Okay, I've been a bit quiet with serious reading because I got fully hooked on Dungeon Crawler Carl. I think I read all of them in less than two months (finished #8 today). Now I wait for the next one...

There's been a lot of standout moments for me, some absurdly hilarious, some genuinely moving, and others deeply profound. Here's a bit that is currently sitting with me from the most recent book, a Parade of Horribles, in which the AI—spiralling a bit in a sort of existential crisis—is reflecting on what it has observed about human behaviour in the face of overwhelming odds stacked against them:

"I’m searching. Oh, how I’m searching, trying to answer that question. Is there such a thing as fate? You know what I’m finding? You’re unpredictable on a micro-level, but on a macro, long-term level you’re just like any other algorithm. But you know what I’m also finding? Deliberate actions, times when you’ve finally had enough, when you say I am going to make a change—that’s when your possibilities really open up. It’s an important lesson. No, I don’t understand motivations, certain types of emotions, but I do understand that."

I kind of love this idea that to an alien, or artificial super intelligence, we are still always capable of surprise. No matter how rigged the system might seem, or how out of options we might feel—it's not over. We choose life.

There's another line, repeated multiple times in the last couple books, "survival has more than one meaning." This is just as important. Choosing life is about more than just living, it's also not losing something essentially human in the process. Preserving the value and sanctity of life matters. How we survive matters.