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Polymath (Jim Wolper)'s avatar

I am both pleased by and ashamed of the way Labatut sucked me into taking his books as reality, even despite the disclaimers. "This isn't the authentic von Neumann," I thought; I even wrote a substack about it which you could easily find if you felt it important. I didn't know vN (I was born the year he died) but I knew people who did and have read personal letters he wrote to those I knew. I didn't know Schrödinger but I know a lot about the technical aspects of his work to form a professional opinion about him.

But I also know enough about writing novels to recognize the importance of picking at the boundary between fiction and reality.

I reject Labatut's claim that the gods have disappeared. Today is Mars' day. In two days it will be Jove's. We learned about these gods so early in our lives that we think they are in our DNA like the number of eyes, we move around in their divinity as unaware as we are of the Earth's atmosphere.

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Moravagine's avatar

You're wrong; Amnesiac is the second disc of the single album Kid Amnesiac, which Radiohead has finally admitted with its recent re-release/packaging. I've been saying it since they came out, and therefore am a Really Smart Guy (it's always a guy. Sigh).

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