Thinking "I am in the presence of Satan" is quite common, though.

Just so you know, I logged in for the first time in months just to give you an upvote.

Somehow "USS Dolly Parton" has a bit of a ring to it for the next US warship after the "USS Dorie Miller".

Hang on, why on earth would you think Dolly Parton of all people would want a warship named after her?

> Sierra Ferrell does a pretty good rendition of that.

Emmylou Harris does a great one also.

that "i before e except after c" rule often gets taken too seriously

Oh I've messed that one up before

i think it's kind of beautiful that weird is a weird word

Isn’t there more exceptions to that rule than there are examples where it’s correct?

Yep, at least on most static word lists.

It's a fun exercise to try and improve the rule by extending it compared to just switching to "E before I".

Only if you forget the final part, “…when it sounds like ‘ee’”.

That’s a recent addendum and is far from universally taught.

Though FWIW, they do protect their eggs quite well.

Isn't this tied to the senesce? Where their digestive tract has closed and they starve to death at the nest

Indeed, AFAIK. I've never seen an explanation for this. Most things that reproduce successfully want to do it again - or at least their DNA does. Perhaps octopuses are simply disappointed by the experience.

Octopus senescence isn’t a choice. It’s a fully programmed part of their life cycle. There’s a bunch of hormones released by the optic gland that put them in this stage where they stop eating, stop healing, and sometimes even mutilate themselves.

For the mothers, the entire time is spent cleaning and blowing water over the eggs.

It’s generally accepted this behavior is the necessary pair to their high aggression and cannibalism. It’s likely if they didn’t go through this they’d end up eating their babies. By dying, they make way for a new generation. And this is their reproductive strategy. Live a short very active life. If you survive, mate, then die and leave the hunting grounds to the next generation.

That explains how the mutation was promoted

But not whether other adaptations could be possible. Fix the digestive tract issue and keep the female well fed and defending the nest in a different way

There's no single mutation. Nor is their sensecense merely a digestive tract issue. This is a core feature of their lifecycle. If you mutate the genes that make the hormones that trigger it, or the receptors for those hormones, you won't just prevent their sensecense, because those genes have other functions important to other parts of their life cycle.

Hence one of the activities they are best known for - "cottaging".

"Illuminatus!" I read this while suffering from the worst attack of flu (fever, hallucinations, the works) I have ever had, Edinburgh circa 1975. I thought I was going mad. Never dared to read it again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy

Not exactly a cult, but... "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. It sounds like fun, until it doesn't so much. Soundtrack by The Grateful Dead.

> language and style of speaking sentences

Nabokov? His protagonists have very special styles of speaking. I'd recommend "Pale Fire" (which is also very funny and has an interesting hypertext-like structure) as a starter.

Nabokov is even more impressive once you realise that English wasn't even his first language!

It more or less was. He grew up in an extremely cosmopolitan household and was trilingual.

> At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.

Surely this is what the acknowledged replicants in the film do, particularly Roy Batty when he saves Deckard?

I was a great PKD fan (collected his books), and was a little disappointed when the film first came out, but it does grow on you.