Re:Yggdrasil Network
by postsantum on Thursday April 02, 2026 @04:18PM
(#47619635)
It's not hard to imagine what elf-rights were thinking of humans. Perhaps they even had a slur or two
Definitely for the dark elves.
Venkat Rao noticed this and turned it into a rather excellent essay: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/discworld-rules
> The Lord of the Rings is a great story, but I have to say, I’ve never understood the strange hold it seems to have on the imagination of a particular breed of technologists.
> As a story it’s great. It is pure fantasy of course (in the Chiang’s Law sense of being about special people rather than strange rules), full of Chosen Ones doing Great Man (or Great Hobbit) things. As an extended allegory for society and technology it absolutely sucks and is also ludicrously wrong-headed. Humorless Chosen people presiding grimly over a world in terminal decline, fighting Dark Lords, playing out decline-and-fall scripts to which there is no alternative, no Plan B.
Re:Yggdrasil Network
by EdwardDiego on Thursday April 02, 2026 @06:01PM
(#47620735)
Thank you for the link, that was a great essay and now I need to reread the Discworld novels.
Re:Yggdrasil Network
by throw-the-towel on Thursday April 02, 2026 @06:08PM
(#47620807)
Ah, the nerds, always itching to build the Torment Nexus from the classic novel Don't Build the Torment Nexus.
I think they appropriate Tolkien (who despised the Nazis and their corruption of "Germanic" ideals and Norse mythology) because a lot of them are nerds who don't read too deeply into it, like how right-wingers and conservatives enjoy Star Trek while being completely oblivious to its progressive ideology.