beer and
haul up in the basement and chat with some cool people.
You guys spouse approval that is awesome.
Yeah me too.
Yeah kind of it's it's okay she's just like so when are you going to hold yourself up in the office
for her layers? Patch Tuesday honey I'll be here patch Tuesday.
I'm not even allowed to use my office because it's a back to the little girls room and
my voice carries.
Yeah I've got spouse tolerance not quite spouse approval but all right thanks everyone
we got to wrap it up we got to cut it off or we're just going to keep going like this
but I guess that's what you do and people you like get together.
So thanks again everyone and have a good night.
Later folks.
Later guys.
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