jet

I found the entire teenager Fallom tangent insufferable, much like the Mule character.... in lore they have a super fast magic ship that can go anywhere quickly... why not drop off their rescue at Gaia and be done with it... why lug them around... there is no urgency here. it just doesn't make sense.

We never get a satisfactory in-lore reason why our Captain has magic decision making powers that are always ethnically pure.

The wizard of oz has been a positronic robotic for 20,000 years... a robot who can control people's minds through hyperspace... This is the third time this EXACT plot has been used in 5 books... at some point we are going to run out of curtains for the real power to hid behind.

Laws of robotics and agency... harm to human's doesn't include loss of agency in this context (take over teenager's mind, reprogram people at a distance, force everyone into a hive mind). The galaxy brain envisioned is no different then the Matrix, or just straight up lobotomizing everyone... humans will stop evolving and exerting any free will, and that doesn't violate the laws of robotics....

Not to mention the previous laws won't exist in the Fallom/Custodian merged mind, so no more limiters... it's assuming the new entity will be a benevolent galaxy despot... Do you want a Warhammer universe, because this is how you get a Warhammer universe.

• foundation hitler, who is developing technology which might make them independent and autonomous of silly psychic bullshit... and, horror of horror, make them characters with agency and vested interests....

• foundation big brother.... who doesn't have many redeeming qualities to be honest

• HIVE MIND, which we JUST FUCKING MEET, which can control anyone from any distance, and wants to control everyone in the galaxy.... but only if we say its ok

We have some cosmic mumbojumbo that makes our decisions perfect crystallization of pure involatile universal truth.... sure... why not.

And like in a bad bethesda rpg we need to choose which of these factions deserves to "win"... no layered incentives to make us invested... no debate about free-will and agency..... Everyone will become (physical slaves, physical slaves to psionic slavelords, or psionically brainwashed into a galactic hivemind)

Talk about insulting the intelligence of the reader... no other fucking options to consider, no debate to be had..... but again.... maybe our protagonist isn't in full control of themselves so we are seeing this through the lens of a unreliable narrator..... FUCK YOU...... What is the point in reading about anything if we can't seriously consider anything written? The book is a wasted 450 pages because any thoughts I have on it can be explained away by some version of "Thats what they wanted you to think".... FUCK THIS BOOK

I'd much rather read a story about how how humans are fighting off evil psionic overlords rather then thousands of pages of text on why being a psionic slave is a rather nifty idea, but only if the right people are in quiet control of the new slave empire.....

Maybe 30,000 years of vigorous galactic competition is a small price to pay to throw off the shackles of forever psionic slavery...... The only reason the author can think of to get any power block to act is if somehow people could have independent thought, and it's expressed as a BAD thing...

• Lavasier linked respiration with slow combustion and focused on measurable heat output.
• Ice-melt calorimetry produced repeatable heat numbers; the calorimeter measured heat, not hunger.
• 1800s calorimetry improvements enabled fuel comparison and efficiency accounting.

Late-1800s shift: apply combustion measurement to food

• Population growth and industrial scaling increased demand for standardization and measurement.
• Atwater burned food in a bomb calorimeter; released heat became the food “energy” number.
• A key assumption followed: the body handles food energy roughly like combustion heat.

Where the calorie model omits biology

• Digestion differs from sealed-chamber burning; humans are open systems with variable absorption.
• Digestion costs energy, and hormones route energy to different fates; the bomb calorimeter omits this.
• A single number can reduce attention to context once it exists.

Why the calorie spread

• The USDA used calories for efficiency: feeding large groups cheaply and reliably, optimizing output per dollar/pound/shipment.
• Calories enabled food swapping on paper and scaled ration planning, institutional feeding, and policy metrics.
• Once embedded in reports and education, calories felt official; labels and regulation made them ubiquitous.

Incentives and downstream behavior

• One number enabled food arithmetic: eat less, burn more, track the count.
• Low-calorie options can gain default preference when taste is high; this rewards “tastier with fewer calories” products.

Equal calories, different outcomes example

• 100 calories of steak and 100 calories of chocolate match on paper but differ in-body.
• Steak: higher digestive cost, stronger satiety signaling, minimal insulin response, hunger quieter for hours.
• Chocolate: rapid absorption, blood sugar and insulin spike, brief satiety, hunger returns quickly.

Thermodynamics and system condition

• Energy conservation constrains what can happen, while complex systems vary within those constraints.
• “Calories-only” fat loss is like “speed-only” flight: speed matters, but lift, wind, and control determine takeoff and stability.
• System condition changes outcomes; chronic inflammation narrows margins, reduces efficiency, and alters handling of identical inputs.

Bottom line

• The calorie persists because it standardizes the unstandardizable and supports administration and marketing.
• A calorie measures heat energy in food; it does not determine what the body will do with that food.

Both chapters deal with super human psychics that can program other people (one group in person, and one person at a distance). All of this is in the context of shepherding in a new golden age of human prosperity in another 700 years of darkness..

But... if you can program people... why do you need to wait? If you remove people's agency what is the point of them having a "golden age". The aspect of super human paternalistic gardeners falls flat in their lack of execution.

I understand this is probably a product of various short stories trying new things out, and its more fantasy then hard science fiction...

• Elim Garak starts as a tailor in exile on Deep Space 9; the harmless image is deliberate.
• He has no rank, yet survives crises that remove people with far more formal authority.
• His leverage comes from acting without responsibility, title, or institutional records.

Cardassian power and why exile sharpens Garak

• Cardassian rule uses information and identity as tools; truth is whatever works.
• In "The Wire," loyalty is enforced with secrets, implants, and obligation; survival pairs obedience with deniability.
• In "Second Skin," identity can be rewritten; narrative control punishes ambiguity.
• The Obsidian Order’s inward turn in "Improbable Cause" shows surveillance and secrecy eroding judgment and speeding failure.
• Exile removes incentives to perform belief; Garak sees when certainty is theater and when structures are irrational.

Federation procedure and its failure mode

• The Federation relies on deliberation, checks, and distributed accountability.
• In "Homefront," fear tightens rules through lawful steps; responsibility diffuses until the machinery enables abuse.
• Garak calibrates the Federation’s tolerance for uncertainty and which threats flip it into emergency logic.

Romulan discipline as a different constraint set

• The Romulan system assumes information is suspect until verified; caution is default, not a crisis response.
• In "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," intelligence work and moral compromise are built-in mechanisms; the system stays consistent under stress.
• Garak works with Romulan predictability: it moves after an internally consistent conclusion forms, then defends that conclusion forcefully.

"In the Pale Moonlight" as the convergence point

• During the Dominion War, the Federation needs outcomes more than purity, the Romulans need actionable certainty, and Cardassians are primed for decisive moves.
• Garak supplies a conclusion each system can adopt without reopening debate.
• Once the interpretation becomes actionable, institutions protect it; reversal would admit internal misjudgment.
• Garak never needs to command anyone; he removes off-ramps so procedure, caution, and moral outsourcing point the same direction.

Takeaway

• The dangerous operator sits outside the chain of command: no title to revoke, no mandate to cancel, and no institution that can clearly hold him.
• Garak endures by reading systems at their limits and by shaping outcomes through ambiguity, timing, and constraint alignment.

This fucking court jester Magnifico, a character deliberately created to be out of place jarring grating and annoying. The twist at the very end logically explains it but doesn't change the fact I was reading 200 pages annoyed.

Psychohistory as a unreliable narrator, we have already established in the lore that selective omission of truth, and outright lying, are acceptable tools in Hari's toolbox... so is his crisis pep talk in error or is it exactly what they needed to see to do what he wanted? The lack of rigor in a "science" like psychohistory leads to a civilization with slave like mysticism

Regarding psionic programming as a human mutation: This is such a blunt narrative weapon that its reasonable it wasn't accounted for, but also in a galactic empire spanning thousands of years humanity will drift and become different genetically incompatible species, especially in the context of being isolated from each other.

On the other hand why does psychohistory care about humans evolving? Why does it have any opinion on genetic drift? While we are at it, in the context of foundation comparing back to the fall of the roman empire... the prediction is about another empire rising... we have no comparable empire in the world to rome, so we are still in the dark patch...

The pattern for each age appears to be those resisting change are blind to their folly and those embracing a new dynamic win, it would be fun to have a chapter on a moment when staying the course was the right method (i.e. all the time between the 75 year incidents).