A l'entrada del temps clar

Also I’ll remind you that Ukraine currently has almost no anti-ballistic weapons. Ukrainian leaders asked USA to sell us more anti-ballistic missiles to protect our homes from russian attacks. We asked for a license to produce interceptors for the Patriot system, which is an air defence system that helps destroy ballistics. This way, we could produce the interceptors ourselves, without asking other countries for support.

Atheist Scarpia: Tosca you make me forget science and logic

Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa

Finished Star Surgeon!

Is it weird that my main takeaway is trying to figure out what things I'd change for a screen adaptation?

Speaking of, I wanna discuss this.

@ciotkahermenegilda @tigirl-and-co @greencheekconure27 Uh, who else should I tag for this?

I feel like the species codes might need to be re-worked a little? Like, it's a little silly that species as diverse as Earth-Humans, Orligians (who are furry and long-muzzled) and, and Nidians (3-foot red-furred teddy bears) are all DBDG, whereas the tripedal, storklike Nallijim are LSVO and the tripedal, storklike Eurils are MSVK.

Also the idea that the first letter represents "evolutionary levels" is absurd. Heck it doesn't even work in-universe; it's noted that "A" is for aquatic species, being the "least evolved", and then they found sentient plants and had to invent "AA", except the AACPs still only have four letters, so what got left out, hmm?

i think what might be better is a color/shape code system, where it's like... the shape represents something, and the colour is the general environment the species requires, and then a secondary shape inside to convey additional information

so like square-yellow-square could be 'quadruped from a hot, sulfurous environment who require heavy gravity'

Another thing I'm not sure how to square the circle on is the initial assertion that the Monitor Corps is staffed solely by Earth-Humans. This is absurd, and White himself ignored it later, but there are MULTIPLE bits in Star Surgeon where this fact is crucial to the plot.

And like, I suppose you could skip Star Surgeon in an adaptation, but like...why would you? It's a great story that illustrates the series' central themes, it's the only time we get space battles, it introduces Commander Dermod to the setting (cuz his original debut, which I haven't been able to get my hands on, was written to take place out-of-verse at editorial insistence), it's relevant to a later story, it has the ad-hoc translator sequence which IMo is one of Conway's best moments, it's got multiple bits of Prilicla demonstrating that he's not only got the biggest balls of anyone in the hospital he's got balls bigger than the hospital, and it's got Conway and Murchison's romance (which is surprisingly well done under the circumstances).

EDIT:

@ciotkahermenegilda @skjam @greencheekconure27

I think we should keep the letter codes but definetely scrap the evolutionary level explanation- just ignore this bit and use the first letter to group according to (rough correspondence to) taxonomical orders. It's still not going to be perfect- taxonomical orders don't even work perfectly for Earth, why would they be ideal for aliens from all over the universe) , but it would be enough to give one an idea of whether to expect a mammal or an invertebrate. All models are flawed but some are useful.

Maybe even include some background discussion of how the system is based too much on Earth and Orligia (rooted in the backstory with the Human-Orligian war) and is long due for an overhaul. The alphabet thing could be part of that- they had to pick something, and early on, there were few enough species and enough linguistic coincidences for it to work (and after all, learning JUST a 26 letter alphabet, not the actual language, is not THAT hard-how many of us know the Greek alphabet without knowing Greek?) , but it too is starting to cause issues, with species that don't rely on vision for example.

The Monitor Corps thing I would make a gradual evolution from human-only personnel to starting to include other species in response to the inevitable criticism.