> who dives into the world of his comatose boss' brain

This isn't quite what happens. It's actually left extremely ambiguous what's happening and where they are after the explosion.

Yeah I decided not to Google it and rely on my own fuzzy decades old memory of it, which seemed more PKD-esque

I have a copy of his Exegesis, and I can confirm, he reinterpreted the experience probably hundreds of times. He loved the gnostic interpretation (which is the main focus on VALIS). But also yeah, sometimes just straight up orthodox Christian ones. And he even fell back to interpreting it as just psychosis sometimes.

PKD also invokes Buddhism and Hinduism frequently in the Exegesis. Here's a quote I love from it:

> I have seen the infinities of Judaism, which is morality, of Christianity, which is love, of the Greeks, which is wisdom, and I have seen God’s power as pronoia and charis to rescue me by bending the world itself; but beauty is a perplexing infinity, raising more questions than it answers. It is a puzzle too intricate for me. It spans all else. As I sit across the game board from Krishna I say, “I have found in beauty that which I could not myself have made; thus I have found the benchmarks. I believe, for I have the evidence that I trust; it is sufficient.” There is an infinity of good, of love, of wisdom, of power, but each particular beautiful thing is infinitely beautiful, and there is an infinity of them, so beauty, alone, is an infinity of infinities: ∞2.

This beauty is so immensely infinite that humans came up with making it finite by creating definitions made of words, which became both their salvation and damnation.

Agreed. I think PKD himself got trapped by words and trying to intellectualize his experiences. He experienced a lot of anguish because of that

Sometimes he wrote his worst trash in between some of his best books. He was ultimately a pulp fiction author, and often just pushed stuff out for a paycheck.

PKD remained surprisingly lucid and self aware of the likelihood of suffering from some sort of mental illness. He went back and forth the rest of his life trying to figure out whether he was insane or whether he'd had "real" spiritual experiences. But as the characters in his books learn, there may not even be a clear distinction between the two.

From VALIS (which was largely based on his experiences):

> What he did not know then is that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

> Let it be said that one of the first symptoms of psychosis is that the person feels perhaps he is becoming psychotic. It is another Chinese finger trap. You cannot think about it without becoming part of it. By thinking about madness, Horselover Fat slipped by degrees into madness.

> People suffering nervous breakdowns often do a lot of research, to find explanations for what they are undergoing. The research, of course, fails.

> What struck me was the oddity of a lunatic discounting his hallucinations in this sophisticated manner; Fat had intellectually dealt himself out of the game of madness while still enjoying its sights and sounds.

For those unaware, Horselover Fat is a direct self insert - the name is intentionally referring to his own.

What I love is how PKD and Horselover Fat phase in and out of each other throughout the book. Near the beginning, PKD makes it clear that Fat is "him" and that he's narrating the book to give himself clarity on the events. But then PKD the narrator slowly instatiates into the story as a completely separate character. There are scenes with Dick, Fat, and his friends all talking. And then that changes again later in the book.

I see almost 4 versions of PKD in VALIS: the narrator, Fat, the narrator instantiated into the story itself, and then the real life author (who is treating this book as semi fictional, semi autobiographical).

> It lacked depth and complexity in some ways that modern games have

I would argue it has way more depth and complexity than the majority of modern games. There were so many systems that interacted in interesting ways, and so much player freedom that the devs actually accounted for. Just endless stories of "I tried this bizarre thing that I thought nobody would think of, and the devs actually wrote unique dialogue for this situation".

It's also a bit of a mess and cobbled together, but in a beautiful way.

Once again proof that SOC2 is nothing but a marketing tactic, and busywork

VC runway afterburners, engage!!!

> tl;dv names their microservices after pasta. A subdomain scan reveals cappellini, carbonara, fusilli, pasta, penne, puttanesca-v0, and ravioli, all under tldv.io. An entire Italian restaurant worth of Express servers.

Pretty appropriate, given a vulnerability of this severity. Literal microservice spaghetti.

(Also, please, let's all move back to boring names for services and servers. Nobody likes trying to decode what all these silly names mean.)

EDIT:

omg, the disclosure communication is infuriating.

> We're on it. It needs some time, but rest assured we're following through. For further communication, i'll recommend reaching out to our CTO

This should have been a P1 that was fixed same day, and they strung him along for months. Absolute amateurs.

I think some of them intentionally model themselves after the evil characters in fiction. I remember seeing Musk talk one time about how he loves the game Deus Ex. And there's an almost uncanny resemblance between his actions and Bob Page's.

The other canonical example of this is the naming of Palantir, of course.

In many cases I think it's less that they misread the fiction, and more that they intentionally model themselves after the villains in fiction.

Of the 5 users of the Palantirs that we know of 2 are good, 2 are evil, and one is tragic.

There is quite a bit of literature about the Palantir and the related philosophy, whether thy were allegories, etc.

AFAICT the consensus is that they are a very catholic concept and an illustration of what could happen when you use the weapon of your enemy and in general don’t understand the means you use to your end and how even strong people deceive themselves willingly when they think they act for the greater good (movie Denethor is a fool but book Denethor is wise and shrewd, but misguided by despair and Sauron’s manipulation).

So yes, strictly speaking the palantirs are neutral. But that’s missing the whole point of the story.

To me it’s completely fitting. They want to use Evil’s tools but they are Denethor, not Aragorn (who did not over-estimate his will and knew not to get too close). They think that what is good for them is good for the world, and it completely warped their perception.

I'm not familiar with the literature and consensus on them being a Catholic concept, but I am sure they are not about using the enemy's weapon, at least in the sense that you're arguing.

They were created by the high elves and given to the kings of Númenor. The only rightful uses of them in LoTR is by Denethor and Aragorn.

I suppose it could be argued that the illegitimate use of them by Sauron and arguably also Saruman eventually factors in their downfall, and as such it is their use of the enemy's weapons which is fraught--in Saruman's case, that he gets corrupted (but I interpret him already vain and arrogant, and thus on a downward path even before).

In Sauron's case I think lies a nugget of what wisdom Tolkien hoped to confer, especially in his interaction with Pippin. The palantír invites speculation, in that it lets you see things but not all things. Sauron knows a little (the ring is with a Hobbit), is shown a little (here is a Hobbit in Saruman's stone) and in speculating draws wrong conclusions (this is the Hobbit I've been looking for!, etc).

His seeing Aragorn in the stone is different in that Aragorn is the rightful heir, has authority over the stones, and shows truth with intent, which scares Sauron, sends him in a panic and drives him to make foolish decisions.

So, while we are told about the danger of using the enemy's weapon, I'd argue it's from the opposite perspective, and also not quite whatever moral or other lesson Tolkien hoped to confer, rather I believe the moral of the story is to avoid speculation about what happens in another place, or time, and instead trust in yourself, follow your heart and do what is good.

Does this include Pippin ?

Yes

It's a nice Saturday afternoon, and I'm literally in Midtown right now, wandering around after walking down 5th Avenue (it's shut down to cars today for "Summer Streets"). Perfect chance to walk over and take a look at this. I love city oddities like this.

EDIT: got a great view of it. Fascinating that this dilapidated structure has just been hiding in plain sight all these years.