Silo: The strange grief of an adaptation

A note for show-only viewers: no major plot spoilers here — just one book reader's reflections on how much the characters have changed.

Watching Silo with my teenage daughter has reminded me of something I hadn't expected.

We're watching the same show. But we're not watching the same story.

She's experiencing Silo exactly as it unfolds on screen. Every mystery is new. Every revelation lands for the first time. Every theory is still possible.

I've read Hugh Howey's trilogy — Wool, Shift, and Dust — at least twice, if not three times. I've lost track.

I don't just remember the story.

I remember the characters. As actual people.

And that's made Season 3 a surprisingly more difficult experience so far.

The Foundational Rules of EVE Online

Before we recorded Episode 11 of The Safe Spot, Rixx sent me three simple rules for EVE Online: all rules apply to all players equally, EVE is about spaceships, and nowhere is 100% safe. That was the spark for the episode — the idea that beneath all the mechanics, balance passes, doctrines, wars, and player drama, there are a few foundational principles that explain why EVE works when it works.

But the idea stayed with me after we finished recording. Those three rules felt less like a closed list and more like the beginning of a larger conversation. They made me think about loss, trust, information, inconvenience, player history, and all the strange social machinery that makes New Eden more than just another online game.

What follows is a further exploration of those rules — not an official rulebook, and not a manifesto anyone needs to agree with completely, but an attempt to name the principles that feel foundational to EVE Online. Read them as a returning pilot. Read them as someone who's been around long enough to remember when some of these things went without saying — and who's watched what happens when they get ignored.

The Safe Spot — Episode 11: Summer Rules

No guest this week — just Rixx and me catching up, comparing notes, and accidentally wandering into one of those bigger EVE conversations: what actually makes the game work after all these years. A little summer lull, a little corp movement, a little real-life desk tinkering, and then straight into the rules beneath the rules.