TFT Snippet #10

Dilandu wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Furthermore, I suspect that once the central bank is chartered, Cayleb will purchase all that floating paper from the central bank.

It would be universally viewed as the Cayleb attempt to buy Siddarmark. Let's not forget, that Safehold society is just-out-of-late-Middle Age.

I don't think the reaction would be that negative even if Cayleb acted outright. Most people/nations are grateful for a injection of cold, hard cash. Which is essentially what buying the floating paper would be.

However, I don't expect Cayleb to act outright. I think that Owain Qwentyn is going to act as his point man. Which would put a Siddarmarkan face on the financial bail-out. RFC went out of his way to mention Owain Qwentyn and to mention that he has gone into exile in Charis. It seems to me that he is setting the stage for him to return to Siddarmark later in the book with Charisian financial backing later in the book to assist with solving the financial crisis.

Dilandu wrote:Well, well, it seems that Safeholdian capitalists would soon find out, that their worker's patience is not exactly limitless...


P.S. The first snippet part, IMHO, could be compressed into six words as much: "RFC didn't want gay main character".

(or something is REALLY wrong with Merlin's PICA, because such major thing as person's sexuality rewrite is not "just a small glitch". Since PICA did not have any hormonal system, the shape of body literally could not affect the personality in any way. It's either hardware or software degradation on a dangerous level)

Huh?

Merlin is Trans. RFC has created a transsexual main character. Female to male transsexual. And you want him to be gay as well? On Safehold, where they have a 'divine' commandment to be fruitful and multiply? Just how many problems do you want the character to have?

I would guess, since we know that PICA's were mainly created as medical support, that gender dysphoria was one of the things they were created to treat. Certainly that would explain why a medical support device has the ability to switch physical sex at will.

So the attraction to the 'opposite' sex is unlikely to be a software glitch, and is more likely something that allows the gender dysphoric patient under treatment to fully experience being a member of the opposite sex. Not only do they have the body, they are sexually attracted to the opposite gender to the one they identify as.

Merlin's attraction to women pretty much dates from the point he starts to self-identify as a man called Merlin. While he still thinks of himself as Nimue, he's attracted to men. Embarrassingly so.

runsforcelery wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Glad you are well enough to be back on here again, RFC. Hope you are soon back to 100%

Thanks for the snippet.

So,
1)The west of Siddarmark has just the problems everyone suspected PLUS carpetbaggers.
2) Stohnar et all are still alive and still in office, despite fears otherwise
3) The economy is shot because the house of Qwentyn imploded and went bust and far too many people are issuing worthless paper

Don't know much about economics, but if, as PeterZ suggested, Cayleb goes around buying depreciating government scrip for good-as-gold Charisian money, I can't see how it's going to hurt his reputation with the voters in Siddarmark. (Remember they have a property qualification for the vote.)

Tum-Te-Tum-Te-Tum . . . .

That 'Tum-Te-Tum-Te-Tum' means we are missing something obvious again.

For example, we have another entity that can buy up scrip - the CoGA. Wouldn't that be a twist...

Dilandu wrote:

Mark Time wrote:
And I’m sure people did not forget that the Soviets entered WWII as Nazi allies. They only became our allies once the Germans turned on them.

Considering that USSR never were German ally, I could only conclude that peoples did actually forget. Or should I remind you, that USSR troops went into Poland only after Polish government was interned in Romania, and Poland, as political entity, ceased to exist? Stalin was very scrupulous about acting by the book...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E ... ntrop_Pact

"the treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania into German and Soviet "spheres of influence", anticipating "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries."

Yeah, that's some Pravda style BS you are trying to peddle here.

1) Glad you're doing better now, RFC.

2) Requiescat in pace, Zhasyn Cahnyr.

3) If I'm reading things correctly, Cayleb (or Charis as a whole) really doesn't have an interest in setting up a private Siddarmarkian bank backed by the Silverlode mines. Slipping Owain back into Siddarmark to reinforce an official Siddarmark bank by buying up their notes at as close to par as possible and not buying notes issued by any of the wildcat banks would do a better job of strengthening the Siddarmarkian government.

A comment of Rhobair's in At the Sign of Triumph revealed that forgery is a known crime on Safehold, and we don't know how many of the carpetbaggers and wildcat bankers are passing their paper off as official. But I'm certain Stohnar and company would be willing to help sort out what's real (and thus redeemable) and what's fake (stock the privy).

4) Hmm, something's going on in Thesmar that needs an official vote from the Siddarmarkian government.

5) I'm delighted to see Koryn and Nimue together, but I really hope Koryn has other brothers or nephews. "Fully functional" or not, I'd be surprised if Nimue's PICA has a uterus-analogue, and Koryn is heir to the Earldom of Anvil Rock -- he needs to secure the line of succession.

Dilandu wrote:

Mark Time wrote:
And I’m sure people did not forget that the Soviets entered WWII as Nazi allies. They only became our allies once the Germans turned on them.

Considering that USSR never were German ally, I could only conclude that peoples did actually forget. Or should I remind you, that USSR troops went into Poland only after Polish government was interned in Romania, and Poland, as political entity, ceased to exist? Stalin was very scrupulous about acting by the book...

You're right, they weren't "allies", they merely signed a nonaggression pact with a secret protocol that divided Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania into "spheres of influence" with the anticipation of "territorial and political rearrangements".

The analogy of Siddarmark/Charis post-war relations to those of US/Soviets post WWII is strained. It Charis and Mother Church had first signed a non-aggression pact prior to Mother Church invading Siddarmark after which Charis came to Siddarmark's rescue you might be able to make the analogy. But, of course, that's not the way the story goes.

I wonder if this is a vote to make the region around Thesmar into a Province of the Republic rather than just the Military District it was.

Julia Minor wrote:1) Glad you're doing better now, RFC.

2) Requiescat in pace, Zhasyn Cahnyr.

3) If I'm reading things correctly, Cayleb (or Charis as a whole) really doesn't have an interest in setting up a private Siddarmarkian bank backed by the Silverlode mines. Slipping Owain back into Siddarmark to reinforce an official Siddarmark bank by buying up their notes at as close to par as possible and not buying notes issued by any of the wildcat banks would do a better job of strengthening the Siddarmarkian government.

A comment of Rhobair's in At the Sign of Triumph revealed that forgery is a known crime on Safehold, and we don't know how many of the carpetbaggers and wildcat bankers are passing their paper off as official. But I'm certain Stohnar and company would be willing to help sort out what's real (and thus redeemable) and what's fake (stock the privy).

4) Hmm, something's going on in Thesmar that needs an official vote from the Siddarmarkian government.

5) I'm delighted to see Koryn and Nimue together, but I really hope Koryn has other brothers or nephews. "Fully functional" or not, I'd be surprised if Nimue's PICA has a uterus-analogue, and Koryn is heir to the Earldom of Anvil Rock -- he needs to secure the line of succession.

Dilandu wrote:Well, well, it seems that Safeholdian capitalists would soon find out, that their worker's patience is not exactly limitless...


P.S. The first snippet part, IMHO, could be compressed into six words as much: "RFC didn't want gay main character".

(or something is REALLY wrong with Merlin's PICA, because such major thing as person's sexuality rewrite is not "just a small glitch". Since PICA did not have any hormonal system, the shape of body literally could not affect the personality in any way. It's either hardware or software degradation on a dangerous level)

RFC did comment upon Merlin being in fact a transgender character in a recent post. However, there is a comment somewhere around AMF, where Merlin wonder whether Nimue was perhaps a closeted lesbian or that being a male all this time had somehow shifted his orientation as a result. I personally ascribe to the idea, evinced in Asimov's novels on robots, that even if a humaniform positronic brain were placed within an ordinary robot's body, that brain would eventually devolve and become more robotic. In many respects, our physical limitations are what make us human, with gender being a certain type of limitation in form and in function. So Merlin has spent so much type as a man, and that is probably why he is attracted to women rather than men.

BTW, in that same post, RFC had stated that the Writ officially permits homosexuality and explicitly prohibits any sort of laws against it. As such, the church does not prohibit it. Yet because Safehold has no advanced technology, which would grant two men or two women access to a futuristic artificial uterus and gene splicer, local laws prohibit homosexuality because they need people to procreate, something that cannot be done the old fashion way for same-sex couples. It does raise the question of whether Nimue and Merlin, who are now in committed relationships, will be able to construct such medical devices and use them to have children utilizing Nimue's DNA. It would of course limit Merlin to having daughters with Nynian but Nimue and Coryn would not be so limited.

Dilandu wrote:Well, well, it seems that Safeholdian capitalists would soon find out, that their worker's patience is not exactly limitless...


P.S. The first snippet part, IMHO, could be compressed into six words as much: "RFC didn't want gay main character".

(or something is REALLY wrong with Merlin's PICA, because such major thing as person's sexuality rewrite is not "just a small glitch". Since PICA did not have any hormonal system, the shape of body literally could not affect the personality in any way. It's either hardware or software degradation on a dangerous level)

While I agree that a gay main character (at least, Merlin would appear to be so to those outside the Inner Circle) would have resolved any questions on the matter, I wonder if there's anti-LGBT prejudice on Safehold. I'd really like to think not, and that Langhorne and Bedard would have at least had at least enough of a memory of the Federation's social mores to try and nip homophobia in the bud with a few words in the Holy Writ, if only to avoid creating another marginalized minority group. After all, their goal was a permanently static society (or static by certain measures); civil right movements, by their very nature, tend to alter the status quo even in those instances where there fail.

On the other hand, Safehold wound up with serfdom and outright slavery. So I might be expecting a bit too much from people like Langhorne.

That said, you're right about a PICA lacking the biological elements (hormones, the human brain-gut-microbiome axis, etc.) that influence personality. Like Nahrmahn, the PICA-bound personality is a purely virtual one. Software, with systems capable of mimicking the biological mind and body in a manner indistinguishable from the inside. And from the outside post-download as well, lest PICA memories might seem "wrong."

To achieve that, you have to be able to emulate the interactions with biological systems fully. In which case, you also have the ability to modify those emulations. Granted, that probably wasn't used much in the Federation; I'd imagine that radical changes in personality (as in a major, fundamental changes in the PICA's neural network) would make reintegration difficult. Not to mention that the possibility of a download rewriting your personality would be...undesirable and unsettling, to say the least.

Merlin's sexuality might not have even been the result of a conscious decision to alter 'his' software. It could have been--partially or fully--the result of the learning algorithms controlling all of those emulation functions evolving over the years Merlin has spent thinking in terms of his male persona. That doesn't mean it's due to a glitch or degradation; on the contrary, that'd mean things are working as intended. It's just that Merlin's situation on Safehold takes things a bit further than Federation scientists probably expected. Or maybe not; the Federation's virtual personalities racked up centuries, possibly millennia, of subjective experience while fighting the Gbaba. "Lifespans" that long would imply major shifts in personality (at least in terms of the personality's neural network as experience is accrued) over time.

thanatos wrote:
RFC did comment upon Merlin being in fact a transgender character in a recent post. However, there is a comment somewhere around AMF, where Merlin wonder whether Nimue was perhaps a closeted lesbian or that being a male all this time had somehow shifted his orientation as a result. I personally ascribe to the idea, evinced in Asimov's novels on robots, that even if a humaniform positronic brain were placed within an ordinary robot's body, that brain would eventually devolve and become more robotic.

Problem is, that I couldn't see any way for PICA personality to change sexual orientation - at least without specifically ordering that. As I mentioned above - PICA did not have any hormonal regulation system. In fact, it did not have any regulation system that worked without cognitive control. The PICA systems emulate the hormonal effects for the stored personality, but this is controlled process.

Just "gender shift" of the PICA body should not affect personality sexual preferences, at least unless the system would be specifically ordered to do that. And as we could observe in first book, the system was NOT ordered to do that(otherwise Merlin would not have a "reaction" on naked male bodies during water game).

So the sudden change of Merlin's sexual preferences could not be explained that way. The PICA should not change personality. After all, the main idea behind the autonomous PICA was, that it would be able to reconnect with the owner, without giving him some kind of electronic schizophrenia due to conflicting preferences & sexuality.