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Dec 10, 2023Liked by Mark Newheiser

What can be said for the compass of thoughts

Bringing ones inner cogitations to days long passed

Thoughts I held like guttering lights trying to expand me

The enduring ennui of life grinding the possible paths down

Till the inevitable selection of the end is left to one

Non carborundum est was the banner we started with

But time tattered and shredded that banner to threads

One's mind is expanded and pained to encompass such ideas again

But reminds of the way we were thinking then

May many adventures of the intrepid Detective flow

Bringing crystal shards of remembered pain

Minds many thoughts once not feared

The short fiction presented in Detective Manse stories makes my head hurt nicely!

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Dec 6, 2023Liked by Mark Newheiser

> You would have accounted for every variable except the one you could never factor in, yourself.

I'm curious if this was an intentional reference to AIXI?

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Nov 26, 2023Liked by Mark Newheiser

I enjoyed this more than the last one and almost as the first one. The point about maybe being more broad minded preventing madness is not one I'd seen made before.

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Nov 11, 2023Liked by Mark Newheiser

Enjoyed this, as with the other Mansetories. I fundamentally don't really "get" a lot of things relating to AI still, but throwing Clippy against eldritch horrors is absurd enough to be grokkable anyway. Will say there's a very short list of magical women whose first names are Morgan, so that was an easy immediate guess. Perhaps Baba Yaga will show up next time?

It felt like the actual metaphor count was also lower in this tale, though "metaphortal" is good. I guess there's only so many ways to cat a skin. I do also think there's a bit of a pattern when Manse world-hops, he always seems to end up in similar realities (theatre production, debate/interview, self-insert as author of same story). Haven't figured out if there's a reason for that or not.

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