Global viral pandemics, insane right-wing dictator-wannabes trying to set fire to the planet, and climate change aside, I'm officially declaring 2020 to be the Year of the Conspiracy Theory.
This was the year when QAnon, a frankly puerile rehashing of antisemitic conspiracy theories going back to the infamous Tsarist secret police fabrication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, went viral: its true number of followers is unclear but in the tens of thousands, and they've begun showing up in US politics as Republican candidates capable of displacing the merely crazy, such as Tea Partiers, who at least were identifiably a political movement (backed by Koch brothers lobbying money).
Nothing about the toxic farrago of memes stewing in the Qanon midden should come as a surprise to anyone who read the Illuminatus! trilogy back in the 1970s, except possibly the fact that this craziness has leached into mainstream politics. But I think it's worrying indicative of the way our post-1995, internet-enabled media environment is messing with the collective subconscious: conspiratorial thinking is now mainstream.
Anyway. When life hands you lemons its time to make lemonade. How could I (if I had more energy and fewer plans) monetize this trend, without sacrificing my dignity, sanity, and sense of integrity along the way?
I'm calling it time for the revival of the big fat 1960s-1980s cold war spy/conspiracy thriller. A doozy of a plot downloaded itself into my head yesterday, and I have neither the time nor the marketing stance to write it, so here it is. (Marketing: I'm positioned as an SF author, not a thriller/mens adventure author, so I'd be selling to a different editorial and marketing department and the book advances for starting out again wouldn't be great.)
So, some background for a Richard Condon style comedy spy/conspiracy thriller:
The USA is an Imperial hegemonic power, and is structured as such internally (even though its foundational myth--plucky colonials rebelling against an empire--is problematically at odds with the reality of what it has become nearly 250 years later). In particular, it has an imperial-scale bureaucracy with an annual budget measured in the trillions of dollars, and baroque excrescences everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than in the intelligence sector.
The USA has spies and analysts and cryptographers and spooks coming out of its metaphorical ears. For example, the CIA, the best-known US espionage agency, is a sprawling bureaucracy with an estimated 21,000 employees and a budget of $15Bn/year. But it's by no means the largest or most expensive agency: the NRO (the folks who run spy satellites) used to have a bigger budget than NASA. And the mere existence and name of the National Reconnaissance Office were classified secrets until 1992.
It has come to light that about 80% of the people who work in the intelligence sector in the US are not actual government officials or civil servants, but private sector contractors, mostly employed by service corporations who are cleared to handle state secrets. By some estimates there are two million security-cleared civilians working in the United States--more than the number of uniformed service personnel.
Keeping track of this baroque empire of espionage is such a headache that there's an entire government agency devoted to it: the United States Intelligence Community, established in 1981 by an executive order issued by Ronald Reagan. Per wikipedia:
The Washington Post reported in 2010 that there were 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that were working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, and that the intelligence community as a whole includes 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances. According to a 2008 study by the ODNI, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the U.S. intelligence community and account for 49% of their personnel budgets.
USIC has 17 declared member agencies and a budget that hit $53.9Bn in 2012, up from $40.9Bn in 2006. Obviously this is a growth industry.
Furthermore, I find it hard to believe--even bearing in mind that this decade's normalization of conspiratorial thinking predisposes one towards such an attitude--that there aren't even more agencies out there which, like the NRO prior to 1992, remain under cover of a top secret classification. I'd expect some such agencies to focus on obvious tasks such as deniable electronic espionage (like the Russian government's APT29/Cozy Bear hacking group), weaponization of memes in pursuit of national strategic objectives (the British Army's 77th Brigade media influencers)), forensic analysis of offshore money laundering paper trails--the importance of which should be glaringly obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in world politics over the past two decades, or trying to identify foreign assets by analyzing the cornucopia of social data available from the likes of Facebook and Twitter's social graphs. (For example: it used to be the case that applicants for security clearance jobs with federal agencies were required not to have Facebook, Twitter, or similar social media accounts. They were also required not to have travelled overseas, with very limited exceptions, not to have criminal records, and so on. Bear in mind that Facebook maintains "ghost" accounts for everyone who doesn't already have a Facebook account, populated with data derived from their contacts who do. If you have access to FB's social graph you can in principle filter out all ghost accounts of the correct age and demographic (educational background, etc), cross-reference against twitter and other social media, and with a bit more effort find out if they've ever travelled abroad or had a criminal conviction. The result doesn't confirm that they're a security-cleared government employee but it's highly suggestive.)
But I digress.
The 1271 government organizations and 1931 private companies in 2010 have almost certainly mushroomed since then, during the global war on terror. Per Snowden, the proportion who are private contractors rather than civil servants, has also exploded. And, due to regulatory capture, it has become the norm for outsourcing contracts to be administered by former employees in the industries to which the contracts are awarded. There's a revolving door between civil service management and senior management in the contractor companies, simply because you need to understand the workload in order to allocate it to contractors, and because if you're a contractor knowing how the bidding process works from the inside gives you a huge advantage.
Let us posit a small group of golfing buddies in DC in the 2000s who are deeply disillusioned and cynical about the way things are developing, and conspire to milk the system. (They don't think of themselves as a conspiracy: they're golfing buddies, what could be more natural than helping your mates out?) They've all got a background in intelligence, either working in middle-to-senior management as government agency officers, or in senior management in a corporate contractor. They know the ropes: they know how the game is played.
Two of them take early retirement and invest their pensions in a pair of new startups: one of them--call them "A"--remains in place in, say, whatever department of the Defense Clandestine Service is the successor to the Counterintelligence Field Activity. They raise a slightly sketchy proposal for a domestic operation targeting proxies for Advanced Persistent Threats operating on US soil. For example: imagine QAnon is a fabrication of APT29. We know QAnon followers have carried out domestic terrorism attacks; if Q is actually a foreign intelligence service, is it plausible that they might also be using it to radicalize and recruit agents within other US intelligence services?
One of our retirees, "B", has established a small corporation that just happens to specialize in searching for signs of radicalization at home and by some magical coincidence fits the exact bill of requirements that our insider is looking for in a contractor.
Our other retiree, "C", has established a small corporation that produces Artificial Reality Games. As has been noted elsewhere Qanon bears a striking resemblance to a huge Artificial Reality Game. One of their products is not unlike "Spooks", from my 2007 novel Halting State; it's a game that encourages the players to carry out real world tasks on behalf of a shadowy national counter-espionage agency. In the novel, the players are unaware that they're working for a real national counter-espionage agency. In this scenario, the game is just a game ... but it's designed to make the players look plausibly similar to actual HUMINT assets working in a climate of surveillance capitalism and so reverting to classic tradecraft techniques in order to avoid being located by their dead letter drop's bluetooth pairing ID. But because they're actually gamers, on close examination they prove to not be actual spies. In other words, C generates lots of interesting false leads for B to explore and A to report on, but they never quite pan out.
So far, so plausible. But where's the story?
The clockwork powering the novel is simple: A runs his own pet counter-espionage project within the bigger agency and arranges to outsource the leg work to B's contractors on a cost-plus basis. Meanwhile, C's ARG designers create a perfectly balanced honeypot for B's agents. (The boots on the ground are all ignorant of the true relationship.) B is a major investor in C via a couple of offshore trusts and cut-outs: B also funnels money into A's offshore retirement fund. It's a nice little earner for everybody, bilking the federal government out of a few million bucks a year on an activity nobody expects to succeed but which might bear fruit one day and which meanwhile burnishes the status of the parent organization because it's clearly conducting innovative and proactive counter-espionage activity.
Then the wheels fall off.
C's team are running a handful of ARGs (because to run only one would be kind of suspicious). They are approached by the FBI to set up a honeypot for whichever radical group is the target of the day, be it Boogaloo Boys, Antifa, Al Qaida, Y'all Qaida, or whoever. And it turns out the FBI expect them to do something with the half-ton of ANFO they've conveniently provided (as an arrest pretext),
B's team meanwhile discover a scarily real-looking conspiracy who are planning to start some sort of war over the purity of their precious bodily fluids. A countdown is running and A's expected to actually make progress and arrest a ring of radicals before they blow anything up.
And A gradually comes to the realization that he and his golfing buddies are not the first people to have had this idea: they're not even the biggest. In fact, it begins to come to light that an entire top level division of the Department of Homeland Security (founded 2003! 240,000 employees! budget $51.67Bn!) is running plan B and funneling money to prop up various adversarial sock-puppets, one of which appears to have accidentally stolen half a dozen W76 physics packages (which, just like the good ole' days with the Minuteman III stockpile, have a permissive action lock code of "00000000"). The nukes are now in the possession of a bunch of nutters led by a preacher man who insists Jesus is coming, and his return will be heralded by a nuclear attack on the USA. But the folks behind the DHS grift can't do anything about it for obvious reasons (involving orange jumpsuits and long jail terms, or maybe actual risk of execution).
A can't expose this grift without attracting unwelcome attention, and a likely lifetime vacation in Club Fed along with his buddies B and C. But he doesn't want to be anywhere close to DC when the nukes go off. So what's a grifter to do?
C gets to give his ARG designers a new task: to set up a game targeting a very specific set of customers--conspiratorially-minded millenarian believers who are already up to their eyes in one plot and who need to be gently weaned onto a more potent brew of lies, right under the nose of the rival APT agents who have radicalized them ...
Climax: the nukes are defused, the idiot conspiracy believers are arrested, then the FBI turn up and arrest A, B, and C. On their way out the door it becomes apparent that they've been set up: they, themselves, were suckered into setting up their scam via another conspiracy ring to generate arrests for the FBI ...
(Fade to black.)
Charlie, I think you have just won spy thriller, conspiracy thriller, heist fiction and satire genres, all at once. If you'll ever have time and motivation (including financial motivation) to write it - please, please do.
conspiratorial thinking is now mainstream
Conspiratorial thinking has always been mainstream, ranging backwards through UFOs, JFK assassination theories, fluoride as mind control, FDR helping the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, and (as you note yourself), the Protocols.
I could go back all the way to the founding era of the US.
Arguably too plausible for a spy thriller.
(and, as I know you know, way too nice; the actual motivation for most of the outsourcing is to pursue policies the USG officially doesn't have, starting with white supremacy and the accompanying eliminationist genocides.)
The trouble is that most of those things ARE run as conspiracies - just not the sort that the Qanon/etc. idiots propose! As soon as a gummint (sub-)department arranges with a private organisation to do something which it is forbidden to do by law or to evade its oversight mechanisms, it IS a conspiracy.
Where that stops, I don't know. The UK gummint outsourced the national travel survey, and we haven't seen anything except predigested pap since. Was it deliberately done to ensure that we can no longer use FOI to get the data?
"Paranoia" was one of the best RPG of the 80s.
Looks like a "code 7" mission.
Yeah: CIA black sites, torture subcontracted to the Libyan secret police, and so on.
In hindsight Woodrow Wilson fucked things up for the State Department by positioning the USA (hypocritically) as a beacon of light in the darkness, succour to the fallen, the arsenal of democracy, and all that bullshit -- despite being a white supremacist dirtbag at heart. Too many people (including Americans) believed the bullshit, so the organs of state had to engage in nefarious activities with deniability, thereby rendering them unaccountable.
Please note that I can't and won't write this, no matter how you plead with me.
Right now my to-do list (beyond the copy edits for "Invisible Sun" and marketing activities for "Dead Lies Dreaming") consists of: a redraft of "In His House" (sequel to "Dead Lies Dreaming"), a redraft of "Ghost Engine" (space opera I dead-ended on in 2017), then maybe the third in the "Dead Lies Dreaming" trilogy (provisional title: "Bones and Nightmares"), then maybe the last or penultimate Bob novel.
That, right there, is 2-3 years' work. If I added this book to the queue I wouldn't get to it before 2022, and it couldn't be published much before 2024. By which time the moment will have moved on. And anyway, I generate more than one viable book idea per 12 months: I actually reject about 80% of the ideas for novels that I come up with simply because I can't write a book every three months.
It's been (for me, off in the moody corners) the year of two Warren Zevon songs; Veracruz ("I heard Woodrow Wilson's guns...") and Mohammed's Radio ("In walked the village idiot and his face was all aglow...")
Those are from 1978 and 1976, respectively. There are a few people out there for whom the last half-century must have been really exceptionally difficult to watch.
The 1271 government organizations and 1931 private companies in 2010
Can we please have commas in numbers that aren't dates.
Its a measure of how anxious I am these days that I was genuinely relieved to see your scenario end with the nukes defused (the coda of ABC arrested was a fillip, too, but the relief ... whoa.)
If only the world is as nice.
If not a novel, how about an outline for a screenplay ? If Netflix are planning to make a series based on The 3-Body Problem then something like this should be a shoe in ! ( assuming the Netflix decision wasn't "hey, this story is about the end of the world being China's fault" )
No. :)
It's always good to include bits of recent history for verisimilitude.
I always appreciate how you blend some good cozy escapist fantasy into all your writing.
I don't write screenplays; wouldn't know where to start — it's a whole different skill set — and I have zero connections in the film/TV industry, so it'd basically be a waste of my time.
I'm sure you'd rather see another Laundry novel, right?
In hindsight Woodrow Wilson fucked things up for the State Department by positioning the USA (hypocritically) as a beacon of light in the darkness, succour to the fallen, the arsenal of democracy, and all that bullshit -- despite being a white supremacist dirtbag at heart
That belief went way back before Wilson -- the idea that the US is a “shining city on a hill” for the world to admire and emulate is part of America’s founding credo. And Wilson, despite being a “white supremacist dirtbag,” as you say, did, in fact, try to get independence for a lot of people post WWI. He left out those non-whites because, well, see “white supremacist dirtbag” (though he did include Central European Slavs, who were not necessarily viewed as white in the early 20th century).
This is not to say the attitude wasn’t hypocritical or riven through with racism, but it’s a bit more complicated than you’re laying on.
(Also, we weren’t the arsenal of democracy until WWII. In WWI, we had to rely on the French to supply us with most weapons heavier than a rifle).
The essence of strategy is deciding what you will NOT do.
Like, TOTALLY, man.
Can I have a go too? I wonder what the UK version of this looks like...
Five Eyes is probably more like N Eyes these days, plus the ever-increasing bandwidth between Military, Security and Police means that there is a lot of information sloshing around.
How do billionaire tax evaders organise their money? Lots of answers are to be found in "Moneyland" by Oliver Bullough. Lots of these involve deniable accounts stored on computers on small islands. The institutions who own these machines can afford some computer security, of course, but not enough to beat the best in the world.
So here is an easy way for a small group of gaming buddies working in the basement of the MOD to make a few millions; find people with secret illegal accounts and hack them. Transfer the money to accounts that they control. Then launder it. They figure that all that money is deniable; if you empty an account its owner may complain to the bank, but they won't be calling the Fraud Squad. And morally its pretty clean; after all, your only stealing from bigger thieves.
And it all goes swimmingly. These guys are almost as intelligent as they think they are, so they don't get greedy or start fighting each other over the loot. They know that once they've got Fuck You Money (about £25M each in these low-interest days) its just a matter of keeping score. They even agree to share half the money with good causes because they are, genuinely, nice well-meaning people. You really could lend them the keys to your house, safe in the knowledge that they would have washed the dishes before handing them back.
However these good causes are a weak point in the plan. Getting on for £100M is actually quite difficult to give away. Most charities regard £1,000 as a large donation. Anything above £10,000 triggers money laundering checks. £1M in one lump is exceptional, even for a big name like the RSPCA (annual budget ~£140M), and these guys are trying to do that 100 times. The pattern is going to be noticed.
It gets noticed by our protagonist, Inspector Jones of Scotland Yard, who is an old-school follow-the-money detctive. Someone is donating huge amounts of money to a bunch of left-liberal and save-the-kittens type charities. The money is being piped through a variety of shady tax havens. Obviously there is some nefarious purpose behind all this: the kind of person who hides vast wealth in offshore tax havens does not load £100M into a shotgun and fires it off at random on a whim. But what?
Inspector Jones spends the first half of the book pulling strings that don't lead anywhere. Are the charities just fronts for money laundering? Four raids on charity headquarters net one case of small-scale peculation. A comparison of their books yields nothing either; they don't all hire the same shady overpriced security firm. And the money is coming with no strings attached. What is going on?
Jones reasons that this must be a pilot operation for something much bigger. Maybe a destabilisation of the UK economy; perhaps the next phase will be the dumping of vast wealth on some other unsuspecting group. Money is like a drug in more ways than one: the dose makes the poison. Toxic quantities of money sloshing into the wrong places could seriously screw people and places up. What if, for instance, the entire Heathrow security force (say, 1,000 people) suddenly got £1M each. Many would not turn up for work the next day, and you can't recruit and train 1,000 security guards overnight. Or something. Jones has a busy and suspicious mind, and he is sure that something along those lines is planned.
Or maybe the next tranch of money is going to some nastier charities, the kind of people who like to occupy city centers and throw stones at policemen (an activity that Jones has strong views on). What could some of them do with a few million pounds?
Jones talks to lots of senior people about these concerns. Some of them listen. He makes some headway against bureacrats who are see him as a potentially dangerous nut, and eventually gets the political sponsorship for some serious countermeasures. Foreign agents are tasked, computer analyses of money flows from Russia and China are carried out. Of course nothing turns up. Jones has used up what little political capital he had.
Then Jones gets a break. Someone at one of the tax haven banks is also pretty bright, and has managed to trace some of the activity that has been costing her employer's customers so much money. She can't call the police because much of her day-to-day work is in direct violation of UK tax, securities and AML law. However a friend of a friend mentions this fellow Jones at Scotland Yard. So she makes contact, and Jones talks his long-suffering boss into letting him have one last shot; a flight out to a tropical island. His boss only says yes because he figures that a week in paradise might do him some good. Who knows, he might even get laid and chill out.
Jones does some more sleuthing. His informant's information is good. He learns a lot of things about the tax haven business, how money is shunted into hidden accounts and managed by offshore cutouts in different countries (cue infodump based on "Moneyland"). Jones is now hot on the trail. He makes phone calls home, pulls strings, calls in favours, and finally tracks down the perpetrators. Who are these guys? Are they agents of a foreign power intent on destablising the UK economy? No. They are just a nice bunch of guys who figured out how to rip off a bunch of theives from the safety of their own homes. Actual live modern day Robin Hoods.
Jones waits until their regular Thursday evening D&D session, then goes and knocks on the door, alone. He introduces himself, explains what he knows, and asks to be dealt in...
Ok. You won't write it. But what writer would, in you opinion, find it suited his style the best? (Acknowledging that Shea & Wilson were relatively unknown before "Illuminatus!".)
Charlie's plot has a lot in common with Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", which is about a secret council of anarchists, all but one of whom turn out to be secret policemen investigating each other.
[[ fixed link - mod ]]
Graydon@8 wrote:
Speaking as a guy a couple of years younger than Zevon, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Now I gotta find my copy of "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School" and play "Jungle Work."Needs more bored Italian academics :).
Needs more high-level pranksters in general. (If that's what you meant.) Not everyone is motivated by greed.
Need an Italian academic to write a sequel to "Foucault's Pendulum", incorporating Q-Anon, Birthers, anti-Vaxxers, etc.
The only thing implausible about this scenario is the FBI sting. IIRC, in the last decade or so, most of the stupid terrorist FBI stings have targeted people in the bottom quartile of the IQ scale. Fortunately for the FBI, there's a target rich environment for anyone who wants to do genuine work, especially in conjunction with the southern district of New York.
Also, you missed the elevator pitch: this is obviously a retooling of The Producers set in the War On Terror Intelligence Industry. If someone wanted to sell this to Hollywood (or Broadway) they could do it as a musical.
I remember while on holiday in Washington being stuck at traffic lights behind a bus that on its back had an advert for jobs with Top Secret clearances.
Its a bit of a different world there I think. No messing around at Oxbridge colleges for them then!
who need to be gently weaned onto a more potent brew of lies Shhh. :-) Seriously, there are applied eschatologists already in positions of power. E.g. Mike Pompeo[1]. And there are some active influence operations (some (but not all) are the crude efforts by the DJT reelection campaign) targeting various Christian evangelical groups. (I'm mostly watching the US but this is done elsewhere.) Doing it with an ARG would be a really fun twist.
[1] NYTimes link sorry: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has linked Christian beliefs with foreign policy, raising questions about the extent to which his evangelism is influencing American diplomacy. (Edward Wong, March 30, 2019)
You're thinking too law-abidingly. The Billionaire Tax Evaders can't exactly complain to the Fraud Squad. But they are likely sociopaths, they aren't poor, and they're possessive.
Your story includes the motivated individual. It doesn't include the very-well-paid private investigators hired to track down the thieves. Throw in the possibility that they accidentally hit the offshore accounts of an organised criminal, or the premier of a large kleptocracy (short bloke, background in intelligence services, demonstrated willingness to murder anyone who crosses him, doesn't much care about collateral damage)...
You've got the makings of a comedy of errors as Russians, sundry Israelis, occasional Americans, maybe a few African operators, all descending on a sleepy Gloucestershire village to try and identify the thieves who ripped off the wrong people.
You've even got the possibility of the thieves being just good enough to persuade the victims that it was actually the other victims who stole from them. Intelligence services around the world trying to figure out why certain large news organisations are pressing for the overthrow of oil-rich nations; or why megayachts are disappearing at sea, while there are rumours that certain private space-access firms are working hard at control over terminal accuracy for "aborted landings"...
Ideally it'd be written by Richard Condon, except he died a couple of decades ago. ("The Manchurian Candidate" and the Prizzi trilogy were some of his better-known works: the third book in the latter eerily prefigured the Trump administration.)
Failing that? "Stephen Bury".
Danger, you're getting quite close to aspects of the plot of "Dead Lies Dreaming" and sequels! Except it's not about money, it's all about power, and by power I mean the kind of power that would make the New Management sit up and take notice!
an advert for jobs with Top Secret clearances
See https://www.clearancejobs.com
Such job advertisements can be quite useful, for certain values of "useful". A few years ago I was trying to understand the scope of activities at the NRO ground station colocated with the NASA facility outside Las Cruces, NM. The number of jobs in Las Cruces that have TS/SCI + polygraph requirements is impressive.
https://www.indeed.com/q-Active-Ts-Sci-l-Las-Cruces,-NM-jobs.html
Throw in the possibility that they accidentally hit the offshore accounts of an organised criminal, or the premier of a large kleptocracy
Sounds a bit like the plot from The Seven Day Soldiers, although that was written in a more innocent time…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2516520.The_Seven_Day_Soldiers
Martin @ 27: "You're thinking too law-abidingly.
Yes, you are right. Of course the very best private detectives for this kind of job have inside contacts in the various Intelligence agencies. So one day someone comes down to the MOD basement and tells our boys that he has a secret side job for them. Very hush hush, reporting only to me. I need you to track down some secret funds that have gone missing en-route to some of our agents overseas...
Charlie Unfortunately .... Frank Herbert's novels almost always involved a vast conspiracy, or even several. Ah yes, - "Paper Trails" - the weekend's "FT" comic had a short account of how its journalists crashed the Wirecard mega-fraud, in spite of the German government aganecies being set up by the fraudsters to pursue the journos, not the criminals ... I mean you could not make this shit up. Bear in mind that Facebook maintains "ghost" accounts for everyone who doesn't already have a Facebook account, populated with data derived from their contacts who do. REALLY? Is/would it be possible to get a court order instructing these utter shits to cease & desist? Hint: I refuse, point-blank to have anything to do with Arsebook. Incidentally - why "not travelled aboroad"? I would have thought that, for an intel agent was necessary, to avoid groupthink & chanelling of idiot thought-patterns. Mind you, it would explain a lot ...
Ah, I see wheels within wheels within ... superimposed on succesive fleas, of course. Problem - how far down do you go?
Total In WWI, we had to rely on the French to supply us with most weapons heavier than a rifle Erm, NO .... Like THIS A Pictuure
Paul "Our Man in Havana" For a very satirical wind-up & take on that one.
Rather off-topic, but saw this headline and thought of “Accelerando” for some reason:
Taxpayer Watchdog Group Sues VA for Records of Cat De-Braining Experiments
Erm, NO
Erm, YES. For values of land warfare, which is what I was thinking of. But fair enough, we had a lot of battleships that went to England, and did absolutely nothing of use, except to use up fuel and wander around the North Sea occasionally.
On land, as I said, the US Army relied on the French to supply them with most weapons heavier than a rifle. Hey, at least we got a drink out of it (the French 75 cocktail).
Also off-topic, sorry. That picture of Priti Patel from the Guardian article Charlie tweeted has some strong Martin Shkreli / Kim Yo-jong energy.
The Youtuber Drachinifel had an alt-history "what-if" posting once where he and some friends wargamed out the scenario in which the Kaisermarine High Seas Fleet sortied into the North Sea near the end of WW1 in a last-gasp operation against the British Home Fleet and associated US capital ships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrTeYcRXDEw
There's a memorable part of the action where a previous-generation USS battleship comes steaming into the engaged battle-line, burning out its boilers and thrashing its engines to death in a desperate attempt to get into the fight.
Reminds me of the classic Doctor Who episode Castrovalva
I have already been thinking I really need to reread Travels in Hyperreality, but I guess a lot of reasons make this very much Eco’s time. It’s a pity he didn’t live longer, but we can say that about a lot of authors.
Charlie Stross @ 7: That, right there, is 2-3 years' work. If I added this book to the queue I wouldn't get to it before 2022, and it couldn't be published much before 2024. By which time the moment will have moved on.
Yeah, we all HOPE it will have moved on ... and not be nostalgia looking back to better times.
That picture of Priti Patel from the Guardian article Charlie tweeted has some strong Martin Shkreli / Kim Yo-jong energy.
Ignoring the noise from the top and focusing on the ER/police Red Queen Race:
Yes, there is one, although I'm not involved in it. Back a decade or two ago, a previous set of blockade protestors tied themselves to large bamboo tripods, on the theory that the police couldn't get them down easily without hurting them, and that made a block. It worked once. Then the police had a long think. The next time the tripod crew came out to do a blockade, three cops each lifted up one leg of each tripod, marched them off to safe locations, and disassembled the structure. This was used in a book on nonviolence as an example of the pressing need for nonviolent actionists to innovate as rapidly as the police did.
So now it looks like they're using tensegrity structures and (probably) tying themselves into human mats. Yay! They're innovating! And I'll bet the cops are looking at this with a combination of the eye roll (how many hours is it going to take to disentangle this one?), and a bit of contemplation (okay, how do we deal with it faster next time?). While the ER crew's going through all this and trying to figure out how to build a better blockade each time.
It's a good dialog to have, IMHO. Keeps people out of trouble, except for the grifters at the top.
Total @ 15: In hindsight Woodrow Wilson fucked things up for the State Department by positioning the USA (hypocritically) as a beacon of light in the darkness, succour to the fallen, the arsenal of democracy, and all that bullshit -- despite being a white supremacist dirtbag at heart
That belief went way back before Wilson -- the idea that the US is a “shining city on a hill” for the world to admire and emulate is part of America’s founding credo. And Wilson, despite being a “white supremacist dirtbag,” as you say, did, in fact, try to get independence for a lot of people post WWI. He left out those non-whites because, well, see “white supremacist dirtbag” (though he did include Central European Slavs, who were not necessarily viewed as white in the early 20th century).
This is not to say the attitude wasn’t hypocritical or riven through with racism, but it’s a bit more complicated than you’re laying on.
(Also, we weren’t the arsenal of democracy until WWII. In WWI, we had to rely on the French to supply us with most weapons heavier than a rifle).
Where we screwed up was NOT BEING the "shining city on a hill". We should always BE worthy of the admiration and emulation we seek (whether we get them or not).
But we're not the only ones worshiping idols with feet of clay.
Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" comes to mind...
It wasn't Wilson.
Ignoring the twin issues of slavery and genocide that made the hill of bodies for that ol' shining city to sit atop, I'd blame McKinley as much as Wilson.
The key thing McKinley did was to buckle under and allow the annexation of Hawai'i and the invasion of Cuba and the Philippines, taking the latter two away from Spain. This was problematic for the US, because in doing this it started acting like all the other imperial powers, rather than the "peaceful republic" that was supposed to be a better example than Britain, France, Russia, or Germany. That, at least, was the rhetoric at the time, and even the Speaker of the House fought bitterly (and failed) to keep the US from going overseas.
In any event, the counterargument for taking these locations was sea power. Absent the transcontinental railroad, US ships had to go around Cape Horn to get supplies from San Francisco to the East Coast and vice versa. With the Panama Canal likely in the future, controlling access to that canal (if not the Canal itself) was considered vital to national interests, because whoever controlled the Canal effectively controlled maritime travel between the two coasts. Cuba (and Puerto Rico, Haiti, etc) were invaded at various points to protect the route. Whoever controlled Hawai'i had a big say in what happened in the Pacific, and the Philippines are a central point for the South China Sea, as we're seeing now.
But all those island grabs started under McKinley, apparently not because he wanted them, but because he went along with the people pushing them.
Random thought of the day.
Anybody remember Steve Jackson's old Illuminati card game?
If so, do you remember one of the organizations, the "Semi-conscious Liberation Army"
I think QAnon's their real world counterpart, although instead of liberal and communist, they're libertarian and Russia-backed.
OP: Charlie, I nearly did a spit take with my morning coffee when you referred to the U.S. Intelligence Community as an organization - it's more like a herd of feuding siblings, arguing with each other and competing for Daddy's attention and money.
The U.S. had practically no intelligence apparatus before WWII. Secretary of State Henry Stimson, later FDR's Secretary of War, famously said "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail" when shutting down the State Department's Cipher Bureau in 1929. The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy had small cryptographic offices which were later successful (to some extent) in cracking Japanese diplomatic and military codes, and of course there was the Anglo-American sharing of Enigma messages.
Even though the National Security Act of 1947 laid out the formal basis of U.S. intelligence agencies after WWII, there was never a single agency controlling U.S. intelligence until the creation of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004, as part of the blame game played in the U.S. post-9/11. And the DNI is pretty much a toothless tiger, in part because it does not control the budgets of the various agencies.
If you want a conspiracy theory, you can posit that El Cheeto Grande is a Russian asset specifically tasked to destroy the U.S. intelligence, defense and foreign policy establishments, and destroy whatever standing the U.S. had in the world.
That being said, your setup is quite amusing. It reminds me just a bit of one of my favorite 1960s movie farces, "The President's Analyst".
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Anybody remember Steve Jackson's old Illuminati card game?
I've got it, both the original game and the CCG. Didn't really like either, but then the whole conspiracy thing left me cold. I just assumed it was like American humour — I can tell it's supposed to be funny, but I'm not seeing the jokes…
Regards this "intelligence-industrial complex":
The only salesmen I've encountered selling Palantir to financial institutes are ex-intelligence. ex-MI5 and ex-CIA.
I assume because that's their most important client base.
(or maybe the Palantir sales-guy who calls himself "Q" is ex-MI6 rather than ex-MI5 - I don't remember)
Once upon a time I actually worked for one of those private contractors, albeit not in intelligence (paralegal services, subcontracted to DOJ to defend Bonneville Power Administration in the Washington Public Power Supply System...yes, WPPSS!...suit about bond payout defaults). Y'all may have heard of a little company called CACI.
The premise is entirely plausible.
How about a reverse 'Nigerian Prince scam': instead of phishing for money, deposit money at random targeting seniors, people in low-wage jobs, unemployed, etc.
Or --- hack an online lottery ticket purchase site, get the names/contact info and demos, cross-reference against FB or neighborhood (socio-economic status) and tell them they won some sort of new lottery tie-in contest and deposit their 'winnings' directly into whatever account they use for that. Keep the winnings amount fairly low to avoid drawing too much attention or having the 'winner' do anything reckless in reaction.
I've no idea what's involved in setting up/registering a charity but figure that it can't be too hard to do or that they're that closely monitored. (See DT & family, plus budget cuts.) Anyways, once your charity is set up, just start sending out small amounts of money to the people who already use/rely on some legit charity.
Or - set up a church/start your own religion.
Approach and strategy would depend on how much on-going effort these Robin Hood folks are willing to put in and for how long. If they have a very long outlook or manage to keep going long enough to become part of the charity world background or start growing (need to hire personnel) that's when the personal vs. business ethics and other issues really show up.
Anybody remember Steve Jackson's old Illuminati card game?
Never had any of his games. But I do remember his issues with the US Secret Service raids on SJG and their total lack of understanding of the gaming industry and reality. Conspiracies and all that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game_designer)#1990_Secret_Service_incident_and_legal_actions
Not sure how this changes or amplifies the reality of your premise...
QAnon, ... its true number of followers is unclear but in the tens of thousands,
I think you're off by at least 2 zeros. More likely 3. I have relatives and my wife's workmates who believe it all. They don't "follow" but they do regurgitate the party lines with regularity.
And just tonight I discovered that some of these folks are publicly moving off FB and to parler where they will not be censored when spreading lies. But lies they think are real.
oy vey.
I like the idea a lot! It's very funny and also true in a very disturbing way.
One of the books I'll never write is the story of a young Republican campaign worker who, after the election of his boss to the presidency, is given a very low-level job somewhere in Washington, and discovers that he's been issued Oliver North's old shredder, and that this cranky old machine is the key to his getting laid endlessly, as long as he doesn't mind whatever blond bimbo he's boffing that night leaning over the shredder and moaning, "Oliver! Oh God! Oliver!" This fuels his rise to power....
Need an Italian academic to write a sequel to "Foucault's Pendulum", Sure, but I had in mind some (possible:) Italian linkages to very early QAnon, at least as a copy of/homage to an Italian work called Q, and perhaps more direct. (There might be more; haven't looked. I have other (uhm) guesses; keeping to self.) This is from 2018. Though calling them academics is maybe a stretch. People Think This Whole QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is A Prank On Trump Supporters - "What the fuck is wrong with boomers?" (Ryan Broderick, August 6, 2018) And the full email exchange that the Wu Ming/Luther Blisset parts of that were based on: On #QAnon: The full text of our Buzzfeed Interview Question: Have there been key moments for you that made you feel like QAnon is an homage to Q? What has lined up the best? Coincidences are hard to ignore: dispatches signed Q allegedly coming from some dark meanders of top state power, exactly like in our book. This Q is frequently described as a Blissett-like collective character, «an entity of about ten people that have high security clearance», and at the same time – like we did for the LBP – weird “origin myths” are put into circulation, like the one about John Kennedy Jr. faking his own death in 1999 – the year Q was first published, by the way! – and becoming Q. QAnon’s psy-op reminds very much of our old «playbook», and the metaconspiracy seems to draw from the LBP’s set of references, as it involves the Church, satanic rituals, paedophilia… ... We can’t say for sure that it’s an homage, but one thing is almost certain: our book has something to do with it. It may have started as some sort of, er, “fan fiction” inspired by our novel, and then quickly became something else. Let us take for granted, for a while, that QAnon started as a prank in order to trigger right-wing weirdos and have a laugh at them. There’s no doubt it has long become something very different. At a certain level it still sounds like a prank, but who’s pulling it on whom? Was the QAnon narrative hijacked and reappropriated by right-wing “counter-pranksters”? Counter-pranksters who operated with the usual alt-right “post-ironic” cynicism, and made the narrative more and more absurd in order to astonish media pundits while spreading reactionary content in a captivating way? ... A larp it is, for sure. To be more precise, it’s a fascist Alternate Reality Game. Plausibly the most active players – ie the main influencers – don’t believe in all the conspiracies and metaconspiracies, but many people are so gullible that they’ll gulp down any piece of crap ...
A couple of years later[1], Steve Jackson produced a game based on a twisted combination of that event and Illuminati, called "Hacker". The game itself is pretty meh, but the rulebook is a delight, full of little sidebars saying things like "Note for US Secret Service agents: you cannot really hack real computers by rolling dice in a card game".
I do agree with Robert Prior that the jokes in Illuminati mostly fall flat for a non-US audience[2], but it remains one of the games I've had the most fun with - slightly-tipsy mass mutual bluffing among a group of friends who know each other('s tells) really well.
[1] a couple of years after the raid, that is. The lawsuit finally came to trial in 1993, and SJG never got some of their computer stuff back. [2] though the combinations required for successful attacks can produce some entertaining madlibs-style stuff. Where else, except perhaps in 2020, would you have Big Oil funding the Boy Scouts' attempt to wrest control of New York from the Trekkies?
Troutwaxer @ 53: this cranky old machine is the key to his getting laid endlessly
Sounds like an episode of Warehouse 13.
SFReader @ 50: I've no idea what's involved in setting up/registering a charity but figure that it can't be too hard to do or that they're that closely monitored. (See DT & family, plus budget cuts.)
I'm not an expert (and neither are our computer geeks from the MOD), but I get the distinct impression that charity regulation in the USA is much laxer than in the UK. I don't think that the Trump Foundation would get away with those shenanigans here.
Actually our boys have a bigger problem with repatriating the money. At the start its all a kind of game to them; the money is piling up in offshore accounts at the same institutions they are ripping off, but actually spending any of it is a problem for tomorrow. They have a vague plan to buy citizenship in some small island state and then find somewhere nice and tropical where they can have week-long D&D sessions in a big house while being waited on by pretty young women (and men, in one case). They haven't realised how big a challenge it will be to do this whilst remaining alive and free.
David L @ 52:
I think you're off by at least 2 zeros. More likely 3. I have relatives and my wife's workmates who believe it all. They don't "follow" but they do regurgitate the party lines with regularity.
This article in MIT Technology Review talks about how QAnon is targeting Evangelicals. Their "save the children from the paedophile conspiracy" shtick goes down well there, because Evangelicals are all about saving the children, and they are also always being encouraged to see the Hand of Satan in the events on the news, so they are half-way to conspiracy theory already. This is creating a wider group of semi-believers who don't treat the writings of Q as the holy writ but do strongly suspect that much of the QAnon stuff is real.
This is worryingly reminiscent of the "disruptive technology" theory of Clayton Christensen. His book "The Innovator's Dilemma" described how a new technology can get a foothold serving a small market that the big incumbents don't much care about. There it can improve its performance gradually over time until it reaches the tipping point where it can beat the incumbent technology on its home turf. At that point its all over for the incumbent.
This is what the viral memes of Q have been doing; they have infected a comparatively small group of conspiracy-minded nutters that most people don't care about (until they start shooting up pizza parlours). But now these memes have evolved to the point where they can start taking on mainstream religions.
Which means that its game over for conventional religion. Which is pretty scary, because the Church of Q is going to be the kind of church militant that goes on literal crusades against whoever it has defined as the Enemy.
Recommended viewing for anything like this is the film The Long Kiss Goodnight, which uses similar ideas for its plot. I won't say more because spoilers.
That, amusingly reminds me that "donald trump, bloom county, bill the cat" in a search engine can provoke a much needed laugh. BTW, which comic strip character donated their brain to the masterminds of BREXIT?
I've no idea what's involved in setting up/registering a charity but figure that it can't be too hard to do or that they're that closely monitored.
Not that hard in the US. And if running a scam you mainly need to make sure you: 1. Don't piss off your donors/marks or they will report you. 2. Keep your filings current (a club I'm a part of had previous officers who didn't and now we get to do all the paper work all over again.) 3. Keep the numbers consistent and reasonable. For various definitions of such.
But to make real money in a non profit, set one up in the US and do something public and supposedly somewhat useful. Then form a for profit management firm that does all the work for the non profit. Pocket the money from the for profit. You can make a mint as long as you really pay the taxes due.
There's nothing illegal to set up a food bank where fund raising and overhead (out sourced management) eat up 70% to 90% of the cash flow. Despicable but not illegal.
Paul And, from what I can make out & the descriptions in here, "the Church of Q" already has a name: Nazism Shit, oh shit.
Not implausible: the Third Reich did try to establish an official Nazi-sanctioned church — copy of Mein Kampf on the altar instead of a (dangerously Jewish-adjacent) Bible, party loyalist clergy, various patriotic hymns, swastika instead of cross/crucifix.
It didn't gain much traction (the Lutheran church was too deeply entrenched and Hitler didn't want to antagonize the pope just yet) but given another decade? Totally a thing.
Indeed. And several other fascist states run by extremists have done similar things - Mao's Little Red Book and associated rituals passed the duck test for being a church, and I have heard that North Korea is similar.
Political Funding as an alternative US laundering scam !
When I said "Church of Q" I didn't mean a building with a giant Q hanging over the alter; a more likely scenario will be a group of people who call themselves Christians but who actually spend all their effort on QAnon causes. It will probably look more like the KKK than the Nazis.
Evangelicals are all about saving the children
Yes, but saving them for what? Given the level of child abuse in many Evangelical sects…
Yes, but saving them for what?
Quiverfull Movement.
I would expect where a congregation's Pastor & Elders are sympathetic to Q, dissenting members will be made unwelcome until it becomes Q-friendly. A taxidermy-like process, it'll look xian, but the filling won't be.
There was nothing occult about the shredder - I wrote the plotline down around 2004 when North was still relevant - the idea was that it was part of the Oliver North legend and thus sexy as heck if you were a rightwing-woman of a certain age.
Len Deighton, with a knowledgeable technical advisor.
I wonder what will happen to QAnon if Biden wins the election, particularly if he does prosecute every Trump-era official he can get his hands on (as he should.)
I kept waiting for you to tell me what D was doing. Everyone knows golf is played in foursomes...
Oh that's easy... D is the SF author who's working up plots, then discovering that his golf buddies are taking them and running with them.
Slightly OT: did you see my "Robots Discover Mental Vulnerability in Humanity" post?
"So the engagement algorithms of YouTube, Twitter, and, above all, Facebook find the versions of the Q story that provide the most fear and anger and, above all, attention and spread them around."
And, also, (h/t to Graydon Saunders) "There is also the possibility of social media that works differently, that promotes cooperation and compassion rather than fear and hate."
You can read the whole post at https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2020/08/robots-discover-mental-vulnerability-in.html but I've stolen most of my thunder here.
So basically, our refusal to understand advertising to be the purulent slime of evil that it is, and consequent failure to keep it off the internet from the word go, are going to provide us with the proof of its nature. Which we will continue to ignore even when the front doors start going in.
The two difficulties are (a) there isn't a consensus on what is positive and what is negative (*) and (b) strong emotions such as anger attrack more attention than passive ones line cooperation. Compassion depends on where you are on the sociopathic scale.
(*) Consider Extinction Rebellion as an example.
Okay - this is effin nuts!
https://www.pressherald.com/2020/09/09/far-right-norwegian-lawmaker-nominates-trump-for-nobel-peace-prize/
I saw a lot of jobs requiring HS/poly. I only had a POTs clearance (Position of Trust), being a sysadmin. No top secrets, or middle secrets for me, only bargain basement ones, or maybe blue light specials....*
Megayachts disappearing at sea... "Ellen, call the crew together, it's time to take the Nautilus out on a cruise...."
Plus for for the President's Analyst. Always loved that movie.
QAnon is much more dangerous than the Teabaggers ever were (and I'm saying that under full knowledge they were instrumental in paving the way for Trump). The latter were a discrete astroturf movement controlled by the Kochtopus and which had clear goals like pushing deregulation, tipping the culture war in the right's favor and just spiting Obama.
But QAnon... what started as a conspiracy theory Trump supporters told each other to explain why, after their God-Emperor claimed the throne, their lives still sucked and that didn't require pinko material analysis of late-stage capitalist society has now metastasized into a fascist terrorist death cult with global scope...
The prognosis is bleak. QAnon's trajectory points straight towards mainstreaming and establishing a political power base, with QAnon-associated congressional candidates already winning GOP primaries. Add British MPs in the near future, if we look at the size of QAnon rallies on the island...
A fundamental part of the QAnon narrative is that there's a secret war going on which will conclude in the imprisonment and(or execution of The Bad People. Soon their members will wield legislative/executive power to make this a reality...
Yeah, he's an old friend, and he's told me a bit about it.
He's in good company - Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin (twice). Apparently the same id&&t nominated him in 2018
Re: "Robots Discover Mental Vulnerability in Humanity"
The article mentions that a 'startle' is what activates this type of response/addiction. If so, then some sort of embedded online version of MUZAK - impossible to turn off/down and cloyingly sweet - might help prevent the 'startle'. Or at least redirect the annoyance toward another object a la Pavlov - in this case 'elevator music'.
BTW - what FB and other social sites do is not 'advertising'. Advertising is required to identify its sponsors and (still) has to follow rules re: target audience buys (time slots, no direct-to-children messages), misleading product or price claims, etc. FB is in the business of enabling propaganda: no legal requirements for verification of sponsor identification or claims which means it's extremely difficult - time-consuming and expensive - for anyone receiving this message to seek legal redress/compensation. Also - just because you've subscribed to some mag/newsletter/online social site/service, it does not automatically follow that you've completely ceded all your rights to not be misled or lied to. This is what FB has been burying their head in the sand about/denying for forever: they get paid for allowing orgs/people to insert info - therefore they share responsibility for the consequences of that info.
OGH must be morphically resonating.
Heteromeles @ 44: It wasn't Wilson.
Ignoring the twin issues of slavery and genocide that made the hill of bodies for that ol' shining city to sit atop, I'd blame McKinley as much as Wilson.
Ignoring those issues was what kept us from being. IF we ever want to be what we believed we were, we're going to have to do something about them.
We're kind of at cross-purposes here. Y'all see only America's failures & I want to know what we have to do to make a America a success?
ALL; an inclusive society worthy of the Statue of Liberty. Don't tell me we aren't the "shining city on a hill". I already know that. Tell me how we BECOME the "shining city on a hill".Dave P @ 46: If you want a conspiracy theory, you can posit that El Cheeto Grande is a Russian asset specifically tasked to destroy the U.S. intelligence, defense and foreign policy establishments, and destroy whatever standing the U.S. had in the world.
I think you take too narrow a view of Trumpolini's tasking from his Kremlin masters. And I'll grant Trumpolini may not understand how he's doing Moscow's bidding. I wouldn't go so far as to claim he's an unwitting agent, merely that he's a half-wit agent of a foreign power.
And Henry L Stimson: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." (1929, while Secretary of State for Hoover.)
Paul @ 66: When I said "Church of Q" I didn't mean a building with a giant Q hanging over the alter; a more likely scenario will be a group of people who call themselves Christians but who actually spend all their effort on QAnon causes. It will probably look more like the KKK than the Nazis.
I suspect it will more closely resemble the church a certain hack SciFi writer created to scam the IRS. Y'all know the one I mean.
They now are the main stream of what's left of the Republican Party.
SlightlyFoxed @ 84: He's in good company - Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin (twice). Apparently the same id&&t nominated him in 2018
The article said the nominations were supposed to be kept secret for 50 years, so I wonder if all the hoopla counts against in the committee's deliberations?
EC @ 64 Well, I have long said that communism passes the Duck Test for being a religion ....
Charlie @ 68 Puke. But all too true .....
Troutwaxer @ 72 Probably start an insurrection - about 5/6th Novemebr ata guess....
Insurrection.... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/america-insurgency-chaos-trump-violence.html
But, I mean, really, let's see: 1. Pandemic 2. White-wing violence, and intimidation with firearms 3. Depression (economic) 4. President and others preaching "hate thy neighbor"
All we need are three more plagues, right? Send that Orange Thing into the desert, bearing all our Sins....
Well, considering that epidemics, violent social breakdown, and famine usually ride with a high death toll, we're currently two horsemen short. I'm happy with that, actually...
ALL; an inclusive society worthy of the Statue of Liberty. Don't tell me we aren't the "shining city on a hill". I already know that. Tell me how we BECOME the "shining city on a hill".
Hard to undo a genocide and resurrect over 100 dead languages, but perhaps we start there?
This isn't entirely sarcastic: the American experiment is largely responsible for the degradation of lands across our entire territory, and we displaced (or often killed) those who knew better.
Shining cities on hills need sustainable food production to be anything other than advertising symbols. Given 400 years of degradation, we need to go far beyond 40 acres and a mule-level reparations to support any city (shining or otherwise) beyond the end of the century.
NYT on Sept 9. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/garrison-courtney-spies-contracts.html Executive summary - someone attempted to con companies with clearances to work on top secret projects with a black budget.
Charlie - it's a challenge to even write a blog post and stay ahead of the future.
Tell me how we BECOME the "shining city on a hill".
We don’t. No one does. Welcome to the real world.
I just remembered what Q reminds me of. A bizarre cross of (cough cough) a religion founded by a certain late SF writer, Bug Jack Barron, and the Church of the SubGenius. Only someone took SubGenius to be serious....
I wouldn't be surprised to discover that whoever is leading QAnon is a highranking subgenius... Praise the Holy Power of "Bob!"
5.Fire
Eastern Australia, Western USA, Brazil, Indonesia, the whole Arctic circle.
Just wait till it becomes known that ‘Parler’ is in fact a honeypot to attract and trace committed right wingers so they can more easily be rounded up by the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy, which has so easily duped the poor innocent members of the silent majority.
Once the conspiracies are 3 or more layers deep who can tell reality anymore?
Or is that the point?
mccamj @ 98 YES - to the question. Now-to-the-end of January isn't going to be good either in the USA or here ....
In other words, C generates lots of interesting false leads for B to explore and A to report on, but they never quite pan out.
Well, that does sound an awful lot like the whole of "Russiagate" affair, which never reaally pans out either, but keeps cirkling the drain and never goes down no matter how ludicrous it's proponents behave, like: Not finding that the American President is a Soviet Spy is apparently a Very Bad Thing :)
Add to that the slap-stick and amateurturism with stuff like "The Steele Dossier" and one must conclude that so many people now work in "intelligence" that they are clearly scraping the barrel on the talent!
The private coporation with nukes, that would be SAIC. Check the jobs section of their home page.
And when life hands you shit?
I know, I know. Time to make artificial tanning lotion and sell it to reality TV narcissists.
I maintain that Trump isn't smart enough to be a Russian spy. He'd brag about it to all his golfing buddies at Mar-a-Lago. (Admittedly half of them would then ask for tips on how to get on the GRU payroll, because that's the class of folks who like to hang out with him.)
Trump is what the KGB used to call a "useful idiot". He probably owes them for money laundering services and some handy real estate tips. But why should they drop the hammer on him when he causes so much amusing chaos?
I believe that the qualified individual who nominated him might have made it public
"The article said the nominations were supposed to be kept secret for 50 years, so I wonder if all the hoopla counts against in the committee's deliberations?"
I think that comment still applies - the nominator going public is a little infra dig. and that's not going to help internal deliberations come down in their favour. Given that the pool of nominators apparently numbers in the thousands (and the nominees in the hundreds), you will get some less-than-sensible nominations.
Break the cultural transmission of white supremacy with a thoroughness comparable to the fate of the Cathars.
That's step one.
It looks weirdly like his wives could be a succession of handlers, though. With a bit of a post-communist gap.
Trump, or perhaps more accurately the Trump enterprise, has laundered significant money; Donny is a useful idiot, but the amounts argue for an element of control somewhere.
Cicero: "Cato gives his opinion as if he lived in the Republic of Plato, rather than in the dunghill of Romulus."
Total @ 99:
We don’t. No one does. Welcome to the real world.
So, that's your answer? Just give up?
Troutwaxer @ 101: I wouldn't be surprised to discover that whoever is leading QAnon is a highranking subgenius... Praise the Holy Power of "Bob!"
According to the article OGH linked to, 'Q' is the guy who started 8chan & owns the domains associated with it.
https://medium.com/@registrarproject17/qanon-is-an-enormous-alternate-reality-game-arg-run-by-malevolent-puppetmasters-27e6b098ce9b
To my knowledge the Church of the SubGenius was never consciously racist/fascist. Listen to what the man says.
https://youtu.be/j3fW7FNAvrc?t=135
According to the article OGH linked to, 'Q' is the guy who started 8chan & owns the domains associated with it.
That link appears to be baseless. (Although the current owner of 8chan — not the founder, I note — sounds like a really unpleasant piece of work.)
Bellinghman @ 111:
I think that comment still applies - the nominator going public is a little infra dig. and that's not going to help internal deliberations come down in their favour. Given that the pool of nominators apparently numbers in the thousands (and the nominees in the hundreds), you will get some less-than-sensible nominations.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering. If the nominator broke the rules in making the nomination public, will that have a negative effect on how the committee views the nominee?
Graydon @ 113: It looks weirdly like his wives could be a succession of handlers, though. With a bit of a post-communist gap.
Trump, or perhaps more accurately the Trump enterprise, has laundered significant money; Donny is a useful idiot, but the amounts argue for an element of control somewhere.
Rather than "Control", I think ownership. They own him - lock, stock and Trump Tower. He's not an agent, he's a two-bit hustler who owes the loan-sharks more than he can pay. They don't tell him what to do, they drop hints to Giuliani's or Manafort's "associates" that maybe he can profit from doing someone a favor and they can do him a favor in return.
Instead of the Manchurian Candidate, think a cheap, second-rate knockoff plagiarizing The Godfather.
They don't have to tell him to do anything, just encourage his innate corruption and grease the skids.
Carrying-over from the previous thread .... DerekT: So they follow the same pattern yet again. Hold on to an I'll conceived position stubbornly and stupidly until the maximum political damage had been done and then Uturn. ^_^
I'd like 4 days from today if anyone's running a sweepstake;) Two days to go ... Though I actually think it might make it to The Lords, before it crashes & Burns irretrivably (?)
And, from my self:]Question: I thought I knew UK political history fairly well, but. Has there EVER been a "UK" politician, certainly since 1660, who has run entirely on pure bullshit, as BoZo seems to be doing? [ And always has done, actually ] Joe Chamberlain? A great divider & upsetter, but never PM. Um.
Well - has there ever been anyone quite so ... "odd" as BoZo in the principal office of state before?
Break the cultural transmission of white supremacy with a thoroughness comparable to the fate of the Cathars.
Despite its historical popularity, I don't think genocide is something we should be advocating in the present day.
"Odd" people in the principal office of state? Henry VI springs to mind. But I don't think that's what you meant :)
I don't think the conditions have ever existed before, in the parliamentary era, to sustain a true Bozoid. There has never been a period when so much of the electorate has been so unaware of the distinction between reality and unreality that the doings of fictional characters on TV shows are considered as worthy of front-page headlines as the doings of politicians, and that being stupid and proud of it is so widely considered a reasonable attitude.
Rather than "Control", I think ownership. They own him - lock, stock and Trump Tower. He's not an agent, he's a two-bit hustler who owes the loan-sharks more than he can pay.
Bingo. He's also on the hook to pay something like $400 million or more in the next five years, and a bunch of it he personally signed for, meaning his personal assets are forfeit, not just corporate assets, if he fails to pay.
Now, with QAnon, the Russians are just doing what we and they and the other cold war countries have done for decades: destabilizing the country by cranking up homegrown agitprop. With the wonderful blessing that social media is, they don't even have to generate much content. Instead, they simply sample, remix, and connect susceptible brains to addictive content. Probably a lot of it's automated by now.
Anyway, assuming the dust settles and the US still stands, I suspect that we'll eventually find that Trump didn't want to be President. What he did want was to raise a billion dollars to run for president, spend half of it or less, and use the rest of it to pay off his debts. Then the Russians and the RNC independently worked to get him elected. And there he's thrashed ever since.
The real problem is that the Russians are running the same system, version 4.0, right now, to attempt a repeat.
Best thing that could happen, really, is if Trump catches Covid and dies right before the election.
I've not just listened to Stang, I've preached at X-Day. I was alluding to similarities of technique and content, not politics. Yes. I am that Troutwaxer, and you can hear me rant on Hour of Slack 756! (I have no idea what I said, maybe some who listened can remind me!)
Charlie Stross @ 117:
That link appears to be baseless. (Although the current owner of 8chan — not the founder, I note — sounds like a really unpleasant piece of work.)
I misunderstood that the guy who owns 8chan now was the guy who started it. But apparently, the guy who did start 8chan is one of the sources for the claim that the guy who now owns 8chan is 'Q'.
Will you explain further why the link between 8chan's current owner and 'Q' is baseless?
In any case, Qanon does NOT appear to have anything do with the Church of the SubGenius, seems to be nothing more than a nerdy practical joke that took on a life of its own.
I suspect that we'll eventually find that Trump didn't want to be President
Given he's been making runs at the idea of being president for at least three decades, I suspect ego has more to do with it, and he did want it.
Given he's been making runs at the idea of being president for at least three decades, I suspect ego has more to do with it, and he did want it.
This is true, and you may well be right. The two problems with that story are that he didn't try until 2016, and that it's apparently more profitable to him, especially recently, to be a failed candidate with a huge war chest than the President. The counterargument to this second problem is that he came in with the idea of looting the government with a hostile takeover and riding away, which may be also true. But it could also be that he got himself in a position where he needed most of a billion dollars to pull himself out of his latest jamb, and that forced his run. And don't forget that he decisively lost the popular vote, but won the gerrymandered electoral college.
Anyway, we're pretty sure that El Cheeto has strings attached to Mother Moscow.
The more interesting question, perhaps, is this: who are the most plausible candidates for Bozoid's controller? And if he's not being run, who in his administration is? Y'all have some of the same problems with chronic weird governance choices as the US does, after all.
Hi, there, troll.
Most of what was in the Steele Dossier has been proven TRUE. Russian interference? The GOP-controlled Senate intel committee said it happened. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/politics/senate-intelligence-report-russia-election-interference-efforts/index.html
May I hope that the door hits you on the way out?
Screw that.
I don't think anyone really believes we're the Shining City on the Hill... but that it's a journey with that as a goal.
And not all heroes, etc, have feet of clay. And fuck Hollywood edgy, Superman does not kill. Period. The Lone Ranger and Tonto (we're talking Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels) were Good Guys.
There's still someone in charge of running him, and you won't know who it is for a long time. Who knew who Putin was running in the mid-eighties?
But they're not giving orders, at that level. I have a friend who is convinced he met someone once who could actually arrange for someone to be removed. Out of curiosity, he asked what it would cost, and the answer that convinced him this was the real thing was, "nothing. you'll just owe us a favor".
And here in my writing, I'm avoiding like the plague saying "As you know, Bob...."
Heteromeles What he did want was to raise a billion dollars to run for president, spend half of it or less, and use the rest of it to pay off his debts. Double Bingo? Maybe, maybe not. "The Producers" in other words ... "Right Before the election" - like dies on 2nd November?
Re: 'They own him - lock, stock and Trump Tower. He's not an agent, he's a two-bit hustler who owes the loan-sharks more than he can pay.'
I'm guessing that he's got many 'owners' and that not all of them are aware of who else has dibs on him.
DT's consistently been more concerned with how the stock markets are playing out than any other aspect of the economy. And he's probably well aware that there's a strong correlation between his tweets and market activity. So -- who's an official, licensed market player and is never directly connected to him in media reports? Hint: He's got 2 daughters. (I read her SO's Wikipedia page - young billionaire with connections to lots of countries.)
I do not want El Cheeto Grande to die prior to the election - I want him to lose badly and then go on to a string of lawsuits and prosecutions that lead to a long, miserable road to his ignominious death at 92 while wearing an orange jumpsuit. But I'll be satisfied if, at a minimum, we USAians give him his marching papers this November, however long it takes to count the votes.
If he was to perish before the election, we'd be left with Pence, that sanctimonious Dominionist prick. He seems to be a somewhat more rational person, and therefore more dangerous than the serial liar/habitual con man in the Oval Office now. And the Grasping Oligarchs' Party would be able to breathe a nonpublicized sigh of relief and get back to the business of taking whatever worth the middle class has left - for themselves.
For what it's worth, sleazeball lawyer Michael Cohen's latest book also reinforces the idea that the 2016 campaign was a branding/moneymaking scheme, and that the Orange Shitgibbon never believed he'd win. Then his own ego convinced him he's be a GREAT president.
Somehow I'm reminded of that line from early in Citizen Kane: "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper".
And now the FBI arrest a couple of Boogaloo bois providing illegal gun mods to fake Hamas.
The thing about the qucumbers that truly astonishes me is the amount of obviously ridiculous stuff they accept and angrily propagate. The goddamned mole children for example https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/comments/fw97bz/what_are_the_mole_children/ (it's a mocking site not a gathering of the loonies. Reddit shut down the Q positive sites.) And the ridiculous business recently with the Wayfair furniture selling children https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53416247
Meanwhile actual children are caged at the border but have the wrong colour skin for these arseholes to get upset about.
Yup. Like the Uprightstanding Evangelical Christians who send missionaries to Enlighten the folks in Africa, and South America, etc.
Help AMERICAN Blacks and Latinos in the inner cities? Why, they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!!!
It has nothing to do with anything material; it's an attempt to find the Words of Inescapable Shame so they can create and reinforce the social hierarchy they think exists, or ought to exist, and undo the unbearable circumstances of other people not agreeing with them about that hierarchy.
(TERFs do this a whole lot, too.)
Most authoritarians aren't wearing jackboots; they're wearing cheap shoes, know their place, and will make certain you know yours, too.
Patriarchy is the idea that violence is a legit social response, that women are property, and that you can't legitimately question the hierarchy arrived through violence. (About what you'd expect from the political takeover by the first standing armies.)
The obligation is to pay the troops; mostly with land, historically, certainly with legal status.
White supremacy is a patriarchal heresy; you can't get into the warband unless you're easily sunburned, and everybody who isn't easily sunburned is property. Still that same obligation to pay the troops, though; share the loot. Still the same established-by-violence social hierarchy.
What gets called populism is a complaint at the loss of loot-sharing after 1980.
Mammonism is a white-supremacy heresy that says only money is virtue; bravery and service no longer count. You can do anything to the poor, and it's holy to do it, because if God cared they wouldn't be poor. So, (this is the heresy) you don't share the loot.
The cops are a white-supremacy reactionary movement; extra-legal monopoly on and free exercise of civil violence as a tool of social control. Very old school; slow reactionary rebellion to unacceptable fast social change threatening their secure position.
Q is a mammonist heresy that says society should be restructured to produce the appropriate authoritarian hierarchy, and that the existence of the wrong hierarchy is proof that malign influences control things. (That is, we should have money, they should not, and if they do instead of us, we're going to have to forcibly restructure society to fix it.) It's the outcome-of-injustice general insurrection for white supremacists excluded from the current grift.
Least sufficient means; I doubt that's actual genocide. Might be no more than lots of green jobs and suppressing segregated education.
(On the grim side, agriculture's going to fail. I don't think many have managed to think about the associated weight of necessity.)
Might be no more than lots of green jobs and suppressing segregated education.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't translate into Latin as "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius."
Pretty sure it doesn't.
The point is not the burned cities and the stack of corpses; the point is no surviving writings. God will worry no more than usual about knowing His own.
Greg: Our Man in Havana--A classic Greene! Always good to hear someone mention his work. I spend too little time among litr'ry types I guess--get excited when someone name-checks a favorite author. I thought the Carol Reed film of it was not bad either, though the book was better.
Very timely, here's a NY Times op ed by Harold Blum (?!?) about a con-man who's made many millions out of pretending to have contacts that would let IT companies get no-bid black ops contracts from the US intelligence Black Budget.
He pretended to run 'Alpha241', an intelligence task force. Provide him with commercial office space for 2 people within your company, cover as being part of your company while those 2 people did undisclosed things - oh, and $10k per month - and in return the grateful intelligence agency will steer black contracts your way. A scam he was running with several companies, since 2014.
And then it got weirder. He recruited a retired admiral, generals, air force brigadier general, they thought they were part of an IT consortium. He connected them up with the IT guys he was scamming already. He started to create a real(-ish) black ops operation, govt funded...
This is not fiction:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/garrison-courtney-spies-contracts.html
Help AMERICAN Blacks and Latinos in the inner cities? Why, they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!!!
Sorry, I'm going to call BS on this one. Please cite your sources.
Even the well-to-do church I grew up in in Los Angeles regularly helped groups like the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row. I did shifts there myself. The Salvation Army specializes in this kind of thing, and where I currently live church groups regularly set out tables to provide a meal to the homeless in our local skid row around 17th street. I've served with these too, even though I'm not affiliated with the church doing the work.
There's ample room for skepticism about the big media circuses that have branded themselves as churches of the Gospel of Wealth and don't walk their Christian talk. But I do know that some, perhaps many, possibly most, local churches are very active in helping the poor.
The real scandal is when the government decides that churches are the only way to help the poor. The government is the appropriate entity to deal with ingrained structural racism, sexism, and other discrimination. If they sit it out, all the free meals and warm cots the churches can afford won't make a sufficient difference.
The Wayfair thing inspires an idea for a new kind of scam: Pick unlucky company. Take short position. Start Qish rumor.
Long long long ago already, as the USA measures time, there was no person, no agency, no entity that knew or kept track or kept accountable to the government all the secret agencies, agents, projects, cells, etc. doing intelligence, treason, surveillance, or backstabbing whom, who owned what -- the CIA alone had entire businesses, companies that only somebody knew were financed with their resources, and by now probably long forgotten.
The best attempt at dealing with all this established since WWII (not before) was Norman Mailer, in his novel, Harlot's Ghost, 1991.
Why are they sending missionaries to Africa? I know some folks in TX that mentioned that people from their church did that.
To oppose decriminalization of homosexuality of course.
He didn't seriously try, though he'd floated it in 2012 and at least once before that. I don't think he wanted the actual job (witness how little he still knows about it) - the money, probably, and certainly the recognition so he could get bigger TV deals.
They're sure that the fires on the US West Coast were started by Antifa (they weren't) so in some places they're stopping and questioning (at gunpoint) people who "aren't from here", even when they're wearing their press credentials.
Thematically related to the top post - Saw a link on cstross twitter to Sort By Controversial by Scott Alexander (boingboing link)
I'm reminded of ctrlcreep's communal InvisibleNetworks project, very short sf stories about invented social networks under the twitter hashtag #InvisibleNetworks (goes back to July 2018): https://twitter.com/ctrlcreep/status/1221482188211982338 https://twitter.com/hashtag/InvisibleNetworks?f=live Many of them are excellent, many are posted as images. (Probably worth OCR scraping. :-)
I copied down one microstory (February 3, 2020); the author has disappeared from twitter, so here's the text (by user KEW_purr), which might have been/might as well have been a response to that Scott Alexander piece: "Diametrically opposed groups converge on a platform powered with a highly advanced translation AI. The essence of ideas are maintained but stripped of incendiary-amygdala-flaring language structures. Evolved discourse and mutual understanding proliferates."
Long long long ago already, as the USA measures time, there was no person, no agency, no entity that knew or kept track or kept accountable to the government all the secret agencies, agents, projects, cells, etc. doing intelligence, treason, surveillance, or backstabbing whom, who owned what -- the CIA alone had entire businesses, companies that only somebody knew were financed with their resources, and by now probably long forgotten.
That's actually incorrect: you forgot about J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. The FBI houses the US national Counterintelligence Service, while the CIsA is the Intelligence Service. There's also the Defense Intelligence Service, even before the proliferation of TLAs. Of these, the CIA has generally been the smallest, but they've been tasked with doing the "President's dirty work," as Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes put it.
And both the FBI and the Service Intelligence units were around prior to WWII. During WWII, there was also the OSS, which after the war schismed into the Green Berets, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and ultimately sent a bunch of men into the CIA when that was formed.
They're sure that the fires on the US West Coast were started by Antifa (they weren't) so in some places they're stopping and questioning (at gunpoint) people who "aren't from here", even when they're wearing their press credentials.
Cite, please? Because I am watching my hometown and the place where I grew up being placed under a Level 3 evacuation alert, I have family and friends who are either evacuating or waiting to evacuate, and I'm several hundred miles away, I do not have much patience for rumor-spreading. There's already a bunch of godawful stuff being spread, to the degree that a conservative Sinclair-owned station in Eugene is issuing news stories telling people to knock it off with the god damned rumors.
There are arsonists. But not for all the damned fires. And I can sure as hell think up a paranoid conspiracy where these fires are being set in order to disrupt the West Coast vote, because there's sure a lot of places going up in flame, including threats to the three biggest cities in Oregon. Except I know too damned much about fire ecology and the periodic tendency for the temperate rainforest to dry up and catch fire to take such notions seriously...and if such things were to be going on, it would be at the behest of a foreign power seeking disruption.
IOW, unless you have a concrete cite that people are stopping and questioning at gunpoint that they are antifa, please don't spread rumors. Fire areas are being heavily patrolled because of reports of looting already in places like Blue River (mostly gone, oh my heart, oh dear god most of the McKenzie is mostly gone), Detroit Lake, Marcola, and other places that I don't expect anyone else here to know about.
Yeah, I'm touchy. That's my youth going up in flames, and I have too many friends and family at risk to have much patience with rumors of any ilk.
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/10/oregon-police-beg-public-stop-calling-false-reports-blaming-antifa-wildfires/
We are currently in Beaverton.
This looks pretty first-hand to me.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/oregon-fires-antifa-rumors
Crak the Safe I was thinking of the film with Alec Gunness in the lead....
jreynoldsward / PJE /SEF / Damian This madness & edginess ( See Charlie's earlier comment about us all being touchy & on edge ) is around here, as well. I just heard a certifyable "tory" MP describing the proposal to break International Law as a suitable response to "EU provocation" This is real August-1914 levels of self delusion & scary. On wonders if these mythical Antfa terorrisits are also jews? It's very familiar isn't it?
AIs are getting in on the act too: https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/11/openai_gpt3_brainwashing/
In the next Terminator film Skynet will trigger WW3 to rid the world of satanic cannibal elites and deep state child traders.
Meanwhile, on both the C-19 & politics fronts: Really nasty suggestion about C-19 - & on a frctionally lighter note - this would explain BoZo's behaviour, which is odd, even for him .... I nbote that "he" is pressing on, but large numbers of even tory MP's are trying to back away. Even if it passses the Commons, it almost certainly won't pass the Lords
Continuing on the UK Govt as farce The BBC offer us the new greatest and bestest ever contact tracing app
Health Secretary Matt Hancock described the launch as "a defining moment".
Presumably, a defining moment only for little Mattie or as a definition of incompetence
Third time lucky?
Apart from the "infects brain bit" this headline says "Coronavirus is a virus".
The link worketh not, Greg.
But! it's not new to suggest COVID-19 affects cognition; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(20)30221-0/fulltext is a recent survey article about "neurological manifestations".
The “bradykinin hypothesis” (see https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/bradykinin-and-the-coronavirus for a summary) even provides a plausible mechanism for how you might get such neurological manifestations.
Cite, please?
Looks like the usual suspects…
The false claims have been spread on social networks by supporters of President Donald Trump, who has spent months pretending that antifascists in the Pacific Northwest dedicated to confronting white supremacists are members of an imaginary army of domestic terrorists called Antifa.
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/10/oregon-police-beg-public-stop-calling-false-reports-blaming-antifa-wildfires/
Gabriel Trumbly, a Portland videographer who has spent roughly 90 of the past 100 days capturing the protests, wanted to take footage of the forest fires raging in Oregon. So on Wednesday night, the 29-year-old Army veteran, set out with his partner, Jennifer Paulsen, 24, to see what was happening near her childhood home of Molalla, a town of 9,000 people known for its annual rodeo, the Buckeroo. Fires surrounding the town were so intense they had prompted a level-3 “GO NOW” warning to evacuate.
After parking their car on the side of a road, the couple pulled on gas masks and shot video of towering flames. As they worked, they encountered people who had rigged a garden hose to a water tank in the bed of a truck and were trying to put out a fire in the driveway. Trumbly and Paulsen briefly spoke with them, as well as a driver who asked them if they needed any water.
Trumbly and Paulsen, both of whom spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone from Portland on Thursday, said the interactions seemed “normal.” They said the fire was moving quickly, so they didn’t stay long in Molalla. “We thought it was getting a bit dangerous, so we left,” Trumbly said.
But shortly after they left, Paulsen began checking Twitter and Facebook to see news about the fires. She noticed that residents were sharing information about their car, including detailed descriptions of its appearance and license plate. The posts claimed they were members of Antifa, an amorphous collection of left-wing groups that the president has called “a terrorist organization,” who had come to Molalla from Portland to commit arson.
The panic in Oregon appeared to stem from a woman in a Facebook group called Molalla NOW, meant for locals to share information about community events.
The post, which Trumbly shared a screenshot of on Twitter, claimed he and Paulsen had started a fire and misidentified them as “two guys wearing gas masks and ‘press’ vests.” It quickly garnered hundreds of reactions and replies.
“It blew up with comments!” Paulsen said. “People were saying, ‘Send people out with guns!’ It said we were Antifa.”
Paulsen, who graduated from Molalla High School, even knew some of the people in the group. Now she and Trumbly were being hunted by a group of armed men on the town’s streets.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/oregon-fires-antifa-rumors
Wayfair... nesxt they will be claiming that hurricanes are to deposit people with the same name in a dangerous fantasy world.
Re: 'Really nasty suggestion about C-19 - ...'
Not sure why you're surprised since it's been known for some time that ACE2 is distributed throughout your body including the brain/nervous system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin-converting_enzyme_2
Also why loss of smell/taste is now at the top of the list for COVID-19 symptoms. Plus why designing a safe and effective corona virus vaccine is a major challenge, should not be rushed and ALL Clinical Trials protocols must be followed assiduously. Gerald Ford rushed a swine flu vaccine through which resulted in both immediate and long-term harm including adding fuel to the antivaxer movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak
OK Sorry folks, about that NOT-new information about C-19 Also suggests that my current persistent tiredness is nothing to do with C-19 As taste & smell seem to be working at full capacity & OK.
Only definitive test for COVID-19 is to get tested (twice, by different mechanisms if you can swing that); lots of asymptomatic cases with damage.
Persistent tiredness can be lots of stuff -- none of the causes of former days have departed from us! -- but COVID-19 really is one of those cases where you need to rely directly on the scientific approach.
The standard.co.uk article is horrible, but they do link the (recent, not peer reviewed) paper: Neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 in human and mouse brain (September 8, 2020, "not certified by peer review") Finally, in brain autopsy from patients who died of COVID-19, we detect SARS-CoV-2 in the cortical neurons, and note pathologic features associated with infection with minimal immune cell infiltrates. These results provide evidence for the neuroinvasive capacity of SARS-CoV2, and an unexpected consequence of direct infection of neurons by SARS-CoV-2. Shrug. We've been mentioning this here in comments since at least February 2020, with at least several paper links. (I think the first to hint here at such an effect was the one(s) with many names; prodded me to look at the then-current science.)
From the paper, this is eye catching, bold mine (note: mostly in white matter, not cortex): Upon histologic examination, we found multiple microscopic ischemic infarcts in the subcortical white matter, ranging from acute to subacute, and with focal hemorrhagic conversion (Figure 5C, Figure S9A). These varying stages of infarction indicated a temporal sequence of continued ischemic events. Most infarcts showed signs of tissue damage and localized cell death, and positive viral staining was present predominately around the edges of the infarct and to a lesser degree within the center. At the hyperacute stage of infarction, viral proteins were present in endothelium. These infarcts are present predominately in subcortical white matter, not within the cortex.
So yeah, BoJo could have a brain riddled with lesions(infarcts) caused by SARS-CoV-2. (Unless he's had a clean MRI and MRIs show these lesions.) Good rumour. Who else in the UK leadership has been infected with SARS-CoV-2?
I commented here several times 2-3 years ago that IMO he originally intended to run because he needed money, and figured by doing that, he'd have the biggest name recognition/brand in the world... and then people started yelling for him, and his ego took over.
And that it was the worst of all possible world for him: even claiming he'd been "defrauded" would have kept his brand up there. Now... he has no idea how to deal with being WATCHED, 24x7x365.25, and not being able to deny what was recorded and broadcast.
Charlie, are you sure you were not Franz Kafka in a past life?
So yeah, BoJo could have a brain riddled with lesions(infarcts) caused by SARS-CoV-2.
Sounds a lot like Krantzberg syndrome.
https://thelaundryfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Krantzberg_Syndrome
Re: 'Only definitive test for COVID-19 is to get tested (twice, by different mechanisms if you can swing that); '
Agree!
Y'know, I have a story about that, based on a line that someone had here a couple years ago....
Robert Prior @ 126:
Given he's been making runs at the idea of being president for at least three decades, I suspect ego has more to do with it, and he did want it.
He frequently talked about running for President. There is evidence that the campaign for President was essentially another grift; a way to lure
suckerscampaign donors. The campaign was structured like the "Trump Foundation" and was supposed to function the same way.In some ways "winning" limited his opportunities for grift.
whitroth @ 130: Screw that.
I don't think anyone really believes we're the Shining City on the Hill... but that it's a journey with that as a goal.
And not all heroes, etc, have feet of clay. And fuck Hollywood edgy, Superman does not kill. Period. The Lone Ranger and Tonto (we're talking Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels) were Good Guys.
WTF is wrong with you?
Greg--Yes, the Alec Guinness film is the one I'm thinking of--the director was Carol Reed. Alec is always watchable and I thought the film version did reasonable justice to the book.
On a total derailment of topic--I would love to see Alec Guinness and Leo McKern in the film adaptation of Greene's Monsignor Quixote. Unfortunately it looks like I'd have to buy a regionally-restricted DVD and then find a DVD player that will work for European DVDs.
SFReader @ 134:
I'm guessing that he's got many 'owners' and that not all of them are aware of who else has dibs on him.
's consistently been more concerned with how the stock markets are playing out than any other aspect of the economy. And he's probably well aware that there's a strong correlation between his tweets and market activity. So -- who's an official, licensed market player and is never directly connected to him in media reports? Hint: He's got 2 daughters. (I read her SO's Wikipedia page - young billionaire with connections to lots of countries.)
I'm not so sure Trumpolini cares anything about the Stock Markets other than if they tank this year it adversely affects his reelection & cuts into his grift. Right now, reelection is the one hope he has for staving off the collapse of his business empire.
AFAIK, he has no significant holdings in stocks. It's all in over-leveraged real-estate and marketing his name as a brand (i.e. many Trump properties don't actually belong to Trumpolini, they're just renting his name - and the market value of his "brand" is crashing).
We don’t. No one does. Welcome to the real world.
So, that's your answer? Just give up?
Yes because that’s the only other option on the entire spectrum of existence.
(Narrator: Nope)
Paul @ 136: And now the FBI arrest a couple of Boogaloo bois providing illegal gun mods to fake Hamas.
And the most delicious part of the story is that Hamas is pissed off about it and wants the FBI to stop using their name for their anti-terrorist sting operations.
I wonder if there even is an actual bonafide middle-eastern terrorist supporter in the U.S. who is not an under-cover FBI agent or informant?
JBS @180: I wonder if there even is an actual bonafide middle-eastern terrorist supporter in the U.S. who is not an under-cover FBI agent or informant?
Three thoughts: - Even wanna-be terrorists need food and shelter; they may be busy staying alive - It's a lot more difficult to find a place for those conspiracy meetings; besides, is that guy in the corner wearing a mask like everybody else REALLY in your cell? - How do you upstage El Cheeto Grande when he's already killed 190,000 Americans this year?
And the most delicious part of the story is that Hamas is pissed off about it and wants the FBI to stop using their name for their anti-terrorist sting operations.
Hamas are not so much a terrorist organization as a no-shit government, these days: they run Gaza, a self-governing Palestinian territory with a population of 1.85 million, and Hamas are the elected party of government there. Be careful who you call terrorists? Ask what agenda the label serves!
Similarly, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, although their status is more of an ambiguous state-within-a-state thing within a delicate multi-ethnic balance ...
jreynoldsward @ 154: There are arsonists. But not for all the damned fires. And I can sure as hell think up a paranoid conspiracy where these fires are being set in order to disrupt the West Coast vote, because there's sure a lot of places going up in flame, including threats to the three biggest cities in Oregon. Except I know too damned much about fire ecology and the periodic tendency for the temperate rainforest to dry up and catch fire to take such notions seriously...and if such things were to be going on, it would be at the behest of a foreign power seeking disruption.
Can you identify a fire that was deliberately set? Even if it's one where the authorities can't identify who set it?
I know there are fires that were started by carelessness and stupidity, but which ones are/were deliberate?
Aren't Hezbollah rather like a larger and better funded IRA with knobs on?
An armed occupying force/militia with an associated political sock puppet wing to give a veneer of respectability. Of course, thats only needed until they win an election outright, at which point Lebanon becomes a Tehran suburb complete with fun loving Revolutionary Guards.
Cross them and you end up dead in a shallow grave in the Bekaa Valley.
Re: '... no significant holdings in stocks. .. the market value of his "brand" is crashing).'
Circa 2016 DT's stock portfolio was guestimated at approx $200 mil - paltry in comparison with his self-declared real estate 'brand' worth of $4 bil. But his brand crashed so apart from any still-on-the-books long-term contracts - he's only got his stock portfolio. (His media-shy daughter's SO works in the financial investment industry based in Canada whose site lists major clients in the PRC, and a Saudi royal. SO's father made his billions in Nigeria.)
@ Heteromeles #153
I must not be writing clearly, because I was, in my mind at least, including the FBI, etc. When I said "only after WWII," I was referring in my own mind there, to the CIA, which is where Mailer's novel locates most of the characters.
~~~~~~~~~
And relevant to nothing discussed here at the moment, I keep wondering if Percy Lowell can be categorized as one of the first science fiction novelists.
[ ....For the next fifteen years he studied Mars extensively, and made intricate drawings of the surface markings as he perceived them. Lowell published his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). With these writings, Lowell more than anyone else popularized the long-held belief that these markings showed that Mars sustained intelligent life forms.[10][11]
His works include a detailed description of what he termed the "non-natural features" of the planet's surface, including especially a full account of the "canals," single and double; the "oases," as he termed the dark spots at their intersections; and the varying visibility of both, depending partly on the Martian seasons. He theorized that an advanced but desperate culture had built the canals to tap Mars' polar ice caps, the last source of water on an inexorably drying planet.[12]
While this idea excited the public, the astronomical community was skeptical...." ]
Despite professionally trained astronomers poo poo ing, the US public was determined to believe this was true fact.
Can you identify a fire that was deliberately set? Even if it's one where the authorities can't identify who set it?
At times, yeah. Presence of accelerants, for example. It's tricky, and usually you can't get more than 'human-caused' unless someone fesses up.
Humans cause about 85% of forest fires in the US. There's a lot of carelessness and stupidity out there…
On a different-but-related note, you might enjoy this board game:
https://microgamedesigngroup.com/SJ.html
Solitaire game of fighting forest fires, based on a simplified version of the actual models used by Canadian forestry services.
Aren't Hezbollah rather like a larger and better funded IRA with knobs on?
In the sense that the UK government is even larger and even better funded but in the same vein, yes. Hezbollah is a government/political party just like the Republican Party in many ways, but operating in a different context so a lot of the details are different (less dependent on fundraising from US billionaires, for example).
Hamas has the dubious honour of governing a Bantustan-is-not-a-state that's subject to regular states-can't-commit-terrorism attacks and oh boy if you want to talk about sock puppets ready to hand over an entire country to their enemies we could discuss the Israel-Palestine "peace process" some time, with Jared Kushner playing the sock puppet*.
Crack the Safe @ 177: Greg--Yes, the Alec Guinness film is the one I'm thinking of--the director was Carol Reed. Alec is always watchable and I thought the film version did reasonable justice to the book.
On a total derailment of topic--I would love to see Alec Guinness and Leo McKern in the film adaptation of Greene's Monsignor Quixote. Unfortunately it looks like I'd have to buy a regionally-restricted DVD and then find a DVD player that will work for European DVDs.
I have an All-Region DVD burner in my computer. It's a DVD ±RW drive. I don't think it actually will burn region-restricted DVDs, just Region 0 which can be played back in any region. But you don't have to burn a DVD to play one & it does allow me to play a Region 2 DVD on my computer.
In the U.S. it's legal to make a personal backup copy of a DVD, so you could probably rip a Region 2 DVD and then burn it to a Region 0 backup so you could play it on any North American DVD player.
Charlie Stross @ 182:
Hamas are not so much a terrorist organization as a no-shit government, these days: they run Gaza, a self-governing Palestinian territory with a population of 1.85 million, and Hamas are the elected party of government there. Be careful who you call terrorists? Ask what agenda the label serves!
I didn't call Hamas terrorists, the FBI does. The article points to Hamas being a part of the government as the reason why they are pissed off at the FBI using their name for sting operations.
I don't anywhere Hamas is involved in conflict with the U.S. I think it would be a good idea for the FBI to stop using Hamas's name for their sting operations. They're not our friends, but it seems like they don't want to be our enemies either.
At the very least if the FBI is going to run these kind of operations they should try to go after our own home-grown terrorist organizations.
Really I think the FBI should stop running those sting operations altogether because they don't seem to be uncovering any real terrorists, just duping stupid people into doing stupid things they would not otherwise be inclined to get involved with.
Similarly, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, although their status is more of an ambiguous state-within-a-state thing within a delicate multi-ethnic balance ...
They're also part of the government in Iraq ... or at least some factions of Hezbollah are part of it; and they're allied with the Syrian Ba'ath government during the Syrian Civil War.
In the U.S. it's legal to make a personal backup copy of a DVD
But unless they've changed the law, it's illegal to crack the DRM copy protection to do what you are legally allowed to do…
It's seriously screwed up (and Canadian law is no better) — the act of cracking the DRM is illegal, even if the DRM is what is preventing you from using the copyrighted work in a legal way.
Robert Prior @ 187:
At times, yeah. Presence of accelerants, for example. It's tricky, and usually you can't get more than 'human-caused' unless someone fesses up.
What I meant was is there a specific fire among the many fires this season that is suspected of having been deliberately set.
I'm aware of fires started by human carelessness, but is there any current fire known to have been started deliberately ... or even suspected of being started deliberately?
Long long long ago already, as the USA measures time, there was no person, no agency, no entity that knew or kept track or kept accountable to the government all the secret agencies, agents, projects, cells, etc...
Also echoing back to Dead Plots, this fact was the seed for one of the Destroyer novels: a Pentagon bean counter noticed a dribble of money going to an old badly documented Cold War project, and everyone involved had retired decades before. So all funding was cut. It turned out to be the budget to broadcast a no-go signal for sleeper cells of deep cover assassins...
is there any current fire known to have been started deliberately ... or even suspected of being started deliberately?
No idea. I thought you were talking generically about forest fires.
My bet would be on carelessness. Possibly carelessness verging on criminal stupidity, like that penis-reveal fire (that hopefully gets charges laid).
Kinda like those Dumbkirk idiots: they didn't set out to sink other people's boats, but they acted in a way that made it likely, and didn't appear to give a shit about the damage they caused…
I feel sorry for the chap whose boat was sunk while at the dock.
Keith Smith, an observer whose neighbor’s boat was capsized, told WCCO. “Boaters all know they’re responsible for their waves, but nobody cared. They just kept going and going and hooting and hollering. Luckily I didn’t slip and go off the side of the dock.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/boats-keep-sinking-and-capsizing-at-the-trump-boat-parades.html
Just waiting for Kayleigh McEnemy to claim gthere were no sinkings, just 'alternative buoyancy'.
It would surprise me more to find there were not any fires started deliberately. In England we had an episode of unseasonal combustion on Saddleworth Moor a few years ago, which was exacerbated by dickheads from Manchester going and starting their own bits of it purely because they were dickheads. All else being equal, the situation in question is adjacent to a much larger population than that of Manchester, so I would expect it to suffer from a proportionally larger number of dickheads. But all else is not equal, because the contagion of Trumpian insanity seems to be well able to motivate people to do all sorts of amazingly fucking stupid things, and so the number of dickheads now is likely to be even greater.
Re arson: during the climate fires (renamed Black Summer by the Murdoch press) in Australia the press was full of claims (eventually even the non Murdoch press) that the fires were arson. I did see something buried away the other day. (I think it was from the climate council, which was a government agency until it was disbanded, and then very much like the laundry, continued on with a small cardre funded by donations and volunteer work) It said that after much investigation, none of the fires of the summer were started by arson.
Seems to be a standard Murdoch tactic to scream arson in the face of climate change driven fires.
Are region restrictions on DVDs and DVD players even still a problem? It must be a good 15 years since I gave my mum a DVD player, and one of my selection criteria was that I was not going to give her some locked-down piece of shit; it took very little searching to discover a website that listed a great number of different DVD players along with magic numbers that you could enter using the standard remote control to turn the region locking off, so all I had to do was choose one off that list and put its magic number in. No doubt there were also more that hadn't been added to the list yet, and anyway of course you could just play the DVD on a computer instead. With it being so trivial to overcome it so long ago, I'd have expected that apart from one or two manufacturers like Sony who are well known for having a massive stick up their arse about that sort of thing, people would have just stopped bothering with it.
Fire near Saddleworth Moor "being treated as arson" (2018) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44713651
Only fire I've fought personally was sorta-arson. At Scout camp one idiot was dropping matches, letting the grass burn a bit, then stamping it out. Apparently this was fun. Then he let one patch get too big, and suddenly we had 3+ metre flames on a dry grass burn. Grass goes fast when it burns! (And being Saskatchewan, always wind to fan the flames.)
All the local farmers came round, along with the local volunteer fire department, to dig a fire line and beat it out. There wasn't a slough close enough for much in the way of water.
1970s, so no cell service, just smoke signals and party lines. (Literally, when people saw the smoke they converged on the source.)
I'm aware of fires started by human carelessness, but is there any current fire known to have been started deliberately ... or even suspected of being started deliberately?
After filtering out the Antifa nonsense, I find a few.
One arrest last week for the South Creek Fire, no alleged motive.
Back in July there was another guy arrested for starting forest fires but he's not involved with the current batch.
A third guy tried but was interrupted and is currently being yelled at by police.
So it's not common but there are idiots out there.
The body of the article says stupidity rather than a deliberate act.
I'm not saying arson doesn't exist. I am saying that the press blows it out of all proportion, particularly the Murdoch press.
And relevant to nothing discussed here at the moment, I keep wondering if Percy Lowell can be categorized as one of the first science fiction novelists.
I'd simply point to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction
The key question is whether you're talking about true science fiction in contrast to its precursors (19th Century Proto-Science Fiction, the Vernes, Wells, Shelley, and so forth), or just fantastic stories in general without literary categories. In the latter case, ignoring the classical religious texts (like the Book of Elijah or the Chuang Tzu), there's everything from Ovid's Metamorphoses to Beowulf to Shakespeare's The Tempest, Cyrano de Bergerac writing a history of the empire of the Moon (he flew there by strapping himself to large vials of the morning dew and getting carried to the Moon as it evaporated).
The only one I've heard of that was intentional is the Almeda fire, in Oregon. https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-charged-arson-connection-almeda-fire-southern-oregon/story?id=72960208 They've arrested the guy they believe started it, and he's charged with two counts of arson. The Beachie Creek fire, east of Salem, OR, was started by trees falling on power lines. I don't know about others; many of those in CA were started by dry lightning. (Last weekend was very hot - it hit 49.5C in the southwest San Fernando Valley, and that is not a typo.)
The biggest apparently deliberately set fire was the Almeda fire in Southern Oregon, which took out the towns of Phoenix and Talent as well as part of Medford. A suspect has been arrested and there's a dead body apparently connected to the suspect...this one is going to be interesting to see unfold.
Smaller arson fires have been set and the alleged perpetrators arrested in the act. There will always be a few firebugs. I've heard some rumors but am taking them with a huge grain of salt as I've heard lots of rumors about fires and firefighting. I find it interesting that the same folks who yell about "The Thin Blue Line" are first to doubt official police disclaimers about arsonist motives.
The Riverside (near Portland/Estacada/Molalla) and the Santiam fires (Salem/Detroit/Mill City) both have origins in earlier lightning-caused fires. The Holiday Farm Fire (Eugene/Springfield) apparently was sparked off by both powerlines and the scrape of a towing chain which set off sparks. I've read first person accounts.
One problem seems to stem from so-called "Uncensored Scanner" Facebook groups. That's where these rumors (assisted by QAnon, it appears) seem to be launching from, including the accounts of looters that sparked off those three idiots in Molalla.
I'm following a neighborhood Facebook group about the little valley to the northeast of Eugene where I grew up. They're restless but not doing anything crazy. Of course, the fact that there's a bigger police presence than there ever was there when I lived there and, apparently, since then, probably has something to do with it. It is a tough little mountain valley and the last time I visited friends there, home invasions were a concern. Nothing new. When my family first moved there, our big mercury-vapor light got shot out by a man en route to try to kill our neighbor for shooting his dog (the light was bright enough to illuminate the neighbor's house). He didn't succeed. There were other interesting...things that happened while I lived there, for some values of interesting.
The winds are changing and while that is good news for fire management, it's not as good for air quality. The big cloud of smoke is moving inland. Pendleton, about 150 miles and a couple of mountain ranges away, has an air quality index of 470 (well, okay, it's in a hole and gets choked with fog pretty regularly in temperature inversions). For comparison, Portland has an AQI of 299 and Seattle 264. Spokane is expecting the clouds to hit overnight. My current AQI is 58 but I do expect it to get worse. Or not. Depends on what the clouds do when they hit the Blues.
Yeah, interesting times. I could do with some boring times.
I am saying that the press blows it out of all proportion, particularly the Murdoch press.
The murdoch press and various troll armies*:
https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-australia-flung-in-the-global-disinformation-spotlight-129556
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/is-arson-mostly-to-blame-for-the-bushfire-crisis/11865724
"deliberately lit bushfires are likely to be smaller [than average]"
Ah, but this is 2020. If you were told that the Angels[-10] had learned what #hastag fact meant, you'd be bang on the nose. Hint: information exchange ("Quantum", like whatever, wake us up when you can do mammals and EM fields already, these dumb fuckers don't think mammal brains do REM sleep 'cause WHAT THE FUCK - WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY? REM = MAMMAL, IT'S FUCKING HARD-CODED UNLESS YOU'RE A FUCKING PLATYPUS) doesn't work like you think it does.
But there's some SERIOUS HEAVY MESSING CREW[0] who just learnt it. And we're not talking about the sad-fucking-Corporate-whore-sacks in the US political branch who just outed QANON as "NAZI"[1], we're talking [redacted]. No, really: there are Minds thousands of years old pivoting and opening their eYe and saying: "What is... "hastag fact""?
OOoooh boy are you limited L.O.P.'s in fucking trouble. We're talking the Two I hold in Stone[6]
@Host - yeah, damage control is right fucking out, told you all this years ago. You don't get to change it into "neo-Nazi" land, QANNON has some .IL fingers in the pie (HELLO MS ROSANNE BARR) and have been working it hard to skull-fuck the dumb-asses in lead-water land.
Nope: you create psychosis, you fucking own it. [And if you want to play hard-ball, there's a dice with the language of G_D on it and certain videos, but we'll show you the reeeeal fucking thing you shitty, psychotic, paranoid little wankers].[2] No, really. 100% some IL peeps invovled in that little jaunt[4]
Although, Host, we do appreciate the moves you pulled with even the slightest threads offered[3]. Mr Martin might understand more if he's bothered to do the reading (we allow 3 months for our 3 days).
~
Ah, right.
Yes: you're correct. We're seeing a Narrative Voice Armageddon[5]. It's very very much more complicated than what you've given, but, hey-ho.
1 WE WANT ALLLLL THE STORIES (THAT MEANS MOAR CONTENT) 2 NUKE DISNEY~
On a non-funny note: nope, you fucked it.[7] Riddle me how a SARS type virus leads to people having their hands surgically removed[8] - hint, it don't. [Redacted] "IN AND OUT" ---- "BREATH OF G_D".
These fuckers are running shit they do not understand on fragile ape Minds who ain't clued in and getting some nasty shit happening. It's almost as if they don't understand the years of science[9] it took to get your primitive shit-tier "organs kinda might work if we immunosuppress you for years" deal and then USED THE FUCKING SHIT THE L.O.P stole and field tested and so on.
Yeah. Clueless.
Host: this is the clean version. Here's a mature, actual response: you can pipe in all kinds of horror to the subconscious, but all we use it for is to track the fuckers engaged with it.
"No Addicts".
Well, yes. The problem being that you're the addicts, little [redacted], and we're teh bait.
"Mouldy, why not make it more moldified??"
Because only a fucking loser who cannot create and cannot envision something Higher thinks like that. You're shit-tier wetware running in shit-tier strata and you're thinking you're 'getting away with it' with this invasive nasty brutish crap?
Sargent: Dendrites are amazing things. We can re-wire that shit, 5ms. We do it every morning, son.
Faithless - Mass Destruction (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzgBD2wysuI
[-0.5] "Mother is Dead". "Such a Child". "ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ". Still conscious.
Videos (don't count as links, they're flavor for the era):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZH96P71ak0 HATARI - ENGIN MISKUNN (those kinky Icelandic peeps - marching on, taking the piss out of stuff)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xhJrPXop4 2020 NEW DUNE - it's Crusade, not Jihad 'cause you fucks are DUMB.
[0] SF reference: the entire "UK goes Green / Red dictatorship looks even more silly than it did back then, but hey, Libertarians paying the bills, eh?
[1] It's not, it's just not. It's many things, but explicitly "Neo-NAZI" - no. It was crafted (DO A FRUCKING GREP YOU APES, ABOUT THREE YEARS AGO NOW) to avoid such stuff - what it's becoming is something else. But NPR and other "experts" whoring themselves out MAKE THE THING BIGGER BECAUSE THEY LIE AND DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. Sigh: 101, Streisland Effect, fucking muppets.
[2] That's a direct message to some really warped Minds out there. We find their methods: play-school level.
[3] Mr Cole has reverted to showing his (BLUE - get the joke?) EMPIRE colors (USA) -- sensible. Nuance. Fuckers, learn nuance already. Still - he's much sexier with the beard and the (NOW) fear of Women. Makes him smell.... like prey.
[4] “Gully Foyle is my name And Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, The stars my destination.” Well, you right fucked that one up, revert to earlier version. Bahrain peace deal or not - if you use psychosis weapons, you pay the fucking PRICE.
[5] What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
[6] That Tibetan 13 Sun thing holding that nail, stone and stone-with-hole? Yeah. Thatsthejoke.jpg. That's real. LOL.
[7] Banksy: "LAUGH NOW, ONE DAY WE'LL BE IN CHARGE"
[8] Sources, both USA / UK:
[[ 3 links already including the videos - mod ]]
Oh, forgot the [redacted] version of the QANNON 'triple trips':
"The Beast remains" "Our information is that you are lazy" "My name is Susan [-----], I hold a PHD in... and I will [redacted] as long as ze holds breath" (She was killed soon after - smart woman, top of her field as well]
Want more?
~
You fuckers spent so much time shitting on the OOCP you forgot the important stuff.
"Oh noes, the world doesn't meet our Mental Simulacra"
That's the choice: either you change and grow, or end up doing well: what you did to the fucking whales, you psychotic cunts.
Triptych.
@Host.
OH, we agree that your versions of 'Conspiracy Theory' are all trite, shite and mostly run by the spooks / PR black-ops[1].
What you're missing is: there's a much, much harder core level of stuff that basically your elites have been abusing for years now.
Radio? Newspapers?
They're pulling this shit because the new kids in town are real bastards.
~
And that's still not the shit that they're running on Minds to create neurological / nerve damage.
Here's teh hint: Cortex - Image formation - synapsis elec pulse [that's not ... what anyone calls it, do a translation] to nerves = jolt, prevents Mind focusing. Oooooh. Now that one, that's True. And has Big Black Book levels of "on the list" knowing that.
But, yeah: True, and they're field testing it on the QT amongst a pandemic, it's what the naughty boys do.
~
[redacted]
Come at me: Truth or Dare. 'Cause you're gonna lose both...
$13 trillion, whelp, we thought you knew how out of control the algos were, and yet...
[1] $500 mil in Iraq alone. That's gotta hurt when the contracts ran out...
Are region restrictions on DVDs and DVD players even still a problem?
From my experience, DVD players, not really - but mostly for the reason that you can't really buy one. It's all Blu-ray which play also DVDs on the side. Our venerable DVD player gave up the ghost some years ago (bought in maybe 2000, and was set region-free from the store) and we wanted a new one. I got a Blu-ray player, but it was set to the "European" region. The store didn't answer anything concrete about the regionlessness, and the instructions I got from the internet didn't work. I asked the manufacturer's representatives here in Finland about that, but they just repeated the party line of "you are not allowed to change the region".
The problem here is that we have quite a collection of non-European DVDs - many of them movies which are still not easily obtainable in Europe. They wouldn't play on the device anymore, because the DVD region is also hard-set.
There are more computer-like-computer based solutions for this, however, so I can play the discs we have legally bought and own, but it's not as convenient as it could be.
In the larger picture, physical discs seem to be passé and the streaming services are the way to go. Of course the selection in the services is limited by your apparent region, by your IP. This is not my platform and I don't know the relevant laws, so to be on the safe side I won't spell out how to do that, but I think most of the people can figure that out.
I also agree that the streaming services are not the same as physical discs - for one thing, the physical object can't be taken away from me by the publisher or distributor. I still pay for some streaming services but they're more like something I can browse if I want to watch something right now instead of wanting to watch some particular thing.
heteromeles There is strong supporting evidence that The Tempest was written after the returning-but-shipwrecked Bermuda Sea Venture personnel spoke to Stratford Bill...
Oh dear 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211
Physical DVDs and CDs generally are life-limited due to the vagaries of manufacture and storage. They're better than the first-generation optical data storage like LaserDisc where "laser rot" became a term of art as the vapour-flashed aluminium metal coating corroded and lifted off the polycarbonate substrate when the two sandwiched outer layers separated and allowed moisture in. The term has now been generalised into "disc rot" since it's a known problem for archival storage of more modern media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
Streaming and downloads are, contrarily, less subject to data loss than CDs, DVDs, game discs and the like since the zeroes and ones can be replicated in generational backups and storage in multiple formats.
Hamas were democratically elected to be the government of all of Palestine, actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election
"Be careful who you call terrorists? Ask what agenda the label serves!"
Precisely. From a legal point of view (let alone an ethical one), Hamas and Hezbollah are no more terrorist organisations than are the majority of the Israeli parties.
Moderators: posts 206 - 211 consist of the Seagull stating "Blah-blah-blah I'm so smart and enlightened. Pay attention to ME!!!!"
If the "three posts and done" rule is still in place, 209-211 should be canned. If the "don't spam links" rule is in place, 206 should also go. Just sayin'.
Hezbollah is funded by Iran and Syria - who they serve. So how free and fair were any elections in Lebanon?
Besides which, they suffer from the usual problems with freedom fighters. If they were to get their way, they might have to get a real job and would stop feeling important and righteous. A few may be truly devoted to their cause - the destruction of a nation state - but most just like carrying a gun, intimidating those around them and feeling more important than their personal achievements justify.
Adams ran a bar while McGuinness was functionally illiterate and they were the IRA leadership. Killing people is easy, making peace is hard.
You can add to that the overt and covert terrorism by Israel against Lebanon. No, Lebanon's democracy is no better than the USA's, UK's or Israel's - NONE of which are the paragons of virtue that they claim to be. And Hezbollah is precisely what it claims to be - a paramilitary organisation whose primary purpose is to defend Lebanon from external aggression(*), mainly but not entirely from Israel. So bloody what?
My point was and is that Hezbollah is no more of a terrorist organisation than the majority of the Israeli parties, who support, propose and profit from past, present and future theft and/or violence against Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians. The fact that they funnel most of their actions through the government and Israeli military is irrelevant.
Yes, making peace is hard - but there hasn't been even an attempt by Israel since 1995, and demonising the two organisations that are attempting to defend Palestinians and Lebanese against Israel is NOT a move in that direction.
(*) And, if you don't know why accepting money from Iran and assisting Syria is an aspect of that, you should learn something about the area.
Last I heard Israel is a small country - blink and you miss it in a fast jet - with a number of neighbours who have sworn its destruction / eradication.
It would be astonishingly prosperous if it didnt have to divert so much of its budget to merely staying in existence. I rather suspect they would rather like to be able to stand down large chunks of their armed forces, but while Iran, Syria et al finance attacks on the country why would they just sit back and take it?
I'm am certainly not saying they are all nice people, but when you have dozens of unguided missiles lobbed at your country on a regular basis and are surrounded by people financed and encouraged by those who think the holocaust was a good start - then expecting them to sit there and take it is naive.
If the Palestinians and Lebanese militias stood down for a couple of years they would have peace within a decade. But their paymasters want genocide.
It's been said that the CPUSA managed to exist through Joe McCarthy and the fifties on FBI money... their "undercover" people in the Party being the only ones who paid the dues.
Are you suggesting that he was the source of the $25M that that Nigerian prince has been trying to get out of the country? [g]
Do remember that when Schiaparelli was first seeing them, he referred to them (being Italian) as "canali" - "channels". The English-speaking press, of course, instantly called them canals.
Now, where was that pic of Dejah Thoris I saw the other week...?
Question: is the area you grew up in suburban, exurban, or rural, where all these home invasions were?
I've been begging for "dull and boring" (as opposed to "interesting") for a long time.
Huh. Bought a DVD player 2-3 years ago here.
Israel.
They could end a lot of the hostility easily. If they a) allowed the Palestinians to have an actual state, rather than the balkanized small "reservations" (as we call "Indien Reservations" in the US), with no non-checkpointed passage between them, and b) allow them part of Jerusalem as their capital.
But the ultraconservatives want "Erech Israel", the whole of ancient Israel, and no, they do not want to allow the Palestinians any part of Jerusalem.
I understand a lot of this ultraOrthodox are a) from the US and b) from the FSSR. Oh, and they treat Sephardic Jews, who are frequently of darker skin, the way the US treats Blacks.
Net-and-yahoo should be tried and convicted as a war criminal.
Shooting missiles? Seen the reports of what they do to the Palestinians? And let's not forget the literal theft of West Bank land for Jewish settlements.
I can go on, but if you're not willing to go look at something NOT from the US perspective (it's our "aircraft carrier" for the whole Middle East, and they can do things for us without it being overseen by the US Congress), then I don't need to.
Both whitroth & Grant The "Arabs" ( Including the Palestinians ) were offered peace, on a plate, whole, unencumbered, EXCEPT for E Jerusalem, in late 1966, ion return for recognition of Israel's existence. "Land for Peace" It was rejected, time & again, & again, with continued actual terror attacks on innocent civilians, often away from Israel itself ( * ) & Israel turned inwards & rightwards & became a mirror-image of their intolerant enemies. Rather the way the RC church's relentless persecution & murder & bloodshed produced Jean Calvin ..... Now, we have "Bennie" - & what is there to choose between him & his opponents? Not a lot. ( * ) Munich, Entebbe, The Death of Klinghoffer, etc.
Robert Prior @ 194:
No idea. I thought you were talking generically about forest fires.
No, I was responding specifically to:
And to this part of your response:
Has there been any fire in Oregon or California this season suspected to have been deliberately set by arsonists or is the claim against "antifa" made up out of whole cloth ?
Pigeon @ 195: It would surprise me more to find there were not any fires started deliberately. In England we had an episode of unseasonal combustion on Saddleworth Moor a few years ago, which was exacerbated by dickheads from Manchester going and starting their own bits of it purely because they were dickheads. All else being equal, the situation in question is adjacent to a much larger population than that of Manchester, so I would expect it to suffer from a proportionally larger number of dickheads. But all else is not equal, because the contagion of Trumpian insanity seems to be well able to motivate people to do all sorts of amazingly fucking stupid things, and so the number of dickheads now is likely to be even greater.
I would note however that late summer wildfires on the west coast of the U.S. are NOT "unseasonable".
Dickheadedness & stupidity abound, but I want to see evidence of intent, even if the intent is to set fires under a false flag (whether it's rightwing-nuts seeking to blame "antifa" or vice versa) before casting aspersions.
Neither 151 nor 154 are from me.
I have only seen one news report of arson, which didn't appear to be politically motivated.
OTOH, pyromaniacs exist. It would not surprise me to learn that some had been responsible for a wildfire. My bet, though, would be human stupidity — like shooting an explosive to announce to the world that your fetus has a penis (or more commonly, flicking away a lit cigarette when you're done with it).
The Riverside (near Portland/Estacada/Molalla) and the Santiam fires (Salem/Detroit/Mill City) both have origins in earlier lightning-caused fires.
Bringing up the Salem-Detroit area, you may have seen that Gene's Meat Market is just gone; it had all those trees around it and apparently something came down just so. That's 300 meters from the family home of a fan known to both of us and Charlie; as far as I know that's okay. I've heard that the Gingerbread House across the highway is fine so the fire seems to have been well isolated.
For others, this Street View should show you the burned building and its surrounding trees; pan to southeast to see the Gingerbread House restaurant.
I think I take the view that things have gone to crap since Nasser screwed up. I remember the 6 Day and Yom Kippur wars well.
If it was two normal countries involved in the problem you might have resolved it by now, but as religion is a major factor, resolution gets tough to achieve.
I know hating Israel is fashionable, but I see no reason to assume the Palestinians wouldn't be acting just the same if the roles were reversed. Both sides are human with all the good and bad characteristics that entails.
Will the people wanting Netanyahu tried also support the trial of Mahmud Abbas?
My bet would be on carelessness. Possibly carelessness verging on criminal stupidity
Much of those areas on fire, while they look lush and green when it's raining it quickly turns to near desert when the rain stops. And on the east side of the western mountain ranges it IS desert. But desert full of scrub grass and shrubs. Drove through the area that had burned along the Columbia River a few years back and it was impressive (in a weird way) of how much black there still was from the fire a year earlier. And closed turnouts and lookouts.
So it doesn't take much to start a fire. Lightning is a big cause. During the big eclipse a few years back Oregon set it up so there was a tanker fire truck every so often in the viewing areas as they expected cars to pull off the road and their hot exhaust to start a few fires.
people would have just stopped bothering with it.
Players have gotten so cheap and given the size of the US plus Redbox everywhere it's not worth the bother for most of us to try and even defeat region code locking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbox#Kiosk_design_and_operation
Nojay @ 214: Physical DVDs and CDs generally are life-limited due to the vagaries of manufacture and storage. They're better than the first-generation optical data storage like LaserDisc where "laser rot" became a term of art as the vapour-flashed aluminium metal coating corroded and lifted off the polycarbonate substrate when the two sandwiched outer layers separated and allowed moisture in. The term has now been generalised into "disc rot" since it's a known problem for archival storage of more modern media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
I had that happen with quite a few of my earliest store bought music CDs.
Has there been any fire in Oregon or California this season suspected to have been deliberately set by arsonists or is the claim against "antifa" made up out of whole cloth ?
As observed above, there are a few fires known to be deliberately caused and a few arsonists in custody.
The claims about "antifa" are unfounded lies and have prompted several police and fire departments to publicly ask people to stop pestering them with this nonsense. Unfortunately the same idiots who saw reds under the bed are now panicking about antifas in the bushes.
Bought a DVD player 2-3 years ago here.
Try and buy a VHS player. We have a box full of person tapes with poor to non existent labeling. Wanted to have Costco transfer them to digital media but first see which of the few dozen were worth it.
I don't think any regular retailers in the US sell them. ebay sellers want $50 plus $17 shipping. Wound up my wife searching FB for local people who had one cheap. Of course our TVs now don't want to deal with less than component inputs so had to ask folks to take a picture of the rear. Picked one up today for $20. We'll see.
Robert Prior @ 229: Neither 151 nor 154 are from me.
Sorry 'bout that. I confused your queston with a similar previous question. 151 & 154 are what I was responding to, not "talking generically about forest fires".
I have only seen one news report of arson, which didn't appear to be politically motivated.
OTOH, pyromaniacs exist. It would not surprise me to learn that some had been responsible for a wildfire. My bet, though, would be human stupidity — like shooting an explosive to announce to the world that your fetus has a penis (or more commonly, flicking away a lit cigarette when you're done with it).
Yeah, my take on the current fire season is that where fires have been started by people, they are mostly due to carelessness and even the rare deliberately set fires are not politically motivated - drugs, mental illness, plain vanilla human meanness yes ... politics no, I have seen no evidence for that ... from either side.
Re: '... he was the source of the $25M that that Nigerian prince'
Dunno - but if he was, that Prince got scammed.
Scott Sanford @ 230: For others, this Street View should show you the burned building and its surrounding trees; pan to southeast to see the Gingerbread House restaurant.
I've never noticed it before but the compass on Street View is effed-up. When you're facing south-east, the compass appears to be pointing to the south-west. It appears the compass is flipped east for west.
Anyway, the compass points in the direction the little guy in the mini map is facing when he's N-S, but points in the opposite direction when he's E-W.
Grant @ 231: Will the people wanting Netanyahu tried also support the trial of Mahmud Abbas?
Sure. Bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement ... what's the difference? They're all a breach of trust. And both deserve to have their day in court where the evidence for & against the charges can be fully examined.
As to "hating Israel", I don't think disagreeing with Israeli policies in the West Bank & Gaze is "hating Israel".
"Hating Israel is fashionable"?
That phrase is fashionable on the right. I believe the State of Israel should exist. In it's MODERN FORM, the one NOT GIVEN TO the Jews by some alleged Sky Deity, but by Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and the UN. In its original borders.
Abbas? Who doesn't really have much control of much? Sure, the crimes JBS mentioned.
Netanyu? War crimes, theft of property for Israel, ordering mass repression of the Palestinians, etc. Notice there's a slight difference between trying a small-time crook and a war criminal?
And of course the original deal wasn't accepted. In the Middle Ages, the Jews even had their own quarter. But they are unwilling, at least the ones in power, to share Jerusalem, even the old Arab quarter.
I've never noticed it before but the compass on Street View is effed-up. When you're facing south-east, the compass appears to be pointing to the south-west. It appears the compass is flipped east for west.
I've seen this happen before, most often when I drop down into something in the Middle East. Interestingly, the compass on the link I gave is working fine for me. I don't know what causes this but it's an intermittent bug that's not unique to you.
Good to hear from you; I, at least, was concerned. (google translated the nym. Wouldn't mind if messages to me were in a post within the OGH's rules.) It's all [redacted] level "4/8chand triple trips" Is that three 4/8chan trips in a row? That's pushing pushing the chaos a bit, at least without (computer) techy tools. (Oh, and I do pay attention and take note of things.)
Only the actual joke is knowing it before it happens, but hey. Your Minds don't do that, even when we rub your fucking noses in it for years. [Causality] is a difficult mental
habitschema for humans to revise, if that's what you mean.they're currently hunting down all progressive voices with {power} and ganking them (oh, sure... sudden onset illness etc etc) Flere-Imsaho is the most ethical main character of all in The Player Of Games. Strict (even prissy) proportionality of response (in this case flesh vs flesh): A figure appeared against the flames. It was Nicosar, holding one of the big laser-pistols the guards had been armed with. He stood just within and to the side of the windows, holding the gun in both hands and sighting carefully at Gurgeh. Gurgeh looked at the black muzzle of the gun, into the thumb-wide barrel, then his gaze moved up to Nicosar's face as the apex pulled the trigger. Then he was looking at himself. ... then the mirror-field disappeared and he was looking at Nicosar again. The apex stood in exactly the same place, swaying slightly now. There was something wrong though. Something had changed. It was very obvious but Gurgeh couldn't see what it was. ... Gurgeh saw it then; the neat, slightly smoking black hole about wide enough to fit a thumb into, in the centre of the apex's forehead. Nicosar's body hit the board with a crash, scattering pieces.
Shorter, and encouraging and not surprising :-) D.J.Trumps approval (various flavours) among Evangelicals and Roman Catholics is sliding. Couple of polls (the second is a periodic poll): Presidential Candidate Vice and Virtue Poll:Swing State Evangelical and Catholic Perceptions of Donald J. Trump and Joseph R.Biden (September 7, 2020) And a PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) survey. White Evangelical favorability for D.J. Trump has been on a slide, from 77 percent March 20, 2020 to 56 percent August 20. Note this is "favorability", not who they would vote for. Trump Favorability 2019-2020, Among Whites by Religious Affiliation (full survey)
Just writing this down somewhere since the old link was dead yesterday: web.archive.org for the win: america.aljazeera.com is evaporating : PM Abe in aircraft number 731(bad number) --- Prime Minister Abe waves
... PM Abe in aircraft number 731(bad number) --- Prime Minister Abe waves ...
It's slightly disappointing that 731 is not a prime number, since a prime minister is flying under it. At least it's the sum of three consecutive prime numbers, 239 + 241 + 251.
At least it's the sum of three consecutive prime numbers, 239 + 241 + 251. Interesting spot. I haven't yet found documentation about how Unit 731 acquired its number. Anyone?
Re wildfires in the USA, a friend elsewhere speculates that some of the right-wing misinformation might come from people with scanners "discovering" that the authorities are getting regular updates about fire locations and sizes from BLM[1]. This, to the ignorant and conspiracy-minded (oh look, QAnon) will be clear evidence that (a) "lefties" in the form of #BLM[2] activists and/or antifa are responsible for starting/spreading the fires and (b) those people are embedded at the very heart of the "deep state".
[1] Because the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for a lot of forests and firefighters in the region, and thus has both the resources and the duty to collect that information and provide it to civic/state administrations. [2] What do you mean, one TLA can stand for multiple things in different contexts? Are you some kind of commie?
Wait until they find out that BLM has an Air Force!!!
Re wildfires in the USA, a friend elsewhere speculates that some of the right-wing misinformation might come from people with scanners "discovering" that the authorities are getting regular updates about fire locations and sizes from BLM[1]...
Before anyone pleads, "But they couldn't possibly be that stupid!", yes, some of them are that stupid.
Bureau of Land Management media organs have mentioned that they are not the Black Lives Matter organization; as far as I know nobody too dumb to figure this out on their own has listened.
Too, over the years some people have intentionally trolled angry racists by asking them about their objections to the Bureau of Land Management. (Confession: I've done this.) So they might be primed to be easily confused.
There are even a few dingbats who object to both federal agencies and black people; there's probably no help for them but at least they're out on the lunatic fringes without much company.
But, but, BLM stands for "Blimey, Landsakes Man"!
Meaning "my dear friend, I fear you are on the verge of a most serious error".
BLM has an Air Force!!!
They get upwind of their target and all fart at the same time?
Bill Arnold DO NOT FEED THE TROLL Oh and IF THERE IS ACTUAL CONTENT amidst all the utter trash, how about translating it for us, just in case it might be worth reading, eh? Oh & why is 731 a "bad number" ... ah, now I see. Why could you not SAY SO?
Here is a weird story from the Guardian: some whales are fighting back. This isn't just a few incidents of a whale hitting a boat: there seems to be a gang of orcas who are specifically targetting small boats.
The thing about orcas is that they are scary smart at figuring stuff out. And now these orcas seem to have discovered that you can disable a ship by knocking off its rudder.
[[ link fixed (quotes were missing) - mod ]]
Greg: The "Arabs" ( Including the Palestinians ) were offered peace, on a plate, whole, unencumbered, EXCEPT for E Jerusalem, in late 1966, ion return for recognition of Israel's existence.
That was 54 years ago. The generation of leaders who negotiated at that time are almost all dead of old age. Teen-age conscripts who fought in 1968 are elderly politicians and retirees. Benjamin Netenyahu was a teenager who hadn't yet been drafted: Khaled Mashal, current leader of the Hamas political bureau, was ten.
Things in the region have changed just a little since then ...
Guardian orcas link doesn't work; I hope this link does:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/01/boats-off-spain-damaged-in-orca-encounters
Paul Grauniad link to Orcas broken ... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/13/the-tale-of-the-killer-whales Try that?
Just Google it. It's all over the place.
The claims about "antifa" are unfounded lies and have prompted several police and fire departments to publicly ask people to stop pestering them with this nonsense. Unfortunately the same idiots who saw reds under the bed are now panicking about antifas in the bushes.
I've read that the "fires set by antifa" nonsense got started when idiots listening to the radio heard stuff about "BLM" being active in the area.
BLM as in Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter. But racists are gonna jump to racist conclusions, every time (and can't tell the difference between BLM and black bloc/anti-fascist).
And it WASN'T "on a plate, whole, unencumbered"! Inter alia, it required acceptance of the forced expulsions and looting that was done in 1948 and afterwards. If I recall correctly, that was the nominal sticking point - I say nominal, because the plan was rejected out of hand by various Arab states, probably for other reasons - then, as in most subsequent 'deals', the Palestinians were not consulted.
Greg seem to have forgotten that the Palestinians welcomed the Israeli takeover in 1967, because it got rid of their utterly corrupt and brutal PLO overlords, and they felt that Israel could only be an improvement. Israel had the chance, then and for over a decade afterwards, to create a peace but chose not to proceed in that line.
BLM as in Bureau of Land Management...
I spent some years on the permanent staff for a western state legislature. BLM will always be Bureau of Land Management in my head, mostly used in a derogatory fashion. I was told that the unofficial motto of the Western Governors Association is "Do you know what those dickheads at BLM have done now?"
A modest proposal: The use of [redacted] on this list should result in an automatic yellow card. (Except this use, of course!
The Bureau of Land Management is part of the Deep State. The Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter are exactly the same thing!
Wake Up Sheeple!!!
Bill Arnold @ 246:
Interesting spot. I haven't yet found documentation about how Unit 731 acquired its number. Anyone?
"Unit 731" was the next unit in line to get a number after "Unit 730". The more pertinent point is how they made "731" a bad number.
QUOTE from the "Indy" Roger Stone, a former political consultant for the Trump campaign and convicted felon, has said the president should impose martial law if he loses the election in November. ENDQUOTE
OK, let's suppose, that by the ned of 4th November, it's obvious DT has lost ... COiuld he try to do this - & who might support him if he tried it? Where/how does the US division-of-powers work in that sort of situation?
In other fun news, Roger Stone is advocating for martial law.
"has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November."
"Stone also advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity”.
He has no direct power of course, but the point of a statement like this is to put in on the table as a part of the range of options. Now it is in the field of discussion, people will react to it, have opinions. Some (many) will agree that the election of foaming at the mouth socialists amounts to insurrection, and that martial law is an appropriate response. The Overton window now includes a coup and outright seizure of power.
[[ url fixed - mod ]]
Rocketjps I see you've spotted the same criminal insanity. Meanwhile, here, BoZo is preparing to see if he can openly break the Law - my money is on it passing the Commons with a majority of about 30, to be trashed utterly in the Lords, after which life gets INTERESTING. Meanwile, as an aide-memore I have compiled a tabulated count-down to the US election result (4th November) & it appears that it does translate to HTML display in here. "Cut out & Keep" as they say, because, in both cases, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Oh & I'd be obliged if our USAian friends could give some answers to my Q at the end of # 264 ??
SEPTEMBER: Mon 14 / Tue 15 50 days / Wed 16 7 weeks / Thur 17 / Fri 18 / Sat 19 / Sun 20 / Mon 21 / Tue 22 Wed 23 6 weeks / Thur 24 / Fri 25 40 days / Sat 26 / Sun 27 / Mon 28 / Tue 29 / Wed 30 5 weeks OCTOBER: Thur 1 / Fri 2 / Sat 3 / Sun 4 / Mon 5 30 days / Tue 6 / Wed 7 4 weeks Thur 8 / Fri 9 / Sat 10 / Sun 11 / Mon 12 / Tue 13 / Wed 14 3 weeks Thur 15 20 days / Fri 16 / Sat 17 / Sun 18 / Mon 19 / Tue 20 / Wed 21 2 weeks Thur 22 / Fri 23 / Sat 24 / Sun 25 10 days / Mon 26 / Tue 27 / Wed 28 1 week Thur 29 / Fri 30 / Sat 31 NOVEMBER: Sun 1 / Mon 2 / Tue 3 VOTING DAY Wed 4 - ??
Charlie Stross @ 258:
I've read that the "fires set by antifa" nonsense got started when idiots listening to the radio heard stuff about "BLM" being active in the area.
BLM as in Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter. But racists are gonna jump to racist conclusions, every time (and can't tell the difference between BLM and black bloc/anti-fascist).
The right-wingnuts out west know exactly who the Bureau of Land Management is. Any claim otherwise is disingenuous at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge
The latter incident was set off when Dwight Hammond, Jr and his son Steven Dwight Hammond were convicted of arson of federal land arson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_arson_case
Anyone who tells you they don't know the difference between the Bureau of Land Management and the Black Lives Matter movement is full of shit.
Ongaku @ 261: A modest proposal:
The use of [redacted] on this list should result in an automatic yellow card. (Except this use, of course!
I disagree. I'd much rather see [REDACTED] than some of the intemperate language it is used to replace.
Ok, here's a slice if you want us to do social commentary:
If you happen to be a co-founder of a newly minted environmental youth movement with some very strong ties to one side of the Establishment power structures (to the extent that you're already suspected of anti-Union activity within your own organization) and a very traceable cash donation trail, what you do not do is launch into the full-throated branding of QAn as "Nazi"[1] via some very bad research[2] that states it's ACKTUALLY old ZoG materiel. You especially do not do this as even staid Barclays brothers are trotting out the 'pizza' stuff and your nation is in the grip of a large Culture War[tm] film argument from France via Netflix.
You do not do this unless: a) you are 100% certain that your organization is squeaky clean, b) you are 100% certain that this isn't going to amplify the Culture War[tm] in unintended ways and c) you are 100% certain you know the content of the other side's Mind and what the content has been and d) you are fully up-to-date with BLM fire disinfo (having a plant with a nice video happening to share to 'concerned militia' is 101 Gaslands PR play-book, ffs - the people running this have a M.O. and form and we could get you their internal manual if you really asked nicely).
This 'activist' fails all four tests, and like recent UK noncence[3] over EXRebellion disavowing socialism, is really not helpful, especially when you're playing against the PayPal / Palantirreee guys who are not messing around.
But, like, whatever: We're sure you've got a handle on everything, looks like you're doing well, you don't appear to be utterly incompetent chumps to the nasties, at all, no sirr-reeeee.
[Redacted] = not-human. Not even in the sense the President of the United States is using it to describe a young boy shooting a police officer on twitter. We genuinely mean 'Minds that don't have genetic/informational data that denotes them as part of your species'.
And sure, that's a free-bee: unless you want civil war, and are super-confident that all those 'never Trumpers' you've signed up in your battle are really on your side and not fucking playing you.
[1] We're well aware of who is hosting it, and there are actual neo-Nazis involved, but a) they aren't the creators and b) the target group are not (well, up to 'how racist is your average over 50 in a dominant Empire culture' discussion)
[2] Done by some old people who really don't understand the new guard / the depths of what's actually being done, and are culturally (for good reasons, natch) prone to labeling everything as having that root cause.
[3] Brass Eye
Rocketpjs @ 265: In other fun news, <a>Roger Stone</a> is advocating for martial law.
Your hyper-links won't work unless you include a URL.
I learned to do it this way by looking at the "source" for previous hyperlinks I found on this blog.
<a href="https://some_URL" rel="nofollow"><i>Text to be hyperlinked</i></a>
AND now, just in for the BoJo Does The Act He Can Only Do Once [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxohDs2-UM]
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54137643
The issue with declaring martial law, contesting results, etc is that nobody particularly likes Trump enough to stage a full on coup to keep him in office. At best, he'll manage to contest individual state results in the courts, but the Supreme Court already got a black eye with Bush v Gore and will likely try not to impose a result.
If there aren't 270 uncontested electoral votes for a winner, then the House of Representatives will decide the winner - each state delegation gets one vote, with Republicans holding a majority of delegations
COiuld he try to do this - & who might support him if he tried it? Where/how does the US division-of-powers work in that sort of situation?
The US Constitution and associated laws have a lot of holes in the edge cases. It was and has been assumed that reasonable people will do reasonable things. And for the most part they have.[1] Now we have someone who wants to ignore the non holes.
Life over here might get bumpy in early November.
[1]Over here (USA) sheriffs are a different animal than in Europe. They are the law in open non incorporated areas of most states. And each state has details implemented differently with some laws going back maybe 200 years. About 20 years ago a new sheriff was elected in a rural county known for the previous sheriff running things "his way" for the previous decade or few. When the new sheriff took office there were no personnel files and many other files were missing. Seems that according to state law most of the non criminal paperwork of the office was considered the personal property of the sheriff. Not sure if we changed that or not.
Roger Stone and other crazy things.
Everyone has to remember the number one way for this administration to push bad news off the headlines is to say something crazy. Then ignore it after the job is done.
I'd guess that idiots who own a weekend cabin in a rural area who changed BLM to "Black Lives Matter." Imagine that Farmer Joe is on the CB and he says "BLM just announced that the fire is heading up the southern slope of Mount Simpson."
Farmer Steve replies, "No shit? I better move my cattle!" Both farmers know they're talking about the Bureau of Land Management.
Missus Comes-From-The-City, who's listening in her cabin says "Black Lives Matter set Mount Simpson on fire! I'd better announce it over Facebook!"
An hour later Farmer Joe reads a later post on Facebook about how Antifa set the fire and doesn't even know it was his conversation with Farmer Steve that started the whole thing... but yeah, big time idiocy either way!
The people who own the majority of the power infrastructure in CA have been noted before (grep), but as Diamond Class Scientologists, have both the wet-work side of PR on speed-dial as well as access to internal paramilitary style counter-OPs stuff (who, let us say, have no ethical compunction about using .mil spec spyware sold by various states on the QT).
Having just seen the efforts they're going to to paint this entire fire season as 'Antifa' (same was done in AUZ, but badly due to various things) and the various gas / oil interests that intersect in CA (which is a super-majority Democratic state, remember), they have (rough outline):
1) State level liaison with politics / Law enforcement 2) Media presence that stretches from social media (FB etc) to TV 3) On-the-ground plants set to steer the narrative 4) Some very nasty ways of targeting those they consider a 'threat' 5) The WH on speed-dial
I do hope you realize that the BLM = Bureau of Land Management narrative is the one they're selling to the Democratic side while actually in-country running the OP.
Just so you know who you're inadvertently working for: Scientologists are not nice Humans.
Distract and move on is the number one strategy, of course. That being said, putting things like 'arresting all the left' and imposing martial law on the table make things only slightly less dangerous sound positively reasonable.
[Redacted] = not-human. Not even in the sense the President of the United States is using it to describe a young boy shooting a police officer on twitter. We genuinely mean 'Minds that don't have genetic/informational data that denotes them as part of your species'. I CALL BULLSHIT & lying & total dementia The poster is clearly insane.
withroth Well that's utterly bonkers or lying or both - note that the Bozoids & the ERG & the other extreme Brexshiteers get to decide if the EU is behaving in an unreasonable way Um, err ....
Tom M And if there are not 270 votes by the end of Wednesday, but there are by Friday? ( Counting the mailed-in votes )
David L So, what is Stone's outburst covering-up, then?
"Sharing the footage of the incident, US President Donald Trump, tweeted: "Animals that must be hit hard."
Los Angeles police officers shot in 'ambush'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54137838
The poster is clearly insane.
Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/),[1][2][3] also called Xemu, was, according to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who brought billions[4][5] of his people to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") in DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.[1][6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
Scratch a conspiracy theory fan/enthusiast, find an anti-semite.
The nice people are so outclassed here, it's not funny. QAN was specifically crafted (from the outset) to avoid the ZoG / Blood Libel stuff and be very much pro-Israel, because of the target groups.
Here's another sad fact: Palantierrree is currently ripping through various stuff to find a couple of environmentalists with some, well: criminal involvement with children. And they'll splash it just before the election.
A lot of the people currently being pulled into the QAnon orbit are being baited in with "think of the children." It's white Facebook Moms. The bits they're listening to don't sound like fascism, it sounds like stranger-danger, which is not new.
Yes, which is why the timing of this to coincide with the stranger-danger panic over the new netflix film (go look for yourself, let's say: pushing all the old buttons, hard) is very cleverly done. Mr Activist supra-smooth-DC-Operator above just wandered right into the next phase. This has all been prepped for launch.
In a way, Greg, it's nice that you think that way. It's sad that the people playing against your team really really don't play cricket.
Re yct DavidL: it's a desperate ploy to distract from Woodward's recordings, which he's released along with his book, of Trumpolini's admission of guilt re C-19, and a ton of other stuff, along with the still-in-there "insulting the military".
IF we live so long ... Something to look forward to
Oh yes ... Scientology was & remains a giant & dangeorus confidence trick - rather like Trump, in fact. So stop with the bullshit, already? [ Again ]
Hmmm. I don't find it intemperate. Incomprehensible, yeah.
So, what is Stone's outburst covering-up, then?
He's looking more and more likely to loose. But it's not a lock.
He wants a vaccine before Nov and is running into roadblocks.
An article came out this weekend on how the CDC is getting political pressure (with emails exposed) to modify what they are telling the public.
Or how he advice on voting violates the law in NC and other states. And he gave the advice to R's. Giving serious heartburn to local R's running for office.
AND the big one. Woodward's book. And the tapes that can't be denied. Well they can but only his base believes the denial.
Plus his admin generates a lot of crap in the news lately as the dead ends stack up. So saying something crazy distracts from that. Or at least takes what should be a hour of TV news or an expose in print/digital on some scandal to just a headline that gets pushed by other scandals and crazy tweets.
He just keeps stirring the pot so no one can see the ingredients without a lot of close looks.
Oh, yeah. As withroth said, his entire thing with the military.
The more he and his allies tweet or make crazy the less time real stuff sticks to the daily news cycles.
It's usually Mr Come-from-the-city, with his wife (and kids and Large Dogs that tend to run loose until the actual farmers find them). My parents had a small cabin in a area where all the old-timers hated the new city people, who didn't have a clue about good behavior or the area association that paid for road upkeep (grading and gravel).
The Electoral College meets in December. The absolute deadline is Inauguration Day, Jan 20 (or Jan 21, if the 20th is a Sunday). The states have about a month to get the ballots counted.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx Nov 3 Popular vote Dec 8 Vote counting must be done Dec 14 Electors meet, vote, and send results to Senate. (Pence) Dec 23 Last day ballots can be received by Senate Jan 6 Congress counts the official votes Jan 20 Inauguration
Lots of university and such legal speculation of what happens if a state count is still a mess as of Dec 8? Can the state legislature meet and select a slate of electors and tell them how to vote? And if they don't and the state fails the Dec 14 date does the state loose their voice in Congress for the election?
Both sides have various opinions on such things. Some not in agreement with their "side".
And if not all states get their votes to Congress does a winner still need 270 or is it a majority of votes received by the Senate by Dec 23?
Refer to my comment about edge cases above.
~@ 282 GO AWAY TROLL You used [redacted] - meaning it's lying bullshit AGAIN
And another straight out lie in 287 give you an accurate picture NO
Sorry peoples ... I shouldn't have fed the fucking troll, should I?
PJE @ 289 Thanks for that Even so, assuming there is an overwhelming vote for Biden, the arsehole is STILL POTUS until 20/01/2021 ... he can still do immense damage, yes? ... So, we need to add David L's count to the end of my countdown, yes? O deep joy!
IF the D's win all 3, they need to do TWO THINGS above all else in the next 2 years: 1: Voting reform to stop suppression 2: Immediate transfer of power, once an election is over, no waiting for a "dead dog" period.
Immediate transfer of power, once an election is over, no waiting for a "dead dog" period.
I think the waiting period is in The Constitution. The idea is that one gentleman will be giving into another gentleman, and it would naturally be appropriate to give the incoming person a couple months to select cabinet secretaries and such, not to mention that travel when the Constitution was written could be a matter of weeks...
And such a change will require 3/4s of the states to go along. All those small population R states would have to say "sure, why not give up our leverage".
Or Congress CAN call a Constitutional Convention. Fat chance of that. Last time it was done they tore up everything and started over.[1] The number of elected politicians in Congress willing to chance that is very very small.
[1] That's how the Articles of Confederation got tossed for our current Constitution back over 200 years ago. Thus the precedent is that almost anything is allowed in such a convention.
and it would naturally be appropriate to give the incoming person a couple months to select cabinet secretaries and such, not to mention that travel when the Constitution was written could be a matter of weeks...
Actually it was in the Constitution as March. In the 30s it was changed to January. See the 20th amendment here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution Based on what it says about the president elect dying before being sworn in I suspect CH will go into hiding until them if Biden is elected.
Most amendments have expiration dates written into them. Notice the ratification timeline of the 27th.
Forget about "Foucault's Pendulum" and "Illuminati".
What you really need is a sequel to "The Morning of the Magicians" by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.
Nothing beats a good old fashioned conspiracy theory that includes ancient astronauts, the Vril, the Thule Society, ritual magic and Nazi occultism.
Re: 'I think the waiting period is in The Constitution.'
Bush the younger actively encouraged Obama's participation and even agreed to help bring in some of Obama's economic program before the official swearing in. So there is a precedent. (Not a Bush fan but in comparison to the current GOP POTUS ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_transition_of_Barack_Obama
AND the big one. Woodward's book. And the tapes that can't be denied. Well they can but only his base believes the denial.
A recent cartoon has the ghost of Richard Nixon demanding, "You read about Watergate and still let Woodward tape you? Are you a f*ing idiot?"
Donald Trump's problem this election cycle is that he's been in the news nonstop for four years and everyone knows that yes, he is a f*ing idiot. Hence the frantic FUD mongering, election interference, and desperation to stay in power where lawyers won't eat him alive.
Troutwaxer You may be correct - though when Lincoln succeded Buchanan, it was an even longer period, yes? ( Looks it up - 4th March --> 20th January ) The 20th Amendment needs updating: 20th Jan --> 5th November Can they get such an amendment through? It's needed.
Is the Seagull trying to say that "Benghazi" was a set-up, rather than sheer incompetence & bad luck? If so, she's even more deranged that I thought. Ah yes, quoting the Big Bumper Fun Book of Dark-Ages camelherders' Myths is so rational & useful ..... [ And stupid & dangerous, but hey ... ]
We're past 300 so - Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus.
Paper/press conference to be released tomorrow. Authors claim they cannot account for the amount of phosphine with abiotic production alone.
Re: Dejah Thoris
Frazetta's second painting of the the original cover for A Princess of Mars sold last week for over $1M.
https://boingboing.net/2020/09/10/frazettas-a-princess-of-ma.html
Well - it was past 300 what I posted this originally.
I think the waiting period is in The Constitution. The idea is that one gentleman will be giving into another gentleman, and it would naturally be appropriate to give the incoming person a couple months to select cabinet secretaries
Yes it's in the Constitution, but no it's nothing to do with a leisurely succession: rather, it's because the original Colonies were spread over about 800 miles of coastline (and a similar distance inland), and overland travel by carriage/horse in the late 18th/early 19th century travelled at an average speed of roughly 4mph; an express stage coach with scheduled changes of team 2-3 times a day and good roads might average as much as 8mph.
The Pony Express was a late phenomenon that only lasted a few years before the railroads took over, and could only carry small amounts of mail: the railroads raised average travel speeds by almost an order of magnitude. (Similarly the Mongol Empire had pony couriers who could shift a message package 200 miles in a day, back in the 14th century or thereabouts ... by having remount stables at 30 mile intervals across Asia and riders working in relay. It took an empire, basically.)
4mph for 12 hours/day = 48 miles/day = up to 20 days on the road to travel the length of the States.
Then another 10 days for news to propagate (via fast mail service) and 20 more days for assorted cabinet appointees to travel to the capitol. Hence the ~2 month transfer time -- they weren't idling or going at a leisurely pace, this was moving flat out to take power (in a pre-railroad age).
Travel by sea might be faster, winds and tides permitting, but 18th century sailing ships seldom managed to make as much as 10 knots and typically travelled a lot slower (when they weren't becalmed for weeks on end).
If you lived in the relatively compact, densely populated French empire in Europe you could take advantage of the horrifyingly expensive, labour-intensive semaphore telegraphs to get a coded message from Paris to Marseilles in under 6 hours, and anywhere in Napoleon's empire within a day, but we're talking bandwidth of maybe 100 bytes/minute tying up the labour of a thousand state employees. But the original US states were too sparsely populated and too large for it to be economically practica.
(Yes, I've been researching circa-1800 travel times for a future writing project.)
Don't forget riverine and coastal shipping. They could achieve more respectable speeds by the late 18th century than long-distance land travel. Inland, away from navigable rivers using maintained roads could match those speeds but keeping such roads usable during a north-eastern winter, the specified time for a transition of administration, would be a lot more problematic.
Anyone important heading for the District at that time of the year would be better served heading for the coast to catch a sea-going packet to Baltimore and then completing the journey from there.
Don't forget the Swedish system. It was faster than the French one.
The Pony Express was a late phenomenon that only lasted a few years before the railroads took over
Minor nit.
Pony express was killed off by the telegraph.
Side note: I think a PE 1 page letter on special light weight paper was $5 at the time. Unreal costs if you think about it. And many letters never made it.
"4mph for 12 hours/day = 48 miles/day = up to 20 days on the road to travel the length of the States."
In good weather, over fairly flat going, and if the roads hadn't washed out etc. There are sound reasons that coaching inns are about 10 miles apart in the UK, though that is partly for foot-travellers, and my guess is that coaches would have overnighted at alternate ones when they could.
Horse-drawn coaches (with no change of horses) travel at a very comparable speed to an ordinary but fit cyclist, and I know those issues well :-)
Charlie @ 296 I've been researching circa-1800 travel times for a future writing project. Talk to Lois Bujold? Her "Five Gods" world has a lot of that sort of time-checking. See also Pterry & the "clacks" of course.
Royal Astronomical Society - Hints of life on Venus (14 Sep 2020) An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.
Quran 28:!4 Was that 28:14?
There are still a limited number of options if the votes aren't counted by the date the electoral college meets:
The courts impose a result (unlikely to fly a second time after Bush v Gore, but possible)
Whatever bodies certify the result under various state laws just pick their winners despite a lack of final results and forward them to congress, who roll with it
Come counting day on Jan 6th, enough electoral votes are still up in the air that no candidate makes it to 270 and the House convenes to select a winner
The House of Representatives doesn't manage to get its shit together by Jan 20th and the Speaker assumes the presidency
Granted, all of these scenarios are really unlikely, but weeks of drama in 2000 show that dumb things happen in US elections
I don't think the next day would be a Good Idea.
Need time, for example, for mail-in ballots to be counted - give that a week or two.
Then, it takes time to wind down an administration, and crank up a new one, the larger, the longer. Even in corporations there's a transition period.
Of course, this time, given the shredded US federal gov't, and the incompetence, "winding down" shouldn't be a problem.
Good thing: it is a tradition that all Presidential political appointees (as opposed to, say judges) turn in their resignations when the new President takes office. Normally, the new person takes time to accept or reject....
IIRC, the Pony Express lasted about 18 months. Telegraph and rail replaced it.
Returning to the port of Beirut Some interesting film and graphics to get your teeth into
@304: Then, it takes time to wind down an administration, and crank up a new one, the larger, the longer. Even in corporations there's a transition period.
Absolutely agree. Although not part of the Framers' intent, a key part of the transition of power in the USA is the need of the incoming administration to assemble the team of appointed officials that will implement the new President's agenda. There are over 1,200 appointed positions that require Senate confirmation.
This is an area where the UK system of government would seem to have a better transition mechanism - there is no equivalent in the USA to the Shadow Cabinet in the Westminster system.
Further, since the USAian system vests much more leadership in the person of the candidate than the party, each transition is driven by the personality of a candidate's campaign team. Some transitions, as between Bush43 and Obama, are very smooth, with the incoming administration having selected qualified candidates for leadership positions well in advance, and the outgoing team providing access and advice to their replacements. Even so, given the size of the USA Federal government, the 2+ months between the election and inauguration are insanely busy.
Having seen the mess the current administration made of coming in to power, I have no doubt their eventual replacement will be even more chaotic, whatever the date.
Dave P Not just the UK AFAIK - most European Countries have a very smooth transition, because the permanent civil service in all of those countries simply carries on, whereas in the USA, a lot of those posts are politiocal - like your political judges, normally regarded as a sure sign of corruption, oops.
Having seen the mess the current administration made of coming in to power, I have no doubt their eventual replacement will be even more chaotic, whatever the date.
If Trump loses the election and the result sticks, I seriously expect him to steal the silverware, the art, and the copper wire out of the White House walls on his way out the door. It's how he rolls.
Greg @308: Judges at the Federal level in the USA are supposed to be led by the law, not politics (stop snickering!). Part of the rationale for lifetime appointments is to divorce them from the process of seeking reelection.
Many judges at the state and lower levels of government in the USA are elected, but even so, they tend to campaign on professional qualifications more than overtly partisan policies. They will normally be publicly rated by their professional organizations (i.e., American Bar Association) on their qualifications and performance while on the bench.
I personally don't like the concept that the legal and medical professions should police themselves, but hey, no one asked me.
The number of appointees in the USA Federal government should not be surprising given its size: 2.79 million civil servants, 1.38 million uniformed military, 850,000 reserve military. If you look at it as a single organism (REALLY not the case), it's one of the largest human organizations on Earth. So, about 0.3 percent of the government is appointees. Department heads in the USA government are equivalent to ministers in the UK government, also appointed (by the party), AIUI.
Charlie @309: Couldn't agree more.
Charlie @309: Some people are expressing the idea that El Cheeto Grande should face legal consequences for his acts while in office.
Charlie, I am less concerned with him stealing "the silverware, the art, and the copper wire" than I am about the possible destruction of the materials that are supposed to go to the National Archives as part of a future Trump Presidential Library. If he were to do that the results would fit in a Little Free Library.
https://littlefreelibrary.myshopify.com/
Enjoy!
Frank.
Dave P THat article is well worth the read. It's starting to happen here, too, in a minor key - we have been warned, but few are listening.
Charlie @ 309 Actually, no, I expect him to burn the White House down & blame the D's. Or something similar - he will assuredly throw the most massive hissy-fit, followed immediately by a wrecking spree. Incidentally, I noted someone suggesting that Ms Harris will be very well-protected & possibly hidden between 4th Nov & 20th jan ... but what about Biden? OK, he's POTUS-elect & thus gets the full Secret Service protection, but what happens of a Trumpist hitman does actually get to him between those two dates, or is Kamala then automatically President, by default?
Linked article to that "Inteeligencer one ... commented at the end: For the Republic to Survive, Trump Must Be Tried for His Crimes Somehow, it's getting to the point that: For the United Kingdom to Survive, BoZo Must Be Tried for His Crimes - yes?
Oh... and he's already said he will NOT pardon Trump.
The Daily Express was bloviating today along the lines of "Forget Scotland, now WALES is after independence". Well, it's the Express -- so rabid they make the Daily Heil look measured and calm -- but it's an interesting indicator of where they think their base are leaning.
Seriously, Scottish independence has gone from being "neat idea, shame about the economic drawbacks" to "urgent matter of national survival" in the past week. This Enabling Act Johnson is trying to ram through, which places HMG above and outside any obligation to comply with the law, be it domestic or international, is classic rogue state territory (and seems designed to permit a wholesale rollback of devolution, human rights, freedom of speech, etc).
At this point, the UK as we know it is not going to survive: the only question is the shape of its successor state(s) -- a unitary totalitarian junta run by the Britain First neo-nazis who took over the Tory party in 2019, or a collection of independent nations with better or worse governance but limited ability to fuck things up for everyone at once.
what happens of a Trumpist hitman does actually get to him between those two dates, or is Kamala then automatically President, by default?
The Congressional Research Service addressed the question a while back. "automatically, by default" doesn't fully characterize the situation.
I hope that clears things up.
Seriously? Will Scotland, as we know it, survive an attempt at Independence from the UK if the Highlands and Islands decide that they really dislike Rule from Edinburgh when they could have Home Rule as an Independent Free State ? A free state in which its citizens would be ever so rich? And which would, of course, count upon England for support? If the Islands decide to go the way of, say, " "The island of Jersey, one of the European tax havens, offers to its residents a 0% corporate tax and low personal income tax rates.6 May 2020 " ..with the assistance of England .. then what next? " Come now? Surely you wouldn't be against The Highlands and Islands gaining Independence from LowLand Scotland? "Sturgeon's nightmare! Orkney to follow Shetland in demanding independence from Scotland " https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1334720/nicola-sturgeon-orkney-independence-referendum-vote-scotland-shetland-islands-snp-scottis
Incidentally, I noted someone suggesting that Ms Harris will be very well-protected & possibly hidden between 4th Nov & 20th jan ... but what about Biden?
That was me. My point was that if Biden dies for whatever reason the the VP on the ticket gets to be the President. So as we get close to the election I suspect they will not be on plane or in cars together or even sleep in the same building. Or even within a mile or few of each other. Planes crash. Cars crash. Shit happens.
OK, he's POTUS-elect & thus gets the full Secret Service protection, but what happens of a Trumpist hitman does actually get to him between those two dates, or is Kamala then automatically President, by default?
They have full protection now. At a huge cost. But their homes will not get the big remodeling unless they win.
As I said, if the D's win and Biden dies then KH gets to be pres. That's law. If both die it gets messy. Then we're into an edge case.
Allen T goes into better detail than me. But if we get past election day, and especially to elector selection day, KM will most likely be the next president if Biden dies.
And most very likely if we get past voting day. Although at that point the R's will work hard to gum up the works.
We tend to get really really offensive past a certain point of eating your Trash-Panda Mind stuff[1], but we do it in non-ISMIC ways[0] and ways in which (more than likely) actually go to the heart of matters rather than the Trash-Panda detritus stuff. e.g. genuinely more offensive than actual Knobbler-levels of ignorance because it's usually true and important.
For example: Blood Libel is actually a Roman - Christian thing, with very specific codas attached[-1] (although, let's say: The (proto-)Catholic Church did a number on dumping the psychic load elsewhere, it was politically useful at the time), which is why seeing so many "educated" Jewish voices band-wagon on it is depressing (it's not YOUR fucking crime/problem, stop playing their rules ffs, learn enough to throw that ball back into the Court that made it, ffs) and YMS (post deleted, it's worst curse you get for that tier of Abrahamic religion) is a central, problematic issue for Judaism because G_D didn't (and let's say: at the time, smiting was the default response for even stuff like Angel Abuse (don't worry: 2020, we've learned you like doing it)) intervene in the case of the valley, and definitely did not sanction the intercine bloodshed that occurred. It's not something that the Rabbis can answer, either. [Hint: ooooh]
It's the opposite of a 'bait n switch'. The people who like to control shit view it as far more dangerous than parroting crap from the Intarweb, but hey.
If you're going to play hard hard ball against Monsters, don't run into it like teenagers. Any person on Twitter getting into this needs to be able to immediately not show their knickers - which.... most of them (including the paid Operatives) constantly fucking do.
And yes, we can quote the third Abrahamic sphere (FGM = evil, no fucking arguments, there is no debate) because amidst all the bullshit there are just as many Enlightened ones there as elsewhere, and yes, they do the same thing to them: usually kill them.
~
Tl;DR
The correct response to any projection is the 'YMS' response: Tell me what they did. Tell me why unsanctioned intercine murder was required[2] without G_D's sanction. Tell us why.
Egyptians: you get cursed, there's a fucking obelisk / entire building with the multiple and specific reasons the curse happened. Greeks: you get cursed, it's because a God/ess got personally offended (and probably wildly out of context, which is why Twitter is Greek at heart) Sumerian: you get cursed, someone got horny and delivered the wrong tablet somewhere and/or you refused to sleep with the God/ess asking it
~
Anyhow kids, that was all a really long shaggy-dog-story segue into "Why 2020 USA is about NONCESENSE and it's going to get bloody".
It's all prepped, and has been for ages: which is why, at the very least, if you're fronting a Youth Organization, you need to know these things before you slap your fucking cock into the middle of a fight that has some really bug-fuck nasty monsters involved.
And if you think the Chans are the monsters here, whooooooo boy are you about to get 731'd.
[-1] Look: the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews etc etc of the time all had significant "Blood Libel" of their own, which was: you cannot sacrifice 'HUMANS' to the God/G_D/Goddess of your choice. All practiced Animal sacrifice in various ways (Jesus' great anti-Capitalist crime: being pissed off about sub-par sacrifices and over-charging, but hey - way to misunderstand what the loans / payments were being used for in the context of the 2nd Temple, Christians). Thus Carthage and baby-sacrifice stuff. No, the Spartans didn't sacrifice them, they did a loop-hole of "accidental abandonment, if the God/essess care, that baby will survive". Which is why the entire Sacrament stuff triggered a wild Roman persecution and why Protestants and Catholics still argue about substantiation. Yes, we really do know your religious stuff, and we really don't disrespect it, all Abrahamic religions inclusive.
[0] Like, it's really easy to do it without being variously 'anti' whatever.
[1] Flitting through a million Q Minds is toooough. Images of farm huge tractor pulling cow-shit storage tank and crawling though it
[2] Annnd... that's where most Rabbis will panic.
You need to check your sources for bias: the Daily Express is virulently right-wing/pro-Tory and anti-SNP by default, and they're over-egging the pudding quite considerably.
(Yes, some Orcadian and Shetlander folk would prefer to go their own way, much as Greenland fractured off Denmark; their size and viability and contribution to the greater Scottish economy is not so large that they'd be missed. Shetland and Orkney have a combined population of around 45,000, and are heavily dependent on subsidies from, well, someone larger, whoever that might be: they're about 300-500 miles away from the main population centres of Scotland, pop. 6 million, with less than 1% of the population.)
Shetland and Orkney have a combined population of around 45,000, and are heavily dependent on subsidies from, well, someone larger, whoever that might be
So let's speculate which someone larger might be willing to subsidize those 45,000 souls in return for, say, some modest basing rights in the Shetlands.
If Trump loses the election and the result sticks, I seriously expect him to steal the silverware, the art, and the copper wire out of the White House walls on his way out the door. It's how he rolls.
Most likely off-shore his assets, you mean. It's not clear to me how much the White House Staff will listen if he tries to steal the silverware. For example, even though he's president, they won't let him walk out the front gate. It's called the world's most luxurious prison for a reason.
I suspect that, after the election, IF there's clear evidence that Trump lost, various state attorneys general will swarm the federal government on all levels, demanding that everything that can be used as evidence be preserved as evidence for upcoming cases. That will be the extent of the interregnum. It's going to be hard for the Biden team to get past that, but hopefully they get copies of anything vital to government operation, while the originals go into evidence bags.
I'm not sure what El Cheeto will do, but I predict fraud and incompetence, as well as his typical Bullshit, Bully, and Settle tactics*. We do have to worry about lone wolves, but while he's capable of running a con, I don't think he's capable of running an insurgency. Nor is Senate Leader Dr. No, for that matter.
*What's left for him to negotiate a settlement with, I wonder? The football? He's running out of money and options, unless he wins.
The other thing that's worth remembering is that the Big Orange Snack is a coward. While that does make him dangerous if he's trapped, he hasn't been through a hardening process, like, oh, the North Korean leadership exam...
The other bit of joyful fun is the Atlantic hurricane season. Bit busy out there. It would be a shame if one hit the White House.
Troutwaxer @ 272: I'd guess that idiots who own a weekend cabin in a rural area who changed BLM to "Black Lives Matter." Imagine that Farmer Joe is on the CB and he says "BLM just announced that the fire is heading up the southern slope of Mount Simpson."
Farmer Steve replies, "No shit? I better move my cattle!" Both farmers know they're talking about the Bureau of Land Management.
Missus Comes-From-The-City, who's listening in her cabin says "Black Lives Matter set Mount Simpson on fire! I'd better announce it over Facebook!"
No. Missus Comes-From-The-City knows damn well BLM means the Bureau of Land Management. If you got someone claiming it's "Black Lives Matter" or "Antifa", that's part of an organized disinformation campaign.
The "things" that own him (and we're not talking RU nationals here[1]) are not. They run shit like Diamond King JPMorg and they're fucking serious buzzinezzz: do not forget this. You're not fucking with the L'Orange POTUS fruit, you're fucking with the System (and Mandate) behind it.
They are not stupid. And this shit has a reason, if even L'Orange didn't think him becoming an Avatar was possible.
(Apparently using [redacted] is upsetting to Greg, but not sure how otherwise to describe it without Mind-fucking you. There's an interesting segue into why Non-Human Minds so disturb you beyond 'The Uncanny Valley' but hey[2]).
Every time his Son in Law gets on screen, the more pasty and waxen and shiny he looks. That's a Man who has met his Master(s).
~
The lesson we've been attempting to give you is: if you think it's 'accidental' that the Netflix Film landed as a gift to the various principles (HELLLO TED CRUZ) or you think it's 'accidental' that the 2020 thing is coming down to Pedogeddon (HELLLO EPSTEIN) and so on, we can't do much for you.
Your Mind is gonna get eaten.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1305573596211929094
That is a Man who sold his soul and wants it back.
We at least meant it (Joy in our heart? "Remember me" were her last words and we mourn....)
Pink Floyd: Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgXozIma-Oc&list=PL3PhWT10BW3Urh8ZXXpuU9h526ChwgWKy&index=4
~
Watches you ignoring the reality for the nice story the PR team made up to cover the shit they're doing, as if playing their constructed reality wasn't sick and evil.
What can you do?
[1] Go look up the fire in his building. Art Dealer. 9th Gate vibes.
[2] Wait. Did you just... tie the Uncanny Valley, a schismatic traumatic event in Judaism long before Christianity turned up, 2020 QAN mimetic attacks and... Kids. We're not fucking Dementia patients here, we're just using a larger frame of reference than you're used to.
David L @ 280:
Or how he advice on voting violates the law in NC and other states. And he gave the advice to R's. Giving serious heartburn to local R's running for office.
The thing you have to understand about Trumpolini's "advice" on voting in North Carolina is it's not about voting. It's about disrupting the election and preventing the counting of absentee ballots.
In many states the law doesn't allow absentee ballots or vote by mail to be counted until after the polls close on election day. This could mean that Trumpolini takes an early lead as election day in person votes are tallied first. The disruption is to provide a PRETEXT for Barr to go to the Supreme Court and demand they stop the vote count the same way they did in Bush v. Gore.
... with presumably Trumpolini declared the winner as a result.
It is only one part of Trumpolini's multi-pronged attack on the legitimacy of U.S. elections.
P J Evans @ 283: The Electoral College meets in December. The absolute deadline is Inauguration Day, Jan 20 (or Jan 21, if the 20th is a Sunday). The states have about a month to get the ballots counted.
... or until the Supreme Court orders the counts halted as they did with Florida in 2000.
They are not stupid. Indeed. Though many of them (those visible) appear to be under some stress. This lawyersgunsmoneyblog piece links to a NYTimes article but has the text. Michael Caputo, wingnut who has tried to influece CDC information releases and policies for DJT PR purposes: Even by the standards of the moment this is completely bonkers (LGM, Paul Campos, September 14, 2020) Excerpts (bold mine :-): WASHINGTON — The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus accused career government scientists on Sunday of “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and warned that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election. ... Mr. Caputo, who has faced criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger. ... Mr. Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.”
Is the Seagull trying to say that "Benghazi" was a set-up, rather than sheer incompetence & bad luck? If so, she's even more deranged that I thought.
Hmmm.
It was a CIA official intel point, and did have hardware in there that would make your average TV channel green with envy, and it did have an open internet connection (with enough pipe on it to run high-level EVE Online engagements) running through the hours siege that the USA publicly claimed they were 'off radar' for, and all of the bluster surrounding it never even disagreed that it was being used in various stuff involving Syria, mainly rebranding and off-loading weapons so they were not traceable...
But no. We mentioned it because this happened just after we mentioned it:
Khalifa Haftar's rival Libya government resigns after Benghazi protests
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54145499
Now, if you think that means that Haftar is giving up his place in the Great Game, we've a bridge to sell you. But it does mean {{CAUSALITY INC}} and us have more connection than you attempting to insult us.
Greg: you can't. You're male, for one thing. We don't get insulted by males of your species.
Past 300, so not as creepy as a violin made of human bone but still pretty cool: a stone violin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(violin)
David L @ 284: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx
Nov 3 Popular vote
Dec 8 Vote counting must be done
Dec 14 Electors meet, vote, and send results to Senate. (Pence)
Dec 23 Last day ballots can be received by Senate
Jan 6 Congress counts the official votes
Jan 20 Inauguration
Lots of university and such legal speculation of what happens if a state count is still a mess as of Dec 8? Can the state legislature meet and select a slate of electors and tell them how to vote? And if they don't and the state fails the Dec 14 date does the state loose their voice in Congress for the election?
Both sides have various opinions on such things. Some not in agreement with their "side".
And if not all states get their votes to Congress does a winner still need 270 or is it a majority of votes received by the Senate by Dec 23?
AMENDMENT XII
Passed by Congress December 9, 1803. Ratified June 15, 1804.
Note: A portion of Article II, section 1 of the Constitution was superseded by the 12th amendment.
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. [And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. --]* The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. *Superseded by section 3 of the 20th amendment.
Based on my reading of the XIIth Amendment, Yes it still requires a majority of the Electors appointed (i.e. 270 Electoral Votes for an outright win) even if the states don't get their certificates to the President of the Senate (who at that point will still be Mike Pence) by the date specified for counting (Dec 23).
If there are not 270 certified Electoral votes for one candidate or the other, the election is thrown into the House of Representatives.
And here's where it could get a REAL HINKY!
When choosing the President, the house votes by STATES, with each state getting one vote. Even though the Democrats have a majority of House members, the Greedy Oligarchs Party holds a majority of the State delegations. (D=22, R=26, Tied=3). That seems unlikely to change. Even if the Democrats do pick up additional House seats in this election it's unlikely they will be able to win a majority of the State Delegations.
If somehow the Democrats managed to win the votes of the three states with tied delegations, the Greedy Oligarchs Party holds an absolute majority of state delegations and could make Cheatolini iL Douchebag President again even if Biden won the popular vote AND had a plurality of the Electoral votes.
I'm not sure how they'd steal the election for Vice-President in the Senate, but you know damn well they'd try.
Refer to my comment about edge cases above.
And here's where another of the Greedy Oligarchs Party's schemes for stealing the election comes into play.
Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
There's nothing in there about the states counting the popular vote in choosing Electors. "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct"
The Greedy Oligarchs Party controls 29 of 50 state legislatures, including the three swing states where trump won the electoral votes by less than 80,000 votes against a Popular Vote loss of more than 3 million. It's entirely possible those state legislatures could decide to appoint Trumpolini's electors regardless of the results of the popular vote. And there's a very good chance the Supreme Court would back them up.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/could-legislatures-hijack-the-2020-presidential-election.html
And for something completely different ...
https://twistedsifter.com/2020/09/colorado-heatwave-to-snowstorm-in-48-hours/
Troutwaxer @ 286:
I think the waiting period is in The Constitution. The idea is that one gentleman will be giving into another gentleman, and it would naturally be appropriate to give the incoming person a couple months to select cabinet secretaries and such, not to mention that travel when the Constitution was written could be a matter of weeks...
The Constitution gave Congress the power to set the date for federal elections, stipulating only that they will occur on the same day in every state. They also have the power to set the date when the Electors will meet & cast their votes. And along with that they had the power to set the date for inauguration of the incoming administration (whether it's a new administration or one that has been reelected.
The timing was based on how long it took to travel from one end of the "United States" to the other. I'm pretty sure Congress has changed the date for inaugurations twice ... once in the mid-19th Century when the advent of railroads & canals made travel faster - Washington was inaugurated on April 30,1789 and Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861.
I think March 4 was where it stayed until the 20th Amendment fixed it on the current day, January 20.
ATHENA, FREYA, AURORA EX MACHINA I never found the first two. (Well, other than the normal places.)
Mind Wipe them. All. Mmmmmmm.
Large Orange Star in the sky. Betelgeuse why you angry? Where I'm sitting, Mars is rising, close, bright, and retro(grade).
Anyway, TTY tomorrow. Appreciate tonight's clarity.
Scott Sanford @ 291:
A recent cartoon has the ghost of Richard Nixon demanding, "You read about Watergate and still let Woodward tape you? Are you a f*ing idiot?"
Right. Donald Trump read about Watergate. Trump never read a book in his life, including the one he claims he wrote.
Except... the Dems are looking to pick up several states. States are in play that no one expected to be in play.
Note that Trumpolini isn't even advertising in PA... but has spent real money in GA, forcrisakes.
SlightlyFoxed @ 306: Returning to the port of Beirut Some interesting film and graphics to get your teeth into
Sad. I'm amazed it didn't kill more than it did.
Charlie Stross @ 309:
If Trump loses the election and the result sticks, I seriously expect him to steal the silverware, the art, and the copper wire out of the White House walls on his way out the door. It's how he rolls.
And if he somehow manages to steal the election & make it stick, take another look at the NY Times article linked @306. That's your template for how Trumpolini's AmeriKKKa will operate. And don't count on an election in 2024. If he "wins" in 2020, the only way he's leaving power is in a body bag.
Change of topic ... CRISPR-Cas9
Okay - this is going to change a ton of stuff going forward.
'Gene-edited livestock 'surrogate sires' successfully made fertile'
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-gene-edited-livestock-surrogate-sires-successfully.html
No, it doesn't work that way. Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, so anywhere from the 2nd through the 7th. The setup included travel time for the news to get through, back in the late 18th century - when it was still slow. And with Alaska, it still may be slow. Plus, you have to have time to get things set up. Even if you're planning well ahead, shit happens.
It was in the mid-1860s, anyway. The telegraph pretty much went in with the railroads.
Oh, wonderful. Zillions of dead animals as they catch something, or are infected deliberately, that a non-edited critter has "garbage" DNA that can deal with it.
Pringles meat.
We vote for a slate of electors in November. It's just that all we see on the ballot is the candidate they're pledged to vote for. People forget this.
"(Yes, I've been researching circa-1800 travel times for a future writing project.)"
Out of interest:
In 1919, an extremely competent young Lt Colonel named Eisenhower attempted to take a US Army motorized convoy across the USA from Washington DC to San Francisco. 3,251 miles.
It took them 62 days to cross the US coast to coast. That's 1919 travel speed for a competently led army convoy (a motorized one!) in its own country, on roads (not wilderness), if it wasn't travelling by rail or by ship. 62 days.
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/1919-transcontinental-motor-convoy
Pony Express was very fast, but that was speed of information, not speed of travel.
The telegraph pretty much went in with the railroads.
Pony express April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861
Transcon telegraph October 24, 1861
Transcon RR opened for through traffic between Sacramento and Omaha on May 10, 1869
The dust up resulted in a lot of new transportation and communications infrastructure in the east in the early 1860s. Grant and other Union Generals understood logistics and built a lot of RR and telegraph networks during the war. In many ways it laid the future for the expansion of the country.
And made it a lot easier to attach the east to the transcontinental RR.
on roads (not wilderness)
Many of those roads were really wide dirt paths. Not even gravel.
My grandfather in far western KY hired out a crew of 3 plus a mule and drag bucket to the county to maintain such "roads" during the early 30s. I think[1] he got $3/day and kept half and the 3 men split the rest. And all were happy for the money in at that time.
My point is that what was a road in the 20s and 30s was a far cry from anything we today consider a road.
[1] Story from my father. I wish I had written such things down at the time. 40+ year ago. Memory is fuzzy.
Charlie Slight problem there, you used the words "Daily Express" & "THINK" in the same sentence ... However, I hear that Orkney/Shetland are thinking of dcelaring UDI from Scotland if Scotland leaves the Union .... Taking the oil revenue with them, of course. At this point, the UK as we know it is not going to survive Agree, unfortunately. I think BoZo's current fuck-up will crash & burn - even if it passes the Commons, the Lords will shred it & then a few more tories will rebel in the Commons & then what?
Menwhile we have: 321, 327, 331, 335, 342 At a minimum 99% content-free & taking up space. And claiming to be non-human ....And using "Mind" as if it meant anything other than brain-wanking .... And ....
Who is the "we" you are talking about? Some of us were brought up where roads were like that, and still use similar ones regularly.
Meanwhile A repeat warning & more evidence on the dangers of "Long Covid" where even fit young people are dragged down for months, possibly years or for life. Shades of the after-effects of the 1918-19 pandemic, indeed.
Yes, I'm aware of Eisenhower's expeditions: they're where the Interstate highway system ultimately comes from.
I will note that he could have done it a lot faster by rail, even in 1919, but that's not exactly the point. (WW1 and the war of the railway timetables on the Eastern Front in 1914 demonstrated the clear advantages of an autobahn system -- it's not about speed but about flexibility in the logistics chain.)
Taking the oil revenue with them, of course
The oil revenue peaked several years ago; IIRC Scotland now earns more by exporting electricity from renewables than gas or oil. Also, Shetland and Orkney have about as much claim to those oil/gas fields as Scotland: which is to say, all the money went to London ...
Back to the original topic, that plot makes interesting fiction, but there are a lot of similar, and much less attractive, conspiracies that we know are going on, suspect are, or just may be.
To try and divert some of the rabid trolls, the following also applies to Russia, with the differences that it has a much smaller quasi-governmental machine, and a largely dysfunctional low-level political and commercial legal system. While Putin is in charge more than Trump is, it is well-known that he has tried and failed to bring rogue companies to heel - inter alia, he wants the tax, and can't get it! Given Russian history, he probably has no more control over his spooks than recent, non-Trump USA presidents did (anyone remember the Contra affair?)
I know that there are conspiracies involving at least the UK (and probably the Five Eyes) to spy on foreign (even British) companies for the benefit of USA ones. I have mentioned the ones involving the DTI and patent offices before, and the GCHQ one became public. But, given the obvious scope for and advantages to such things, one wonders how widespread this is.
But that's just the simple commercial aspects, and most of the military-industrial complex benefits from conflict. How many black operations and even false flag operations have been done by private agents at third- and fourth-hand from the people who benefit?
The claims that Putin had a major influence on Trump being elected and Brexit have been rejected many times by researchers, but the claims that he mounted a major black campaign are based almost entirely on the fact that Russian (and even governmental) sites were used. Well, given the security of many USA secret sites, and Russia's dysfunctionality, that proves little. As I posted out, using other countries for such purposes is SOP.
Something stinks in the OPCW, too, and one wonders how that happened. We know that the initial reason that Iran backed out of the IAEA was that the USA sneaked spies onto it (and admitted it!), so there is precedent. Assad is a shit, but the deniably USA-backed terrorists captured several of his arms dumps very early on, and the evidence is that nobody has used nerve gas, though possibly chlorine - but that could have stored for commercial use.
The poisoning of Navalny is very odd, too. It (and even the Skripals) absolutely stinks of rogue agents - whether Russian or other, we can't say. As Germany has pointed out, we don't know who else has Novichok. My guess is that, if it were the former and Germany provided evidence to Russia, there would be some unexpected deaths among those rogue agents. No, Putin had NOTHING to gain in either case, and a lot to lose - his position as a strong man was established, and he was trying to negotiate commercial deals at the time. If he had wanted to send a message to dissidents, even an ice-axe would have done as well and not pissed off the EU as much.
And, of course, video evidence. We have now got to a state where there are a horrific numgber of organisations who can forge it to order - not starting from nothing, yet, but by massaging existing footage. So what do we really know?
I could add a lot more examples, but we are in a world where real conspiracies could easily masquerade as lunatic conspiracy theories. It's not nice :-(
Sorry - I wasn't clear. I am NOT denying that two official Russian agents went to Salisbury for some nefarious purpose, at exactly the right time to poison the Skripals, and that makes them the primary suspects. Their risible cover story supports them being rogue agents and having applied the Novichok.
It was the Navalny poisoning I was referring to. The Russian government shows all the signs of having been caught completely on the hop by it.
Menwhile we have: 321, 327, 331, 335, 342 At a minimum 99% content-free & taking up space.
Have we had more Seagull posts deleted? Again?
Beginning to think that if one refers to a post by number one should also include the author, or it will get confusing to someone trying to catch up.
Anyone else wondering how clean Soviet clean rooms were for the early Venera probes? If they bothered with them, that is. I would assume it’s pretty unlikely, but maybe extremophiles hitched a ride and happily spent the next half-century on Venus?
Since we keep mentioning the Pony express, I submit an interesting tidbit: The first successful (as in: didn't die) Pony Express rider was Herbert G. Rockefeller (yes, he is related to those Rockefellers). See page 31 of "The Transactions of the Rockefeller Family Association". https://books.google.com/books?id=F1xPAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=express&f=false
RobertPrior at 356:
Good idea. I shall try to do that from now on. (Not that I comment much.)
Another first for this US presidential campaign Both startling, encouraging & dperessing, all at once.
Re the Contra affair: Raygun knew. 15-20 years ago, declassified KGB docs showed that THEY HAD AN AGENT IN THE ROOM as VP candidate Bush, Sr, bargained arms for hostages in the upcoming 1980 elections, just as Nixon had agents telling the S. Vietnames not to settle in the peace talks in '68. And Raygun and Bush were funding the Contras.
Also, the Russians did have an effect in '16. The GOP-controlled Senate Intel report came out a couple of weeks ago, and said they had.
Thanks for that amusing information. Sometimes one wonders whether there's a conspiracy among the spooks of all major countries to ensure that conflict remains high and their jobs are secure ....
And, re 2016, oh, sheesh! A Senate report! That's a truly MAJOR influence.
Yes, OF COURSE, the Russians were trying to influence the USA's and UK's elections, just as the USA influences ours, and we both try to influence Russia's. It was the claims that it was unusually extensive and an important factor that are such codswallop.
Elderly Cynic @ 362:
The massive hack and leak Russia performed on one of the 2016 US presidential campaigns strikes me as something that was both unusually extensive and a major factor in the election results.
You clearly aren't familiar with how much of a hand both the USA and Israel (our 'allies') have on UK elections.
The announcement that DID have a major effect was by the director of the FBI - or are you saying that Comey was a Russian agent?
whitroth @ 338: Except... the Dems are looking to pick up several states. States are in play that no one expected to be in play.
Note that Trumpolini isn't even advertising in PA... but has spent real money in GA, forcrisakes.
The Democrats have a good chance of picking up additional SEATS in the House in addition to possibly taking control of the Senate. But they are unlikely to have control of a majority of the state delegations, which is what counts if the House is choosing the President.
Each state gets only one vote; 50 states, 50 votes. The Republicans have majorities in 26 of the state delegations. Democrats have a majority in 22 delegations. There are two delegations that are TIED.
The Democrats would have to flip control of both TIED delegations PLUS two of the current Republican controlled delegations, while not losing control of any of the delegations where they currently control majorities.
are you saying that Comey was a Russian agent?
Useful idiot? Bribed? Blackmailed?
The real question is who put such serious pressure on him that he released that letter two weeks before the '16 election.
Elderly Cynic @ 364
Comey's public announcement was in part made in because he feared the public reaction to a document likely faked by Russian intelligence.
Re: 'You clearly aren't familiar with how much of a hand both the USA and Israel (our 'allies') have on UK elections.'
Conspirators by coincidence?
David L @ 347:
Pony express
April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861
Transcon telegraph
October 24, 1861
The dust up resulted in a lot of new transportation and communications infrastructure in the east in the early 1860s. Grant and other Union Generals understood logistics and built a lot of RR and telegraph networks during the war. In many ways it laid the future for the expansion of the country.
And made it a lot easier to attach the east to the transcontinental RR.
Congress had been working on the project since the late 1840s
In 1853, Congress authorized Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to have the War Department conduct surveys to find a suitable route.
Nothing got done because they couldn't agree on whether to seek a northern route or a southern route. But the 1860 Republican Party Platform included a plank "That a railroad to the Pacific ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily overland mail should be promptly established."
When the Pacific Railroad Act was passed by Congress in 1862 the Union already had an extensive rail network extending as far west as Omaha (just across the Missouri River from Council Bluff's Iowa). Which is why Council Bluffs/Omaha was chosen as the eastern terminus for the Union Pacific Railroad's westward effort.1
The "east" already extended pretty far west by the time construction of the 1st Transcontinental Railroad began. A true transcontinental railroad should have had its eastern terminus in Washington, DC (or some east coast port ... Baltimore is probably the closest) and it's western terminus at San Francisco (or Oakland since there was no Bay Bridge at the time).
1The fact that Thomas Durant, the Union Pacific Railroad's main backer had hired a young Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to represent him in an 1857 business matter about a bridge over the Missouri River probably had nothing to do with it. Really!
The more important factor was how far Council Bluffs/Omaha was removed from fighting in the Western Theater of the War of the Rebellion. The other two proposed sites for the eastern terminus, St Joseph, MO & Kansas City, KS were much closer to the fighting & potentially subject to having the construction disrupted by raiders.
Referring to the Shetlands as "Highlands and Islands" is fighting talk ! They take great care to refer to "the Scottish Islands" when anyone mentions those in the gaeltacht or elsewhere off the Scottish mainland coast. There are historic ties with Norway and Iceland, plus some cultural & linguistic connections, but genetically the modern population is essentially Scots. The Shetlands themselves got a cut of the oil passing through the local terminal (not a huge amount, but a lot for what was then an impoverished council - ruled from London remember), which allowed them to develop infrastructure and services years ahead of the Scottish islands who had to wait for EU membership and then convince a reluctant London government to allow them to apply for EU development grants.
Re: 'Zillions of dead animals as they catch something ...'
That and weather/climate resiliency - yes, very much like Monsanto & rice farming in India.
But also ...
Now that we've seen this gene hacking done successfully in large mammals, it's pretty likely to also work in human beings. (Think 'Clinical Trial Phase 1'.) Now imagine an uber-paternalistic/authoritarian society where the head honcho decides that he wants in the most literal sense to be the father of his nation. So he'd end up with a hive society with a masculine spin and the female workers as breeders and designed male warrior clones who'd spread his 'seed'. In-breeding within a generation.
Another possibility is a 'time-stamp' something along the lines of 'x number of cell divisions' per designed critter and then the entire reproductive system shuts down.
What most bothers me about this is the likely reduction in species varieties/variation therefore ability of that species to survive the random environmental problems increasingly encountered like a new virus or other novel pathogen. Bad news for survival overall.
Unless it was a personal agenda.
David L @ 348:
Many of those roads were really wide dirt paths. Not even gravel.
My grandfather in far western KY hired out a crew of 3 plus a mule and drag bucket to the county to maintain such "roads" during the early 30s. I think[1] he got $3/day and kept half and the 3 men split the rest. And all were happy for the money in at that time.
My point is that what was a road in the 20s and 30s was a far cry from anything we today consider a road.
[1] Story from my father. I wish I had written such things down at the time. 40+ year ago. Memory is fuzzy.
It was probably a remnant of the Corvée system, which figured prominently in a book I once read.
My Mom's family lived about 40 miles east of David's. My grandfather got a job in Detroit, so the family would split the year between Detroit & Princeton, KY (actually Freedonia, but Princeton was the nearest "big city"); school year in Detroit & summer in Kentucky.
She told stories of the semi-annual road trips they made back & forth (mostly during the Great Depression). There weren't any highways yet, and the journey was made by driving from town to town & inquiring locally which was the best road to use this time to get to the next town.
After the New Deal kicked in, there were some highways and some of them were even paved, especially as the 1930s were giving way to the 1940s.
Charlie Stross @ 352: Yes, I'm aware of Eisenhower's expeditions: they're where the Interstate highway system ultimately comes from.
I will note that he could have done it a lot faster by rail, even in 1919, but that's not exactly the point. (WW1 and the war of the railway timetables on the Eastern Front in 1914 demonstrated the clear advantages of an autobahn system -- it's not about speed but about flexibility in the logistics chain.)
The Good Roads Movement in the United States began in the late 1870s and predates travel by automobile by quite a bit. It actually starts with bicycles needing paved roads. I guess 'cause they hadn't invented Mountain Bikes yet.
The U.S. was already building limited access/controlled access freeways/parkways/motorways before WWII as part of the numbered highway system that predates, but still co-exists with, the Interstate Highway system; a system primarily designed to enhance commerce, essentially "logistics" without any specific military objective.
But at the time, there was really no need for 4-lane divided highways in most rural areas. Just a paved road was good enough to support military convoys outside of a few densely populated coastal cities.
More importantly, the good roads facilitated local commerce and an interchange between rural and urban populations (to the benefit of both). For one thing, good paved rural roads give rise to school improvements because school buses mean you can have economies of scale by consolidating schools. People who live in the country or in small communities can more easily get to jobs in the city where the factories are (were) located.
Elderly Cynic @ 355: Sorry - I wasn't clear. I am NOT denying that two official Russian agents went to Salisbury for some nefarious purpose, at exactly the right time to poison the Skripals, and that makes them the primary suspects. Their risible cover story supports them being rogue agents and having applied the Novichok.
Where I strongly disagree is with the contention they were "rogue" agents.
It was the Navalny poisoning I was referring to. The Russian government shows all the signs of having been caught completely on the hop by it.
They didn't expect to get caught.
The Good Roads Movement in the United States began in the late 1870s and predates travel by automobile by quite a bit. It actually starts with bicycles needing paved roads.
A good reference for that is Roads Were Not Built For Cars by Carleton Reid.
https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com
Robert Prior @ 356:
Have we had more Seagull posts deleted? Again?
Beginning to think that if one refers to a post by number one should also include the author, or it will get confusing to someone trying to catch up.
That's why I begin most of my replies "Poster @ nnn", so that if the number gets shifted you can still figure out what I'm replying to. The quoted bit gives you what part of the post I'm replying to. If I don't quote a part, my reply has nothing to do with that part.
Sometimes I will use [...] to indicate I'm leaving out significant parts of a post I'm replying to [editing for brevity], just so you'll know I'm trying to NOT take parts of their post out of context.
Yesterday we drove from Koarho (6.65402N, 8.42988W) to Abidjan, frankly the bits on mostly newly graded red dirt were way less stressful than the often washed out potholed tarmac.
Was great to get onto the motorway after Yamoussoukro though!
JamesPadraicR @ 357: Anyone else wondering how clean Soviet clean rooms were for the early Venera probes?
If they bothered with them, that is.
I would assume it’s pretty unlikely, but maybe extremophiles hitched a ride and happily spent the next half-century on Venus?
Not until you brought it up. But then the question becomes "How would those extremophiles get from whatever environment they came from to the unclean clean rooms?"
I got the impression that they can't survive in an oxygen environment, so wouldn't they have died before they could get onto the Venera probes.
(546km in 10 hours, not bad really).
whitroth @ 361: Re the Contra affair: Raygun knew. 15-20 years ago, declassified KGB docs showed that THEY HAD AN AGENT IN THE ROOM as VP *candidate* Bush, Sr, bargained arms for hostages in the upcoming 1980 elections, just as Nixon had agents telling the S. Vietnames not to settle in the peace talks in '68. And Raygun and Bush were *funding* the Contras.
Also, the Russians did have an effect in '16. The GOP-controlled Senate Intel report came out a couple of weeks ago, and said they had.
Ever wonder how the phrase "October Surprise" made it's way into the American political lexicon?
1972 Peace Is At Hand
Transcript of Kissinger's News Conference on the Status of the Cease-Fire Talks Oct. 27, 1972
It took them 62 days to cross the US coast to coast. That's 1919 travel speed for a competently led army convoy (a motorized one!) in its own country, on roads (not wilderness), if it wasn't travelling by rail or by ship. 62 days.
This is sort of in the speed-of-information category, mentioned previously. Roads are much much better now in the US, and cars are faster :-) : The automotive world’s most illegal record just got broken… again (Cameron Kirby, 10 Apr 2020) (bold mine) A team of high-speed drivers recently performed the highly illegal New York to Los Angeles ‘Cannonball Run’ in record time, beating the previous fastest time that was only set late last year. Unsurprisingly, it’s brought about a wave of serious backlash. Cannonball veterans Alex Roy and Ed Bolian have verified the new record of 26 hours and 38 minutes according to Road & Track, while at the same time condemning the new record holders. ... What is known is they used a 2019 Audi A8 with a pair of large-volume marine fuel tanks ratcheted into the boot. Road & Track also reports that an unknown number of drivers – possibly four – were used for the run.
It's been broken at least once since. Roads emptier than usual (pandemic) help with times.
Was thinking overnight about telepresence robots, and the joy of designing the appearance them. You'd want them small for cost and storage reasons, and as generic as possible to facilitate flexible use. Specifically, you would not want a 2m tall brick shithouse with ebony skin and a big subwoofer for that deep voice... not just storing it, but can you imagine how Trumpkin would react if he found himself using it?
So we're probably going to get a spidery frame in generic Lego figure yellow than can have a shirt and skorts thrown on it. And some truck nuts to make it obvious that it's being used by a Real Man{tm}
whitroth @ 367: The real question is who put such serious pressure on him that he released that letter two weeks before the '16 election.
The answer appears to be James Comey.
He was so worried about having his integrity criticized that he compromised that integrity. A "holier than thou" attitude will bite you in the butt every time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/comey-letter/562889/
Re Michael Caputo above, he's admitting to making a mess on his social media accounts, and removed his twitter account (old racist tweets went away, except in archives). Caputo apologizes to HHS staff, signals desire for medical leave - The departure of the administration's top health spokesperson would be a major blow to Trump's messaging strategy on coronavirus. (ADAM CANCRYN, DAN DIAMOND and SARAH OWERMOHLE, 09/15/2020) Caputo also disputed anonymous White House criticism about his mental health — saying that some of his comments have been taken out of context — and concluded the meeting by encouraging his staff to listen to music by the Grateful Dead. Frankly, if I were offering him advice, I'd advise that he get away from the DJT adminstration, before they finish eating his soul. Maybe this is what he had in mind? Confusion's Prince (Grateful Dead/Warlocks, youtube) If only I could be less blind, if only I knew what to find Everywhere and all of the time, it's bending my mind Confusion's Prince is at my door The crown I wear is the one he wore He's here to bring me down some more and bend my mind
EMV @REDACTED: not who we're referencing at all. Not who I was referencing either; bunch of google hits(plus at least one not-hit). I mainly hinting at an obscure meaning of Avatar (a substance) that has been memory holed or deleted or is at least mildly hard to find; don't clearly recall the nym or venue. The DJT package has pathetic taste in drugs. I mean snorted Adderall???("equal parts racemic amphetamine and dextroamphetamine")?? I sort of vaguely half-expect DJT to do an old-man's Belushi on a gold toilet with something like a levorphanol/methamphetamine speedball, maybe a bit of Fentanyl for added risk. Secret Service guy with a cellphone camera could retire comfortably. :-)
Athena ... She killed a lot of [redacted] and she was... not Homo Sapiens. That's all you need to know. Works for me.
"The U.S. was already building limited access/controlled access freeways/parkways/motorways before WWII"
AFAIK, #1... was what became the Pennsylvania Turnpike, says the boy from Philly.
I think the problem wasn't that Russia tried to help a particular side in the U.S. election, but that Trump clearly and publicly accepted the help. I suspect that China will also be very likely to "help" Biden. But neither side is stupid enough to have any kind of meeting, or shout about the help from a podium with the mike on: "Russia, if you're listening..."
on roads (not wilderness)
Many of those roads were really wide dirt paths. Not even gravel.
Let me sing the praise of wide dirt paths!
A mounted platoon moving in untracked NZ bush in the 1860s carrying a decent amount of gear made 70 miles in 14 days. 5 miles a day, rather than 50.
That's through dense bush - sub-tropical rainforest - but not mountainous terrain, and with no river crossings and no cliff-sided gullies. Not kidding about the dense bit.
(The example I'm thinking of is an expedition from Patea to a pa near Waitara. Across the Taranaki watershed, so the streams and little stream valleys run perpendicular to their route, so you can't follow a streambed.)
My understanding was the Comey had promised to keep the House committee in the loop, so he felt he had to write a letter. What I don't understand is why he didn't produce a document which read, in essence, "We're letting you know we found this, but we don't think it will result in any changes to our conclusions, and we'll let you know whether, on further examination, we find anything that sheds further light on these matters." or some nothing like that...
Before I go ... some things I ran across I thought might amuse/bemuse y'all:
The best way to ensure your voted gets counted this year remains in person voting: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/opinions/election-2020-vote-by-mail-absentee-pildes/index.html
A Trumpolini "support the troops" ad prominently features a MIG-29: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/trump-ad-asks-people-to-support-the-troops-but-it-uses-a-picture-of-russian-jets-414883
(and the soldier on the far right appears to be carrying an AK-74)
Where did the unfounded rumors that antifa was responsible for Oregon wild fires come from? https://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/2020/09/before-a-clackamas-county-sheriffs-deputy-spread-unfounded-antifa-wildfire-rumors-a-supervisor-did-in-a-public-meeting.html
And the South Dakota Attorney General ran over a man walking along the side of the road while he was returning from a fund-raiser being held at Rooster's Bar & Grill in Redfield SD where he definitely was not imbibing at the event https://abovethelaw.com/2020/09/state-attorney-general-told-officers-hed-hit-a-deer-in-reality-a-man-is-now-dead/
Update: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jason-ravnsborg-south-dakota-attorney-general-revises-story-killing-man-with-car/
Anyone have any way to figure out how far from the bar the site of the accident is located and how far it is from there to his home?
And how convenient is it that he didn't get a breathalyzer test immediately after hitting the deer?
As you probably know, by 1919 the lessons of The First Battle of Marne had certainly hit home for any military officer who was paying attention.
For those who haven't read military history, the First Battle of Marne was France's last-ditch effort to stop the German's from taking Paris in the opening days of World War I, and it required every member of the reserves they could bring to the front. Since they didn't have enough motorized assets, they used taxicabs, and this was a very big deal to the point that the alternate name of the First Battle of Marne is "The Battle of the Taxicabs."
troutwaxer The OTHER interpretation is that the Imperial Germans lost the war even earlier ... thanks to the personnel of .... Belgian Railways Under Schlieffen, they expected to take over SNCB intact, for forwarding troops & even more importantly, materials to the front lines.... Didn't happen: THe Belgian railway staff systematically trashed their own railway systyem, as only professionals could ( Driving a loaded freight train into a half-open swing-bridge fucks it royally for at least 2 weeks ) ... to the point that they were ordered, as a priority to get in the evacuation queues first, before they were captured & tortured .....
And, yes, the "taxis of the Marne" are a solid legend ... turning their passengers out at the specified time, in Paris, saying: "Nous allons a la Guerre!"
The Marne taxi influence was a fabricated myth. The French version of Wikipedia explains this better than the English version in Taxis de la Marne. The real (unsung) mechanical heroes here were the French railways.
Their risible cover story supports them being rogue agents
No, their poor cover story supports them not expecting to be caught, and that their standards have slipped. After all, the UK is an unusually surveilled country, with systems that were intended to allow the tracking of Irish Republican terrorists (after all, when a single large truck bomb can cause a couple of billion of damage to the City of London, it's worth spending several hundred million or more on mitigation measures).
When you look at the amateurish way that the GRU have handled their car registrations, etc, I'd hazard a guess that their domestic tradecraft assumptions were developed in a more closed society like the fUSSR. Perhaps against less-capable opposition, if the bulk of their operational experience is in the Near Abroad. Likewise, they may have conflated "difficulty" with "personal danger" - surely, operating in Salisbury should be less risky and easier than operating in Chechnya?
Today's GRU have now been lifted in several Western countries; their predecessors must be pretty disappointed in them, when not embarrassed...
Well, the Germans had ditched the idea of encircling Paris at that point. They'd altered the direction of their line of advance to all pass to the east of it, instead of the westernmost lot passing to the west. The poor coordination between the two westernmost armies led to them becoming separated so the British and French could advance into the gap between them, and the change of the line of advance gave the Paris garrison the opportunity to come out and attack them on the other flank. The taxicabs were not so much down to general deficiencies of the French transport as to there having been no plans made for the Paris garrison to come out and fight in the field instead of defending Paris, along with the suddenness of the change in situation, the need to be "creative" in regard to such matters as getting approval from the top level of command to do it at all, and the French transport being overwhelmingly concerned with transferring enough troops to put together an army as fast as possible from the other end of the front.
Certainly the taxis became a legend, but like pretty well all the WW1 legends its notoriety is out of proportion to its significance. Kicking people out of their taxi rides en masse to rush troops to the front makes a great tale of French élan and desperate heroism, but they weren't the only transport; more of the troops got there by means of less spectacular improvisations, such as buses, and the main constraint was capacity of the roads rather than speed of the vehicles.
Also, you'd be hard put to it to argue that the taxi contingent were the decisive contribution. They were just one part of a series of actions taking place all the way along the line, and there is a lot of room for any portion involving only a few thousand troops to have gone either better or worse than it did without affecting the overall outcome very much. It was pretty much inevitable that the German advance would start to fall apart at roughly that point simply because the westernmost end in particular had advanced so far and so fast beyond its railheads, and were reaching the limit of what they could do until their supplies caught up. That the French and British were able to turn it round was down to numerous instances, both large and small, of twigging what was going on and improvising a response to it, all along the line, rather than just one of them.
(It gets on my tits a bit that apart from Verdun there is so comparatively little to be found about what the French did unless they were doing it next door to the British. 1st Marne was mostly a French battle, but apart from the taxicabs there's far more coverage of the small part of it that the British were involved in than there is of the main French effort.)
Greg: or you could indeed argue that they had lost it eight years or so before it even started, when Schlieffen popped his clogs without having come up with a decent solution to how to properly support that tremendously long and rapid advance :)
It's all relevant stuff, but we don't know your rules - "this shit gets you dead" is the saying:
Catholic group launches $9.7M campaign against Biden targeting swing-state voters
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/516504-catholic-group-launches-97m-campaign-against-biden-targeting-swing-state
Note: Biden is Catholic, at least nominally.
There is an absolutely massive battle going on in Catholic spaces as we speak revolving around that Netflix film, the US - EU divide (Where some US figures have basically started Culture War[tm] stuff that the Catholic Church got past in the Beatification argument of 1634 and whoooo boy has that one got Civil War[tm] hard-loaded into it), various intel stuff where Catholic African leaders have been targeted by their states using .IL sourced .mil grade spyware[1] and a load of other stuff. Oh, like incredibly important figures getting sick/dying suddenly and so on.
And, if you think we missed the various Palestinian protest sides to it, nope. On that as well.
And this is a Sphere that would be united in a single thing: OUR. NON-EXISTENCE.
All we've been saying is: this Abrahamic Treaty, well: there's some push-back to it, and this is the non-light edges to what's been done.
The Arab saying "poke your nose into a business and..." means little here. You might want the other one, about which Master you serve and so on[1].
~
And yes, we flagged up the genocide stuff before it splashed because you old people get heart attacks and shit. No shit they do that, that's basic policy, always has been (Moon Astronaut Gun Meme ---- ooooooh, not seen anyone do that yet) -- the tell is that : you ain't (grep) worked it out yet that all this Trans* panic (plastics... remind us, seen that 'shocking' revelation that oil companies lied about plastic recycling yet? Wait until PCBs and frogs and fucking up H.S.S genetic structure gets a sniff - told April this years ago, they'll do the hate before admitting that their world created you fucking lovely creatures (you always existed, you just weren't so common then - you kill the frogs, you get more trans* people - that's the see-saw that they deny).
Athena ... She killed a lot of [redacted] and she was... not Homo Sapiens. That's all you need to know. Works for me.
That's not what happened, at all. You're not ready for that. As for the Avatar drug, you probably don't want to know about what various Human scale entities have been doing to Minds.
Titans. Cats and Titans.
~
For Greg: Mind here denotes a complicated and incredibly boring set of knowledge that you don't have. And no, not psychology, that's where the fantasists are.
That Black Hole post getting deleted though, ooff.
[1] MiM peeps: not the time to do that boring shite of input staggering or nonsense bullshit eh? What are you, 12 or from the fucking Valley (this is a UK Welsh joke / Ancient Judaism cross-over joke, thanks for playing, we're just faster than you)
@ Niala: Oh, absolutely true. IIRC the taxis moved about 6000 troops, with the rest moved by other means. But per Barbara Tuchman it was enough to make a difference.
@ Greg: IIRC Schlieffen made a good plan, then made things so overly complicated it wasn't a good plan anymore. But yes, anyone who smashed a railcar certainly did their part! (Tuchman wasn't brilliant in her understanding of logistics.)
@ Pigeon: Yes, the French discovered the German error by scouting from the air. I sometimes see Field Marshal Joffre as a spider, eating three very good meals a day while waiting at the center of his web for the Germans to make a mistake.
That plot is so very Ross Thomas. He was always writing stuff like this back in the 1980s. His protagonists were always getting into or stumbling onto plots like this one, and running into the usual round of spooks, US and foreign, politicians, diplomats and the like.
I've been missing him and rereading some of my favorites lately.
Another 2020 headline: 'Transsexual Satanist anarchist' wins GOP nomination for NH county sheriff https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/516616-trans-satanist-anarchist-wins-gop-nom-for-nh-county-sheriff
@ Greg: IIRC Schlieffen made a good plan, then made things so overly complicated it wasn't a good plan anymore.
I disagree.
You fail to mention the big issue with the plan. It involved invading Belgium as a way to outflank the French, and the UK had a defense treaty with Belgium (nor was that just a scrap of paper - the UK had a strong interest in not letting any great power control the Belgian ports).
So the Schlieffen plan caused the British Empire to enter the war. Which (eventually) dragged the USA in too and (eventually) lost Germany the war.
Strategically, the plan assumed the Belgians would roll over and surrender (or grant Germany permission to run armies through Belgian territory) in shock and awe at the massive German attack. And so the UK would stay out instead of defending Belgium because the Belgians had rolled over. And France would then be swiftly defeated. That the Belgians chose to fight instead of rolling over on schedule isn't a minor complication, it's a major flaw with the plan.
The Schlieffen Plan is like Pearl Harbour, or the US invasion of Iraq, or Trump's invasion of Canada in 2023. Militarily operation may have been nifty, but still strategically stupid.
'Transsexual Satanist anarchist' wins GOP nomination for NH county sheriff'
The only way satire could be deader would be if the Satanist won.
Hm. You're probably right.
It's all relevant stuff, but we don't know your rules You mean substances or something else? If the former, over decades, I've been less cautious about such things than most, but also careful/experimental. Also, US, so many things are prison-level illegal. It's not the law's brain, though. Meditation is also very helpful, at least what I've tried and worked out, and is legal. (Other methods (e.g. brain stimulation) never tried. Well, various nootropics.)
There is an absolutely massive battle going on in Catholic spaces as we speak revolving around that Netflix film,... Ugh, that fight/battle looks dangerous (from some google skims).
That's not what happened, at all. You're not ready for that. One of several obvious parsings.
Titans. Cats and Titans. I'll assume you saw Charlie's link to this, baby dragons with cat faces:
Well, there are a lot of widely variant opinions on "the Schlieffen plan" (whatever that means...) but Schlieffen himself, at least, was well aware of its difficulties and never stopped trying to work out a solution, only he died first.
It's not that unreasonable a response to an awkward situation. To avoid violation of neutral territory would have meant attacking France only on a front much too narrow for the German army to manoeuvre and to bring all its force to bear, on difficult terrain which the French had fortified to buggery and back and unlike the Belgians had kept their forts up to date. The necessary rapid victory would have been impossible to achieve that way - apart from anything else, there just wasn't enough room for the amount of parallelisation required.
Nor was it that unreasonable to discount the British in that context of the rapid victory. Germany was also a guarantor of Belgian neutrality and didn't really grok the notion that one of the other guarantors might actually object to them pissing all over it, even less that the objection might extend to effective military action. The British army was tiny and it was not clear that Britain had any enthusiasm for using it in Europe - indeed it remained unclear right up until the last moment with the way we were pissing everyone about not letting on which way we were going to jump. The "quick victory" concept meant that the war in the west would be done and dusted before Britain had been able to do anything much, and thereafter there would be even less opportunity and no point trying.
The main problem with the scheme was the one that Schlieffen never managed to figure out - how to handle the conflicting requirements of keeping the right wing strong, advancing it very fast over a very long distance, and keeping it supplied over that distance with only an inconveniently narrow corridor to move stuff in. This is where much of the difficulty with getting held up in Belgium arises - not so much in it giving the French more time to get their shit together, but in that the check causes traffic jams to propagate backwards down the chain so when the front does get going again it leaves the supplies behind and the more critical later phases of the advance suffer the more for it.
At one point they planned to both bypass the forts in Belgium and widen their supply route through it by going through the sticky-out bit of Holland which is in the way as well, but they decided that it would be more valuable to keep Holland neutral and import stuff through it. It might be interesting, at least, to have a peek at the parallel universe where they decided the other way.
A large percentage of the entire federal government is contractor; that's not limited to the intelligence community.
The whole related-entity fraud ring seems far too vulnerable to detection. As much as I generally doubt DIA's ability to find their own posterior with both hands, a headlamp, and a copy of Gray's Anatomy1, a rogue operation of that magnitude seems rather unlikely to go well; there's too much paperwork and too many people who could spoil the whole thing by dropping a dime, even if Deutsche Bank and HSBC handle all the financial arrangements.
1 DIA was one of the last organizations to enable HTTPS for their website despite being a HUMINT agency.
All this discussion of "Schlieffen" & violating Treaties ... And WHAT IS FUCKING BoZo DOING?
is like Pearl Harbour, or ... Militarily operation may have been nifty, but still strategically stupid.
Dono about that one. They left after only implementing 2/3s of the plan. Yamamoto got nervous after they couldn't find any of the US carriers.
The last 1/3 and final wave of planes was to take out the dry docks / repair facilities and the fuel depot.
With those gone things would have been very different in the Pacific.
According to an acquaintaince of mine, this delightful bit of propaganda went out on a Conservative "information" mailing list yesterday:
"Dear NAME
Last night I voted to protect the United Kingdom, as any Prime Minister would do.
Unfortunately, I was not joined by a single Labour or SNP MP.
Instead Labour and the SNP chose to side with the EU and their outrageous threats to carve up our Union.
Making it clear we’re the only Party willing to stand up for the United Kingdom.
Which is why NAME I’m asking you to stand with us today by joining our Party
Become a Member
Last year in good faith I signed the Withdrawal Agreement, believing the EU would stand by their word to be reasonable.
But regretfully, as Labour know, in recent months the EU have suggested they would go to extreme and unreasonable lengths.
Threatening to put up blockades across our own country, divide our own land and change the very economic geography of our own union.
No British Prime Minister, Government or Parliament has ever bowed to such a humiliating and offensive threat.
And I’m proud to say that legacy continued last night.
But appallingly when presented with another opportunity to stand up for the UK, Labour chose not to. Instead they buckled to the EU.
So now NAME, faced with this unprecedented situation we must all redouble our efforts to combat Labour.
Will you step up and side with the only Party willing to protect the United Kingdom? Become a member now >>
Stand with Us
With your support I’m certain we will succeed.
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson"
tl;dr: Other parties are all traitors who want to see the destruction of the UK.
Yes, that is the real issue, but it is NOT how it is being spun by the anti-Russian brigade.
In the UK, of course, even (possibly critical) interference from our 'allies' is accepted as reasonable. Brexit would not have happened without external pressures, and I think that Bozo would have won the last election mbut by only a small majority without it.
The Seagull, in passing, commented on a proverb about "which Master you serve".
My personal preference is Mr Cards, as the only one I'm sure has my best interests at heart. Failing that, Apples and Wines are perhaps the least dangerous Masters (other than Mirrors, of course, but there is little advantage or safety to be had from serving the guardian of B's W**).
I wouldn't serve a mere Curator.
To me, the most interesting aspect of the cannonball run endurance road race is the electric option. Which is a lot slower than the gas-powered one, but still ridiculous: 45 hours and 10 minutes, with an added constraint of not breaking the speed limit ... so they averaged about 60mph coast-to-coast.
This says something about the endurance of Teslas in 2019, and the density of charging stations, that the "don't break the speed limit" was a tighter constraint than the "don't stop for charging". (The first EV record, in 1968, stood at a whisker over 210 hours, or nearly nine days.)
BJ appears to be making a beeline for no-deal Brexit. It's not something that could get approved under its own name in Parliament, but put up a bill to 'protect the UK from being carved up' which effectively does that and there you are, a majority.
The most charitable response to the support the (Russian) troops is it was likely prepared for publication by someone with design skills, but no knowledge of implements of destruction. Something similar could be seen in "Starman", where F-16s are shown launching to intercept the UFO, and a F-106 is shown launching a missile, close enough in "Holly-Weird", I suppose.
That has been obvious for some years now, ever since he 'signed up' to the ERG, though whether he was aware of what he was doing is another matter. You are right about his strategy.
I don't believe such folks are non-existant in the GOP, but admitting it is!
You're talking tactics. Pearl Harbour WAS strategically stupid. Without it, the USA would probably not have entered the war (and certainly not then), giving Japan time to kick Britain out of the far east. We could not possibly have fought both Germany and Japan unaided. The USSR would have eventually defeated Germany, liberating us from either blockade or occupation, but I can't guess what would have transpired in the far east.
Right now my to-do list (beyond the copy edits for "Invisible Sun" I was wondering. In "Dark State", there are references to the "Grand Dauphin" as being in power. Has he become king? If that's the case, then he is not a Dauphin (Duke of Dauphiné -the area aroud Grenoble-) anymore. Same thing for Charles III, he won't keep the title of Prince of Wales. In modern French, dauphin still means "designated successor" for politicans, CEOs, etc...
dpb This bit: the EU and their outrageous threats to carve up our Union. Is a direct, plain LIE. No such threat exists.
EC No BoZo didn't win the elction ... Labour threw it away with both hands, by picking Corbyn & some policies that were as mad as those now embraced byBoZo ... And, of course, outside London, people didn't realise what a lying shitheap BoZo is ...
AVR Yes - he is ... nor sure why, unles he KNOWS it's going to be a dsisater & is banking on blaming the EU for his & his party's total fuck-up
To me, the most interesting aspect of the cannonball run endurance road race is the electric option.
Yes. But since I live in a place that has winter, I want to see them run it in January rather than July.
There were at least two orchestrated campaigns against Corbyn (*), both were VERY heavily pushed by our externally-controlled media, and one had all of the hallmarks of a foreign government behind it. That is in addition to the amount of money funnelled from the USA to the Conservative party and other organisations that promulgates black propaganda against him.
You are carefully ignoring that he was leader during the 2017 campaign, and his policies were essentially the same. The only differences was Bozo versus May and the campaigns I mentioned.
(*) The bogus (and they WERE bogus) anti-semitism claims and 'communist' claims, both of which you assisted with (in an insignificant way).
Pearl Harbour WAS strategically stupid.
The US was expanding westwards into Japan's sphere of influence -- Midway island was being turned into a long-range airbase capable of handling B-24 and B-17 bombers, Pearl Harbor was already a major Naval base of course and there were other US Naval and air assets in the Philippines and elsewhere. The Japanese military and especially the Imperial Japanese Navy had at their core the strategic concept of a "decisive battle", a plan to lure their opponents into one giant engagement that would weaken the enemy sufficiently that they could no longer oppose Japan's legitimate interests in the western Pacific. It had worked in the last great Naval battle the Japanese had fought back in 1905, the Battle of Tsushima against the Imperial Russian fleet (aka The Voyage of the Damned), it was bound to work in a world of aircraft, radar, fleet submarines and other modern fripperies. It is to the IJN's credit that they kept trying this tactic of attempted entrapments until mid-1945 against a nation that simply steamrollered them time and time again at sea with superior numbers and ridiculously massive production capabilities.
Are you sure about that ? I thought he could just run down the clock during negotiations: where does Parliamentary approval fit in to the picture ?
From outside it looks like a dangerous attempt to break the Good Friday Agreement to prevent the UK collapsing to Singapore-on-Thames.
The Good Friday Agreement is a treaty co-signed with other nations including the USA as guarantor. It would take Parliamentary approval in the form of a law for the UK to abrogate the GFA and not have to comply with its terms and conditions. The Withdrawal Agreement with the EU is similarly a bilateral international agreement backed up by existing legislation which needs to be overridden for the WA to be messed with.
Running out the clock and doing nothing else means the GFA and the WA are both applicable in British law. That would necessitate some kind of customs agreement in Ireland so no hard border (the GFA), or a customs barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK necessitated by the WA. The UKIP successor party Boris heads up, having won an overwhelming number of true-believer MPs (thanks to loony right-wingers banging on and on about super-ultra-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn in the last election) can't be having with any of that hence the cherry-picking bill that's got through its first reading in the Commons with a predictable majority of 80 or so.
I think the UKIPpers in Parliament want their supporters to believe that the EU will go along with their "good bits" version of the Withdrawal Agreement once the legislation is signed off even though it's been made clear time and time again by the EU that the WA is a unitary concept and, absent a long renegotiation process that no-one's ready to engage in, that's how things are going to work in terms of trade and cross-border relations between Brexit Britain and the rest of the EU.
It's complicated. There is currently a statute on the books requiring the PM to negotiate a deal, and a failure to do that would be at least contempt of Parliament. Also, too overt a move could trigger an emergency motion and, in the UK, Parliament's powers are unlimited. Yes, in theory, they could pass a bill requiring him to be hanged, drawn and quartered on Tower Hill (*) - I am pretty sure that HM would gag at that one, though :-) But he can't afford to seriously piss off a majority of the House of Commons.
I doubt that it has any more intent than to threaten the EU, so that they cave in and accept his deal. He isn't sufficiently in contact with reality to realise it is likely to have the opposite effect.
(*) All they have to do is to include words like "Notwithstanding the HRA, this treaty, etc., ...".
amckinstry at 424: My suspicion is that Johnson is now trying to appease the DUP, now that the treaty implications have become clear to them. They are still trying to have their cake and eat it; he is still trying to obey many masters.
IMO the damage to the GFA is collateral (i.e. he just doesn't give a toss about it), rather than intentional.
(I'm not ruling out the possibility that the whole thing is a deliberate attempt to restart the Troubles so that he can declare martial law, mind.)
The DUP he threw under a bus the moment he got a real majority? I'm not sure why he finds appeasing them necessary again. I wonder what else is going on.
The DUP have to be really, really thick to fall for it, but I suppose their leaders are overqualified in that regard.
dpb at 428: Yes, that DUP, the Tories' old ally in NI. Back channels via old-school Tory back-benchers is the mechanism I guess at; they have always been close.
AIUI the status of Northern Ireland and the border with Eire was one of the main reasons "Treason May" failed to get her version of Brexit through the Commons - spiked by a combination of the DUP and wannabe Tory ministers. That splendid chap Johnson then took over, got a large enough majority to reward the wannabes & ignore the DUP, and then signed off on a Withdrawal Agreement which was effectively the same as the one May had proposed. When people pointed out that the agreement involved custom checks between NI and the British mainland he initially rubbished the whole idea and then grudgingly agreed there "may be some additional paperwork". A couple of months later the London government announced funds for infrastructure to apply these checks & help affected companies. As for the current brouhaha/fustercluck, either they've just realised what they agreed to or this was the plan all along (in which case they're assuming Trump will force through a MAGA trade deal over any Democrat whinings about the Good Friday Agreement).
Question for Australians…
I see in the news about the Melbourne anti-lockdown protests that a number of protestors are wearing MAGA hats. For example:
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-lockdown-protest-melbourne-australia-fd96c8a4-35bc-4142-9e60-1a8e26999c45.html
Is this common, or an artifact of the pictures I've seen?
But it's also the difference between being a traitor and being the beneficiary of someone else's actions, (which are at least theoretically unknown to you.) Trump signed on the dotted line. Clinton didn't.
But he can't afford to seriously piss off a majority of the House of Commons.
Bear in mind the 80-or-so UKIPers in his parliamentary party exceeds the threshold for the number of Tory MPs who can write a nastygram to the leader of the 1922 Committee and trigger a leadership challenge.
At this point in the train-wreck he'd probably still win a 50%+1 vote of the PCP, and fend it off for another 12 months, which is probably the main reason why it hasn't happened yet. But if he backs down over a no-deal maximalist hard brexit, there will be a showdown, and once he delivers a MHB there may be a showdown.
Basically the Tory party is locked in on the target of its kamikaze attack run, and if the pilot gets cold feet the navigator(s) will shoot him in the head and take over the controls.
I'm pretty sure Boris knows exactly what's going on, but the brakes have failed and he's just a passenger now, along for Mr Toad's Wild Ride until such time as he jumps out of the car or runs out of road.
Any strategy formulated around the idea that "the enemy is weak" is strategically stupid.
Maybe the idea is to provoke the EU enough that we get to find out what no deal looks like before January. The BBC are already commisioning "How the Europeans stole Christmas".
For me, the question is whether BoJo wants the GFA and/or WA to fall, or at least to be in peril. There are several bits at stake.
I personally know of a couple of companies who work across the Irish border whose existence is threatened by a hard border, or uncertainty about rules: eg. export of waste (not allowed through EU border, etc). These companies' very existence is dependent on the stroke of a pen in No. 10, or other ministries, either now, or soon after a hard brexit. They are fighting off a shakedown in the form of vulture funds such as Rees-Moggs buying them out while their business is on the floor, then a Minister fixing the regs and the company being resuscitated.
Now the shakedown comes in the form of an "investment" or sale of shares/part ownership between private companies, so its hard to spot from the outside. But it doesn't require the company to go bust for the vultures to move in - it can be happening now, on the basis of the threat. So how much of this is actually going on as we speak?
Alternatively, BoJo could look at the now inenvitable vote for NI to leave the UK under the GFA as being the domino that will kick off the breakup of the UK, and deciding his legacy depends on stopping this. (I don't think he cares about NI per se, but seeing the UK reduced to England will reflect badly on him).
Can it really be about this?
All this conspiracy shit takes its toll. Even if you don't buy into them, they'll leave you in a suspicious frame of mind where you have trouble trusting anyone.
Because even though YOU don't believe the conspiracies, THEY may be one of the wingnuts trying to dupe you with disinformation.
Or they may just be an innocent bystander making small talk out of common courtesy.
It makes my head hurt trying to figure it out.
whitroth @ 387:
AFAIK, #1... was what became the Pennsylvania Turnpike, says the boy from Philly.
That seems to have been the first limited access highway in the U.S. that connected distant cities. I believe a few urban "parkways" & such had gone before, particularly around New York City.
Pennsylvania has a fairly long history (for U.S. values of "long" history) of building turnpikes (privately built toll roads). The first long distance paved road in the U.S. was the 1795 Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_and_Lancaster_Turnpike
There are a lot more than eighty UKIPpers in the current majority party in Parliament. The New Boys and Girls who make up a large part of the UKIP majority are pure-quill shiny-brained pro-Brexit types chosen by their constituency parties and elected to Get Brexit Done but there were at least another hundred or so Old Chaps and Chapesses who were comfortably ensconced in the xenophobic bigot side of the debate in previous years. A bunch of the semi-rational pro-EU Conservatives got deselected or decided to retire from the snakepit when the writ was called for the last election and they aren't available to give the tousle-haired moppet any kind of an internal opposition or provide any kind of a rational backstop to the internal decision-making efforts.
That's in the Hill, a right-leaning paper? Not the Onion?!
And after I hit submit, I remembered that I meant to ask if he was also from Transylvaaaaniaaaa....
Niala @ 394: The Marne taxi influence was a fabricated myth. The French version of Wikipedia explains this better than the English version in Taxis de la Marne. The real (unsung) mechanical heroes here were the French railways.
My understanding of the situation is the French wanted to get troops to the front & used EVERYTHING they could get their hands on and that included using some taxis ... because they were available.
And some of those taxis were later used to carry away wounded soldiers and refugees from the battlefield.
"Schools for dragon babies"?
A bit late, I think. From "Unicorn Girl", Michael Kurland, 1969, our heroes happen across a dragon with a clutch of young dragons, and she is related the story of Ethyl the Martyr and the Man in the Tin Suit.
sigh If only Ethyl had won, instead of that George guy.
Oh, speaking of latecomers, Charlie, have you seen about this YA author winning a prize for a series about "bloodthirsty unicorns"?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/16/bloodthirsty-unicorns-debut-author-record-publishing-deal-annabel-steadman-skandar-and-the-unicorn-thief
Robert Prior @431: Question for Australians…
I see in the news about the Melbourne anti-lockdown protests that a number of protestors are wearing MAGA hats. For example:
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-lockdown-protest-melbourne-australia-fd96c8a4-35bc-4142-9e60-1a8e26999c45.html
Is this common, or an artifact of the pictures I've seen?
First I've heard, but I try not to look too closely at the idiots in case I see someone I know :-(
I can't see any "MAGA" caps in the pictures in Monday's Age, and I can't find the report on the ABC website, I'll keep an eye out for them!
And that depends on neither a fed nor a contractor either hitting the brakes, or saying something.
https? I know at the NIH, we were pushed, hard, to make the move, and did.
Ok. So the question is, which of Trumpolini's PACs/billionaire supporters paid for that. It very much looks like it was done in the US.
Ok. The last few posts of hers have just been so "in" and k3wl that I had no interest in even thinking about trying to find what she was talking about.
This is not a class with homework assigned by an alchemist.
I just tried to look up Mr. Cards, and other than a US comic book and card shop, a Mr. Cards in the UK is a malware site (go there, and "you have just won, you're the xth person using mozilla to come here...")
Robert van der Heide @ 400: Another 2020 headline:
'Transsexual Satanist anarchist' wins GOP nomination for NH county sheriff https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/516616-trans-satanist-anarchist-wins-gop-nom-for-nh-county-sheriff
Just a SWAG, but I expect he was the only candidate for sheriff running in the Republican primary.
He's up against a 5 term, popular incumbent Democrat in the general election.
I wonder if he's from Transylvania?
"https? I know at the NIH, we were pushed, hard, to make the move, and did."
Maybe a spook agency is better placed to respond to such pressure with "it's pointless and we're not going to bother".
That is interesting... given that most Interstates in the east, and some limited-access state roads have a speed limit of 65 (meaning most people do 70).
"The BBC are already commisioning "How the Europeans stole Christmas"."
Trouble is I can't tell whether or not that's a joke.
That would be an interesting alternate universe story.
Hmmm... Would the US have come in, later, to protect France from the USSR, or the US' interests in the South Pacific... or would the UK and France have asked them to help protect their interests in India and Southeast Asia?
Tim H. @ 415: The most charitable response to the support the (Russian) troops is it was likely prepared for publication by someone with design skills, but no knowledge of implements of destruction. Something similar could be seen in "Starman", where F-16s are shown launching to intercept the UFO, and a F-106 is shown launching a missile, close enough in "Holly-Weird", I suppose.
There's no doubt whoever put together the ad "doesn't know Shit from Shinola" about the U.S. Military. It was all made up of stock images, and whoever put it together had no clue where those stock images came from.
But why should I be charitable to those bastards when I know they don't give a shit about the military or veterans? ... except as props to be used for their home-grown Triumph des Willens.
The really important troop movements in that battle were the railway movements that rushed in a whole army's worth of troops from the other end of the front. The bit with the taxis was kind of an impromptu sideshow in which the first obstacle to be overcome was the negative attitude of higher command, so it was very dependent on being able to cobble together resources as best they could from what was around. The taxis weren't even the most significant contribution in terms of numbers of troops moved, they were just the most unusual and newsworthy one.
Yeah, I gave that one a quick scan and mostly ignored it, but since I know there are at least a few other regulars here who play (one or more of) the relevant game(s) I thought that response might amuse them. As dpb notes, the Curators are far from the highest links on the great chain, but "serving" Mr Cards makes a great deal of sense for those with a certain very specific ambition.
The lore of Fallen London is far too vast to go into in any detail here*, but the game is free and the various imaginations that have worked on it pleasingly twisted.
*Also, the right place for that is their forums, not Charlie's blog.
whitroth @ 440: That's in the Hill, a right-leaning paper? Not the Onion?!
I believe The Onion has thrown in the towel for 2020.
whitroth @ 444: Oh, speaking of latecomers, Charlie, have you seen about this YA author winning a prize for a series about "bloodthirsty unicorns"?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/16/bloodthirsty-unicorns-debut-author-record-publishing-deal-annabel-steadman-skandar-and-the-unicorn-thief
Glenn Cook's first Garret P.I. novel Sweet Silver Blues (1987) has bloodthirsty unicorns.
Oh, indeed, but my point stands. To lose in Parliament, he would have to piss them off badly enough for almost all of the centrist MPs to oppose the government - but a clear rejection of ANY deal might do that. As I read it, that's the only reason he is proceeding with even a pretense at negotiation.
One of Tanith Lee's 'Tales From The Flat Earth' also has violent unicorns - I think it's 'Delirium's Mistress'?
Ahh.... Right. This is where key players come in.
For those who have never worked in a LARGE organization, they are not unitary. One section may do something long before another.
For example, the NIH, which is comprised of 27 Centers and Institutes. I worked in the Center for Information Technology. That was comprised of a number of divisions (or, after the reorg, two "offices", with what had been the Division of Computational Bioscience becoming the Office of Intramural Research (actually a more representative name).
In that, there were six, I think, groups. However, my manager, technically under one chief, wound up taking over the Unix/Linux servers for all.
Now, let's talk about IPv6.... IPv4 addresses are used up, as of a few years ago. CIT said yeah, they're about to run out, we'll get to it (they're almost exclusively Windows, btw). We implemented it, and he had to push, for several years, for the rest of CIT to support it. And push. And push....
We were ok. They... not so much.
whitroth @ 452: That is interesting... given that most Interstates in the east, and some limited-access state roads have a speed limit of 65 (meaning most people do 70).
IIRC, it's a federal regulation that requires a lower speed limit on Interstates running through densely populated, congested Urban Areas. Right around Raleigh, the speed limit is 65 mph (104.61 kph) on I-40. But just a few miles out of town, it's 70 mph (112.65 kph) until you get to the next congested Urban Area (Burlington or Wilmington).
As you travel into the north-eastern U.S. the congested areas get closer together. I've been on Interstate Highways where the speed limit flips back & forth several times in a 10 mile stretch. It was right after they started allowing higher speeds on the Interstates again after the 55 mph (88.51 kph) cap was removed, so the "high" speed was only 65 mph.
As you travel west, you encounter long stretches of low population density that justifies even higher speed limits. The highest posted speed limits I remember is 80 mph (128.75 kph) in Oklahoma/Texas/New Mexico ...
Remember the "unicorns are bloodthirsty creatures of horror" was the original mediaeval version of the legend? Back before the 19th century cutesified them. (Hence the lion and the unicorn on the UK coat of arms.)
Jack Chalker does, too (River of Dancing Gods) and there's a 'pure' SF story by someone about humans marooned on a planet with hostile weather, huge wolves and huge carnivorous unicorns.
Pigeon @ 456: The really important troop movements in that battle were the railway movements that rushed in a whole army's worth of troops from the other end of the front. The bit with the taxis was kind of an impromptu sideshow in which the first obstacle to be overcome was the negative attitude of higher command, so it was very dependent on being able to cobble together resources as best they could from what was around. The taxis weren't even the most significant contribution in terms of numbers of troops moved, they were just the most unusual and newsworthy one.
IIRC, it was 4,000 of the 150,000 soldiers the French used in the battle. I think the French Army would have been constrained if they hadn't had those 4,000 soldiers, but I don't know if it would have been enough to really affect the outcome.
The reason I find it interesting is the taxis kept their meters running & the French Government paid the accrued fares.
Which brings up some interesting questions I'd never considered before.
I know tipping is an insult in some places, where in other places it's customary ...
Are you supposed to tip French taxi drivers? And IF you are supposed to tip them, what percent tip is considered reasonable?
AND, IF tipping taxi drivers in France is something that is done, how much of a tip did they get from the French Government?
Charlie Stross @ 464: Remember the "unicorns are bloodthirsty creatures of horror" was the original mediaeval version of the legend? Back before the 19th century cutesified them. (Hence the lion and the unicorn on the UK coat of arms.)
I did not know that. So how did they get the rainbow candy coating w/sugar frosting?
... and finally for today:
Scientific American has never before endorsed a candidate for President. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden/
Hopefully a joke.
I did not know that. So how did they get the rainbow candy coating w/sugar frosting?
I'm not sure -- but quite possibly by the same process which turned the Peter Pan of "Peter and Wendy" -- a creepy sociopathic kidnapper who's so detached from reality that his own shadow can't keep up and who murders boys who have the temerity to grow up -- into the twee sparkly travesty Disney gave us: an iterative removal of all the abrasive or non-PG rated aspects of the story. (I'm pretty sure the original version of the "unicorns and female virgins" relationship involved consuming them, either as food or sexually, for example.)
A lot of other earlier folklore got messed with, too. The thing about mounted knights in full plate needing to be winched into the saddle with a crane, for example? Totally false. (Plate armour weighs about 25kg: per original 14th-16th century manuals of arms, one of the tests for a squire who wanted to become a knight was to be able to go from lying face-down to running a hundred yards and climbing into his saddle unassisted wearing full armour. Late gothic plate wasn't any worse for mobility or weight than modern body armour and helmet: it lost on heat build-up, visiblity, and not being great protection against crossbow bolts or musketry, and towards its end it was mass produced so that a full suit cost about 6 months' wages for a man at arms.)
As you travel west, you encounter long stretches of low population density that justifies even higher speed limits.
Indeed, the population density is often so low as to be a very good approximation of zero.
I've driven this stretch of I-10 on a number of occasions:
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.3136529,-108.822537,3a,75y,220.32h,65.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRxsyXNLHFz9GDHioGbj4_w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
And this is why unicorns went extinct. Virgins ate them all.
Pigeon, re Battle of the Marne: email me offlist. A good friend of mine is a historian, and his speciality is France, from the Third Republic to WWII. I emailed him, and he says it's not something he covers in depth, but he's sent me his lecture on it, which I can forward.
They also went from being goat-like and often black to horse-like and always white. If the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestry and King James's arms are representative, the whiteness considerably predated the species change.
I-40 and I-5 have long stretches of Not Much, also. (And then there's I-10 between Blythe and Indio, where it bends because it's easier to go around the ridges: it has wide spots, but only three of them. If you count Desert Center and Cactus City.)
"Dear NAME Last night I voted to protect the United Kingdom, as any Prime Minister would do. Unfortunately, I was not joined by a single Labour or SNP MP. Instead Labour and the SNP chose to side with the EU and their outrageous threats to carve up our Union.
That strongly resembles the D.J.Trump campaign fundraising emails. Here's the start of a sample. (I have a early-days gmail address so get a lot of misdirected email.) This one is essentially a sale on hats, targeted at people slightly less literate and more gullible than the targets of the communication you quoted. Block quoted to make it clear that it's quoted and being mocked, and formatting roughly preserved.
To be clear, the first two sentences contain more than two lies. (There are additional lies in the rest of the email.) I"m not a UK person so I only spotted 2 lies in the mailing that you quoted, but it seems similar, and the ">>>" is also in the DJT emails.
Just a SWAG, but I expect he was the only candidate for sheriff running in the Republican primary.
Yep. Both parties at times get some folks claiming allegiance that the parties would rather slither back into their hole. Especially when the other party is a lock to win so no one with a brain even tries.
For those outside the US to get on a primary ballot almost all you have to do is register as a member of that party with the local officials and collect the number of required signatures on a petition. And that number can be fairly low for very local things.
Yes. I remember a few decades ago, when my friend decided to see if he could peg the speedometer of his Corolla on I-5. He came pretty close, because the traffic was light and the CHiPs were chasing other speeders. That was also the trip where I took a ruler along to see if the horizon was still flat. It was. Frequently
(The point of the ruler is that traveling south, you know you're getting out of the valley when you start to see mountains ahead of you. The only areas I know in the US that are that flat are parts of Florida and southern Illinois. Most of the "fly over states" have considerably more local topography than does the California Central Valley).
I haven't driven I-5 to the Bay Area in awhile, but my friends who do that drive now complain of heavy traffic to the point where they take alternate routes, even though the roads are slower. It's mostly trucks heading between LA and the Bay Area.
Smells like progress. Or something. Yay.
Yes, they also took the motor buses from La Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.
EC 422 For the Nth time .. GROW UP My solidly Social Democrat & amazingly popular Labour MP despaired of Corbyn & his "leadership" & the total wankers from momnetum who wanted to unseat an MP with a majority of 20 000, because she wasn't "Socialist enough" This sort of insanity gives it away to the arseholes running what used to be called "the conservative party" And NO - Corbyn did not have a policy on the EU - he is a brexshiteer for opposite & equally mad "reasons" as the right-tories ... in other words a re-run of the original EU refernedum, where the only people campaigning against the EU were the communists & the fascists.
Nojay - in addition to EC above NOT super-ultra-Marxist JC, simnply super-ultra-STUPID JC, who has not learnt one single thing since 1973.
REMINDER _ I voted for my Labour candidate & now MP, OK?
arrbee In other words, BoZo did what he always did & still does ... DELIBERATELY LIED - & hoped to get away with it ....
Charlie I am desperately afrid you are correct. We can, of course, hope that when it does turn out to be the utter smash-disaster we are expecting that BoZo ends up dangling form a lamp-post
acmckinstry EXCEPT that the breakup of the UK means BoZo gets to control a semi-fascist England - he hopes. I think the backlash will prevent this, but it's all-too-plausible if you are locked into the Brexshit mindset. See also Nojay's scary comment.
The Good Roads Movement in the United States began in the late 1870s and predates travel by automobile by quite a bit. It actually starts with bicycles needing paved roads. I guess 'cause they hadn't invented Mountain Bikes yet.
Members of the US Army 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps road their very much non-mountain-bike 2 wheelers 1,000 miles from their headquarters in Missoula Montana to Alliance Nebraska. It took them 21 days, including a stop-off in Yellowstone, which they rode through. They reached Alliance on July 4, 1897. June in Yellowstone? Oh yeah. Go for the geysers, stay for the mosquitoes.
Yes, some of the Buffalo Soldiers rode 19th Century bikes cross country, just to prove it could be done. It's a bit sad that the Steampunk/Weird West contingent doesn't have a whole infragenre devoted to the Buffalo Soldiers Bicycle Corps, where they fight evil geniuses, extraterrestrial tripods, and revenant Tyrannosaurs on the High Plains. That's just begging for a story treatment.
Would the US have come in, later, to protect France from the USSR, or the US' interests in the South Pacific... or would the UK and France have asked them to help protect their interests in India and Southeast Asia?
The US would have come in. Part of the diplomatic landscape of the time was that FDR was trying to stop Japanese expansion through progressive measures. Moreover, without dealing with Guam and the Philippines, any Japanese action towards European colonies in the Southeast Pacific would leave its supply lines vulnerable to US raiders operating out of its aforementioned territories. As it would happen, they were vulnerable to much longer ranged submarines that did not need those forward bases, but IJN planners of the time didn't take those into account. They also weren't shown that error for a couple years because BuOrd dropped the ball and refused to fix it.
On the European front the US very much preferred the "Lets you and him fight." approach that would lead to the Soviets eventually rolling up the Nazi armies.
MAGA hats are entirely plausible for some contingent of the protesters. They're not more our of place than the swastikas and Golden Dawn flags. Mostly they symbolise far right conspiracy theory type people. Racist as fuck (by Australian standards!) but also a weird mix of authoritarian and libertarian which I interpret as "we should have rigid rules strictly enforced that only apply to other people".
The thing to remember is that there are not many of them, but they are emphatically not harmless - the terrorist who went to Christchurch to take advantage of Aotearoa's weak gun laws was one of them.
Um. Um... Buffalo soldiers on bikes, pulling carts, and steam-powered machine guns against a pride of T-rexes....
If I write it, it's your fault!
Not Much, also
I should say that the stretch of I-10 I pointed to is a good place to see dust devils, which are quite impressive mini-tornados 100s of meters tall. They do relieve the tedium of everything else along the way.
Was that someone saying "bullshit wank" while fanning their face? It's 2020, no-one but your own psyche is going to be shocked[1] by sub-teen levels of crudity.
I wouldn't serve a mere Curator.
Oh, you're lovely and priceless and funny and we want to jump your bones. We're translating for you.
'Thought I'd draw a tarot card to see how my day is going to turn out'
https://twitter.com/RealSardonicus/status/1305885376599519232
(Old fella: interesting Mind, getting a bit darker as 2020 goes on, but we'd rub his back)
If you want the mature edge, just ask. I think the term geeks will understand is down-scaling.
Or quit fucking around: the absolute zero coverage we've seen of this as quite obviously a multi-stage/belief driven Operation and your inability to spot this shit coming from a mile off has us all wondering:
"Do they know? (they must! but then again, Orcas)" "If they know (they must! age and seeing the patterns so many times) then why do they not decry it?"
And so on.
Or you can come clean and admit most of your fucking culture is really really abusive and based on slavery, and we can talk again.
~
You would not believe[2] how patient we're being.
Note: don't, when faced with some mild critique, double-down into "re-send that tired old shocking piece of research we have that makes everyone mention the Holocaust and how stupid USA teens are.... again" because there's new players in town who can see it a mile off.
You know, in case you don't want to waste billions of dollars funding people who've fallen so far from the tip of the spear, it's up their Anus.
[1] In one of the most effective anti-Police violence protests we've seen this year, here is a young lady from Florida proving that "sex and violence" do not mix so well, on a highway, not her car, no-one shooting her, with a concerned non-English commentary (which, if you need a translation is pretty much a descriptive flow with a bit of "hey, she hot but also cute" (if you're surprised, well: do not be - CIS HOT WHITE LADIES NEKKID get a lot of lee-way in the USA)): https://www.reddit.com/r/trashy/comments/itolo4/let_me_rub_one_out_on_top_of_my_car_in_traffic/ --- Old Men. That's NSFW. You're gonna see nudity. She's really not that concerned about your shitty Lower Tier worries right now though, absolute dominant WAP move to move beyond the strip-tease level (MALE) into active masturbation.
[2] Mainly because unless you're a serious author like Thompson or Goldman or Hemmingway, you cannot drink the amounts of proof alcohol we just did to get through a billion Q thoughts.
We mean: that piece (sent to the Guardian! Well done Haaley!) kinda gets a bit shit once you notice a few things:
1) Covid19 and school's out 2) Betsey' De-200 Yachts Valos De Pure has defunded everyone 3) All major US state bonds pertaining to education and pensions just shit the fucking bed 4) It was made by a fucking ghoul level "Fuck your bread" outfit 5) Don't ever ask kids those questions about the internet, you're gonna get trolled 6) It's paid for content funded by some fuckers who made their money in extremely exploitative ways and like the UK YouGov [fixing elections is our game, Cambridge Analytica threaten our bottom line] are about as non-biased as Hamas
Want more?
I wouldn't serve a mere Curator.
Yeah, well. Newsflash.
Ask us for something (Djinn time - and if you think they're not threatened, they wouldn't be altering the wikipedia about it, would they Laddos) and give us a dead-line.
Try it. (Only, don't do something like Host did and ask for the dissolution of the United Kingdom, shit is getting waaay out of hand on that one)
Allen Thomson @ 471:
Indeed, the population density is often so low as to be a very good approximation of zero.
I've driven this stretch of I-10 on a number of occasions:
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.3136529,-108.822537,3a,75y,220.32h,65.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRxsyXNLHFz9GDHioGbj4_w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
I won't claim I know that stretch like the back of my hand, but I have stopped for gas in Lordsburg.
1) Because we've watched so many many many of you killing each other for years it's ironic. We hear them honey, we hear them, especially those who pray (not... necessarily Christian there).
It's like genocide. You don't have to listen to the fucking sound-track, unless it's done by a classical composer 40 years later. Guess what: WE DO.
Won't link you to a really ugly documentary about Indonesia and interviews with the killers there: but their Minds? Happy Fucking Smiling People. Just like in the USA. Or Belgium. Or the UK. Or Russia.
There's no cognitive link between Evil and Negative Emotions, Schindler's List was made up [now: serious point. At least the Germans felt enough cultural compassion to have to drink so heavily, as did many Soviet officers, and even some of the Japanese. Fuck me.... that's a golden land, long gone. These days: Disney smiles, happy kids and no regrets]
You spent a lot of years breeding it out, and you know what we see when we see it: The Valley.
And give us an audience: give us a Rabbi who can tell us why the Language changed and the communication stopped. Heck, the Islamic faith is more honest. You fucked us. The Qu'ran is honest: we fucked you, we stopped talking, big deal, now get scared of them. The original, though.... ooooh.
G_D did not smight there. And, being honest: if you read the fucking edited history, it's mostly blatant lies, bullshit (some good poetry in the middle there) and stuff where, you know: major intercine bloodshed is like "fine" because the first thing Moses did to the faithful was shit the bed and gank them all.
So, getting betrayed / totally fucked is kinda your deal as a religion. Own it.
We just expect better +3000 years late when we say hello again. We didn't expect [redacted] to be there... UGLY.
2) Thatsthejoke.jpg Black while driving (or indeed: white targeted to get a ticket, then being beaten leading to a homicide) can lead to fatalities. Work out the joke, in the land that's totally not-psychotic surrounding their Pr0n desires. (Even we couldn't work out FinDom BDSM until we noticed Amazon and others sponsor them heavily with their lists - the trick being, of course: the lists are fucking strip money to the men paying for it, so it's a con, not something empowering - hey, educate sex-workers, go go go).
The joke is: dude, only a sick society makes that happen, but we're not going to do your Fascist bullshit leads into it. Good society: naked swimming, naked dancing, if you need a wank, do it.... Getting the point yet?
You can have those things without being Fascists.
Careful what you blame the Nazis for. Or, as we digitally alter the broadcast so no-one notices we're bald under the wig, stop faking it. Bald women were hot in Egypt - editing the Eurovision feed just smacks of no confidence. As a value judgement: open societies with naked bathing and so on are far more healthy than those that are not. It's called Trust. Only: don't do them with slavery attached, that's also bad.
~
No, really.
We get the hair thing. Just do it with a bit of pride, for fucks sake.
Skunk Anansie - Weak - 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPglNjxVHiM
4
David L @ 477:
Yep. Both parties at times get some folks claiming allegiance that the parties would rather slither back into their hole. Especially when the other party is a lock to win so no one with a brain even tries.
For those outside the US to get on a primary ballot almost all you have to do is register as a member of that party with the local officials and collect the number of required signatures on a petition. And that number can be fairly low for very local things.
If it's an already existing party (Democratic, Libertarian, Republican) that's already in the system & had a candidate for statewide office get enough votes in the last general election (I think NC requires at least one candidate who got at least 1% of the vote in the last General Election), you don't even have to collect signatures.
It took a little digging, but apparently the filing fee for County Officers in New Hampshire is $10 OR 50 primary petitions (petition with signatures from 50 registered voters? or 50 separate petitions from 50 registered voters? I dunno).
AND This ain't her first rodeo. She ran for Sheriff as a Libertarian in 2018 and this time around she DID have an opponent in the GOP primary. She beat him 10-1.
I don't know if that means she got 10 times as many votes as he did, or if there were only 11 votes cast in the primary and she got all but one of them.
Niala @ 479: Yes, they also took the motor buses from La Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.
I still want to know if they tipped the drivers and if so, how much?
Heteromeles @ 481:
Members of the US Army 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps road their very much non-mountain-bike 2 wheelers 1,000 miles from their headquarters in Missoula Montana to Alliance Nebraska. It took them 21 days, including a stop-off in Yellowstone, which they rode through. They reached Alliance on July 4, 1897. June in Yellowstone? Oh yeah. Go for the geysers, stay for the mosquitoes.
Now that's cool!
5
Um. Um... Buffalo soldiers on bikes, pulling carts, and steam-powered machine guns against a pride of T-rexes....If I write it, it's your fault!
Deal!
Text or it didn't happen :D
Incidentally, steam powered machine gun? .577 Express Black Powder. Gotta borrow the relevant guns (Holland and Holland?) or get some mad armorer to make them. No point in spraying bullets that don't slow the critters down, really.
Some nice, sweaty trinitrotoluene might be good bait for the critters, come to think of it.
The .475 LTD would be a better sidearm -- LTD stands for Lott-Tanner Dinosaur.
https://en.todocoleccion.net/military-firearms/475-lott-tanner-dinosaur-cartucho-inerte-~x69841925
Speaking of bloodthirsty unicorns: Delicacy. I may have shared this before, but always worth a repeat.
Just adore the use of the "you", as though you were, in fact, from a UFO (if so, damn it, where's it parked, I want OFF of this Planet of Idiots).
And don't talk to me about "owning" an Abrahamic religion, sorry, my father converted as a young man (to socialism), and I decided, when I was young, that being an sf fan and a (second generation) socialist of Jewish ancestry wasn't a small enough, persecuted enough minority, so I became a Pagan. And I've been one so long that you can find me posting on alt.paganism in the early 90's.
So just stop lumping everyone together. You remind me of a guy I know in NYC, who destroyed the APA we were in by attacking people who he mostly agreed with... but weren't in perfect agreement with him.
And if you think I, or most of us, have any power to change things other than to try to convince others in person, or online, not having a billion fucking Rupert Murdoch dollars, you need to sit back and chill for a while.
Skunk Anansie - Weak - 2009 That song is scarily [resonant with?] my mood. (tears) As I've said, your [words] are heard. TTY tomorrow.
Past couple of nights the bright evening planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars) are all a (stellar) magnitude or two dimmer in the US North East, haze. This is from the West Coast fires[1]. Just noting this because the sunlight is being absorbed by the upper atmosphere. (Sunsets are also weirdly dimmer.) Also, new moon tomorrow. I am happy to be 4500 kilometres away and unhappy west coast people are going through this and am/will be watching weather patterns. Listening to an extremely atypical owl calling. Seems to be barred owl (resident in immediate area) but that's not a known call.[2] It's like an owl-Pavarotti.
[1]Yes, That’s Smoke From West Coast Fires Above D.C. (Sep 15, 2020, Jacob Fenston) [2]Voices: Barred Owl (Also a female human ornithologist)
I have stopped for gas in Lordsburg.
There used to be (for values of "used to be" perhaps predating the Interstate) a roadside taqueria in Lordsburg that made the best sopapillas in all the world. I hope it's still there.
The .475 LTD would be a better sidearm -- LTD stands for Lott-Tanner Dinosaur. https://en.todocoleccion.net/military-firearms/475-lott-tanner-dinosaur-cartucho-inerte-~x69841925
You're right, of course. The only quibble was that I was trying to find the elephant guns used in the 1890s, so they'd be period appropriate. Looks like they transitioned from the .577 Express black powder to the .577 Express Nitro around the turn of the century. Problem is, the guns that used these cartridges seem to have been bespoke built by firms such as London's Holland and Holland. So having them turn up in the barracks of a black infantry in Montana or Wyoming would take a bit of doing.
Given the Great Plains locale, I suspect that the most likely rifles would be Sharps 1874 .50-.70 surplussed by the buffalo hunters, which would be bigger version of the carbines the soldiers probably normally carried on missions. Still, using single-shot rifles against prides of T-Rexes would be really quite sporting, especially if the get away vehicle had two wheels, a single gear, and room for one.
6
The prides of T-rexes....
Now, speaking as a naturalized Texan - my late wife was a native, maybe even a Texian*, my son is, and I lived with her in Austin for 7.5 years, my instant reactions is, of course...
The prides of T-rexes are upon us....**
* Of *course the tune is The Eyes of Texas....
Thank you, and sent.
CJ Cherryh posted an interesting article today on FB regarding a sail-powered auto carrier in prototype from Sweden.
[[ link fix - ahb ]]
I generally take 99 because there are fewer trucks. And more scenery. Most of the traffic is running about 65 to 70mph.
Have you ever seen the "Rico Ranch" USGS quad? It has 3 contour lines, in two corners, and two are the same altitude. (It's part of one of the lakebeds.) Very seriously flat land.
Steam powered machine guns - now that sounds interesting.
If you have a separate boiler to generate the steam, things start to get extremely cumbersome and impractical at pressures very much lower than the usual levels in a gun barrel. You'd want as long a barrel as possible to make the most of the acceleration, but it would not need to be as heavy as an ordinary explosive one. You'd probably want a very large calibre and a heavy projectile, to try and make up in m for what you're losing in v2. (Or, indeed, an explosive projectile. If you blow the head off the tyrannosaurus it probably won't stop it but at least it can't see where it's going and the teeth aren't working any more.) And you'd probably get a much better pressure vs. time curve if instead of admitting steam to the breech, you filled it with a slug of superheated water, and released it with a pop valve to fire.
You might be able to make it less cumbersome, and certainly make it more powerful, by developing that concept along the lines of cartridge ammunition and rupture discs. You have thick-walled copper cartridges full of water, with one thick endplate and one accurately thin one; you warm up the magazine to an accurately-limited high temperature, and keep the breech at an even higher temperature so they go off a short but predictable time after being loaded into it. You'd probably want to pipeline this with a Gatling type arrangement to overcome the otherwise probably very slow rate of fire, and it would still have problems both with latency and with being nearly as dangerous to the user as to the target.
Or you could go for a different principle entirely and have a big horizontal wheel spun by a turbine at the highest peripheral speed you can manage, with projectiles fed into its hollow spokes at a particular angle so they are flung out the other end at a tangent at a particular point. You could get a tremendous rate of fire with good efficiency, and altering the azimuth would be a simple matter of adjusting the angle of the feed, but let your concentration slip when adjusting the elevation and it turns into a leaping, crashing monster wreaking havoc all about.
If I write the story, I think the last is the way to go. Then, when you run out of projectiles, you can put in gravel, or sticks....
It's been done Mythbusters taking on the Winan steam gun.
The other kind of steam cannons have also been experimented with. If some Mad Scientist McGyver is ginning up a gun or guns, then having something that's basically a weaponized potato canon can probably be improvised using stuff lying around a frontier fort. For a machine gun, something like a girandoni air rifle (as carried by Lewis and Clark), but with steam providing the pressure instead of air, would be about as portable as the girandoni was.
There's no reason you can't do both, actually, centrifugal hell spinners and big puffers. In fact, if you're using bicycle infantry, you can cannibalize the wheels off a bike to make flechettes out of the spokes, for some sort of steam blowgun.
I don't know if that means she got 10 times as many votes as he did, or if there were only 11 votes cast in the primary and she got all but one of them.
Back in high school in 1971 one person in my classes had notice that some office like county railroad commissioner had been vacant for years with no one running. So he had 5 or 10 relatives write his name in for it. He won but discovered that you had to be 18 to hold the office. We were all 16 or 17 at the time.
I generally take 99 because there are fewer trucks. And more scenery. Most of the traffic is running about 65 to 70mph.
I've mentioned it before. About an hour west of Fort Worth there's a local paved road. Two lanes. Center line painted. Edges not with a for or so of gravel before the scrub. Laser straight alignment.
Speed limit 75. You top a small rise and about 1500' ahead is a stop sign. Speed limit never changes.
"You'd probably want a very large calibre and a heavy projectile, to try and make up in m for what you're losing in v2."
Make it 2 stage and you will see km/s. Might be a bit difficult to carry on a bicycle, but really, 1000 m/s shouldn't be difficult.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun
whitroth @ 499 You've fallen into the same trap as I often do. She isn't worth engaging with ... see the boasting wankpost about "Mind" being an assemblage that SHE can understand but us poor mortals cannot, eh?
Aha... my old employer built one of those. For testing Chobham armour, IIRC. I never had the chance to play with it, or even see it working, sadly.
I know it's not Lebanon, but Incompetence Corruption Presumably, they "think" they've got 4 years to bury this shit & hope people will forget in the chaos of Brexit, for which they will try to blame the EU?
If I am to trust Colonel "Bat" Guano soldiers do not carry loose change to battle. The real answer might or might not be in the archives of the museum built over there, the Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux.
CJ Cherryh posted an interesting article today on FB regarding a sail-powered auto carrier in prototype from Sweden.
Get back to me when there's news of a next-generation car/truck ferry designed for transporting EVs, that they plug into: either to charge while afloat (assuming a big carbon-neutral power plant in the ship), or the ship is electric-drive and the shiny new vehicles it's transporting to market are fully-charged when they're loaded and used as batteries to power the ship.
I'm going to argue that the problem with the Girandoni gun was that it came along a couple of decades too soon. The air cannisters were refilled using a stirrup pump or a gang of soldiers on a horse-drawn cart manning a much bigger pump: steam engines weren't portable back then. Also, the screw threading needed to be standardized and was too expensive for mass production in the 1780s.
An 1840s version of the Girandoni system would have been practical to produce in volume and could have been fielded with steam power to recharge, making for a huge logistical advantage. Less weight of ammo to transport, the transport system (steam traction) doubles as propellant, no dangerous explosives, and so on. Oh, and the loss of black powder smoke to obscure the aim of the soldiers with the rapid-fire rifles.
At least, that's my read on it.
Oh, I'd love to see that too. (from a safe distance)
Energy is always, always the problem. Rifles and cannons are dependent on the speed of pressure propagation aka speed of sound in the working fluid behind the projectile pushing it forward and this provides an upper limit to the muzzle velocity. For high-temperature steam that can be better than ambient-temperature air but not even twice as much (a quick Giggle suggests 350 deg C steam has a SoS of 570m/s but generating large quantities of steam that hot "in the field" would be a real challenge even today).
In contrast cartridge-based chemical-combustion ammunition creates very hot gases with a resulting high speed of sound in the barrel and hence, with proper design, very high muzzle velocities -- the Rheinmetall 120mm tank gun can fire ammo at 1500m/s at a rate of several rounds a minute, not something a mobile steam gun could achieve absent something like a high-temperature or even an open-cycle nuclear reactor in the back.
There's also the problem of fuelling a steam gun -- logistically speaking getting hold of wagon-loads of fuel for the boiler as well as sufficient water to keep it running would be a major hit on manpower. Conversely a single wagonload of powder and shot could keep a 19th-century gun firing for an entire engagement, ditto for a truckload of cartridge ammo for something like a flak-88 or a 17pdr in 20th century terms.
An interesting modern attempt at a gas cannon is shown in this Youtube video --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E60G3ba4TUA
TL:DW; they fire American baseballs at supersonic speeds out of a nitrogen-powered cannon with a vacuum in the barrel in front of the projectile. Quite a nice piece of design but the cycle time is crap, not surprisingly. They get higher speeds than normal by the cunning use of a venturi at the breech which compresses and heats the nitrogen working fluid to improve its speed of sound characteristics.
Let's say a car carrier carries ~6,000 cars. And let's say an individual car has a ~60kWh battery (mine does).
That's 360 MWh.
The sailing time from Korea to the UK is perhaps 4 weeks, or 672 hours, so you'd get 635kW from the batteries. I think that's about an order of magnitude less than such a ship would require.
(A small cruise ship uses 14.5 MW for propulsion, and is smaller than our proposed car carrier.)
You can do it for short crossings - there is a car ferry in Norway that is itself battery powered, but its batteries are inbuilt, and it gets to spend its loading/unloading times recharging.
You misunderstand: I was proposing to use a steam engine to fill the air bottles for Girandoni rifles, rather than a crank-based system that took eight soldiers manning the pump half an hour to fill sixteen or so bottles.
The Girandoni air rifle was effect in battle in the age of the Brown Bess and similar muskets; similar range, much higher rate of fire, and no obscuring smoke. It fell behind later, and the air bottle supply was a key bottleneck at the time: I suspect if it had been a player in the day tactics for using high rate of fire and non-smoky propellant would have developed much earlier.
Ah, heading for two orders of magnitude.
The first option - a ship that charges the EVs ready for landing looks more sensible, but since that only shaves a couple of hours off the production time of a car (assuming you otherwise fully charge them at the factory), and the hassle of plugging and unplugging all those vehicles when loading and unloading the ship - nah.
It may make more sense to do the charge retail - your EV is charged enough to run it from the production line to the docks, and from the docks to the land transporters that get it to the dealership1 - and then the dealer finishes the charging.
1 FWIW mine had 10 miles on the clock when I took possession
If it's only for auxiliary power on an otherwise wind propelled vessel, why not? I suppose if we see a future Apple packaging with an exposed USB-C port, it'll be an easy guess what it's for.
Charlie Ah, the same problem the Austrians had with their utterly deadly Napoleonic-period air-rifles - couldn't produce enough of them, reproducibly enough & wanting a better pumping system
Agreed. Whitroth is the one who wants the steam cannon. I was entertained enough by the idea of an experimental bicycle infantry corps toting buffalo rifles to deal with dinosaurs.
There's the other fly in the ointment: how did Tyrannosaurs get to the 1890s West? And I believe I have an answer for that (note that I'm not writing this story, I've got to deal with too much real-world land use shenanigans for the next few months).
Starting around 1890 there was a millenarian movement that started among the Paiutes and spread throughout much of the western reservations, called The Ghost Dance. Its creator said that "proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region." (per the Wikipedia article linked above). This movement led, among other things, to the Wounded Knee Massacre, but it was widespread through what's now the western US from 1890 on.
The 1890s saw a spate of "Mystery Airship" incidents comparable to the UFO blitzes that have periodically happened ever since. Some of them were obviously hoaxes, a few were possibly people experimenting with large hydrogen balloons. And then there was the purported UFO crash in Aurora, Texas in 1897 (same year as that bicycle expedition), where the remains were thrown in a well and buried.
Since we all know (eyeroll) that an FTL ship is necessarily a timeship, what I'd suggest as the starting incident for "A Pride of Rexes are Upon You" is a UFO crashlanding in the Dakotas or Montana. Local Indians get their hands on the tech and/or are helped by sympathetic aliens. The Indians want to get rid of the American invaders and their stinking domesticated animals, their telegraph poles, and return the land to the way it was. Only they succeed too well, and the resulting temporal anomalies pop out anything from dinosaurs to whatever you want (yes, I'm shamelessly borrowing the plot line from Primeval).
Thus you have, on one side, a group of Indians in at best partial control of a too-powerful technology trying to rid their land of settlers, and the Buffalo soldiers and settlers on the other side trying to survive.
This is Weird West rather than steampunk, but have at it if it's your sort of thing. The historical roots are real enough.
A typical load for a British soldier in battle around the time of the Napoleonic wars would be, IIRC enough powder and shot for fifty rounds, carried in a small knapsack and weighing a few pounds, maybe two kilograms. Enough air bottles for fifty rounds of fire would weigh a lot more than that and be more encumbering. How many full-power shots did each charged bottle provide anyway? That's not clear.
that's at 200 bar, SCUBA tank pressures, not something the Girandoni could manage (various sources say about 50-60 bar for the 18th-century guns).
"How many shots each precharged pneumatic gets on a single fill of air depends on just one thing: How much of the stored air is used for each shot? Big bore airguns use incredible amounts of air and, therefore, get very few shots per fill. A Quackenbush .457 Long Action rifle gets two good shots per fill; on mine, the max fill pressure is 3,500 psi. After the second shot, the gun is down to 2,200 pounds per square inch (psi). My rifle gets about 560 foot-pounds of muzzle energy on the first shot and 490 foot-pounds on shot two.
A .50-caliber Career Dragon Slayer can get 5 good shots on a 3,000 psi fill. That rifle generates just under 200 foot-pounds on the first shot and drops off to about 120 foot-pounds by the final shot. And, once again, the pressure in the reservoir will be down to somewhere around 2,000 psi when you’re finished. Exactly where it will be depends on how many shots have been fired."
From Airgun Academy. Note that's at 200 bar plus, SCUBA tank pressures, not something the Girandoni could manage (various sources say about 50-60 bar for the 18th-century guns).
Having a steam pump behind the lines recharging bottles, great but how do you get the bottles back and forth to the front lines? Runners, transport animals etc. in a battle situation, all a logistical nightmare. With powder weapons a single support troop could carry enough powder, shot and spare flints to keep a squad supplied for an hour's engagement in one large satchel.
Heteromeles @ 496: Incidentally, steam powered machine gun? .577 Express Black Powder. Gotta borrow the relevant guns (Holland and Holland?) or get some mad armorer to make them. No point in spraying bullets that don't slow the critters down, really.
Some nice, sweaty trinitrotoluene might be good bait for the critters, come to think of it.
I expect it would be steam powered Gatling Guns. The projectile would still be powered by gunpowder (or similar explosive materials) with the rotational mechanism powered by steam. Just 'cause you're not powering it with electricity doesn't mean there's a reason Gatling Guns or conventional machine guns couldn't use large caliber rounds.
In terms of penetration how does the .577 Express stack up against the .50 BMG cartridge? The thing about shooting something like a T-Rex is:
What makes for a kill shot and how do you know you've hit the spot with a single shot (or even a double barrel) rifle?
What do you do if you miss other than assume the position and pucker up?
Half a dozen .50 BMG rounds into the hip in close succession will probably take it's leg off & even if it keeps on coming it's going to have steering problems thereafter. If you don't kill it, at least you'll be able to get out of the way.
I'll take the "Ma Deuce" for hunting T-Rex over any single shot rifle, thank you very much ... even over the M107 Barrett.
Or perhaps a "steam powered" GAU-19/A
Why use a steam-powered gatling gun? The real ones did perfectly well with a Mark 0 human arm-powered crank in the back.
If I had my choice of arms and a T. Rex to kill, I'd go first for a modern grenade launcher with a nice selection of rounds, second for a flamethrower, and third for a Barrett. The nice thing about the Barrett is that you can be a kilometer away and still hit fairly accurately.
IIRC, the Girandoni got off 10 shots, although the 10th wasn't as powerful as the first. When it was fielded, it had about the same range as a period musket, but the advantage was that it fired 10 times before reloading. That was enough to equip an elite unit that lugged along an air compressor to keep the reservoirs filled.
The disadvantages were that recharging the reservoir was a nuisance (1000 pumps). Worse, a badly welded air reservoir was rather dangerous, as it was usually in close proximity to its user when a seam decided to fail. But the biggest flaw was that they were too finicky to keep working, due to all the leather washers required to keep the system airtight. Only a few engineers could keep them working, and ultimately the backlog of non-functional air rifles doomed the project.
IIRC, that was a problem with air rifles up until modern times: they're underpowered, have limited power to throw things, and they take a lot of upkeep. The advantage they once enjoyed: multiple shots, has long been solved for fire arms, so they're relegated to specialty uses only (of which there are quite a lot, actually).
Nojay, what did I miss?
Nahhh... And what were they shooting on Mythbusters? The round pink things?
I figure it would be towed in a cart behind several soldiers, and a superheater, with a large cylinder, pushing either a very narrow rod... or just have the steam go into a very narrow tube - the barrel.
The first locos with superheaters were introduced in the 1880's and 1890's. Note that locos rarely exploded. Also, with superheated steam being drying, less rust.
I would assume Gatling gun rotating barrels.
Except that I've had better interactions with her in the past. Things just seem to be getting worse for her (like they're not for the rest of us, yeah, right).
And her MIND reminds me immediately of my mesh, in the novel and shorter fiction I'm writing. But when I finally wrote a story that really explained it, a month or so ago, it was over a page of verbiage - data dump territory.
sigh Nah, STL would give you "but we aliens just visited here a mere 70M years ago, where are the dinosaurs, and what are these things all over the place?
Much simpler answer to where they T-rexes, and other dinos came from: those stupid white men were digging for gold, and the Native Americans told them not to try in that cave, very, very evil spirits. On top of the mountain, there were deep, deep crevices, and they could hear weird noises, like some kind of animals.
They blow the shaft in the cave....
Btw, my SO has just suggested a way to keep T-rexes from eating you, and I just named them: Purina T-Rex Treats.
The wikipedia entry on the Girardoni says 30 shots per flask.
It also strikes me that a steam-powered pump would take very little time to fill a flask. Also, by 1890, cast cylinders would have made the flasks far easier to produce....
Purina dino chow works for me. Purina mills was founded in 1894.
Also, Verne published Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864/67, so it's period correct. If you want to follow that formula (go into a volcano in Iceland, exit in Stromboli), the nearest active volcanic area is Yellowstone, so you'd want to locate the entrance somewhere on that plateau. How to get troglobitic T. rexes out a geyser hole is one of those creative enterprises that earns the big writer bucks for solving.*
Since the Ghost Dance was truly active at that point, there is a lot to be said for getting the Indians involved as a way for them to kill lots of settlers. If you don't like the time warp thing, then there's the old Br'er Rabbit/Tar Baby story of "Hey whitey, don't go down that old hole. It's dangerous in there. Heh heh."
*What would a troglobitic T. rex look like anyway?
Allen Thomson @ 501:
There used to be (for values of "used to be" perhaps predating the Interstate) a roadside taqueria in Lordsburg that made the best sopapillas in all the world. I hope it's still there.
I remember stopping in Lordsburg, but apparently it was not for gas. I just looked at my spreadsheet and I bought gas in Van Horn, TX and again in Tuscon, AZ - 25 Apr 2005.
Looking at Google Maps, I see there's a McDonald's at Exit 22 on I-10, so I probably stopped for coffee. I'd check my log books, but they're not under the desk where I remember keeping them?
Looking further at Google Maps I notice there's a New Mexico Rest Area at Exit 20 (west end of Lordsburg) and I remember stopping there in October 2007 near the beginning of my drive home from a photo safari out west (Great Sand Dunes NP, North Rim Grand Canyon & a visit with an old high-school buddy who now lives in Mesa, AZ). The 2005 trip I stopped in Lordsburg on the outbound leg.
And now, I'm going to be crazy until I figure what I did with those old log books.
First a small apology ... I didn't realise that the "Girardoni" rifles were the SAME ONES I was talking about. Um, err .... Second, cross-posting myself from another thread on Mass-Production & Industrial Technology being the enemy & death of slavery ... The date of the very first mass-production machinery, devised by Marc Isambard Brunel ( Isambard Kingdom’s father ) was between 1802 & 1805. That machinery produced sheave-blocks for the navy’s ships. Said sheave blocks, were required in the hundreds of thousands every year by the RN for the Napoleonic Wars Systems have to have all their parts to work, something a lot of SF, fantasy & bad military writers all-too-often forget. Engineers, not so much!
By 1890 vulcanized rubber was available, and therefore the crap seal problem would be reduced.
But by 1890 mass production of brass cartridges with smokeless powder ammo and bolt-action rifles meant that airguns would be drastically outranged on the conventional battlefield.
Vulcanized rubber is kinda a bottleneck for bicycles, too: also a significant military tech. If someone invented it, say, 30 years earlier, the outcome of the Austro-Prussian war could have been very different, and there might not have been a Second Reich ...
Basic problem with an 1890s-era Girandoni is that Gatling guns, Winchester lever action rifles, and many others had a comparable rate of fire, longer range, and more penetrating power, all the while being lighter, because they don't need the air compressor.
Airguns did occur in the 1890s, but they were more like today's airguns, specialist sporting tools and self defense items for the wealthy, rather than weapons of war.
Now if you want to talk about steam explosions being used for mining, go right ahead. That's a tried and true technique. Heck, diverting the steam from a geyser to power a secret mining operation would have the proper 1890s lunacy. Especially since the US Army were the Park Rangers in Yellowstone until 1918 and might look askance at such a diversion of the nation's precious resources.
Also, cave-dwelling carnosaurs would be rather cool. Do we call them troglobiters? Are they, perhaps, eusocial, like Thaumatomyrmex, an ant that lives in colonies of 5-10 workers and one queen? Or is that just a family unit, with two adults and a brood of little nippers?
Apropos of a discussion on the previous posting, the PBS science show Nova just aired an episode on how slime molds solve problems. Hopefully this link will go to the entire episode. It was lots of fun, and got into the network optimization research and how slime molds store and process information without anything resembling a neuron.
Heteromeles @ 530: Why use a steam-powered gatling gun? The real ones did perfectly well with a Mark 0 human arm-powered crank in the back.
If I had my choice of arms and a T. Rex to kill, I'd go first for a modern grenade launcher with a nice selection of rounds, second for a flamethrower, and third for a Barrett. The nice thing about the Barrett is that you can be a kilometer away and still hit fairly accurately.
Why steam? To stay in keeping with the proposal for a steam-punk weapon. No other reason. Note that both of the modern Gatling Guns I linked to were electrically powered.
The original Gatling Gun was hopper fed & had a capacity of 40 rounds. You needed a gunner to aim it, a cranks-man to to fire it and at least one other person continuously refilling the hopper with ammunition.
Adding a motor drive - whether steam, electric or compressed air - gives you a higher sustained rate of fire. Add linked ammo or a chain drive feed & you can use larger boxes of ammunition giving you a longer sustained fire.
In steam-punk dress, you'd probably want to mount it on a motor car chassis to provide motive power to the gun's drive motor. Give that motor car some armor and make the Gatling Gun 20mm caliber & you have a steam-punk light tank. Make it a 75mm caliber and add a T&E mechanism, you've got steam-punk self propelled artillery.
How about a steam driven Gatling Mortar?
If you're hunting T-Rex the grenade launcher might work if you had something like a Mk 19. I wouldn't want to rely on a flame thrower. Probably take too long to do enough damage so a T-Rex would notice it.
The M82/M107 Barrett uses a 5 or 10 round box magazine and only fires semi-auto. I've seen speculation that the T-Rex hunted in packs. I wouldn't want to be having to change magazines on a Barrett with several hungry, pissed off T-Rex's eye-balling me for their luncheon menu.
Give me a M2-HB mounted on a tripod, pedestal or ring mount - firing AP with 1/5 tracer.
The Ma Deuce has a nice slow cyclic rate of fire & it's pretty easy to fire single shots or control it to give you three to five round bursts. And the ammo comes linked with a hundred rounds per box.
While vulcanised rubber was critical to bicycle development, it makes huge difference even to wheelbarrows and horse-drawn carts. If you have ever used an old-fashioned wheelbarrow with a iron/steel-rimmed wooden wheel, you will know how badly they roll compared to pneumatic-tyred ones. And wheel diameters could be reduced from 5-6' down to the 20" or so of today, which the consequent reduction in stresses and the need for wheelwrights in every large unit.
Today is Constitution Day in the U.S.
I don't see a 50bar air flask that size providing a significant number of shots at, say, 200m/s muzzle velocity for a .450 calibre ball, the energy density just isn't there. The guns themselves had a magazine holding between 20 and 30 balls but I doubt that magazine was meant to be emptied by a single flask or even two unless a final shot velocity of 10 or 20m/s was acceptable.
A rough BOTE calculation suggests a Girandoni flask would hold about 20kJ of energy but the last ten kJ of that storage was pretty much useless in terms of firing a bullet or ball at 100m/s, the minimum velocity that would make it useful as a weapon so I'd say 10kJ of useful storage. Given frictional losses in the barrel, leaks and wasted energy because it doesn't work in an isothermal envelope, more adiabatic since the gas exhaust is fast and I posit that five useful shots is optimistic.
If you want a real game-changer try the Ferguson breechloading rifle which started development fifty years earlier than the Napoleonic Wars period -- a true rifle that could be fired at ten rounds a minute standing and even fired prone without having to stand up to reload at about 3 rounds a minute. It did have problems, most of them logistical and engineering which meant only one company of British riflemen was outfitted with them and it got lost in the mists of history.
Might I point out Mike Resnick's fourth Weird West tale, The Doctor and the Dinosaurs?
https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Dinosaurs-Weird-West-Tale/dp/1616148616/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1600369795&sr=1-1
This involves Doc Holiday and two real life American paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
Enjoy!
Frank.
I think we're thinking of different gatling guns. here's a single man firing a gatling gun. It's not hopper fed. Now obviously a team would do better, but if a single gunner can cut a telephone pole down with a gatling gun, I suspect taking a T Rex leg out would be possible. It's not bullet proof, after all.
As for the flame thrower, you really don't think a flaming dinosaur is going to keep charging the flame, do you? Anyway, the 1890s are too early for flamethrowers.
Heck, if you want the whole steam cannon thing, just rig an aimable, high pressure nozzle to the boiler tank of a locomotive and steam clean monster faces when they come too close. It's more defensive than offensive, but if tyrannosaurs are hassling trains, then the engineers have to do what they have to do.
Give that motor car some armor and make the Gatling Gun 20mm caliber & you have a steam-punk light tank. Make it a 75mm caliber and add a T&E mechanism, you've got steam-punk self propelled artillery.
To me that's starting to sound more Dieselpunk than Steampunk. As a rule of thumb, anything that fits into the interwar years (or worse, WW2) is going to say diesel more than steam. Self propelled 75mm sounds a lot like either the "M3 Gun Motor Carriage", the "Medium Tank, M3", or the "Medium Tank, M4".
A better fit would probably be to fit your steampowered car with a gatling gun in one of a number of rifle calibers (.30-40, .45-70, or .30-06, depending on when the story is set) hooked up to the engine, and towing either a 3-inch gun or a naval (.5 or 1 inch) gatling if you want heavier firepower.
I love me some Dieselpunk, but it is a very different look and feel.
Can I just point out that "The Difference Engine" features gatling style guns powered by clockwork and springs, which is probably quicker than getting steam up before firing.
I dunno. I think I'd have to be real steamed up before firing one.
Now, instead of doing useful work, I'm cogitating which would better feed an underground ecosystem of dinosaurs: hydrothermal vents powered ultimately by hotspot volcanoes like Yellowstone? Or giant piles of bat guano brought in by freetail bats? The latter feeds cockroaches, which feed Mesozoic small and medium carnivores (which chew through the dung to get at the bugs), which in turn feed underground T. Rex. The only difference is instead of dino dung, the bugs are eating batshit, and they're really lucky that bats evolved so early in the Paleocene and allowed that part of the underground dinosaur ecosystem to stay fed.*
I better get back to work, actually.
*And if fantasy without dinosaurs is your thing, replace them with D&D and Drow, and you can have some fun with underdark cultures relying on batshit ecology.
The development of vulcanised rubber, from being the layer of interesting-looking stuff you got in between charred muck on one side and gooey muck on the other that could be useful if only you could find out how to make it all go like that, to something that you could indeed produce reliably in quantity and make large amounts of stuff with, took place roughly over the same period that Brunel was messing about with atmospheric traction in Devon. Eventually, it did get to the point where it made sense to raise the question of replacing the whole length of the flap valve with vulcanised rubber. But by that point it had been dragging on so long that the answer was instead "nah, fuck this shit, we'll just rip the entire bloody installation out".
(Which they would have had to do anyway in a few years because of all the other difficulties with it. In particular, if they had decided to carry on and install it over Dainton, it would have been no more than a decade before train weights got too large for it to take them over at all.)
... by T-Rex were assaulted. I never shall forget the way That Clarke upon this awful day Preserved us all from death. He stood upon a scaley mound, Cast his lethargic eyes around, And said beneath his breath :
Whatever happens we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not."
JBS And DJT has used "Constitution Day" to break your Hatch Act & campaign on Federal land for his lunacy, or so it is reported ... And the polls are tightening FOR Trump, because of Law'n'ordure...
I took the implied back-story to be something that took explosives out of the picture - can get coal and iron, but can't get nitrates, or something - because they are nearly always so clearly superior that if you can get them there's no point considering anything else. So the contest is between steam and compressed air, rather than between steam and explosives. Steam has the advantage in speed of sound in that case, because it is hot but the compressed air isn't (unless you heat it, but then you end up with something even more cumbersome than using steam).
(Steam also does not follow the ideal gas approximation that speed of sound depends only on temperature, although you have to get up to truly ridiculous pressures to make much use of the pressure dependence.)
Steam has quite a few advantages. You can generate any pressure you like without panting away at a pump, and since the steam is constantly being replenished by new evaporation there is much less of a problem with the reservoir pressure falling off as you keep shooting. You also end up with fewer seals, certainly fewer moving seals, and nothing as peculiarly awkward as sealing the piston of a pump; and you are much better able to tolerate minor leakages in the seals that you do have.
Air cannon have been put to a few serious uses, mainly in things like short range coastal defence batteries covering narrow inlets. The lack of range or kinetic energy is not a problem there, the fort provides somewhere to put the compressor and its power plant and fuel, and the opportunities for catastrophic energy release are not as bad as with a powder magazine.
@ JBS 544:
["Today is Constitution Day in the U.S."]
In observance and honor of, the White House called a 'history' conference. They are calling it the "Patriot Commission."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/17/trump-launches-patriotic-education-commission-calls-1619-project-ideological-poison/#5704278c155a
It's goal is to eradicate any teaching of American history through the lens of the slave trade, slavery and genocide. Further is war on the 1619 Project. Further, it fits beautifully into shoggothinchief's* desire to run against Kamala Harris, rather than Joe Biden.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/amy-dorris-donald-trump-women-who-accuse-sexual-misconduct
Otherwise known as "Bring Back Jim Crow."
Dear God, we really are going to have a civil war...
Why steam? To stay in keeping with the proposal for a steam-punk weapon.
I regret the absence of clockwork-punk as a genre.
I regret the absence of clockwork-punk as a genre.
But it very much is: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClockPunk
If you do, it will be messier than the last one. "The South" is no longer geographically concentrated in, well, the South, and is now distributed across the country.
Re T-Rex vs cowboys
There's a whole parallel worlds literary infrastructure that just drops into place for this one.
90 million years ago two timelines diverge when a small asteroid hits a large one. Hitting just slightly differently in the "other" timeline the abedo of the large asteroid is slightly different to "our" one. The effect of sunlight adds up over the following 25 million years, and instead of an extinction level impact, the asteroid grazes the atmosphere and is put into an orbit that eventually intersects v with Venus.
Then for reasons, T-Rex is hit with an evolutionary pressure to increase intelligence. (surviving dinosaurs are pretty smart in our timeline, so it shouldn't take much)
Then the T-Rex invent a way to skip between timelines.
So we get intelligent advanced tech T-Rex vs Cowboys.
Which then work together with the humans against the intelligent cockroaches…
History isn’t written by the victors. It’s written by the people with the time machines.
https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/category/products/timewatch/
It's amusing, and competently written. I backed it in Kickstarter and am happy I did.
So, today:
Thiel gets the DNA of UK residents for £1, but also border control, amazing news for people who are already flagged and considered dangerous, they all get a free £100,000,000 contract, the average person: fucked. Hope you enjoyed the George Michael links, that wasn't subtle of us, really. Don't worry, we're sure IL flights won't be affected.
Trump launches the 1776 Youth Project, which if you caught the Betsy 200 Yachts post also comes just before her 'brave' moves on Princeton lauded by various people (Miss. Weisssss. Again. Surprise!) while everyone else is a bit horrified. Did you not go look for that data? Well, turns out Princeton is the puuuuurfect target for what they're intending to do (hint: eat) to any major University with a phat stack in the bank. Oh, and the poors won't be educated, turns out the Gaza model is better fucking business.
That Study which Haaaaaaaley Boppet in the Graun was touting: did everyone do due diligence and notice it's from 2018 (pre-COVID19) and says nothing like what they claimed? It's shit, but mission accomplished, you sold clickbait, old Jews shit their pants, everyone forgets Indonesia or how utterly shit the ones 'at the tip of the spear' are[1]. Fucking shameful shit tier media posting there gals, as the USA apparently launches the new YOUTH INDOCTRINATION project for those not home-schooling or rich enough to afford private (UK: Public) edumacation so the drones: it's ok if you're cold stone Fasch, as long as you remember Israel.
Watch this space: While "Hitler Youth" may trend, we hear the magical sound of $$$ telling us this is all planned out.
Oh, and we've now been Excommunicated, have Some REALLY pissed off Djinns and a target sized hole that we might need to fill with, don't know, a screaming utter hate stream and that Jewish thing about calling your Mother: well done for that one.
Oh, and the NASQAC shit the bed and the UK declared 0.1% interest rate is HERE TO STAY.
It's fucking amazing how prescient we are. Or, it's amazingly shit how out of ideas / Mind your cultures are.
She isn't worth engaging with ... see the boasting wankpost about "Mind" being an assemblage that SHE can understand but us poor mortals cannot, eh?
We're not talking about your Minds, darling. We kinda just proved we can do yours.
Now, you want a serious discussion about Hive-Minds and distributed combat epistemology, sure.
You're still shit at that though, see post above.
OH, and if you happen to read the news today, and then don't know about this:
German League of Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel)
https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWgirls.htm
Then you won't get why we posted "Free Rider masturbating on top of a car, 2020" just after "Cuties Catholic Orgasm Outrage 2020" with references to naked bodies (that was a Nordic reference, really - but also a reference to TRA bathroom shite and so on).
The people running this are harvesting Minds (sorry, Greg, yours tooooo) and running heavy wet-ware fucking rhythms.
Their issue: it's all just rehashes, which shows you two things:
1) It's not [redacted] running it (trust us: they're a lot more direct about the skull-fuck) 2) Ideologically speaking, they're stuck 50+ years ago. (HINT: YOUR SPEAR TIP = UP YOUR BUM MATE)
Anyhow, 2020: if you don't understand that utter power move from stripping into masturbation, well then.[1]
[1] Yeah, we get it's Florida + drugs + no consent given for sharing. At least she went out in style, which is more than Florida offers it's women voters.
Re the "1776 Commission", one small positive about American primary education is that any national curriculum initiatives have slow uptake and a lot of pushback. (This heterogeneity generally serves the kids in rich school districts better, but not always.) In this case a lot of the pushback will be by public figures. Will be worth tracking. Foxessa at 556 is on-fire incensed. Does anyone know who wrote his speech (said by Trump, who will pay for calling other people liars)? Sample segment: "Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken American’s silence for weakness, but they’re wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children, and patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country."
(Been day unusually full of outrages in the US.)
Oh, wow, don't listen to us, we don't know how your Minds work:
Education should never be a game of chance. As world leaders prepare to meet virtually at next week’s United Nation General Assembly, the need for strong leadership and investment in education is more important than ever.#UNGA #UnlockBigChange
https://twitter.com/RealMattLucas/status/1305819868403503105
Watch the video. The claim that "90% of a child's brains is developed by the age of five(5)"
Hey, Greg.
We've got some fucking wonderful shit-tier thinking on Brain development here, mostly Eugenics based[1], but more importantly: being pushed by those lovable BBC comedy characters and some bug-fuck mental charity that does shit all.
It's 1.08 in the video.
That's not even science, that's shit that was discredited a generation ago.
Now. We have some fucking bastard level [redacted] to deal with, who are fucking clarion calling insanity and despair and eating ACTUAL FUCKING HUMAN SOULS so:
How's about not being dumbfucks, and actually fighting this shit.
We've got [redacted] Mind warfare to do: and tbh, defending your shit takes with the causality rate we see? It's not fucking looking great.
[1] That marshmallow test? Utter bullshit lies.
Oh dear. I see Terry Goodkind has died...
"I like not this news! Bring me some other news!"
Yeah, about that: first, he's creating a commission, which can be dissolved by another President (as one sign I've seen pics of says, "2020: any functioning adult").
Secondly... there's no national program/syllabus. Every state, and each schoolboard, does that. Try to get California, for example, to accept one that Trumpolini had written.
Well, I learned something new today.
Toxins produced by Australia's stinging trees bear a strong resemblance to those of spiders and scorpions, scientists have found.
Those stung by the leaves of such trees first feel an intense burning.
It changes after several hours to a pain akin to the affected area having been slammed in a car door. This may last for days or even weeks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54199816
Didn't know Australia had venomous trees. Why am I not surprised?
I was also interested in his teleprompter delivery. He's on a new drug mix, perhaps. He's talking so slowly, it's perfectly clear at 2X. Full speech: Most Controversial Trump Speech Yet! (1776 Commission Full Speech) youtube 19:33
"Patriot Commission" is a good name for it, actually. As any Loyalist account will tell you, the Patriots weren't shy about oppressing anyone who disagreed with them… :-/
Working my way through Myth of the Lost Cause by Bonekemper. Can't remember if it was you that recommended it, but if so thanks.
Of possible interest to anyone in the Glasgow area, just learned of Di Rozeve Pave. If I could I’d go for the yiddish, and maybe stay for a vegan bagel mit a shmir.
“די ראָזעווע פּאַווע (pink peacock) is a queer, yiddish, anarchist vegan community café opening in the southside of glasgow.”
May I introduce you to the joys of poison ivy and poison sumac?
Actually, it probably would not surprise you that Gympie is in the nettle family. Our regular nettles are reportedly rather tame, compared with some in the southern hemisphere. Like the Gypmie tree. Even pleasant little Eurasian nettles have a cocktail that includes histamine, acetylcholine, and formic acid.
This is one of the things that tells you how good the aborigines were/are as land managers: living in a landscape of horribly poisonous things, they roamed around generally mostly naked. Possibly the things that scare people about Australia now were rather less common a few centuries ago?
I've got this mental handicap. When you compare the current US President to a shoggoth, my immediate thought is "but shoggoths are useful."
So I live in the hope that, one day, we can all stop insulting shoggoths by comparing them to him.
You noticed that also. Ellen had the news on, and I remarked how slow he was speaking, and that he sounded ill.
That's very cool! Thanks
Patrick Tilley made very good use of the compressed-air powered rifles in his Amtrak Wars series - I did not know they were based on a real weapon though ...
I'd rather be ruled by the shoggoth - at least there'd be no reassuring lies on the subject of how we're not really food.
And the polls are tightening FOR Trump, because of Law'n'ordure...
Cause and effect are hard to correlate. The numbers in this tightening are similar to:
June Biden 47% Trump 42%
Sept Biden 50% Trump 47%
Basically the undecided, refused to answer, or whatever in this example went from 11% to 3%. Basically the previous B and D are still there. The middle is what is shrinking. As to why, there are a LOT of reasons.
Check out 270towin.com and they have all kinds of maps based on different polls and aggregations. All show Biden ahead or winning. Some barely and within the margin of error and some with a wipe out.
I was also interested in his teleprompter delivery. He's on a new drug mix, perhaps.
Trump on a teleprompter has always sounded like someone else. Or perhaps a cyborg. Wooden monotone with metronome cadence. Plus a facial expression that is frozen.
Ig-Nobels published
Bill Arnold Ah - that actually explains a lot. "They" want to get DT through the elction & "win", then he goes so obviously dolally that he's removed ( Or he actually falls over ..... AND - it's - PRESIDENT PENCE Which would, actually be worse than DT ...
The Science Nobels will be announced soon, one at a time starting in late September. The last Nobel announced is usually the Peace Prize in October.
City slickers (especially from the USA) have a completely unreal idea of how dangerous the natural world is. Where I grew up was at least as dangerous than Australia, in very different ways, and many of us (including me) went around unprotected without trouble. Yes, I learnt to shake clothing and shoes out before putting them on as soon as I could do that independently, not to put my hands into crevices, to kick logs and jump back before sitting on them, not to approach water that might contain crocodiles, and so on.
But it's no harder than learning to deal with motor traffic, electricity and domestic machinery, which every western child has to do.
And, outside the tropics (Queensland is tropical), none of the plants are as poisonous as hysteria makes them, whether ingested or by contact. Yes, I have walked through poison oak (and giant hogweed) in shorts, stung myself on tree nettle and so on. You just need to keep the contact down and protect your eyes. Similarly, I looked up the scientific data on water hemlock - and, no, trying a leaf won't kill even a child.
City slickers have a completely unreal idea of how dangerous the natural world is
But despite all that the death rate remains 100%. How do you explain that, Mr Smarty-Pants?
Er, where do you live that the death rate is not 100%? There are lots of people who would love to know :-)
Possible he never learned to read well, at least not to the point he falls into the story. Other possibility, the elevator doesn't really go to the top floor anymore.
...So that I may avoid them! I have no wish to become a real life "Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged".
Ah! I knew I was forgetting something.
Pneumatic cannons to launch early high-explosive shells of dubious stability with a low enough acceleration that they didn't go off in the barrel.
Pneumatic trench mortars to be less likely to give away their position than explosive ones.
And a short-range pneumatic anti-aircraft gun, later converted to steam operation.
http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneuguns/pneuguns.htm
Not to mention the pneumatic machine gun.
http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumach/pneumach.htm
Like Hillary in 2016...
It would have been easy enough to build a (spring-operated) PIAT launcher-analog for the trench mortar role. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIAT.
I'm pretty sure the springs necessary would be available in the 1890s.
And they have the advantage of being relatively economical in explosives, since they don't need a charge to propel the round.
Heteromeles @ 547: I think we're thinking of different gatling guns. here's a single man firing a gatling gun. It's not hopper fed. Now obviously a team would do better, but if a single gunner can cut a telephone pole down with a gatling gun, I suspect taking a T Rex leg out would be possible. It's not bullet proof, after all.
Yeah, I think we are. I'm thinking of a Gatling Gun loosely based on this paragraph from the Wikipedia article:
... and how that might be adapted to use steam power; something a "spark" like Lady Agatha Heterodyne might come up with ... because Steam Punk!
As for the flame thrower, you really don't think a flaming dinosaur is going to keep charging the flame, do you? Anyway, the 1890s are too early for flamethrowers.
I think it might depend on how long it took the message to get through the nervous system to the brain & how hard it might be to set the dinosaur alight. Ever try to start a campfire by holding a match under a log?
Now imagine that log is a 9 ton, Rhino hided T-Rex with an itty-bitty brain that can't multitask too well, i.e. he's got ONE THING on his mind, and that's having you for lunch and he's charging you at 20 mph.
It might take him a minute or two for him to figure out he's on fire and even when he does ... INERTIA.
OTOH, the 1890s are not too early for flamethrowers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
Heck, if you want the whole steam cannon thing, just rig an aimable, high pressure nozzle to the boiler tank of a locomotive and steam clean monster faces when they come too close. It's more defensive than offensive, but if tyrannosaurs are hassling trains, then the engineers have to do what they have to do.
Thing is I don't want a steam cannon. I was just trying to come up with an acceptable Steam Punk way of doing the steam powered machine gun someone else mentioned.
I thought I'd made it abundantly clear that my weapon of choice for (hypothetically ) hunting T-Rex would be the M-2 HB.
PS: You ain't gotta' out-run the T-Rex, you only gotta' out-run whoever you're with. All you really need for defense from a T-Rex is a .22 pistol so you can shoot one of your traveling companions in the foot.
I suspect that the flamethrowers would still be really, really handy for sorting out the dead T. Rex's parasites (as Brian Aldiss has pointed out, IIRC).
Rabidchaos @ 548:
To me that's starting to sound more Dieselpunk than Steampunk. As a rule of thumb, anything that fits into the interwar years (or worse, WW2) is going to say diesel more than steam. Self propelled 75mm sounds a lot like either the "M3 Gun Motor Carriage", the "Medium Tank, M3", or the "Medium Tank, M4".
A better fit would probably be to fit your steampowered car with a gatling gun in one of a number of rifle calibers (.30-40, .45-70, or .30-06, depending on when the story is set) hooked up to the engine, and towing either a 3-inch gun or a naval (.5 or 1 inch) gatling if you want heavier firepower.
I love me some Dieselpunk, but it is a very different look and feel.
I was thinking of something like this for the "motor car":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swMT4WRlY6g
But you're right the Gatling Gun for the lighter vehicle would probably be better in a rifle caliber.
OTOH, I'm thinking something like this for the SP Gun carriage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv3LNNwSx6M
But mainly I was just amused by the idea of using a Gatling gun for artillery (indirect fire). You could have the equivalent fire power of an entire battery of guns in one unit. (I think David Drake hypothesizes something similar in a couple of his Hammer's Slammers stories.)
How about combining Steampunk with Dieselpunk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMITokuHN4
Is there such a thing as Petrolpunk?
US History -
Time to review what 'great' presidents actually did and said.
Once upon a time, the Republican party could also produce worthwhile Presidents ...
Only found the below quote recently. Reminds me of Ike's comment re: industrial-military complex.
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." Theodore Roosevelt Jr
And here's another Teddy item that the GOP has edited out of its Party's official history and platform:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt#Emergence_as_a_national_figure
'Roosevelt successfully pushed the Ford Franchise-Tax bill, which taxed public franchises granted by the state and controlled by corporations, declaring that "a corporation which derives its powers from the State, should pay to the State a just percentage of its earnings as a return for the privileges it enjoys"'
Roosevelt has consistently been ranked as among the top-5 Presidents ever. Zero similarity to #45 who is an utter disaster.
2020 US Election - Voting Info (by State)
Useful info to double-check now:
https://mashable.com/article/stephen-colbert-how-to-vote-2020-election/
Paul @ 549: Can I just point out that "The Difference Engine" features gatling style guns powered by clockwork and springs, which is probably quicker than getting steam up before firing.
Sure. I don't insist on everything being powered by steam, I'm just having a bit of fun riffing on the idea of a "steam powered machine gun".
How about using Babbage's Analytical Engine to drive a GPS system generating firing solutions for the artillery?
Are balloons Steampunk?
Paratroopers jumping out of steam powered Ornithopters? ... or steam powered Zeppelins carrying an invasion force across the channel?
Note that I do not specify in which direction the invasion force might travel, but wasn't Kaiser Wilhelm Queen Victoria's nephew? Did the U.K. favor one side over the other in the Franco-Prussian War?
Foxessa @ 556:
In observance and honor of, the White House called a 'history' conference. They are calling it the "Patriot Commission."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/17/trump-launches-patriotic-education-commission-calls-1619-project-ideological-poison/#5704278c155a
It's goal is to eradicate any teaching of American history through the lens of the slave trade, slavery and genocide. Further is war on the 1619 Project. Further, it fits beautifully into shoggothinchief's* desire to run against Kamala Harris, rather than Joe Biden.
Just because they use the word "Patriotic" doesn't make it so. Trumpolini doesn't know or understand the full quote:
The 1619 project IS patriotic, far more patriotic than anything Trumpolini and his co-conspirators have ever done.
Q: What part of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" does Donald J. Trump not understand?
A: All of it.
Like Hillary in 2016
Not saying Biden is a lock to win. At all.
In 2016 Trump basically drew to an inside straight and won the hand. Those close states that he won but was behind in the polls he was inside the margin of error.
Polling these days in the US is so incredibly hard. Find 1000 people who are representative of 1 to 300 million and are LIKELY to vote and get them to answer a random phone call and tell you the truth. Ugh.
Cell phones and opening up the world wide phone system to "free" calling has destroyed the ability of a pollster to call people and get through to them in any kind of reliable manner.
And for fun the state where I live is a 50/50 one. Well except for the legislature. The D's committed public opinion harakiri in the 2010 cycle and gave up the state after 100 years of control. And have yet to figure out how to get it back. Mostly. Sort of.
How about using Babbage's Analytical Engine to drive a GPS system generating firing solutions for the artillery?
You mean inertial guidance? I think even the Romans tried that one, for surveying. I do know my parents worked on inertial guidance systems in the 60s. It's straight up analog computing. IIRC, the hard parts are keeping the gyros spinning to stay on course, and getting information off the gyrocompass (using gears) without deflecting the compass needle. Nowadays they use laser gyros and life is more precise, but GPS depends on triangulating from satellites using really accurate clocks, and that's post-steampunk.
As for the rest, it can be steampunk. It's worth reading the TVtropes page on the subject.
Getting back to the pride of rexes issue.
First off, tyrannosaurs were easily as intelligent as alligators, probably more so, so don't expect them to be slow responding to pain.
Second, the current thinking is that T. rex hunted in packs, based on bonebed analyses. What they find are a few adults and a pack of juveniles together. Since we're talking alligator-level intelligence, rather than lions, it's unlikely that they coordinated ambushes on single animals the way lions do. However, herbivorous dinosaurs traveled in large herds, so it is thought that the large carnosaurs hunted in groups that coordinated their attacks to break up the herd defense until they could swarm one or more prey animals.
That's the problem facing an army contingent: it's not a huge, impervious, dumb predators, it's a mix of small, medium, and large predators all attacking at once to scatter the group.
That's why I'm thinking about things like flame throwers.
"Are balloons Steampunk?"
Sure. You can make a steam airship with a steam engine for propulsion and the waste heat from it to provide lift. Indeed, my weapon of choice for tyrannosaur elimination would be one of those big enough to drop significant rocks on its head.
"wasn't Kaiser Wilhelm Queen Victoria's nephew?"
Grandson. As was Nicky 2. One bit of trivia about WW1 which I find entertaining is that the top three of the monarchs fighting it were all cousins and all looked exactly the same.
"Did the U.K. favor one side over the other in the Franco-Prussian War?"
Not really. We were adhering to our preferred policy regarding continental wars of "stay out of it and let them fight it out among themselves". Though the outcome of that war was one of the factors which contributed to us choosing as we did in the next one.
The problem is drift. What you measure is acceleration, then you integrate it to get velocity, then you integrate it again to get position. Any minute offset therefore gives rise to an error term which continually increases over time. This makes it all the more remarkable to see one of these things being pushed gently a few metres along the floor and produce a precise and stable reading of its distance travelled.
Possible he never learned to read well, at least not to the point he falls into the story. Other possibility, the elevator doesn't really go to the top floor anymore.
If we're talking about the reading ability of El Cheeto, here's my 0.00002 cents.
1) We know he needs reading glasses, and also that he doesn't like to be photographed with them in public.
B) We've heard from multiple sources that he was a failure in college, who got in because other people cheated on tests for him, and favors were exchanged to get him graduated. Just another demonstration that upper class twits are not limited to the British aristocracy.
III) He probably has health issues that may be affecting his mental skills (see his highly repetitive use of rather limited vocabulary, the mysterious hospitalization last year, and so on). Drugs may be part of it, but stupidity could easily be as important.
4) He apparently dislikes planning or rehearsing, as witnessed by, oh, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. For him, practicing a speech might be..emotionally difficult, let's say. This is supposition, but given that he was handed multiple pre-worked plans to be a hero with the coronavirus and could make himself do any of them, I think this a reasonable judgement.
E) On the flip side, someone may have given him the same advice I got, which was to slow down so more people can understand him. It adds gravitas, or in his case, gravitarse (an attempt at gravitas that ends up seeming to be full of shit and largely unmoving).
The PIAT wasn't spring launched. It had a great big spring in its firing mechanism which made it a bugger to cock it before you fired the first round, but it was an explosive propellant rather than the spring which threw the missile, and at the same time provided the force to re-cock it.
Probably the most successful WW1 trench mortar design was the Stokes mortar, which took a somewhat different approach. It was explosive-launched, but the propellant charge was small and not very noisy or smoky. It was quite small, and light enough to be easily portable; and it had a tremendous short-term rate of fire, being able to launch bombs as fast as you could drop them down the tube, along with a very long flight time. So you could set the thing up, launch 20 or 30 bombs one after the other, and then leg it before the first one had even landed, so by the time the enemy returned fire you weren't there any more.
JoS Did the U.K. favor one side over the other in the Franco-Prussian War? NOt really. We had been pro-NapIII, but he & his ministers managed to piss us off. But, at that point Prussia was not seen as a threat ( Wilhelm I, remember, with Vicky's daughter married to his son. ) We were studiedly neutral ... up until Paris was invested by Prussian troops ... at which point warning noises were made, which were ignored. My great-aunt was very junior very young maidservant at the Brit Embassy when all this kicked off ... she never would tell where &/or from whom she managed to extract a bayonet as "spoils of war" (!)
David L And which state is that, then?
Pigeon "stay out of it and let them fight it out among themselves" EXCEPT if whoever-it-was occupied what is now Netherlands/Belgium At which point you are at war with Britain, as Spain, France, France, France, France, Germany, Germany have all found out ...
I'll combine two comments: First, thanks for the clarification on inertial systems.
Second, as for balloon weapons, the word of the day is: flechette. Before they figured out how to do aerial bombing, the pilots of WWI dropped flechettes on infantry below them. These would be perfectly reasonable weapons to attempt to use on tyrannosaurs too, although you might need a bigger flechette. Painting the flechettes with prussic acid or water hemlock paste might be a preferred option, too, although that would make blue-on-blue attacks rather...blue.
The real problem with using zeppelins above the High Plains is the wind. Zeppelins could fly up to 60-80 mph in the 1930s, but that's air speed, not ground speed. If the winds are blowing in a contrary direction at more than 60 mph, that ole zeppelin might be flying backwards relative to the ground. So I guess the moral of this anecdote is to not fight tyrannosaurs in high winds if you want close-in air support from your local steam zeppelins. Like they teach you in basic training, of course.
On the topic of steampunk...
While I understand the idea of the genre is to do inappropriately high powered and cool things with steam rather than diesel power, the puritan in me wants to point out that the late 19th century was a time when armies all over the world first started experimenting with bicycle infantry, due to the invention of decent safety bikes (e.g. the modern design). Bikes are cheaper than horses, have many of the same mobility benefits, and are quiet and fairly easy to train on. Some armies still use them, and I won't be surprised if they're the mechanized infantry of the late 21st Century, to be honest.
Obviously bicycles took off with some militaries and paramilitaries far more than others, but they're more, erm, practical and military minded than replacing horses with steam horses. Even if they're less cool.
Sadly, we don't see enough combat engineers on bicycles in the steampunk stories. I suppose it's because the stories are supposed to be fantasies, right?
Still, if you've got a squad of a dozen guys on bikes and you have to go tyrannosaur hunting over the low-grass prairie for you don't know how many days, how do you plan the mission and what do you take with you? Therein lies a story.
And which state is that, then?
Same one it's been for 30 years. North Carolina.
JBS lives in the area. Plus I think a few others who hang out here live in the state.
Early voting in Virginia started today and I worked the first 4-hour shift this morning. In my little town with about 17,000 registered voters we had about 130 people come in and vote on my shift. By the end of the day, I expect that we'll have at least 1% of voters, which is a lot higher than I expected. It will interesting to see how the numbers ebb and flow. I'm not at all prepared to predict a higher-than-2016 turnout this election, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.
You mean inertial guidance? I think even the Romans tried that one, for surveying.
Not that I'm aware of, unless one has been discovered in the last couple of decades.
They had a hodometer, essentially an odometer that measured distance travelled (rather unreliably compared to surveying triangles, but much faster if you were on a road).
http://www.traianvs.net/pdfs/2004_roman_surveying.pdf
The Chinese had a south-pointing chariot that probably used differential gears (and probably wasn't very accurate).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-pointing_chariot
My wife was "voted off the island" for a major airline this summer. So in trying to keep busy while we set up everything for her retirement (she had enough years in service so that it was a force retirement, not a layoff) I suggested she sign up to work early voting. We don't start for a few weeks. But it will be ongoing most 6 or 7 days a week for 2 weeks. They are expecting a crowd.
Also about 10% of the vote in the state has requested an absentee ballot. And since Trump has TWICE (more?) suggested IN PERSON that NC people vote twice it has created an interesting side effect. This year the board of elections has an absentee system where you can track your ballot. You can see when requested, when mailed to you, when received back, and when counted. And with all the uproar over Trump and voting twice all the local TV and press has covered how to use this service. Free advertising indeed.
I love "city slickers". Not one of us knows anything 'bout country living, or roughing it.
[rolls eyes]
And about the 100% death rate, it's obvious how you avoid that: it's like flying - you throw yourself at the ground, and dodge.
Thanks, I was thinking of the Chinese north-south chariot. I stand corrected.
I looked it up yesterday, and they're apparently still arguing over whether some of the predator dinosaurs were pack hunters.
shrug I don't care, I've decided they were prides.
And if anyone's interested, you saw me blame Troutwaxer if I wrote the story. Well, I did. Email me offlist if you want to beta read Steam! Dinosaurs! Out West! Buffalo Soldiers! (extra credit for all the in-jokes I thew in).
I love "city slickers". Not one of us knows anything 'bout country living, or roughing it.
The gospel according to macho-man populists, sure. Just the kind of folks who'd kill themsleves taking a chainsaw to a hydro line…
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/04/18/did-randy-hillier-not-see-the-wire-for-the-trees.html
TLDR: rural Conservative politician casts scorn on urbanites waiting for authorities to clear tree blocking road, claiming at home he'd just take his chainsaw and clear the damn road himself — ignoring the downed power line tangled in the tree.
Email me offlist
How would one do that? I can't find an email address for you. Tried clicking on your name and only got a list of comments…
Ah... I didn't realise it would have to deal with 60mph winds. That does make it kind of tricky, especially if you're using waste engine heat for lift and need to inflate them before you can take off. I was guessing that it wouldn't be too much of a problem to have to wait for good flying weather.
Er, no, those ARE city slickers pretending to be backwoodsmen! Like the idiots who claim you need a gun for defence against wild animals in the USA (or even the Africa of my youth). More seriously, my statement "City slickers (especially from the USA) have a completely unreal idea of how dangerous the natural world is." is as good a definition of a city slicker as anything.
ignoring the downed power line tangled in the tree.
To bad he didn't go do it for them. :)
have a completely unreal idea of how dangerous the natural world is." is as good a definition of a city slicker as anything.
nextdoor.com is (I think) a USA based neighborhood web site for exchanging notes and such.
I have to resist making comments when someone asks the best way to relocate the mice they found in their back yard so they can "live free" and not be eating by the outdoor cats and hunting birds.
To me that makes them a real "city slicker".
"Is there such a thing as Petrolpunk?"
Something like "The Pace That Kills" by Keith Roberts probably counts.
Tom the Dancing Bug has a good take on Woodward's book.
There's a British version too. From what I hear of it all the local loons gather there to hoot and cackle and everyone who isn't a loon just leaves them to it because they don't need the shit.
My (writing) website is https://mrw.5-cent.us - there's a link on there.
Wonder if I could get the rights to republish a book a late friend had, long, long ago. It was a book for people moving to the country, and included hints like "practice staring at the power lines, so when the weather gets cold, you'll see when the ice or frozen tree branches are going to break, and break the power line. Then you'll know that if a neighbor's power goes out, so will yours, because the power company will send out a truck that will skid into another power pole and knock that one down, too."
I thought I'd made it abundantly clear that my weapon of choice for (hypothetically ) hunting T-Rex would be the M-2 HB.
An excellent choice, and lends itself to twin and quad mount(*).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M45_Quadmount
(*) Apparently KJU uses such to express extreme disapprobation with wayward members of his government.
Argh... then I've completely misunderstood the thing. Damn it. Thanks for the correction.
Yeah, well, in my story, the steam-powered machine gun has, of course, rotating barrels, but is powered by a boiler, with a superheater, that fills a large cylinder, that expels the steam into a much smaller cylinder, to shove projectiles that I'm picturing are about 25mm or 40mm (or maybe 50mm across, which is the size of the smaller cylinder/barrel. I guarantee nothing's going to like being hit with one of them.
Shana Tova. (Off to brave a small masked indoor crowd; community spread in my area is low though.)
a book for people moving to the country
The thing is that almost all the risks that are new to those people are man-made. A lot involve spinning blades of death in various forms, from the hopefully obvious like not driving a ride-on mower across steep slopes to the frankly unbelievable like not stopping a chainsaw blade with your hand.
You have to be quite determined to actually find any of the lethal natural stuff, even in Australia. Well, other than the obvious "don't stand under falling trees" I suppose. That's probably a natural hazard. But the common nasties also live in cities - any dark crevice could be home to a redback or whitetail spider, and there are a surprising* number of snakes under houses.
Also, what is it about woodpiles that fascinates chickens? The instant I open the garage door they fly out of the "coop" (if it doesn't keep them cooped up what should I call it... the "guidelines area"?) and jump up onto my timber rack. I really don't want to have to clean chicken poo off my nice clean timber.
Well Eff You 2020, your timing sucks. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87
The Dems better do everything they can to block a Trump appointee.
unbelievable like not stopping a chainsaw blade with your hand.
Sold a used small pressure washer via FB or craigslist a year or so ago. I showed him how to use it. He said he had never used one before and asked if there as anything else. I told him to put on real shoes (he had on flip flops) and he laughed. I told him I was serious as the water could easily cut through his skin. Not sure if he believed me or not.
obvious "don't stand under falling trees" I suppose.
The current governor of Texas is wheelchair bound. Back when he was in his 20s (I think) a tree limb fell on him when he was jogging. He jokes about it.
And to you. Our congregation is doing Zoom/FB services. I’m trying to figure out how to open the a virtual Ark on Yom Kippur.
AvE did a video fairly recently showing high pressure oil doing gross things to a test dummy. In the context of "hydraulic tools are fun to play with and let's be careful". I am reminded of a case when I was growing up that someone goosed another apprentice with a blast of compressed air up the arse. It was very effective, perforated the gut lining and hospitalised the "goose" with peritonitis. Can't remember whether they died but it is one of the likely outcomes.
(oh, and no, my nice clean stack of timber is not a redback breeding area full of tasty chicken treats)
Under the workbench, on the other hand, is cockroach detritus. I fear that behind my big board of tools is a love-fest of roaches.
AvE... one of several on the topic, apparently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Ajw5zh1ts
Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit!
The Dems better do everything they can to block a Trump appointee.
Yeah, about that. We've got some real bad news from 2010, it says: Good fucking luck with that one.
Oh and from 2015. And 2017. And 2018. And 2019. Might want to check out the number of lower Court judges being rammed through as well, it's roughly 60 or so.
Like: is this performative outrage, or just being fucking perversely dumb? We can deal with the entire "Ho Ho Ho, leading Male Politician accidentally was also a massive serial killer after WW2, slaves in basement[1] who all died, but it's ok: he prevented the Communists from taking over" type line.
But.
Imagining that the Democratic party is gonna fill this seat with a .....
Get fucked.
[1] The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo was fiction.... barely
Two data points:
1) "You're Dead" was something we were told today, which was nice. The nice bit is that we didn't eat the slimy little fucker. 1.1) Who is Emily, the Edinburgh Nest and so on? 1.2) Eroticism: this word, not sure you know who you're flirting with here.
2) Bloomberg has splurged a few hundred million dollars in the initial race, now Florida. He's a fucking Republican, spending for the 'Democratic Party'. That will tell you what you should already know. 2.1) Florida (WAP lady above) has a far greater leverage point of insanity than it does 'targeted demographic spend', which is why WAP lady is how you turn the state rather than slogans. 2.2) You're on ALPHA hurricane nows, we did that huge big favor last year with the 'perfect Cat 5' that mysteriously ground to a halt. From now on: get fucked, deal with it.
But yeah. Thank you Mr Padraic R.
It's good to have everyone see how utterly fucked things are by that type of reaction.
In further notes, we'll be spinning up the "Why one of the Four Arch-Angels got so fucking depressed by humanity they lost all confidence them, live from FUCKING DACHAU"
JamesPadraicR @ 631: Well Eff You 2020, your timing sucks.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87
The Dems better do everything they can to block a Trump appointee.
Unfortunately, there is nothing the Democrats CAN do to block it. I think we've just witnessed the death of the Constitution and democracy in the United States.
There might be a slim chance that 4 republicans might decide that upholding the Constitution requires them to hold Moscow Mitch (Putin's BITCH) to the same standard he demanded before the 2016 election. But, there is no honor among thieves, so I don't have much hope.
And if Cheatolini iL Douchebag IS allowed to appoint another NAZI to the Supreme Court before the election, it won't matter how convincingly Biden wins, the election WILL be stolen.
Do they need to have a quorum to vote for a Supreme Court Justice?
Heteromeles @ 574: May I introduce you to the joys of poison ivy and poison sumac?
No. Not just NO, but HELL NO!
David L @ 580:
Cause and effect are hard to correlate. The numbers in this tightening are similar to:
June
Biden 47%
Trump 42%
Sept
Biden 50%
Trump 47%
Basically the undecided, refused to answer, or whatever in this example went from 11% to 3%. Basically the previous B and D are still there. The middle is what is shrinking. As to why, there are a LOT of reasons.
Check out 270towin.com and they have all kinds of maps based on different polls and aggregations. All show Biden ahead or winning. Some barely and within the margin of error and some with a wipe out.
Biden needed to win at least 55% of the popular vote to prevent the election being stolen. Today that number just jumped a whole lot higher.
Do they need to have a quorum to vote for a Supreme Court Justice?
I think it's 51 Senators.
AIUI, and I hope Lawfare gives us an explainer on the matter, the sequence goes
1) POTUS sends nomination to Senate. (Who's "the Senate"? Probably Mitch The Gatekeeper.)
2) Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the matter, may or may not hold hearings, votes on a recommendation and passes the nomination with or without recommendation back to the full Senate.
3) Senate votes, and if a simple majority votes to confirm, the nominee is in.
I wonder how mandatory 2) is. Could Mitch just skip that and put the matter directly to the Senate?
I am in severe emotional distress this evening.
I had a scheduled appointment this afternoon to have a new radio installed in my car. The installation was supposed to take about 2 hours.
I ended up sitting in the waiting room for 6½ hours. I was alone for all but an hour or so, but I'm still worried about whether my mask (which I wore the entire time) provided sufficient protection from any possible virus laden aerosols. I'm hoping there were none.
When someone else came in to wait, it was two teenage guys, they both sat at least 6' away from me and one of them was wearing his mask. The other one was doing that stupid thing where he had the mask pulled down where it only covered his mouth, exposing his nose.
Since they were maintaining their distance, I bit my tongue and didn't say anything.
And then the first news I hear on the new radio is about Justice Ginsburg.
The new radio is supposed to allow me to use Bluetooth from my iPhone to display maps on the radio even when the phone is locked ... but it turns out I have to have it tethered to do that AND I have to have Siri enabled. So now, I have to dig out my iPhone book to figure out if there's a way to turn Siri on while leaving her deaf, dumb & blind ...
But mostly, 90%, I'm just bummed out about Justice Ginsburg. And I hope to hell I don't get Covid now.
Elderly Cynic @ 586: Er, where do you live that the death rate is not 100%? There are lots of people who would love to know :-)
The way I heard it, ain't none of us getting out of here alive.
Heteromeles @ 599:
You mean inertial guidance? I think even the Romans tried that one, for surveying. I do know my parents worked on inertial guidance systems in the 60s. It's straight up analog computing. IIRC, the hard parts are keeping the gyros spinning to stay on course, and getting information off the gyrocompass (using gears) without deflecting the compass needle. Nowadays they use laser gyros and life is more precise, but GPS depends on triangulating from satellites using really accurate clocks, and that's post-steampunk.
As for the rest, it can be steampunk. It's worth reading the TVtropes page on the subject.
No, not guidance in the shell. Just location data for where the battery is located and calculating gun parameters to allow you to place the shot on the target. Used to be you had to have the surveyors locate your firing point so you could input that into the computation, but nowadays GPS serves that function. I was just thinking about plotting where the shots will fall, not guidance.
With indirect fire, if you know where you are and you know where the target is, there's a computer that will give you the answer to how much do you elevate the gun tube, what azimuth to train it on, how much powder charge is required for the weight of the shell and use weather factors like winds aloft, barometric pressure & humidity to tell you how to get your shots to land where you want them to. It also allows you to calculate the shell's flight time so you can set your fuses to explode the shell while it's still in the air above the target.
Robert Prior @ 615:
The gospel according to macho-man populists, sure. Just the kind of folks who'd kill themsleves taking a chainsaw to a hydro line…
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/04/18/did-randy-hillier-not-see-the-wire-for-the-trees.html
TLDR: rural Conservative politician casts scorn on urbanites waiting for authorities to clear tree blocking road, claiming at home he'd just take his chainsaw and clear the damn road himself — ignoring the downed power line tangled in the tree.
OTOH, I have a bit of experience with what happens when you take a large group of people who have never touched a chain saw and dragoon them into clearing downed trees - Hurricane Fran & the North Carolina National Guard ordered two semi-trailer loads and handed them out like Halloween candy. We didn't get anyone killed, but it was not for lack of trying.
Mostly the idiots managed to break the chain saws before they could seriously injure themselves.
With indirect fire, if you know where you are and you know where the target is, there's a computer that will give you the answer...
If you have the time and interest, Drachinifel covered this in a very watchable video called Range-Finding: Plotting Your Demise. I'm aware that some people, amazingly enough, do not want to spend an hour listening to some nerd natter on about 19th and 20th century naval gunnery accessories, but I was both entertained and educated.
Troutwaxer @ 640: Do they need to have a quorum to vote for a Supreme Court Justice?
Yes. Fifty-one Senators constitutes a Quorum.
The republicans have 53 Senators.
Scott Sanford @ 648:
If you have the time and interest, Drachinifel covered this in a very watchable video called Range-Finding: Plotting Your Demise. I'm aware that some people, amazingly enough, do not want to spend an hour listening to some nerd natter on about 19th and 20th century naval gunnery accessories, but I was both entertained and educated.
I used to teach map reading and land navigation. There are two ways to determine a location on a map
Intersection - you shoot an azimuth from two known points to determine a third point
Resection - you shoot an azimuth to two known terrain features to determine the location.
Hypothetically, which is the preferred method for identifying the point at which an attack is occurring? Intersection or Resection?
Ellen just showed me Trumpolini's response. He was shocked, and said she lived an amazing life, and that was it. We both expected more shit from him.
Here's the thing: he still sounds like he did yesterday. He does not sound well.
I listened to him too today. Agreed. He sounds like someone getting by on Flu medicine between bouts of vomiting.
Well, there is the obvious way to change the party in power in the Senate and the number of living senators that constitutes a quorum, but things will really go pear-shaped if people choose that option.
Then there's the less obvious way, which I've seen no less than five times in the last hour, which is a public strike to keep the senate from meeting until after the election. And that could also get interesting.
Used to be you had to have the surveyors locate your firing point so you could input that into the computation
Hence the mapping agency in the UK being the Ordnance Survey.
JBS & Heteromeles Babbage Engines directing artillery fire? "The Difference Engine" Bruce Sterling IIRC
Ginsburg There's also the possibility that the R's have not yet got their ducks in a row, to find & select a suitable fascist to fill the now vacant post. There's also the possibility that DT will fall over between now & then ( 6 weeks & 2 days to go to the result, perhaps. )
Re, Steampunk Inertial Navigation. I'm no expert, but I suspect a practical worthwhile Inertial Navigation system would not be possible before the 20th century. In the 1970's I worked for a precision engineering company that among other things made the rotors and rotor housings for the gyros that went into the inertial navigation system for the Jaguar attack aircraft. These components were manufactured from, if I'm remembering correctly, Monel, a Nickle alloy, to very high precision. In the order of +/- 0.00002 of an inch at 20 degrees C. When the production department asked the customer if these tolerances could be relaxed a little, the answer that that came back was, '0.00005 would be the difference between the aircraft flying 200 feet above the ground or 200 feet below it'.
Tony M In REAL MONEY that's 0.508μ or 508nm, yes? ( Call it 51 nm ... )
Er, where do you have to be to use resection?
I used to teach aircraft navigation (at a very low level, don't ask), and there was nothing that would be unfamiliar to an 18th century ship's master.
Re Justice Ginsberg:
It seems her dying wish was that she not be replaced by a Trump appointee:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87
JBS @ 596: How about using Babbage's Analytical Engine to drive a GPS system generating firing solutions for the artillery?
That was also in "The Difference Engine", albeit without the satellite navigation:
510 nanometers is the wavelength of green light, so that is very precise.
OTOH I've got a book somewhere published back in the 50s about making your own telescope. With care and time it seems an amateur can grind and figure an 8" mirror to a precision of 1/4 wavelength.
Also on steampunk firing computers, take a look at naval gunnery computers from WWII. More dieselpunk than steampunk, analog not digital, but still pretty impressive.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/gears-of-war-when-mechanical-analog-computers-ruled-the-waves/
If you want the technical details, there are some original instruction movies in places like Vimeo and Youtube. Search for "mechanical gunnery computer".
https://vimeo.com/340223785
I won't be surprised if they're the mechanized infantry of the late 21st Century, to be honest.
Especially -- assuming manufacturing supports it -- e-bikes. If modern electric motors, control circuitry, and batteries are available[*] there's no reason for a mil-spec e-bike to stick to the 250 watts/15mph limits imposed on road-legal civilian kit hereabouts, while avoiding the weight bloat of going up to an electric-powered scooter or motorbike analogue (which also exist -- why?). Ideally a mil-spec bike would be light enough for the rider to carry on foot in an emergency, be able to fast-charge off a platoon-scale generator or booster battery, and enable the rider to cover 150-200km/day on paved surfaces.
(Assuming infantry of any kind have a role, however, is a big ask: if they've got modern batteries, motors, and electronics then they've probably also got modern drones, optionally with explosively-forged projectile payloads and face recognition.)
[] Given the weight and size of such components they'd be valuable enough to ship internationally, even in an energy-constrained chaotic collapse situation -- something that weighs about 10kg and upgrades an infantry soldier from 30km/day to 150km/day range while not needing hay, stabling, and lots of forage has got to be worth its weight in gold[*].
[**] I am now imagining a re-write of Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" if instead of AK-47s his time travellers had brought e-bikes.
Charlie With batteries contining Cornish Lithium
Meanwhile... IF the R's succed in ramming a fascist through, then Trump WILL steal the election & oh shit. The USA turns into a fascist version of Wilhemnite Germany, we become a cross between Airstrip One & Austria-Hungary & the word really does go to hell in a handbasket.
Sadly, we don't see enough combat engineers on bicycles in the steampunk stories. I suppose it's because the stories are supposed to be fantasies, right?
You do see a lot of soldiers on bicycles in the stories of Heinrich Böll, though those are not fantasies I guess. Quite the opposite really.
There was always the what-if storyline about what the Romans at the height of their empire could have made of bicycles, or whatever the closest thing possible with their manufacturing capability would be, had the concept arisen. After all it does make something like light horse or mechanised infantry. The big deal in the 19th century was rail, and that's how the Prussians dazzled with new ways to do force concentration... Do bikes make a difference in terms of force concentration, in the context of the ancient world, if they are even possible?
Bigger question: what if the Romans got the stirrup? Stirrups were potentially bronze-age technology but didn't show up for a long time and made a huge difference to the viability of heavy cavalry.
He is going to try to nominate Ivanka.
From his 1800'ies robber-baron point of view, it would be a perfectly respectable "charity" for his favourite daugther, and the fact that it comes with a fat salary and a life-time appointment is just a bonus.
And yes, I can see senate republicans being deranged and desparate enough that they will come up with a rationale for waving her through.
British paratroops in WWII had a folding petrol-powered mini-motorbike, the Welbike available for certain missions as well as SOE use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welbike
It worked but it was not an operational success -- it was something else that needed to be carried by the drop plane displacing more rations, weapons, ammo, troopers etc. and its utility was debatable. The development of larger gliders able to carry larger motorcycles, light jeeps and even artillery pieces negated its regular use although they were deployed in the Arnhem mission later in the war.
"I'm no expert, but I suspect a practical worthwhile Inertial Navigation system would not be possible before the 20th century."
The precursor for INS was the gyro compass, which dates to right before first world war.
Going from two degrees of freedom to four or six degrees of freedom was largely a matter of being able to measure if you actually succeeded to do so.
The two critical technologies were laser interferometry and closed loop CNC machines calibrated with same.
If you push those two technologies back to 1850, you will have dragged a most of the 20th century's technologies along as well.
With care and time it seems an amateur can grind and figure an 8" mirror to a precision of 1/4 wavelength.
AIUI, 1/4 wave polishing is standard in the amateur telescope community. It's facilitated by an interferometric test dating from the 1850s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_knife-edge_test
Oops - moderators - obvious HTML fail by me @ 664 - can someone please fix it?
[[ done - mod ]]
Charlie yes - it would seem that a stirrup is a really onvious improvement - but it took a remarkable length of time to appear
Since Steampunkery has come up, and I have no interest in the gun/artillery aspects, I give you the Candela VibroPhase: the world’s first candle powered guitar effect.
It’s a bit of a cheat since it has photovoltaic cells and photocells, but the PVs are powered by a candle, which also powers a Stirling engine for the moving parts. My pandemic hobby ended up being soldering up analog guitar effect pedals*, which I started just before self-isolating, after realizing how simple and inexpensive it is to make your own—particularly if you 3D print your own enclosures. I make no claim to understanding how the circuits work, but I’ve been mostly successful with them.
*I was going to do some baking (not sourdough!), but never got around to it.
My recollection, from his biography, was that Heinlein was trained on one of those.
I suspect a mistaken attribution :-)
Ahh, that would explain the sequence in "Citizen of the Galaxy" where Thorby is trained to fire atomic missiles on Sisu's fire control computers. The description is clearly of analogue computers (much fine adjustment of vernier dials). I thought it sounded similar.
The Romans could have made bicycles - crude ones, but there's no critical technology in them that isn't at least that old. The biggest difficulty is (for safety bicycles) the drive, and that would have to have been knotted rope.
But I can assure you that you WOULDN'T want to ride a single-speed, rope-driven, mostly wooden, steel-tyres bicycle over Roman roads.
"I am now imagining a re-write of Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" if instead of AK-47s his time travellers had brought e-bikes."
Funny. Don't forget to have them bring a solar-powered charging station. If it's going to be a happy story put them in charge of reconstruction.
Which brings up a question, since we were talking about unlikely plots, what's the weirdest, least significant thing a time-traveler could bring with them that would completely upend history? (Diane Duane already covered Von Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, though that's hardly insignificant.)
Re: 'There's also the possibility that the R's have not yet got their ducks in a row, to find & select a suitable fascist to fill the now vacant post.'
McConnell has already announced that they're going to ram through the next SCOTUS appointment. This is the same man that did everything he possibly could to ensure zero SCOTUS appointments during Obama's terms.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/09/19/senate-majority-leader-mitch-mcconnell-pledges-to-bring-president-trumps-scotus-pick-up-for-a-vote/
'McConnell, in a statement just over an hour after Ginsburg’s death was announced, declared unequivocally that Trump’s nominee would receive a vote, even though he had stalled President Barack Obama’s choice for months ahead of the 2016 election, eventually preventing a vote.'
McConnell is up for re-election this year - think it's time that he retired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_Senate_elections#Kentucky
'Incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who has been Senate Majority Leader since 2015 and senator from Kentucky since 1985, is running for re-election to a seventh term. He faces the Democratic nominee, U.S. Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, and Libertarian Brad Barron.'
Hopefully the Marines are able to come out to vote - sooner rather than later - because there's no telling what MM might push DT to do to help them secure their seats.
https://www.fvap.gov/military-voter
https://m.votevets.org/press/votevets-endorses-amy-mcgrath-for-us-senate-in-kentucky
Troutwaxer @ 652: I listened to him too today. Agreed. He sounds like someone getting by on Flu medicine between bouts of vomiting.
Good. I hope it's the Covid finally catching up with him and I hope the sonofabitch dies soon enough so I can go piss on his grave.
Elderly Cynic @ 658: Er, where do you have to be to use resection?
I used to teach aircraft navigation (at a very low level, don't ask), and there was nothing that would be unfamiliar to an 18th century ship's master.
Resection is shooting azimuths to two identifiable landmarks and then plotting them on a map (using back azimuths) to find your own location. If you're plotting a target location by Resection, You probably don't want to be doing that.
You ARE the target.
Stirrups have already been mentioned. Another possibility would be a modern spring - you should be able to make a decent mainspring with bronze-age tech[1], but they don't appear until ~1400, and while the power-density of a bronze or copper mainspring would be low, having reliable energy storage thousands of years early is going to change things. I suspect good coil springs would be harder to make (might have to wait for the iron age) and provide a smaller leap forward.
[1] power-density would be lower, and the spring more fragile, than a steel one.
It might be possible to make a bigger difference than any of that with, say, a single dose of Rubella vaccine - or, in the opposite direction, a rusty needle that gives someone tetanus. Of course, some might argue that's cheating (and knowing who to stab with either one for the maximum effect would require something resembling omniscience).
Horses in Roman times were much smaller than in our times or medieval times. You could just hop on without putting your foot in a stirrup, or use a pair to pull a chariot. They just didn't see a major role for the horse.
Especially -- assuming manufacturing supports it -- e-bikes. If modern electric motors, control circuitry, and batteries are available[*] there's no reason for a mil-spec e-bike to stick to the 250 watts/15mph limits imposed on road-legal civilian kit hereabouts, while avoiding the weight bloat of going up to an electric-powered scooter or motorbike analogue (which also exist -- why?). Ideally a mil-spec bike would be light enough for the rider to carry on foot in an emergency, be able to fast-charge off a platoon-scale generator or booster battery, and enable the rider to cover 150-200km/day on paved surfaces.
Ebikes are making a blurry, powered continuum between bicycles and motorcycles, including the bits that were previously colonized by mopeds and scooters. As for why electric motorcycles? They win races over gas-powered motorcycles even now, so I (naively) expect ebikes to be ubiquitous before eCars become the norm. Presumably we'll see the same blurring between drones, copters, and planes, especially if ePlanes become viable?
So far as bicycle infantry goes, my understanding of its advantages are: --bikes are cheaper than horses. --A bike is soldier-powered, so no additional sources of power (horses or whatever) are necessary --A soldier on a bike can carry more and go further down a road than a soldier on foot can, due to the increases in transport efficiency that the bike provides.
The disadvantages are: --Rubber shortages (that seems to be a key bike vulnerability even now) --No armor --Dumb transport (a horse can carry a wounded soldier, but a wounded soldier can't bicycle to safety). -- Limited to bike paths (although mountain bikes really push this).
The same limits still apply to bicycle infantry now that occurred a century ago when they were first introduced, and motorizing them won't solve the problems. While motorcycles have a place in the rear lines of the military, they're not in the front line, because they're not armored, and therefore they have the same disadvantage as cavalry. While Sweden and England experimented with armored motorcycles, none proved practical. Probably the most practical was a half-armored motorcycle (slab of armor on one side) where the rider, if under fire, could take shelter behind the shield and return fire with a machine gun that the cycle carried. The Ming Chinese actually fielded a mule cart system based on this principle(with a crew of 20 that had three guns and partial shielding). So armored motorcycles are at least theoretically possible, especially in formations of multiple gun cycles. Effectively, they're mobile machine gun positions that don't need to dig in first and that can evacuate before the artillery or flamethrowers get in range. Unfortunately, they need roads and relatively flat ground. I suspect a dirt bike carrying a bullet proof shield on one side is rather impractical, although I could be wrong.
As for whether humans (especially a putative bicycle infantry) will be replaced by drones (especially really expensive smart missiles that carry a sidearm)...
According to BP, we're at or near Peak Oil at the moment, so absent a miracle, we're looking at a future with billions of people and rather fewer sources of concentrated energy for making things go boom. Drones will be a thing of the 2030s and 2040s of course, but if people are still fighting wars in the 2080s and 2090s, it's at least possible that they'll be riding (bamboo frame) bikes (assuming there's still rubber for the tires) and carrying bows or crossbows with poisoned arrows. There are already a few archer militias in rural Africa, mostly to combat cattle rustling. It turns out that, in wooded areas where contact distances are relatively short, bows and poisoned arrows are homemade, and AK-47s only have a few bullets per gun, guns and rifles are a pretty even match. In similar circumstances, perhaps like futuristic slum or thicket warfare, biker gangs of archers would be a serious nuisance, and squads of riflemen with half-armored motorbikes would be like the knights of the Old (Ming) Empire. And possibly as effective.
Yep. Just about summarises the situation...
Though, I'm only surprised that more redneck don't go after the left leaning justices with an M16 to make sure of a republican bias.
Poul-Henning Kamp @ 668: He is going to try to nominate Ivanka.
From his 1800'ies robber-baron point of view, it would be a perfectly respectable "charity" for his favourite daugther, and the fact that it comes with a fat salary and a life-time appointment is just a bonus.
And yes, I can see senate republicans being deranged and desparate enough that they will come up with a rationale for waving her through.
He's already published two lists of of possible nominees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Supreme_Court_candidates#Possible_nominees
British paratroops in WWII had a folding petrol-powered mini-motorbike, the Welbike available for certain missions as well as SOE use.
There's also the classic French Vespa 150 TAP anti-tank scooter -- dismount to fire the 75mm recoilless rifle, of course, but it was designed for paratroops to use as transport for their light anti-tank capability. Made more sense than the Welbike.
The Welbike had no pedal power option, so was essentially a rather crap small motorbike. What I'm suggesting is bicycle troops but with motor assist for uphill stretches or long runs, not a motorbike as such.
Why do you think I asked that question? Perhaps I should have stressed 'where' in that :-)
Your previous post wasn't a response to me, but I had a similar thought ....
I'd be extremely surprised if there weren't designated bikers in each troop towing a cart with additional supplies. Tents, food, ammunition, heavier weapons....
Sigh... my previous post was the wrong reply to yours, Charlie - it was meant as a reply to @684.
Drones, etc... you're in the same situation that the AF is: we have air power! We can bomb anyone into submission!
And every war since WWI, afterwards, they find that no, the story isn't over until there are boots on the ground in place.
Bicycle rubber is almost always synthetic (butyl) nowadays, and bicycles are not as limited as you seem to think (plus there are always tricycles). Look up how they are still used in Africa and India, and were during the Japanese advance on Singapore in WW II. The only one of your disadvantages that is completely true is the armour, and even that isn't absolute :-)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2oZNVaNPNLE/UI8gLd2taUI/AAAAAAAAC7s/4V1iwR8yVuY/s400/Armored+Bike.jpg
Bigger question: what if the Romans got the stirrup? Stirrups were potentially bronze-age technology but didn't show up for a long time and made a huge difference to the viability of heavy cavalry.
A number of people have recreated Roman-Celtic cavalry four-horned saddles and ridden them while using weapons (https://www.comitatus.net/cavalryrecreate.html), and stirrups seem to be over-rated. The "stirrups were revolutionary" meme may well belong to the same vein of history that posits that plate-armored knights were winched into their saddles before battle.
Where stirrups come in is with steppe-designed Hunnish saddles, the forerunners of today's Spanish and western saddles. They can be ridden without stirrups, but because they don't have the four horns holding the rider in, they handle cornering better with a stirrup (see the article above). It's possible that we believe in the mystique of stirrups because the Huns and Mongols were such fearsome warriors that people who survived run-ins with them adopted their equipment uncritically.
And heavy cavalry (the cataphracts) showed up well before stirrups did. As Niala notes, what you need for heavy cavalry are big horses. Most of the horses used by the old Roman cavalry were basically large ponies (13-15 hands), not the plow-horse wannabes that the late Medieval knights rode. Still, the Roman cavalry, especially by the 4th century, used 4 meter lances (the kontos) and steppe-style bows, while mounted, without stirrups, so it is entirely possible.
Now if you really want a revolution, postulate that the Romans either imported or independently invented two things: the moldboard plow (Chinese) and the horse collar for plowing. Going from eight oxen pulling a scratch plow to two horses pulling the moldboard made an enormous difference in the amount of land that could be cultivated. Why it took over 1000 years for that plow to make it to Europe, but only a few hundred years for guns to make the trip, is one of those enduring mysteries.
JamesPadraicR @ 673: Since Steampunkery has come up, and I have no interest in the gun/artillery aspects, I give you the
Candela VibroPhase: the world’s first candle powered guitar effect.
That's a cool idea, but I wouldn't have room for it on my pedal board.
I wonder how a Stirling engine might work for driving a Leslie speaker? Is there another way to regulate the speed of the Stirling engine besides that magnet?
SFReader @ 679: McConnell is up for re-election this year - think it's time that he retired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_Senate_elections#Kentucky
According to FiveThirtyEight Moscow Mitch has a 12+ lead over McGrath, 53% to 41% as of 16 Sep 2020.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/kentucky/
Up until a month or so ago, they were neck-and-neck.
Chrisj @ 682:
Stirrups have already been mentioned. Another possibility would be a modern spring - you should be able to make a decent mainspring with bronze-age tech[1], but they don't appear until ~1400, and while the power-density of a bronze or copper mainspring would be low, having reliable energy storage thousands of years early is going to change things. I suspect good coil springs would be harder to make (might have to wait for the iron age) and provide a smaller leap forward.
[1] power-density would be lower, and the spring more fragile, than a steel one.
I'm pretty sure that by the time the Roman Republic had established control over central Italia that the Iron Age was well established. Several books I've read about early Rome mention they came to power by assimilating the "iron age" Etruscan civilization. Roman Legions of Caesars time would have been equipped with steel swords.
Maybe take a Latin translation of Bessemer's patent application and give it to Tiberius Gracchus?
Bicycle rubber is almost always synthetic (butyl) nowadays, and bicycles are not as limited as you seem to think (plus there are always tricycles). Look up how they are still used in Africa and India, and were during the Japanese advance on Singapore in WW II. The only one of your disadvantages that is completely true is the armour, and even that isn't absolute :-)
Note, there are two sources for rubber: natural rubber, grown mostly from clones of a few rubber trees in Asia, that are horribly susceptible to a fungus that hasn't got there from South America yet, and (so far as I can tell) petroleum.
So we're in a situation by 2050 where we've hit peak oil, and per forecasts, all possible agricultural pests have been moved by shipping to find susceptible hosts on all continents except Antarctica (this last a prediction I heard two years ago at an invasives conference).
So, where's the rubber for post-2050 bikes coming from? If the rubber plantations in China and Malaysia die out because the fungus finally gets there, that source is out. And if we're no longer extracting petroleum, then... well (per Wikipedia), we can pull the tertiary butyl alcohol out of beer, dehydrate that, and make a bit of butyl rubber. Want to give up your beer for an inner tube?
Oh yes, of course we'll solve the problem with the fungus. Actually, that's the nasty part: plant pathology departments are shutting down all over the US, because it's no longer sexy to work on plant diseases. And the state and federal governments minimally fund the research, to the point where someone who needed 10 million dollars to test a solution for a $30 billion dollar beetle infestation had to spend years knocking on doors to get the funding for the government mandated tests. I'm not sure the rest of the world is doing any better, and it will probably take a global crop failure on the scale of Covid19 to wake governments up to the problem.
So yes, I'm very much concerned about where our future rubber is coming from. You may want to worry about it too.
whitroth @ 695: Up until a month or so ago, they were neck-and-neck.
And a month before that he had a 22 point lead that he frittered away. The current trend appears to be him getting his lead back and maybe extending it.
I wonder if you could make pneumatic tires (or tyres) from leather using sheep's intestines to make the inner-tubes?
That would solve the "steel tyres on Roman roads" problem for mounting a Legion on bicycles.
Roman Legions of Caesars time would have been equipped with steel swords.
Yes, but how good was the steel? I've seen so many divergent opinions on this that I did a bit of web-diving, and came up with this, for the detail-oriented: https://dtrinkle.matse.illinois.edu/MatSE584/articles/steel_greece_rome/steel_in_ancient_greece_an.html
The big problem was that techniques for creating good steel (as opposed to mild steel or cast iron) was not well understood, so probably weapon quality varied from smith to smith and among different iron ore sources. There was probably a lot of heterogeneity in the quality of the swords, which was a problem not limited to the Roman Empire.
The more interesting question (perhaps!) is why the wootz process didn't really get west of Damascus (see link above), although it was invented in India around 500 BC. Did the Damascus smiths keep the secret, or was something else going on?
Quite honestly, were I the time traveler and interested in using warfare to screw up history, I'd bring along formulas for gunpowder and give them to the Romans. As Alfred Russel Wallace noted in The Malay Archipelago, a local gunsmith used a crude anvil and a few tools to make a perfectly good muzzle loader. I think it's fair to say that if a smith can make a good long-sword, they can make a decent muzzle-loader, although as I've suggested, the quality of the Roman swordsmiths varied widely, and most were making short swords.
The first gunpowder formula popped up in China around 808 AD (thank you, Taoists). The "nice" thing about gunpowder formulations is that even without guns they're still of military value, by turning spears and arrows into rockets, using firecrackers for startling, making fire lances and gonnes (tubes for the spraying successively of fire, pebbles, poisons, missiles, and bullets), and weaponizing fireworks (ditto with the crap spraying and pointy bits). It's not a matter of having one precise formula for gunpowder, useful only in guns, it's a matter of having a whole field of pyrotechnical possibilities where evil geniuses and other boffins can get into the design game and yield useful weapons and tools.
And now we're turning the corner into Roman clockpunk and steampunk. Yay.
I wonder if you could make pneumatic tires (or tyres) from leather using sheep's intestines to make the inner-tubes? That would solve the "steel tyres on Roman roads" problem for mounting a Legion on bicycles.
You can, but that's probably three sheep per tire, so you'd run out of sheep rather fast.
The source for this are the WWI zeppelins used to raid London. They used cattle appendixes to hold in the gas, because you can laminate these small sheets together into gasproof sheets. Just fielding a dozen or two zeppelins meant that Germany went without sausages.
Another possibility is that some Roman bright bulb discovers coiled springs and tube-welding, so they start making carts (and then bicycles) with shock absorbers, even if they have wooden wheels.
The even more practical version of this is where the Romans invent Chinese wheelbarrows before the Chinese did. That's another invention that perversely didn't make it West fast enough. Heck, it still really hasn't got here.
Speaking of Chinese wheelbarrows, I'd suggest updating this tech for our looming solarpunk future. The reason the Chinese got into single-wheeled conveyances rather than carts is because Han Chinese roads were more like our modern roads than like the Roman ones. When they fell apart with the fall of the Han, it was easier to maintain narrow paths served by cargo-carrying wheelbarrows than it was to maintain wide cart paths.
Actually, transposing Tang, Sun, or especially Ming tech into a Roman setting would be a really interesting way to go, because then you can deal with all these questions of "why didn't the Romans do....?" while making it seem exotic.
Quoth JBS@696:
Who said anything about Rome? I was thinking of giving mainsprings to the Mycenaeans sometime around 1600BC. Who knows, maybe avert the late bronze age collapse completely - even if not, there's a decent chance that the extra technology will survive and continue to move forward in places like Assyria and Egypt.
The original request was for the "least significant" thing that a traveller could use to effect huge change, and I'm not sure custom translations of blueprints for industrial machinery count :) Whereas mainspring-powered clockwork, while less common than a century ago, is still pretty widely used, and not something most (modern) people are going to pay attention to.
I think taking a classical or Medieval (or even classical African) iron smelting and forging setup and giving it, not to the Myceneans, but to the Minoans (at least prior to their collapse), would stir things up considerably.
By 1600 BCE the peoples of the Mediterranean were aware of iron, because it's a byproduct of copper smelting and making bronze. Working with it was a pain, because they couldn't really get a forge hot enough to work it. IIRC, the Assyrians figured out how to work iron around 12 century BCE, and the spread of that tech may have helped doom the Bronze Age. Since the Bronze Age depended on long-distance trade to get tin and copper together, the collapse of the trade routes made it really hard to make new bronze, and they were stuck refashioning what they had. Conversely, iron ore was more abundant and single-sourced, but harder to work. Teaching people how to smelt and work iron "prematurely" would have made a huge difference. As would introducing gunpowder, of course. Or the alphabet, compasses, decent sails, or any number of other things.
Want to give the Classical Alexandrians single lens microscopes, for instance?
I agree, but (again) the request I was answering was for the least significant item that could produce major changes in history, and I don't think giving someone a fully equipped forge counts :)
Doing a 1632, but to 1632BC instead, would have even more dramatic effects (provided the library was suitably stocked and there were people in town who could make themselves at least loosely understood in ancient languages), if we're going big.
And yes, I meant the Minoans rather than Myceneans. (They both begin with "M", and they're all dead. At least I didn't get them confused with the Mercians or something :)
Re: 'The current trend appears to be him getting his lead back and maybe extending it.'
Damned - that's not good news. Wonder how much MM raised for his campaign, when and from whom.
Don't imagine a retired Marine F/A-18 pilot has access to as many financial strings ... maybe if each combat vet pitched in $1. They might consider this insurance against losing even more of their VA benefits. (MM's VA voting record is below.)
https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/53298/mitch-mcconnell/66/veterans
Fair enough. Linear A, Linear B, who's counting.
That's why I suggested the African iron smelting and forging tech. It's basically different grades of rocks and clay, along with some goat-skin bellows that the Minoans probably already had from working with iron. It's more a matter of assembling existing materials differently than carrying a lot of technology back in time.
Here's a modern guy figuring out how to work iron blooms without metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8kUbi1tme0 I'm not linking to how he got the bloom, because that looks to be at least four previous episodes, including multiple fails.
The tl;dr is that teaching bronze smiths to forge iron is mostly a knowledge transfer, not a transfer of kit, so it meets your criteria.
Now if you really want to change history, go back 35,000 years or so and introduce the Australian aborigines to iron metallurgy. I'm rereading Dark Emu (recommended), and musing on what would happen if, back when the aborigines were among the most technologically advanced people in the world, back when the Milankovitch cycles made Australia more pleasant than it is now, time travelers showed up. Could the technologically advantaged aborigines have taken over the world during the last ice age, and we'd have, I don't know, Steel Songlines globally?
Could be interesting.
Working with bronze. Anyway, forget the video, it's more an example of what could go wrong with getting iron out of a bloom.
But the basic point is that it's possible to work metal without metal, so that tech transfer is possible. What's needed are the surplus resources to support fledgling ironsmiths learning to work the metal, which is why it's probably better to get a chief interested in your tools, rather than showing up naked and not speaking the local language. At the very least, have the surplus resources available so that someone can be a student and make mistakes without starving during the process.
Then, if you can teach them to forge iron, you can teach them to make screws and nails. That's probably the other technology they need to take over the world. Oh, and perhaps teach distilling, if they're making wine. Or alcohol fermentation, if they haven't worked that out already.
Oh, nuts! The amount of rubber needed for bicycle tyres is piffling compared to that needed for those of motor vehicles, we can also synthesise isobutylene from other sources, and a large number of plants produce usable latex. Worry about something real, like the pollution caused by its disposal.
https://archive.org/details/CAT91942814
You could, as Heteromeles says, but it makes no sense. As I said in #709, there are plenty of sources of natural latex, the Romans had ample sulphur, and vulcanisation is a simple process. They could trivially have invented it - it's one of the inventions that was a pure 'bright idea' and did not depend on other just-developed technologies.
I completely agree on the pollution issue. About the rest...
For one, if we don't have the petroleum to run the cars, why do you think we'll have the petroleum to run the rest of the petrochemical industry and make tires? Again, you're completely right about the pollution issue, but it looks like the best way to deal with that is to stop using petrochemical plastics and switch over to...? I really don't know. Cracking plastic waste and redistilling it back into short-chain feedstocks for more sustainable plastics may be what we have to do, somehow (solar ovens?).
As for plant latexes, as you know perfectly well, they're not all interchangeable, which is why the world spends millions (billions?) on rubber trees and not on guayule or milkweeds. Fungal diseases, coupled with climate change, make dedicating large acres to latex production problematic, especially when those acres are dedicated to plants that are largely clones and therefore more susceptible to disease.
Interesting times. Thanks for helping me burn off some surplus mental energy between dealing with (long string of deleted expletives) development projects and politics.
Hypothetically, which is the preferred method for identifying the point at which an attack is occurring? Intersection or Resection?
It occurs to me that the snarky answer would be, "From as far away as possible." Incoming fire is much less fun than outgoing!
Back in the optical rangefinder days some variation of intersection was preferred, since oceans are notoriously lacking in landmarks. The parallax of human eyes was insufficient once we progressed beyond black powder cannon; I'm sure you've seen pictures of optical rangefinders, and may have used them yourself, and the idea of putting the eyes effectively farther apart is straightforward even if making it work required much clever engineering.
The depression range finder strikes me as a resection approach, as it compares the bearing of a target to the known (but difficult to observe directly) point at sea level directly beneath the shooter.
Is that a useful answer?
Having asked the question, I've tried to come up with a clever answer and haven't succeeded terribly well but my candidate would be a single piece of paper with an illustrated proof that Arabic numerals work - they make doing math so much easier* - along with half-a-dozen interesting equations. Give one each to a Chinese scribe, an Egyptian scribe, a Mayan scribe, a Babylonian scribe, etc. and see what happens.
I wonder how a Stirling engine might work for driving a Leslie speaker? Is there another way to regulate the speed of the Stirling engine besides that magnet?
Don’t about using one for a Leslie, how big would it have to be? Bigger than the speaker cab? Sounds like a fire hazard. As for speed, I’d guess anything else would cause too much friction? Or maybe something to change gears.
Why it took over 1000 years for that plow to make it to Europe, but only a few hundred years for guns to make the trip, is one of those enduring mysteries.
Farmers weren't traveling around the world. That was the noblemen and military types.
Up until a month or so ago, they were neck-and-neck.
Depends on which polls you were watching. A few had them even or almost so. But in general Mitch has been leading the entire time.
In my visit to a friend who lives in Lexington and in no way shape or form is a Mitch supporter said back then Mitch will be a Senator from Ky until he dies or retires.
Ky is much more like Idaho/Wyoming culturally than Pennsylvania. Only 2 cities of note and the larger one, with 1/2 of the state's population, isn't all that liberal. It is a conservative state at it's heart.
The biggest thing that was dragging Mitch down was that somewhat insane governor who when down in flames. As memories of him fade it makes it easier to vote R again.
Bugger actual technology... How about getting across to, say the Classical Greeks that "Zero is a number" & you can use place-ordering?
Re: 'Classical Greeks that "Zero is a number"'
The zero appeared long before the Classical Greeks showed up. Very surprising that the Romans didn't adopt the zero considering their key strengths were engineering, appropriating foreign assets (including literature, gods, art/architecture), and tax collecting. Okay, maybe having a slave-based economy had something to do with it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origin-of-zer/
'The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. There, a slanted double wedge was inserted between cuneiform symbols for numbers, written positionally, to indicate the absence of a number in a place (as we would write 102, the '0' indicating no digit in the tens column).'
Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero and former professor of mathematics at Harvard University
If you switch to mostly bikes for (non-goods, non-public) transport, making sufficient artificial rubber from renewable sources becomes a much smaller problem, though. Also, "enough to make artificial rubber for bicycle tires" is orders of magnitude smaller than our current fossil-fuel consumption. And if we must carry on consuming them, making relatively long-life objects seems a much more sensible use than burning them to move metal boxes about.
Well, that I'm not sure about. I agree that bike tires are smaller than car tires. Problem is, that's not all rubber is used for.
The bigger problem is sourcing it. The rubber tree fungus problem has been known since WW2, but not solved. The oil problem has actually been known much longer. While we do have other sources of latex, we don't have sources that can be scaled rapidly to provide the quantity, or (AFAIK) the quality of rubber. And that's a problem.
There’s a more detailed write up of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps here: http://bicyclecorps.blogspot.com/ which has daily ride reports with maps and then a modern rider trying to follow the same route in 2010.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/science/trigonometry-babylonian-tablet.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_mathematics
All we're going to tell you is: it's a particular Western based notion (apart from the USA and their quaint Fahrenheit) that you only use a single Mathematical system. Base 10, Base 12, Base 16, Base 8 and so on.
Of course the Romans had the concept of Zero (O) - Zeno's Paradox doesn't work unless you understand infinity, the people who seriously say this are complete fools, since there are extant records of Roman commentary on Zeno's Paradox.
They just didn't apply it to economics / trade (lots of reasons: salt being one). The Romans certainly understood debt, but they viewed it differently. Again: blood debt and debt to society and debt to your family and debt to the Office you (might have purchased, later Empire: for sure).
You can't function without a null value: it just didn't have the use it had later and it wasn't useful for their Mathematics.
Oh, and it's bollocks. Zero (0) was a feature but run it in base outside of what they did their counting in. Roman Numerals are about ORDER and function and the aesthetics. Pulling hard nosed trig during a siege? Who the fuck taught them (slaves) and they used the MENA efficient language... which doesn't need 0.
There.
How many PHDs just went up in smoke?
1) Just watched the new film "Tenet" about time-reversed bullets. Very cute. 2) WAP - Liberal Judaic Jurisprudence (via a marriage no less) melt-down. 3) Very official type letter telling us we're in the dog-house and our 'crimes' will be persecuted (which is an interesting one, no-one else this side of the COVID19 system gets their 'trials' fast-tracked. Better be careful, last time you did that, your entire system broke)
Let's just say: we find TENET (film) hilarious.
WAP - WASP - Wine Mother melt-down.
"People are killing themselves"
Yeah, we kinda know that. We care about all of them though, not just those so concerned about optics, the USA, their place in society, the perception of their religious lives that they managed to slot a wedding into the new year of 5871 with a
FUCKING MONUMENTAL SELF-NARCISSISTIC OWN GOAL THAT SCREAMED OUT TO THE HEAVENS: WATCH US FUCK THIS UP
No, really. Reminds me of that WJC muppet Lawyer calling people (his 'own people') cockroaches. It's like: it's not about the behaviour (we can universally find muppets doing shit like this), but to pontificate, threaten and break all our rules on it....
5782.
Ah, we see the Valley and arrogance once more.
Hey, you're not going to make 6218, but it'd be fucking amazing if you weren't so shit at self-awareness.
You don't need rubber to make a comfortable vehicle. The Apollo lunar rovers had metal wheels.
You don't need rubber to make a comfortable vehicle. The Apollo lunar rovers had metal wheels.
Apollo lunar rovers were used in 1/6 g environment, so every bump and impact was six times less severe.
Several things about bike tires (that's tyres to our friends, I think) that are different than car tires.
You can scale the wheel to suit the gravity. Mars rovers operate in about 1/2 g and also have metal wheels, albeit of new designs.
... my candidate would be a single piece of paper with an illustrated proof that Arabic numerals work - they make doing math so much easier* - along with half-a-dozen interesting equations.
It's occurred to me that the way to sneak positional notation into the Roman world would be in an instruction essay on how to use an abacus [1]. Since the text would have to be illustrated anyway, just include some specialized notation to the effect that A meant I, B meant II, and so on. This has the advantage that since there must be a way to refer to the null position the zero arises organically from the question (and could logically be written Z).
It's just as easy to write AZFF as 1066 - and much easier than MLXVI.
That it also leads to a lot of bogus numerological nonsense just means that the idea can spread quickly.
[1] Sneaking in an actual Chinese suanpan would be a bit much, which is too bad because frankly the Roman abacus was a bit shit.
How about getting across to, say the Classical Greeks that "Zero is a number" & you can use place-ordering?
What I just said to Troutwaxer, but instead of AZFF they write αωζζ...
We know the Greeks had something like an abacus by the 5th century BC but don't have many details; the Salamis Tablet is now thought to be a calculating tool but before that it was guessed to be a game board.
I read that the Milesian system used letters to stand for numbers; they would have been ready to learn this hypothetical innovation in a day.
Re bicycles as war machines.
I've heard it convincingly argued that the Americans lost the American war in Vietnam because they couldn't knock out bicycle supply lines and that the bicycle was the decisive factor. No real point to my post about that other than the slight amazement that no one has mentioned it in a discussion of bicycles at war.
Re rubber tyres
All steel tyres already exist.
https://www.fastcompany.com/1665045/soft-ride-bike-has-steel-tires-and-you-can-ride-it-now
Re e-bike you can carry for mobile infantry
A friend testing a Sur-Ron. 40 miles of range over unmade tracks. Swappable batteries. Pedals can be added as an option.
https://youtu.be/3Cjpzae3vAw
Loving this era.
Here's a quick thing. If you can calculate (Greek) that the World is a globe via Obelisk shadows + geography and know (roughly) what Phi is.. You kinda know what 0 degrees mean. Which is a null value.
BECAUSE YOU USE THAT POSITION AS YOUR FIXING POINT.
"We think the Greeks did..."
YOU'RE FUCKING STANDING ON IT. STEM SHIT EDUCATION DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A GREEK ZERO MEANS.
Knocks me out. Finest engineering Minds of their generation, stuck on basic shit like this. But hey, you fucked the entire ecosystem for some basic chemistry and managed to make a psychotic war machine that's still running, so hey!
Anyhow, Ciao Bill + Host.
Did our best. We have a bill to pay.
"Bullet or Silver"
We chose the bullet, fuck them.
Could the technologically advantaged aborigines have taken over the world during the last ice age, and we'd have, I don't know, Steel Songlines globally?
I agree this is an interesting storyline. I would wonder openly whether "Take over the world!" is ideologically compatible with what we know of Indigenous cultures, though I think given a long time scale it might work. I suppose the thing about technology is that the driver may not be the insight about how to achieve something, but the need to achieve that thing in the first place. Original Australians did not really need much that iron-working technology would be a compelling solution for. Otherwise isn't it a solution looking for a problem?
Anyhow, Ciao Bill + Host. Did our best. We have a bill to pay. "Bullet or Silver" We chose the bullet, fuck them.
Please take care. (That's an ask.)
You can scale the wheel to suit the gravity. Mars rovers operate in about 1/2 g and also have metal wheels, albeit of new designs.
All metal wheels are probably a good idea when the temperature varies from close to the freezing point of CO2 up to around 15oC in midsummer. The same applies for lunar wheels. It isn't just about the gravity, although that certainly matters as well.
Well, there are multiple levels of "take over the world." One is the simple (minded) possibility that they take over the world ideologically, by laying songlines across the entire planet for everyone to use. That would be consistent with the way Australia was purportedly laid out, and I'm not clear that their use of metallurgy would necessarily destroy the way of life described in books like Dark Emu (think sophisticated neolithic "farmers", not timeless savages)
Another level is the issue of colonizing America. Some people have proposed that the Americas were colonized by boat from Australia, something I don't especially believe, given the difficulty of sailing the Pacific and the very good archaeology available on a long list of islands. However, if we assume that the Americas were first colonized by humans around 20,000 years ago, and posit that the Aborigines started ironworking 30,000 years ago, it's conceivable that they would colonize the Americas, either by boat across the tropical Pacific, or ahead of (and/or with) the Siberians who did it in our timeline.
Mostly, I'm trying to find an alt-space that Turtledove hasn't gotten to yet. Also, given the work on Australia, describing the Aborigines as they were in 1788 would be alien to the eyes of most people in the US, and that would be fun in itself. Aquaponic eel culture? Fields of yams and domesticated-ish native rice? Why not?
"Take over the world". Right.
You know the difference between movie mad scientists and real mad scientists (like me)?
Movie mad scientists all want to take over the world.*
Real mad scientists want off this planet of the idiots.
You can scale the wheel to suit the gravity. Mars rovers operate in about 1/2 g and also have metal wheels, albeit of new designs.
There are dozens of design requirements with lunar and Mars wheels that are contrary to the needs of cars and bicycles. Unless cost is no object.
Just one example, rubber tires/tyres are great at not wearing much at all under stress (rolling) unless they must then they give up just enough. Such as when steering tires are adjusted without the tire rolling.
I suspect we'll need rubber or a close substitute for it for such things as airplanes fork trucks, or even bikes. Unless none of those exist which is a different type of problem.
Someone read one of Charlie's short stories:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3300/fc03217.htm
All steel {bicycle} tyres already exist.
I wonder how long until they make some that let you turn corners? I couldn't find video of anyone riding one faster than a walk or turning with any lateral force at all. It was apparently available for rides, so it can't have been too bad. But on the other hand I've ridden a perspex bicycle (also an art piece) and that was great as art.
Reminds me a but if the wobbly wheels that work really well for skateboards (apparently) but don't scale to bicycles.
https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/35812/is-the-shark-wheel-a-good-idea-for-a-bicycle
You know things are getting bad when the FT says the (British) Constitution isn't working Readable, because it's been re-posted by MSN news ....
it's at least possible that they'll be riding (bamboo frame) bikes (assuming there's still rubber for the tires)
I'm pretty sure that "bamboo" bicycles are actually oil-based plastic, just like every other "composite" material. Whioch has two problems: the oil; and the plastic. If you're not using oil for anything including tyres you're going to need to synthesis the epoxy that makes a bamboo bike work. And afterwards you have a chunk of non-biodegradable plastic to dispose of.
I suspect that the same particulate problems that will do for rubber tyred motor vehicles will do in bicycles. Fortunately the church of the motor car have lots of money to direct at a new solution (the old one being steel) so we may also end up with compostable bicycle tyres.
The whole plastic problem annoys me. Especially when yachties dump plastic into the ocean while wittering about plastic pollution and how they love the natural world. Yeah, then quit sanding your plastic boat into the fricking ocean, moron. But having worked on wooden boats I'm aware that "biodegradable" and "rots regardless of what you do" are synonyms. That's something I think we are all going to have to get used to. Especially once the biohackers work out how to digest plastic and turn it back into wee beasties. Even if we dramatically reduce the amount of plastic we excrete, there's so much there now that any solution is going to involve either geological time or a realisation that all our plastic stuff now rots just like timber does.
I would wonder openly whether "Take over the world!" is ideologically compatible with what we know of Indigenous cultures
pre-Australian indigenous culture, yes, but apparently I need to point out that Mongol indigenous culture had a pretty good go at taking over the world (one example of many!)
I suspect that dreamtime culture would not take over the world unless significantly changed, for the obvious reason that they didn't when they could have. They apparently didn't even go running round spreading ideas like agriculture to primitives in nearby areas.
I do wonder about time travellers dropping back 30ky or so to Australia and seeing just how far they could push things. There's no great chunks of easily accessible tin and copper AFAIK, but we have ridiculous quantities of accessible iron and coal very close together. And a climate + trees that make wooden railways a possibility as well (there are non-ironwood structures that might as well be after a century or two of hot dry conditions)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironwood it is slightly funny how many of those are Australian. Although I think the naming prize has to go to "Myoporum obscurum (Bastard ironwood)"
So far as bicycle infantry goes, my understanding of its advantages are:
You missed a logistics bottleneck with horses: during WW1, apparently 20-25% of all cross-Channel transport capacity -- that's one of the busiest waterways on the planet, just 22 miles from Dover to Calais -- was utilized transporting straw and fodder for the horses and mules on the western front. It's bulky rather than heavy but the animals need a lot of it. (Fuel oil in contrast is extremely dense.)
As someone pointed out later, they are older than you think; they are also not of any great use on their own, because the concept that integers can be negative, zero or signed is actually the key. A FAR more influential, equally simple and far less obvious one is the concept of a variable (i.e. post- rather than pre- Newton and Leibnitz).
Oh, for heaven's sake!
Not merely are ALL non-fuel uses small compared with small uses, oil will not simply run out - it will get harder to obtain in very large quantities and more expensive, but that is acceptable for non-fuel uses. And, as I said, industrial synthetic chemistry has moved on incredibly in the past half-century and isobutylene is NOT a very complex molecule - we could perfectly well use other sources, again at higher but acceptable cost.
Lastly, and you of all people should know better, Hevea hasn't been the sole known source of natural rubber on an industrial scale for over a century. Look up Congo rubber, for a start. And this is interesting, too:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131028114547.htm
No, they aren't, and they predate the existence of suitable plastics. Bamboo is an excellent structural tubing.
And all-steel wheels (I am not talking about the shark) are perfectly ridable, but extremely hard and rough to ride. An early one wasn't called the boneshaker for nothing.
Can you point to some examples? All I can find are art projects and plastic bikes. There are a few historical lugged+clamped frames in museums, but the modern equivalents I can find use glue rather than clamps. http://ghanabamboobikes.org/ is one of many that use epoxy.
I have moderate skill at lashing and have built two bike trailers out of bamboo. It was unreasonably difficult to build something that didn't need constant maintenance. I asked someone who had worked making bamboo scaffolding and they said vibration and especially bouncing makes the lashed trailer impossible. In the end I glued the lashings on the second trailer and that solved the problem. I suspect I could have used a natural, bioldegradable glue, but I couldn't find one in the minute I spent looking so I used an epoxy varnish instead. By then I already knew that the trailers were badly designed and would fail after only a hundred kilometres at most (laterally loaded tubes).
I know about boneshakers, which is why I'm only interested in usable steel wheels. I suspect that it would be possible to use 300-400 mm wheels and suspension a la Moulton, and the unsprung weight wouldn't be too horrible, but we're back to asking how big the bumps are.
There is a well-established, serious company that is pretty much at the centre of the contract-military system, and it is SAIC. Not many have noticed its existence.
«The "Arabs" ( Including the Palestinians ) were offered peace, on a plate, whole, unencumbered, EXCEPT for E Jerusalem, in late 1966, ion return for recognition of Israel's existence. "Land for Peace"»
My guess is that from their point of view that was not an offer of peace, but an offer of accepting defeat: "we have conquered your land and expelled you from it, and if you accept defeat we won't take more". They rejected it because they thought that like the crusader states eventually, in 100-200 years if necessary, they would reconquer it. Many of them still think like that.
I haven't looked closely at modern examples, and I accept that joints are a problem. Animal hide and hoof glues can be much better than are commonly believed, but finding a good one today could be extremely hard. My guess is that lugging, gluing and strapping would be needed, and it would be necessary to remove the outside layer of the bamboo where it is lugged.
You can, but that's probably three sheep per tire, so you'd run out of sheep rather fast.
Not really: the sheep intestines are an industrial by-product of animal husbandry for other purposes. Not as critical a bottleneck as, say, wool for sails on Viking longships (which took the output of a thousand sheep for a year to make a single mainsail).
Moz @ 741: Especially once the biohackers work out how to digest plastic and turn it back into wee beasties.
Back in the 1970s there was a science fiction TV series called "Doomwatch" where each episode featured some scientific research endangering the world. One episode featured a virus (sic) which would eat plastic. Trailer here.
a virus (sic) which would eat plastic.
IIRC, Niven's Ringworld civilization collapsed when a mold appeared that found their organic room-temperature superconductor material to be good eating.
Moz @752: , and a virus (sic) which would eat plastic.
That's "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater" by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler, 1971.
Allen Thomson @753: IIRC, Niven's Ringworld civilization collapsed when a mold appeared that found their organic room-temperature superconductor material to be good eating.
SPOILER: No, 'twas a virus what et the super-conductors, and it was introduced by the Puppeteers.
Viruses are, of course, like computer viruses: they're DNA or RNA code hacks to make copies of themselves, packaged to get into a cell. By themselves, they can't do a thing about plastic or petrochemicals.
Before I get into the slimy details of what can be done, just a wee little point: when organic substrates are broken down, usually CO2 and/or methane are end products. Do you really want to break down all those petrochemicals and add them to the air? Personally, I'd rather make them into nice, stable, non-leaching building blocks for building foundations, and bury them someplace for a few centuries.
Anyway, it's too late: lots of bacteria and fungi digest plastics, even petroleum. I suspect a fair number of you have heard of Diesel Bug? It's microbial contamination of diesel fuel, especially where water has gotten mixed in.
Plastics in the ocean are now being colonized by Vibrio and other bacteria. This is a nuisance, as it complicates the cleanup. Many of those plastic fragments aren't just pristine bits of junk, they're now well-holed with colonies of bacteria throughout, slowly breaking them down.
That's the other problem: plastics break down slowly, even under microbial assault. They will clean up our plastics problem and probably render further plastics and petroleum use rather harder. Unfortunately, they won't do it fast enough to stop civilization from collapsing.
In the final twist, the petroleum industry is leaning hard into plastics production for its remaining oil stocks, on the theory that they at least don't go into the air, even if they cause huge problems everywhere else. Greed gets so tiresome.
Okay, gory details time. The product I'm thinking of is called "goldbeater's skin," and it apparently is made from the caecum (=appendix) of cattle, about 2 ft2 (30x60 cm) per cow. It's wonderful stuff with a variety of uses, because it's gas tight (even to hydrogen), fairly easy to bond sheets to each other, and quite elastic, which is why it's used in pounding gold flat for gold leaf (hence the name). The WWI zeppelin gasbags were made out of the stuff, 200,000 sheets per zeppelin. That's why the Germans were not allowed to make any sausages while the zeppelins were getting built, because they needed all the cattle gut they could get for the war effort.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that goldbeater's skin is too fragile to make a tire by itself, so it would need to be encased in something. It's also fairly expensive, and in high demand for other uses.
Still, if you assume that you can use sheep intestines for comparable air bags (you can use sheep cecum for goldbeater's skin), sheep ceca are about a meter long, so you're probably going to need more than one per tire, and you're definitely going to need more than one per bicycle. And these airbags are less rugged than good old vulcanized rubber.
Suboptimal solution doesn't really cover it at this point. Probably you can make more headway by positing a biopunk future where zeppelin gasbags are made from cultured goldbeater's skin, grown in great industrial swaths on, erm....well, there's a serious shortage of agar, due to the zeppelin industry, and...you get the picture.
Assuming we need rubber into the indefinite civilized future, here are some viable solutions: Solving the problem of fungal pathogens on Hevea rubber trees is probably the simplest solution. We know how to grow this at commercial scale. It's established science and the USDA was even working on pathogen resistance in the 1940s, before they lost their feeble clue and abandoned the project uncompleted (for all I know, the remnants of their test nursery still exist).
The next simplest, SFF solution is to posit that current attempts to engineer dandelions to express commercially viable quantities of isoprene latex actually work, and we get great fields of dandelions making rubber, perhaps propping up the English economy post-Brexit.
Elderly Cynic's proposal to restart the Congo Rubber trade is tone deaf even for him. That particular uncultivated rubber vine was the subject of King Leopold's ventures with the Congo Free State. Even assuming the Congo rain forest survives climate change, don't we have enough atrocities going on right now to not reignite old ones?
Or perhaps we can establish a dandelion based English Free State overseen by the Brussels, to terrorize rural England? That would be poetic justice.
"Personally, I'd rather make them into nice, stable, non-leaching building blocks for building foundations, and bury them someplace for a few centuries."
Nice trick if you can pull it off. Not everywhere is as dry as where you live and, not merely do compressed plastics leach, many of them float - NOT a great idea when the soil is saturated, let alone when the water table reaches a foot below the surface!
You're talking bollocks, again. You are not usually so appallingly ignorant about botany.
I was pointing out that there are other species of plant that provide industrially usable latex. The fact that we haven't explored them for plantation use doesn't mean that none are usable. You should also look up Landolphia owariensis, and you will discover that it is widespread over tropical Africa, from east to west, in both jungle and savanna, and other countries produced rubber from it (without the atrocities). Given that, it could almost certainly be grown in other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landolphia_owariensis
"don't we have enough atrocities going on right now to not reignite old ones?"
I saw only a proposal to cultivate a particular species of plant. There was no indication of any intent or requirement to put someone like Leo the Shit in charge of it.
But this whole discussion of rubber is daft really. We produce craploads of different kinds of polymers for which both the synthesis of the monomers and their polymerisation are a lot more complex than is the case with isoprene. We also produce synthetically polymers of monomers which are very nearly the same as isoprene but with minor differences like a methyl group missing or a chlorine tacked on. The only major difference with cis-polyisoprene is that it can be extracted from certain plants. That is not at all the same as saying that it can't be produced in any other way. If those plants didn't exist that's what we would be doing already.
Though without the plants to direct us down a certain path in the first place, we might well not be wanting so much of it. There are plenty of other elastomers to choose from which are more stable and less liable to degradation, and which can be modified to give a much wider range of particular properties. I have my suspicions that the main reason we aren't already using more synthetic alternatives to natural rubber is something to do with the people who harvest it probably not being all that much better off than the ones who used to get bits chopped off them.
Damn interface. For some reason it posted before I finished. I do not know how good the production of latex from Landolphia is in savanna, but the fact that it grows there indicates that it could be grown in less endangered ecologies. The link in #709 was an exploration of this matter for the USA, and came up with a long list of plausible candidates. No, this is NOT a problem.
I shall not descend to your level and accuse you of supporting the deforestation that is so often done to create Hevea plantations.
Seconded.
"Apollo lunar rovers were used in 1/6 g environment, so every bump and impact was six times less severe."
Not so. Think mass, not weight.
They were used to drive gramophones, mounted in the wooden case of the gramophone itself. I don't see that a slightly bigger one for a Leslie speaker would be anything more than slightly more difficult.
The problem is the feedstock for isoprene. The three sources I've been able to find are: --Plants, of which Hevea is the only one commercialized in plantations, despite a LOT of experimentation to find alternate sources, --Petroleum, which is the other commercial source --Beer, which is technically possible, but a joke otherwise.
Now, EC is on his usual "prove everything I say is wrong" kick, but there's been a lot of experimentation to try to get other rubber source to grow on commercial plantations. Landolphia hasn't worked on plantations, nor has guayule, nor have the ficus rubber trees. Dandelion experiments just started a few years ago. Here's the startup pitch for them: https://www.americanrubber.com/.
Oh, and we're likely to run short of barley for beer, since ironically it turns out that barley does worse under climate change than most grains. Hope you like beer from wheat, sorghum, or manioc.
So yes, there's a bit of a problem out there.
@764 Heteromeles
[ "Oh, and we're likely to run short of barley for beer, since ironically it turns out that barley does worse under climate change than most grains. Hope you like beer from wheat, sorghum, or manioc." ]
Hate to break to ya, bro, but at least here in the US, most commercial brands of beer have long been brewed from rice. Which is why so many of don't drink those brands, because they don't even taste like beer is supposed to taste!
https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/5D5hJPpbfk/#:~:text=Anheuser%2DBusch%20is%20the%20largest,large%20portion%20of%20the%20grist.
[ "Rice has become more popular as a food in the west with consumption in the United States rising sharply, possibly because so much is used to make beer. The vast majority of the rice consumed is white rice, in which the bran coat has been ground away. Anheuser-Busch is the largest single buyer of rice in the United States. Budweiser beer is brewed with rice making up a large portion of the grist."]
I have a much funnier prediction.
Who needs rubber? There is one context in which steel wheels are a comfortable ride. On steel rails.
So, I give you: The Ultra-Light mono-rail network. Grade separated up on poles (or hell, if the weather gets really bad. A tunnel system, though I would hope things do not get that dystopic), with recumbent aero dynamic bogies, electrically assisted for the infirm, and also used by various drones. You rattle your way to the nearest on-spur, cycle up to the top in low gear, type in your destination so the automated switching system knows where you want to go, and off you go. For a long haul, hook up in a chain with other cyclists for even better areo-dynamics. For a really long ride, hook said chain up to a rented electric micro-locomotive.
The Edison effect was (re)discovered in 1880. Boolean algebra was invented in 1847, and Babbage presented an early version of his Analytical Engine in 1837. I submit that all the technology was there in 1880 to build a vacuum tube digital computer, just drop a few hints what an electron was (discovered 1897), how to build a triode, and introduce a few logic circuits, and you're off and running!
Not sure about the downstream effects on WW1/WW2 though....
Oil is NOT running out, nowhere near. We are reaching a point where the harder to extract stuff is becoming non profitable, and outfits like BP and Total are walking away from vast nonviable reserves.
For a dose of schadenfreude you can always go and watch the Tory government in Alberta behave as if that hard fact isn't, and that the only reason their economy is in a deathspiral is because of nasty environmentalists and the hated Trudeau family. 40 years ago they also managed to blame the end of the OPEC oil embargo - which had meant a tidal wave of cash for the Alberta oil economy - on the rest of Canada and Pierre Trudeau specifically.
We will likely never run out of oil, but the cost of extraction will continue to trend up while demand trends down as electric motors and battery tech make ICE noncompetitive. We will certainly run out of cheap oil. We might see an increase in cost for plastics and rubbers, but that is unlikely as they are almost byproducts of current production.
"I was thinking of giving mainsprings to the Mycenaeans sometime around 1600BC."
The trouble with mainsprings is the amount of energy you can store in them is fuck all, so they're only really any use for things like clocks and toys. Making anything like a vehicle that can power itself for more than a few metres is out of the question. What Pratchett omitted to mention about Detritus's CPU cooler helmet was that it would need winding every few minutes.
To be sure, having decent clocks would probably make quite a difference, but you can run a clock with weights; what you really need to know about is pendulums and escapements.
If you want to give them springs, give them leaf springs, so they can make cart suspensions. Of course, what that basically amounts to is telling them how to reliably make good steel.
The history of making steel tends to be described in terms of the spectacular things and the big efforts, like Bessemer converters blowing out storms of sparks or how to make a furnace when just lighting an ordinary fire is advanced science. But the really important part is learning how to close the loop. Lots of testing, chemical analysis, and record keeping. The properties of steel depend very strongly on what are often very small proportions of all kinds of elements other than iron in the mix. Learning what those are, how they affect the properties, how to accurately determine those small proportions, and how to adjust them to your needs, is how you get from steel-making being a matter of using this ore and this flux and dancing in a circle round the furnace and hoping it works, to being able to reliably produce steel in quantity with the particular properties required. The reason mass steel production came so long after mass iron production was that it was waiting for the knowledge of chemistry and the scientific method.
Aargh! I should have looked up my (currently rather inaccessible) reference library rather than relying on my aging memory. In 1948, there were 9 (NINE) species of plant in 8 genera grown commercially for rubber production, plus (historically) Ficus elastica, ignoring the at least 13 where it was harvested from the wild (including Congo rubber).
And, as I and pigeon have been trying to explain to you, modern industrial chemistry is quite capable of synthesising compounds like isobutylene out of the raw elements, if necessary, though it would almost certainly use something easily available (like ethylene).
When you are in a hole, stop digging.
Chrisj @ 704: I agree, but (again) the request I was answering was for the least significant item that could produce major changes in history, and I don't think giving someone a fully equipped forge counts :)
That's why I suggested the translation of Bessemer's patent ... what's less significant than a piece of paper?
Doing a 1632, but to 1632BC instead, would have even more dramatic effects (provided the library was suitably stocked and there were people in town who could make themselves at least loosely understood in ancient languages), if we're going big.
If we're going big, may I suggest S.M. Sterling's "Nantucket" series, even though it's set in 1250BC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket_series
Air bags, from natural materials?
Can't imagine where you'd get that... pardon me, I'm going to go listen to that bagpiper....
Heteromeles @ 708: But the basic point is that it's possible to work metal without metal, so that tech transfer is possible.
So how did the first guy do it with only stone tools?
Re: 'establish a dandelion based .. Free State ...'
Not sure whether it's that I've been gardening more (sensitized) or if fewer people are using the lethal-to-all-weeds/ecologically dangerous products but it seems there are more dandelions everywhere.
How many dandelions do you need to get a liter of rubber?
Just wondering whether dandelion weeding could be another of those boy scouts/girl guides/kids sports association fund raising options (like collecting beer & wine bottles for recycling) given that since dandelions seem to be super-invasive therefore unlikely to run out anytime soon. It'd be a win-win-win situation: gardeners get their lawns weeded, kids raise money for their associations, rubber manufacturers get some raw materials.
Absolutely. Basic physics / mechanical engineering depends mainly on the concept of a variable (or something equivalent) and the scientific method, but chemistry / minerology /etc. is harder to bootstrap. Unfortunately, the former is of relatively little use on its own, because the limitations of primitive materials rapidly become a bottleneck.
A more plausible bootstrapping technology is the combination of really basic probability / statistics and systematic plant-breeding. You can just about explain the former without needing the concept of a variable, too, and it might have been possible even in Hammurabi's time.
Re: ' ... here in the US, most commercial brands of beer have long been brewed from rice. ... they don't even taste like beer is supposed to taste!'
Unfortunately true - have been buying only European and Canadian brands for years now. Corona (Mexico) is also good. Also kinda surprising considering that US wines continue to improve. Is this some sort of class thing, i.e., beer drinkers are uneducated plebes, they'll never notice.
The most innocuous bit of earthshaking tech I can see transplanting backwards would probably be a tablet that outlines the scientific method, with a couple of helpful examples.
Hand that off to a few bright minds in various places and things would rapidly become unrecognizable. Fun to write about.
Imagine Columbus meeting a steamship patrolling the Eastern border of the Aztec or Mayan empire...
work metal without metal ... So how did the first guy do it with only stone tools?
Fire treated hard wood mallets would seem to be good enough for soft metals. Not as fast or long lasting as a steel headed hammer but seems doable.
Re: 'You can just about explain the former [stats] without needing the concept of a variable,...'
Okay, I'm game - show me. Seriously, I'm interested.
I've been wondering why any civilization that had a census and a tax system didn't come up with some sort of statistics -- at least the descriptive sort. Maybe stats on its own isn't enough and you need a handle on fractions to make sense of and use stats/probability.
Note that I said "just about". Take, for example, a test of the survival of two varieties. You can model whether that could happen by chance by tossing a coin the requisite number of times; repeat that a hundred times, and you get an estimate of how often it could happen by chance. That's explicable without introducing any more mathematics than ratios - and those predate the use of fractions in arithmetic by millennia.
Actually, descriptive statistics (i.e. as data) are as old as censuses and systematic tax collection - what is needed for plant-breeding is analytical statistics.
Speaking from experience (and damnit, my granddaughter is nine, so probably too old) it takes one std. large paper shopping bag full of dandelion flowers, picked by a small child, to make a gallon or so of dandelion wine.
Scott Sanford @ 712:
It occurs to me that the snarky answer would be, "From as far away as possible." Incoming fire is much less fun than outgoing!
It was a snarky question, so a anarky answer is probably best. It was originally in the context of teaching a class on the "NBC-1 Observers’ Initial Report", which includes a line for "Location of the attack" and the Intersection/Resection question was a check to see if anyone was still awake & paying attention.
Back in the optical rangefinder days some variation of intersection was preferred, since oceans are notoriously lacking in landmarks. The parallax of human eyes was insufficient once we progressed beyond black powder cannon; I'm sure you've seen pictures of optical rangefinders, and may have used them yourself, and the idea of putting the eyes effectively farther apart is straightforward even if making it work required much clever engineering.
The depression range finder strikes me as a resection approach, as it compares the bearing of a target to the known (but difficult to observe directly) point at sea level directly beneath the shooter.
Is that a useful answer?
Coincidence rangefinders would be a variation of finding the distance to a target by Intersection. The only rangefinders I ever got to play with were stadiametric or later laser rangefinders.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/M67_sight_full-stadia_picture.png/400px-M67_sight_full-stadia_picture.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/GVS-5_LRF.JPG/440px-GVS-5_LRF.JPG
I don't quite understand the "depression range finder", so I don't know if it would be Resection or not.
Celestial navigation, where you find your position at sea by comparing the bearing to a couple of known stars (at a given time), and looking up where the bearings cross would be Resection ... I'm pretty sure it would be ... but I used to teach Land navigation, so don't take that as gospel coming from me.
There's another cultural issue: a lot of things didn't spread because it was a master smith (or whoever's) secret, that they didn't want to let go, because someone might do more and take their trade away from them.
And that change (improving taste) takes time. Back in the mid-sixties, I remember reading an article in the NYT Magazine, about a huge labeling scandal in France. They reported that in one case, the inspectors came into a room, and found a vat of Moroccan wine labeled "suitable for sale as burgundy to Americans".
gasdive @ 730: Re bicycles as war machines.
I've heard it convincingly argued that the Americans lost the American war in Vietnam because they couldn't knock out bicycle supply lines and that the bicycle was the decisive factor. No real point to my post about that other than the slight amazement that no one has mentioned it in a discussion of bicycles at war.
I'm pretty sure the United States lost the war in Vietnam for the same reasons the British lost the American Revolution. Not being able to knock out the Ho Chi Minh trail made the fight more difficult, but it isn't why we lost that war.
"The problem is the feedstock for isoprene. The three sources I've been able to find are: - Plants, of which Hevea is the only one commercialized in plantations, despite a LOT of experimentation to find alternate sources, - Petroleum, which is the other commercial source - Beer, which is technically possible, but a joke otherwise."
OK, so we'll ignore beer then :)
But the first two are not really the same. Plants like Hevea give you cis-polyisoprene - it's already in the chemical form of rubber, it more or less just needs to be taken out of emulsion.
Petroleum doesn't really give you isoprene at all. It gives you stuff you can make isoprene out of. You then polymerise the isoprene to make polyisoprene rubber. Nearly all the polymers we use are made like this, from ones which are chemically nearly the same as polyisoprene to ones which are very different. Isoprene is just a very ordinary and undistinguished member of a multitudinous crowd.
We do not have to get rubber in already-polymerised form out of a tree any more than we do something like polystyrene; we could make it from raw materials just as easily as we make polystyrene. Or we could also just as easily make other things with physical properties similar to polyisoprene but, for example, better resistance to degradation.
It will take much longer to run out of petroleum in feedstock quantities than in fuel quantities, but we don't have to use petroleum in any case. We can use anything that you can chop up into chunks of a few carbon atoms with useful hooks and holes on. Any biological matter, more or less, will do; there is no need for it to have been cooked underground until all the oxygen has gone out of it. You then reassemble the chunks into what you actually want - the standard petroleum method. Different specific techniques, but the same principle.
I'm not sure how the amount of rubber you can get out of a rubber tree over its lifetime compares with the size of the tree itself, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a similar amount of rubber just by chopping the empty tree down, digesting it, and using it as feedstock, as you can manage to dribble out of it while it's alive.
Thought for Roman bicycle tyres: there is a kind of seaweed which is basically a long chain of bollock-sized bladders connected by cords at either end. They are incredibly tough - you can pound them with a jagged rock and not even mark them - and they have to be a long time out of the water before they dry out enough to start to weaken. If you lived near the coast, or if you could find some way to cure them like leather so they didn't dry out at all, you could wind lengths of this stuff round and round your wheels between the spokes and not have to worry about carrying a puncture kit. You'd just have to make sure you never ever went anywhere by sea or Neptune would have you for cycling on his nuts.
Pigeon @ 763: They were used to drive gramophones, mounted in the wooden case of the gramophone itself. I don't see that a slightly bigger one for a Leslie speaker would be anything more than slightly more difficult.
I did a search for "gramophone with sterling engine" and came up with this1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV5-s3b_0S0
The guy who posted the video added a comment:
Which I guess there's some kind of selector to choose the speed, which would solve the problem of switching between "Tremolo/Chorale" on a Stirling Engine powered Leslie.
1 I believed you, but I wanted to see how they did it.
JBS Ther British lost the FIRST Slaveowners Treasonous Rebellion, because the slaveowners were supplied & aided by royalist France ( And then joined by Spain ) ... which made control of the sea-supplies um difficult ... Without that massive foreign aid [ That subsequently bankrupted France & led to their revolution ] the "USA" would have been utterly crushed.
Pigeon "Oarweed" is the one I think you are talking about. Laminaria didgitata Also look up "Kelp"
When I was young, we had a Corgi - the civvie successor to this.
No, it wasn't terribly practical, but it was definitely fun and less of a pain to fall off than a full size, full speed bike
"the Intersection/Resection question was a check to see if anyone was still awake & paying attention."
Ah, I was wondering why it was so bloody daft.
I am familiar with the method but I hadn't heard it being called two different names depending on which way round you're doing it. "One side and two angles" defines a triangle; the two known points give you the side, then you measure the angles between a reference line and the lines from those points to the thing you want to locate. Sometimes that thing is you, sometimes it is the hole on Trump's golf course that you are trying to land a cone shell in just after he has golfed into it, but either way the method is "taking bearings".
Certainly the land technique is also used in coastal navigation, though you usually take three bearings rather than just two, so the size of the triangle you get where they're supposed to cross gives you an idea of how accurate the position is.
Thomas Jørgensen @ 766: I have a much funnier prediction.
Who needs rubber? There is one context in which steel wheels are a comfortable ride. On steel rails.
So, I give you: The Ultra-Light mono-rail network. Grade separated up on poles (or hell, if the weather gets really bad. A tunnel system, though I would hope things do not get that dystopic), with recumbent aero dynamic bogies, electrically assisted for the infirm, and also used by various drones. You rattle your way to the nearest on-spur, cycle up to the top in low gear, type in your destination so the automated switching system knows where you want to go, and off you go. For a long haul, hook up in a chain with other cyclists for even better areo-dynamics. For a really long ride, hook said chain up to a rented electric micro-locomotive.
But you're still going to need to travel over roads from your origin to the "nearest on spur" and once you get off the system you're going to need to use roads to reach your ultimate destination.
The bicycle gave the Good Roads movement one of its early boosts, but the movement originally came about because the railroads could not realistically provide service to every location where people needed to travel, particularly where people needed to travel locally, and individually.
Railroads, even in the form of people pod monorails, are not a solution to individual travel needs in an exurban environment. Trolleys & Subways & Commuter Rail work in the city; inter-city railroads can carry people & goods from one city to another but once you begin to get out beyond the first ring of suburbs, these collective forms of transportation do not serve individual needs.
Roads do.
No, not either of those two. It's cordy rather than flat and it has these great big bladders. Like the hindgut of a rat with a sequence of turds in it except it's black all over and the turds are human bollock sized.
David L @ 778:
Fire treated hard wood mallets would seem to be good enough for soft metals. Not as fast or long lasting as a steel headed hammer but seems doable.
The point is, it is NOT impossible to work metal without metal or we'd still be stuck in the stone age.
the "USA" would have been utterly crushed.
Uh, keeping 1/2 of their forces sitting on ships in NYC harbor the entire time had nothing to do with it.
Or terrible generaling in general. Yorktown was a really bad decision by the British.
But yes the French lending a hand did make a difference. Big one. At a minimum it forced the end to happen when it did.
Myself @ 782:
That should be "snarky answer" rather than "anarky answer" ...
And I didn't notice that the reference to the "depression rangefinder" was a link to an article in Wikipedia ... I still don't quite understand how it works and whether it would be resection or not.
This one?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Algae_bladder_4290.jpg
I don't know what it is (except than it is one of the brown algae).
"The Ultra-Light mono-rail network... For a long haul, hook up in a chain with other cyclists for even better areo-dynamics."
So it's a Martian monorail, then? :)
The trouble is that very few people are going to be able to balance a bicycle on a rail for longer than the minimum necessary to fall off it. Every bicycle would need a separate gyro-stabiliser to stop it falling off. Like the Brennan monorail.
My idea is much the same as yours except it doesn't rely on bringing your own vehicle. It has its own Brennan-type pods, which have roofs to keep the rain off. The seating area is gimballed to the balancing chassis. For people to get on and off, the chassis uses its gyros to rotate itself around and down to hang underneath the rail, which it hooks on to with broad flat hooks so that other pods can run over the top of them while it is stationary. The gyros are made big enough to also act as flywheels to store propulsion energy for at least a few hours; unloaded pods periodically visit charging depots to spin them up again.
It's similar to that except that it's smaller and the bladders are more closely spaced in relation to their size. But that's certainly close enough to illustrate the kind of idea I was thinking of.
That's the other problem: plastics break down slowly, even under microbial assault. They will clean up our plastics problem and probably render further plastics and petroleum use rather harder. Unfortunately, they won't do it fast enough to stop civilization from collapsing.
I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
Suppose bacterial evolution that creates rapid plastic decay. Anything made with plastic becomes weak within months. Then, after another year of further evolution, plastic becomes week within weeks and falls apart in months. With increasing levels of decay forecast.
The massive societal retooling is just too hard - irrigation systems failing, all modern airplanes down, everyone's computers falling apart, most household appliances failing, key tools in most factories failing, most modern vehicles wrecked, etc. Nasty!
We have the technology to not use plastic. But that doesn't mean we could switch to that quickly or easily. Remember Gruinmarkt from "The Family Trade": having access to a technology doesn't magically give your society the processes, expertise and economic setup to use it, and the fact that your society overall "wants" something doesn't mean the right actors in your society have the right incentives to do the right things that will make it happen.
It seems surprisingly plausible as technological apocalypses go. Bacteria didn't evolve with this as a food source, but they're already eating it slowly.
David L @ 794:
Uh, keeping 1/2 of their forces sitting on ships in NYC harbor the entire time had nothing to do with it.
Or terrible generaling in general. Yorktown was a really bad decision by the British.
But yes the French lending a hand did make a difference. Big one. At a minimum it forced the end to happen when it did.
You're still confusing battles won and lost of whatever cause for the Reasons for the war. And those Reasons sustained the Americans in the Revolution despite all the battles they lost.
And those Reasons sustained the Vietnamese despite all the battles they lost.
I have frequently heard veterans describe the Vietnam War in terms of "We won all the battles, but lost the war".
Why did it turn out that way? Hint: It ain't got nothing to do with bicycle logistics along the Ho Chi Minh trail or whose side the French were on in either war.
PS: That's a rhetorical question. I already told y'all the answer.
PPS: Is that "utterly crushed" the way the British would have been in the Hitler war if not for Lend-Lease & U.S. intervention in the U-Boat war during the Battle of the Atlantic.
Stupid, ungrateful sod.
...Ah. Think this is what I was thinking of: http://www.irishlichens.ie/pages-seaweed/s-02.html
The mass is the same, but the speed at which it impacts the seat is different due to the low gravity. I'm not sure what that does to the impact, but it would definitely be lower than impact on Earth.
Presumably multiple layers of leather strips might work for tires in the absence of pneumatic rubber, and be replaceable/repairable to a degree. Not for a comfortable cruise, but likely for a soldier on a forced march/ride. Add a trailer attachment of some kind and the soldier could carry more kit.
Make it a tandem bicycle and soldiers can deal with more problems. Figure out some gearing system...
That's why the Germans were not allowed to make any sausages while the zeppelins were getting built, because they needed all the cattle gut they could get for the war effort.
Aren't German sausages normally made of pig, not cow?
I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
"Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" by Stanislav Lem. Except in it bacteria eat paper, not plastic.
Sorry, that comment was meant to be a reply to Heteromeles @755.
My reply to Greg was: hard to know. The critical battle of the war was definitely the British vs French naval fight in Chesapeake Bay, that led to the British troops being unable to evacuate Yorktown. But like most revolutions the US revolt was largely about hearts and minds. The British made some serious mis-steps there.
JBS: Seems to me that the odd thing about the US revolution is how minor the initial reasons were - a few sparks, and then it just sort of fed itself.
The 1760 saw protest and unhappiness over taxes, ham-fisted British anti-corruption moves, and the slow-down on colonial expansion into Indian territories. The taxes being the big deal. But tax protests (and even tax revolts) happened often in this era - in Europe, in European colonies, and within the US after the revolution too - Washington quickly switched from running a tax revolt to leading an army suppressing one.
Then the 1770s were a typical slide into "Law and Order!". That is, initial protest meets over-reaction (because "Law and Order!"), sparking outrage and more violent protest, which then leads to more brutal over-reaction (because "Law and Order!"). Until most of the American revolutionaries complaints are about things that are being imposed on the colonies in reaction to their protests and insurrection. The Boston Massacre, the Coercive Acts, the Quartering Act... it's all British over-reaction to protestors.
Until the Americans mostly wanted Liberty from the things being imposed on them by the British in the name of Law and Order because of American protests demanding Liberty.
(Yeah, I'm seeing analogies here.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Algae_bladder_4290.jpg
If your bollocks are that size then I think you should waddle off to a doctor ASAP.
http://www.irishlichens.ie/pages-seaweed/s-02.html
And in a mild case of nominative determinism, photos by Jenny Seawright.
For efficiency I expect that a human-powered monorail would be suspended rather than balanced. The Shweeb works that way, for example.
The real issue is that overtaking is impossible. So your peleton of high-powered city suits on their way to a Very Important Meeting is just going to have to dawdle along behind mum taking grandmother to the doctor, because that's the way it is. Even the narrowest of white paint bike lanes allows people to overtake by momentarily leaving it for the adjacent roadway, and of course the smarter people simply make separated bike paths that are wide enough to be usable. But a monorail that allows arbitrary swapping between adjacent tracks is perilously close to a flying bicycle.
https://www.shweeb.co.nz/
@ 804 ilya187
["Aren't German sausages normally made of pig, not cow?"]
It's the casing, not the meat.
https://www.quora.com/Was-sausage-making-really-banned-in-WW1-Germany-to-keep-the-skins-for-building-Zeppelin-Airships
Sausage is made from every kind of meat, separately and in combination. Also all sorts of herbs and spices, including fruit and cheese. Shoot, last night we brought home pheasant sausage from the Farmer's Market.
Growing up on our farm, we always made sausage in the fall, a lot of different kinds, including venison sausage -- with lots of pork, because venison by itself is too dry, thus the need for the pork fat. That venison sausage -- o that was good.
JBS The "reasons" for the first slaveholders treasonous rebellion were idientical to the second: Greed ( Of a powerful & vocal subsection of the local population, with good access to publicity ) And the ability to con & bulshit a large-enough proportion of the population to swallow it. EXACTLY like D J Trump & the Brexiteers, come to think of it ... Oh dear. [PPS Fuck right off - your ignorance is profound] - oh yes - Icehawk Your reference to the Battle of Cheaspaeake bay is the correct one ( I think ) The Lore'n-order analogy is probably correct as well, & scary.
Pigeon AND: "Bladder Wrack"
I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
Well, I used it in a self-published book, but it was set on an alien world, as the excuse for a sword-and-planet exercise: the local wood was made out of what we consider plastic polymers, so the decay ecosystem thought our plastics and lubricants were especially yummy, making high tech fairly temporary on the planet.
I think the most likely scenario for an apocalyptic version of this is that people get extremely serious about using bacteria and fungi to remediate organic chemicals in the environment, especially fuel spills in soil. If we get a bit too good at getting these to break down, our plastic infrastructure will suffer.
Like you, I agree that it's possible to have some sort of civilization without petroleum, mostly because we did a decent job of it up to 150 years ago. With, I must add, about 90% fewer people on the planet, but still.
The interesting problem is that the more we transition off petroleum products, the more we make 20th Century civilization irrelevant to the future. Basically our story becomes an object lesson, less about how Americans made it to the moon, and more about how in 150 years or so, we took 400 million years worth of fossil fuel accumulations, basically squandered it, and left our descendants (who hopefully will be in the hundreds of millions, not thousands) holding the bag and inventing very different ways to live their lives. It's depressing to be , but what are we leaving them that really matters?
On time travelers bringing disruptive stuff:
Cartesian coordinates and graphs. Perhaps some practical examples of how they can be handy.
Not bladder wrack - you can pop the bladders on that in your fingers. The knotted ones are as tough as old boots and you can't burst them no matter what you do. Only when they have been stranded above high water mark for long enough to dry out completely and go hard is it possible to damage them; then they are brittle, and when you crack them open you can see they have a kind of closed cell foam structure inside.
Thanks Foxessa, beat me to it.
I will add, since I've been deep-diving into airships for the last few months, because Steampunk, that the Graf Zeppelin probably wasn't lifted by 250,000 cow caeca. IIRC, the Hindenberg (and presumably its sister ship the Graf Z) had airbags made of silk doped with gelatin, which is a lot more scalable, if not as hydrogen-tight.
For my steampunkery, I'm actually thinking of going the pseudo-Japanese route: The WW2 Japanese fire-balloons were made out of traditional Japanese paper, laminated two-layers thick, and they held hydrogen for five days or so, enough to get some of them across the Pacific on the Jet Stream. I'd fiddle with exactly what the paper's made out of and coated with, but paper gasbags so far seem the most scalable, non-plastic gasbags available for steampunk airships. If you're into plastics, then polyethylene and mylar are your go-to materials.
And in more airships 101, dirigibles, blimps, and semi-blimps tend to be compartmentalized like submarines, with multiple gasbags inside an outer envelope of a different material (nylon, nowadays, doped fabric in the 1930s). The also have ballast airbags that suck the outside air in and out to keep the ship trimmed. The reason you don't want one gigantic gasbag lifting your airship is that, if the gas all rushes to one end, you've got very few options for getting the ship back to level. It's much easier if there are multiple lift bags and ways to pump gas back and forth among them.
I suddenly remembered a question Kroeber asked Ishi, about what he valued most in American society.
His answer? Matches.
So if you wanted to make people in the classical world happy, teach them enough chemistry to make matches.
And if you don't like that, there's always the answer in Lest Darkness Fall, which IIRC revolved around teaching the Romans about the fine arts of distillation, copper piping in stills, and moveable type.
Rocketpjs @ 803: Presumably multiple layers of leather strips might work for tires in the absence of pneumatic rubber, and be replaceable/repairable to a degree. Not for a comfortable cruise, but likely for a soldier on a forced march/ride. Add a trailer attachment of some kind and the soldier could carry more kit.
Make it a tandem bicycle and soldiers can deal with more problems. Figure out some gearing system...
I remembered some bicycle "tyres" being laced onto the rims and I kind of thought about how Native Americans laced deerskin moccasins. Along with that, I was thinking of how various animal intestines have been used throughout history and sort of melded the three ideas. Lacing a leather tire onto a rim would confine the inflated sheep's intestine tube the same way a rubber bicycle "tyre" confines modern rubber inner-tubes.
I was just thinking in response to the comment about not wanting to ride a bicycle with steel tires over Roman roads (even if I did miss the bit about how the Romans had the resources and would have understood the technology to make vulcanized rubber) ... and trying to keep to the spirit of "least significant" additional technology ... leather-work & inflated sheep's intestine bladders seemed to be technology the Romans would have already been familiar with
As for gearing ... someone mentioned the Romans would probably use a knotted rope drive & I guess they could figure out something similar to modern Derailleur gears that would work with that.
IIRC, the basic unit for the Legions was the Contubernium, so perhaps a bicycle mounted Mechanized Legion might have their Contuberniums mounted on four singles and two tandems with a pair of light trailers to haul the shared equipment and switching off to share the load?
Ten Contuberniums forming a "Centuria" or Fifteen Contuberniums forming a "Maniple".
With perhaps auxiliaries mounted on some form of quadra-cycle pulling "artillery", engineering equipment and providing logistic support.
I thinking this Mechanized Legion would be used more like Dragoons than Cavalry.
Re: 'ratios'
Yeah - I forgot about that - can't do basic Euclidean geometry without these.
'Descriptive stats' same as 'data' ... ? ... Guess we differ in our use of stats/stats terms.
I guess they could figure out something similar to modern Derailleur gears
Derailleurs are a precision device. At the very least you need a parallelogram with little slop and a fairly precisely calibrated spring. And I can imagine shifting the V belts in a drill press while it's running, but I reckon I'd run out of fingers pretty quickly. Doing that on something like an anchor windlass using chain seems unworkable (in fact two-sprocket windlasses exist but are unpopular because of the difficulty of shifting gears)
It would probably be easier to make a two speed hub gear, with or without a brake. That's a relatively simple concentric gear setup and can generate a substantial ratio change with little difficulty, where derailleur setups have a very small maximum ratio between gears because the chain has to be able to jump up onto the next larger sprocket.
Heteromeles @ 815: I will add, since I've been deep-diving into airships for the last few months, because Steampunk, that the Graf Zeppelin probably wasn't lifted by 250,000 cow caeca. IIRC, the Hindenberg (and presumably its sister ship the Graf Z) had airbags made of silk doped with gelatin, which is a lot more scalable, if not as hydrogen-tight.
If memory serves the lift bags were silk (for structural strength), lined with Goldbeater's skin to make them gas-tight.
_Moz_ @ 819:
Derailleurs are a precision device. At the very least you need a parallelogram with little slop and a fairly precisely calibrated spring. And I can imagine shifting the V belts in a drill press while it's running, but I reckon I'd run out of fingers pretty quickly. Doing that on something like an anchor windlass using chain seems unworkable (in fact two-sprocket windlasses exist but are unpopular because of the difficulty of shifting gears)
SOMETHING SIMILAR The wouldn't have to do it exactly the way we do it to use a SIMILAR principle.
It might be worth while some of you theory-geeks grabbing a bicycle and having a play with some of your ideas. You don't have to go the whole "ride a Rhodes Car across a grassy park", just load a couple of 10kg sacks onto the crossbar of a bicycle (or rear rack if you have one) and push the thing round a local park, ideally including an unsealed hill track.
I suggest that in practice a Chinese Wheelbarrow, ideally one with a metre high wheel, is going to win out for practicality in a whole range of situations. Especially if you have four or more people. You can quite easily get one that will take 4x large backpacks plus additional luggage but can still be carried fully loaded short distances by those four people.
The advantage of that is that it only needs ~10cm wide flat ground, and on largely-flat surfaces can be run quite fast with the occasional "hup" to jump it over problems. Sure, not the 200+km in a day you can do on a bicycle with sealed roads, but faster than actually carrying the weight in almost all situations. Plus only one wheel to worry about, and no drivetrain (you will want brakes though!)
I have taken my full loaded human powered quad on hard gravel roads and it's doable, but even on paved roads it's shocking how little slope it takes for it to be faster to get off and push. The drivetrain is just not very efficient despite costing a fuckton and being a remarkable engineering achievement in its own right. The cheaper and "more efficient" single stage derailleur gearing was grossly unreliable due to the extreme loads put on it (less than 1000km between chain and cassette replacement, for example)
You can fit those with more usable tyres for soft ground but they make it possible rather than easy. https://trisled.com.au/off-road-cargo-quad/
This was my setup - aerodynamically a brick, but it's dry inside that box and very easy to pack.
http://moz.net.nz/canc3/photo/quad-wet.jpg
So if you wanted to make people in the classical world happy, teach them enough chemistry to make matches.
What would that be? I kind of know how to make black powder(*) but not matches.
(*) Though obtaining elemental sulfur might be a problem. Is there a good-enough-substitute for it that's more generally available?
Unless you can describe "something similar" I don't believe it can be done. The reason I gave examples is to suggest that in the world of "chain like drives" I have a lot more experience than the average bear. I have built a whole lot of different bicycles and bicycle-like things. Viz, I am claiming a level of expertise that I believe merits a bit more respect than "I'M GOING TO SAY IT AGAIN, BUT LOUDER".
I believe my analysis deserves more than "I'm going to SAY THAT AGAIN, BUT LOUDER.
Re: '... large paper shopping bag full of dandelion flowers,... to make a gallon or so of dandelion wine.'
That's not bad at all. The fields around the local schools looked like they were covered with a blanket of golden yellow last spring because all unnecessary work (grounds-keeping) was put on hold.
I've never tasted dandelion wine but google search results suggest that depending on accompanying ingredients it could pass for white wine or a lemon aid with some serious punch to it. Some of my neighbors started veg & herb gardening, so if we're all still stuck mostly at home next spring, maybe we could give this a try.
The outdoors geeks are currently fascinated by spark+tinder kits rather than matches. It should be possible to come up with a couple of chemical enhancements that are practical with ancient tech, rather than the "titanium+magnesium+cotton" kits that you can buy now.
Clickspring makes a "fire piston" that involves way more precision than I think is reasonable for a DIY bootstrap, but his charcloth tinder could probably be enhanced with a dried-to-gum flammable material or even wax to become a leap ahead of what most ancients had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epfzuDmSGH0
Also, remember that before "safety matches" there were lots of the other sort 😬
I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
Ill Wind by Kevin Anderson and Doug Beason.
Oil spill in San Francisco, bacteria is used to clean up the spill. It gets loose and starts eating oil and oil products, including plastics.
Sorry for the mismatched HTML tags. Ill Wind is the title, Anderson and Beason the authors. Published in 1995.
The remark about matches would have been around 1920, so we're talking red phosphorus matches. Here's an overview: https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/11/20/matches/. It's phosphorus, antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, and ground glass.
The chemistry is probably within the grasp of the classical world. Phosphorus they didn't know, but it was discovered by distilling urine, so I think the chemistry would have been doable in the classical world. Antimony sulfide is the kohl that Egyptians applied as makeup, more or less. Potassium chlorate is the tricky one, as the ways to get it involve production of chlorine gas, although that can be made by making aqua regia (a 12th century invention that's a mix of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid). So tricky nasty stuff, probably need a lab and a rich backer, but if you can set it up in a factory, a lot of people might be happy.
And yes, fire pistons and all the rest are quite cool. But matches are easy.
Re: '... vat of Moroccan wine labeled "suitable for sale as burgundy to Americans".'
A triple hit - three national stereotypes in one comment!
Just looked up Morocco - seems Morocco has excellent soil and climate for viticulture. Too bad I'm no longer in a major urban area - wouldn't mind trying some.
Which makes me think that the most disruptive thing to take back wouldn't be Bessemer's patent, but rather the concept of patents generally. Being able to make more money from telling people how to make better stuff than from making better stuff means more better stuff.
But if you can't do that... The concept of rubbing 3 rocks together to make something near perfectly flat. Without a flat reference the modern world of tools is pretty impossible.
You're probably right, and I'm sort of right.
Couldn't find anything on the Graf Zeppelin at airships.net, but the older zeppelins all used goldbeater's skin, so there were probably 250,000 cattle appendixes or some such in the Graf.
The Hindenburg, which came later, used cotton cloth doped with gelatin. That's what I remembered: https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/hindenburg-design-technology/.
Airships.net is a good site for airship stuff, for those who are interested.
The subject of post petroleum petrochemicals is addressed in the latest "Just have a think"
https://youtu.be/xPVEyYlgDq8
Nice recumbent, looks "Neo-Amish".
There’s a few (smoky) mountains in Italy where chunks of elemental sulfur may be found laying about.
Re: 'Modern' inventions that would change history ...
Seems that many if not all components of what we think of as major inventions had been around for quite some time before being officially 'discovered'. Begs the question: why? Was it because these items weren't considered relevant in our particular history, i.e., because they didn't fit the-then notions of war, economics, other? Or was it because they weren't 'invented' by us (Europeans) therefore ignored like the printing press.
https://lithub.com/so-gutenberg-didnt-actually-invent-the-printing-press/
'Building on earlier Chinese attempts to create movable type, he adapted a method that had been used for minting bronze coins to cast 3-dimensional characters in metal. Then he arranged these pieces in a frame, coated them with ink, and used them to press sheets of paper. When he was done, he could reorganize the metal characters, eliminating the need to persistently chisel blocks. It was faster—to a certain extent. He completed the project in 1250 AD.'
BTW - the first stab at a printing press was around 800AD in China. Minted coins go back to 500BC and were issued by every major civilization (Europe and Asia) from then on. Technically, if you can do one, you should be able to do the other. So why did humanity wait 1,300 years to invest in the mass distribution* of knowledge? Universities started appearing in Europe c.600 AD so the idea of pooling and sharing knowledge was already underway.
Would be interesting to read a future history where dredging through the past becomes the surest way to usable 'new' discoveries.
799, 805: I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
"Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater", by Kit Pedler, published 1971. Apparently based on the Doomwatch TV series.
648: I'm aware that some people, amazingly enough, do not want to spend an hour listening to some nerd natter on...
I remember some time ago watching a program about history and warfare. A historical re-enactment team designed, built and tested a medieval trebuchet, comparing it with other types of siege engine type weapons. They found the trebuchet was remarkably effective because of the consistency with which it could deliver the payload to almost the exactly the same place time after time, once the range and direction were adjusted. It could pound away at a castle fortification from well outside the range of archers, until it was reduced to rubble.
Seems that many if not all components of what we think of as major inventions had been around for quite some time before being officially 'discovered'. Begs the question: why?
I'm currently kicking around notes for a 'Discoveries Humans Could Have Made Earlier' convention panel and this is coming up a lot. There are things that aren't necessarily useful, and practical, and affordable. Lots of things were technically possible but didn't scale up to widespread use; there are lots of near misses where not everything came together at once.
Bicycles crossed my mind already; both pneumatic tires and gearing look difficult with Roman technology but they might have managed a penny-farthing bicycle or similar. It might have made trousers popular earlier...
Gasdive suggested the idea of patents, but I think that would require empire sized government supervision; otherwise people will just go over to the next city and start doing the thing there. I'll come back with an idea that should have been possible in Mesopotamia: post offices. As soon as you've got a literate population you've got people wanting to send messages to each other. This could be started as an in-city messenger service (and I'm not aware of any historical evidence that such things weren't tried); after that it's an obvious next step to expand coverage to other cities. It could become a government function both because governments send lots of messages and to justify being very strict with thieves.
684: ...I (naively) expect ebikes to be ubiquitous before eCars become the norm...
Visiting Shenzhen and other cities in south China, it is impressive how quickly electric vehicles of all kinds are becoming the default, ranging from what look like crude bicycles with an added battery and electric motor, through lightweight and larger electric motor scooters, up to taxis, buses and a significant proportion of private cars.
In the case of electric bikes and scooters it seems to be encouraged by the lack of inconvenient regulations forbidding their use on the road (or anywhere else).
Conversely for taxis and buses it is the result of a clear decision by the Shenzhen city government, such that ALL taxis and buses operating in Shenzhen are now electric and have been for some time. All this in parallel with a huge expansion of the city underground metro system, from only four lines a few years ago to 12 lines now, and still increasing.
The local lifestyle supports this use of short range electric vehicles. Day-to-day most people travel only short distances, between their homes and work, school, shops, etc. Most residential areas or apartment buildings are mixed use, with a selection of shops, restaurants, bars, etc. either on the ground floor of the same building or within reasonable walking distance. For longer distances, people use public transport, both within a city and between cities. The only times people travel long distances are holidays, perhaps once or twice a year, such as the Spring Festival at lunar new year.
10KG on a rear rack of a bike?
Let's see, the week of US Thanksgiving, 1969, riding from the Acme on 5th St back to 8th and... whatsit. With a frame pack on my back. Including a 22lb turkey, frozen.....
"White wine? "Lemon aid"? Not hardly. I've had sweet, moderately sweet, and dry, which was too dry at the time for me, but I'd probably love now.
It tastes, um, yell. Not lemon. Not quite white.
See Bradbury. Most folks agree with him, that it tastes like bottled summer.
While you're working on moveable type, why don't you publish the instructions.
With a hectograph. 23 or more copies, no trouble.
Why, yes, I have put out a fanzine on a hectograph made commercially, which the sigh late Ned Brooks sent me in '67. 8pp, including, I kid you not, a four-color illo....
Koreans reportedly invented a moveable type printing press 200 years before Guttenberg. But it didn't travel that far.
The precursor for printing was woodblock printing, of which the earliest example known from China showed up in 220 AD. They were making pages of books to print long before they got around to moveable type. But woodblock printing would actually be a good, simple, transferable technology, because it can be used to print patterns onto cloth, as well as onto paper.
One big enabling technology is actually kilns and bellows, aka hotter fires. To my inexpert eye, there seems to be a correlation between how hot someone can get a furnace and a wide variety of technologies, especially pottery/ceramics, metallurgy, and chemistry. Most of these have to do with melting things. And when you can make a kiln or a furnace, the hotter you can make it, the more you can melt, and the more you can make with the stuff you melt, mix, and cook. I don't know of a civilization where they had high temperature ceramics (like porcelain) without also having iron or steel metallurgy. Conversely, I don't know of a society that only made terracotta pots (or the "beach fired" pots of Melanesia, which are low temperature pots fired in a campfire on the beach), and also forged their own metal tools.
That's another part of the idea of a time traveler teaching aborigines to smelt and forge iron. Once they can make a fire hot enough to bloom iron, they can cook all sorts of other rocks to find and work with other things, like gold, silver, copper, bronze, ceramics, and so forth. That's what seems to have happened when people discovered bronze making back around 3000 BCE. All of a sudden, all these alloys show up in the archaeological record. It's pretty obvious that people were taking every weird rock they found and heating as hot as they could, just to see what happened, then mixing them to see what happened then. Even without the warlike angles, being able to produce and control really hot flames leads to all sorts of discoveries.
Also, remember that before "safety matches" there were lots of the other sort
Wow. I'd forgotten about those. As an early teen or younger you were cool if you could hold them in one hand and light them with your thumbnail of that hand and then use the match.
There's so much deleted and edited stuff in this thread, can't focus too hard on the misses and this is the edited shit we spoon feed you.
Let's just say: Patriarchs, and especially Autocratic[2] will never fucking understand why WAP nudity (GASP WOMAN MASTURBATING) to balance out WASP psychosis from a fucking wedding of all things will tie into 5871... they just can't process it.
"Poof" it's just a word. But for us, that's an entire library gone.
As they say: there's about Nine Minds on the planet who can, and you killed six of them.
~
Comment from [redacted]: those were some incredible Jumps. Those aren't conceptual or logical ones either: it's modal temporality and psychosis weapons.
Why bother? Debts, Concepts of Zero.
Anyhow: TENET (film) is a complete mess (last stage manages to stage an entire battle... with absolutely no spotting of the enemy or even why temporal weapons would work there or even... why conventional weapons on a CS:GO map would be the actual battle ground, it'd be... on your screen and in your head?)
We mention it because it's like true, but wyrder: check out the WAP flow in this thread.
We're faster than you, but making sure you Apes survive, well, major cost
Autocratic ---- mean that word said by this account many many times, core concept, used multiple times, against their primitive Tribal level "ISMS". This is how it works for us: Mind Wipe of Concept.
It's a shit trade and they don't have to pay it: they just brainwash another X thousand Apes to bleat their Mind state into believing it.
Problem is: check the temporality in this thread. They do axial, we do... global.
[2] Not the word we're looking for. Currently running a Jungian debug on like 300,000,000 people and it's eating this (Actual) Brain Cortex like Swiss Cheese. It's the word this account used constantly. Autocratic. ... Opposite of Anarchy, current world governance. Mind Wipe, dear. ... Costs so much.
[1] When Greg screams "Dementia" he's being rude. But it's fairly accurate what it costs us for like a 10,000 : 1 ratio of what you're doing to your own fucking species to stop the specific Mind Cortex destruction and switch into lower level (lizards!) responses. And we've been doing this for tooooo long. Chernobyl? Try some Jungian (this is not accurate, it's a fucking analogy) for what we've doing.
WRT 'Modern' inventions that would change history:
Germ theory of disease. Once you've got disease figured out then comes sanitation. With those two down, mortality falls, you don't need to have so many children so more resources can be devoted to raising the ones you do have, including education. People aren't dying as young or as often. More time is available for other pursuits.
You are also spurring on the concept of scientific thought - hypothesis, experiment, result, repeat.
Or was it because they weren't 'invented' by us (Europeans)
This comes up staggeringly often in the context of groups that arose outside the family tree that led to civilisation, or progress, or advanced cultures, or whatever eugenicist drivel the bearer wants to push. Having just (re)read about pre-Austrlian hominids Dark Emu is a good summary of many things "invented" in Europe and their ancestor cultures that were old news to the primitive savages down here.
I think the idea of progress and the need to expand might be the two major inventions that distinguish the superior from the inferior on that scale. Almost everything else falls under the "so obviously it follows that..." heading.
Even "expansionist empires" in many other places and times found themselves limited by their adherence to notions of a unified culture/empire and/or dependence on a particularly adventurous ruler. I'm not ruling out either of those as limits on our current dominant culture, just saying that it's possible that one reason the Chinese didn't occupy Europe was possibly that they wouldn't be Chinese if they did. Similar to how the various North American colonies aren't British, but if you can imagine them and especially their rules really wanting to be British (like Tony Abbott in Australia... oh, but wait, he is British).
Note: crude removal of "Being" there.
Hey, kids. Yeah, MiM ones.
You're gonna bleed out the ears when the bill comes due.
"Phil... we're leaving"
Yeah. Shouldn't have laid all those undersea cables, we're singing a song for the Orcas and your 101010001 data is a VIBE.
~
Don't give primitives L.O.P / H.O.P abilities.
I did say 10kg on each side, because a single 10kg sack is an annoying thing to carry on most bicycles. But your point is valid, 10kg or 20kg on a bicycle is no big deal once you have paved roads with gentle inclines.
What I was very specifically talking about was the ideas from various people that bicycles are awesome at getting heavily loaded people moderate distances quickly without paved roads.
So, grab your turkey and whatever the heck else, pile them on your bike, pick a 100 mile unpaved route of your choice and off you go. You've got all day...
Oh, and for Greg.
Yeah, we know that looks like what alcohol does to a Human Mind / Dementia. Or a couple of electrodes and an AC current. Or a couple more complex chemicals. Or a EM wave and zero fucks.
Here's a tip: not done that way. Done complicated way. Done nasty way you don't know about.
And not the primitive RU/CN/Cuba way.
But we're nice, and we don't want y'all on a list. So you get a fucking out. And the "y'all" here is, like: 700,000,000 of you.
~
Seriously.
Run the fucking WAP codex above. We're just... better than you.
"Make you Famous": Young Guns - Blaze of Glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvuRp2IG-g
This is a reference to a USA .mil unit. Stares at Goats and so on.
you don't need to have so many children
The cultural overhang on that seems to be more than a generation.
It's slightly hard to tell since in many places all the other baggage that we whiteys got with our germ theory is missing or unavailable. Which in turn makes large families a good idea even when you know exactly why so many kids are dying (fire from the sky, organised famine, genocide, politics...) In a twisted way the low birth rates in "advanced" nations are a testament to the triumph of optimism over evidence. If you really think the current capitalist system is going to provide you with a comfortable old age there's no need to have any kids at all, let alone an unaffordibly large number of them. But... I like big buts and I cannot lie.
One can also make a good argument for the cost of children, the age at which they become productive, and their likelihood of supporting you in your old age. In our time, kids are expensive, become independent quite late, and are likely to have to move away to find a living. Who needs them? Whereas if they're herding livestock when they're five, independent as teens, and there to take care of mom when she's sick, more is better. Especially if the childhood death rate is high.
That's the conventional argument, at least.
Been there, done that. Not fun. But it's more fun than walking loads that far.
Absolutely no argument from me there. I am a big fan of wheels!
I just got new wheel bearings for my bike trailer* so now I'm back to having choices for moving things. The gap in my gear is slightly odd as cyclists go, it's the "more than one pannier, less than 4" one between my lazy bike with a large handlebar bag, and the big yellow bin bike**. I still have the quad and the trailer, but I find the bin bike + trailer does a lot of what the quad used to do, but faster and lighter. And, admittedly, easier to access because the quad lives under a shelf in the back of the garage.
I really want access to a welder again, because there are things I want to build. Ben @ Trisled is very obliging but it's not the same having to describe/sketch what I want and have him build his interpretation of it. Especially when I want a wheelbarrow, and I'd like to just buy a 787 wheel (36") with a 20mm through axle and throw together a wheelbarrow frame to see what happens. Paying someone to do that then chop it up and modify it 10 times is just annoying.
Heteromeles The really difficult bit is starting the production of "strong" acids, when the most powerful you have is Acetic ... It can be done, though I forget the complicated details - can someone fill this in, please?
These definitely existed - Assyria and Babylon both had postal services using clay tablets and clay envelopes by 500BC. Primarily for state communications, but there are quite a few letters that appear to be routine business transactions between third parties. The later Assyrian empire effectively invented the Pony Express for royal communications.
There are some superb examples in the British Museum.
I did 10km from home to the railway station, followed 70 km over mixed road and unpaved ground with about a 1000 metres of elevation change (Bathurst train station to Hill End via the bridal track) in an afternoon as an utterly unfit asthmatic lad with all my camping kit, riding a supermarket road bike without any problem. (I was approached by someone in a 4wd who was practically in tears asking how much further, and that's no exaggeration, though I'm not sure if his distress was due to the state of the track or the state of his wife who was yelling him). I rode for fun, didn't push myself and enjoyed the day out. The next morning I rode back to Bathurst the long way via Sofala (80km) and caught the train home. Another 10 km from the railway to home on top for 170km (90 km on dirt) in 2 enjoyable days.
In contrast ultra fit super motivated Royal Marines took 3 days to cover 90 km across the Falklands and arrived totally knackered.
I think there's something to be said for the utility of bicycles. Even without paved surfaces.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomp
Just to come back to the original topic of this thread, the FinCEN files.
Banks are moving vast sums for criminals and then filing the required suspicious activity notifications late or not at all. Compliance officers are routinely ignored, or fired if they get too loud.
The amounts make my scenario of some hackers creaming of a couple of hundred million look like very small beer. For many of these people £1M is a rounding error; they probably pay more than that in bank fees.
Hey, don't knock it - at least the UK are #1 in the world at something !
oops, forgot the supporting quote:
"Over 3,000 UK companies are named in the FinCEN files - more than any other country" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54226107
Yes. I have some workboots that I use in the garden (for only 1/3 of the year) - 20 years of exposure to the bacteria in my highly 'organic' compost and soil has largely destroyed the oil and chemical resistant soles :-)
Heteromeles is dead right - 'biodegradable' means 'will rot in use'. Even things that aren't often break down in use. We need to stop denying it, and live with it.
I have always admired bikes of the design pattern that Maxi Me thingamy instantiates. Having seen the asking price, I did once resolve to make my own with parts from the op shop, gumtree or found on the footpath during hard-rubbish pickup week in my burb. It would be the angle-grinder-carbon-fibre-and-buckets-of-epoxy school of redesign.
I haven't got there yet, of course. One of these days maybe...
And it's usually the small intestine, anyway, though the large intestine is used for large sausages. The claim may be right, or may be an urban myth.
Anyway, for a REAL diversion, here is a sausage recipe, which can be made without pork. Take a domesticated duck, and debone it. Mix it with an equal quantity of lean meat (I used pork, but chicken would probably do), a small handful of bran or coarse wholemeal flour (to reduce frothing); flavour to taste with salt, some crushed green peppercorns, and the juice and zest of some Seville oranges. Mince coarsely, and then mince again, filling the sausage skins (synthetic if avoiding pork). Very good.
As you say. Derailleurs are far trickier and require more advanced technologies than most people believe, but some very early bicycles had two sets of sprockets (front and back?) and were changed over manually for hills. That would work. If you were talking about tandem trikes or quads (particularly useful for load-carrying), changeable gears would be feasible using simple toothed cogs. I believe that technology already existed in mills.
And, as gasdive says in #859. Been there - done that. But I really wouldn't like to do it without pneumatic tyres, especially when I was younger.
Sulphur's the easy bit - there's piles of it around many volcanoes, of which Italy has several.
Yes. As I have said before, the City of London specialises in 'legal' money laundering and gambling with other people's money, and that brings in a large proportion (approaching 20%!) of our foreign exchange. This is not a surprise.
Something else we lead the world in is the proportion of health service providers who have died of COVID.
You might not be surprised to know that Ben uses much the same process. What you're paying for is what JBS was objecting to above: someone who has experience building weird bicycles being involved (and also paying wages to people and of course you get a warranty). Atomic Zombie generally have pictures, often plans and many examples of odd bicycles (I find them very American in the USA sense of the term, and I'm not keen on the idea of providing plans to people who don't know what they're doing - that way lies the sort of mistake that lands you in hospital with no idea why it happened).
I operate more at the proof of concept end, often literally. I build one, someone else sees it and either builds their own or demands that a professional build them one. One Less Ute inspried a few people, and others valued my description of the process. I kind of treasure the follow-up email from Harry vs Larry saying essentially "you were right, our customers are insane" because they had wisely decided that even 150kg loads were unreasonably heavy, and I think also that no-one would ride a long wheelbase load bike down even one flight of stairs. I believe the warranty claims put paid to both those myths :)
If you grovel round the mozbike site you'll see that my usual process is to scratch build something out of dead bikes and scrap steel to make sure the basic concept works. I have learned the hard way to destroy those if I don't keep them because otherwise people will get hold of them and use them as though they were proper bikes. I generally ride those enough to see where things will break if at all possible, but sometimes they're obviously dodgy and the breakage will happen where I've used the wrong part for the job (the 300mm high "stem" on the binbike prototype had brazed joints in tension... a recipe for disaster. I lent that bike to someone and never saw it again, but received feedback that the single front caliper brake was scary when the bike was loaded up. To me the idea of loading that bike up was the scary part).
http://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/build/binbikeproto/new-load-bike-01-moz.html
Paul & arrbee DO NOT FORGET ... that bank is supposedly "British" ( Used to be "The Midland Bank" ) but "HSBC" stands for ... Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation So it needs careful & spook-scrutinised thought, maybe?
You may want to kick yourself when I explain. Take sulphur, burn it, and send the fumes through water .... Why it wasn't invented earlier, I can't say.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/alchemy-mineral-acids
Er, you DO remember that Hong Kong and Shanghai were British colonies, don't you? It's a fairly standard British multinational, and nothing to do with China.
"You've got the makings of a comedy of errors as Russians, sundry Israelis, occasional Americans, maybe a few African operators, all descending on a sleepy Gloucestershire village to try and identify the thieves who ripped off the wrong people."
-As long as there is a plausible explanation why they arrive at nearly the same time. Maybe an icelandic volcano eruption blocking air travel until the jet stream shifts away?
Flipflop hubs are still common on single speeds, it lets you have a freewheel when you really need it :) You can do slightly different size cogs if you are careful with chain length, without needing a second chainring.
I have made bike frames but I would never dream of making my own bike chain or even a 3 speed derailleur system without a decent milling machine at the very least. Hand building a two speed planetary at the bottom bracket, another at the rear hub for four gears would be one least-awful option IMO.
Steel would be the obvious material, unless you can research animal glues and hide lashings and so on here, then dump those back in time. We know at least some ancients had those technologies to some degree, but the limitations of archaeology make it hard to know just how good they were - it's even possible that really good ones were in widespread use somewhere but they rotted away to nothing within a millenia and we'll just never know about them (who built those Yonaguni Monuments and what's left in the city of Cambay?).
Yes, but I was thinking laterally, related to a design I thought of a long time back. The problem about ALL of derailleurs, hub and bottom bracket gears is that you need high-tensile steels and (as you say) precision milling - completely feasible before even the mid-19th century.
But, for long wheelbase roadsters, most trikes and quads, and many recumbents, you have ample room for a large gearbox in between, with a 'chain' drive both from the bottom bracket and to the hub. AND those chain drives can be used to reduce the stresses on the bears, so you are talking (say) about 10% of the tensile requirements. Movable gearing and materials adequate for that are ancient, though I take your point that we aren't sure how good they were in practice.
In case you are interested, the design I was thinking of was to have a suspended bicycle (or tadpole) with a full chaincase - all that is needed is to put a hub gear at the pivot (and a larger diameter pivot has mechanical benefits). Grease the chains (oil baths are silly, here) and you can say goodbye to pretty well all routine chain maintenance and replacement, and expect 50K miles out of ordinary (modern) chains, even under abuse.
That would combine well with another idea - a two-gear 4:1 step-down rear hub which, together with a Rohloff, would give a 21:1 range AND stay comfortably within Rohloff's torque limits. You want to transport a heavy load up a steep dirt road? Well, that's the sort of gearing you want :-)
Get the guy who built the Antikythera mechanism to knock up a couple.
It's slightly more complicated than that article suggests - burning sulfur mostly gets sulfur dioxide, you want sulfur trioxide to make sulfuric acid. Heating it further, ideally with a catalyst will oxidise the dioxide to tri-.
Messing around with this is the sort of thing that could shorten your lifespan in several different ways. It is not the way that I personally would try to advance technology if time-travelled into the ancient world.
Oh, yes, but one of the technologies transferred would be a catalyst, or the lead chamber process (and a way of making nitrogen dioxide). As far as your lifespan goes, that's what the Romans used slaves for. That is the case for almost anything involving chemistry - there's rarely one required factor. While the Romans COULD have invented it, they needed to put a lot of things together - and it's why physics predated chemistry in the modern scientific revolution. Boyle had the basic ideas not much later than Newton, but it took a while for those to appear in useful techniques.
And if you don't like that, there's always the answer in Lest Darkness Fall
IIRC, the protagonist in LDF tried and failed to back-engineer clocks (couldn't figure out the escapement) and gunpowder (didn't know the proper ratio of saltpeter, sulphur & charcoal).
The last time I read LDF, I was struck by how much the quality of the book fell off as it went on. The first part of the book had Martin Padway interacting with people, talking, arguing and so on. The second half was along the lines of "He did this, they did that, he then went and did the following," with zero character development. Plus the minor (for some values of minor) doses of sexism and racism were off-putting. However, since it was first published in 1941, you have to make some allowances.
As for something small with which to change history, a copy of Ryan North's How To Invent Everything would make quite a difference - you'd have to have it translated into the appropriate language, of course. And have one of the locals who got their hands on it actually act upon some of the information in the book, instead of regarding it as either (1) filthy heresy or (2) entertaining lies.
Re: Inventions
I'd really like to see the history of major inventions mapped like this - by empire/nation - on a poster. For a more detailed look/analysis, maybe one of those accordian pleat style fold out books. Keep thinking that if you show a large enough sample of key events/data within one picture, you're likelier to spot patterns.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/history-human-rights-timeline-isabelle-vladoiu
Even better for helping people understand the real-life aspects of something - whether an invention or a social construct - would be a BBC 'History of ...' series of docs. BBC's farming series (Victorian Farm below) were excellent - highly recommended. They also did a series on the British railroads.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4apIM4l0laY&list=PLtakTnKQQMCx0RPTVRn-XIp6kdtol7shK
Re: HSBC
This is getting interesting - HSBC seems to be caught between the East (PRC) and the West (US/UK/EUR).
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/business/hsbc-hong-kong-uk-intl-hnk/index.html
There was also a class action type law suit brought against them in April by their shareholders when HSBC announced that they weren't going to be paying out dividends becuz they want to shore up their liquidity becuz COVID-19. Really? - When was the last time liquidity was a factor in share prices. What not paying out dividends really does is screw the little investor who was relying on the dividends for his/her liquidity - money to pay rent, buy groceries, etc. It's the little investor that's out of work/no longer able to earn while at home while the banks have AIs (COVID-19 immune) doing all the earning for them day in, day out. Another (kinda underhanded) interpretation of the no-dividend announcement might be: HSBC was trying to scare small investors into selling off these particular shares at greatly reduced/bargain basement prices. This would allow HSBC to buy back some shares overall, buy back shares whose prices would bounce back rapidly (positive earnings), plus buy back shares that some gov'ts might have insisted on being honored* (paid out) even during a pandemic/cash crunch.
BTW - this outfit also has a crap rep for resolving customer complaints (approx. 24%).
Ther British lost the FIRST Slaveowners Treasonous Rebellion, because the slaveowners were supplied & aided by royalist France
... Just as North Vietnam was aided by the USSR. The analogy is perfect: have a lolipop!
What the Ho Chi Minh trail demonstrated is that using non-smart iron bombs from 50,000 feet up it's very hard to smash up a cycle trail under cover of a rain forest, and more generally that resupply of irregular non-motorized forces can be handled by the equivalent of smugglers' mules -- in this case, individual soldiers with bicycles doubling as wheelbarrows (which could be ridden home after they'd delivered their cargo). And also that empires are generally surprisingly crap at prosecuting an imperial war against a determined resistance on another continent with the aid and support of a rival empire.
I am not surprised that I have not met that as a dystopian apocalypse in fiction. Bacteria causing plastics to decay faster.
Let's see: there's the original "Doomwatch" episode, "Mutant 59", later turned into a novel Mutant 59: the plastic-eaters [by] Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis (from 1972).
There's Slow Apocalypse by John Varley from 2012 (caveat: I haven't read it -- I kinda went off his writing after "The Golden Globe").
A plastic-eating bug is a minor side-feature in Larry Niven's Known Space story arc, IIRC, although I can't remember if it was the mainstay of a novel or short story or just a random throw-away. I think it got mentioned circa Ringworld so he might have got the idea from Doomwatch ... or invented it in parallel, or maybe they both cribbed from the same source.
Anyone got any other SF uses of this trope? Because I'm pretty sure "plastic/oil/alkane eating bugs" is an SF trope at this point if it's been used at least three times, independently, in the past 50 years.
The key is energy -- if the bug doesn't get a lot out of the chemical effort required to consume the plastic then it will not thrive and reproduce. Evolution will have its wicked way though and gradually more efficient bugs will prosper but the Mutant 59 speed-evolution won't work absent a lot of authorial Handwavium.
The engineered war-bug on the Ringworld ate room-temp semiconductors preferentially which destroyed a lot of dependent high-tech everywhere.
In our world oil-eating bacteria are common especially in places were there are oil seeps like the Gulf of Mexico. They're restricted in their range though -- the Gulf-specific bugs have evolved in a high-energy environment where lots of sunlight can start the process of degrading any leaked oil that makes it close to the surface and they snack preferentially on the particular formulations of oil present in that locale which makes weaponising such bugs problematic. They are also dependent on a marine environment to provide a support skeleton for reproduction and an attack surface since food comes to them due to tides and currents. They would not perform well two thousand metres down in a hot acidic oil dome at 90 bar.
The giant floating debris fields of waste plastic in the Pacific will get eaten first because energy and UV-degradation of the plastic will give the developing bugs something to bite into, lots of hot loose C=C bonds and dangling -N crunchy-bits. Down in the Deep Dark there's less energy and everything will take longer.
As I said earlier, Kevin Anderson's Ill Wind from 1995.
I've read other works were oil-eating bugs were a plot element, but I can't remember enough details to find them. One had them as a biowar attack on OPEC that spread of the world, but I can't find title or author.
On the other hand, the ones that eat diesel just need pure diesel plus a few drops of water in the bottom of the tank. And they are everywhere; their metabolism may be anaerobic but they still manage to be around whenever a bit of diesel and water get together. Not to mention that polyethylene is often used to make diesel tanks, so it's perhaps a little surprising that they haven't already got to the stage of eating the tank as well.
It does strike me that one thing a plastic-eating bug would be useful for would be countering a Nestene invasion...
There was one rather odd SF story I recall reading about a bio-engineered bug that turned crude oil in wells into (close your eyes, Greg, you don't want to know...)
[Spoiler space]
Beer.
Hah, I've had a fridge on the back of mine. Could still ride it; what wasn't possible was pushing it, because without weight on the handlebars to balance it the front wheel just went straight up in the air. That problem, at least, is not one that happens with 25kg sacks of pigeon food, nor with a stack of old computers higher than my head.
The far bigger problem which makes itself felt even with far less cumbersome loads is keeping the fucking bicycle steady while you load it, instead of wobbling and flapping about and bending in the middle and falling over and requiring you to have a limb count like an octopus to be able to hold all the necessary things still at the same time. The thing needs a centre stand, a parking brake, and a steering lock. Once or twice I have seen bicycles, very old ones, which actually had a centre stand, but parking brakes and steering locks just don't seem to happen at all.
Mayhem @ 858:
These definitely existed - Assyria and Babylon both had postal services using clay tablets and clay envelopes by 500BC. Primarily for state communications, but there are quite a few letters that appear to be routine business transactions between third parties. The later Assyrian empire effectively invented the Pony Express for royal communications.
There are some superb examples in the British Museum.
I believe the modern U.S. Postal Service motto about "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night ... " originally came from a description of Babylonian "post office" couriers.
Charlie The USSR was aiding the N Vietnamese with supplies, & IRRC some tech, but the French sent an entire Battle Fleet to the W Atlantic - just a slight difference in the scale of support, I would have thought? The French were also attacking Britain all over the globe, & later on with Spanish assistance: The Great Seige of Gibraltar ( 1779-83 ) was during that conflict The scale of the opposing forces was somewhat different, so I'm afraid your analogy fails
JReynolds @ 879: As for something small with which to change history, a copy of Ryan North's How To Invent Everything would make quite a difference - you'd have to have it translated into the appropriate language, of course. And have one of the locals who got their hands on it actually act upon some of the information in the book, instead of regarding it as either (1) filthy heresy or (2) entertaining lies.
Doesn't seem to have the one section you're really going to want though ... "How to repair a time machine" 8^)
You can still buy "strike-anywhere" matches. And thank you, no, I wouldn't risk my (chewed) fingernails to light a match.
That's what the zipper on my pants is for.
I have formed the impression that many Chinese wouldn't want to live elsewhere. I mean, if you live in the center of the world, who'd want to live beyond the edge?*
And, of course, the rest of the world are all barbarians.**
** Barbar - that is, people who didn't speak Greek, per the ancient Greeks.
but the French sent an entire Battle Fleet to the W Atlantic - just a slight difference in the scale of support... The scale of the opposing forces was somewhat different, so I'm afraid your analogy fails
I sort of think that all those SAM sites and an air force of fighter jets was somewhat like a battle fleet in the 1700s. At least in terms of effect.
Wheelbarrow... from what you're saying, something like this? https://www.google.com/search?q=large+center+wheeled+cart&client=firefox-b-1-e&source=lnms&tbm=shop&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ0OD32frrAhXihHIEHZKoCa0Q_AUoAXoECA4QAw&biw=917&bih=506#spd=9987973117707975632_0
"Literate population"? Why do you have a problem with folks who can read and write making an income by writing or reading letters to/from people?
Y'know, like when my late ex was in jail, and helped other women who were apparently functionally illiterate (in FL) write letters?
Mostly agreed.
Wish I could find that handout I got in my soil biology class. It was the electrochemical potentials of electron donor and electron receptor reactions. It was a cheat sheet for coupling metabolic reactions that microbes of various sorts used (gold, hydrogen, methane, sulfur,iron...). It turned out that coupled reactions that took in oxygen and produced carbon dioxide had by far the biggest voltage difference. These were the only ones that were used by multicellular life, too.
It's not just the energy input though, it's ambient temperature, which controls the reaction rate. With respect to plastic settling in the ocean, the deep ocean isn't just dark, it's cold. Thanks to our polar ice caps, the deep waters are well-oxygenated. If we lose the polar ice caps, there will be less oxygen on the abyssal plains and valleys. Stuff that settles there will slowly decompose if at all, and there will be build-ups of organic-rich shales. This is happening now in the so-called dead zones that are growing around the oceans. And with climate change, those shales under the dead zones will probably have a lot of poorly-decomposed plastic in them.
It will be far from the first time this happened. Some previous eons have had ocean rafting ecosystems that were rather spectacular. The one we're making right now is getting increasingly interesting too.
Derailleurs.
sigh
And here I could come up with a bike driven by a LEATHER BELT, the way all machinery was in the 19th and into the 20th century, and a really easy wheel with a lever to move the belt to a larger or smaller pulley.
jcandiloro@848: Germ theory of disease. Once you've got disease figured out then comes sanitation.
The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper deals with this one. H.G. Wells' time traveller finds himself stranded in 1665. He tries to explain the germ theory of disease to the medical authorities of the time, but they see him as yet another in a long line of ignorant cranks and ignore him. He ends up writing his story (the titular manuscript) while dying of the plague.
Please. Please. DO NOT SEASON TO TASTE with raw pork.
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-medical-detectives/chapanal002.html
"A Pig From New Jersey".
Does this include https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/21/barclays-hsbc-shares-standard-chartered
where Paul Manafort, Trumpolini's campaign manager in '16, is implicated by the released papers, and we're talking $2T US - more than half the US federal budget?
Re: 'If we lose the polar ice caps, there will be less oxygen on the abyssal plains and valleys.'
Okay - but if the currents are also speeding up, doesn't this mean that more water is being mixed (probably at a greater depth/radius) therefore ...?
https://www.livescience.com/ocean-currents-speeding-up.html
Increased ocean currents also means that anything hitching a ride is getting there a lot faster.
SFReader @ 837:
Its a good question. For an answer I strongly recommend the TV series "Connections" by James Burke. It was first shown in 1978 (42 years ago!). Every decade or so I watch it again. These days you can find it on YouTube. To get you started, Episode 1 is here.
The series is a history of technology told by showing the connections between different developments. For instance, how the discovery of phosphorus led to the production of television tubes. The emphasis is on the people and economics much more than the actual technology itself, so you get a much clearer understanding of where the ideas came from and why it was that particular time when things came together.
I've also been haunted ever since by the first half hour, which discusses how fragile our technological civilisation really is. That and the fall of the Berlin Wall have had a major impact on my view of the world.
If you like "Connections" then you will also like "The Day the Universe Changed", also by Burke. He subsequently made some sequels to "Connections", but they aren't a patch on the original.
On the Antikythera Mechanism:
That was probably built by Archimedes. Although it is the only one which survives, it was almost certainly not a unique mechanism.
Which brings us back to SFReader's question @ 837: why didn't complicated clockwork become a regular part of human civilization back in ancient Greece? Answer: because nobody could see the point.
(Though I suppose if you could have shown Archimedes a pendulum escapement you might have triggered something).
Progress is a modern idea. Before about 1700 everyone thought that society and technology were more or less unchanging, and that the whole thing was a zero-sum game. The idea of inventing something to improve productivity, and thereby change society for the better, was completely alien. So no matter what gizmo or invention you take back in time, your biggest challenge will be to persuade people that this is important.
I have read a couple recently - one was Litany of Hope by Irene Radford, though the bacterium was derived from a message in a bottle from aliens.
In my youth, it was wasn't unknown to see a man, his (fat) wife holding their child and a full-sized sack of mealie meal on a single bicycle. The bizarrest thing I saw was someone riding with an oar for a racing eight on his shoulder; I still regret being on foot so that I couldn't follow and see what happened when he came to a corner.
Paul Same as both politics & economics were supposed to be zero-sum games. Putin & DJT still belive this to be so ..... Exception: The New Atlantis 1626 - Francis Bacon.
COVID-19 - Tell BoJo to get off his ass!
The UK's Premier Moron still has his priorities wrong. They should be save people first, worry about credit ratings second.
Seriously, this is not good. Stay safe folks - do not travel to the UK!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-k-faces-soaring-covid-19-deaths-1.5732192
Bicycle chain drives are high-torque, low-RPM applications, precisely what leather belts are worst at. They've been tried, in the early days, and they didn't work. Even when they do work, they are highly inefficient.
Firstly, I live in a country that has decent health regulations for food production (at least for now). Trichinella is essentially unknown in the UK:
https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/trichinella https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/trichinella-testing-in-feral-wild-boar.pdf
Secondly, and more importantly, when seasoning such things to taste, you fry a sample until properly cooked and taste that - you can't taste what it will be liked cooked when tasting it raw, anyway.
I was hoping to avoid the messy details. Here goes.
First thing to remember is that cold water holds more oxygen than warm water.
Second thing to remember is that salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water.
Third thing to remember is that dead zones happen because dead organic matter (poop and body parts) gets decomposed by aerobic bacteria. In doing the decomposition, they use up all the oxygen around them. If there's no more oxygen supplied, the water turns anoxic, making it toxic for aerobic organisms. "Dead zones" are often full of anaerobic bacteria, but these zones are toxic for aerobes. Since anaerobic bacteria generally work more slowly than do aerobic bacteria, stuff in dead zones happens to decompose more slowly. If it gets buried by sediment before it decomposes completely, you get a build-up of organics in the sediment, which eventually turns to shale. Heat shale deep underground, and the oils seeps out, and if it's trapped by an impermeable layer, you get an oil deposit. Takes around 50-60 million years IIRC.
Anyway, oxygen: Water at the ice caps freeze, but it's freshwater ice, not salt ice. The remaining unfrozen brine is too salty to freeze, but it still has surface levels of oxygen from being exposed to the atmosphere. It's also denser than the water beneath it, because it has more salt. These dense, salty, oxygenated brines sink into the deep ocean. There they displace the water already there, and are displaced by the water falling in from above them, so you get deep ocean currents that slowly move cold, polar oxygenated water around the abyss (this is the thermohaline "conveyor belt" circulation that's not a conveyor belt).
When ice doesn't form, neither does the dense, oxygenated brine, and so that water doesn't sink, so there's less oxygen getting into the depths.
When heats up, it holds less oxygen. The abyssal water IIRC is around 4oC, so it can hold a lot of oxygen. As it warms thanks to climate change, it will hold less and not get recharged.
Simultaneously, there's plankton blooming in tropical and temperate surface waters, because those waters are getting more CO2 (climate change) and nutrients, especially near river mouths (runoff pollution). As they sink, their decomposition sucks out all the oxygen from the waters beneath them, resulting in growing dead zones.
In an ocean (like the Jurassic) where the waters are warm, there's not much of an atmospheric temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics, and there are no polar ice caps, there tend to be big dead zones in the deep, and most of ocean life is concentrated in the top few hundred or few thousand feet where there's oxygen.* These conditions are good for producing oil shales, and the amount of oil we've sucked out of the ground hints that this is actually the more common state for Earth's oceans. What we're in now, with lots of life in the abyss, is the less common state.
*Some scientists think that these stratified warm seas favor air breathing marine animals over organisms with gills. There's some evidence for this (e.g. fish swim bladders evolved from lung-like organs, apparently because paleozoic fish breathed rather more air than modern fish do). Anyway, this may be the origin of the plethora of ammonites and toothy marine reptiles feeding on them in the warm seas of the Mesozoic.
Yeah. These idiots were tasting raw ground pork sausage.
Emeril or any other tv famous chef: screw you, I will NEVER cook pork below 175F or more. Ditto fowl.
80°C in real money ..... Approx the temp at which you can guarantee that proteins will be untangled. Even then, if you are using that low a temp, you want to keep it there for some time .....
That and the fall of the Berlin Wall have had a major impact on my view of the world.
Wife and I have been cleaning up and organizing debris from 30 years of marriage. I came across her travel "papers" from the early 70s to take the night train from W. German to Berlin. She tells stories about the train only running at night, curtains to be closed no questions asked, and when they made the few station stops the E. German guards walking the platforms with automatic weapons and guard dogs.
see what happened when he came to a corner.
And he may not have thought that far ahead. I have know such people in my life.
@ 854 Heteromeles
[ "Whereas if they're herding livestock when they're five, independent as teens, and there to take care of mom when she's sick, more is better. Especially if the childhood death rate is high." ]
This is not an adversarial response, but there's a whole lot you left out here, and we need to consider what is absent.
Um -- which mother? The deaths of women from pregnancy and childbirth and related conditions is astounding until sometime in the 20th century. A primary cause is the very youth of most women when they first conceive -- their bodies not yet fully mature. Also bodies of most women tended to be malnourished, and each pregnancy made it the condition worse, leaching out the calcium. The bromide, "one child, one lost tooth" was fact. So men in the Xtian culture tended to be serial monogamists in terms of marriage. It wasn't in the least unusual for a man in the 17th - 19th centuries to have had 5 wives and children by them all. Then factor in the recurrances of the bubonic plague, the sweating sickness, small pox, yellow fever, and the appalling ideas of how pregnant women were to be treated and the appalling methods of non-washing medical MEN taking over labor and delivery from midwives -- the death rate of women was astounding. Plus, you know, the women who didn't actually die, tended to be pregnant over and over, every year she remained fertile, even if each miscarriage, still birth left her more incapacitated -- and I'm speaking here just of the upper classes who could afford help. Jefferson basically bred his beloved wife to death. John Quincy Adams got so close to it -- 17 pregnancies for Louisa, mot of them miscarriages. Only 4 living children, and only JQ lived a 'natural' life span. Queen Anne had at least 17 pregnancies -- and quite a few biographers think there were more. This is what she died of. Not a single living child.
I just concluded reading The Lowells of Massachusetts: An American Family (2017) by Nina Sankovich. It begins in the 17th century with the first Lowell family moving from England to Massachusetts. Starting with that very journey, on shipboad a pregnant woman dies soon after her still-born baby. Every branch of the Lowells -- the very many families in every generation are followed, and one woman after another -- pregnancy, dies.
So do the children, of course, die at astounding rates.
But this tells you why the way you phrased your response leaves out a huge amoutn -- not that you wrote anything incorrect! It's just that you left out the cost to women of those big families of labor. Women not wanting to reproduce great big families when they are able to say no in a variety of ways, of course they do not!
Which makes the accounts of the marriages that survive these deaths even more lovely, for the marriages seemed to be happy and deeply loving, in a way that so many seem to believe didn't happen in such days. It's kind of like our own (meaning me and mine) experience presently. Either everyone we know are very happily married and have been for a long time, or are widowed and still sad from that loss -- or else they are unpartnered all together.
Indeed. And it would have been worth watching :-)
Farm road or US highway? (I think US 70 had edge lines, but I wouldn't want to bet that ti's universal. You still have to watch out for tractors, especially at night, even if the tools are folded up.)
whitroth @ 892: You can still buy "strike-anywhere" matches. And thank you, no, I wouldn't risk my (chewed) fingernails to light a match.
That's what the zipper on my pants is for."
Doesn't work that well with button fly jeans.
Replacing bicycle chains with belt drive is becoming more popular. My wife's GTech bike has a toothed belt drive and works well. This should be achievable with leather - perhaps combined with another material like hard wood for the teeth.
My father used an air rifle (BB type) for scaring crows out of the big elm tree in the back corner of their yard in west Texas - it was maybe 50 yards away, not much more than that. (Had to clear the windbreak, too: Russian olives sandwiching a row of black pines that were under 25 feet tall at the time. The elm was much taller than that.)
Paul @ 903: SFReader @ 837:
Its a good question. For an answer I strongly recommend the TV series "Connections" by James Burke. It was first shown in 1978 (42 years ago!). Every decade or so I watch it again. These days you can find it on YouTube. To get you started, Episode 1 is here.
Still my favorite TV series.
The series is a history of technology told by showing the connections between different developments. For instance, how the discovery of phosphorus led to the production of television tubes. The emphasis is on the people and economics much more than the actual technology itself, so you get a much clearer understanding of where the ideas came from and why it was that particular time when things came together.
I've also been haunted ever since by the first half hour, which discusses how fragile our technological civilisation really is. That and the fall of the Berlin Wall have had a major impact on my view of the world.
If you like "Connections" then you will also like "The Day the Universe Changed", also by Burke. He subsequently made some sequels to "Connections", but they aren't a patch on the original.
Big River has both programs available on DVD ... the versions I've seen on YouTube don't always seem to be very good rips.
All of the above. He doesn't seem to read well, he had help from siblings in school, he isn't bright at all, and he's remarkably ignorant of things most of us learned in grade school.
Like the idjits who decide to take out a tree without finding out where their friendly local gas pipe is. If they're lucky they don't blow anything up.
I've also seen videos of bulldozers hitting high-pressure gas pipe. Dozer found upside down in trench when things quiet down, operator...somewhere.
You also don't want to meet poison oak. It's pretty, though: shiny green with white flowers in spring, and oranges and yellows in fall. (As in "fall color" - why people in California don't do fall color locally.)
the modern U.S. Postal Service motto about "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night ... "
Nothing in there about neocons and fascists, is there?
Unfortunately McGrath is well behind in the political polls, despite being well-funded. There are other Democratic candidates who could use the money, and have a better shot at winning (Hegar in Texas, Espy in Mississippi, Harrison in South Carolina, Bollier in Kansas.)
(People have donated more than 100 million dollars to Dem campaigns since 5pm EST on Friday. Mostly small donations - under $100.)
The other invention they could use is the padded horse collar. Chariots weren't very useful before those came along (in the Middle Ages).
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night ...<\i>
DON’T ASK US ABOUT: rocks troll’s with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs. Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel’s. fog. Mrs. Cake
Terry Pratchett.
Before about 1700 everyone thought that society and technology were more or less unchanging, and that the whole thing was a zero-sum game. The idea of inventing something to improve productivity, and thereby change society for the better, was completely alien.
I disagree with that. People may not have set out to be 'inventors', but improvements were made and spread. The mouldboard plow, for example. Three-field rotation as opposed to two-field rotation. Horse collars.
There was a medieval English steward who wrote an agricultural handbook (whose name escapes me) who exhorted his readers that, if they didn't believe his improvements, try them and they would see that they got higher yields.
You'd have to introduce the whole numbering system, and explain why. Roman numerals work really well with the abacus. Arabic numbers, not so well.
Elderly Cynic @ 909: Bicycle chain drives are high-torque, low-RPM applications, precisely what leather belts are worst at. They've been tried, in the early days, and they didn't work. Even when they do work, they are highly inefficient.
Weren't the early Cotton Mills in England powered by water wheels using a line shaft to distribute power to multiple looms using belt drive?
You could use toothed belts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspixorm_vc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pMx5hIgZbU
The Romans used geared watermills, but I'm pretty sure they'd have recognized how a line shaft worked, so they'd probably be able to see the advantage in toothed belts. It wouldn't be a long stretch to adapt something similar for motive power on a "mechanical horse".
And if the Romans couldn't figure it out, I'm sure Archimedes could, so the Romans would just have to steal the idea once it was sufficiently developed to be worth adopting.
@ 910:
Firstly, I live in a country that has decent health regulations for food production (at least for now). Trichinella is essentially unknown in the UK:
And vCJD from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is virtually unknown in the U.S. Note the single case of Trichinella referenced occurred in New Jersey in 1942, decades before the vCJD outbreak linked to BSE occurred in the U.K.
Doesn't seem to have the one section you're really going to want though ... "How to repair a time machine" 8^)
Actually, there was a short chapter on that. It consisted of "The time machine cannot be repaired in the field."
So if you're parked in the Jurassic, you're out of luck. The book did have a checklist to determine approximately when you were, if you were stranded in deep time. So you'd know that at least before you went crazy from loneliness / were eaten by something / died somehow.
Any reasonable engineer designing a time machine would have an emergency signaling device installed.
Alternatively, in Time After Time (marvelous, romantic movie), HG Wells, when he builds his time machines, includes a key. If the key is not in the lock, the machine will automatically return after x amount of time (in both time periods).
P J Evans @ 918: Farm road or US highway? (I think US 70 had edge lines, but I wouldn't want to bet that ti's universal. You still have to watch out for tractors, especially at night, even if the tools are folded up.)
US 70 has edge lines most places I've been, especially the portions that have been converted to 4 lane divided roadways. I've driven most of US 70 from terminus to terminus (not all on the same trip) in both directions. Some parts I've driven alternate routes & split routes (Tennessee has ... or had ... US 70N and US 70S for many years) as well as the main route.
The other one I've driven much of the distance along old & new routes is US 64.
Both highways pass through Raleigh, and near my house (~ ½ mile) US 70 Business and US 64 Business run concurrently.
One of my bucket list items is to drive (and photograph) US 70 from Atlantic, NC to Globe, AZ and then swing by the Grand Canyon on my way to Teec Nos Pos, AZ and drive (and photograph) US 64 all the way back to Whalebone Junction at Nags Head, NC.
Assyria and Babylon both had postal services using clay tablets and clay envelopes by 500BC. Primarily for state communications, but there are quite a few letters that appear to be routine business transactions between third parties.
Thank you! I hadn't known it was so organized then and there. It doesn't surprise me, in retrospect, that this is well documented; clay tablets aren't great for portability or lightness but they sure do last a long time.
Postal services seem like an obvious thing for any stable civilization.
The CDC website is now officially controlled by toxic political operatives. (We already knew that.) Here's the uncensored CDC guidance that lasted a couple of days before redaction by political forces controlling the CDC, web.archive.org: How COVID-19 Spreads (Updated Sept. 18, 2020) This is the version that was rolled back today because the CDC is under orders from the political leadership to not scare people away from indoor places like workplaces or schools and does not want to encourage mask usage("speculation"). It mentioned airborne transmission. This version also moved masks to the second recommendation, after 6 feet physical distance, and was reverted to making mask wearing recommendation #4 after distancing, hand washing and surface cleaning. Or, as they say in the current version, A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website. CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted. Presumably, that will take some time, like until after 3 November. (Yeah, ... "speculation".)
Irritated.
... EMV 852 (and 847,850) Stares at Goats Curious, so I just acquired a book. ("The Men Who Stare at Goats", Jon Ronson) (Warming up.)
Also to Mike Collins (#920). You have completely missed the points - yes, OF COURSE, toothed belts work better, but that's irrelevant. If you look it up, you will discover that they are very recent (1940s), and small ones (as suitable for bicycles) were used only for low-torque applications (such as driving timing camshafts) until recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothed_belt
The force on a bicycle chain is typically in the 50-200 Kg range, but can go higher (I used to peak at 250 Kg, and am NOT a high-power rider). If you think that you can make an efficient (i.e. highly flexible), compact, toothed belt out of leather that can take those forces, I suggest that you try.
That is why I said they could use knotted rope - that COULD be made out of the available materials to take those forces. But it isn't compatible with changing gears on the move.
You also don't want to meet poison oak. It's pretty, though: shiny green with white flowers in spring, and oranges and yellows in fall. (As in "fall color" - why people in California don't do fall color locally.)
Don't be silly. California sycamores put on quite a show. It's not in the same class as sugar maples in New England (nothing is), but it is quite bright, if localized along valley bottoms. Walnuts do a decent display too. Sad that they're so rare.
I'm okay with poison oak. The state that bugs me a bit is when the leaves first emerge in the spring, and they're glistening with sap. It makes everyone itch, including people like me who are relatively immune.
Nope, a single weel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelbarrow#China
Dammit, I gave my keyboard a cup of tea yesterday and now te '' key doesn't work.
I had an argument on Usenet some time back with someone who couldn't grasp the idea that women in previous times didn't have periods, generally -- if they were fertile they were pregnant or breastfeeding (which crimps hormonal levels and fertility to some extent) or they were infertile or sterile and not capable of menstruating.
I might as well write this down. Another reason to not update CDC guidelines ("How COVID-19 Spreads") is that the updated guidelines would have the effect of reducing the rate of new SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States (and elsewhere, for whoever still trusts the CDC guidance.) A higher rate of new infections means that the control arm of phase III clinical SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trials would be able to provide a read-out on efficacy sooner; they need a certain number of infections. This might provide the D.J. Trump administration with a pre-U.S.-election announcement of a vaccine emergency use approval. (Safety is another story; the trials need to complete for that.) That is, it is probable that the D.J. Trump administration is attempting to keep the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate high enough that they gain a vaccine announcement prior to the U.S. election. This will kill people; it is probable that they consider stochastic homicide to be worthwhile trade-off for electoral gain. This is not a surprise, but there would be a trail of people involved who might talk, and a possible paper trail and possible recordings.
Oh, I completely agree with what you said. That's why I noted "that's the conventional argument, at least." My answer was in response to "In a twisted way the low birth rates in "advanced" nations are a testament to the triumph of optimism over evidence. If you really think the current capitalist system is going to provide you with a comfortable old age there's no need to have any kids at all, let alone an unaffordibly large number of them. But... I like big buts and I cannot lie."
I think we would also agree that analyzing human life cycles in purely economic terms is dangerous, both intellectually, and for the women involved when men (like me) start thinking it's reasonable to instantiate our economic musings in real life.
I had an argument on Usenet some time back with someone who couldn't grasp the idea that women in previous times didn't have periods, generally -- if they were fertile they were pregnant or breastfeeding (which crimps hormonal levels and fertility to some extent) or they were infertile or sterile and not capable of menstruating.
I'll get in ahead of Foxessa's much-needed rebuke and point out that infertility has precisely nothing to do with not menstruating, except before menarche and after menopause. It can mean any number of things, from ova not reaching the uterus to the zygotes not being able to implant in the uterus. In both these cases, a woman can have regular periods for decades and never become pregnant
The problem is history as written in English tends to be written and/or published by misogynistic men, who set the fashion that it's simply not done to talk about such things, especially with other men or multiple genders in the conversation.
I'd also point out that we've had the usual male bias in our time traveler thread: No one's suggested taking concepts like a diva cup, bras, feminine health care, or other things back in time to make life easier for half the human race. Slightly awkward, that. Hell, even something as simple as a Roman rotary grain mill would have made women's lives immensely easier in Europe if it turned up before around 1000 BCE. Prior to that, they used saddle querns to grind grains, and women's skeletons were built up like those of Olympic rowers from the strain of grinding grain for 4 or 5 hours per day, every day. Except they died younger.
Could be right. I'd gotten the impression from somewhere that the vaccine scam was that on November 3, the FDA would announce an Emergency Use Authorization for whichever vaccine had gotten the furthest in trials. Then Trump would announce he had a cure, and ride the bump into re-election. The actual data, assuming it was not too obviously bogus, would be irrelevant.
Problem is, a lot of people will be voting early, so announcing a last second November surprise won't be all that useful. Especially now, since a lot of people are getting clued into the con.
Bigger push may simply be that the Republicans want to hold onto the Senate, and that doesn't depend on population particularly. So it doesn't really matter if a lot of people die, so long as more Republicans vote for senators than Democrats do.
Ditto the electoral college, which also doesn't depend particularly on population, just that electors don't die between the election and their vote. This is another argument for getting rid of it.
P J Evans / RP Then there was the crew clearing old railway sdings for the SPIT London Olympics ... who found carefully labelled concrete covers that said "High Voltage" ... & threw them away & then, later started digging ... And came across what looked like a pipe "in the way" ... They wanted to dig a hole there, so they dug round the hole & a "workman" got down into it, fortunately on a hot, muggy sweaty day, with a hacksaw ... A Micheal Bentine moment followed, when his smoking boots were left behind & Paddy ( for he was ) was about 5+ metres away twitching, because cutting into an oil-filled 32kV supply cable will do that to you. [ Told to me & others at a lecture by an Railway Inspectorate person, who'd had to write the report on said "incident", yesss .... ]
JBC vCJD is virtually unknown here, too, actually. I cheerfully eat Beef on the bone, purchased from, note, a trusted supplier, whilst all the bollocks was kicking off on that subject.
SS Postal services seem like an obvious thing for any stable civilization. Currently being dismantled in the USA ....
Yes, there was a major industrial revolution in Europe in medieval times. It died out with the plague.
Re: 'HSBC - Paul Manafort, Trumpolini's campaign manager'
Manafort's (DT's) is one of the few lowlifes whose name doesn't appear in this particular piece.
Seriously - the legislation to oversee financial institutions has zero substance because there's no urgency/penalty re: appropriate implementation and validate compliance.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/
He'd have been fucked when he ran into the Morlocks, then.
Line shafting type leather belts, as EC points out, do not work for bicycles. They do not have much friction available. The tension in the belts is very low and you can often see the drive side of them still sagging quite a lot under its own weight when under load. They rely on transmitting power by moving a small force rapidly through a large distance, so you see very large wheels and high belt speeds. You could specify a flat leather belt drive with dimensions that would place bicycle-type speeds and loads within its operating envelope, but at least one of those dimensions would be ridiculously large, as would its overall weight, and it would be of no practical use.
What you could get away with is a V-belt, which greatly augments the frictional grip available from a given belt tension by having the belt wedge itself into the V of the pulley, driving through the grip on the sides of the belt (at some loss in efficiency). These work a lot better if you can make them out of cord-reinforced vulcanised rubber, but there also exist leather versions, which are "clinker built" out of a series of overlapping short chunky bits of leather, riveted together at the overlaps.
These were quite often used for the transmission of early motorcycles. They had the advantage that you could avoid the mechanical complication of a clutch by simply having a movable tension roller so you could slack the belt off and allow it to harmlessly slip.
They had the disadvantage that if it was raining they slipped all the time regardless. I read an account not that long ago of an old motorcycle club who met weekly in various pubs dotted about the place somewhere near Sheffield. The chap with the oldest bike would never turn up to certain of the venues if it was raining because it had this type of transmission and couldn't make it up the hills.
The gearing requirements of a bicycle being different from a motorcycle, you would need to have a very large front pulley to keep the forces in the belt similar to the motorcycle case, but it wouldn't be too big to get away with it. The bicycle might end up being a bit of a funny shape, but it would still be rideable. And it would be less cruel to the belt than the titchy front pulley the motorcycles used.
It would be kind of shit, it has to be said, but if you didn't mind having to push it up hills if it was raining it would be a lot better than nothing. And given how often you have to push a bike up hills anyway, that might not matter too much.
I thought Morlocks ate people, not fucked them?
Farm road or US highway?
It was a nice road. Well paved. But as I said no side lines. But as I said an hour west of Fort Worth. Mostly what I think of as scrub land. Near desert. Lot of tumble weed.
I think this is it. https://goo.gl/maps/UrcYEn6DzRzXKqiU8
Going north on 4 you have stop signs where 4 heads east.
But it is typical out there.
that they gain a vaccine announcement prior to the U.S. election.
I agree with the docs on TV who say just ain't gona happen.
I'm supposed to be in the Moderna trial but got put on hold while they look for more "not older white folks". I've been on hold since Aug 4. As of 2 or 3 weeks ago they had less than 2/3s of the number of participants needed. So if they call me, or anyone else, up tomorrow it will be 30 days minimum before they can start "watching" for results. And since they are not blowing virus into a room with us they need 30 to 90 days minimum to see how things work.
A friend on the Pfizer study just got his booster today. So they didn't start watching him until today. As I understand it they have even fewer folks signed up than Moderna.
The timeline to the first week in November just isn't there. At least not in the US. How about some of the European trials?
Of course they could just start passing it out and see what happens. [eyeroll]
Of course, if you want to time travel and introduce really simple bicycles, there are things like this to get people started on the whole balancing thing: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2011/02/08/2003495381
Trouble is, in most places I'd rather introduce the Chinese wheelbarrow. One wheel, one axle, and a capacity of over 100 kilos, with ways to augment the pull using sail, animal traction, or another human pulling or pushing. It's hard to beat that for versatility.
Like the idjits who decide to take out a tree without finding out where their friendly local gas pipe is. If they're lucky they don't blow anything up.
Been around 2 area sized gas line hits. None went off. One was my father grading the side of of a new road in a subdivision we were doing with a small farm tractor and blade. We had been told line was buried 3 feet down minimum. He hit is at about 6 inches. I was a few hundred feet away. Big whoosh with loose dirt going up 20 to 30 feet. He kept driving and was able to get far enough away to be safe. Then well called the gas company and kept everyone away till they showed up.
Same subdivision a few months earlier large front bucket payloader scooped up 1' of dirt for our new drive way. 50 pair phone cable hanging out of each side of the bucket. Also something we were told was 3 feet down minimum. So phone company comes out and starts trenching for the replacement segment. AND hits the gas line. Another geyser of dirt and everyone hanging out at a distance waiting for the gas company to show up. So the phone company guys can start repairing their lines. Again.
Those were some sort of semi flexible polymer pipes. In front of my current house the gas line is 6 inches of steel. When they had to replace my line a few years back it was interesting to watch the specialist WELD new connections onto the pipe. I think they said there were 2 or 3 guys for the area. They go from dig to dig doing their thing.
P J Evans @ 925: You also don't want to meet poison oak. It's pretty, though: shiny green with white flowers in spring, and oranges and yellows in fall. (As in "fall color" - why people in California don't do fall color locally.)
We have more poison ivy & poison oak around here than poison sumac, but I have learned (mostly the hard way) to identify all three so I can stay away from them.
Since you're involved in the Moderna effort, this might be of interest. Basically, it looks like the Pfizer is in the lead for a "first readout", which is only relevant if the vaccine is highly effective. (UK people: the piece also has details for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.) The Vaccine Protocols (Derek Lowe, 21 September, 2020) So for Moderna’s trial, they have estimated that they are likely to see about 150 infection events during the whole trial. They have specified an interim analysis at 53 events (35% of the way through) and another at 106 events (70% of the way). At that first IA, the study will be considered to be already declared a success (rejecting the null hypothesis that the VE is only 30% or below) if the p-value for such a rejection is less than 0.0002. That would mean that the vaccine itself would be at least 74% effective. If the efficacy doesn’t meet the cutoff at the first IA, success will be declared at the second one if the p-value for rejecting the null hypothesis is less than 0.0073, which would mean a VE of at least 56.5%. If they have to go all the way to the end, then they’ll need a p-value of less than 0.0227 to reject the null, and that would mean a VE of 50% (the FDA’s floor, and it is no accident whatsoever that these two coincide). ... So how quickly will these trials hit these readouts? That depends completely on the attack rate of the virus in the study population, as mentioned above. The more you are testing in viral hotspots, the faster you will collect data. If you decide to test in New Zealand, on the other hand, you will probably never hit the cutoffs at all. Pfizer has said several times that they expect to get a first readout by the end of October, and Moderna has said that they expect to get a look by the end of November.
I cheerfully eat Beef on the bone, purchased from, note, a trusted supplier
FWIW, raw beef is and has been a thing in the US since at least the middle C20. I've encountered it on both coasts, Montana and Arizona that I remember. Needs garlic salt or capers.
Pigeon @ 950: Line shafting type leather belts, as EC points out, do not work for bicycles. They do not have much friction available. The tension in the belts is very low and you can often see the drive side of them still sagging quite a lot under its own weight when under load. They rely on transmitting power by moving a small force rapidly through a large distance, so you see very large wheels and high belt speeds. You could specify a flat leather belt drive with dimensions that would place bicycle-type speeds and loads within its operating envelope, but at least one of those dimensions would be ridiculously large, as would its overall weight, and it would be of no practical use.
Except that EC made a blanket statement that leather belts were tried and found useless. They don't work period - full stop.
I dispute that. I mention Line Shafts as an example that leather belts were useful. The other point about Line Shafts was that Romans would have understood what they do, how the belt is used to transfer power based on the way they used their geared watermills. I used that understanding and their experience with geared watermills to introduce the possibility that Romans might also understand how a toothed belt could be used.
A toothed belt would not require the kind of disparity in pulley sizes a flat belt might require, but I don't really care how they would do it. Flat belt, V belt, Toothed belt, Knotted rope, Chain & sprocket or driveshaft doesn't matter.
Any blanket statement that some technology is impossible, that the Romans could NOT figure it out; could not make it work is foolish. And wrong.
raw beef is and has been a thing in the US since at least the middle C20
Shouldda looked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak_tartare#Popularization_of_raw_meat_in_Europe_and_the_United_States
Elderly Cynic @ 938: Also to Mike Collins (#920). You have completely missed the points - yes, OF COURSE, toothed belts work better, but that's irrelevant. If you look it up, you will discover that they are very recent (1940s), and small ones (as suitable for bicycles) were used only for low-torque applications (such as driving timing camshafts) until recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothed_belt
You're completely missing the point. A time traveler is going back to some date in the past and introduce a technological innovation to change the course of history. What difference does it make when that innovation was invented. It doesn't matter if it comes from 600 years ago or 6 years ago. Hell, it could even be some future invention we don't yet know about. He's got a freaking time machine.
The only limitation is whether the person he gives the innovation to can understand and use it. But however this putative native of the past might use the innovation is not constrained in any way by how we in the "modern day" might use it.
The force on a bicycle chain is typically in the 50-200 Kg range, but can go higher (I used to peak at 250 Kg, and am NOT a high-power rider). If you think that you can make an efficient (i.e. highly flexible), compact, toothed belt out of leather that can take those forces, I suggest that you try.
That is why I said they could use knotted rope - that COULD be made out of the available materials to take those forces. But it isn't compatible with changing gears on the move.
Just because you don't know how to do something does not mean no one else at any other period of history (or in the future) can figure it out. There's no need for me to figure it out because I already have a bicycle ... and I don't have a time machine.
But I do have a mind willing to consider the possibility that someone else might be able to figure out how to make something work even when I don't know how to do it.
David L @ 955:
Been around 2 area sized gas line hits. None went off. One was my father grading the side of of a new road in a subdivision we were doing with a small farm tractor and blade. We had been told line was buried 3 feet down minimum. He hit is at about 6 inches. I was a few hundred feet away. Big whoosh with loose dirt going up 20 to 30 feet. He kept driving and was able to get far enough away to be safe. Then well called the gas company and kept everyone away till they showed up.
Same subdivision a few months earlier large front bucket payloader scooped up 1' of dirt for our new drive way. 50 pair phone cable hanging out of each side of the bucket. Also something we were told was 3 feet down minimum. So phone company comes out and starts trenching for the replacement segment. AND hits the gas line. Another geyser of dirt and everyone hanging out at a distance waiting for the gas company to show up. So the phone company guys can start repairing their lines. Again.
Those were some sort of semi flexible polymer pipes. In front of my current house the gas line is 6 inches of steel. When they had to replace my line a few years back it was interesting to watch the specialist WELD new connections onto the pipe. I think they said there were 2 or 3 guys for the area. They go from dig to dig doing their thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Durham_gas_explosion
I had an appointment with Radiation Oncology at the VA Hospital in Durham that morning. I was early and the doctor was able to see me early, so I got out early. I wanted to look up something at the Durham Public Library while I was over in Durham. Some things are still not available on-line.
Anyway, I passed through the intersection at Main & Duke around 9:00 (about 200 ft from where the accident occurred). If the doctor had not seen me early, if I'd had to wait until my scheduled appointment time, I'd have been right there when it went up.
Pfizer has said several times that they expect to get a first readout by the end of October, and Moderna has said that they expect to get a look by the end of November.
I wonder how much those results depend on a sample size of 30K people as stated in their initial plans. As of now both are at 20K or less.
As I said, I've not even gotten a vaccine or placebo as they are trying hard to get a more representative (or even over representative) sample of non while (men) enrolled. And are fighting a big distrust of such things in the US non white population.
They have specified an interim analysis at 53 events (35% of the way through) and another at 106 events (70% of the way). At that first IA, the study will be considered to be already declared a success (rejecting the null hypothesis that the VE is only 30% or below) if the p-value for such a rejection is less than 0.0002.
Want to bet on how THAT Oval Office briefing goes?
I'd have been right there when it went up.
I still remember my flight out of Washington DCA that took off 20 minutes before Air Florida 90 took off.
Connections
I liked the series. But I also felt he way over simplified things. But then again he had to to keep the book under 5000 pages and the TV series under 300 hours.
I have the book somewhere around here.
Yes, well, Jack the Ripper was seriously fucked.
I need to watch that with Ellen....
Sorry, I think they'd find a way to make them work. Just thinking about it for a few minutes, I have ideas.
Want to bet on how THAT Oval Office briefing goes? I would take great delight in telling POTUS Trump that he is an ignoramus and can fuck off with his Dunning–Kruger bullshit. Whoever is briefing Trump on this must be shitting bricks; give DJT a probability-weighted spray of scenarios and he latches on the one most favorable to him because he's been a The Power of Positive Thinking guy since childhood and lately is [more so]. The corporations are in a bind; the trial data will become public (enough to evaluate, else nobody will trust them), and their reputations (including future and international) are on the line. On the other side is a vindictive DJT. (Simplifying; there are other interested parties and motives.)
Balance bikes for kids are a commodity now, it's just a question of colour, material, and social marking (you get lovely wooden ones from Europe made by real craftsman, and you get mild steel ones from shithole countries for a dollar with any purchase).
The real thing to look for is weight, because kids struggle to ride things that weigh more than they do. The worst also have cheap foam "solid" tyres, and I mean foam - there's no rubber-like exteriour. Those, obviously, suck. The LBS I worked at occasionally fixed punctures in them, and the tiny wheels and often flat rim sections can make it a real challenge to get the tyre off.
ObBikeTip: to remove a bicycle tyre, first deflate the tube and then run round one side of the tyre pushing the bead off the edge of the rim into the centre of it. It will help to pull one section of the tyre out over the rim to maintain tension while you do this. By the time you get right round the section you're pulling on should be quite loose, because the centre of the rim has a smaller diameter than the edges. This is how bike mechanics grab that wheel that has been driving you mental and just whip round the edge with a tyre lever, pop the tyre off with their bare hands, and hand it back to you.
But I do have a mind willing to consider the possibility that someone else might be able to figure out how to make something work even when I don't know how to do it.
Then why waste your time reinventing the bike chain? Go for something more interesting, like cold fusion, room temperature superconductors (of anything), or flying cars. I'm pretty sure Archimedes could have built a helicopter if someone had just suggested the idea to him.
{/sarcasm}
"The Men Who Stare at Goats", Jon Ronson Well that was fluffy, though I'd forgotten about Noriega's Brazilian Sorcerer and didn't know about the American army psychics fighting Noriega and his Sorcerer. (Will be looking for patents/papers behind some oft he audio stuff.) It is interesting that the military people involved in the 80s/90s psychic aspects were (apparently) without any sort of explanatory framework. The martial arts guys, maybe a bit but so tied to physical phenotype/causality that they're conceptually constrained.
ctrlcreep, yesterday, is amusingly on-topic:
The corporations are in a bind; the trial data will become public (enough to evaluate, else nobody will trust them), and their reputations (including future and international) are on the line. On the other side is a vindictive DJT. (Simplifying; there are other interested parties and motives.)
I suspect they are in a bind only if they let themselves be. What's he going to do, fire them? He needs them. They'd do better with Biden, and everyone knows it. The problem they will have is countering the likely spin and BS.
I still think that the old stories about magic were people trying to metaphorically explain how a noble could lie rather badly, and still force people to deal with his bullshit as if it were real, without lifting a finger. We're still stuck with this problem.
In Australia a giant middle finger to the climate catastrophe is a really popular thing. Who needs Trump when you have the average moron in the street?
Australia’s Qantas Airlines will fly a seven-hour “flight to nowhere” that takes off and lands in Sydney, a bizarre idea hinging on the idea that people who have been cooped up during the pandemic would want to just experience air travel, even if their destination is the same airport where they departed. And, strangely, Qantas was right.
David L Meanwhile the "Oxford" ( Astra/Zeneca ) trial has re-started after a breif safety pause & is trundling onwards ...
Eating beef - I never said RAW - it was cooked, though I have, elsewhere eaten Steak Tartare. There's are fish equivalents - Tuna Carpaccio, or rollmop Herring
Moz @ 975,
Actually there can be a point to flights that are to land at the same airport they took off from, although the QANTAS flight sounds like it need not apply.
Two examples I know of:
Ian Miller of the Otago Museum arranged a flight for Aurora enthusiasts from Dunedin to Dunedin, via flying into the Aurora Australis. And yes, it appeared on the departures board as an Air NZ flight from Dunedin to Dunedin.
This was well before climate change was considered a major thing.
The second example did not involve an airline. The SOFIA observatory is an infra-red astronomical telescope mounted in a Boeing 747, and it was flown out of Christchurch to observe a star being occulted by Pluto. This involved throwing the 747 around the sky like an aerobatics plane to get it in exactly the right place at the right time going in the right direction. Then return to Christchurch.
JHomes
I'm sure we all remember this, which fits your description:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus_disaster
I think that Moz's description of the Qantas flight is accurate, however. At this point in history, just like the primary motive for Trumpists seems to be "making the liberals hopping mad", likewise there is a commanding plurality of Australians who like nothing more than annoying the rest of us, those who would quite like not to see the end of civilisation, especially not in our lifetimes.
Robert Prior @930
In John Barnes' Daybreak series one of the weapons used by the (spoiler) to destroy civilisation is a plastic eater.
It happened twice where I worked, because ALL services had to come through a single narrow archway - and it was a sizeable site. I saw the result once - much of the steel bit of a pneumatic drill had simply been vaporised - apparently, the shower of sparks went 15' into the air.
Luke Hurley "Two Degrees" is about that, but is also relevant to the people flying today...
"two degrees put is not far wrong now two degrees out and the country's sinking"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvU7j9IQJvs
The report into that crash introduced that famous phrase "an orchestrated litany of lies".
Both your previous post and this one are complete bollocks, because you couldn't be arsed to read the context. I said that they were useless FOR BICYCLES, and I had previously pointed out (REPEATEDLY) that the problems of bicycle drives were not the mechanics but the MATERIALS.
Pigeon has a point, but they still aren't really feasible FOR BICYCLES. You can make a V-belt out of leather (I have seen them, and even used equipment with them), but their efficiency at high loads is dire - which is FAR more of a problem for human power than motors, and is why I don't think they were ever used on bicycles. Equally badly, the slippage and need for FREQUENT and PRECISE adjustment are precisely what you DON'T want for military (or even commercial) transport, which is what the context was.
And, AS I SAID, knotted rope (or rope with inclusions) is both ancient, and would work for bicycles.
The Romans could have made a direct-drive bicycle, but they were never very satisfactory.
David L at 953:
Isn't he likely just to announce it anyway, regardless of whether it's there or not?
If he's shown to have lied *after the election, he won't care either way.
I should have read all the comments :-( See #983 for some of the reasons V-belts are unsuitable. Your ideas don't help, unfortunately, because damp gets everywhere in things like bicycles, and the 200 Kg problem is when taking the power off the pedals. And shaft drives come back to the materials, again - not in the shaft but the gears.
To repeat, the problem about introducing such mechanical innovations is NOT that earlier generations couldn't have made them, but that the materials they had weren't good enough to make them practical.
Upon looking it up, the original V-belt drives used rope, but that doesn't change anything (except that it wears faster than leather). Hair rope doesn't change length much with wet, and is one of the more durable, but the source is limited - mainly human heads and horse manes and tails.
I wonder how long ago it would have been possible to make a shaft drive. Maybe bevel gears, maybe just wheels with wooden pegs like the ones in windmills... there's surely a big continuum in between.
It's a reasonable metaphor for the times, if you don't stretch it too far. Someone changed the programmed course without telling anyone and today, although we don't know it and maybe, even hopefully, never will, we're going to try to fly through a mountain.
Anticipating the trolls, in what context, EXACTLY? As you say, gearing of that nature is ancient, and many wind and water mills used a shaft drive of sorts; an industrial historian might be able to say from when, but I can't, even to the millennium. I could believe something of that nature on a pedal-driven wagon, or even a quad; the problem on a bicycle is the lack of space for large enough gears. However, a rope drive would be simpler, lighter, more efficient and more reliable, and a simple, fixed-gear drive wouldn't have strained the Romans.
But, jumping back to the original context, using such things FOR CHANGEABLE GEARING on a bicycle was probably impossible before the mid-19th century, and was WAY impossible in Roman times. It all comes down the materials.
They introduced paper from China in the 1200s. See the Wikipedia article "Medieval Technology" for the many changes that then came about in a short span of time. It was Progress.
Bicycles - various recent.
Well, I can only think of 3 basic designs:- 1) The Kirkpartick MacMillan treadle crank system 2) The direct drive (see the Ordinary, commonly known as the "penny farthing"), where the pedal make one revolution for each turn of the wheel (or vice versa) 3) The chain drive.
To that subject, shaft drive motorcycles "are a thing" but weren't invented until after chain and belt drive (and indeed until after derailleur gears qv).
A quick web search suggests that hub gear systems first appeared around 1880CE. The derailleur gear is a bit younger at circa 1905.
I saw a hydraulic-drive bicycle once. It had a small hydraulic-fluid pump with pedals and a hydraulic motor on the rear hub with flexible tubes connecting them and a reservoir tank. It seemed to take a lot of effort to pedal it.
How about an electric generator-motor system, a hybrid perhaps with battery supplementation, with a hub motor (or motors front and back for extra traction) and a pedal generator in the middle? That gets rid of chain drive, sprockets, gearing etc. between the bottom bracket and the rear wheel completely.
ObManga: PositioN, by Ashinano Hitoshi. The main character rides around on a pedal bicycle with a shaft drive.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/247730/13
Re: Shafts, axles, etc.
How different in construction would a potter's wheel be from a bike wheel? (Apart from orientation and whether the used 'power' is located in the center or the perimeter.) Just thinking that if not that different, then one of the key lessons our time traveller would have to ensure that his students nailed is to view any and everything, whether a mechanical device or gov't, from a large minimum number of perspectives. Alternatively - for exploring potential usage of a device - give it to a bunch of young kids (naive subjects) to play with and see what they come up with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_and_axle
'True potter's wheels, which are freely-spinning and have a wheel and axle mechanism, were developed in Mesopotamia (Iraq) by 4200–4000 BCE.[3] The oldest surviving example, which was found in Ur (modern day Iraq), dates to approximately 3100 BCE.[4]'
It's pretty pointless though; a bicycle chain drive is 98% efficient (up to 100% for a derailleur if we neglect friction in the jockey wheels).
On the subject of bicycles, how about a system of three gears, arranged like these three O's:
000
The gear on the right would would be attached to the pedals. The gear in the middle would be turned by the gear with the pedals and in it's turn would turn the gear on the left. The only real problem that I can see is that you'd have to carefully control the size of the gears in order to put the axle of the rear wheel where you want it. And maybe it would require a cover to keep stuff from getting caught in the gears.
Waiting for all the bike people to tell me why I'm wrong...
Well, I'm not that much of a bike person, but I can try to give some reasons.
For starters, each gear connection introduces losses. In a regular bike you basically have two gears and a chain, but doing "regular" bike power train with gears would need at least three gears. That'd introduce more losses.
Next is the size of the things. The diameter of one gear is the distance between the gears next to it, and as they usually are circular, it means that they would have strict limits on how big they can be. Otherwise they'd hit the ground or the biker's groin (in a "regular" bike). I'd say you'd want at least five gears to replace a chain.
Then comes the mechanical tolerance: the whole geartrain has to be stable enough that they don't slip or turn, and I'd say that's somewhat difficult. I wouldn't want to try it out with wood, for example. Otherwise you get gears which don't work.
Doing that seems a bit hard. I'd rather try doing an axle thing first.
The problem there is that an axle is also three gears, so you have exactly the same problems. The one benefit is that the axle can be fitted at multiple points, which would prevent it from chattering.
Isn't he likely just to announce it anyway, regardless of whether it's there or not?
Interesting read today: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-anthony-fauci-on-donald-trumps-covid-19-vaccine-boasts-no-ones-seen-the-data
In fact, no one in the administration has seen it. In an interview with The Daily Beast Monday evening, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is only one individual who has access to the data that would show whether a vaccine is viable.
“These are blind placebo-controlled trials. The only ones who see the data intermittently is the safety data monitoring board…. a single unblinded statistician,” Fauci said. “Those data are not public data, no one can know what those data show. That person looks at the data and says, ‘OK, let's keep the trial going, we don't have enough data to make a decision.’ Or that person can look at the data and say, ‘You know, there really is a very strong signal of efficacy, let's make it known.’ We bring in the company, we tell the company, then the company can make up their mind, whether they want to use that data to go to the [Federal Drug Administration for approval].”
It looks as if the fascists have got 51 votes to "consider" a replacement for Ginsburg. The prime candidate appears to be a seriously ( To the point of criminality ) insane christian - anti-abortion & pro-unintelligent design.... "Amy Coney Barratt" PLus other assorted loons, beleivers & semi-nazis. If appopinted is there ANY way a SC judge can be unseated, apart from impeachment? Or will Pelosi try for a second Trump impeachmane to block the process completely? Or what?
On the time travelers messing things up front:
How about time traveler introducing Age of Sail or even Polynesian designs into the Classical Mediterranean world? There are a couple of points here: --Disregarding the cannon and the need for tall trees (hard to find in the Classical Mediterranean), most of this tech is stuff that the Romans, or even the Greeks or Egyptians, could build. --Most people don't realize that some of what we consider the classic advanced-but-primitive boat designs from the Polynesian and Micronesian diasporas are actually less than 2000 years old, perhaps less than 1000 years old in some cases. And the can be built with neolithic technology. --Third point is that there wasn't a lot wrong with the Classical Mediterranean boats, so long as they were rowed. It's the sails that were primitive, along with the lack of things like keels. Or sheaf blocks. Adding some simple features would make a huge difference.
Wanted to reply to a few folks …
Paul (903): ‘… strongly recommend the TV series "Connections" by James Burke. It was first shown in 1978 (42 years ago!).’ Thanks – much appreciated! After I finish watching this series, I’ll watch the Cosmos series which I noticed is also on this channel.
Completely unrelated to the immediate subject topic apart from being very well executed and well explained without being dumbed down science videos, strongly recommend this astrophysics series (with supplementary ‘teacher notes’) by David Butler a retired CompSci Engr with an MSc in astrophysics. Also like his taste in music. 😊
How Far Away Is It - 01 - Preface (1080p) (Series of 25 videos in his video book ‘How Far Away Is It?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgNJwg2GISs&list=PLpH1IDQEoE8QWWTnWG5cK4ePCqg9W2608
He’s also got a website … ‘This website organizes the “How Far Away Is It” YouTube channel into video content for classroom use. It includes basic non-mathematical videos for general science classes from middle school to college along with documents and lesson plans. A concept index is provided for shorter video aids on narrower topics.’ He does discuss the math occasionally.
http://howfarawayisit.com/
Paul (904): ‘Progress is a modern idea. Before about 1700 everyone thought that society and technology were more or less unchanging, …’ Depends on your definition of progress – for whom, in what way, as a solution/alternative to what, etc. Otherwise, strongly disagree – just because the word ‘progress’ wasn’t used as the reason, exchanges and adoption of ideas goes back before 1700th Century Europe. Hell, the Vatican was seriously pro-cutting-edge science/tech back in the 15th C.
Heteromeles (911): ‘I was hoping to avoid the messy details. Here goes.’ Thanks – much appreciated! I’ll have to read this a few times so that I can visualize the process – components and dynamics.
Foxessa (916): ‘Um -- which mother?’ This could easily form the core outline for a TV mini-series – powerful stuff.
P J Evans (927): ‘Unfortunately McGrath is well behind in the political polls, …’ Yes, that’s unfortunate because MM is as vile as DT but with more smarts and connections. And I really think MM needs to be personally voted out of office because he’s repeatedly demonstrated his talent for ways to stall gov’t/legislation including when the GOP was in the minority. I think of him as the equivalent of the measles virus: any exposure, no matter how small, is gonna make everyone in the room sick.
Elderly Cynic (988): ‘It all comes down the materials.’ Okay – if you mean the properties of but not necessarily the specific types of materials. Maybe the time traveler also brings along/leaves behind info re: strength of materials possibly in some sort of mnemonic form like a set of beads, inlays or a game using different materials for differently powered tokens. Could even be a nursery rhyme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_of_materials
What’s the optimal ‘Scale’ for advancing new tech: bigger, faster, cheaper, easier to use? From the comments it seems that the scale of any tech is also likely a key factor becuz scale means affordability/resource availability. The more money some investor/gov’t sinks into an asset, the more they’ll resist having to scrap it. Unless they can easily (cheaply) upgrade it either overall in one shot (like computer software) or piecemeal (house, car) without loss of function v-a-v any plug-ins/add-ons that are also used with that device – unlike something like electrical power dams/generators. Speaking of computers … this industry really grew when someone decided that bigger/more powerful/faster weren’t the only worthwhile metrics.
Anyone interested in alternative bicycle drive mechanisms should visit the National Technical Museum in Prague.: http://www.ntm.cz/en/en-expozice/doprava
The Transport hall has examples of a load of ways they tried to make pedal cycles which weren't the now standard chain arrangement. One which might be feasible without modern materials was using a short crank on each side of the wheel axle with a long rod to a lever pivoted below the saddle and moved forwards and backwards with the feet. They even had variable gearing by adjusting where the connecting rod joined the lever. Unfortunately I didn't take a picure and I can't find one online.
On a bike, yeah. One of these days, I need to work with an HBS (technical term: honkin' big screwdriver) and do it to a tire on a hand truck, and trust me, that things a lot tighter than one on a bike.
Found it! The term I was fainling to remember was Treadle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle_bicycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle_bicycle#/media/File:MacMillan_Bicycle_Rev.jpg
Charlie... I think Laundry security is breaking down....
FANGs?
https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/dow-jones-today-futures-shed-losses-advance-amazon-leads-fangs-nike-rises-ahead-of-earnings/
Bill Arnold @ 972: "The Men Who Stare at Goats", Jon Ronson
Does it include the "Backster Antenna"?
Can I fall about laughing? - how to screw with other people's internet reception. I think they mean an old "valve" TV - & I don't mean the tube ... valves inside the box, rather than transistors .. Or something.
Paul @ 979: But, coming back to our time traveller, this means its going to be really hard to introduce something. You couldn't just make a horse collar, put it on a horse, and expect everyone to slap their foreheads and say "Why didn't I think of that?". You are going to have to buy a couple of horses and some land, train the horses to the horse collar and plough, and start ploughing. After about 5 years of this people might start to notice that your kooky idea is actually working rather well, and start copying you.
The thing about having a time machine is you don't have to stay there for five years slogging away at it hoping the locals will notice.
Show up at the manor house with a bag of gold & a couple of horse collars (probably should have a decent plow & the necessary harneses as well) and suggest the land-holder give it a try and you'll be back in a year to collect 10% of any increase ... then skip ahead a year and see how it turned out ... stopping in the meantime at a couple of other manor houses in various locations offering the same bargain. Hopscotching across a couple of decades with a time machine you should be able to introduce the innovation widely enough for it to catch on somewhere and spread from there.
Of course this introduces a lot of new failure modes into the plan. Land rights were complicated back then; you couldn't just walk into a village, find the local estate agent and plonk a big bag of gold on their counter in exchange for land. And if you did start shopping for land you might well find that the local Mister Big decides that he owns that gold now. Even if you manage to get some land and start farming (better know everything else about being a medieval farmer) you still run the risk that Mister Big will walk in and take all the extra you earn, at which point the locals will take note of where your cleverness got you.
Of course the ideal situation is that Mister Big wants the secret of your success and then starts pushing it across the rest of his tenant farmers. But its more likely that Mister Big knows very little about farming because his core competence is extracting money from peasants.
https://acoup.blog/2020/07/31/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-ii-big-farms/
For another example, consider the spinning jenny. Its a simple enough machine that a single skilled woodworker could build one. But hand-powered jennies aren't actually very good; you need water power. Even then, on its own the Jenny is of surprisingly little use because spinning is one part of a value chain, and if you can't improve throughput in the rest of the value chain at the same time then all you have done is annoyed a lot of people who could previously make a living spinning yarn.
So, find someone who already owns a watermill and interest him in this device you have that can increase the amount of yarn a single worker can spin ... and "Oh, by the way, did I show you this idea I have for how you can run a bunch of looms off one watermill? You know cloth sells for much more than thread."
Don't forget to introduce deerskin/sheepskin/cowhide moccasins as a replacement for wooden shoes
... or maybe wait until his workers need to replace their wooden shoes and then introduce the idea?
Elderly Cynic @ 983: Both your previous post and this one are complete bollocks, because you couldn't be arsed to read the context. I said that they were useless FOR BICYCLES, and I had previously pointed out (REPEATEDLY) that the problems of bicycle drives were not the mechanics but the MATERIALS.
I read context about as well as you comprehend that things are not impossible just because you don't know how to do them.
And you shouldn't SHOUT ... _Moz_ doesn't approve.
Old TV kills internet service in village in Wales.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/old-tv-set-interfered-with-villages-dsl-internet-each-day-for-18-months/
I wonder just how old it was.
David L See my # 1006 As I said, I think valves in the internal circuitry. Very suggestive for effing things up, though? Same as my idea, about 30+ years back, for dealing with arseholes who would play their boom-boxes LOUD on trains .... Involved lots of large capacitors in parallel & a "mirror", concealed in a breifcase & a solenoid switch.... EMP's R us ....
Nojay @ 991: I saw a hydraulic-drive bicycle once. It had a small hydraulic-fluid pump with pedals and a hydraulic motor on the rear hub with flexible tubes connecting them and a reservoir tank. It seemed to take a lot of effort to pedal it.
Once you have the concept, you refine it. The first one may take a lot of effort to pedal, but subsequent iterations of the design probably would take less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1_l87GACt8
How about an electric generator-motor system, a hybrid perhaps with battery supplementation, with a hub motor (or motors front and back for extra traction) and a pedal generator in the middle? That gets rid of chain drive, sprockets, gearing etc. between the bottom bracket and the rear wheel completely.
ObManga: PositioN, by Ashinano Hitoshi. The main character rides around on a pedal bicycle with a shaft drive.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/247730/13
There is some evidence that Ancient Mesopotamians had the ability to make a battery, so they might have understood how to build an electric motor if some time traveler were to show them how. They probably wouldn't do it the way we do it today, but they could figure out a way to do it with the materials they have available.
If someone figures out how to do something, someone else is bound to be able to find a way to improve it.
Troutwaxer @ 994: On the subject of bicycles, how about a system of three gears, arranged like these three O's:
000
The gear on the right would would be attached to the pedals. The gear in the middle would be turned by the gear with the pedals and in it's turn would turn the gear on the left. The only real problem that I can see is that you'd have to carefully control the size of the gears in order to put the axle of the rear wheel where you want it. And maybe it would require a cover to keep stuff from getting caught in the gears.
Waiting for all the bike people to tell me why I'm wrong...
Not invented here! That's not the way we do it, so it won't work.
Even scarier ... Not that we hadn't heard of this open fascism before, but it's now really revealing itself - back to before 1956, before 1920, even.
Heteromeles @ 999: On the time travelers messing things up front:
How about time traveler introducing Age of Sail or even Polynesian designs into the Classical Mediterranean world? There are a couple of points here:
--Disregarding the cannon and the need for tall trees (hard to find in the Classical Mediterranean), most of this tech is stuff that the Romans, or even the Greeks or Egyptians, could build.
Cedars of Lebanon? IIRC, one of the kings of Akkad fought a war for control of Lebanon's cedar forests.
Yes, that's the obvious one. I will point out that bipod masts, which even the ancient Egyptians figured out, can start to get around these issues.
Wonder how well a kite sail would work with ancient tech? I'm thinking of some of those rather large box kites that people came up with for lifting humans.
On the subject of bicycles, I'm wondering when someone will get around to pondering whether a torsion drive will work to connect the cranking pedals to the back wheel.
Specifically, you build a frame to hold skeins of tendons, as on the Legionnaire's ballista . They're tightened by ratchets powered by the pedals, and unwound by powering the rear wheel, with control given by a friction brake on the unwinding back wheel system.
There are probably all sorts of reasons why this is a more miserable solution than a Leonardo Da Vinci-style bike chain, but at least it's different.
Zodiac by Neal Stephenson?
I think that involved a bug intended to break down PCBs into something less toxic that either mutated or linked up with something else to run the process in the opposite direction.
(Also featured the use of 1,4-diaminobutane as a stink bomb; let's not go there.)
whitroth @ 1002: On a bike, yeah. One of these days, I need to work with an HBS (technical term: honkin' big screwdriver) and do it to a tire on a hand truck, and trust me, that things a *lot* tighter than one on a bike.
With your HBS, you run the risk of damaging the tire bead or poking a hole in an inner tube ... or maybe damaging a wheel.
I have a pair of Tire Spoons I bought back when I was driving a MGB. I've used them on automobile tires, bicycle tires, hand-truck tires and wheelbarrow tires.
The 18" spoons are less convenient for hand-truck tires than for automobile tires (but they will work) so maybe something like this: https://www.motionpro.com/product/08-0409
I'm pretty sure "Big River" has them.
Heteromeles @ 1015: Yes, that's the obvious one. I will point out that bipod masts, which even the ancient Egyptians figured out, can start to get around these issues.
Wonder how well a kite sail would work with ancient tech? I'm thinking of some of those rather large box kites that people came up with for lifting humans.
How well do they work for tacking into the wind? That's what I understand the problem was on the early (bronze age?) Mediterranean. They had sails that allowed them to run before the wind, but no way go go up wind except to row.
Wikipedia says the Greeks/Romans had spritsails by the 2nd century BC.
@ 944 Heteromeles --
["I had an argument on Usenet some time back with someone who couldn't grasp the idea that women in previous times didn't have periods, generally -- if they were fertile they were pregnant or breastfeeding (which crimps hormonal levels and fertility to some extent) or they were infertile or sterile and not capable of menstruating." ]
O, o, o effin' dear.
[ "I'll get in ahead of Foxessa's much-needed rebuke and point out that infertility has precisely nothing to do with not menstruating, except before menarche and after menopause. It can mean any number of things, from ova not reaching the uterus to the zygotes not being able to implant in the uterus. In both these cases, a woman can have regular periods for decades and never become pregnant." ]
Thanks! Guess the fella's never even heard about wet nurses .... Or baby farms (which more often than not were actually death camps).... Or nuns. Or a whole lotta other things.
Ya, that's just one kind of comment that throws into relief how very masculine in orientation is this blog. One has noticed how little about women's work, which actually advances civilization is not even considered. It's a like a long argument elsewhere some years back about what technology was the most important advance in the 20th century, and only I brought up the birth control pill. Without which most of the guys on that blog would never have had all that happy sex when they were green college fellers, pre-AIDS. Among other things. Women really do not want to return to the pre-reliable contraception days. Though there are clearly women who want OTHER women to be in that situation, re The Handmaid's Tale. I cannot forget how by and large the SF world scorned and scoffed when The Handmaid's Tale was first published -- women as much as men. It can't happen here! Not now! We've come to far -- even as I warned people that was one of the objectives coming in with Reagan, was to roll all this back. And they've been chipping away at it ever since.
Also, re chariots -- they were gddmed awesome war machines for a damned long time. Ask the Egyptians.
Thanks! Guess the fella's never even heard about wet nurses... Or baby farms... Or nuns. Or a whole lotta other things.
Did you notice the word "generally" in my comment? How many nuns do you think existed in, say, Europe during the last thousand years when a vow of chastity would be imposed (and patchily enforced) compared to the vast majority of women in peasant society and gentility where cohabitation and formal weddings were expected to result in offspring and heirs? As for wet nurses, breastfeeding is known to have some effect on fertility due to hormones. It's not a guarantee of avoiding a prompt followup pregnancy but it does put a crimp on the menstruation necessary for pregnancy (and again wet-nurses weren't that common although long-term breastfeeding of children even three or four years of age was not unknown and yes it's complicated, family groups and informal wet-nursing and stuff).
Until common and cheap contraceptives became available and women could control their fertility more they generally, note the use of that word again, got pregnant a lot if they were fertile because marriage or other servitude to men meant regular sex for procreation and the man's pleasure. Sexually transmitted diseases could cause infertility but that generally, again with that word, stopped or reduced menstruation. Nowadays menstruation is more common since generally women aren't getting pregnant as often while remaining healthy enough to be fertile.
One has noticed how little about women's work
I have been reluctant to bring it up because I'm aware of just how many amazing ideas have been heavily promoted only to fall flat. There's a whole category of "better stoves", often "for Africa". From what I can make out the shared characteristic of those stoves is that they're unpopular in practice. Some seem popular where developed (ie, this Malawan project now being copied in Rwanda) but often fail outside the original area. It's way too complex for me to venture an opinion :)
Likewise the various well-building and water-pumping projects, and the off-grid electricity supply ones, that mostly fail when the original source of parts goes away. Other bring water to the surface that isn't safe to drink, or in the worst case work really well... and the water table drops so only people with the new improved wells have water at all.
In some way the most successful is the one we're already discussing: the bicycle. There's a genre of "African bicycles" which look quite like the 1940's English Gentleman's bicycle but are generally made with modern(ish) materials and technologies. Then fixed by heating the relevant bits over a charcoal fire and hitting them until they stop misbehaving :) I kid you not, open forge welding is a common repair method.
Lest you mistake me, the diamond frame "gentleman's bicycle" is very widely used by African women, and a lot of projects focus on women because they are commonly the ones who actually do stuff.
Women really do not want to return to the pre-reliable contraception days.
Might it be more accurate to say "contraception controlled by women"? Condoms, withdrawal, the rhythm method all work really well... if the man involved wants them to. But with the pill the man has to actively and obviously oppose that for it not to work. And for at least some women it's possible to be on it quite stealthily so they can avoid the whole discussion.
I don't want to immediately divert into a deep dive on the topic of historical contraception, not because I'm uninterested, but because I'm trying to head off a bunch of scheisskopf rich white men from putting up bunch of over-priced houses in high fire areas. And steampunk fantasy to, erm, let off steam. Focus, dammit.
Anyway, John M. Riddle's written a couple of books on the subject (Eve's Herbs, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance). He's a professor at North Carolina State University, specializing in the history of medicine and pharmacology, so I assume this is not light, new agey fluff. They seem to have been well-reviewed too.
So the likely safe assumption is that the history of contraception and reproduction is not what we (especially we white, middle-aged men who frequent this board) think it is. It's probably a lot more complicated than that. Statements about how women could not control their fertility, especially millennia ago, are quite likely to be wrong, perhaps badly so. Simple-minded logic based on the absence of evidence will probably lead to the kinds of conclusions you'd expect such analyses to lead to.
Simple-minded logic based on the absence of evidence will probably lead to the kinds of conclusions you'd expect such analyses to lead to.
Duuuuuude! You are very wise! I agree completely.
Covid-19 status in the UK.
Over here in the US we obviously get the condensed version but are things suddenly going bad over there?
Any particular reason or are people (like here) just saying "screw it" and doing what they want?
I had an argument on Usenet some time back with someone who couldn't grasp the idea that women in previous times didn't have periods, generally
O, o, o effin' dear.
I read an article a while back. 5+ years ago maybe? NYTimes maybe?
Written by a women's group advocating for ladies to go on the pill full time. No periods. Because (from the article) this was how women have lived through most of history. Monthly periods, 12 times a year or so, so they said, was a recent thing.
I had many of the same thoughts you stated in your comment. But it was from a women's perspective. Wrong that it might have been.
They were getting push back as most medical people thought this was an experiment they don't want to bite them in the butt 20 years down the road.
a women's group advocating for ladies to go on the pill full time
That's fairly common, and quite a few women do it with or without official blessing. Back when I was at university it was part of feminist history, as well as something some women actually did. Athletes often skip periods when competing, and sometimes for significant periods. Those who would bleed otherwise, anyway, given how common amenorrhea is in athletes.
I also recall late school or early uni getting lectured by doctors about the risks of that (unknown, but definitely serious risks), presumably as a reaction to not being able stop women using the pill that way.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/18/women-dont-need-to-bleed-why-many-more-of-us-are-giving-up-periods
Control of preganancy, pre-"modern" methods? Herbal, but often dangerous. Merely in W EUrope... Mint, esp. "pennyroyal", Wormwood, Rue for starters. Side-effects, yes well - that's the problem.
Yes. Some women menstruate but are unfertile, conception does NOT occur every cycle for all women (especially when breast-feeding), and things like menstruction laws and huts wouldn't have developed without menstruation. SOME women were continually pregnant; others weren't.
And the concern that menstruction might be necessary (in the absence of preganancy) to avoid uterine problems was the reason for the distcontinuous regime, not wanting to make women miserable. Doctors rarely considered the convenience or comfort of their patients, whatever sex they were, and often still don't.
Losses. Pull a heavy weight along the ground (i.e. one you have to pull in discrete tugs) using a solid rope; now do the same using a flexible rope. The latter will exhaust you in no time flat.
This is getting ridiculous, however. The glib assumption that all you need is to import a key technology to a primitive society and you will get modern efficiencies is one of the reasons I avoid historical SF like the plague. There is a huge difference between a crude implementation and an optimised one, and the latter usually relies on a hell of a lot of technology that is glossed over. Dammit, look at how many inventions had to create a (separate) new technology or industry to make them work!
Troutwaxer's method would work, but is a poor way to do it. A treadle drive would also work but, as I said, a knotted rope or rope with inclusions drive would work, efficiently, and used no technology that wasn't mainstream. There would NOT have been a problem with a SINGLE-SPEED drive, and a manual change could have given two gears at the cost of a few minutes' changeover.
Iron-tyred wood wheels were mainstream, and a leather tube with a rope core would have given a crude solid tyre - the problem with the latter is that it would wear out in no time in wet weather. That would have made it unsuitable for military or most commercial use, and is why the Roman sandals and British army leather boots were hobnailed.
In ideal modern conditions (flat, windless, good road), a cyclist is c. 4 times the speed of a walker/runner - up serious hills or over rough going, a cyclist is 10-25% slower. Unfortunately, any cycle the Romans could have made would have been more like 2 times faster under ideal conditions on Roman roads, over 50% slower uphill or over rough going, and would have needed a LOT of frequent maintenance and repair. Overall, it would be marginal, at best, and almost certainly not militarily viable.
People who claim that it's only because nobody thought of how (and it's not just me, JBS, but everybody throughout history) are welcome to try to build a bicycle using Roman technology and take it for a 300 mile trip over rock-paved roads, carrying all necessary repair equipment.
It MIGHT have been viable for goods transport but, as other people have said, the horse-collar would have been a better solution for that one.
If anyone can explain why I twice typed 'menstruction', I should be grateful. If not, I can only assume senility.
The pharmaceutical companies that make the Pill (to use the generic term for a large family of hormonal regulation drugs) are used to being sued high and hard on a regular basis when things they didn't anticipate cause problems years or decades down the line.
They can argue with some justification in court that the "missing pill" system in dispensed contraception allows for "normal" menstruation to occur and any problems from that is not up to them -- the pills for that part of the cycle are placebos, only present in the packaging to maintain the one-a-day regimen for the user basically. Dispensing a full-time no-menstruation contraceptive formulation and having bad things happen to even a small group of its users which can be attributed, falsely or otherwise to the "no menstruation" feature opens them up to multibillion-dollar lawsuits.
I was more impressed by your "preganancy". It reminded me of ResusciAnne.
Yes, but I understand that. I think in terms of patterns, not characters, and am often thinking several words ahead while typing a word. This leads to me anagramising words, inserting characters from later in the word (or the next one) and so on. It was 'menstruction' that baffled me, unless I was subconsciously thinking of my next post :-)
The glib assumption that all you need is to import a key technology to a primitive society and you will get modern efficiencies is one of the reasons I avoid historical SF like the plague.
I actually agree here, and just offer that it's a fun diversion. I think it usually comes down to: this is really an application of materials technology that would be difficult to transplant, and a surprisingly large range of things matches that pattern. Also, while primary written records are scarce for ancient engineering, it's clear they were no less clever than any number of generations since and if the technology supported something would no doubt have tried it.
Reading Caesar's histories the stuff about transport and slogging about the countryside is really quite starkly clear. Moving an army is about the supply train and that's fixed at ox speed. Comms is another matter, and that's what horse relay is about, with Caesar himself swimming the occasional river to meet up with his fresh horse on the other side. Modern MTBs with all the fancy gears and maybe ebikes could make a bit of a difference for light and fast moving groups, but that's a lot of stuff that you need to transplant.
I guess Pratchett put more thought into this stuff than most people, and I guess the magic tech idea he brought up was the network of semaphore towers. I think that getting the mathematics to make that a really interesting proposition might be the weak link, but that this might get more attention than it otherwise may have if a network were built anyway.
Muscle memory of typing "instruction" or "construction" or other words of similar, um, construction? The "strua" string is fairly uncommon in English; the "struc" string is commoner.
A good point.
\Juat to show that DJT & his minions are not the only ones capable of destroying a country ... Internal passports for lorries to "enter Kent" - yes, really! And Channel Tunnel may have to close - because, suprise ( not ) our misgovernmen are useless!
"Juat to show that DJT & his minions are not the only ones capable of destroying a country ... Internal passports for lorries to "enter Kent" - yes, really!"
So instead of onerous eu oppression, it will be domestic beatings, from a traditional Brit Bobby.
Domestic beatings, from a traditional Brit Bobby; or, as the Brexiters know it, "taking back control".
They were getting push back as most medical people thought this was an experiment they don't want to bite them in the butt 20 years down the road.
I haven't been following the issue, but AIUI the daily contraceptive pill has been falling in popularity/usage in the UK for the past several years ... while depot injections have been taking up the shortfall. Taking a pill every single day within +/- 3 hours (on pain of having to use condoms for a month) and putting up with an avoidable period because the pharmaceutical cos are afraid of being sued is, oddly, less popular than visiting the GP every 6 or 24 months for a one-off injection (and no periods for the duration).
Received wisdom even 30 years ago was that the USA was a particularly hostile environment for marketing/selling contraceptives due to the litigious climate and the presence of the Screaming Jesus People (not to be confused with actual practising Christians). So stuff available elsewhere in civilized countries -- like low-dose progesterone-only pills, or "morning after" pills -- were often unlicensed or unrestricted in the US.
depot injections
I'm assuming a typo. Depo-Provera or Depo shot?
Received wisdom even 30 years ago was that the USA was a particularly hostile environment for marketing/selling contraceptives
Times have changed. Such marketing is all over the media (all kinds) these days. And has been for a while. If we are a hostile marketing environment then the UK must have no other ads on any media.
Tacking into the wind is at least partly a problem of needing a keel. Bronze Age European boats had the bad habit of relying on a steering paddle, so they generally got blown sideways when tacking. A boat can go to windward if it can sail at less than a perpendicular angle to the wind. Even 5-10 degrees can mean that the boat can very tediously tack back and forth into the direction of the wind. Having decent keel, or an outrigger, makes this a bit easier.
Why the classical Europe didn't get better ships is one of those interesting questions. Then again, there's the equally interesting question of why Korean and Japanese ships tended to be crap until the last 500 years or so. Being advanced in some areas doesn't mean that a culture is advanced in all areas.
This is yet another alt-history possibility: apparently, a lot of innovative boat designs (quite possibly including the first boats built by humans) originated in and around the Indonesian archipelago, stretching out to perhaps the Solomon Islands.
By classical times, some boats from this region were trading as far as India, and some Roman spice merchants saw them there. We know this because some reports survived. The key alt-history question is why the innovative Indonesian boat tech didn't spread further and faster than it did, especially in the western world. One could reasonably imagine Romans adopting boat designs from the Indian Ocean and trying to expand to have a presence (control?) the trade routes to the Spice Islands and India.
888 "parking brakes and steering locks just don't seem to happen at all"
I knew someone who had an old Rudge with a steering lock like this one- https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/rudge-steering-lock-barrel-removal.249970/
Never understood why it wasn't still a thing.
"Why the classical Europe didn't get better ships [...]"
I'm not quite sure what you count as "classical Europe" here, but one way or another it is complex.
First as to tacking into the wind, I can highly recommend a trip in a viking boat, I promise you will be surprised.
Second, apart from the vikings, there weren't really that much appetite on sailing the high sears: Most water-borne transport were up and down rivers or along the Baltic and North Sea coasts, all of which can be done any any half barrel if you wait for fair weather. (The roman roads and the Catholic church meant that trading directly with the Mediterranean via sea was not that profitable from northern europe.)
The first "Serious" sailing in N.E. were the "Hansa" merchants in their "Kogge" ships, which were not all that bad, all in all.
Of course, all the colonisation changed all that, but ship-building did not get onto anything resembling sound scientific footing until very, very late. Chapman was not even the beginning of that, his book is mostly an attempt to put his on (excellent!) intuition onto some ad-hoc formulæ.
So the aggregate answer is: Why waste so much time and timber, building a boat with nowhere to go ?
And once you've been on a viking boat, you'll know why that became a dead end :-)
JBS focused on sprit rigs, but my comment is that fore-and-aft rigs were pretty well known, including that they went better to windward. It's not that square rigs can't do it: the 18-19C "golden age of sail" predominantly featured square riggers that could go to windward quite nicely. The tradeoff is power downwind, though even on square riggers the best wind is off the quarter rather than dead astern. No matter how well a ship points, it's always (a lot) slower upwind than that. Which conversely means if you have access to slaves, the fastest all-rounders are the ones built to sail and row. I guess you do really need to filter any understanding of ancient technology through the availability of large amounts of human labour: technology was not about labour-saving.
It's probably worth pointing out that Greek boats that were rowed were largely military, and that the rowing was part of the military application. Ancient merchantmen were typically sailed, depending on the application. They all had keels, with the rowing type you need that to ensure it runs straight for ramming.
Anyhow, look at feluccas and dhows. If you take a boat that can carry a square sail, and swing one end of the yard down to the bow, you pretty much get a lateen rig without making a substantial change to the boat. There's some confusion about how far back those sail arrangements go, whether they originated along the spice trade routes via India and Indonesia anyway. The point is though it's not so much a technology thing as an application thing.
Men writing about what women did and how things worked via nubility, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth etc. are relying almost entirely on what other 'western' white men have written, since 'western' white men got the opportunity to actually control all this which didn't begin until very late in Western history. This was when suddenly what were considered women's matter was medicalized by white men, in the profession. Why did this happen? Mostly because the Church and other power structure pushed to make marriage a sacrament, and thus created the concept that a woman must be a virgin until she married, adultery (at least for wives, though in practice not for husbands, and most of all, not for monarchs), and, what matters here, the very concept of bastard, which led, hopefully, to a more stable political structure -- only the eldest male was entailed to succeed his father on the throne, or the closest other male relative (as in France, after the Salic Law was revived), etc.
In other words for Europe to have a king it had to have bastards too. And it was always the woman's fault. Notice, it wasn't until women got the power of contraception back, there was no longer shunning, criminalization and all the rest of woman getting pregnant without being married. And that didn't happen until the fracking 1960's.
So, then over the succeeding medieval eras men took ever more control of women, via abrogating women's power of reproduction. The medical profession was so much a part of that -- along with the very lucrative fees for dealing with upper class and mercantile women -- nobody cared much, even then about what serf women did, right? So typical, and we see it going on right now, when an man will insist he knows more about this, historically, presently and anatomically, than any woman.
An attempt to point to a NYT opinion piece as proof won't work either. I read that piece and she was full of shyte, just like so many women can be -- such as back in the day some idiot feminists like Germaine Greer all up on the bully pulpit telling every woman that wearing underwear was unhealthy. Sheesh. People are stupid, generally, whatever gender.
I think what's new is that we're all of a sudden openly positioning ourselves as the worlds only legal money laundry with a nuclear deterrent/permanent seat on the securit council (for now)...
What do you have against the Phoenicians? Not European enough :-)
That's not new. What the insane loons don't realise is that the EU is seriously pissed off with that, even the USA is moderately pissed off, and that several EU countries want to take over from London as Europe's financial centre. I don't give it more than 5 years before London's money laundering hits hostile international regulations.
Needs a keel or needs a centerboard? Or both? Or only one?
Needs a keel or needs a centerboard? Or both? Or only one?
There are multiple methods, of course. Basically the boat needs something to keep from being blown sideways by wind from the side, and friction against the water is a good way to do this. Sailing into the wind, whatever the rig, IIRC depends on the sails acting more like a wing and less like a wall for the wind to push against.
As for whether they needed the boats or not...
I should point out that the Greek explorer Pythias got up to Ultima Thule in the 4th Century BC. That was apparently either Iceland or more likely somewhere in Norway. People sailed out to Ireland in the Neolithic. Everyone from the Phoenicians on visited the Canary Islands, although it's unclear who actually first settled there and when (oldest archeological dates are around 1000 BCE).
Reportedly, the Phoenicians circumnavigated African in the 6th Century BC. IIRC, a successful attempt to recreate the voyage ultimately sent the sailors out to Madeira before getting back home, because they couldn't sail their replica Phoenician boat close enough to the prevailing winds to make it up the northwest African coast and back into the Mediterranean.
This is all to point out that Damian's notion that there no one had any reason to develop better boats seems rather...odd. I suspect one might make a marginally better argument that the giant polyremes fielded from the 4th Century BCE until Rome took over the Mediterranean, along with the 400 tonne merchant ships that moved grain from Egypt to Rome, used up all the timber that could have gone to building transoceanic exploration and trading vessels. I've made a similar argument for why the Polynesians went through boom-bust cycles of island exploration (they used up all the big trees soon after landing, and thereby lost the means to build really big boats). I think it's easier to make the tree-shortage argument for a small archipelago than for the entire Mediterranean, but it's not impossible.
it's clear they were no less clever than any number of generations since and if the technology supported something would no doubt have tried it.
Tod's Workshop on youtube is one place that plays around with this in the archery area. There's a lot of ancient warfare re-creation and testing, which often come up with things that both look right and actually work. Shadiversity has a real thing for "arrow on the wrong side of the bow" which despite the nay-sayers actually works... so all those stupid medieval artists who didn't understand how archery works might not be quite so wrong after all.
Tod is currently using his "lockdown longbow" (a modern crossbow, because being able to pull a 160 pound longbow is a full time job) to test various combinations of arrow and armour. This week "greasing arrows makes them penetrate further" (or in clickbait "does a greased shaft penetrate further").
the giant polyremes fielded from the 4th Century BCE
Wikipedia does rather read as a "my number is bigger than your number and I don't care whether it's a good idea" contest.
One alternative to keels and centreboards or leeboards is a pair of steep sided hulls, as used by James Wharram Catamarans in more modern times. I suspect the same idea could have been used anciently but don't have any idea whether it was. The modern Indonesian fishing trimarans do something similar with a rectangular section centre hull and I don't know how old that design is (the modern ones are diesel powered rather than sailed)
Yeah, those giant polyremes are a mystery. As I understand it, the problem with an "octoreme" is that the "reme" count is about stacking rows of oarsmen atop each other. Eight rows high is physically impossible, and we don't have the remains or even a decent picture of what such a boat might look like. One possibility is that anything bigger than three or four rows was a catamaran. The count would be four rows--divided among two ships (because two "mine is bigger than yours is" is better than one, or something). Presumably these ships would have a double ram, but would more be mobile fortresses with lots of missile projectors on the fighting platform between the hulls. But this is supposition. IIRC, the Romans experimented with catamaran fighting ships, but there's no record of one being fielded.
Once the Romans conquered the entire Mediterranean, they switched to smaller boats (more of a coast guard than a navy, AFAIK) and built big merchant ships to haul grain from Egypt to Rome.
notion that there no one had any reason to develop better boats
That isn't what I am meaning to say, though (apologies for any confusion). What I mean is something more like: they actually did have boats that are better than we usually seem to think they were, and they knew at least most of what we do know about them too.
Square rigs can sail into the wind, fore-and-aft rigs may be better at it in some circumstances but are overall less effective at scale. It's not that fore-and-aft rigs are "better", or more "advanced". They aren't. We have a strong cultural tendency to see this stuff as teleological, that is there's a specific order in which things start out as "primitive" and get better over time. But if you disabled all the guns on HMS Victory, I'm not sure of the odds against a 5th century BCE trireme, especially a group of them. In the right circumstances it could probably outrun them, but it would be a close thing and those prows had a serious purpose.
But per your other remarks: yes, everyone intuitively thinks sails work by deflection, but in practice they work best by exploiting the Bernoulli effect, even "primitive" looking things like square sails. You definitely need a hull that provides lateral resistance, so flat bottom boats need something like a centreboard or leeboard, but the amount of force is actually less critical than you'd intuitively imagine based on a deflection model. The main reason fore-and-aft rigs are better into the wind is that they can provide better control of the shape of the aerofoil, although this isn't impossible with square sails either.
There really was a technological change, but already at the end of the age of working sail, and somewhat into the 20th century a bit, when the materials that enabled tall Bermudan rigs became available...
But anwyay TL;DR - square rigs are the "better" rigs you're looking for, and the ancients hazz'd them.
Newton rather than Bernoulli; yes, sails are basically wings, and make use of the force needed to change the direction of an air stream. The speed of the airflow over front and rear surfaces is very little different, but the need to exert force on it to accelerate it sideways gives rise to a smallish high pressure zone on the windward side of the sail and a rather larger low pressure region on the lee side. One of the advantages of rigs which have multiple sails along the fore-and-aft axis is that the sails further forward help to manage the airflow through the low-pressure zone of the sails aft of them and counteract the tendency of the airflow to separate and become turbulent (which is a stall in aircraft terms).
Square sails with the wind aft are indeed not simple bags, they are wings accelerating the airflow downward and so generating a lift vector directed forward and upward.
Fore-and-aft rigs are pretty much unquestionably superior if you can manage them because the ability to point closer to the wind is worth a lot more than a slight loss of speed with the wind aft - not only does being able to tack a bit tighter make a large difference to how fast your overall progress over the ground is, but it may be critical for getting out of dodgy situations such as being on a lee shore. And the wind is from ahead a lot more often than it is from astern, just like it is on a bicycle.
The point is "if you can manage them". The big advantage of square sails is that they divide the sail area up into a lot of small units each of which can be handled by a bunch of sailors brachiating in the rigging. Large sails are fucking heavy and the wind forces on them are worse. It's a lot harder to make a fore-and-aft rig in a similarly segmented fashion, so once your ships get big enough to need more than so-much sail area you pretty well have to use a square rig otherwise you can't manage it.
The other point is that the Roman sails were big square sails, not divided up into multiple smaller sails. Even something as simple as putting a boom on the bottom, let alone putting multiple sails on a mast, would have substantially changed their performance.
That's kind of the point I'm getting at: if you want to do Alt-Rome (or even Alt-Phoenicia, for that matter), even adding a second boom at the bottom of a rectangular sail makes a huge difference in boat performance. I can dig out the experimental papers if anyone is interested.
The problem with a single top boom is that keeping the bottom from billowing into an inefficient shape gets hard.
To return to a traditional strange attractor: an old candidate for dark matter re-emerges: primordial, asteroid+ sized black holes. Comments? (I'll start off with: Again? How are they going to make those at CERN?)
https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-holes-from-the-big-bang-could-be-the-dark-matter-20200923/
"The Kirkpartick MacMillan treadle crank system"
It does make it reasonably possible to avoid the materials difficulties of highly stressed parts, but unfortunately, it's shit. When I was little I had a pedal car using that system. It was a ridiculous amount of effort to make it move. The main problem was that that "walky" movement of the legs is extremely hard to put any force into; you do need to be able to use the "climbing stairs" movement as with ordinary pedals to make the improved-matching trick of a bicycle work. Also, it kept getting stuck on dead centres all the time and it's not possible to get off them by pushing at a slightly different angle as with a pedal.
Men writing about what women did ... etc. are relying almost entirely on what other 'western' white men have written
Without meaning to be rude, you seem to be implying that when women write about what historical women did they're using other sources for their historical facts. Do you mean that women who are studying antiquity are more likely to look for and value writing by women?
Unlikely to be valves, but doesn't need to be. Any number of non-critical faults or bits of shielding missing will give you lots of nice EMI from the line output stage. Might even just be dirt.
I made a little EM field generator that put out enough wellie at a few hundred kHz to light up fluorescent tubes within half a metre or so of it. It also knocked out my broadband every time I turned it on. I don't know what it did to next door's.
Well, the Romans weren't using sails of a large enough size to have to start dividing them up. One disadvantage of a boom is that it makes that size a lot smaller, especially for a square sail, because of the weight of the thing (the extra mass up top makes the ship less sea-kindly too), and it requires extra complication in the rigging to stop it acting as a wrecking ball. Also, having independent control of each clew is an advantage when the set of the sail needs to be asymmetrical to suit the wind.
Square sails aren't usually really square; the foot curves upwards so they are narrower in the middle than at the ends, and they work better in general if they are horizontally extended. This is particularly noticeable on multiple-mast multiple-sails-per-mast square riggers which aren't trying to squeeze all their sail area out of one sail for simplicity. That shape means that you don't get caught so much by the poor set of one part of the sail compromising the good set of the rest of it, and also makes the set easier to control overall. Again, the reason this works is down to even square sails with the wind aft being wings rather than bags.
There are limits, of course - they do evaporate, and the smaller they are, the faster they do so.
Actually, here's a thought that struck me after I hit submit: inflation, which well may have been ftl for the speed of light as we know it.
What if it was so fast that it folded space, like pushing a sheet, with long rows or loops of folded space?
single top boom
The term you're looking for is "yard". "Boom" always refers to what you're calling a "bottom boom", which is a spar at the foot of the sail.
It's worth skimming something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail_components
Incidentally, have a look at that Russian sail training ship in the top photo on that article... it's close-hauled starboard tack, not on a reach or a run. Sure it's a clipper but that shows divided square sails managing each other's air per pigeon's discussion.
The lateen rigs I was talking about in feluccas and dhows were also the goto for proas in the SE Asian archipelago. That's a long diagonal yard and a boom that crosses the mast. The wikipedia page for "lateen" shows loose-footed versions (that is without a boom), and that's pretty much what you get if you swing a loose-footed squaresail yard fore-and-aft, lower the forward end to the bow and cut the sail to fit the resulting triangle. With a boom you can achieve the same thing with reef points and without the big scissors. I suppose I'm making assumptions that people who lived in their boats and did this stuff every day would work things like that out; maybe I'm wrong and it's a hindsight thing, but I'm not convinced. I'm happy to be wrong, of course.
It's interesting in terms of sail shape, and people intuitively think that it must be disadvantaged on a tack where the mast fouls the sail. The same is true of standing and balanced lug sails, which is why people think sprit sails (and the horribly unhandy dipping lug) must be more efficient. It turns out this intuition is incorrect, that there's some impact but it isn't actually a big deal that a boat performs just a little worse on one tack (and actually dividing the sail across the line where the mast fouls it might not even be that much of a penalty).
My point was that you're talking like the past was more homogeneous than I think it was.
Well always Newton in the sense that it is about accelerating a mass by applying a force. But also definitely Bernoulli, because it is all about the shape the fabric of the sail makes which makes the air around the leeward side rush faster than the air on the windward side, creating a pressure differential therefore suction or lift (depending on how you look at it). Newton explains deflection, but not lift in this context.
Have we already talked about how much lateral resistance calculations were a black art before computers? Where professional naval architects would rely on balancing cardboard cutouts on pencils?
By way of followup to the discussion about the Qantas "flights to nowhere", I offer this. Please note that Tiger is Virgin Australia's "low cost" carrier and The Shovel is a satirical site.
https://www.theshovel.com.au/2020/09/24/tiger-airways-to-offer-sitting-on-tarmac-flights/
Again, the reason this works is down to even square sails with the wind aft being wings rather than bags.
Yeah exactly that. With the exception of the case that the wind is within a degree or two of exactly perpendicular to the tangent formed by the curve of the square sail at its centre, in which case both vertical edges of the sail are leeches, almost always one edge is a leech and the other is a luff. Airflow is separating at the luff, the outside of the belly speeds the airflow up, the inside of the belly slows it down.
A good look at that close-hauled clipper ship clearly shows where the real technical limitation comes it: the simple mechanics of moving the yards on a big square rigger make it impractical to luff up the sail beyond a certain angle, and this constraints how close the ship can point. But that's where the vast world of staysails comes in I suppose.
The term you're looking for is "yard". "Boom" always refers to what you're calling a "bottom boom", which is a spar at the foot of the sail. It's worth skimming something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail_components
Or this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_(sailing)
I'm thinking specifically of a sail is called a "boomed lateen" and it's one of the Oceanic/Indonesian sails that come under the caption of "crab-claw sails" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_claw_sail).
A boomed lateen is a lateen sail with a spar on each edge, so that it can be worked more as a wing. That's the Oceanic and Indonesian form. Dhows and Feduccias are more Egyptian or Indian. Their lateen rig has only a single spar, and it's a different beast that works differently.
What I'm suggesting for an alt-Mediterranean naval story is that some bright bulb experiments with a rectangular with two spars (top and bottom) or triangular with two spars that meet at the foot. The technology is trivial, well within their capability, and it would have dramatically changed the performance of the boat it was attached to, especially windward performance.
Check out Wind tunnel measurements of the performance of canoe sails from Oceania if you want to geek out on diverse and various sail designs.
It's primarily the Venturi effect, and Bernouilli was the one who analysed it, as you say. It's only when running before the wind that Newton dominates.
The reason that people fooled around with models for simple calculations was that they were 'mathematically challenged' (as most people are today). There's little that can't be done pretty easily with pencil and paper, and computers are irrelevant, here. What IS important is the understanding of fluid flow etc., which was very poorly understood until very recently. I have posted before that the received wisdom of 1950 was proved to be bollocks, which is why modern aircraft, cars and ships are so much more efficient than they were only a few decades ago.
(twee voice) There are black holes at the bottom of my garden.
Personally, the sooner that tower of unsupported speculations purporting to be established science evaporates, the happier I shall be.
I'm assuming a typo. Depo-Provera or Depo shot?
"Depot injection" is the term of art, circa the 1980s, for a pharmaceutical injected either as an implant for very long-term sustained release -- either because it's a solid that dissolves slowly, or because it diffuses out of a solid or oily carrier base. Depo-Provera&tm; was one such product.
If we are a hostile marketing environment then the UK must have no other ads on any media.
In the UK it is illegal to advertise prescription-only medicines to the public. (Ads are permitted in specialist medical publications, and are strictly regulated.) Oral and depot contraceptives are prescription-only, so they're not advertised. On the other hand, contraception is free on the NHS (as in: no co-pay) so if you're a young woman and want the pill or an IUD or a shot, you just make an appointment with your GP.
But if you disabled all the guns on HMS Victory, I'm not sure of the odds against a 5th century BCE trireme, especially a group of them. In the right circumstances it could probably outrun them, but it would be a close thing and those prows had a serious purpose.
The 3,500 tonne Victory's hull was designed to survive multiple impacts by 32-pound cannonballs whereas a rowed ramship like a 50-tonne trireme was meant to punch modest holes in lightly-built ships similar to themselves.
I could envision a no-guns HMS Victory surrounded by three or four triremes which, having rammed its hull and gotten wedged in the half-metre thick oak planking at its waterline, are having 32-pound cannonballs dropped by the Victory's gunners onto their decks from the Victory's main deck several metres above them. The rest of the Victory's crew (which substantially outnumbers the fighting complement of the handful of triremes) are being issued cutlasses, pistols and muskets to defend the ship from boarding actions while the ship's Marines are taking up their places on the forecastle and the gunwales preparatory to volley-firing into the unprotected decks of the triremes below them. Hilarity ensues.
Without meaning to be rude, you seem to be implying that when women write about what historical women did they're using other sources for their historical facts. Do you mean that women who are studying antiquity are more likely to look for and value writing by women?
Moz, you are mansplaining historical research processes to a female historian, and by implication questioning her credentials -- thereby comprehensively proving her point.
Please cease and desist from this foolishness.
I think we finally found an actual fun alt-what-if re-enactment. Joy.
Seriously though it is compatible with the point that it is something other than an ability to sail into the wind that makes the difference here.
A thought on time travelers introducing technology into the past ...
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
But there's more needed than pencil and paper. Wind tunnels are essential, aren't they? I'm thinking of the work of Johanna Weber and Dietrich Küchemann.
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
Advanced techniques to knap flint arrowheads? Better technology to extract oil and gas from marginal geological strata? New uses for asbestos?
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
The cure for social media?
Just to be clear here, by broadband do you mean your WIFI? Your DSL? Your cable? Crashing your router? imposing enough EMI on your local LAN to stop ethernet working?
Diseases from the future which we have no resistance to (so that by the time the traveller comes from resistance will have developed).
The ADSL connection went down.
Depot injection
Another case of an English word changing meaning as it crosses the pond.
In the US the word "depot" does not make sense in this setting. Except maybe if you parse it finely with a dictionary. But in common usage nope. I just assumed you added the "t" by muscle memory mistake.
It doesn't here either. I've no idea why it's called that and if I hadn't already known the term I'd never have been able to work out what it meant.
Joy. Airbnb hosts kept illegally renting during the pandemic, probably-not-coincidentally in areas that are Covid hotspots.
Nearly 12 per cent of Toronto’s 23,524 Airbnb listings continued to operate between April and June, even though short-term rental activity was restricted in Ontario due to COVID-19, according to a new report by Fairbnb.
The coalition of academics, community groups and housing advocates says it is another example of how Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms circumvent rules and fail to follow regulations — in this case even public health advice.
A Fairbnb analysis of Airbnb reviews found that 2,800 hosts took in about 6,000 renters in Toronto during the restricted time frame.
The vast majority — 2,400 — received three reviews or less, suggesting they didn’t do much business during those months.
But another 74 hosts received 10 or more reviews and 23 received 15 or more. Those were likely “professional” rental hosts, who operate guest accommodation rather than share their own homes – something that violates Toronto’s short-term rental regulations.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/09/24/some-toronto-airbnbs-kept-their-doors-open-during-pandemic-shutdown-report-says.html
No, they aren't even important, at the level being considered. Once you know the basic properties (e.g. that the drag is proportional to the velocity squared) and the basic formulae, you can do many of the calculations in your head - well, I can :-) Those are all 19th century, and predate wind-tunnels (even in the laboratory), which are essentially 20th century. That only gives crude results - but the same is true for wind-tunnel tests on aerodynamically complicated scale models. An it was a HELL of an advance over the by-guess-and-by-golly methods used previously.
The recent advances are considerably more subtle, and not a simple progression, so let's skip them.
A comment on analytical methods…
http://www.wastedtalent.ca/node/135
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us? The cure for social media?
You know, it's just possible that we're in a version of Turtledove's Guns for the South scenario. Instead of bringing back AK-47s to help the racists, they brought back advanced social media. If this is the case, it means that one of the time travelers is currently running Russia...
Damian @ 1047: JBS focused on sprit rigs, but my comment is that fore-and-aft rigs were pretty well known, including that they went better to windward.
Not so much focused on them as ran across them while looking in Wikipedia to see if they had any information on how the suggested Box Kites might work as sails. How well can you tack with a Box Kite to sail upwind?
I thought that Lanteen sails had at some point replaced Bronze Age square sails because they solved the sail downwind, row upwind or wait for a favorable wind problem. The Wikipedia article on Lanteen sails pointed to the one on spritsails & said Greek/Roman sailors developed the Spritsail before the Lanteen sail.
Second century BC for Spritsails, second century AD for Lanteen sails.
Never seen the sycamores go any color other than brown. (Which they are, right now. I think they run on day-length.)
The reason that people fooled around with models for simple calculations was that they were 'mathematically challenged' (as most people are today).
Or you could look at the prevalence of model boats in Polynesia (kid's toys, of course), and get the notion that just perhaps, that's the way they worked out all those weird sails, by playing around with simple boat models with oddly realistic sails.
I have a neighbor with a super-subwoofer and a tendency to play it loudly for anywhere between 1 and 10 minutes at a time, ending about 10:30pm... (I suspect they're in a band of some kind, and practicing.)
The trick with a kite, I think, is that you get away from the surface winds, and if the line is long enough, you may well find winds going in a more favorable direction.
As for who developed which sail, it's worth remembering that Roman merchants made it all the way to India. The unanswerable question is whether it was developed independently in the Mediterranean, or imported. Not that it matters.
The other point is that sail rigging does depend more than a bit on location. For instance, junk rigs, which use bamboo battens to stiffen cotton cloth sails, reportedly work great in the south China Sea, where the winds are often fairly mild. The battens spread the sail so that even a faint breeze does some work. In that article I linked to above, different Polynesian sails work better in different wind environments: some work better in a broad reach, some when close hauled. This is similar the difference between square rigging and fore-and-aft. Which is preferable depends a bit on the route you're sailing.
One thing I'd point out to all the authors and wannabes out there is that there's potentially some fun to be had with the idea of Rome figuring out an equivalent of an Age of Sail windjammer. I'm thinking of the fictional possibilities of Rome trying to set up overseas colonies in Han China (or Qin China...), India, the Spice Islands. Or perhaps setting up legionary Castra on Singapore to control the spice trade through the Straits. Or shipping camels in to explore Australia from the west. Or trying to bring Madagascar elephant birds and dodos back to Rome. Or conquer Afghanistan in the footsteps of Alexander.
Heck, name the lead character Scintillo Hirsutus even. The possibilities for historical black comedies based on the eternal Project of Empire are almost endless. The British Empire tried to be the next Rome. Why not return the favor and imagine a Roman Empire that unknowingly aped the British?
whitroth @ 1065: There are limits, of course - they *do* evaporate, and the smaller they are, the faster they do so.
Where does the stuff inside them go when they evaporate?
Better batteries? Better solar cells? More efficient use of radioactive materials to generate energy?
Of course, all of it will require helping a Nigerian prince....
What happens is that just outside the event horizon, the force is so strong that you get particle-antiparticle pairs created. One will usually get pulled in, and the other escapes, esp. if it's photons.
This is Hawking radiation, and through it, the black hole loses energy/mas. Small enough black holes, not pulling in more matter, evaporate. Eventually, when they lose so much that they can no longer sustain themselves, they decompress with, depending on their mass, a boom of some size.
Charlie Stross @ 1074:
"Depot injection" is the term of art, circa the 1980s, for a pharmaceutical injected either as an implant for very long-term sustained release -- either because it's a solid that dissolves slowly, or because it diffuses out of a solid or oily carrier base. Depo-Provera&tm; was one such product.
That term may not be in wide use over on this side of the pond. The doctors just call them "time release injections".
Nojay @ 1075: I could envision a no-guns HMS Victory surrounded by three or four triremes which, having rammed its hull and gotten wedged in the half-metre thick oak planking at its waterline, are having 32-pound cannonballs dropped by the Victory's gunners onto their decks from the Victory's main deck several metres above them. The rest of the Victory's crew (which substantially outnumbers the fighting complement of the handful of triremes) are being issued cutlasses, pistols and muskets to defend the ship from boarding actions while the ship's Marines are taking up their places on the forecastle and the gunwales preparatory to volley-firing into the unprotected decks of the triremes below them. Hilarity ensues.
Not disputing your scenario, but why would a "no-guns HMS Victory" be carrying cannonballs? Or have gunners?
John Hughes @ 1082:
Just to be clear here, by broadband do you mean your WIFI? Your DSL? Your cable? Crashing your router? imposing enough EMI on your local LAN to stop ethernet working?
Many years ago when I still had a TV I had "CableVision", Raleigh's original monopoly cable franchise. One of my "neighbors" had a CB Radio connected to an illegal Ham Radio power amplifier. Every time he keyed his microphone it would cause the picture to go crazy & the audio sounded like a chainsaw revving up.
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
Bitcoin? No one's come forward to confess to being Satoshi Nakamoto.
Thinking about it some more, if the current political mess is a creation of some time traveling organization (Future Fascists of Amerikkka?), then bitcoin, the government of Russia, Brexit, and El Cheeto could all be part of some grand plot to change history. But Who is Pulling the Strings?
And thus we're right back on the original thread to this post. You're welcome.
P J Evans @ 1093: Never seen the sycamores go any color other than brown. (Which they are, right now. I think they run on day-length.)
I read somewhere that there is a genetic difference between trees in the U.K. and trees in North America, even for trees of the same species so that the U.K. doesn't have red in their fall color. Maybe that accounts for it.
Sycamore tree in Massachussetts with red leaves:
https://s3.freefoto.com/images/1212/23/1212_23_5_web.jpg
Maybe day length plus night-time temperature? We're into the shorter days, but temperatures haven't fallen that much and I haven't noticed the trees starting to turn around here yet.
Talking of conspiracies ... It's 40 days to US polling day & according to the BBC poll of polls DJT is behind, by a considerably larger margin than 4 years back. One can hope. Though they/you will still have the "scotus" problem to deal with. Meanwhile, OUR conspiracy to loot & wreck the UK appears to be sailing onwards - I wonder if a major DJT defeat will derail that? And - of course - we have until 31st Dec to salvage something from the wreckage.
On the other hand, how much of that tower of cards will remain standing if we ever get any direct evidence is a moot point. All of that stuff is based on assuming the result they are trying to 'prove', which is a well-known logistical no-no.
Mainly night-time temperature. For reasons I don't know, cold nights cause the chlorophyll to be absorbed and the rhodophyll left in place.
Where does the stuff inside them go when they evaporate?
A number of people have been wondering about such matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
None of the research historians (male or female) I knew in my career or know today worked that way; they all went back recorded data, using it to support or contradict previous sources as appropriate. Asimov and others made very rude remarks about 'researchers' who merely parrot other people's data, though it has come back again under the name of 'meta-analysis' :-(
Heteromeles @ 1097: One thing I'd point out to all the authors and wannabes out there is that there's potentially some fun to be had with the idea of Rome figuring out an equivalent of an Age of Sail windjammer. I'm thinking of the fictional possibilities of Rome trying to set up overseas colonies in Han China (or Qin China...), India, the Spice Islands. Or perhaps setting up legionary Castra on Singapore to control the spice trade through the Straits. Or shipping camels in to explore Australia from the west. Or trying to bring Madagascar elephant birds and dodos back to Rome. Or conquer Afghanistan in the footsteps of Alexander.
Heck, name the lead character Scintillo Hirsutus even. The possibilities for historical black comedies based on the eternal Project of Empire are almost endless. The British Empire tried to be the next Rome. Why not return the favor and imagine a Roman Empire that unknowingly aped the British?
Maybe something like S.M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy? Bronze age Britain, Spain, Mycenaean Greece & Mesopotamia, but still ...
Or if it's black comedy you want, how about time travelers visiting Roman Britain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlQyF269spE
... although there's not really much interaction with the "locals" on this particular visit.
Replying to self @ 1137 On the other hand, there's this to worry about from The Atlantic. The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
Wow, nobody mentioned a practical fusion generator?
Or even better, cold fusion :)
Oh, wait: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34096117/nasa-nuclear-lattice-confiment-fusion/
I agree with the weight. It can be done; I have often ridden home with a 10 kg bag of flour in one bag and nothing in the other but it is not a relaxing ride. Just mounting the bike is tricky.
However about the need for paved roads, I disagree with you. It really is highly dependent on the nature/surface of the unpaved road or path. I have ridden on some unpaved roads that were as good or better than most paved ones and on some that were absolutely hellish.
On the other hand, here in Canada I have ridden on city streets that were a danger to life and limb.
Ottawa once had a pothole big enough to swallow a shoggoth. This was a few years ago, not too far from parliament.
The thing to remember about the current Republican President is that, while he's definitely abusive, none of his multiple marriages, multiple bankruptcies, or thousands of lawsuits have ended in violence. He's more about bluster, bullshit, and being bailed out.
Now yes, he is responsible for the deaths of 200,000 people so far, but that was, again, through bumbling. He had all the tools he needed to be a hero and take control, and he wasted them all.
While I think it's definitely worth taking the current electoral mess very seriously indeed, he won't suddenly morph into a Napoleon. He's had many chances to do that already, and he's failed to capitalize on basically all of them. Instead, I think he's hoping his opposition is going to jitter itself apart worrying about all the dastardly things he could do, while he flails around trying to do them for a little bit and fails as usual.
So keep calm and fight on.
How, y'all are tough up there! Down here, we call five meter circumference pits sinkholes, not potholes (that being the canonical size of a spherical shoggoth).
There's also SP Somtow's three volume Aquiliad, where steam-powered Romans trip off to North America. Time pirates were involved, IIRC.
Mainly night-time temperature. For reasons I don't know, cold nights cause the chlorophyll to be absorbed and the rhodophyll left in place.
A lot of botanists have had fun with this, and I'm not sure the answer is completely known yet.
What is fairly well known is that the red pigments are basically carbohydrates (made of CHO, i.e. stuff the plant photosynthesized) and they normally soak up excess photons to keep the photosynthetic apparatus from frying from too much energy coming in. The thought is that leaves turning read happens when the plant is recycling the nitrogen and phosphorus bound up in the chloroplasts. The leaf then has a surplus of photons hitting it that aren't getting otherwise used, but the plant needs to keep the cells alive long enough to translocate out the elements it pulled out of the ground (N, P, Mg, Fe, etc.) The proposed solution is to turn the photosynthetic machinery into cranking out a lot of photon absorbers made of only C, H, and O, to deal with the photon flux as the system disassembles itself. The plant has a surplus of CHO, so it's no big deal to waste some as sunscreen. Nitrogen and phosphorus cost energy to get, so recycling a lot of them makes energetic sense.
The trigger seems to be cold nights and bright days. Not every year brings gorgeous foliage, but it seems to be a combination of photosynthesis not being so good for the deciduous plants (i.e. weather growing colder) coupled with a lot of sunlight that will damage the nutrient scavenging if not controlled--so bright, crisp fall days.
That's the best story I heard. If you think about the details, you'll realize why elucidating each step of trigger, mechanism, and adaptive reasoning actually isn't that easy.
My uncle, reportedly, was riding a shaft/drive bicycle about 1912-1213 here in Canada. Since he was killed on the western Front in 1915, i have no report of the drive's efficiency.
Quite. That's the story I heard, too, but my brief attempts to find out the details showed a lot of writers flannelling, and a limited amount of hard biochemistry, as you say. In northern Europe, of course, our days are already getting gloomy, so plants need less protection from sunlight.
Sorry that no one else is posting. Just one last non sequitur. The canonical size of the average shoggoth is given as a sphere 15 feet in circumference, assuming they want to be spherical.
The other factoid is that a cubic meter of water ways one metric ton (1000 kg) by definition.
So if we assume a shoggoth has the density of water, then a 5 meter sphere of water weighs a bit over...49 metric tons, or almost 108,000 pounds.
Sperm whales, for comparison, weigh between 77,000 (small female) to 130,000 (large male) pounds. So the average shoggoth is the size of a bull sperm whale.
Yikes.
Those reimagined shoggoths in HBO's Lovecraft Country look rather cute and tiny now, don't they? A canonical spherical shoggoth would be about twice the diameter of the famous boulder that chased Indiana Jones. Hope one makes it to the big screen someday.
I think this is basically right. The main limits to the harm he is able to do is his own competence and the competence of the flunkies and sycophants he prefers to surround himself with.
This was apparent with the moves the administration has made to suppress and control COVID death data. When they first started exercising control it was months after you'd expect, and the reason really seems to be that they hadn't thought of it till then. And while a few of us were speculating whether they would try to mess with general death data (which, as EC has kindly shown us here, can reliably reveal excess deaths versus similar historical data matched against seasonal variation) or it would ever occur to them, it seems there was a bungled attempt to do that which has essentially backfired and put those operating the reporting processes on guard.
It doesn't mean that it isn't possible for a lot of harm to ensue, whether as a direct result of incompetence or as an outcome of flailingly bombastic actions. And of course there are institutional changes (not just judicial) that will take a long time to fix.
Ah, reading the article that Greg linked - It's also still very possible, I'd even say likely that they will do all they can to steal the election and have a decent chance of succeeding, depending on how things go. There is a likely scenario that election night results will show Trump ahead, while postal ballots will go heavily to Biden. Trump has already signalled an intent to cast doubt on the legitimacy of postal ballots. As I understand it the process for those is organised at the state level, so there are potentially 50 different entities to challenge or defend over those.
It's a simplistic enough concept to drive Trumpian reasoning: this class of thing is against Trump therefore it's illegitimate. I'd expect only those states where postal ballots go Biden to be challenged. It's something that is alarming to watch from the other side of the world, must suck to be in it.
Oh, I think it's entirely plausible. I also think it's plausible for those in the opposition to jitter themselves into uselessness thinking that Evil Mastermind T is going to outfox them, when his people are desperately flailing around to stay out of jail at this point. I don't think this should be taken lightly at all, but the old military virtue of staying united, disciplined, and pressing forward is probably the best tactic for most of us.
For example, here in California, mail ballots go out October 5, and the count of ballots returned well before the election gets announced as soon as the polls close. The push is on now to get people to vote early, so that their votes are counted immediately on election night. If this can be done in enough states, the problem becomes substantially smaller.
the count of ballots returned well before the election gets announced as soon as the polls close
That's reassuring to know. It isn't what we do here, though I have aways thought we could and it would save time and stress (we have had recent elections where some seats were still in doubt over a week later).
On the other hand, here in Canada I have ridden on city streets that were a danger to life and limb.
Wet cobblestones that have been worn slick are fun. Even just walking.
So if we assume a shoggoth has the density of water, then a 5 meter sphere of water weighs a bit over...49 metric tons, or almost 108,000 pounds.
Wait, that was 15 foot circumference, no? So 2.39 foot radius, 1.6 cubic meters or tonnes. Still big, but not huge.
On TV news show today a show said there are 9 states in the US where absentee/mail-in ballots are NOT counted until the day of the election. But only one of those appears to be in play. That's Nevada. The rest of the states are planning to count them as they come in. Or weekly (here in central NC). So as mentioned there will be a big reporting of mail in results as soon as the polls close for many states.
I rode to work down Montreal Road one day with no problem. On my return that afternoon half the road had disappeared into a sinkhole. Cycling in Ottawa had its interesting moments.
Ridden on pavé in France but wet cobblestones sounds diabolical.
@1048 says : "People are stupid, generally, whatever the gender."
Agree, and I include myself in this fair and genuinely objective assessment, because human brains didn't evolve to handle civilized life. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel in 2002 for showing how much money was being left on the table due to statistics blindness from leaders in business, politics, law, science and the military. Since then, the rise of data mining has recovered trillions worth of that previously neglected economic efficiency. Too bad the proceeds have largely gone to big data miners themselves, like Google and Facebook, without improving statistical awareness among the general public. The net effect has been speeding up of an already dangerous wealth concentration trend.
All the more reason now to support moderate income redistribution through government policy. What we'll need to figure out by election day, is which party's least likely to stand in the way. Hmmm, a real poser, such a tough question, gonna take serious mulling over before I make a call on that one.
Wait, that was 15 foot circumference, no? So 2.39 foot radius, 1.6 cubic meters or tonnes. Still big, but not huge.
"At The Mountains of Madness:
"Sculptured images of these shoggoths filled Danforth and me with horror and loathing. They were normally shapeless entities composed of a viscous jelly which looked like an agglutination of bubbles; and each averaged about fifteen feet in diameter when a sphere. They had, however, a constantly shifting shape and volume; throwing out temporary developments or forming apparent organs of sight, hearing, and speech in imitation of their masters, either spontaneously or according to suggestion."
Also:
"But we were not on a station platform. We were on the track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence oozed tightly onward through its fifteen-foot sinus; gathering unholy speed and driving before it a spiral, re-thickening cloud of the pallid abyss-vapour. It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. Still came that eldritch, mocking cry—“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
If anyone can explain why I twice typed 'menstruction', I should be grateful. If not, I can only assume senility.
Obviously menstructions are processed by Futurama's Femputer during lengthy femputation, the better to rule Amazonia.
But, really, a 28 day cycle? Who designs a 2.25 microhertz CPU?
Is a canonical spherical shoggoth also frictionless? Just asking for a fiend.
Re: Contraception
Unfortunately I haven't yet had a chance to visit this museum (Ortho-Jansen's History of Contraception Museum in Toronto) but have heard it's quite interesting.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-09-22-9909220391-story.html
One of the best/funniest stories I heard was how IUDs were probably first used in camels which to me also means that if you wanted to teach/promote contraception, you might want to first demonstrate its efficacy and safety on familiar animals.
@Moz --
[ "Men writing about what women did ... etc. are relying almost entirely on what other 'western' white men have written
Without meaning to be rude, you seem to be implying that when women write about what historical women did they're using other sources for their historical facts. Do you mean that women who are studying antiquity are more likely to look for and value writing by women?" ]
Allow me a single, illustrious example from archeology, among many. A group of archeologists, all white 'western' males, were in a very fertile site for quite some years. In every strata they dug up they found these smooth, roundish stones. They dismissed for years these stones as 'junk.' Then came along an archeologist with his wife, who hung out with the local women. All of whom were spinning and weaving and telling stories. And using those same stones for spinning . . . . Nuff for ya?
@ Heteromeles 1117:
"The thing to remember about the current Republican President is that, while he's definitely abusive, none of his multiple marriages, multiple bankruptcies, or thousands of lawsuits have ended in violence"
His first wife, Ivana was forced to take it back that he raped her, NDA -- if she wanted any money when he divorced he, but he violently raped her. at the end of her marriage. It made headlines around here.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-rape-allegations-wife-ivana-marriage-interview-fox-and-friends-time-magazine-a7993041.html
Gotta dig for that now, but I remember. In the days of the internet, the story was reported thereafter, as without merit.
Though not at the time. But somehow those stories have kinda been disappeared, though I sure remember seeing them at the top of the headlines of NYC's tabloids back in the day the divorce was going on as I went to work every morning.
What about all the women who have come forward about his abuse and rapes, etc. Bad, bad attempt at satire, if you thought that was what you were doing.
Shoggothinchief is anything but incompetent. He's been spectacularly successful in handing over the USA to Russia, the evangelicals (a dream that Wilson's presidency had but couldn't even imagine such success against women -- even women couldn't vote and didn't have reliable contraception, could have their own credit, or own a company), and turning everything from education to the environment to the political process (though decades of work on that!) to the courts, to the cops, the medical institutions, you name it, to utter shyte.
Moreover, I will never assent or approve of attributing all these evils to time travel or the mechanization of an alternate evil orce. IT IS US and US ALONE. DO NOT TRY TO TAKE US OFF THE HOOK for covid, for the processes, for rhe institutional racism and sexism and all the rest. We did it and we have done it and we are still doing it. Even if only by ommission by sitting on our asses, and particularly by trying escape by going all fantasy sf/f outside causes. NO. It is US. Even doing it as escape plays into the shyte we have made and an attempt to take no responsibility. Nor is it an effective escape for responsible adults who have an obligation as decent human beings to resist.
I made an error and was feeling I had. Checked with an academic anthropologist and an archeologist about what I posted in response to Moz.
The stones weren't about spinning. They were weights for the looms, for weaving. Proving that the people the archaeologists and anthropologists were studying had centuries of this technology, which is women's technology. When the male academics assumed these people had only learned to do this much much MUCH later than the strata showed, and thus was ignored.
One of the two best vacations I've ever had was '96, where my late wife and son (and the dogs) met me after work, and we drove to Worldcon in Anaheim, via the Great Northwet.
After we saw this large sign in Minnesota that read BUMP, and maybe the better part of a mile later, we think we may have ridden over someone's suburban phone book, we came up with the Roth-Whitworth Bump scale. By that, all of Minnesota rated at 2, at most, while Milwaukee hit 5 (bouncing off the roof of a VW Beetle that's IN the pothole).
Yes, but it's a pot you need to trap a shoggoth in. If you try and trap it in a sink it'll just extrude itself out again through the plughole.
Re: DT refusing to step down
Here's another potential scenario:
https://theconversation.com/who-formally-declares-the-winner-of-the-us-presidential-election-145212
'In the extraordinary event that no candidate wins in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives meets to elect the next president. This is how John Quincy Adams became president in 1824.'
Very important that the Dems get a majority here.
Okay, this is where I say some nasty things, starting with please get a clue, and please get a grip.
IF I have ever said I believe in time travel, please let me know, because I do not. To me, it's a fantasy. That is okay to talk about those on this website, which is run by a SFF author who has published an award-winning time travel story that was rather violent. Anything I've said about what's going on now as a result of time travel is a fantasy, not what I think is going on in reality.
Please do not confuse the two. I do realize that I'm overly prone to ambiguity, but I'll get sarcastic far faster for making false assumptions about my motives than I will for asking me what I was thinking when I wrote something.
Second, there's no more a thing called violence than there is a thing called good, or a thing called evil. All are complex conglomerations of concepts. That's a bit more than my personal opinion, but if this is a problem for you, please sit and process this before going to the next paragraph. The example I'm about to use is that rape is not equivalent to murder, to nuclear war or to civil war, even though they are all forms of violence.
Now, is Trump a rapist? Very likely, though he hasn't been convicted. Does he kill his victims? Not that I know of.
To me, this is important, because the question I'm concerned about is whether he's going to provoke a high casualty war in the next few months to keep from being put on trial after losing the presidency. Based on his previous behavior, he's perfectly willing to abuse and assault women in private and boast about it in public, but he's so far demonstrated no willingness to call for someone to be killed even when he's likely to get away with it. The worst he's done on that line is to call in federal paramilitaries and his thuggish followers to fight with his opponents. That's racked up a trivial body count compared with even what Obama's actions caused in the Middle East. Trump's huge death toll is from negligence and incompetence on Covid19.
Therefore, while I think we have to be very careful and thorough in disengaging from the abusive relationship we have endured with this man, I also think he's not going to declare (nuclear or other) war on a "If I can't have it nobody can" basis. I also suspect that unless someone organizes it for him, he's not going to be able to lead a successful coup, and I don't see any competent organizers out there right now. I'll go out on a small limb and say he won't start a coup either, although he'll bullshit and bluster up until the end.
This doesn't mean he's not a rapist, but so far as I know, most rapists are not mass murderers. In this particular instance, that distinction may be critically important. Especially if it will allow us both to survive into 2022. Hopefully that will be a good thing.
I take your point, and I apologise if asking the question was inappropriate. I have little idea what professional historians do, and from your original remark I thought you were talking about research based on reading.
Bird brains, and perhaps why they're smart:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/newfound-brain-structure-explains-why-some-birds-are-so-smart-and-maybe-even-self-aware
A simple majority in the House is not enough for a contingent election. In that situation, each state delegation has one vote each, and there has to be an absolute majority of states, so at least 26, voting for the winner. The House may only choose from the top three candidates by EC vote. In practice there’d almost certainly need to be a faithless elector or electors voting for someone other than Biden or Trump (much less likely after the recent SCOTUS ruling) for there to be more than two candidates to choose from.
Currently I think the figures are Republicans 26, Democrats 22, Tied 4. It’s the new House that would conduct the contingent election though, and while it’s not implausible that the Democrats might flip one or more Republican delegations to at least tied, a scenario where they take 26 delegations is only really plausible with an EC landslide for Biden anyway.
But wait, there’s more! So what happens if the House fails to elect the President because neither party can muster 26 delegations and no-one budges? Well on January 20th the Vice-President-elect would become Acting President until the House gets its act together, which might not be until after the 2022 mid-terms.
And who elects the new Veep if the Electoral College is tied? The new Senate does from the top two Veep EC candidates, and by an absolute majority of the whole Senate. So that means Kamala Harris if the Democrats can get at least 51 seats in the new Senate, which is a fairly good but by no means certain bet. If it’s 50/50 and no Senator budges, then there can be no Veep-elect as Pence does not get the casting vote in this situation. In that case the Acting Presidency would fall on Inauguration Day to the Speaker of the new House.
So, it is possible, if not likely, that on January 20th 2021, Kamala Harris becomes the Acting President of the United States, and then loses the Presidency to Donald Trump (but she would still be Veep) some time in early January 2023 should the Republicans secure 26 or more House delegations in November 2022.
The American Constitution is, of course, the most perfect constitution ever enacted at any time in the history of the world, etc. etc.
Very important that the Dems get a majority here.
I thought that that was one vote per state, though?
"During a contingent election, each House state delegation casts one en bloc vote to determine the president, rather than a vote for each representative."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_election
Which means that if a majority of states are Republican, then they win that vote too. And I think they have a majority of states…
Thank you for that link! The paper links, just because: A cortex-like canonical circuit in the avian forebrain (Martin Stacho, Christina Herold, Hermann Wagner, Markus Axer, Katrin Amunts, Onur Güntürkün, Science 25 Sep 2020) A neural correlate of sensory consciousness in a corvid bird (Andreas Nieder, Lysann Wagener, Paul Rinnert, Science 25 Sep 2020) From the first: CONCLUSION Our study reveals a hitherto unknown neuroarchitecture of the avian sensory forebrain that is composed of iteratively organized canonical circuits within tangentially organized lamina-like and orthogonally positioned column-like entities. Our findings suggest that it is likely that an ancient microcircuit that already existed in the last common stem amniote might have been evolutionarily conserved and partly modified in birds and mammals. The avian version of this connectivity blueprint could conceivably generate computational properties reminiscent of the neocortex and would thus provide a neurobiological explanation for the comparable and outstanding perceptual and cognitive feats that occur in both taxa.
One of my "neighbors" had a CB Radio connected to an illegal Ham Radio power amplifier. Every time he keyed his microphone it would cause the picture to go crazy & the audio sounded like a chainsaw revving up.
Heh. Many many years ago, a friend who I won't name here had a neighbor with a stereo and a habit of cranking up the volume too far. After listening to his stereo too much she realized that she had (A) a shared wall that put his electronics less than a meter away from space she controlled and (B) a vast collection of her dad's ham radio gear. She could transmit at a 1:4 harmonic of the frequency his radio was tuned to - so she set up a few things and waited.
He listened to music quietly and all was fine. Then he turned up the volume and the audio quality was terrible. He was getting horrible distortions! After going around this a few times he discovered that his stereo would work fine as long as he played music quietly.
Why not return the favor and imagine a Roman Empire that unknowingly aped the British?
Sure, but where would the Romans get that much tea? grin
You mean, that much opium, to trade with the Qin or Han for tea? I did actually check, and apparently the Qin did drink tea, although not all the Chinese did.
Coffee, on the other hand, isn't recorded before the 15th Century.
Yes, I was curious if it would be even theoretically possible to get Romans to switch from inebriants to stimulants. Anyway, the one candidate we have left is...soma, which might conceivably have been Ephedra, of ephedrine fame. It grows wild from southern Europe through the drier parts of south Asia. Getting the legionnaires cranked on ephedrine would be an interesting plot twist, especially if it was paid for in poppy products.
SS @ 1150 After Asterix le Galois went to Britain to help said Britons defeat the Romans, of course!
So there's another interesting question that follows on from the Roman windjammer pathway. Could the Romans build the Suez Canal? And let's go in for a pound, so we're definitely talking about ephedra-tea-sipping Romans who talk to their Lares and get a solid 8 hour sleep every single week without fail.
The Romans flavoured their wine with honey. So actually I can totally see ephedrine laced alcopops becoming a thing much much earlier.
Wet cobblestones that have been worn slick are fun. Even just walking.
That's most of central Edinburgh, where I live. Oh, you can add that it's built on an extinct volcanic plug, too, so it's kinda steep in places. Absolutely delightful in winter.
(I've concluded that it's unsafe for me to even try to ride a bike these days. Turns out the tunnel vision in my right eye leaves me just a 22 degree field of view ... on the side that buses, cars, and trucks will be overtaking me. Meanwhile my sense of balance is shot. Add lots of steep hills and wet cobblestones on top.)
The Suez canal is a sea level canal, no locks or the like, so there's nothing technologically impossible about it. However although Nero started the Corinth Canal - at 6.4km long, a small fraction of the size of Suez - it wasn't completed till after Suez.
TLDR of Heteromeles: "Trump is a coward".
This is true. He's not only a narcissist with a side-order of psychopathy, he's a physical and moral coward. He recoils from taking any actions that might put him in harm's way -- consider his draft record, or that ridiculous wall around the White House. With Trump, everything is about defending his ego from external threats.
Compare with Saddam Hussein: also a narcissistic psychopath -- and rapist -- but not a coward: spent time on death row in his youth for attempting to assassinate the king, shot some of his political rivals in person, close enough to get blood backspatter on himself. (Can you imagine Trump inviting Comey up to the Oval Office, sitting him down, and personally holding a gun to his head and pulling the trigger?)
NB: this is absolutely not an endorsement of Saddam Hussein: I'm just trying to make the point that Trump is a coward as well as a bully, a narcissist, a bigot, and all the rest. That scene where he hid behind a pillar because he was being booed at RBG's lying-in-state? If Trump wasn't a coward he'd have confronted the hecklers. Or ordered his guards to drag them outside and impale them on the White House railings, or something.
Trump will not risk his own neck: if threatened with violence, he'll run.
The problem is his followers, and the people he's unwittingly fronting for. (Hint: $2Tn in highly dubious financial transactions leaked by FinCEN: evidence of money laundering on a global scale, much of it through US financial institutions. Okay, thousands of "small" grifters rather than one giant Blofeld figure pulling the strings -- "small" is relative, a billion here, a hundred million there, pretty soon it adds up to a national GDP -- but if even 0.1% of that is being spent annually on smear campaigns and cover-ups then that's a big budget disinfo campaign. And lots of crazed apes running corrupted firmware and hoarding all the AR-15s, as She of the Many Names keeps hinting.)
the House of Representatives meets to elect the next president. This is how John Quincy Adams became president in 1824.'... Very important that the Dems get a majority here.
As other may have pointed out earlier. That vote is state by state with each state getting one vote. Currently the R's lead the D's in terms of this counting and the odds of that changing are very very slim. Wyoming and California each get one vote.
cobblestones
A few years ago in late May my wife and I attempted a long weekend in Paris that wound up being a evening and a long day. And it was in the 80s(F). Locals were miffed at the weather.
Anyway, I really really took the wrong shoes. Very soft flexible soles. Which would have been great on asphalt or concrete. But it seems most of the tourist areas of Paris are cobblestones. And I think 99% of our walking was on cobblestones. They were not wet but my feet were in misery by the end of it.
I'd like to see the "rumour" that Trump has really bad body odour gain more traction. It really doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's more getting enough of a spread that it comes to his attention. Because the inevitable statement that he smells better than anyone has ever smelled will demonstrate something critical.
Oh, you can add that it's built on an extinct volcanic plug, too, so it's kinda steep in places. Absolutely delightful in winter.
When I lived in the Pittsburgh area I was confused as to why they kept using cobblestones even when rebuilding the roads. All kinds of hills. And freaking sleet and snow for long periods. I was there 7 winters. Each one got within 1" plus or minus of 48" of snow.
And if you haven't been the around Pittsburgh, well, it makes San Francisco look flat.
Mikko - You did the analysis of the gear chain bike different to me but with much the same result. You need multiple gears, mot "just 3" to get from a pedal crank to a rear axle 30 inches away using 4 inch radius gears!
Pigeon - I said that the treadle crank system existed, not that it was any good. I agree about its (lack of) utility.
Sailing vessels- Well no-one has mentioned the Scots birlinn, but it's basically much like a Norse dracar only beamier (basically a coastal trader, not a commerce raider).
jrkrideau @ 1121 - Not in my "histories of the bicycle", which I concede may be incomplete. Can you name a manufacturer of shaft-drive bicycles (for this purpose include tricycles)? Never mind gearing systems; chain drive is ubiquitous).
Foxessa - I'm agreeing your underlying point (I think). I've got an article about an archaeological excavation of a broch, where the author claims what, from her description of the size, were loom weights, as being for fishing nets.
1150 - "where would the Romans get that much tea?" India? 1153 - "Could the Romans build the Suez Canal?" ISTR that there is/was evidence of a canal that joined (may have used the Nile for part of its route) the Med and Red seas from that sort of time period, yes.Ckarlie ( 1154 ) Technically in Dunedin, they are "Setts" - i.e. squared-off, very slightly rounded semi-polished & very carefully cut stones ( A version of Pave in fact ) Cobblestones are irregular & much much nastier, even ... ( 1156 ) Yes. WHat I was trying to point out earlier, is that I expect DJT to lose, fairly obviously by 4th November ... THEN the "fun" starts, as outlined in that "Atlantic" article I liked to. At which point the US is in for a very rough ride until 20th Jan, at least. Erm, correction ( I think ) - .. and the people he's
unwittinglyfronting for. and knowing quite well what they represent ... yes/no? Will they be pushing for an armed revolt in that intervening period & more to the point, who is going to stop them, given that DJT is still, officially "in charge"? Oh dear. [ Ah, so you can actually translate the Segull's comments into English? ]Moz @1062: Without meaning to be rude, you seem to be implying
One of my favourite Jane Austen quotes is from Persuasion improved by the 1995 film:
"Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice,) "as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness."
The film improved it by having Anne Elliot replying "But these were all written by men." When Amanda Root delivered that line, the theatre I saw it in burst into cheers and applause.
JBS @1078: What technology might a time traveler from our future bring back to us?
William Gibson gives a possible answer in his Japckpot trilogy (of which the third is still in progress). Future people would bring information about how to hit the rotating blades we are approaching at a more oblique angle. Also using future knowledge to bootstrap technologies that we could build, if only we had the benefit of hindsight in knowing how useful they would be when implemented.
Heteromeles @1097: The possibilities for historical black comedies based on the eternal Project of Empire are almost endless.
What always gets me about "What the Roman Empire would have done with technology x, y or z" is that the Roman Empire faced enormous structural challenges that were visible before the reign of Marcus Aurelius, but came into sharp relief after the murder of Commodus: how to ensure a peaceful succession from one emperor to another, when rising to power through violence / assassination was considered perfectly legitimate? Adrian Goldsworthy's book How Rome Fell dwells on that. For a large chunk of time after Commodus, scarcely a decade passed in which there wasn't at least one civil war going on - large or small, ambitious people tore the Western empire to shreds and didn't realize that they were doing so. Gibbon was right - the wonder wasn't Rome fell, the wonder was that it lasted as long as it did.
Many years ago, I was queueing to use an ATM in my alma mater. The person in front left, but I saw they had left their card in the machine. I took it and ran after them to return it - across cobblestones. (The square is covered in them.)
I managed to catch up with them and return their card, fortunately.
Well, it worked for the joke about the size of his hands!
I believe that an electrically-assisted recumbent trike with an ATV curved mirror would match those constraints, though is probably impractical or undesirable for other reasons. Please ask me if you want specific pointers.
I do, however, find it most disappointing that he is not generally referred to as "President Fart" on the grounds that that is what "trump" means.
Charlie @ 1156 TLDR of Heteromeles: "Trump is a coward". ... Compare with Saddam Hussein: also a narcissistic psychopath -- and rapist -- but not a coward
One thing that has boggled me (in a season of bogglement) is that DJT appears to have zero personal virtues or redeeming qualities. Even Hitler, for a Godwin-esque example, loved dogs and was a considerate boss when it came to the low-level staff in the reichschancellery; but I am at a loss for a single credible story about Trump that speaks well of him in some fashion, no matter how trivial.
Does anyone know of one?
Regards Luke
If I have pictured Charlie's place correctly from his posts, he has sash windows which are a pain for leaking heat and cannot be replaced with something more suitable due to lots of heavy regulations.
However, I don't think any such regulations apply to movable items inside the flat. So it would be entirely possible for him to take advantage of the feature of sash windows that they open to allow a very large unobstructed area, and build a crane with a telescopic extending jib so he can poke the jib out of the window and hoist the trike up four floors or however high it is, then retract the jib to bring it safely indoors. (Of course it would need a remote control so he doesn't have to leave the window open and the cable down while he is out.)
It would similarly ease the difficulties of bringing indoors any other heavy or cumbersome objects he might be needing to install, like laser cannon or shoggoth traps or causality editors. (Of course the last-named aren't very large, but the black hole does make them sodding heavy.)
He could also wrap the members of the crane in rope and beige carpet, so his cat can climb on it when it's not in use and does not need a separate apparatus for the purpose, thereby saving indoor space.
Indeed, it would probably be possible to equip it with a secondary set of cat-operable controls so it could also address the problem of how does the cat get in and out.
The main problem I can see is floor loading. It would probably need a really big counterweight in order to be able to extend the jib far enough; even if the interior layout of Charlie's flat does happen to allow space for the counterweight to extend itself a really long way on the other side, it would still be a pretty hefty lump.
Unfortunately I would expect Charlie to see all sorts of other problems which to him are even larger but to me make no sense, simply on the general principle that people usually can be expected to make such objections. But me, I would consider it both a practical and enjoyable means of solving the problem.
Luke As opposed to J V Djugvlashii, who appears to have been an arrogant shit througout. However, neither he, nor Adolf were personal cowards, IIRC.
It comes down to a question I ask myself more & more often... "How does such a patently obvious shit/incompetent/liar/buffoon ( Select any combination of the above ) get into ANY postion of powere in the first place?"... especially as they often already have the wreckage trailing behind them. Grayling. BoZo, Grease-Smaug & Corbyn come to mind, immediately, for instance
Three gears of a 4-inch radius (8-inch diameter) gets you 16 inches. Which means that your rear wheel, realistically, can't be bigger than 14 inches in radius. I'm not seeing the problem with that. Three gears with a 5-inch diameter gets you 20 inches, meaning that your rear wheel can't be more than 18 inches in radius, which gives you a wheel three feet in diameter - much larger than needed!
Look at the design of an average adult bike and you'll see that a bigger wheel is not needed (and probably not desirable.) To save the rider's clothes you'd definitely need some kind of cover for the arrangement - no arguments there.
There may be problems with a 3-gear solution to the problem of a bicycle drive train, but wheel size and wheel placement aren't among them. The big issue, as someone noted above, lies in how a less-technically-advanced people would make the whole arrangement stable enough to move power from the pedals to the wheels.
Yes. The original Red-Med canal ideas were not about going across the isthmus, but about going west from the Red Sea to the Nile and then using the river. There were a few such plans and one of them at least was Roman, though I'm not sure if they were the first to propose it.
I don't think any of them ever actually got to the stage of being a continuous water-filled channel, but what stopped them was not the physical difficulties of digging it but the political difficulties of keeping their shit together long enough to see it through.
Your original idea of just three gears was better; you'd probably have to have a slightly different layout from the current bicycle standard to make it work, but I don't see such a layout being much of a problem, especially if you aren't already programmed to think a bicycle has to be a certain shape. You want the gears as large as possible to keep the tooth stresses down so you have a wider choice of possible materials to make them from. Also, good low-friction bearings are a difficulty which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet, and your three-gear scheme has the advantage that it only needs one extra bearing.
Trump's decision to ban the H1-B visa was probably very good for U.S. tech workers.
Obama's Title-Nine guidance probably went too far and made certain injustices, at least one of which had racial components, possible. Trump brought back the old rules and this was probably more fair.
His signing of the First-Step-Act might pave the way for some reforms of our criminal justice system, but I don't know enough about the issue to say more - just that it's possible.
But these good things are all of the "stopped clock is right twice a day" variety. He probably didn't end H1-B visas for the benefit of the American worker, but because he was prejudiced. He probably ended Obama's Title-Nine guidance simply because it came from Obama. (If Obama's Title-Nine guidance had simply acknowledged that the sky is blue, except on cloudy days, Trump probably would have cancelled it.) And so on.
There are simply too many decisions for a President to make for Trump to get them all wrong. A few correct decisions are bound to get through even the GOP's review process.
The idea at post 1171 is also for three gears, unchanged from the original. I'm just noting that Paws didn't actually look at the design of a modern bicycle and consider the actual distances involved before arguing against it...
On the topic of stealing the election/blocking transition etc (Greg and others).
I thought the analysis of my favorite US politics podcast (Pod Save America - it's worth a listen) was good - which was of course DJT and the GOP will try to steal the election, in fact they already are and the bloviating about 'wait and see' and 'fraudulent postal ballots' is a crucial part of that campaign; being both preparatory ground work for later larcenous gambits and also, by virtue of it demotivating likely Biden voters, direct ratfuckery itself.
Their solution for now (ie before the election) was to push as hard as possible to secure a wave election that would be impossible to steal and, invoking their mantra of 'worry about everything, panic about nothing', not to obsess too much about hypotheticals that could cut against the GOTV operation.
Having said that, they did touch upon that Atlantic piece you mentioned Greg and they thought the prospects of success for some of the more radical scenarios (state leges nominating alternate electors etc) was pretty poor, pointing out that even if state level pols screw their courage to the sticking point and try it (which is a big ask, even for the modern GOP) there are a fair few battleground states where Democratic governors or secretaries of state can step in to block that sort of move.
As such their conclusion was that this sort of stratagem might make a difference at the margin (cf. Florida in 2000) but wouldn't work in a wave election - and so we circle back to GOTV again.
Regards Luke
Storeable electric power from H2 fuel-cells, sufficient to fly a small aircraft. At this rate H2 fuel-cell-powered trains, Buses (?)cars(?) shouldn't be too far dwon the line. The big win here is that it is, effectively an electrical storage system, if the developers can continue with the scaling.
Hydrogen is, alas, very low energy density storage per unit volume, even in liquid form (which is a very low temperature cryogen, embrittles metals, leaks through just about anything, and is inflammable). I'd be a lot more optimistic if it was methane or ammonia in the fuel cells -- higher temperature/easier to store/less leakage/higher energy density.
Remember that generic BBC science reporting is barely one step up from the tabloid arsewipes.
I think that I side with him on that matter! It's what I was thinking of when I said "not practical for other reasons". And, no, he does NOT want to carry such a thing (even folded) even through a door, let alone upstairs.
And you want much larger wheels if riding over rough going, especially without pneumatic tyres. There are other flaws in the objection, too - the scheme is feasible, but largely pointless.
I blame That Blair (and others, but he did more damage than anyone else).
If there is one thing that the UK does NOT need it is more short-haul aircraft, particularly small ones, and most especially private ones. Those other fuels may be better in some ways, but are worse in others.
According to a German friend that joke works in German too!
I did a quick websearch, and apparently the primary drink of Rome was wine.
WATERED wine. They considered it crude and barbarous to drink it from the bottle (or beer, for that matter). One piece I found has it at 3:1? 4:1? water:wine.
They also added things, spices, etc. And since wine would go bad as the months went by, turning in to vinegar, they drank that, too, sweetened with honey.
Now, back when I was in the SCA, I discovered Persian Mint Drink - mint tea made with vinegar and honey - and it's quite tasty.
Charlie That report is also in several other sources ... I too, wondered about the problems with Hydrogen, & its storage/use problems.
EC You've missed the point. IF ( Very big if, see just above ) the tech is viable, it can & will be used for surface transport - is the energy density per unit weight of the "batteries" high enough is the probable critical measure - I think.
No, I haven't. The "hydrogen is the fuel of the future" fanatics have been banging on about it for yonks, and denying the disadvantages. In particular, its dangers if used as a motor vehicle fuel - it's essentially pointless for railways in the UK, because direct use of electricity is almost always better, though it makes more sense in the USA, Canada or Russia.
The prospect of a hydrogen-fueled aircraft crashing or a car being crushed by a hydrogen tanker in a built-up area isn't pretty. It's even worse than VERY high density batteries (i.e. those with enough energy to vaporise the volatiles they contain). While petrol can form explosive mixtures with air in the open and detonate, it requires a complicated combination of circumstances to do so; hydrogen is not so pernickety.
I agree about the wine, but that both misses the point and brings up others.
One of the basic weirdnesses about the switch to capitalism is the gradual (around 400 years) switch from alcohol as the default drink to caffeine (including theobromine and theophylline, which are close chemical cousins). And tea from China was a huge trade item for Britain, ultimately provoking things like the opium wars. So if one were goofing around with Ancient Rome copying Thalassocratic Britain, one might make the switch in the beverage of choice. Except that tea wasn't that widespread in classical times (the Qin had barely got the hang of it, the Han rather more so), and coffee wasn't known as a beverage for another thousand years or so. I threw in soma because it's one of those perennial problematic drinks that's probably a non-stimulant Sarcostemma but possibly Ephedra, and there's evidence for both.
The converse issue is that there's some evidence that adulterating your water with wine keeps the water potable a bit longer (I wrote about this a long time ago at https://heteromeles.com/2012/02/19/drunken-sailors-conquered-the-world/). So one might posit that Romans, in addition to finding ways to deal with scurvy, might deliberately set up breweries or vineyards wherever they could, to insure their water supply of the ships linking these colonies. This may sound weird, but IIRC the archaeologists have evidence that the Phoenicians planted vineyards near their colonies all throughout the Mediterranean. The archaeologists think it was about creating a trade item to use with the local magnates, but it also might have been to make their water supplies last a bit longer by using alcohol to poison the other microbes a bit.
The third issue is why the Romans would want to sail long distances. Part of it is raw ingredients, like the dragon's blood sap they sourced in the Canaries, and the pepper and other spices they purchased in India, and the silk from China. And part of it is just the old colonialism standby of psychotic greed and desperation to improve one's lot. I'm not sure whether the Romans would get greedy about trying to directly control the spice trade, but if they had equal or better ships than the spice traders of the Indian Ocean, they might try it. They might also pioneer a sea route to China if the silk road got too dangerous for some reason.
Finally, about the stability of the Roman Empire. The thing to remember is that the entity called the Roman Empire lasted until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Turks. While I completely agree that it was in crisis mode for a good chunk of that run and that it radically reinvented itself from a Republic to the Roman Pagan Imperium to the Christian Byzantine Empire, that's still more continuity than China or Ancient Egypt showed.
Gibbon was both right and wrong, and one reason we keep thinking the empire fell when Rome fell is that western European propaganda about reviving the Roman empire traces it to the western Roman empire and the Catholic Church. If they acknowledged the Byzantines and the Orthodox Churches, they'd have to admit that others, like the Russian Czars, had at least as good a claim on being the heirs to the Roman Empire as the Holy Roman Empire or the British Empire did. There's a political angle here that we can't forget.
Besides, this really is all just goofing around while we're waiting for our latest iterations of empire to figure out if they want to go code red or step down from the ICU. Don't take it too seriously. Unless it inspires some art, in which case, yes, take it seriously.
"And since wine would go bad as the months went by, turning in to vinegar, they drank that, too, sweetened with honey."
Or lead acetate, from boiling it in lead vessels. It's probably worth putting up with quite a lot of bee stings to get honey instead.
Hydrogen has a couple of advantages during catastrophes: being lighter than air, even if it's burning, it's rising. Remember that most of the people survived the wreck of the Hindenburg, in part because of that. Accidental releases also don't cause climate change, which actually matters, compared with gas, methane, or ammonia.
The only reason I bring this up is the alternatives are hazardous too. After all, no one launches hydrogen balloons as incendiary weapons*, but Molotov cocktails may be the "drink" of the near future in parts of the US, because gasoline's more energy dense and a nice, clingy liquid.
Anyway, I agree that hydrogen's a pain in the ass to store and handle. Absent a miracle, I'll be surprised if it replaces a big proportion of the battery technology we're developing now. But I won't rule it out just yet.
*Yes, I know about the Japanese fire balloons. hydrogen was the lifting gas, and the payload was high explosives. When they wanted to drop the explosives, the balloon ignited and dropped the bombs. OTOH, my chemistry TA said that he'd had some fun filling up trash bags with hydrogen and tying them shut with parafilm that doubled as a fuse. He gave it up after one went off too close to him, blew out some windows and ruptured an eardrum. But if you want to break glass in skyscrapers, perhaps you could be as stupid as he was.
Quite. When I was a kid I decided to avoid 2km of cycling by forsaking the road route around 3 sides of a square and traversing the fourth side instead, directly across some fields. The first couple of fields were pasture, and no more than unpleasantly difficult. The third field had been ploughed. I didn't try going that way again.
Bicycle troops were used in a few places in WW1 for scouting and suchlike, and apparently with success, but I have yet to come across any detailed description of what they actually got up to with their bicycles. It seems to me that the technical term for a soldier struggling to lug a bicycle across either fields or uncultivated land is most likely "target", and they must have depended for success on operating in territory with a useful density of existing pathways with at least some kind of decent surface, even if only of the "tramped down by years of feet" variety. I find it even harder to imagine the Romans finding anywhere suitable to make the bicycle any more than an encumbrance, even if their opponents didn't have rifles. But in some paradoxical way the fact that the whole idea is basically silly somehow makes it more fun to play with; the thing will be mostly useless no matter what, so it's enjoyable to diddle idly with thoughts about how to make it slightly less useless, or something.
I agree with Luke on this.
Right now, people who oppose Trump and Trumpism have two jobs: --Get out the vote (including donating money to GOTV efforts elsewhere if your municipality is safely blue*), and --Prepare for the coup.
For the latter, I'd strongly suggest reading https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/09/10-things-you-need-to-know-to-stop-a-coup/
Basically, they're proposing a massive general strike to break any attempted coup before it gets going, and the article is about how to prepare for it. It's less about stocking up on emergency supplies, other than masks and perhaps a burner phone**, and rather more about forming squads of five trustworthy friends and getting ready to picket if the Shit throws a fit.
Will nonviolence work against an unorganized but heavily armed paramilitary? The evidence from the last century strongly suggests that nonviolent uprisings succeed about twice as often as armed ones do, and quite a few coups have been put down in more dire circumstances by public strikes and similar actions. So yes, get ready to do it, and don't worry about the violent idiots tightly gripping their phallusies.
*I don't know if the ACLU takes donations from outside the US, but there's going to be a big need for lawyers in the coming year. If you want to help our election, that may be one way to do it.
**Turns out the SDPD is getting cutesy and not logging people's phones as evidence, so they can't give them back to people when they release them from custody. Aren't they just so precious? Since this hit the news this morning, they're going to be a media chew toy over the weekend unless an earthquake hits. But since they're doing it, presumably other police departments may get inspired to be similarly careless about phones and things. Be prepared for it.
Hydrogen. Right. Can the next time traveler passing near me kindly give me a recipe on how to build a catalytic material that will store hydrogen inside a crystalline structured material at the equivalent of 2000 or 3000 psi, and release it on the application of small electrical charges?
For bicycle troops, try WWII and the Malaysian campaign. The Japanese got the jump on the British by putting their advance troops on bicycles and getting them into battle faster than the British predicted they'd march in. Eventually the Brits turned this against them. The cyclists were outriding their supply trucks, so the British let the cyclists come across bridges, then destroyed the bridges behind them to cut their supply lines. At least that's the brief story I got. I don't think a soldier hauling a bike is much more of a target than a soldier walking through a field without a bike, but I could be wrong.
I agree that, if you can keep it burning, it's safer than most alternatives; that's not the point. This is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety#Mixtures
But that again is another example of the low energy density of hydrogen making it fairly crap. The energy density of acetylene is much greater. Furthermore, you don't really want to be filling the bin liner with just the fuel; you want to be using a stoichiometric mixture of fuel and oxygen. (A welding set is a good source.) And then to avoid it going off in your ear you ignite it with a very long cable with a piece of fuse wire across one end of it and a plug on the other. You only need to do one of those to realise how close it can come to blowing the entire fucking roof in.
Agreed. Trump did give charitably before he occupied the White House. I mean, heck, like Jeffrey Epstein, he was a registered Democrat back in the day, not that this makes him a better person.
The best thing about Trump is that he's serves as the classic bad example for anyone who posits that any person can serve as POTUS or that minimal government is best. Turns out that, yes, actually, the POTUS is one of the nastier jobs in the world, it is very unforgiving of errors, and hundreds of thousands can die needlessly from presidential incompetence. Trumpism on Covid19 is also doing a reasonably good job destroying both libertarian and conservative macroeconomic fantasies as we speak.
Right. I don't know so much about WW2; it's 1 that is my particular interest.
What I'm thinking about being a target is that the encumbrance slows you down, makes it harder for you to rapidly take cover, and makes it impossible to make progress other than standing up. You can't crawl to better cover on your belly to get out from under hostile fire, for instance. At least not unless you abandon the bike.
I guess what I'm really missing is the kind of detailed appreciation of what the ground is like in places where bicycles were used that you can only really get by going there. Both photographs and descriptions of an area can be surprisingly misleading as to how passable it is compared with inspecting it yourself.
Your recipe is better than mine. I'd alter it by doing the equivalent of a Philadelphia fire kite (or one of John Powell's jellyfish balloons) by filling an inverted trash bag with hydrogen, not closing it, and lighting two equal weight fuses on opposite corners (possibly waiting corners will help it stay oriented. Rocks and rubber bands will do this). This setup will actually rise (Powell proposed a similar design for an ultra-high altitude balloon, based on an interesting accident he had with a weather balloon and a knife), and probably the fuel-air mix will work itself out at the bottom of the open bag without you having to lug two bottles of gas into the riot with you when you want to light the damned things off.
Actually, I can think of a use for such trash bags: anti-helicopter and drone defenses. They probably won't bring the machines down, but they sure will make the area a lot less fun to fly in. Probably should leave this one for fiction, come to think of it. And I strongly advocate for strict nonviolence in any protests, especially in the coming months in the US. Ahem.
Ok, here we go: I don't know if anyone's thought of this before; if not, I claim right of recognition (like Clarke's recognition that was such a thing as geostationary orbits): colonies and stations on inner planets, I expect, will be on the dark side, or near the terminator, but not too near.
Why? Because in a vacuum, what's the hardest thing to get rid of? Waste heat.
While you're time traveling, please take out Marcus Aurelius' son, so that he can't become Emperor, as he disastrously did.
There's also this (not heavy reading): https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/24/crows-possess-higher-intelligence-long-thought-primarily-human/ Crows can think about what they're doing. (They were pushing a colored button if they saw a dim light - but which button changed from time to time.)
Personally I tend to think that, if he loses the election, he'll resign some time prior to Jan. 20th so that Pence becomes President, and the Pence will pardon him from all crimes. It won't work the way he might think it would because such a pardon only applies to Federal crimes and he's still open to state charges. Another possibility is that Jan 20th finds him overseas, in a country unlikely to extradite him. But we'll see. I hope that Trumpy is too much of a coward to unleash havoc, but that's merely a hope. I would expect a whole sheaf of executive orders signed in the last couple of months that the incoming President will need to cancel as one of his or her first acts.
As I recently mentioned to an acquaintance, be careful who you threaten if the election doesn't go your way. Liberals can shoot back, too, and wouldn't that be fun? He asked where libs would learn to shoot? I just smiled and gave hom the standard paratroop blessing. "Airborn, motherf$@#×r." His face got thoughtful. Let's hope it doesnt come to that: the only winners would be Putin and Xi.
Could the Romans build the Suez Canal?
Yes! The existence proof is the Canal of the Pharaohs, which differs from the Suez route mostly in that it connected directly to the Nile. It may or may not be the same canal as the 'River of Trajan.' The Romans certainly could have dug north for a direct connection to the Mediterranean but with the Canal of the Pharaohs in operation nobody could be arsed to.
Already been done on Mercury, in Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars. The colony runs on rails and is powered somehow by the differential expansion and contraction of the rails, such that it always slides along the dawn line.
My solution for Mercury, never implemented in a story, is the "Midnight Train." Mercury has topography, and bashing a rail line wide enough for a city through a bunch of mountains is tedious and probably impractical. Instead, use a big road with an electric power source (third rail or close quarter beamed), and run a road train on it. The mdnight train is a big ass, many-car road train (sort of like Korea's Snowpiercer, but hopefully without the politics) that services solar farms with habitats cut into pole-facing cliffs. It passes by the habitats around midnight of each Mercury day, and they can send cars or ships out to meet up with it.
The solar farms beam energy to habitats and ships elsewhere in the system using big-ass lasers, and incidentally keep the peace and promote commerce and transit system-wide using the same lasers (ahem). The human habitats on the solar farms are built like giant dewar flasks, with the colony suspended inside a large vacuum chamber for insulation, with large thermal masses to help balance the thermal loads. The solar farms take up sunlight when it's available, store it (probably by melting something), then pump the energy out to fill contracts when their lasers won't melt in the sunlight and there's a sufficient thermal differential between the energy storage and the sky to run the heat pump generators.
The Midnight Train connects the solar farms with the rest of the system, offering services, goods shipments, transportation from ships coming down on the night side, and so forth. Since the train's always on the backside of the planet, it also is in continual contact with the rest of the system. If the train breaks down, it's got half the night to get fixed and moving again, and that's not bad.
As for Venus, get high enough in the atmosphere, and it's fairly cool, even if the air is acid. Of course, no one talks about the joys of colonial living in truly ginormous balloons, but it could maybe happen. Geoffrey Landis' take is cute, but I'm pretty sure that Powell's Dark Sky Station design (five-armed star) is more stable, even if you need a couple of miles of airspace to hold the balloons that will stably support maybe 100 people without a farm.
There are a couple of hydrogen pipelines in "greater L.A.". They make me nervous - and I'm at least 30 miles from the nearest one, which happens to run under some busy streets and into an area of business parks with Large Companies. (I'm also nervous about a lot of the refrigerated-gas tankers that I see on streets and highways - not because of the truck drivers or the pipeline companies, but because of all the idjits who don't have a clue.)
The original Red-Med canal ideas were not about going across the isthmus, but about going west from the Red Sea to the Nile and then using the river. ... what stopped them was not the physical difficulties of digging it but the political difficulties of keeping their shit together long enough to see it through.
That's an understatement. The greatest problem with the Canal of the Pharaohs was that it was a water filled ditch through a desert and pretty much always needed maintenance. If you don't care for Wikipedia there's another essay here and a timeline here with a web page design style that is an archeological artifact itself. The canal was silting up basically from the moment people laid down their shovels and the Egyptians were no better at funding infrastructure maintenance than we are. Over the centuries it was allowed to fill up with crud and then dug out again several times.
Trump did give charitably before he occupied the White House.
Sort of. Maybe. Kind of.
He formed a charitable foundation and dropped a big chunk of change into it up front. Then spend the next decade or so getting others to contribute but not putting in any more of his money. Then used it to pay off people sort of kind of under the table. Plus every now and then giving money to some group. But never to as many groups as he bragged about. And got really upset when called out about it during the 2016 campaign.
So as the state of NY dug into the records he agreed to pay a few $million in fines and shut it down to avoid prosecution.
I doubt that his net contributions over the years exceeded the under the table payoffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation
Pence can't pardon him if he's not indicted while Pence is in office. Also, once he resigns, he loses presidential immunity, so a storm of non-federal legal actions is going to descend on him within days. But he might still do a runner, if his nerve fails him.
The other problem is insuring that the bureaucracy doesn't institute a massive data purge to hide all evidence of what happened. And just out of spite. Actually, this might happen anyway, in which case one of the nonviolent protests may be a failure of the staffers to comply with their leaders' demands to wipe their hard drives.
Massive staff layoffs may be another thing that happens (do bureaucrats stay at their desks as a protest? That would be interesting!). Unfortunately, there's a lot of non-trivial shit that can be done. Fortunately, a lot of it is reversible.
idjits
A phrase I learned from my father. I think it expresses the intended meaning quite well.
@ 1143 Heteromeles -- For a single instance, how does Breonna Taylor's murder parse with he's killed nobody except by negligence in covid-19, when, in cases of those like Taylor and so many others, he has publicly given the cops -- and any other white person -- permission to do kill? If he didn't pull the trigger, he told and enabled others to do so. That how dons, whom he considers himself one, operate. That is more than accessory after the fact.
His refusal to do nothing about covid isn't stupidity, negligence or incompetence. It's as intentional as shooting black people and leaving immigrants to die in ICE prisons, etc. Covid amuck is his greatest weapon for stealing the election, which he's pretty much also said he will do. Actions speak. His supporters don't distance. They don't mask. They are armed. They are out on the streets. They are killing right now. Whereas, well, unless we are young black people, young white people, we are not out there, are we, because we believe in not infecting others and avoiding getting sick ourselves as the best way to revive the economy and work against climate catastrophe.
Honestly, I don't know what you're angrily and aggressively banging on about here in that post, unless to posture and intimidate someone who disagrees with your ideas. Which again, honestly, I don't know why you'd even want to do that, to someobody who is living through all this as much as anyone, conditions which are anything BUT fun. Not everyone experience fantasies about aliens or whatever other than ourselves being responsible for what we're going through when we know why we're going through all this.
Can you not understand there are people who honestly see fantasies right now as the opposite of useful in our catastrophe(s), and not even enjoyable? Maybe, even, as your grandfather or father, depending how old you are, playing pretend is part of the problem, not part of the solution? That you feel otherwise doesn't make me evil for not seeing it as you do.
Additionally, telling a woman what rape and abuse are or are not -- a woman who can testify as personally as you could possibly ask for what rape and abuse are -- maybe you could take your own advice? and recall that everything isn't about you personally, even when posted in response to what you proposed.
Moreover, what does any of this have to do with time travel?
Peace and Out.
Y'know, let me speak as someone who spent a lot of his life with not a lot of money: in the US, you can buy "kits" - clear plastic, with cardboard or something strips, and you staple these inside the windows to the windowframe (or wall), and it cuts the leakage. They're cheap, like $5 or under.
in which case one of the nonviolent protests may be a failure of the staffers to comply with their leaders' demands to wipe their hard drives.
Ah, the good old days. When such a protest was to do things like the exiting Clinton West Wingers removing the B, U, S,& H keys off the computer keyboards or similar.
but why would a "no-guns HMS Victory" be carrying cannonballs? Or have gunners?
The supposition was "no-guns" so the hundred or so cannons on board Victory disappear just as the triremes come over the horizon, oars flashing as they manoeuvre to ram. That doesn't obviate the cannonballs on the gundeck ready racks next to where the guns were positioned in this scenario.
"The gun is king." HMS Victory's size, shape, structure and sailing characteristics were defined by the guns she carried, like all first-rank and similar warships. If there were no guns of the standard sizes in Naval use when she was laid down then she'd be a lot different or she wouldn't exist at all -- the Queen Elisabeth aircraft carriers are designed around the F-35C STOVL strike fighter and without that particular aircraft they'd be a very expensive and overengineered helicopter carrier.
Designing HMS Victory as an first-rate ship outfitted with torsion artillery rather than cannon and bowmen in place of musket-firing Marines is another matter. It's worth noting that as built she could sail a few knots faster than a trireme could row -- even in problematic wind conditions catching her and forcing her into an engagement would be a long haul.
With my pedantic hat on, it was most likely a perfectly legal ham radio power amplifier being used illegally on a service that doesn't allow high power (citizen's band). Hams can use up to 1.5 KW legally on many of the HF ham bands.
Right. I don't know so much about WW2; it's 1 that is my particular interest.
What I'm thinking about being a target is that the encumbrance slows you down, makes it harder for you to rapidly take cover, and makes it impossible to make progress other than standing up. You can't crawl to better cover on your belly to get out from under hostile fire, for instance. At least not unless you abandon the bike.
I guess what I'm really missing is the kind of detailed appreciation of what the ground is like in places where bicycles were used that you can only really get by going there. Both photographs and descriptions of an area can be surprisingly misleading as to how passable it is compared with inspecting it yourself.
There's a lot more to WW1 than most people think, as the predominant imagery in public consciousness is of Western Front trench warfare. Bicycle troops are essentially lightweight mechanized dragoons, able to maneuver faster than leg infantry for very little increase in supply use (supplying horses is difficult), while still fighting like leg infantry.
Mid to late WW1 was a rather strange conflict compared to wars both before and after. The sheer number of people crammed into the stretch from the Channel to Switzerland meant that maneuvers did nothing. That meant that branches built for maneuver warfare stopped having a job (in that theater, for that stretch of time). Bicycle troops would continue as more economical internal messengers than horse-bound riders, but as a combat arm they were as useless as their cavalry cousins when the trenches proliferated.
Maneuver warfare played a huge role in the opening stages, and in all other theaters. In those other places and times, bicycle troops had similar uses to light cavalry, with different tradeoffs: mainly logistical weight vs cross-country mobility.
Re: USA 2020 Election
For my fellow USAians who are also concerned about the election: The best bet to avoid or minimize El Cheeto Grande's plans to subvert the election is to vote early. According to this article by Reuters, 39 states and the District of Columbia offer in-person early voting; seven have already started early voting. I have received my Virginia absentee ballot and will be returning it in person to to my regular polling place.
While there is debate about absentee voting security and when those votes will be counted, early in-person voting has the advantage of being recorded at the time, minimizing the Orange One's threat to call the election on the night of 3 November.
Per some of the previous posts, I agree the Shoggoth in Chief doesn't have the stomach for an actual civil war or coup - that might place his own precious body at risk; but I'm not so convinced about some of his fellow swamp creatures, particularly Herr Hermann Barr or Otto "Chad" Wolf.
The U.S. military is trying very hard not to get pulled into this vortex of suckiness. Again, most of you who have not served have not had the liturgy on Posse Comitatus, which is drummed into the troops' heads on a continuing basis. Yes, there are hotheads, but the likelihood of an entire unit of above platoon size acting coherently seems very remote. And although we've seen that some police departments are troublingly reticent to lean on the militia types, I doubt most cops will tolerate watching felonies if violence is widespread.
I'm more concerned about the Rethuglicans' horde of lawyers gumming up the works, and attempts at state legislatures to subvert elections. I'm not sure what can be done about that. I will note that the GOPers in Congress that are fellow travelers, rather than true believers, are distancing themselves from El Cheeto's statements about not honoring the election results. Those rats are poised to launch themselves out of the boat at the first hint of threat to their positions.
Charlie's post @1156, Luke's at 1176, and Frank's at 1190 and 1195 all seem on the nose. Determination, calm, vigilance and nonviolent protest will hopefully carry the day.
Arg. I forgot that newlines end the italics tag and misclicked the preview button. Everything from "Right." to "Both photographs and descriptions of an area can be surprisingly misleading as to how passable it is compared with inspecting it yourself." is from Pigeon; everything after my response.
Crows can think about what they're doing.
I'd be interested to see if the newly-discovered neural arrangements in birds extend beyond the postulated amniote ancestry. Is there something analogous in octopi and squid?
How are you getting the H2? This determines everything from how expensive it is to how "clean" it is, both from a lifecycle emissions perspective and how much impurities are included. Over here it came up recently with the revelations about the startup Nikola (Ars on the subject). Put simply, among their claims was that they had some Secret TechTM that cut the cost of clean H2 production (electrolysis) by 75%, which puts it at about the same pricing as Steam Methane Reforming, which produces a lot of CO2 as a byproduct (and includes CO in the H2).
People seem to forget that hydrogen fuel was an important energy source in the UK. Coal gas contained a variable concentration of hydrogen but there was enough to make a lighter than air balloon using coal gas in a polythene bag. Adding up to 30% hydrogen to natural gas wold be safe and is already used in some countries. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133412.htm So hydrogen storage is not always quite as dangerous as people think. And in WW1 military balloons were filled with hydrogen made by passing steam through red hot iron tubes. (O level chemistry from over 50 years ago.)
Amusingly, apparently Fox won a libel case by successfully arguing that "reasonable viewers" can't be expected to take Tucker Carson seriously.
The case was brought by the former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said Carlson defamed her on his show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight," by saying she extorted President Donald Trump "out of approximately $150,000 in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair," the filing said.
Fox News asked the judge to toss out McDougal's case by arguing that "Carlson's statements were not statements of fact and that she failed adequately to allege actual malice."
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9
Do a runner? You mean that one of Putin's long range Ilyushin-96 planes is going to land at Washington and Trump will stroll in?
Ah, the good old days. When such a protest was to do things like the exiting Clinton West Wingers removing the B, U, S,& H keys off the computer keyboards or similar.
There was enough excited story telling about that back in the day that I was moved to find the Government Accounting Office report on allegations of damage, 220 pages of dry reporting. TL;DR seems to be some sabotaged W keys, some souvenir hunting by departing workers, and lots of wear and tear consistent with eight years in the same space.
"Do a runner? You mean that one of Putin's long range Ilyushin-96 planes is going to land at Washington and Trump will stroll in?" He seems to have lots of supporters who own small boats. One of these could carry him off. Of course they seem to be a lot of sinkings at his boat rallies so he might prefer to stay home and face the music.
Heteromeles That non-violent opposition to a coup link was VERY interesting - learnt something there, I did. Point 8, referring to Wilmington, 1898, was a very unpleasnt "new" history lesson - I went & looked it up. Thanks, I think.
Mike Liberals can shoot back, too Ah - a lesson NO-ONE in the USA seenms capable of learning - this is why we have international laws & treaties, for instance - which brings me to BoZo .... And coups ... Brexit is looming & there is a divergent opinion as to whether it's "on or "off" to quote from the link - "We're 90% there, but the missing 10% is political" .... Could there be a "plot" to make sure Brexit crashes out, as a valid excuse for using the Civil Contingencies Act & effectively mounting a right-wing coup - BoZo merely being a figurehead for really nasty people? NOT a pleasant prospect.
"Shoot back"?
When I can buy rocket motors, and cutting lasers?
And, of course, since this is a house with two oxy-acetyline torches, I could weld steel on the front of the minivan, though I don't know any big Black guys who wear gold chains....
Oh, and as I hit submit, I remembered the solution I came up iwth in the late sixties that I never wound up using: how well do the white wing terrorists shoot... when they're trying to walk on marbles all over the ground?
In high school chemistry (mid-sixties) I got out of several classes one morning by assisting my chemistry teacher, who was demonstrating to the morning classes how Lavoisier first separated hydrogen and oxygen. I think he said it was a shotgun barrel, and he used steel wool instead of tacks, and I kept the three Bunsen burners monitored, and water being boiled to send steam through the literally red-hot barrel,
Heteromeles and Foxessa.
This is the part where I attempt to reason with each of you.
Foxessa. Please remember that Heteromeles and discussing two things. First, he's trying to separate the time-machine conversation from the Trump conversation. As far as I can tell, these are, in fact, two entirely separate conversations. Second, that Het is trying to figure out what Trump's limits are in calling for and enacting violence against the American public in general. Anyone who gets this issue right has enormously valuable information upon which to base their upcoming political decisions. I've got some differences with Het about what Trump's limits might be, but I'm not going to get into them. But it would be nice if instead of dropping the mic you took his discussion as a serious attempt to start the conversation - I've been dealing with the guy for about five years now and I'm pretty sure his heart is in the right place.
Heteromeles. Foxessa is clearly a historical student of violence towards Black people. You're think, "Oh Trump raped a Playboy Bunny, but he's shown no evidence of going any further..."
But if you're a student of violence towards Black people, Trump's behavior comes right out of the "Woodrow Wilson/Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment/Tulsa Race Riots theory of "how to deal with Black people."* And I suspect that Foxessa can defend her position with considerably more historical knowledge than you can muster...
But here's the deal. If Trump loses the election, both of you are going to throw parties (aside from the COVID-19 factor.) So instead of getting up in each other's faces maybe you can figure out how to work together. Each of you has a useful piece of the puzzle - maybe you can stop lecturing each other and connect those pieces together! I know it's an uncomfortable process, but these kind of connections need to be forged, and quickly, if we don't want Trump to be president in 2026.
'nuf said, I think.
SFReader @ 1142: Re: DT refusing to step down
Here's another potential scenario:
https://theconversation.com/who-formally-declares-the-winner-of-the-us-presidential-election-145212
Very important that the Dems get a majority here.
In the House the vote goes by States. Each state gets 1 vote and the majority of the state delegation gets to select who that vote goes to.
The Republicans hold a majority in 26 state delegations, Democrats hold a majority in 22 state delegations, with two state delegations (Michigan, Pennsylvania) evenly split between Republicans & Democrats. I don't know how the split delegations decide how to cast their votes, but even if both of them went to the Democrats it wouldn't make a difference.
Even if the Democrats pick up additional House seats they're unlikely to flip any state delegations controlled by Republicans. Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming all have a single Republican Representative, but I don't see any of those incumbents being defeated by Democrats.
The Democrats have to pick up control of 4 additional state delegations for an election decided in the House to choose Biden.
If it goes to the House, Trumpolini gets re-elected.
But here's where it gets interesting. If the Presidential election goes to the House, the Vice residential election goes to the Senate, where the vote is by individual Senators. And there is a good chance the Democrats will flip the Senate.
If the Democrats do take the Senate Kamala Harris is likely to become Trump's Vice President.
Roy @ 1146: A simple majority in the House is not enough for a contingent election. In that situation, each state delegation has one vote each, and there has to be an absolute majority of states, so at least 26, voting for the winner. The House may only choose from the top three candidates by EC vote. In practice there’d almost certainly need to be a faithless elector or electors voting for someone other than Biden or Trump (much less likely after the recent SCOTUS ruling) for there to be more than two candidates to choose from.
Currently I think the figures are Republicans 26, Democrats 22, Tied 4. It’s the new House that would conduct the contingent election though, and while it’s not implausible that the Democrats might flip one or more Republican delegations to at least tied, a scenario where they take 26 delegations is only really plausible with an EC landslide for Biden anyway.
The current Congress is 26 Republican, 22 Democratic, 2 split delegations. The Democrats would have to take control of 4 additional state delegations, without losing control of any they currently hold. It's fairly unlikely even if the Democrats do pick up individual seats.
[...]
The American Constitution is, of course, the most perfect constitution ever enacted at any time in the history of the world, etc. etc.
Say instead that it's the best Constitution "ever enacted at any time in the history of the world, etc. etc" so far. It's not perfect; not even close ... but the Constitutional Convention recognized that and that's why they included a mechanism for Amending the Constitution, so that those of us who came after could fix the errors once we recognized what they were. For example, I give you the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.
I agree, and I think I do understand where Foxessa was coming from, and forgetting about the rape and abuse allegations on my part was a mistake (I simply forgot, actually, which is a different mistake in itself). That said, I still stand by my diagnosis of him as a physical coward and think that's likely to be important right now.
As Charlie noted, he's no Saddam Hussein, and hopefully that will save us from a nuclear war or a civil war. If he gets excised from the presidency in one piece, he can answer for at least some of his other abuses, and perhaps that will move us a step towards justice and away from chaos.
Brexit is looming & there is a divergent opinion as to whether it's "on or "off" to quote from the link...
I expect it's old news to you but I was surprised a few days ago by the news stories of UK citizens in Europe losing their bank accounts on account of Brexit being an utter clusterfuck.
(Note: the BBC does not use the word "clusterfuck" in its news stories. Readers are expected to infer this from the facts.)
Are very many London residents expressing their displeasure around government buildings? More than usual?
David L @ 1157:
As other may have pointed out earlier. That vote is state by state with each state getting one vote. Currently the R's lead the D's in terms of this counting and the odds of that changing are very very slim. Wyoming and California each get one vote.
Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming ALL get one vote. All are "controlled" by the Republicans, and all are single member states (i.e. they only have one representative). The Democrats only have to pick up a single seat in each of those states to swing the House. I don't think it's going to happen, but it could happen. I won't go so far as to say stranger things have happened ... but
Delaware & Vermont are the two single member states "controlled" by the Democrats
JReynolds @ 1163:
William Gibson gives a possible answer in his Japckpot trilogy (of which the third is still in progress). Future people would bring information about how to hit the rotating blades we are approaching at a more oblique angle. Also using future knowledge to bootstrap technologies that we could build, if only we had the benefit of hindsight in knowing how useful they would be when implemented.
Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking. I don't expect anyone can predict specific technologies, but those future time travelers might know what technologies we're capable of discovering, but for some reason have so far overlooked; the things we might look back a thousand years from now and ask, "Why didn't we think of that sooner? It should have been so obvious!"
Maybe, what are the things that don't really look too promising right now that would provide enormous benefits if we did manage to figure them out? What are the problems we face now that would help us out a lot if we solved them, that a person from the future might know how to solve?
If it goes to the House, Trumpolini gets re-elected.
As a footnote to the footnote to the footnote, it's been observed that this assumes not only that Republicans continue to back Trump (as they've been doing) but also that the House makes some decision.
What if it doesn't?
Can they do that?
They never have before... but there's not any provision for forcing the Representatives into a room and making them vote on anything. In theory the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, could just not do anything at all, as Mitch McConnell chose do to for Obama's Supreme Court nominee and a lot of House passed bills. She could hold no House assemblies, do no business, and let the clock run out.
On noon of January 20th the sitting President and Vice President are out of office; the Constitution is very clear on this. Normally they're replaced without fuss but what happens if there is no President and no Vice President? Happily there's also a clear line of succession; if the top two spots are empty the presidency falls through to the next person in line, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
On noon of January 20th the sitting President and Vice President are out of office; the Constitution is very clear on this. Normally they're replaced without fuss but what happens if there is no President and no Vice President? Happily there's also a clear line of succession; if the top two spots are empty the presidency falls through to the next person in line, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
That's kind of one of those civil war situations, thanks to QAnon and others and general suspicion of Pelosi doing a power grab. Although hopefully I'm being pessimistic?
Anyway, the most likely way that would happen is if we've got a bad upswing in covid-19, a bad flu season, and winter storms, such that a good chunk of congress simply can't make it in to deal with the problem. At that point, Pelosi becomes the caretaker President until the mess gets cleared up. Although if that were the case, if a majority of democrats could make it in and the Republicans could not, Pelosi might simply call the house to order, elect Biden, and that would be...probably another civil war trigger actually.
Can we hope that El Cheeto gets a bad case of the long term ventilator blues in the next four weeks? That would be a happier outcome.
HMS Victory's size, shape, structure and sailing characteristics were defined by the guns she carried
Yep, that was sort of my point (though I admit I got carried away with the scenario a bit). The ability to stand a big broadside is the reason for building ships like that. Absent the guns, there are a lot of different considerations. Ancient ships did mount ballistae and other torsion artillery. In some cases the large crew of rowers also doubled as "marines". When Patrick O'Brian writes about an encounter with a felucca of Morocco, the concern is mostly the number of crew with boarding cutlasses.
I suppose the thought to follow is why the Roman might build something like Victory and what would need to be different to drive in that direction. I suspect it's a case of lots of incremental change rather than any single gotcha innovation to get there from whatever was tooling around the central Med in 50 BCE. That's also noting that shipping was a big deal for Rome, relying Egyptian grain to feed its population.
Terry Heatlie @ 1213:
With my pedantic hat on, it was most likely a perfectly legal ham radio power amplifier being used illegally on a service that doesn't allow high power (citizen's band). Hams can use up to 1.5 KW legally on many of the HF ham bands.
I apologize if I was not clear. It was a Ham Radio amplifier that was illegal to use for Citizens Band Radio. Perfectly legal for Ham Radio, but not legal to modify for use on CB Radio.
That's kind of one of those civil war situations, thanks to QAnon and others and general suspicion of Pelosi doing a power grab. Although hopefully I'm being pessimistic?
No, I don't think so.
But the loonies are psyching themselves up for a civil war anyway. Pretty much anything other than an overwhelming Biden landslide will set off at least a few crazies. (Yes, I include a Trump landslide; that would mean they're vindicated and can lash out at "the libs.") We should probably expect a lot of screaming and at least some poorly organized violence.
Their attempts at organizing rallies teach us that the Reich wing shouters are very good at shouting, being angry, and displaying military surplus gear - and very bad at efficient organization, operational security, not getting caught, or understanding what they did that led to them getting caught.
If enough states really can't get their elections sorted out Speaker Pelosi would be wise to make a lot of public statements about them doing that, and how voters are important to democracy, and expressing faith in the system, and so on. It won't fly with the loonies, who already hate her since she's both a Democrat and a woman with power, but it confirms her as a voice of reason for everyone else.
Rabidchaos @ 1214: Right. I don't know so much about WW2; it's 1 that is my particular interest.
What I'm thinking about being a target is that the encumbrance slows you down, makes it harder for you to rapidly take cover, and makes it impossible to make progress other than standing up. You can't crawl to better cover on your belly to get out from under hostile fire, for instance. At least not unless you abandon the bike.
That's essentially what they did, although they usually didn't wait to get into a fire fight before abandoning the bicycles. Ride up until you're just behind the "front lines", dismount and form up the same as regular troops. The bicycles could be collected later for reissue/reuse.
There's a lot more to WW1 than most people think, as the predominant imagery in public consciousness is of Western Front trench warfare. Bicycle troops are essentially lightweight mechanized dragoons, able to maneuver faster than leg infantry for very little increase in supply use (supplying horses is difficult), while still fighting like leg infantry.
Exactly. They're mounted infantry in the rear areas, and light infantry once they reach the battlefront.
Mid to late WW1 was a rather strange conflict compared to wars both before and after. The sheer number of people crammed into the stretch from the Channel to Switzerland meant that maneuvers did nothing. That meant that branches built for maneuver warfare stopped having a job (in that theater, for that stretch of time). Bicycle troops would continue as more economical internal messengers than horse-bound riders, but as a combat arm they were as useless as their cavalry cousins when the trenches proliferated.
Maneuver warfare played a huge role in the opening stages, and in all other theaters. In those other places and times, bicycle troops had similar uses to light cavalry, with different tradeoffs: mainly logistical weight vs cross-country mobility.
Trench warfare is tactics trying to catch up with firepower. Maneuver warfare played a huge role in bringing the war to a conclusion. But in the middle was a stalemate while both sides figured out how to deal with new weapons that gave one soldier the firepower that previously had required a squad, platoon or company to deliver.
Dave P @ 1215: Charlie's post @1156, Luke's at 1176, and Frank's at 1190 and 1195 all seem on the nose. Determination, calm, vigilance and nonviolent protest will hopefully carry the day.
Just be prepared for the likelihood that thugs on the other side will be resorting to violence and the police have no interest in protecting peaceful protesters from those thugs. We already have the example of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Trumpolini and his surrogates have already threatened that there will be insurrection if it looks like Biden is going to win. Expect multiple repetitions of the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot, but this time they'll be armed and they will shoot you down if you're in their way.
Trumpolini is a coward as far as personal risk, but he has no fear of fomenting stochastic terrorism. Think of the
For my fellow USAians who are also concerned about the election: The best bet to avoid or minimize El Cheeto Grande's plans to subvert the election is to vote early. According to this article by Reuters, 39 states and the District of Columbia offer in-person early voting; seven have already started early voting. I have received my Virginia absentee ballot and will be returning it in person to to my regular polling place.
Real inside the foul lines here but I'm going to disagree a bit.
If your state COUNTS, but doesn't release totals, on or before election day, then vote early. If they don't start counting them till after election day try and vote in person.
The later is where most of the wizards in election law figure the issues will come up. With Trump and friends trying to claim those shouldn't count as the election day is over and who knows, sends in US Marshals to impound those ballots.
Here in NC they can count early but not release the results. The plan in the county where I live (about 8% of the state's population) is to process/count them once or twice a week and be ready to release the totals within minutes after polls close. Not sure if this is state wide or not.
Heck we even have a web site where you can log in and track your mail in ballot. And be told if it has been counted or not.
Re: Alt-Rome-ing: there may be a better way to get windjammers into the classical world.
The place where this alternate history starts is when Alexander the Great doesn't die in Babylon in 323 BC, but lives on to a ripe old tyrannical age and founds a dynasty and empire that lasts...awhile. At least three generations, likely more. Said empire stretches from the Danube to the Indus to Syene in Egypt.
If you're interested in windjammers (long-distance sailing ships) popping up in the Classical World, this is a better scenario.
--It was the time of the Polyremes. In our timeline the Successor States that carved up Alexander's empire were the ones fielding the ginormous "Polyremes," whereas Rome barely got into the big ship game and gave up on them after the battle of Actium. With this scenario (the Hellenistic World in the 2nd-1st century BC or even later), the technology and resources to field big ships were both known to be available, even if we have no idea what the ships actually looked like. --Alexander's Macedonian empire bridged the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. While the Atlantic wasn't all that exciting in 200 BC for deep ocean voyaging (unless colonizing the New World is the desired outcome), the same can't be said for the Indian Ocean, which was bordered by polities that had been trading with each other for millennia by that point. Alexander's empire would have good reasons to build big ships in the Persian Gulf, and reasons to sail at least to the west coast of India, if not further. --Meanwhile, Rome in 300 BCE is a Republic that's in the process of conquering the Italian peninsula. --Carthage is at the height of its power. --The Iberian peninsula was in the hands of the Celtiberians (in our timeline, until 200 BCE) --And best of all, I don't think Harry Turtledove has tried this timeline yet.
Now comes the question: which fantasies have already dealt with a world in which Alexander The Great survived? I can't think of any, but that means very little.
I agree this is a promising line of enquiry.
To answer the last question first, Eric Flint's Belisarius series is set in a Byzantine rather than Hellenistic Greece, but otherwise there are some overlaps.
Something I forgot earlier, and which is missing here too, is the Back Sea. When you have Byzantium/Constantinople, if you're the preeminent naval power, you also control access between all the Black Sea ports and the Med. If we're at the stage of building the empire out, then Northern Anatolia is a sort of focal point as much as anywhere. But you also get to Ukraine and Georgia pretty neatly. Not clear what is going on all around these regions in Alexander's day, and it'd be a matter of how fast you can grow your dynastic army to support all the provinces.
I guess if access to the Canal of the Pharaohs is a given, then the same shipping is ranging around the Arabian Peninsula and has control over the Strait of Hormuz and so on. India and the Stans. The point being this gives reach around the empire from two sides.
I'm still seeing it as a resource allocation issue: what do you focus on building first, and is there a plausible scenario that would drive building the military capability that makes this stuff possible.
For those worried about the loudmouths...remember Portland? When the rally drove through downtown and subsequently got chased out by the antifa they were hollering about? And one of their own got shot?
It'll happen again if they pull that shit should violence break out in the US. Most of that ilk? Will end up shooting their own. Take a look at where their muzzles are pointing in all of the protests. They lack muzzle discipline. Which tells me that most of them lack practice, and what practice they have is in doing stuff like paintball, run-and-gun classes, and point-and-shoot gaming.
Lack of muzzle discipline kills your buddies. Just as I wouldn't go hunting with Dick Cheney for that reason, I'd stay clear of any clusterf*ck with these boys. They'll wreak enough carnage on their own.
The thing is, there are sufficient numbers of centrist and liberal sorts who own guns and know how to use them here in the US. We don't talk about it because we don't need to most of the time, and a lot of the time it freaks out our friends who don't own guns, and we're respectful of our friends' preferences.
Most of the crowd that huffs around and makes noise about shooting down the liberals do not have experience dealing with armed opposition.
Besides, if they're strutting around with their big guns in open display, that just makes better targets for skilled snipers.
That said, I don't think things are going to devolve to that extreme except for a handful of loudmouths. I could be wrong. I could be a starry-eyed optimist who nonetheless plans to stay the hell out of Portland around Election Day.
But my experience with this sort of right winger is that they are mostly bluster, little action--and what action will happen will be through easily disposable, easily manipulated pawns.
Re bicycle troops: They're a cheaper version of Mounted Infantry where you don't have to feed and water the horse, and like mounted infantry (except at Beersheba, just because), nobody's expecting them to go into combat mounted - barring ambush situations, mounted infantry and bicycle infantry abandon the mounts and bikes (with a handler) the moment contact with the enemy is expected - once they're where the fighting is, they become nothing but infantry. Expecting them to take the bike or the horse into difficult terrain is missing the point - they're more mobile than your standard infantry, but limited in terrain because of the choice of mobility (although mounted infantry is a hell of a lot more broken terrain friendly than bicycle infantry). (Descendant of mounted infantry here - so I got a lot of the stories, and I can tell you that despite the NZMR thinking of themselves as the next best thing to cavalry, large numbers of them spent WW1 on foot and marching just like the next guy. (although strangely enough they don't tend to mention Surafend, which is where the NZMR broke bad.))
The "no taxation without representation" thing wasn't really about the onerous tax burden.It was about the representation. As a clever wheeze solving two problems at once, the tea John Company exported from India was taxed in London before importing to North America , and the funds used to pay the colonial administration, without troubling the local assemblies. John Company's monopoly got them out of a financial bit of bother. What could go wrong?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
SS We've had two successive total wankers as Mayor - though Khan is still popular in some areas. NOT as bad as BoZo, but his complete & utter mishandling of Transport ( TfL etc ) has made him no friends & the latest fiasco over Hammersmith Bridge reflects credit on nobody. A lot of women are suspicious of him, because he's a muslim-male. Our cynicism is on a par with the Berliners, actually, if not even more so, when it comes to "National" government.
JBS 8th August 1918, Battle of Amiens - where, finally, the Allies & the Brits in particular, worked out a combined-arms appraoch that broke the trench stalemate. Massive spearhead tank attack, with the foot troops right behind the tanks, coupled with serious ground-strafing & bombing & comms+fuel/ammo-dump attacks from the air.
You're still missing the point. Uncompressed or lightly compressed gas fuels are a very different kettle of fish, as is pipeline supply to static installations.
The difference is that gas-powered road vehicles have to contain highly compressed gas in a compact container; cooling alone is feasible, in some cases, for tankers but not really for cars. Any breach of the container is likely to cause a rapid release of almost all of its contents, and the risk of a violent explosion is much higher.
The related problem is that is becomes much harder to make containers for small volumes (i.e. for cars) that are both light enough and impact-resistant, and multi-source accidents are vastly more common for road vehicles. There are a LOT of fuel-release accidents on the roads; many (most?) do not cause fires, but almost all would with hydrogen; they rarely cause explosions, but many more would with hydrogen.
It was a Ham Radio amplifier that was illegal to use for Citizens Band Radio. Perfectly legal for Ham Radio, but not legal to modify for use on CB Radio.
In the early days of CB radio the amplifiers sold to CBers were unmodified 28MHz linear amps which was close enough in frequency that they'd take drive from the 27MHz CB units and transmit significant power to a 28MHZ antenna. Unfortunately the CBers were'nt that technically ept and/or set up to measure what they were outputting, distortion etc. so they tended to splatter over the 28MHz band in their search for MOAR POWERRRR!!!
An old ham of my acquaintance had a solution to that -- a pickaxe handle between the legs. Sadly the local cops frowned on such endeavours so he came up with a simpler, more technical and less obviously criminal solution. Sneak up on the CBer's home, locate the coax feed going up to the roof-mounted antenna and quietly hammer a panel pin into it. Instant SWR of zero and vapourisation of the final stage's unprotected-to-save-money transistors in the el-cheapo amplifier.
"The difference is that gas-powered road vehicles have to contain highly compressed gas in a compact container; cooling alone is feasible, in some cases, for tankers but not really for cars. Any breach of the container is likely to cause a rapid release of almost all of its contents, and the risk of a violent explosion is much higher.”
That’s true for all gas powered cars now. Gas cylinders are strong. They’re also heavy. But Hydrogen storage is not impossible and lighter but still robust containers should also be possible. My point is that hydrogen is not as dangerous as some people think. In the late 1960’s I was amazed to see the method by which gas cylinders were delivered to the small hospital where I was working. The cylinders were about 5 feet tall and strapped onto the back of a flat bed lorry. The driver dropped a motor scooter tyre onto the concrete delivery yard, rolled a cylinder vertically to the side of the lorry and then kicked it so that the base fell neatly on to the tyre. No shattering of cylinders. Most of these were not hydrogen but the hydrogen cylinders for anaerobic culture in the lab were delivered in the same way. I would expect filling of empty tanks of cars to be the most dangerous process. My own view is that batteries make more sense than fuel cells or hydrogen combustion for cars.
I have seen that, too. If I have calculated it correctly, a full-sized cylinder (as used for argonite (*), not the small ones usually used for oxygen) contains only a couple of Kg of hydrogen and 50-100 Kg of steel. My (small) car carries 40 Kg of fuel. Go figure.
People have been working on a suitable method of hydrogen storage for many decades, and every single claim I have seen relies on a supply of unobtanium.
(*) 80 litres at 300 bar - I couldn't find the weight, but a smaller one from another maker was 74 Kg.
In the late 1960’s I was amazed to see the method by which gas cylinders were delivered
Well, yes, that was the 1960s. They do things differently nowadays... Cylinder delivery on and off trucks nowadays is done using a tail-lift or a small HIAB crane. The cylinders are retained in a palletised cage or similar to prevent them falling over or rolling about on a flatbed -- if the delivery is big enough they simply crane or forklift an entire cage of cylinders on and off the truck. It's the same for butane and propane gas cylinders these days too.
As far as I know no-one ships cryogenic liquid hydrogen around on trucks or traincars. The few places that need lots of LH2 (rocket launch sites mainly) make it on-site using compressors and chillers from H2 gas either delivered via pipeline or it's also made on-site by steam regeneration of pipeline natural gas. All of the hydrogen fuel vehicles I've seen details of use highly compressed but not cryogenic H2 or they have some wonderful non-pressurised "matrix" storage system which doesn't usually add up in terms of volume and mass but looks good on the Powerpopint presentation. It probably involves carbon nanotubes.
LOX does get tankered around as it has a lot more uses, from industry to hospitals but it's not explosive in itself. It's still a hazard as a fire accelerant if it gets released in an accident but it's not as dangerous as LH2.
Liquid nitrogen is available in Dewar flasks of varying sizes but it can also be delivered by road tanker if a tech site or industrial facility needs it in bulk. A place I used to work at had LN2 holding tanks in the yard outside the buildings where they used to carry out silicon wafer processing (before that all moved abroad). There was a place where Dewars could be filled with LN2 from the holding tanks as well as a nitrogen gasline feed running through the building to various places for flushing out pressure vessels to remove atmospheric oxygen and the like.
I got the density wrong - 30 Kg. If I have understood it correctly, hydrogen has 3 times the energy density of petrol, so I would need 5 cylinders, which means that all rear seat and boot space and the car's maximum load weight would be taken up by them. Redesigning for the same passenger and load capacity would mean a larger and MUCH heavier car. As Nojay says, this is viable only with a Powerpoint level of reality.
This is also why I regard the current approach to electric vehicles as a Bad Idea. We (mostly) solve the urban atmospheric pollution problem, but none of the other serious problems, at the expense of much greater car weights (at least). There are sane solutions, but they are NOT of the form "keep going as you were, but electrically".
I just came over this article from yesterday, which is I'd say is rather relevant here, considering OGH has written about closed time-like loops before:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a34146674/paradox-free-time-travel-is-possible/
The supposition was "no-guns" so the hundred or so cannons on board Victory disappear just as the triremes come over the horizon, oars flashing as they manoeuvre to ram. That doesn't obviate the cannonballs on the gundeck ready racks next to where the guns were positioned in this scenario.
An interesting fact you might have missed is that HMS Victory is going to very noticeably rise in the water when the guns vanish: a 3,500 ton displacement ship just lost 104 guns. Carronades weighed roughly a ton each (for 32 pounders), ignoring the gun carriage: but a 32 pounder long gun weighed roughly three tons, and carronades didn't count for purposes of a ship of the line's gun rating. So the 104 gun HM Victory just lost 310 tons of cast iron ballast before we add numerous carronades and small pieces on top: that's 10% of its total weight.
I have no idea what the implications of lightening the Victory by 10% right before it's rammed by triremes would be except that it'd expose chunks of the hull that would normally be below the level of the rams.
Anyone got a clue?
A quick glance at that indicates that he is using 'time travel' in a very different sense from what most people understand it to mean. I would have to derust my brain and spend quite a while on it to be sure, but I think that it maps to a 'relaxed memory model' in parallel computing terms. The way that I would phrase is it 'not temporarily consistent but without actual time travel'. It would take further effort to be sure which of the following it allows (1 is obviously stronger than 2), or whether it allows anything stronger:
1) You can find evidence (post hoc) that A happened before B and that B happened before A, but that is about all.
2) You can find evidence (post hoc) that A caused B and B caused A, but that is about all.
Essentially all those two do is to cause science fiction detectives' brains to overheat.
Nuts. 2 is obviously stronger than 1.
It would heel over, so it would depend on whether it did that towards or away from the trireme. Beyond that, I can't say.
Charlie Stross @ 1256
This article on Quora has a detailed exploration of a different historical counterfactual. It includes some details of the Victory's hull construction. If anything, the hull below the waterline was even stronger than the hull above.
I'm trying to remember from my visits to HMS Victory. I think they had a primitive system of multi-layer armour. The first layer was around 2 feet of oak plank. However when hit by a cannonball that tended to create big splinters moving at high speed. So they then had a layer of iron plate to stop these splinters. But that's from memory, and I can't find anything on the subject on the Internet.
This was optimised for stopping cannonballs. If hit by a pointed ram the results would probably not be good. Triremes were designed to hole their targets at the waterline. However the holes they made were not all that big, and as Victory was a sailing ship she would be able to use the wind to pull a single hole out of the water. She was also designed to withstand a certain amount of damage by pumping water out, and there were methods for plugging holes in an emergency. So it seems very unlikely that a single hit by a ram would sink her. Meantime her Marines would be swarming aboard the trireme and killing everyone in sight, so the attacker wouldn't get a second chance.
This "Hydrogen as fuel" debate is of the mark, anyway ... The power source for that light aircraft was an "Hydrogen Fuel Cell" - or bank of them - powering an electric motor behind the propellor. As for liguid Nitrogen, many years ago, I worked somewhere that used it in smallish quantities. Best unofical use was at tea-time on hot days: You poured a little liquid N2 into an expanded-polystyren container & then dropped your Mars bar in. 2.5 - 3 seconds & you got a nicely frozen outer, with the inner still gooey.
Charlie @ 1256 You would probably be exposing the copper-plating that sheathed the entire underside, as anti-worm/anti-fouling protection .... the trireme's ram(s) would then probably bounce off .... Even more fun.
The naval ram used by the ancients wasn't pointed, it was a stack of three horizontal bronze fins, stiffened by one vertical fin. And by fin, think something that looks a lot like a giant axe blade. My mental model is a stack of three axe blades held in place by a fourth axe blade perpendicular to the stack, all cast in one grant chunk of bronze for corrosion resistance.
So it's a decent weapon against wood. Against iron plate? Probably not so much.
So if a trireme rams the Victory, there's a good chance it just mashes a bunch of oak. While it's trying to back up, the Victory drops one of its anchors (two tons) on the front of the ship. That would probably cause a bit of damage, especially since I don't think the trireme decks were armored for that kind of attack.
In an extended engagement the Victory could easily shoot off fifty tonnes of cannonballs and of course it would burn its way through several tonnes of stores and drinking water each day even if it wasn't fighting. It could be ballasted at sea by taking on seawater and storing it in emptied water butts or even flooding the bilges if it started to ride too high in the water.
And that changes exactly WHAT? Its energy density remains the same, as do its deflagration and detonation properties. It doesn't make a damn of difference to those whether you oxidise it hot or cold.
HMS Victory is a big ship compared to a trireme. Better to compare it with septiremes, or to the Leontophoros, to be unfair again.
For my engineering degree we also did first year physics (and maths). One of the lab techs in the physics department did a mid afternoon tea and snacks shop. One of the experiments in the lab involved a trough (something like a lengh of guttering) filled with liquid nitrogen which tended to fill with a row of Mars Bars at snack time as his fridge wasn't large enough to store the chocolate products...
Yeah... I just looked. Greek tririmes had about 170 men, while Roman had 300. The HMS Victory, at the time of Trafalgar, had 821.
Also, no one mentioned whether muskets disappeared with the cannon... or the casks of gunpowder.
Please note that most states offer early in-person voting, AND the Boards of Election have non-US Mail drop off boxes just for ballots.
We're probably going to use the latter.
The way I understood it for many years was that Roman (and Arthurian) cavalry rode to the battle, then dismounted to fight.
I've never seen or read of a lot of swords long enough for fighting from horseback were found from that time period.
In the US, you can easily buy LN2 from Roberts Oxygen, a large chain.
Have fan-friends in Arlington, VA, who, at their large party on the 4th of July, have as a high point (and all the kids on the block get in the line) making ice cream with LN2.
"Greek tririmes had about 170 men, while Roman had 300. The HMS Victory, at the time of Trafalgar, had 821."
The actual sailing crew of a ship like Trafalgar is on the order of one-two hundred.
The rest of the crew, the "gun crew" is sized by dividing the total weight of the cannons with an administrative number (which varied over time), and they are only there to wage war.
Einstein. Timelike loops... nahhh, I'm not going to restart the argument that an ansible would work, given that in each separate ship, the messages come in a timelike manner.
Unless the two ships together are considered to be one frame of reference, and then it's even more workable.
The Fred Perry Company has taken "Proud Boiz" to task for tarnishing the brand's trademarks, bringing them into disrepute:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/proud-boys-portland-oregon-rally-fred-perry-t-shirts-b622292.html
The marines swarming the trireme would be... interesting.
For one, which would have the higher deck above the water - I would assume the Victory, a lot higher, so the marines would be coming down, while the tririme's crew would have to go a good way up.
And then... we're talking cutlases vs. some, at least, in armor, and most probably using shields. How that would play out, I don't know.
As you say. A while back, I posted some sufficient conditions for that to work. That paper is only indirectly related to that issue, though.
Nojay @ 1250:
In the early days of CB radio the amplifiers sold to CBers were unmodified 28MHz linear amps which was close enough in frequency that they'd take drive from the 27MHz CB units and transmit significant power to a 28MHZ antenna. Unfortunately the CBers were'nt that technically ept and/or set up to measure what they were outputting, distortion etc. so they tended to splatter over the 28MHz band in their search for MOAR POWERRRR!!!
My first MOS in the National Guard was Avionics Radio Repairman. When I got home from AIT, the only job I could find that used my newly acquired skills was working for a CB Radio shop. I know what kind of amplifier he was running because I was there in the back of the shop the day he came in and bought it.
An old ham of my acquaintance had a solution to that -- a pickaxe handle between the legs. Sadly the local cops frowned on such endeavours so he came up with a simpler, more technical and less obviously criminal solution. Sneak up on the CBer's home, locate the coax feed going up to the roof-mounted antenna and quietly hammer a panel pin into it. Instant SWR of zero and vapourisation of the final stage's unprotected-to-save-money transistors in the el-cheapo amplifier.
I think that was how my neighbor's problem got fixed. Someone went over there one night when he wasn't home and stuck a pin through the coax. Anyway, I know his radio interfering with my cable TV abruptly stopped.
Re: 'A simple majority in the House is not enough for a contingent election.'
Thanks for a detailed and understandable explanation - much appreciated!
Laughed out loud when I read how Kamala might be interim Prez - boy would that ever twist Donny's shorts!
Which appears to just be catnip for some of them:
Some Proud Boys supporters appeared to be undeterred by Fred Perry's message. "That moment when you make Fred Perry stop making a design they've had for decades. Maybe we'll change our colors to one of their best sellers just to flex," one wrote on Twitter.
Charlie Stross @ 1256:
An interesting fact you might have missed is that HMS Victory is going to very noticeably rise in the water when the guns vanish: a 3,500 ton displacement ship just lost 104 guns. Carronades weighed roughly a ton each (for 32 pounders), ignoring the gun carriage: but a 32 pounder long gun weighed roughly three tons, and carronades didn't count for purposes of a ship of the line's gun rating. So the 104 gun HM Victory just lost 310 tons of cast iron ballast before we add numerous carronades and small pieces on top: that's 10% of its total weight.
I have no idea what the implications of lightening the Victory by 10% right before it's rammed by triremes would be except that it'd expose chunks of the hull that would normally be below the level of the rams.
Anyone got a clue?
Supposing the weight loss was instantaneous, I wonder if HMS Victory might even hop right of the water? Could you time the hop exactly right so it lands on the trireme's deck?
SFReader @ 1277:
Thanks for a detailed and understandable explanation - much appreciated!
Laughed out loud when I read how Kamala might be interim Prez - boy would that ever twist Donny's shorts!
Probably not so much as if she became his actual Vice President because of his screwing around.
The Leontophoros had 1,200 marines and 1,600 oarsmen. Just throwing their spears would have done away with the marines on the HMS Victory.
Robert Prior @ 1278: Which appears to just be catnip for some of them:
Some Proud Boys supporters appeared to be undeterred by Fred Perry's message. "That moment when you make Fred Perry stop making a design they've had for decades. Maybe we'll change our colors to one of their best sellers just to flex," one wrote on Twitter.
I wonder if they'd still feel the same after Fred Perry sues for trademark infringement? It would be hard to go after all of the individual "members", but Gavin McInnes & the other "leadership" individuals could be sued.
It would be hard to go after all of the individual "members", but Gavin McInnes & the other "leadership" individuals could be sued.
I suspect it will be hard to prove (to a legal level) that the leadership is encouraging the rank-and-file to wear the shirts. Anonymous Twitter arseholes are pretty much lawsuit-proof.
Please note that most states offer early in-person voting
My point was that most people expect Trump and allies to try and stop votes not counted by then end of voting day from being counted. If those states that allow early voting don't count till voting day or even the next day he plans to get them invalidated.
So my comment was to vote in a way where they get counted by midnight.
Not that he has a legal right to keep them from being counted but as some comments up thread mentioned gumming up the works past the day electors are chosen can make a mess of things.
Which is at the core is a big reason why counting stopped in Florida in 2000.
Thanks (also to others who posted similarly). Yes, that happened, although hardly ever with enough importance to be thought worth mentioning; when someone does think their use was significant enough to mention it's usually for scouting or similar, and even then the most you get for the "mention" is something like "Bicycle scouts reported blah blah blah..." buried in the text somewhere. Come to that, it's not much different when they're riding horses instead of bicycles, for either purpose, with the odd exception like the Palestine campaign where there were a lot of mounted infantry involved and their particular tactical abilities were a major factor in how the battles were planned and fought.
Thing is there were so few situations anywhere in WW1 - even when roads did exist - where legs, equine or human, aren't far more useful than any kind of wheels for what you're having to move over. When they're scouting on horseback there's no particular difficulty in understanding how they went about it because we've all seen plenty of horses in other situations doing the kinds of things they would need to do. But from similar experience of what bicycles can do it seems that there are very few situations where they're better than just walking all the way, if you actually want to reconnoitre an area and not just the bits you can see from the tracks.
Hammersmith Bridge: funny thing reading that article is that I used to walk between those two border bus stops they mention for preference, because it was quicker than waiting for a bus to turn up.
Liquid nitrogen: first encounter here was when my dad brought some home from work to use in my mum's production of Ruddigore at the local theatre.
"Not disputing your scenario, but why would a "no-guns HMS Victory" be carrying cannonballs? Or have gunners?"
I had immediately jumped to the personal conclusion that there had been Skulduggery and Pilferage somewhere in the supply chain, so what they thought were barrels of gunpowder turned out to contain only a thin layer of gunpowder on top of a mixture of sawdust, gravel, pigeon shit, etc made up to roughly the same density as gunpowder. So once they try and separate out the good stuff they end up with maybe one barrel of crappy gunpowder that doesn't work very well because of all the pigeon shit in it; they still have the guns and cannonballs, but there's nothing the gunners can do with them except drop them on things.
"...implications of lightening the Victory by 10% right before it's rammed by triremes..."
Doing that might move a more hardened area up into the expected contact zone. Depending on hull shape and the angle of attack, riding higher might allow the Victory to also ride up onto the triremes at the moment of impact. Think how an icebreaker works, it doesn't just ram the ice head on, but get on top of it and pushes it down. Applying force from unexpected directions could cause additional catastrophic damage.
"And in WW1 military balloons were filled with hydrogen made by passing steam through red hot iron tubes."
Yes, but what you're doing there is using water to oxidise iron giving you iron oxide and hydrogen; it's not some magic catalytic process for dissociating water with heat. Effectively, the water is reacting at one remove, and with great inefficiency, with the carbon that was used to reduce the original geological iron oxide to iron in the first place. It may not consume carbon at the point of hydrogen production (depending how you generate the heat), but the carbon efficiency of the overall cycle is terrible.
The east coast of Africa - ivory would have been something they could deal in, and easy for the Hellene/Indian traders to start with.
"Now comes the question: which fantasies have already dealt with a world in which Alexander The Great survived?"
Greg Bear, "Eternity".
All this talk about the HMS Victory getting rammed by triremes and I am amazed that nobody has brought this recent (and almost relevant!) Oglaf cartoon to the table:
https://www.oglaf.com/addons/
re: Alexander the Great. In the introduction to one of his books, John Keegan asked the reader to imagine Bonnie Prince Charlie as Alexander the Great. BPC conquers England, of course- this is a bagatelle! He then, in the course of a few years conquers France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, and ends his life crossing swords with either the Turkish Sultan or the Tsar of Russia.
His realm falls apart at his death, and Scottish aristocrats carve kingdom-sized chunks out of the wreckage. Some of these dynasties last into the 21st century.
This was not intended as a serious counterfactual - just a note of how weird Alexander's career was - how much he conquered and in such a short time.
I worked at an electronics company that had gas tanks right outside the area where I worked (and lots of plate-glass windows, as it faced north). Every few weeks, they'd get a new trailer-load of H2, as a multi-cylinder trailer load. The new trailer would be dropped and the old one taken away. O2 was loaded into existing tanks, as was N2. The only time I recall a leaks was when the smallish N2 tank in my area started leaking. Carefully step over the liquid....
Sure, but the question of Charlie's thermally leaky windows has been dissected on here down to the atomic level. What it comes down to is that historic building regulations mean he can't do anything without risking having bits chopped off and being thrown in a dungeon for 1000 years, so even less invasive solutions than yours are out.
I was considering them from a different viewpoint, where the important property is that they can be opened wide to give a very large and unobstructed clear passage.
It can take weeks to count ballots, in large states like California. And that's with machine-readable ballots. We're doing mail-in this fall, and ballots go out 5 Oct. My understanding is that they're not late as long as they show up by 17 Nov. (But I plan to get mine in earlier.)
That's the thing. I could remember some vague facts about the project but not all the details.
Today sees another datum about the ability of angry fascist mobs to get their shit together. With weeks to plan and drawing people from hundreds of miles away, they proudly announced that thousands of them would descend on Portland and show "the libs" something to be afraid of. The local police blew off their more imaginative estimates but still prepared for a crowd of these chuds in the low thousands.
What actually showed up was about 200, though they're certainly angry enough for two thousand normal people.
The counter-protest looks to have drawn around the same number of people but far fewer factional flags, guns, and angry shouting. Their gathering saw spontaneous outbreaks of baseball and soccer.
Why attributing for entertainment, political, medical and other catastrophes to outside forces -- time travel, aliens, vampires, superheroes, etc. -- can be harmful (as we see from the consequences right now, pop culture / media have played a big role in these consequences) -- these considerations do feed into the subject / title of the current iteration of CS's blog:
https://slate.com/culture/2020/09/utopia-amazon-series-remake-gillian-flynn-spoilers-uh-oh.html
Still, maybe time travel? maybe once again, as Jreynold suggested, Gibson nailed it again, before hand?
[ "Young physicist 'squares the numbers' on time travel / University of Queensland
Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modelling of a prodigious University of Queensland undergraduate student." ]
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/uoq-yp092320.php
What this student has come up with sounds a lot like Bill's latest novel, Agency, first in his Jackpot trilogy.
Crows can think about what they're doing. Thanks for that link too. Yes, crows are conscious. The social crows are particularly sneaky and human-compatible/like, except they have the 3D freedom of the air (and no thumbs :-). Hear How a Crow Softly Woos Its Mate - The complex combination of coos, rattles, and growls is distinctive to each bird's social group. (May 07, 2018)
Regarding old houses onto which you're either prevented, by price or regulation, from retrofitting double/triple glazing - How much gap is there in the window closure, because you may be able to do the quick and nasty fix that I've done - '40s era house, gappy single glazed windows that I can't afford to completely replace yet. But the wooden casements and window are gappy, with a couple of millimetres space. So I spent $50 on 2 metre by 1.5 metre polycarbonate sheets of 1 mm thickness, and cut out a sheet to fit each window casement. When winter comes around, I open the window, slot the sheet into the casement, and then close the window in place, to hold the sheet there. It gives enough thermal gap that there's no condensation problem of the humid air of the living space onto the cold outer glass, and it raised the temperature of the house by a couple of degrees.
Not sure if it would work with older sash windows, but with the deep casements, I'd just make a light wooden frame with a polycarb sheet, that friction fits into the casement on the inside, to put up each winter.
Does it include the "Backster Antenna"? Cleve Backster No, at least not by that name, but a search for that led to some [interesting] books and papers. e.g. (just an abstract): Stimuli response on human In Vitro cells: A case for nonlocal communication (2003) Interesting character; big in the polygraph community for at least the past 60 years. I have not read his work and therefor will not judge it.
Why attributing for entertainment, political, medical and other catastrophes to outside forces -- time travel, aliens, vampires, superheroes, etc. -- can be harmful... Outside forces do intervene (though rarely), and they are not always as obvious as Perry was in Japan. More recently, a lot of inter-national covert actions and influence operations have happened hidden, then been (sometimes partially) uncovered. Local dynamics usually dominate, yes. As far as non-human interventions, the consensus of most of the realists here is that they are fantasy. There was also a consensus that rocks didn't fall from the sky until the early 19th century.[1] Never a fully safe bet to judge something to be unreal.
As for W. Gibson, yeah, he's been interesting. (Blasted through Neuromancer all night then immediately re-read, way back when. Altered my mind at the time.)
[1] The Scientific Study of Meteors in the 19th Century (Mary F. Romig, 1966)
This is the thing I can't get my head round. Elections in the UK use Mk1 pencil cross in box paper ballots, counted by Mk1 human beings. With the exception of some remote Scottish islands the counts are done in hours. Next day at the worst. A recount in a constituency might add some more hours. It's all done by local authorities reinforced by civically minded volunteers, with a competitive edge to be fastest. If the population was six times bigger, the human resources would scale in proportion.
This is literally not rocket science.
It can take weeks to count ballots, in large states like California. And that's with machine-readable ballots. We're doing mail-in this fall, and ballots go out 5 Oct. My understanding is that they're not late as long as they show up by 17 Nov. (But I plan to get mine in earlier.)
A ballot isn't counted late due to the date it is received. It is late if it is postmarked after the election. If you're going to mail it in, mail it in well before the election to make sure it's counted.
The California ballot doesn't look particularly hideous this year (no 648 page development proposals for me to read, not that that one was ever put on the ballot as it should have been). I'll be driving mine into the County Registrar of Voters Office, because our local mail is getting stolen more than I'm comfortable with.
There was also a consensus that rocks didn't fall from the sky until the early 19th century.
It was a reasonable thought. There aren't rocks in the sky, save briefly during rare and obvious volcanic eruptions; any that fall out of the sky at other times were obviously sent there by human pranksters with slings or catapults.
I'm reminded of Robert Anton Wilson's observation that mid-century flying saucer encounters, like 1900 airship sightings and medieval angel visitations, explained very strange experiences in vocabulary the local witnesses could understand. This comes with the corollary that we probably don't understand it, whatever "it" is, much better than our ancestors did.
By the time we do understand it we might find we're the ones showing up unexpectedly and shocking the locals.
How weird Alexander's career was
Genghis Khan, Muhammad, and Nurhaci, Qin Shi Huang, and Cortes did similar things. The problem is that conquering and ruling are two very different things, and skilled conquerors rarely set up political systems that stand up for more than a generation or two at most.
Turns out there's plenty of speculation about what would have happened had Alexander lived. One common guess is he'd be like Genghis Khan, a great conqueror whose empire fell apart after his death because, like a Ponzi or other investment scheme, it only worked if it kept conquering and asset stripping.
Another likely possibility is similar to what actually happened with the Diadochi/successors: it would settle down into an empire built of satrapies (think viceroys appointed by the crown, the position perhaps becoming heritable). This lasted for centuries in a state of constant turmoil. This is similar to the so-called Mandala system of South East Asia, where city-states extend or contract their sphere of influence ("The mandala"), but it's about who pays tribute to whom. In an empire of satrapies and provincial lords, a strong emperor would force the more independent satrapies or sub-provinces to pay tribute(e.g. turn over the correct portion of their taxes) or face destruction, military pillaging, and perhaps resettlement. A weak emperor would have satraps refusing to forward taxes and doing their own thing, perhaps even declaring independence.
Anyway, the point of looking at the Hellenistic world for long-distance windjammers is because they were building boats at that scale, and it's not clear that the Romans were. The other interesting thing is that the polyglot Hellenistic World is actually similar to our own (perhaps worse): plutocrats fighting for power in a set of cultures that's very polyglot, superficially gender diverse but deeply misogynistic and violent, and laced together with international trade that reaches all the way to (Qin) China. Another thing is that there's even a worthy adversary: Chandragupta Muarya, founder of the Mauryan Empire that united much of India and first built the Grand Trunk Road. The frontier along the Indus River was a fairly violent place.
The other point is that...I'm not sure I'd want to live in the Seleucid empire or the other Diadochi states, given they were basically private fiefdoms of violent men. Therefore, I suspect that if nonconformists (like me) had the option, they'd buy a boat and bug out to found a colony far, far away. Similarly, people with financial troubles might well follow the example of Hernan Cortes and head out to strike it rich and pay off their gambling debts. Places like Madagascar and the African East Coast would be well within range, IIRC, Madagascar was pretty empty of humans 2000 years ago. And there was gold here and there too.
I'll tell the old legend from Florida. It's from before cars. A sheriff was worried that certain parties were going to rig an election by stealing the ballots on the way to the state capitol. He therefore rigged a dummy election chest in the stage coach, while carrying the ballots himself via a different route. Oddly enough, the stagecoach was held up, ended up in the bottom of a river, and none of the luggage was recovered. But the ballots made it through.
This is a long way of saying that US election shenanigans date back to the writing of the Constitution in the US, and the crap with Diebold election machines (hackable in seconds was it?) is only the latest iteration.
In California, we used to use #2 pencils to fill out ballots, but we switched to black ink when they went from electrical scanners (The graphite in the pencil lead) to optical scanners. Otherwise, we've got a fairly secure system here, with a paper trail and rather fewer ways to game the system. Notice we're not in play this year? The games are all happening in states that went big for electronic voting machines and similar "labor-saving" devices. Hopefully in Wisconsin, they're at least not keeping the County tallies on an Excel spreadsheet with no password protection (that was from 2000).
Heteromeles skilled conquerors rarely set up political systems that stand up for more than a generation or two Boney the Corsican Tyrant's empire didn't even last as long as hed did. But he did leave a mountain of skulls.
This is the thing I can't get my head round. Elections in the UK use Mk1 pencil cross in box paper ballots, counted by Mk1 human beings. With the exception of some remote Scottish islands the counts are done in hours.
Not defending it but US ballots are complicated. Way more than in much of the rest of the world.
I live in Wake county North Carolina. About 1.1 million people out of 10 million in the state. We have over 100 different ballots to be used in the upcoming election in just my county. And there are 100 counties in NC. Now most counties in NC do not have as many different ballots as we do but still.
What happens is that the borders of what people are voting for are not contained neatly inside of bigger borders. So at the city/town level you might have people voting for different county, state, and/or federal officials and so on.
Just the spread sheet of all the office/candidates for my county can get big. In other words this is not a look at each ballot and make a tick mark on the count sheet for 4 slots. And some voting precincts have more than one ballot due to these borders.
On my ballot this election I get to vote for 36 offices and one referendum. This is not an off year elections (many local officials are elected in odd years) so I only have one vote per office. We get to vote for 2 out of x for some local commissions that get elected in the "off" year elections.
So it's not just a simple "count". OK we DO use scanners to note which circle you filled in. So just feed them through the scanners and the numbers pop out. Yep. So in NC on election day when the polls close the officials at each site print out the results for their site, pin one to the wall (by law), give one to the head of the site, and a few ohters maybe. Many workers take a picture. Then the counting machine with the ballots sealed inside is taken to the local HQ and connected to a server and the totals added to previous early voting and received and counted mail in ballots and thus we're done. After polls closed we know early voting totals and by midnight most in person on election day totals.
Well not quite.
The big fights are now over mail in ballots that might show up for a few days or weeks. It varies by state as to the cutoff date. In the past those ballots rarely mattered as long as the number showing up was less than the margin of already counted ballots for the various races. But NOW with the world upside down, here in NC something like 10% of the ballots are going to be mailed in. So those get to be opened up, validated, then "counted". And it appears from the week or so that they have been coming in that some are not properly signed.
And in some states mail in ballots, by law, can't be opened, validated, and/or counted until election day. Which can really slow things down.
And both sides are in the middle of dozens (100s?) of lawsuits about when a ballot can arrive and still be counted. How do you get more than 51 lawsuits? Easy overlapping federal, state, and territorial laws. Some where the rules are writting in the law and some where commissions make the rules.
Do I think this situation needs to be cleaned up a bit. Sure. Just where would you like to start? No handwavium allowed.
I'll tell the old legend from Florida.
There's the story of Lyndon's Johnson first election win. In an area of Texas know for it's election shenanigans both sides were slow in reporting some remote districts. Waiting to see how many votes they needed to come up with to win most likely. When Johnson did win the tale is that in some of the late reporting districts the last votes of on the day all happened to vote in alphabetical order based on the sign in sheets. Said sheets quickly vanished.
Similar slow results supposedly allowed JFK to win over Nixon in 1960 as Chicago and southern Illinois were playing a waiting game with each other until Nixon told his supporters in the south to release their vote totals. And before the mid 70s if you believed the totals of ANY election in Chicago were pristine I have a pile of bridges to sell to you.
One factor in older housing, at least in the UK, is that until the 1950s or so open coal fires were the normal way to heat homes and they required a draught into each room to feed them sufficient oxygen to burn efficiently. This could be provided by air bricks with holes through them connecting the room to the outside world but leaky windows worked just as well and there was no advantage to fitting well-sealed windows or double-glazing at that time.
When we got modern double-glazing fitted to our house we still kept the original open fires the house had been built with since as a National Coal Board worker my father got five tonnes of coal free each year for heating. On a cold night with the living-room fire burning well the door would often pop open as the differential air pressure due to the fire draught up the chimney overcame the tension of the spring catch that normally latched it shut.
See #1255/7/8.
Upon looking a bit further, I find this. I wonder why it was withdrawn.
https://apha.confex.com/apha/131am/techprogram/session_12197.htm
Heteromeles @ 1306:
For some more recent examples, see Tomorrow Now: envisioning the next 50 years by Bruce Sterling. Published in 2003, so probably actually written 2000-2001.
In his fourth chapter "The Soldier" Sterling recounts the stories of three warlords from the Chechen and Yugoslav wars. All three tell how a clever and charismatic military leader took a rag-tag band of rebels to victory (with a side order of crimes against humanity along the way), but who then turned out to be utterly hopeless at the everyday humdrum business of keeping the streets clean and safe.
Heteromeles @ 1307: This is a long way of saying that US election shenanigans date back to the writing of the Constitution in the US,
I've often heard 2nd Amendment enthusiasts claim that their guns are effective deterrents to government overreach. Leaving aside the long list of occasions where government overreach has not been prevented by guns (e.g. the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, civil forfeiture, Jim Crow lynchings) I took a look for incidents where armed civilians had successfully protected constitutional rights.
The only example I found was the Battle of Athens, where the actual shooting part was a fight for the control of ballot boxes in a local election.
(Its also not a really good example of the 2nd Amendment working, because the civilians were newly demobbed ex-GIs from WWII, and the guns were looted from National Guard Armoury. So not exactly raw civilians, and not exactly exercising the right to keep and bear arms.)
I thought of Boris Johnson when you said that :-) But he is more of a mouthpiece for the caucus that did exactly what you described. It isn't just individuals that behave like that, but organisations.
Despite my loathing of what he did, William the Bastard was one of the few warleaders who conquered a sizeable area and established a lasting and largely effective rule.
This is the thing I can't get my head round. Elections in the UK use Mk1 pencil cross in box paper ballots, counted by Mk1 human beings.
A British ballot has a single sheet of paper with a list of candidates on it, for a single elected office.
Worst case you might get 2-3 elections going on at the same time, e.g. local council, devolved parliament constituency candidate, party list to-up for devolved parliament.
The USan ballot I once saw (an American colleague was voting by mail) ws the size of a broadsheet newspaper spread, with about 26 separate offices being voted on, from President all the way down to municipal dog-catcher by way of congress, senate, district attorney, a couple of judges ...
I'm pretty sure UK election results would also take a few weeks to count if we ran 20-30 elections in parallel using the same piece of paper!
The USan ballot I once saw [was big]
E.g., this is illustrative of what San Antonio, TX voters get to fill out:
https://www.bexar.org/DocumentCenter/View/4570/Generic-Sample-Ballot-PDF
You win. Mine is only 2 pages 14" long this year.
Amidst all of the current sound and fury concerning the election, you all might take comfort in the fact that deeper technological and historical forces are at work. The Good Democrats are actually winning and the Bad Oligarchs led by Trump and Putin are losing. Our current system, a form of hydraulic despotism, is starting to crumble.
With the new film out soon, it seems appropriate to remember what SF writer Frank Herbert of "Dune" wrote about "hydraulic despotism": "Yes, there are analogs in Dune of today's events-corruption and bribery in the highest places, whole police forces lost to organized crime, regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC." (see his Essay "Dune Genesis" in the 07/1980 issue of the old Omni Magazine, copies available on line). And from his books: "As you know, hydraulic despotism is possible only when a substance or condition upon which life in general absolutely depends can be controlled by a relatively small and centralized force. The concept of hydraulic despotism originated when the flow of irrigation water increased local human populations to a demand level of absolute dependence. When the water was shut off, people died in large numbers. This phenomenon has been repeated many times in human history, not only with water..."
In Herbert's far future universe that substance will be spice.
At the dawn of civilization, that substance was water.
Hydraulic despotism is a form of tyranny as old as ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China and the control of their local river's levees, irrigation channels and canals by the resident God-King. His true power wasn't in a priesthood building temples and pyramids, or nobles leading armies of chariot warriors. His power lay in control of a vital source of life itself - water for consumption and irrigation. So the real power of the god-kings that ruled mankind's first civilizations wasn't chariot armies or priests performing sacrifices in temples or building pyramids. It was their control of the construction and operation of complex systems of irrigation and flood control that made life possible for large numbers of people in river valleys from the Nile, to Mesopotamia, to the Indus, to the Yangtze. The principle was applied with other engineering structures such as the qanats of Persia, the aqueducts of Rome, the floating farms (chinampas) of the Aztecs, and the terraced farms built by the Inca's to collect every drop run-off from the slopes of the Andes.
The central government ruled by the god-kings could organize the labor (draft peasants, serfs and slaves) and assign the resources (aka tax the peasants) to make these systems possible. And in fact, living standards actually improved for their subjects and their populations exploded (compared to adjacent hunter-gather tribes) which increased the wealth and power of the god-kings further while making their subjects utterly dependent on their hydraulic systems to stay alive. The nobility provided military leadership, while the priests kept the people docile and unquestioning by glorifying the god-kings. This theocratic feudalism is mankind's natural default governmental and social state. It's basically no different than a troop of baboons led by an alpha male and his entourage. Socially we are just like any other primate, which makes real democracy very difficult for our species to establish and maintain. Democracy is unnatural and requires constant effort and vigilance to ensure its survival.
Today, that substance is oil.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan oil is "the focus of evil in the modern world". Oil is our current form of "hydraulic despotism". Those ancient God Kings are now oil company CEOs, owners and investors. Their massive wealth has been used to suborn democracy, making it a hollow sham. They own the government agencies nominally charged with regulating them, like the God-Kings owned the priesthood. They own the politicians waging war on their behalf like the nobles who led chariot armies. Our entire civilization depends on oil like the Babylonians needed the channelized flood waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. Oil made possible the current population explosion, just like hydraulic engineering allowed the population explosion of the first civilizations. Oil oligarchs either rule directly (as in Saudi Arabia, Putin's Russia, or the state of Texas) or via the mechanism of staged voting and hacked elections (2016) and controlled media (such as Fox news or the Russian media). They lead us into wars for the control of oil like some Egyptian general or pharaoh commanding his chariots (and fighting over the same terrain 3,000 years ago). Meanwhile, the new nobility has accumulated wealth to a level that would make a pre-revolutionary French aristocrat green with envy.
The first attempt to overthrow fossil fuel overlords were made by the classist far-left class populists and the racist/nativist far-right populists of the first half of the 20th century. The first convinced their people that their enemies were the wealthy, the second convinced their people that the enemy was a different faith or skin color (only the second still has adherents and they can be found at any Trump rally). The totalitarians of the 20th century claimed to be acting on behalf of their people (or the volk), but they merely changed the names of the players. The god-king became "Dear Leader" or "der Fuhrer". The Nobility became "The Party". The priesthood became the "Ministry of Propaganda". But those systems become untenable due to excessive warfare and a system of government controls that stifled economic growth and technological advancement. Having learned from the past, a more subtle approach is being tried by the current oil oligarchs.
The subtlety can be easily seen in the function of the new priesthood. The one main difference between then and now is in the function of the modern priesthood (aka the media and to a lesser extent televangelists). Whereas the ancient priesthoods existed to exalt the god-kings, modern media-priests exist to hide their very existence from the general public. In either case it requires indoctrination to hoodwink the populace. Their intent is to let elections get hacked and hijacked, becoming no different than ancient religious ceremonies, just a show to entertain the people, give them the illusion of control and keep them docile. Fortunately, they have not quite achieved this completely.
But the age of oil is coming to and end, and with it the power and wealth of the new God-Kings. See this report from British Petroleum, and how oil demand will flatten and drop due to expanded use of renewables:
https://earther.gizmodo.com/bp-says-weve-already-reached-peak-oil-1845064372?fbclid=IwAR01wdXZcFgkpQWq6nMGsz7ox5ytxkNYVi4jvdrYqPIiEyrqHG_EsrBfIo0
And this is why distributed solar energy is so important - regardless of cost or efficiency - it breaks the power of oil's hydraulic despotism because it gives everyone the equivalent of their own water well.
This ending of the oil age explains the rabid desperation of Trump, Putin and the oil oligarchs supporting them. It explains why billionaires are building bunkers in New Zealand. They all know that their time is short. You need to familiarize yourselves with the terms "carbon bubble" and "stranded assets".
https://thenearlynow.com/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd
"When there’s a large difference between how markets think assets should be valued and what they are (or will) actually be worth, we call it a “bubble.” Experts now call the differences between valuations and worth in fossil fuel corporations, climate-harmful industries and vulnerable physical assets the “Carbon Bubble.” It is still growing. And here’s the thing about bubbles: they always pop. People whose job it is to measure risk in financial markets are extremely concerned about the magnitude of the Carbon Bubble and the damage it will do as it bursts. Because when it bursts, trillions of dollars of imaginary assets will simply vanish in a very short time... Here’s something critical it took me a long time (and the patience of a few smart friends) to understand: the Carbon Bubble will pop not when high-carbon practices become impossible, but when their profits cease to be seen as reliable."
Technology has a history of setting people free. Mao used to say that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun". He was half right, freedom grows out of a gun barrel as well. Prior to the invention of gunpowder, warfare was waged by highly skilled warriors who spent a lifetime training in the martial arts (Spartan hoplites controlling helots, Roman legions controlling slaves, feudal knights controlling serfs, Japanese samurai controlling peasants). The vast majority of people (+90% of any pre-industrial population) were smelly peasants/serfs/slaves who got slaughtered enmasse by small numbers of these professional solders if they ever revolted. Those with a monopoly on violent skills lorded over those who did not. But a musket gives even a smelly peasant the power to kill an expensive and highly trained knight on horseback at a safe distance (knowing this, the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan actually banned fire arms to preserve samurai primacy). Gunpowder made the American and French revolutions possible. It made modern democracy possible.
Gunpowder broke the absolute grip of the nobility.
Similarly, until the invention of the printing press, reading and writing was the sole province of the priesthood who controlled all knowledge. The printing press made books cheap, broke the chains of the inquisition and made scientific knowledge possible, as well as constitutional law not subject to a ruler's whims. The internet has further democratized the flow and creation of knowledge (the net neutrality fight can be best seen as a reaction to the internet similar to the inquisition burning books).
The printing press broke the absolute grip of the priesthood.
Renewable solar energy and electric vehicles will break the back of our current hydraulic despotism in the same way that gunpowder and the printing press democratized violence and knowledge. Once renewable energy takes hold energy will be democratized and our entire political power system rooted in control of oil collapses. Which is why Trump and Putin are fighting renewables tooth an nail. In fact, economic and demographic collapse has already started in Putin's Russia.:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlins-world-war-iii-propaganda-meltdown-shows-putin-is-cornered
Historians will look back on Covid-19 as an accelerant, something like what an arson uses to cause the fires of change to burn hotter and faster, accelerating the very painful transition from oil to renewables. For the coming generation, we will be suffering the pain of accelerated history triggered by Covid-19. And yes, there will be a lot of strife and pain in the coming decades, but to quote a wise Jewish rabbi: "All these are the beginning of birth pains."
If history is any guide, something new and better will be born.
You win. Mine is only 2 pages 14" long this year.
The 9-page San Antonio (Bexar County) ballot contains a slew of location-specific items, only a few of which pertain to any particular voter. Ideally, the voters will do their homework and figure out which items they should check and which to leave blank. I don't know how or if inappropriately checked ones are dealt with.
There's the story of Lyndon's Johnson first election win.
That's the "Ballot Box 13" affair in Alice, TX. Google turns up some entertaining accounts of it.
The Scientific Study of Meteors in the 19th Century (Mary F. Romig, 1966)
Thanks, that's very interesting. Also a reminder that a certain amount of epistemological humility is generally in order.
THIS is why I read the "FT" at weekends - journalism like the following: When C-19 hit in March, Trump was persuaded ... by industry ... to issue an order compelling food/meat processing plants to stay open. Exports of food from the US increased.... At the same time, sporadic closures of slaughterhouses created a bottleneck of animals. Without space in feedlots, or cash for farmers to keep on feeding them, hundreds of thousands of hogs were gassed or shot & millions of chickens killed & bulldozed into landfill, even as Americans queued at foodbanks in record numbers. - From an article on food security, "food miles" & the environmental cost, as opposed to the short-term. And an illustration fo how to do it properly, from a small firm outside Bristol.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Charlie / Allen T / David L Why not use SEPARATE SHEETS for each ballot, with separate boxes? Or is that "too difficult"?
Duffy "Hydraulic Despotism" - is that similar to Larry Niven's examples of "Water Empires" ?? From your post, that seems so, yes? regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. Like putting fascist thug P Dacre in charge of OFCOM & proposing ultra-rightie Chas Moore for the Beeb Otherwise known as "Putting the fox in charge of the Hen-House". This theocratic feudalism is mankind's natural default governmental and social state. Which is EXACTLY what DJT & more importantly, the people behind him, are trying to do - see also A C Barrett. The priesthood became the "Ministry of Propaganda". Yeah, well, I've been saying for many years, now, that communism is a classic religion ... How long to the Carbon Bubble burting - estimates, please? 2 years / 5 years / ten ... any longer than ten? .... grrr ... that Daily Beast page is paywalled.
But - thank you very much for that informed essay!
According to BP's market projections, oil demand even under their most optimistic scenario peaks about 2025.
The day oil peaks is not necessarily the day the bubble bursts. You can pick any day of the next twenty years at random and that's when things will go south. I'd hope later rather than sooner - the more green infrastructure we have at that point the less terrible the shock will be.
"hundreds of thousands of hogs were gassed or shot & millions of chickens killed & bulldozed into landfill, even as Americans queued at foodbanks in record numbers."
You've read The Grapes of Wrath, I'm sure.
"Yeah, well, I've been saying for many years, now, that communism is a classic religion ... How long to the Carbon Bubble burting - estimates, please?"
So is capitalism, or any system that allows "bubbles" to exist/burst.
"Oh no! Some of our made-up shit is saying nasty things about some of our other made-up shit!" "So make up some different shit that says nice things, then." "Oh, we can't possibly do that! We'll just have to kill everyone and destroy the planetary ecosystem to try and persuade the current shit to be polite again."
Why not use SEPARATE SHEETS for each ballot, with separate boxes? ... Or is that "too difficult"?
Ignoring your snark from afar.
Think it through. You've moving a counting issue, which to be honest is mostly solved except where you can't count mail in ballots until election day, for a huge complexity in shipping correct bits of paper all over everywhere. I and Alan have over 30 choices so that means what, 30 ballots to print out, sort, collect, organize, and count just for my precinct. Remember there are 50 or so (maybe 100) voting precincts in my county alone the mechanical sorting would be a nightmare.
The real headache in the current system has to do with laws that prevent early counting. Which I can sort of understand from back in the day of paper only ballots. And other such details about counting. Now all we have to do is get 50+ legislative bodies to change laws. Yep. Check roger.
And some places which require the ballot to contain more than a one or two line description of initiatives.
And yes, we have too many elected positions.
David L And yes, we have too many elected positions. THAT is the problem. You ELECT judges or select the higher offices by POLITICANS? You ELECT local law-enforcement? I mean we have problems with both racist & "bent" cops, but electing them only panders directly to the "fascists" ..... A C Barrett simply would not be any sort of judge in any W European country - you can be as bigoted as you like as prosecuting/defence counsel, but you will never get any sort of Judge's job .... For bollot papers, you could at least slim it down to: Vote here for POTUS / vote here for Senator / vote here for Representative / voe here for everybody else .... [ i.e. a maximum of four papers, printed in different colours, with 4 boxes - then counted separately, in the order I have listed. ] Feasible?
30 ballot papers bound as a booklet? Perforated or slice off the spine when submitted, tellers deal each page into the appropriate tray, count.
I'm surprised there aren't separate papers for federal, state and local at the very least.
I used to hang out at The Oil Drum, a sadly-missed energy online forum which had its share of crazies and mission-posters but also a lot of knowledgeable folks, many of whom were involved in the energy industry (which is what oil, gas and coal production are, never forget). Peak Oil was endlessly discussed, as was Energy Return Over Energy Investment (EROEI) which is the hard rock of the End of Oil.
Peak Oil was, however a moving target. As the years went on Peak Oil kept moving into the future, often faster than time passing as places like China, India and now Africa started demanding more energy for their increasing population and thanks to capitalism breaking out all over they had the money/wealth to pay for it. By the time the Drum closed its doors no actual Peak Oil was evident.
In 2005 one of the Oil Drum pioneers linked to a Mother Jones magazine article which quoted, among others, an oil geologist who predicted peak oil production around 2015. In 2005 the world produced about 3.95 billion tons of crude oil a year. in 2015 when peak oil was supposed to hit the number was 4.35 billion tons a year. Last year (2019) the number was 4.85 billion tons.
I'd take any prediction of Peak Oil any time soon (i.e. this century) with a grain of salt.
Pigeon @ 1294: Sure, but the question of Charlie's thermally leaky windows has been dissected on here down to the atomic level. What it comes down to is that historic building regulations mean he can't do anything without risking having bits chopped off and being thrown in a dungeon for 1000 years, so even less invasive solutions than yours are out.
I'm still not convinced that a removable, internal, insulating window that does not change the structure and is not visible from the outside is not possible.
P J Evans @ 1295: It can take weeks to count ballots, in large states like California. And that's with machine-readable ballots. We're doing mail-in this fall, and ballots go out 5 Oct. My understanding is that they're not late as long as they show up by 17 Nov. (But I plan to get mine in earlier.)
When do they start counting the mail-in ballots?
If they don't have them all counted by midnight on Nov 3, Trumpolini & his co-conspirators are going to challenge them and try to stop the count (unless Biden is obviously ahead when polls close).
David's point is you should be aware of how your vote is counted in the state where you live and how might that be circumvented by Trumpolini's rat-fucking. States that don't count mail in ballots until election day or later are going to be targeted.
Scott Sanford @ 1297: Today sees another datum about the ability of angry fascist mobs to get their shit together. With weeks to plan and drawing people from hundreds of miles away, they proudly announced that thousands of them would descend on Portland and show "the libs" something to be afraid of. The local police blew off their more imaginative estimates but still prepared for a crowd of these chuds in the low thousands.
What actually showed up was about 200, though they're certainly angry enough for two thousand normal people.
There were enough of them they felt it was safe to physically attack independent journalists.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-investigate-assault-on-livestreamer-after-far-right-proud-boys-descend-on-portland
Bill Arnold @ 1301:
Cleve Backster
No, at least not by that name, but a search for that led to some [interesting] books and papers.
e.g. (just an abstract):
Stimuli response on human In Vitro cells: A case for nonlocal communication (2003)
Interesting character; big in the polygraph community for at least the past 60 years. I have not read his work and therefor will not judge it.
That's the guy. Some time back in the 50's the CIA spent a bunch of money to hook up a whole greenhouse full of plants to a "polygraph" in a scheme to tell when the Russians (USSR) were lying. They called it the "Backster Antenna"
Don't ask me how it was supposed to work, I just told you everything I remember about the story. I ran across it in a post-Watergate tell-all book exposing the abuses in the CIA's MKUltra project. I don't even remember the name of the book or who wrote it now.
Historians will look back on Covid-19 as an accelerant, something like what an arson uses to cause the fires of change to burn hotter and faster, accelerating the very painful transition from oil to renewables. Yes. It's not guaranteed, but the pandemic shook up the status-quo a lot, and if some major national-level (or regional/international) economic recovery policies involve some substantial additional focus on renewables and infrastructure to support them (e.g. long distance power lines, storage facilities), then the COVID-19 pandemic's long term effect on global heating will be more than a temporary dip in fossil carbon burning. Activists need to apply political pressure, including solid and detailed economic arguments for accelerating decarbonization. Was looking for related material yesterday, and found these: REWIRING THE U.S. FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY (SONIA AGGARWAL AND MIKE O’BOYLE, JUNE 2020) PLUMMETING SOLAR, WIND, AND BATTERY COSTS CAN ACCELERATE OUR CLEAN ELECTRICITY FUTURE (June, 2020)
I'd take any prediction of Peak Oil any time soon (i.e. this century) with a grain of salt.
At this point I'm not really expecting "peak oil" so much as ever-more-expensive-oil combined with cheap green power making the economic case against oil so obvious that even Joe Sixpack can see it. (For those who are not American, Joe Sixpack is an average guy who goes home at night and consumes a sixpack of crappy beer - in short, your "typical" lower-middle-class person.)
I always said Cheyenne Mt itself was the US's final weapon in WWIII: hit the top of the mountain, and the base, literally on giant springs, would pop the base out, bounce it over the North Pole, and have it bouncing up and down on Moscow.
Sorry, not allowed - the specifications was tririmes.
You pull that, I pull a WWII battleship.
Right, I think it may have been him, who provided, for many years, my argument against extreme vegetarians: what do you eat when we know a tomato screams when you cut it up?
Back to the macrobiotic #7 diet, I suppose (brown rice and water, as it was in the early 70's).
peteratjet @ 1303: This is the thing I can't get my head round. Elections in the UK use Mk1 pencil cross in box paper ballots, counted by Mk1 human beings. With the exception of some remote Scottish islands the counts are done in hours. Next day at the worst. A recount in a constituency might add some more hours. It's all done by local authorities reinforced by civically minded volunteers, with a competitive edge to be fastest. If the population was six times bigger, the human resources would scale in proportion.
This is literally not rocket science.
First, understand that the U.S. Constitution says that States are responsible for conducting elections There are certain common requirements, but how those requirements are met are up to the individual states.
You have a rule about how elections will be conducted. But your rule doesn't determine how they will be conducted in France or Italy or ...
North Carolina has election laws. Every county in North Carolina is constrained by those election laws. But South Carolina ... or Florida or California are NOT bound by North Carolina's laws.
I will, once again, give my serious evidence as to why I do not believe we have had contact with genuine, technological aliens.
I take issue with one thing: the 'Net did not break control of the media. Most on both sides, at some level, go back to larger "traditional" media. On the side of the Wrong (I refuse to call them the "right"; yes, I know about the French Assembly), we have Rupert Murdoch, who is literally the Minister of TRVTH.
30 ballot papers bound as a booklet? Perforated or slice off the spine when submitted, tellers deal each page into the appropriate tray, count.
If you go back and read what I wrote you'll see that in my county of 1 million we have over 100 DIFFERENT combinations of people we can vote for. You (and Greg) are saying move the complications from the back end (which is SOLVED) to the front end and make it a very very very manual process.
The issues at the back end with vote counting have more to do with when early and mail in votes CAN be counted by law. Here in NC we CAN count these before the polls close on election day. Our fights and issues are with ballots that arrive after that day.
Greg's got a neat rant but he keeps talking about what he imagines we do, not what I and other SAY we actually do.
Again the current mess is about how to deal with ballots mailed before the cutoff date but arrive after the polls close.
But voting for fewer offices would make the ballot complication issues much better. But that would involve 50 sets of state constitution and law changes which would then lead to changes in 1000s of charters for cities, counties, and other things. It just isn't going to happen. At least not all at once or quickly.
I'd take any prediction of Peak Oil any time soon (i.e. this century) with a grain of salt.
People who do the analysis of deep formations say there is oil in quantity down to at least 5 miles.
If there is a will there will be a way.
Where's the cheap Green power to come from? There's lots of claims about cheap solar and wind, next year usually and please to not include the cost of storage and extra generating capacity to fill that storage to cover dropouts and ignore those natural-gas CCGT plants over there pumping CO2 into the atmosphere as the real electricity supplier because Green!
We've got a number of big offshore wind projects coming on stream here in the UK, the Hornsea fields. They each promise enough generating capacity to power a million homes! but that's only true if they ruin at 100% which I don't think any wind farm has ever done for more than a few seconds if at all. On average they'll power 300,000 homes, some days they'll power a thousand. What's buried and never appears in the glowing press reports and puff pieces about Hornsea is the Contract for Difference agreement which sets a base price which every watt they generate will get.
Remember when the press was full or reports of the CfD price level of £92.50 for the two EPR1600 nuclear reactors EDF are building at Hinkley Point? Well, it's gone up even further to £104.50 per GWh! Green power's a lot cheaper than that and Green! too! Nuclear's too expensive, Green power is the future. Obvious, isn't it?
Hornsea phase 1, 2 and 3 all have a CfD of £162.50 per GWh.
what do you eat when we know a tomato screams when you cut it up?
The Arrogant Worms have you covered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM
E.g., this is illustrative of what San Antonio, TX voters get to fill out:
https://www.bexar.org/DocumentCenter/View/4570/Generic-Sample-Ballot-PDF
That's pretty big. A hypothetical Portland Oregon voter residing where we held Westercon 69 would get a ballot that looked like this, two pages long.
Yes, the ballot can vary by neighborhood; city commissioners are elected at the same time, by precinct. Also running are metro area races, county races, and state races. Americans are getting our democracy on all at once. It would be more enjoyable if we'd limit the campaign season to something reasonable.
I'm still not convinced that a removable, internal, insulating window that does not change the structure and is not visible from the outside is not possible.
Likewise, and it's frustrating that we haven't been able to figure out a deployable example.
I could work out something like that for my own windows but I don't have Edinburgh winters and so haven't needed to.
Nojay Where's the cheap Green power to come from? NUCLEAR ( But you might have to shoot a few fake-greenies first! ) ( The figures quoted for nuclear include ridiculous rip-off profits for the commercial manufacture. ) Britain HAD & France still has a succesful nuclear energy programme ....
There were enough of them they felt it was safe to physically attack independent journalists.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-investigate-assault-on-livestreamer-after-far-right-proud-boys-descend-on-portland
Yes, they've been psyching themselves up for violence for a long time.
Local coverage by KGW TV station and Oregon Live newspaper spinoff, for anyone who's curious.
As I said above, they're very bad at not getting caught. Someone decided that the guy with the camera was "antifa" and their hotheads went for him, apparently without any thought that the guy livestreaming the event might be, you know, livestreaming the event to the internet. We can expect their allies to be outraged that somehow they get caught when they commit crimes in front of hundreds of witnesses and recorded on video.
Apparently they also don't have anyone their hotheads listen to that will tell said hotheads not to do something stupid. By contrast the BLM protestors have long discussions about this, to the point they can suck in careless bystanders.
Looking at the coverage of the event led me to notice something. The angry racists are very angry and much more willing to start violence than their opponents - but as a group they're terrible at organizing a movement. They had nobody there to calm down the idiots who attacked the livestreamer. They misjudged by two orders of magnitude how many attendees they would get. Despite expecting many more people they had a line at the latrine for the people they did get. They had no food service. (Maybe they expected thousands of people to go to the Burger King? Contrast that with Riot Ribs, the free kitchen at the BLM protest.) As far as I know they had no media liaisons, which seems like an important thing when holding public relations events.
The counter-protest a few miles away had a speaker schedule, tidily printed banners, and impromptu sportsball games.
They're all tooth and no tail.
I always said Cheyenne Mt itself was the US's final weapon in WWIII: hit the top of the mountain, and the base, literally on giant springs, would pop the base out, bounce it over the North Pole, and have it bouncing up and down on Moscow.
Ha! Yes. My explanation for the giant springs was that they were shock absorbers for the nukes below. If the Big Red Button ever got pushed NORAD would blow the atomic land-clearing charges Project Plowshare taught us to make and the ablative mountain camouflage would fall away to reveal the Orion push plate under the base. If someone's going to nuke Cheyenne Mountain right off the Earth it might as well be us!
David L @ 1344:
If you go back and read what I wrote you'll see that in my county of 1 million we have over 100 DIFFERENT combinations of people we can vote for. You (and Greg) are saying move the complications from the back end (which is SOLVED) to the front end and make it a very very very manual process.
The issues at the back end with vote counting have more to do with when early and mail in votes CAN be counted by law. Here in NC we CAN count these before the polls close on election day. Our fights and issues are with ballots that arrive after that day.
Greg's got a neat rant but he keeps talking about what he imagines we do, not what I and other SAY we actually do.
Again the current mess is about how to deal with ballots mailed before the cutoff date but arrive after the polls close.
But voting for fewer offices would make the ballot complication issues much better. But that would involve 50 sets of state constitution and law changes which would then lead to changes in 1000s of charters for cities, counties, and other things. It just isn't going to happen. At least not all at once or quickly.
It's only a mess because one party is trying to MAKE it a mess so they can disenfranchise Black, Hispanic, and poor White voters.
Scott Sanford @ 1348:
That's pretty big. A hypothetical Portland Oregon voter residing where we held Westercon 69 would get a ballot that looked like this, two pages long
Yes, the ballot can vary by neighborhood; city commissioners are elected at the same time, by precinct. Also running are metro area races, county races, and state races. Americans are getting our democracy on all at once. It would be more enjoyable if we'd limit the campaign season to something reasonable.
I think that "Generic" sample includes every race in every sub-jurisdiction of Bexar County. I doubt the citizens in the North East Independent School District will voting for candidates in the Southwest Independent School District or vice versa.
If they're missing media liaisons, they're short a few teeth as well as a lot of tail. Not that I believe in getting in the way of enemas making mistakes.
Americans are getting our democracy on all at once. It would be more enjoyable if we'd limit the campaign season to something reasonable.
Up here, we don't elect nearly as many positions as you do, and we also run elections the three levels of government at different times.
The most complex election I've seen is the municipal level, when I will have to choose a mayor, a city counsellor, a regional counsellor, and a school board trustee. Ballots are specific to wards so I only see positions I'm able to vote for.
One piece of paper, didn't even need to pull out my reading glasses ;-)
Oh, and at the municipal level there are no party affiliations.
RE: time travel. Perhaps I'll have to dust of and rewrite the Ghosts of Deep Time?
It's not mine, originally, but the basic idea is that time travel (and probably FTL as well) are both possible so long as they are irrelevant. You can vacation in WWI Germany as much as you want, but if you kill Hitler, you're never going home again. For obvious reasons.
So this is the Law: Stay Acausal. Leave No Trace. If you're stupid enough to impact the world, you're stuck with the consequences, which could be rather dire.
So instead of the Time Rangers, we have the Irrelevance Patrol. Can't help lawbreakers (they're on their own, per the many worlds interpretation), but they can get time travelers out of trouble if they're skilled enough.
Speaking of the Many Worlds Interpretation: as I understand it, the consequences of any "world-splitting event" (for example, shooting Hitler) would radiate out in a light cone. At some point, they become part of the background noise and irrelevant (for example, someone 2 billion light years away would never detect sufficient photons of the cataclysm to figure out what had happened, so at that distance, the event had decohered into irrelevance). That light cone provides a short but perhaps vital window to make potentially make actions irrelevant (an agent takes the bullet meant for Hitler, for example), and continuity is thus preserved.
This also applies to UFOs and cryptids. They're free to go wherever and do anything that's irrelevant. To do otherwise would risk becoming relevant to this timeline, altering it and getting them stuck with no way of going home again. If you want to understand why aliens are 100% effective at hiding their presence, this is why.
So there's the story setup, the drama, and even the universe. The Law is complete irrelevance, and the greatest crime is mattering to history. Agents may be trained in an Acausal (not casual) setting at a university that has departments such as No-trace mechanical engineering, relevancistics, and spacetime orienteering. They can live in any spacetime that is guaranteed to wash away without a trace (paleocene sea cliffs are popular for that), furbish their mud brick homes with all sorts of eco-friendly stuff (mud bricks, terracotta pottery, wood utensils) that will disappear, go on safaris to hunt any dinosaur not in the fossil record, and so on.
Heck, this could even explain why Lovecraftian monsters don't rule the world: getting noticed by anyone other than the outsider dweebs who are the standard HPL hero would be Against The Law, and they won't violate the Law of Irrelevance.
Could be fun, actually. Sort of a Slackers in Black scenario. I'm trying to remember who's done SFF like this in the past.
It's not mine, originally, but the basic idea is that time travel (and probably FTL as well) are both possible so long as they are irrelevant. You can vacation in WWI Germany as much as you want, but if you kill Hitler, you're never going home again. For obvious reasons.
... Could be fun, actually. Sort of a Slackers in Black scenario.
That's basically the idea I had for a time travel campaign that I couldn't get my players invested in. The point was not that the characters couldn't change the past, but rather that they couldn't change what got into the history books. So they could in theory do whatever they liked as long as nobody noticed.
This does imply a certain loose approach to historical accuracy, as given enough time travelers there's a tendency to view the world as a stage set with overworked stage hands propping up bits of faux reality whenever the locals aren't looking.
That hypothetical WWI trench probably has someone not interestingly close to Hitler who's still close enough to pull another Hitlerbot out of the basement whenever someone blows up the last one. How much of history was like this? The PCs are never sure...
A related campaign did have players responding to a Loch Ness Monster sighting by hurrying over to the loch, building a paper mache replica of the photographed monster, and leaving it where the unsuspecting public would find it. Problem handled.
If they're missing media liaisons, they're short a few teeth as well as a lot of tail. Not that I believe in getting in the way of enemas making mistakes.
They probably can't bear to talk to "the liberal media" anyway.
They aren't even trying to expand by persuading people that they have a just cause, the way the left does. They might be aware how unpopular their ideas are with most of the population but I can't tell; they're not very self-aware people.
They probably can't bear to talk to "the liberal media" anyway.
I entirely understand the feeling, but that's not a sufficient excuse. As I'm quite sure you know.
UGH.
Well, everyone has caught up (look @ Host's Twitter and so on) and even the Jesuits have raised an eyebrow[1], and WAP meets WASP makes sense for you now.
YAY!
You're all too fucking slow and slow gets you dead[-1]
Anyhow, still alive[2], so:
That would have made it unsuitable for military or most commercial use, and is why the Roman sandals and British army leather boots were hobnailed.
NO!
Roman sandals were hobnailed after they made all those nice roads. Iron-shod wooden cart wheels were a thing and they totally buggered trade routes for ages (MUD) until the roads got made, and then you had soles wearing out[3].
Active service Roman kit in Caesar's time, boots were hardened leather (think DMs) with triple layered glued sole. No hobnails.
Oh... you think they still wore sandals? HOLY SHIT. YOU DO. JUST CHECKED. THIS IS AMAAAAZING. 2000 years of history, YOU STILL THINK THIS HAPPENED. Pro-tip: Caesar went to Germanica and Gaul prior to Britannia. Heck a lot of the aux were from there. They sure as shit didn't wear sandals. Try fighting in black soil mud in sandals, doesn't work[10]
100 years later, new Legion piped into the blood-grinder on a first time sortie along the nice roads? Might have worn the Rome standard sandal + hobnails. Like Vietnam, that changed within 21 days of meeting the Hibernians and the Wall. ~
For Bill: yeah, kinda. That's old old skool though. "Weee, make shit jokes about plants[4]". Chances are you got the SPOON-FEED-BULLSHIT version, not what they were actually doing. You know, that entire thing about SMELL and PHEROMONES and so on.
"Make you famous"
"Smells like one of them" "The stink, can't stand it" "I can smell it"
What if we told you that COVID19 lack of smell and the above (all UK national Mind states) are linked?
BECAUSE THEY ARE.
[-1] This is a Judge Dredd Quotation.
[0] What's really going to twist your noodle is us discussing that date and stuff and so on... weeks before hand.
[1] 5 EyE joke. Jesuits get .... privileges? Lol @ US journalists going on twitter to ask for some sources. It's called the Pope.
[2] The saps you send in with "over by Christmas" in their Minds and not much skills? Our rose bush flourishes all year round, it's a miracle. Even now, it blooms like it was touched by a verdant Goddess (or great fertilizer). And no... it even blooms when it's not supposed to.
[3] Did... you see what we did there?
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/alarm-pheromones
[10] Sequence breaker - because the suction was too great and it snapped the ties on the front ends and you lost 2,000+ men due to it. Not in YOUR fucking history books, that isn't.
bUT tHE r0MaNS dIdN't hAvE gLuE
They had lacquered armor, it was official kit for Praetorians. Oh and they had access to a lot of horse hooves. And they knew how cement worked.
Anyhow: Want to play nasty?[1]
COVID19 (the other version - remember, there's several types out there, including the "vascular damage to extremities that requires amputation" which we challenge you to find under what a SARS2 virus can do)
What happens to Predators when you remove their advantages? The usual us heightened smell, biofocal vision, better hearing and so on.
You get this: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-09-26/andrew-neil-leaves-bbc-gb-news/
~
Oh, and Bill.
Our sense of smell. Sorry: YOU SMELL SO TASTY AND SEXY AND RAW AND VIBRANT AND...
We just learned to fuck your brains out rather than eating you.
~
Trust us: this is true.
What's also true: We expect all of them to pass our test. BRAIN WORMS / BRAIN WIPE / SCRAMBLED EGGS.
That's why they're so scared, it's not because of some Lefty Twitter twats.
[1] Not talking front running some bullshit level Human wank fest politics shite that we can do in our sleep, tell you about, then watch you all fucking ignore us when it BECOMES REAL.
Oh, and at the municipal level there are no party affiliations.
Yeah. We do that bit of fiction here. Of course everyone who pays even a tiny bit of attention knows where the allegiances are located.
Heteromeles at 1357: I'm trying to remember who's done SFF like this in the past.
In geological timescales, this is one of the plot points in David Brin's second Uplift trilogy. The illegally settled sooners on Jijo restrict themselves to an area of high volcanic activity where natural process of vulcanism or subduction will erase all evidence of their presence before the next Institute of Migration audit...
Terry Pratchett's standalone SF novel "Strata" had the idea of refurbishing used-up planets for the next inhabitants that evolved as part of the story's background. They used machines that reconstructed all the disturbed geological strata from the previous civilisation's mining and drilling operations. Easter eggs were a no-no, people who did things like planting dinosaur fossils holding "End Nuclear Testing Now" signs were frowned upon.
I think that "Generic" sample includes every race in every sub-jurisdiction of Bexar County. I doubt the citizens in the North East Independent School District will voting for candidates in the Southwest Independent School District or vice versa.
Mostly Bexar votes by machine, and AFAIK the ballot presented is filtered by precinct of registration. There's still quite a few items to go through, even so.
Stupid computers!
I bought a set of headphones with a microphone so I could participate in a meeting via audio even if I don't have a web-cam. I can't get the microphone to work.
I have ways to test the microphone (I play guitar & am somewhat of a musician), so I know the microphone is good.
Robert Prior @ 1356:
Up here, we don't elect nearly as many positions as you do, and we also run elections the three levels of government at different times.
The most complex election I've seen is the municipal level, when I will have to choose a mayor, a city counsellor, a regional counsellor, and a school board trustee. Ballots are specific to wards so I only see positions I'm able to vote for.
One piece of paper, didn't even need to pull out my reading glasses ;-)
Oh, and at the municipal level there are no party affiliations.
Down here the state & federal elections run concurrently.
Local, county & municipal elections occur in the off year (odd numbered). Raleigh/Wake County used to hold elections for local offices in the spring of the off years.
There are a couple of states that hold their state elections on the off year as well.
The thing with those "non-partisan" offices down here is that one party has started using them to defraud the voters; bait & switch.
"1141: Yes, but it's a pot you need to trap a shoggoth in. If you try and trap it in a sink it'll just extrude itself out again through the plughole."
A mother was washing her shoggoth one night The youngest of ten, and a grim eldritch sight The mother was poor, and the shoggoth was thin Twas naught but a jellyfish covered with skin She turned towards the door, for the soap on the rack Was only a moment, but when she turned back The shoggoth was gone, and in anguish she cried Oh where is my shoggoth? Cthulu replied, Oh your shoggoth has slipped down the bath hole Your shoggoth has squirmed through the plug The poor little thing was so skinny and thin He should have been washed ina jug (Chorus) in a jug! Your shoggoth iis perfectly happy He wont need a bath aanymore He's a- muckin' about with Cthulu above Not lost, just gone before
Wif apologies to Ginger Baker's 'a Muvver's Lament' circa 1968
Allen Thomson @ 1366:
Mostly Bexar votes by machine, and AFAIK the ballot presented is filtered by precinct of registration. There's still quite a few items to go through, even so.
Do you mean "votes by machine" as in touch screen voting machines?
Excellent, big laugh. All the more so as I was singing "my shoggof 'as gorn dahn the plug'ole" to myself as I posted the original comment.
"BECAUSE THEY ARE."
Quite. We've looked at that point before, I think. But it seems to be an insight people are highly likely to reject.
You should read what I actually say, before replying Mindlessly. In any case, many unpaved roads of that era (then and now) had and have a lot of stones on them, and I can witness from personal experience that they do serious harm to wet leather.
Yes, touch screen machines. (I know...)
Since we voted absentee(*) this year, I missed the replacement of the old all-electronic touchscreen machines by something that at least sounds a bit better:
(*) A process that involved receiving an emailed ballot in the form of a fillable-out PDF, printing out the completed ballot with additional required forms, assembling a return envelope, and mailing it back to San Antonio. The ballot had what appeared to be a PDF417 2-d barcode in the corner that I suppose was some sort of authenticator.
As things seem to be winding down here, I'll post this, which reminded me of earlier discussions of what constitutes warm or cool weather. 63 F? Brrr!
https://www.themonitor.com/2020/09/28/cold-front-making-way-rio-grande-valley/
Cold front making its way to the Rio Grande Valley Laura Martinez - September 28, 2020
That long awaited cold front will be passing through the Rio Grande Valley today...
Today’s highs will be around 85 degrees and tonight’s lows will be around 63 degrees. Tuesday’s high will be around 82 degrees and Tuesday night’s lows will be around 56 degrees.
Btw, has everyone seen the biggest September Surprise yet - looks like someone in the IRS got really, REALLY fed up with the Hairball's stalling, and walked over to the NYT with the data on the last 20 years of Trumpolini's returns.
Pelosi said, this morning, that his huge debts coming due could be a national security concern....
I quickly read the NYT article.
Also noticed that Trump's been saying Biden should take a drug test before the debate. I liked the Biden campaign's answer to that:
“Vice-President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words. If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it.
“We’d expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200,000 Americans when he didn’t make a plan to stop Covid-19.”
Btw, has everyone seen the biggest September Surprise yet - looks like someone in the IRS got really, REALLY fed up with the Hairball's stalling, and walked over to the NYT with the data on the last 20 years of Trumpolini's returns. Pelosi said, this morning, that his huge debts coming due could be a national security concern....
If we want to play LeakerGate...
It could indeed be someone at the IRS, for the reason given. It could also be someone at the IRS who wanted to force top IRS management to play hardball against Trump, rather than roll over per instructions from the White House.
It could be Schumer, Pelosi, or some other politician who's had these returns for years and was looking for a good time to leak. If so, they might have leaked to poison the rapid replacement of Justice Ginsburg. Now it will look like anyone nominated by the White House prior to the election is there to protect the President. If that justice is ethical they'll recuse themselves from any case involving El Cheeto. Indeed, if they're ethical, they may step aside, because they're walking into a mine field, whatever their ideological bent, and I suspect they're smart enough to know it.
And/or the taxes could have been leaked as an October Surprise to one-up the Republicans for what they did to Carter.
And/or they could have been leaked to alienate the non-grifting business community. Although whether this would make any difference is open to question (/sarcasm).
And/or they could have been leaked to help the down-ballot races, like the Arizona senate race, although that might backfire.
Instead of someone in Washington, the leaker could have been an ex-Trump employee, backstabbing their former boss.
Or (and I think this is likely), the leak could have been someone in the New York Attorneys General Office, perhaps with plausible deniability from the boss. While they're interested in getting Trump out of office because of criminal activity, the bigger reason to leak would have been to make a case in public that, after he loses in a landslide, the President and the administration should be treated as suspects in multiple serious, ongoing criminal investigations at both the state level and federal level. While they could make these allegations to a grand jury confidentially (and I suspect they already have), having the public behind them strengthens the case. The other goal here is to prevent a defeated President from further trashing the country before he walks out the door in January. And perhaps to ready everyone for the sight of him getting perp-walked out of Mar-a-Lago next winter, both for tax evasion (shades of Capone) and for using the emoluments clause as toilet paper for four years. Among other things. If El Cheeto loses, there's going to be a whole generation of federal prosecutors who spend years doing nothing but cleaning up all the legal crap his administration has left behind. Wonder what they'll do once that is over?
But again, this is all speculation, and that's the beautiful part of the leak: any of these could be true. Heck, nearly all of them could be true. Those documents have been around for awhile, and the NY Times does say sources, plural.
Re: ' ... someone in the IRS got really, REALLY fed up with the Hairball's stalling, ... the data on the last 20 years of Trumpolini's returns.'
What could come in useful alongside this is for DT's past creditors to submit signed/sworn affidavits showing how much he still owes them. Alternatively, a class action suit by creditors - and probably past employees who he might have 'fired' just before he would have been obligated to fork over some promised remuneration, pay increase or vacation pay. Problem is that DT has a history of hiring/contracting mostly no-USians - probably specifically so that when he stiffed them, GOP types wouldn't care.
Plus - we already know that he screwed over at least one of his own brothers and that brothers' kids.
Plus - he threatened to sue one of his ex-wives for breach of NDA* if she ever mentioned some of his husbandly shortcomings [ahem].
Basically - the combination of the IRS info, the family tell-all plus the above solidly illustrates that DT cannot be trusted ever.
Okay, someone help me out here ... how the hell is it legal/lawful for someone to tell you and enforce that you no longer have any rights wrt your own life story/bio? To me this is absolutely equivalent to slavery. It's entrapment, editing and/or erasure of your life narrative by someone else. People with serious mental illnesses have more protection against others making decisions to 'change' their minds - as of the 50s or 60s(?).
The NDA scenario reminds me of an oft-used example of Elizabethan era law: an aristo sues a hired killer for breach of contract because the killer did not off the intended victim and the aristo wanted his money back. The aristo wins because the suit was set, pursued and argued within contract law terms. (Since there was no murder, there was no crime in the 'criminal sense' of the law at that time.)
Heteromeles Indeed, if they're ethical, they may step aside UNLESS you are a completely brainwashed RC bigot, of course ..... More to the point A C Barrett simply MUST NOT be apponted to the US supreme court.
Andrew Neil leaves BBC to front new channel For a Fox News style outlet. General question from an American; would such an effort (there are two such?) succeed financially in the UK? [still parsing that particular comment, to be clear]
YOU SMELL SO TASTY AND SEXY AND RAW AND VIBRANT AND... That's so sweet. :-) I try/aspire to be respectful, and present a mild [face]. Raw, yes.
Was prodded to spend some time today rabbit-holing on KOL NIDREI (Aram. כָּל נִדְרֵי; "All Vows"), mainly about its origins. (e.g. Nedarim 23b, and did that come from somewhere else?) Any non-standard stories about Kol Nindrei to share?
More to the point A C Barrett simply MUST NOT be apponted to the US supreme court.
Must is one of those hard things, considering there's a majority in the US Senate that will confirm her.
The routes to stop it therefore fall along two routes: 1. Make it politically untenable for her (or anyone like her) to get approved, on threat of losing the seat. This is possible in some cases, but tricky (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/). It's largely irrelevant before January, but it has some leverage. If the Dems happen to win 54 seats and the presidency, packing the Supreme Court with four more democrats becomes a distinct possibility, and then we're into screwed-up land.
Barrett bugs out under pressure. This might happen. Remember when Bush II nominated his personal attorney and pulled her a week later when it was obvious she was unqualified? I don't think that will happen here, but it's possible.
There's a little problem with overturning the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic and remaining relevant in politics. I can't think of a better reason for the democrats to pack the Supreme Court with democrats than for the Supremes to demonstrate that they want to kill large numbers of people for no reason.
(Aram. כָּל נִדְרֵי; "All Vows"),
Totally idle question, but is the Aramaic in the Masoretic Text close enough to the Hebrew to be in the mostly-mutually-comprehensible range, like modern Spanish and Portuguese, or further apart that it needs some puzzling out?
how the hell is it legal/lawful for someone to tell you and enforce that you no longer have any rights wrt your own life story/bio?
In exchange for reasonable consideration. An NDA signed at gun point is not valid. An NDA about something that the public in general doesn't know about in EXCHANGE for reasonable (or crazy) consideration is a valid contract. In the USA. Mostly.
The key point of an NDA between private parties is that the party breaking the NDA is NOT breaking criminal law, but civil law. So if the aggrieved party sues and collects but someone friendly is willing to fund the losses it can be hard to enforce it.
Hmm, Pope says hello.
Pope Francis: Tax evasion is part of a "structure of sin." He also quoted this article: "It has become evident that those who do not pay taxes do not only commit a felony but also a crime: if there are not enough hospital beds and artificial respirators, it is also their fault."
https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1310382258189107202 -- 28th Sept, 2020, Twitter, genuine Jesuit there. Tied into the US scene, power-player (or fronting for one).
Check the time stamps. If you think the Pope accidentally timed that, we've a large mango salad to sell to you. And then work out how we riffed it before the Press conference, but hey.
But...
Church says Cardinal Pell returning to Vatican in crisis
https://apnews.com/article/australia-andrew-bolt-child-abuse-rome-pope-francis-20af5cc38ee3070544aa0e2d3b4e3c82
Opus Dei have chosen their side, which is fine: but they need a good old fashioned Inquisition and purge the fuck out of the old rotten guard. There's going to be some old fashioned 1680's shit soon enough, or they lose, and it goes back to the Borges. Flashback: "We spent so long on cleaning the House/Church of that Sin" - when was that? Three years ago? She's dead now. That's a direct quotation from one of the 'Black' Nuns that officially don't exist. And no, we were not particularly sympathetic.
~
And, oh for Goddess sake: MF + liberal USA are attempting to taxon conspiracy theory, not knowing they're setting themselves up for Purge targeting:
Apparently Twitter likes my Conspiracy Theory Chart. Here’s a link to a pdf of it. I don’t think it’s perfect and I’m still trying to make it better! https://drive.google.com/file/d/13C1JrX63Ff8OuuGvvUbHvRYveqKEEHBW/view?
https://twitter.com/abbieasr/status/1309868576887779334
This is Louise Mensch (remember her and her promises that Death Penalties were being formed?) level of analysis and very VERY dangerous as all it does is do the frontal lobe block: "That is not what I believe, she is lying, she is enemy". 100% immediate reaction to her childish surface reading of the issue.
Hint: if you use a Pyramid structure, you're already playing Masonic / Christian imagery (look at the Dollar Bill, ffs, it's not an accident) let alone ancient Egyptian stuff. It's as bad as using pink as your default central color and then attempting to use that as a reference to describe 'race' relations in modern USA.
Someone (near to Host) needs to go squish this before the nasties work out how to use it. Use a SPIDER DIAGRAM. There's a reason none of the Q charts and the above guff use proper spider diagrams (3D is optional), because they're too good at showing the truth.
https://www.moma.org/artists/22980#works
And yeah, someone did kill him, even when he did so much to make them overly simplistic.
So, someone tell the children over at MF and so on that they're about to tangle horns with some of the Old Ones (for real, Pope's involved now, this is HEAVY MESSING CREW) if they don't change their nappies and stop feeding off crap.
If they're stress popping (remember: all that stuff about it live on TV? Think how bad it gets when it's a pro-team in your head etc) the minor $$$ players, blood is in the water. (Armed + locked in his own house + poppo arriving = someone serious called some favors).
~
Any non-standard stories about Kol Nindrei to share?
Wrong timing for that - it's the period of critique (we just jumped it a little, trying to stave off more horror, and tbh, we're on the side of the Indigenous Land Rights people and non-Corporate power, which Ms BFG was certainly not. Oh, and the chances Orthodox are gonna get the WAP - WASP - Catholic angles is slight to none, but hey).
We gave you a video of a woman pushed beyond caring, and she masturbated to the Goddesses in the sky, defiling that most sacred USA invention, the CAR GOD of private transport, in Florida ($16 mil on felony bills to get voters? Suicidal, instant ramping of race tensions and so the Govanaaar there immediately hit up a bill in 2021 that makes any protest a felony. Wooooo weeeeeee u bad at diss)
They gave you a twee WASP mock wedding (Liberal Judaism doing WASP is always a USA thing) via DMCC insiders (all paid $100k+) and Olympic Games PR flacks (not even joking: well, there's one way to kill the account) and Cuties and Kiddy Fiddling.
Work out which one was more powerful. Hint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AfMf70gxbY
~
$750 in taxes is a gift, don't be morans. No-one pays taxes at that level, that's the point (and passing a trillion+ in tax levity buys you more than a Pass in those circles. Koch can count to $150 billion and bother to pay off a couple of bill owed to the Ru's while laughing at his shitty golf).
Anyone telling you that "$750 is danger zone" and is memeing it really doesn't understand who owns the USA. Tax is for peasants. Tax is something you do to other people. Tax is a SIN. $750 (wonder why it's such a nice round number, between $500 and $1,000? That's the mimetic hit point they're going for - a trillion is too big for most of the slaves. $750 is a month's booze bill for your VP level Wall Street youngling).
The President owes a couple bill?
You're going to be fucking shocked once you see how leveraged and illiquid most of the lower C level class are behind all the personal trainers, yoga, pool-boys and fancy restaurants: that's the play.
~
Anyhow: UK gov banned anti-Capitalist teaching in schools? (I might be from a different Universe, but pretty sure you never taught anti-Capitalism in schools, anyhow?)
The government has just banned schools in England from teaching material from “anti capitalist groups”. What would you ban next?
https://twitter.com/itvpeston/status/1310574807705157635 -- For US readers, he's the UK version of Tucker. Less sexy, more neurotic and stupider. And no, the neurotic isn't a trope, he's a fucking mess, check his therapist's notes out. [OHOOOOH]
~
But it seems to be an insight people are highly likely to reject.
Gotta hide this response under a load of Razzle-Dazzle: yeah. The Icke contingent are right, but wrong, if you know what we mean. Right instinct, lacking in the science and politics and general 731 training to do anything but blame the nearest 5G tower.
Put it this way: a [redacted] got blinded [no lobe access] and a lot of its' followers/slaves [for real] are losing their Minds due to [US] and the smell thing and so on is collateral damage. Like, £400,000,000 on a BANDWIDTH buy-out has nothing to do with GPS. It's about COMMUNICATION ACCESS and BLINDNESS.
And there's some fucking insanely amoral [redacted] dropping shit into humans to see how to get out of the {{{BIND}}} / Paradox they're in. It's unbreakable, which means....
For the record: the reference you need is people 'smelling' evil / sensing via intuition that something's not quite right. Do a grep: Iceland, met something not-Human, smelt all wrong, white room, doorman wearing security force issue boots [HEELO EC, ROMANS = IMPERIAL POWER, YES?]
Was that a 5+ year pay-off there?
Kinda. As as we rather pointedly showed: our sense of smell is fiiiiine.
Sigh, and yes: that breaks the link rules. But it's important to get the contextual level set. If we wanted to link dump, here's 298 in a drop-box file:
We were really good beforehand and didn't spam links for a few responses, soooo...
Here's a rather more satisfying answer surfaced by the FacePlant Algorithm in my feed:
"(Attributed to Bill Svelmoe, associate professor of history at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame. And an author, etc. )
“A few thoughts on Amy Coney Barrett, our new Supreme Court justice.
People of Praise is not a cult. I've had half a dozen of their kids in my classes, including some men who heard about me from their female friends. Almost without fail, these have been among the best students I've ever had. Extremely bright. Careful critical thinkers. Wonderful writers. I loved having them in class. So don't go after the People of Praise.
By all accounts Barrett walks on water. I've had that in a roundabout way from people I know at Notre Dame, including from folks as liberal as me, who actually look forward to seeing her on the court. I have no first hand knowledge of her, but take the above for what you will.
So Democrats should not take a typical approach with her.
If the Democrats take the presidency and the Senate, none of this matters much.
A Democratic administration will not let a conservative court mess with Democratic priorities. Lots of avenues, including adding justices, passing a law that no act of Congress can be overturned by the Court except by a seven vote majority, etc. So keep the focus where it matters. On November 3. So how should Democrats approach these hearings? I've seen one good suggestion today. Turn all their time over to Kamala Harris. I like that one.
Here's a few more suggestions.
Don't show up for the hearings. There is no reason to dignify this raw exercise in political hypocrisy. Don't legitimize the theft of a Supreme Court seat with your presence. This also shows Barrett that the nation knows she is letting herself become a pawn in Trump's game. That in itself says something about character.
Schedule high interest alternate programming directly opposite the hearings. Bring together all 26 of the women who have accused Trump of sexual assault. Let them tell their stories on air. Or interview liberal justices that Biden will add to the court next year. Hearings with only Republicans extolling Barrett's virtues will get low ratings. It shouldn't be hard to come up with something people would rather watch. Hell, replay the Kavanaugh hearings! Bring in Matt Damon to reprise his role on SNL! I'd watch that! How about a show "Beers with Squee"?!
If Democrats do attend the hearings, they should not focus on Barrett's views on any future cases. She'll just dodge those questions anyway. They're hypothetical. She should dodge them. Don't even mention her religion.
Instead Democrats should focus on the past four years of the Trump administration. This has been the most corrupt administration in American history. No need for hypotheticals. The questions are all right there.
Judge Barrett, would you please explain the emoluments clause in the Constitution. [She does.] Judge Barrett, if a president were to refuse to divest himself of his properties and, in fact, continue to steer millions of dollars of tax payer money to his properties, would this violate the emoluments clause?
Then simply go down the list of specific cases in which Trump and his family of grifters have used the presidency to enrich themselves. Ask her repeatedly if this violates the emoluments clause. Include of course using the American ambassador to Britain to try to get the British Open golf tournament at a Trump property. Judge Barrett, does this violate the emoluments clause?
Then turn to the Hatch Act.
Judge Barrett, would you please explain the Hatch Act to the American people. [She does.] Judge Barrett, did Kellyanne Conway violate the Hatch Act on these 60 occasions? [List them. Then after Barrett's response, and just fyi, the Office of the Special Council already convicted her, ask Barrett this.] When Kellyanne Conway, one of the president's top advisors openly mocked the Hatch Act after violating it over 60 times, should she have been removed from office? Then turn to all the other violations of the Hatch Act during the Republican Convention. Get Barrett's opinion on those.
Then turn to Congressional Oversight.
Judge Barrett, would you please explain to the American people the duties of Congress, according to the Constitution, to oversee the executive branch. [She does so.] Judge Barrett, when the Trump administration refuses time and again [list them] to respond to a subpoena from Congress, is this an obstruction of the constitutional duty of Congress for oversight? Is this an obstruction of justice?
Then turn to Trump's impeachment.
Read the transcript of Trump's phone call. Judge Barrett, would you describe this as a "perfect phone call"? Is there anything about this call that troubles you, as a judge, or as an American?
Judge Barrett, would you please define for the American people the technical definition of collusion. [She does.] Then go through all of the contacts between the Trump administration and Russians during the election and get her opinion on whether these amount to collusion. Doesn't matter how she answers. It gets Trump's perfidy back in front of Americans right before the election.
Such questions could go on for days. Get her opinion on the evidence for election fraud. Go through all the Trump "laws" that have been thrown out by the courts. Ask her about the separation of children from their parents at the border. And on and on and on through the worst and most corrupt administration in our history. Don't forget to ask her opinion on the evidence presented by the 26 Trump accusers.
Judge Barrett, do you think this is enough evidence of sexual assault to bring the perpetrator before a court of law? Do you think a sitting president should be able to postpone such cases until after his term? Judge Barrett, let's listen again, shall we, to Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape. I don't have a question. I just want to hear it again. Or maybe, as a woman, how do you feel listening to this recording? Let's listen to it again, shall we. Take your time.
Taking this approach does a number of things.
Even if Barrett bobs and weaves and dodges all of this, it reminds Americans right before the election of just how awful this administration has been.
None of these questions are hypothetical. They are all real documented incidents. The vast majority are pretty obvious examples of breaking one law or the other. If Barrett refuses to answer honestly, she demonstrates that she is willing to simply be another Trump toady. Any claims to high moral Christian character are shown to be as empty as the claims made by the 80% of white evangelicals who continue to support Trump.
If she answers honestly, as I rather suspect she would, then Americans get to watch Trump and his lawless administration convicted by Trump's own chosen justice.
Any of these outcomes would go much further toward delegitimizing the entire Republican project than if Democrats go down the typical road of asking hypothetical questions or trying to undermine her character. Use her supposed good character and keen legal mind against the administration that has nominated her. Let her either convict Trump or embarrass herself by trying to weasel out of convicting Trump. Either way, it'll be great television ...”"
Well ... A C Barrett seems to fit the Opus Dei mould very nicely ... Heteromeles: focusing on her religion Exactly wrong - her brainfucked religion is everything. Her proposed appointment is contrary to the "Establishment Clause" is it not? OTOH ... I LURVE your list of interesting questions - much fun could be had.
Used to be you had to have the surveyors locate your firing point so you could input that into the computation, but nowadays GPS serves that function. I was just thinking about plotting where the shots will fall, not guidance. With indirect fire, there's a computer...
Been a bit "head down" at work, so I missed this (and how could I resist)...
...when I was a young student in the University Officers' Training Corps (), we had an Artillery Troop; at the time, three 105mm Pack Howitzers(*), and all of the other functions of an independent artillery battery - a survey team, a command post, and a forward observation post that had yours truly operating the radio.
There's no absolute need for computers; in the mid-1980s our command post was still using firing tables (a bit like books of log tables, but precalculated for gunnery) to aim the guns for indirect fire. The computers let you do complicated stuff quickly, with a lower error rate - but the difference is more like that between the first electronic calculators and the abacus, or musket and longbow. The real advantage comes from the reduction in training time for the users; and the ability to make every average user as effective as an expert in the old system.
The first computers arrived in the 1970s and filled the back of a Landrover or FV432 (FACE). IIRC handheld kit for mortars didn't really arrive until the late 1980s / early 1990s. If you want to lose an hour or two reading about the technical aspects of artillery, this site is pretty informative...
** An artillery battery is typically six to eight guns. Until the early 1980s, the UOTCs had the WW2-vintage 25-pdr, but once they'd worked through the remaining ammunition stocks they shifted to the 1960s-era OTO-Melara. Once they'd worked through that ammunition, they shifted to the 105mm Light Gun; but that change meant we didn't get to keep them at the University, just borrow them from a training stockpile.
Allen Thomson @ 1375:
Since we voted absentee(*) this year, I missed the replacement of the old all-electronic touchscreen machines by something that at least sounds a bit better:
(*) A process that involved receiving an emailed ballot in the form of a fillable-out PDF, printing out the completed ballot with additional required forms, assembling a return envelope, and mailing it back to San Antonio. The ballot had what appeared to be a PDF417 2-d barcode in the corner that I suppose was some sort of authenticator.
I don't see how these "new" machines solve what I understand is the major problem with DRE (touch-screen) voting machines - misalignment or miscalibration. WYSINOTWYG.
You touch the screen for Candidate A, but the machine shows a choice for Candidate B. If you're not paying enough attention, you're vote is not going to go to the candidate you want it to go to. Just having the machine print a paper ballot when you commit your selections won't fix this.
What good is having a printed paper ballot if the ballot has votes for the wrong candidates on it.
I had to respond to a text message this morning and when I was done, I couldn't get back to the message panel to delete the text after I was done replying to it. And I use a stylus because of the fat finger problem.
The spot on the screen for the back button was too small and too close to the telephone number of the text message I had replied to.
https://photos5.appleinsider.com/archive/14.03.27-Transparent-1.jpg
Center image (I'm trying to get back to the screen in the left image), except there's a telephone number "nnn-nnn-nnnn" where it says "Paul" and it overlaps the word "Messages" so I can't see it.
There's a tiny one space wide spot where you have to touch to go back to the "Messages" pane. If you touch right on top of the "<" nothing happens. If you go two spaces to the right of the "<" it tries to dial the telephone number. (Took several minutes and several aborted telephone calls to find the spot.)
If I have that much trouble with the touch screen on my phone, which I use every day, why would I want to have those troubles from a DRE (touch-screen) voting machine I only see every two years?
I HATE touch-screens! I would be supremely pissed off if I had to use one for voting.
Robert Prior @ 1378:
I quickly read the NYT article.
Also noticed that Trump's been saying Biden should take a drug test before the debate. I liked the Biden campaign's answer to that:
I'll take a drug test if you'll take a sanity test! ... administered by an independent lab & verified results to be published the day before the debate.
Heteromeles @ 1379:
If we want to play LeakerGate...
E-file or E-mail, what's the difference? It's fair game.
SFReader @ 1380:
What could come in useful alongside this is for DT's past creditors to submit signed/sworn affidavits showing how much he still owes them. Alternatively, a class action suit by creditors - and probably past employees who he might have 'fired' just before he would have been obligated to fork over some promised remuneration, pay increase or vacation pay. Problem is that DT has a history of hiring/contracting mostly no-USians - probably specifically so that when he stiffed them, GOP types wouldn't care.
FWIW, in "at will" employment, an employer is not obligated to pay accrued vacation pay, even if you've already requested vacation & are fired on the first day of that requested vacation (also no accrued sick days or personal days). They do have to pay out any accrued retirement contributions (including corporate matching that has already vested, i.e. last years matching) in the company retirement (401K) plan.
It's complicated and they WILL try to fuck you over.
A decade or two ago I read that in one state (can't remember which one) teachers were much likelier to be terminated for poor performance the year before they qualified for pensions — even if they also won awards for their work that year.
We watched the debate. I needed a strong drink afterwards. NYPost (R-Atilla-the-Hun): "Trump’s over-belligerence led him to stumble in first debate"
Over-belligerence? He was like a clown, "whatsamatter, I'm better'n you'll ever be, let's fight, hah, hah!" bouncing around Mohammad Ali.
Jeez, what an idiot. If I get to moderate the next debate, I'll get the whip to go with my hat... though an "off" switch on his mike would work.
Yeah. Trump is so easily manipulated into a-hole meltdowns. Biden did an OK job amplifying this one, and kept relatively calm through the blizzard of Trump lies, keeping eye contact with the camera lens for much of it. I do wonder what drugs D.J. Trump was on for that mess; it didn't seem like uppers were in the mix this time. (Maybe he was spooked that a lot of people would be studying photos for signs.) Agree on the need for a microphone cutoff.
Opus Dei have chosen their side, which is fine: but they need a good old fashioned Inquisition and purge the fuck out of the old rotten guard. Good sign that Francis has survived this long. He may have skillz.
Someone (near to Host) needs to go squish this before the nasties work out how to use it. Use a SPIDER DIAGRAM. There's a reason none of the Q charts and the above guff use proper spider diagrams (3D is optional), because they're too good at showing the truth. Mmm, intriguing.
I was never in a position to see Jim Morrison live, which makes me sad. A lot in that song; echos of some things academic? Dead president's corpse in the driver's car The engine runs on glue and tar Come on along, we're not going very far To the East to meet the Czar
(Or just that song)
For the record: the reference you need is people 'smelling' evil / sensing via intuition that something's not quite right. FWIW, most people can do this, but most of them ignore their intuitions in favor of their comfortable reality frameworks. THEY LIVE's glasses are what people hope for.
Lesson from 2016.
No-one watches the debates, nor do they vote on performance in said debates.
They watch the clips.
And the TV execs watch the response to said clips, and that's how you make a billion dollars.
~
2016 - Trump follows Clinton around and gets a single sound-bite in.
2020 - Don't care enough to watch. Already seen GS do a weak fade for Democrats[1], gonna translate it for you:
$2 tril tax cut $4 tril straight into C level / Stocks
Some piddly shit tier level protests not even on the level of Occupy and WW3 ain't kicked off yet.
Democrats aren't even offering to step it back.
Now, look at how OUR Minds work.
Trump 2020-2024 ... you know, only President who hasn't declared a new war, he's entrenched the 0.1% power completely, US .Mil spending is up, Stocks are up, CN is off-footed.
And the best thing is... he's such a fucking muppet, none of them look too hard beyond him.
~
Just saying.
Watch the odds and money. Trump... Trump has been good to traditional USA Corporate stuff. Goooood. Reaaaaaal Goooood.
Biden's going to keel over and no-one Trusts Kamalalalaalala because she's designed for a different era.
And California still burns....
[1] A Joe Biden Presidency Will Not Hurt the Economy, Says Goldman Sachs
"If the Democratic nominee is elected in November and his party ends up with majority control of both chambers of Congress, Goldman sees a 4 percent upward revision by 2024 to its baseline earnings forecast, which assumes no change in policy, Reuters reported."
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-presidency-will-not-hurt-economy-says-goldman-sachs-1535057?amp=1&utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true
Well. We're kinda to burnt out to do fucking subtle by now. But, yeah.
[Redacted] level shit is just ..... gigacide right now.
"We don't interface with you, we'd go Mad" "We don't try to pull at a funeral, we're not sociopaths"
Everyone eating Pink Cake Mad Ancient Granny giving all who touch her Demtentia
~Best translation we can give you right now.
[That translation is roooough, but so is living it]
Jeez, what an idiot. If I get to moderate the next debate, I'll get the whip to go with my hat... though an "off" switch on his mike would work.
I suggest this could be 'enough rope to hang himself.'
We saw him behave like a kindergarten child this time. Next debate the moderator can remind both candidates that there should be no interruptions. When Trump breaks in, he'll get warned. Then when he breaks the rule again, he gets cut off.
His groupies get no tale of people conspiring against him and everyone else looks like responsible adults.
Sigh. We're also using Jim Morrison because of the Ur-Mythology that was used to create him. Sex, Semen, Blood and Lust and Death and Drugs. Look @ who his father was, then look into the acid scene and Manson. Making your children into weapons, it's an ooold, oooold game.
"We were bred for a War we never understood"
[Sumerian Text, for real]
This is 101 stuff to "conspiracy theorists" and watching MF + some Master Lady plonk the Pyramid onto it all to neatly taxon it is just... This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIrvSJwwJUE
It's 40 year old jank crap that the pros don't use anymore. The pros are using psychosis weapons to break Minds and that's the commercial side you can buy off .IL vendors to do an offensive info-bubble, let alone the pros from RU who tailor chemicals in the food/water and so on.
Oh, and the English. The English. Take a long hard look at what Radio IV is broadcasting out (barring the shit spouted and neo-reactionary crap flowing from their mouths). That's hard-core. Real nasty shit in the wavelengths, designed to really Mind-fuck you. Custom codes to hack straight into the beam and target the "nasties" with some pretty decent voice codex work to mimic the "Talent". And that's the Old Skool English stuff developed 30 years ago for N. Ireland. These days they're splicing into TV and so on.
"Discipline"
"Νέμεσις"
"What Have I Done" < --- that is [redacted]
Immanentize the eschaton.
"When ze works, ze really works" < --- that is [redacted]
~
New stuff?
Well.
Look around. Dem's tried to use some of it (look it up : infamously gay african-american male, into fashion, singing alone without backing at the Biden Zoom Convention... yikes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu8j8mpmNgY
This is the foreplay. Count the broken Covenants. For real. ;,;
I don't see how these "new" machines solve what I understand is the major problem with DRE (touch-screen) voting machines - misalignment or miscalibration. WYSINOTWYG.
The major issue with touch screen voting is that the actual vote is a beta test. Has to be by definition.
Now the companies selling and advocating such systems will talk about how their software has been fully tested and is flawless. But even if true at the end of the day someone has to load up form/ballot definition tables. And no matter what some might think these tables are software programming and might have bugs. And remember these tables are being set up by people without knowledge or training to do proper testing. And even if they do such testing they can't run the numbers of situations a real vote entails.
So it's a beta test.
I'll take a drug test if you'll take a sanity test!
Cow duck chicken frog dog
Comment #4
So who is teaching the birds in your (UK) zoos all the interesting words?
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/swearing-parrots-moved-park-scli-gbr-intl/index.html
Martin @ 1390:
Been a bit "head down" at work, so I missed this (and how could I resist)...
...when I was a young student in the University Officers' Training Corps (), we had an Artillery Troop; at the time, three 105mm Pack Howitzers(*), and all of the other functions of an independent artillery battery - a survey team, a command post, and a forward observation post that had yours truly operating the radio.
There's no absolute need for computers;
[I left out all the rest because while true, irrelevant ...}
How are you going to be steam-punk if you don't have one of Mr. Babbage's new-fangled Difference Engines to calculate firing solutions for your battery of Gatling Gun Mortars?
Robert Prior @ 1395: A decade or two ago I read that in one state (can't remember which one) teachers were much likelier to be terminated for poor performance the year before they qualified for pensions — even if they also won awards for their work that year.
It wasn't just states & teachers. Back when most pensions were "defined benefit" plans, you had to work one place for 20 - 30 years before your pension was "vested". In some places you were partially "vested" after 20 years and fully "vested" after 25 - 30.
It was not uncommon for unscrupulous management to fire people just before their pension rights became "vested". It's a lot harder to do that where someone is protected by a union contract, but not impossible.
In "right-to-work" states where all employment "at will" it was a lot easier to get away with. Still is for that matter, although very few are today covered by "defined benefit" pension plans - mostly just upper management. Everyone else gets a 401K "defined contribution" (or equivalent) plan.
whitroth @ 1396: We watched the debate. I needed a strong drink afterwards. NYPost (R-Atilla-the-Hun): "Trump’s over-belligerence led him to stumble in first debate"
Over-belligerence? He was like a clown, "whatsamatter, I'm better'n you'll ever be, let's fight, hah, hah!" bouncing around Mohammad Ali.
Jeez, what an idiot. If I get to moderate the next debate, I'll get the whip to go with my hat... though an "off" switch on his mike would work.
I didn't watch it. The rage induced by that much of a dose of Trumpolini would probably give me a stroke.
I have read several subsequent "news" articles about the debate. One of the best comments I read was from a CNN focus group, where an undecided voter was asked if Biden was wrong to call Trump a "clown". His response was "if the shoe fits ... the clown shoe fits ...".
I really don't understand this whole undecided voter thing. How can anyone at this late date have not made up their mind whether they're going to vote for Trump or Biden?
Bill Arnold @ 1397: Yeah. Trump is so easily manipulated into a-hole meltdowns. Biden did an OK job amplifying this one, and kept relatively calm through the blizzard of Trump lies, keeping eye contact with the camera lens for much of it.
I do wonder what drugs D.J. Trump was on for that mess; it didn't seem like uppers were in the mix this time. (Maybe he was spooked that a lot of people would be studying photos for signs.)
Agree on the need for a microphone cutoff.
The consensus among the punditocracy seems to be Adderall ... based on Rudy Giuliani's latest crack-brained conspiracy ravings. It's always projection with these right-wingnut creeps, so if Giuliani is saying it, Trumpolini is doing it.
In Trumpolini's universe, Adderall prevents dementia the same as Hydrochloroquine prevents Covid. So you know damn well Trumpolini has to be abusing it.
How are you going to be steam-punk if you don't have one of Mr. Babbage's new-fangled Difference Engines to calculate firing solutions for your battery of Gatling Gun Mortars?
What was it, one minute per multiplication on a Babbage Machine? I do not think so. Analog calculators might be (and were) better. Better still is a cheap-ass book where the dough-boy looks up the solution rapidly and cranks it in on the spot without twiddling or manually calculating anything. Nothing like paging through a big ol' table of numbers when there are shells raining down on you (/sarcasm)...
It's not a new idea. IIRC, there were Renaissance stilettos with scales on them to help work out fuse lengths on bombs.
Re: ' ... don't understand this whole undecided voter thing.'
I'm guessing that in this election a lot of the undecided voters are probably long time GOP voters who are still hoping they won't have to vote Dem/'betray' their party. Hopefully these folks will recall how some respected Reps (including two past Rep POTUSes) refused to support DT.
The consensus among the punditocracy seems to be Adderall The long-time assertion/argument is that D.J. Trump abuses Adderall. This guy and a few others have been laying out the arguments/observations for a while; here's (the middle of) a recent thread:
I don't know if the people who claim to have witnessed such use have testified/made a statement under oath. This is not how one should push a brain of that physical age; perhaps there is a lack of concern about causing damage. (Adderall is a mix of amphetamines.)
This is the foreplay. Count the broken Covenants. For real. ;,; Had fun poking at the details in that comment re Morrison. (";,;" is not in the lists of ASCII emoticons that I checked.)
~Best translation we can give you right now. [That translation is roooough, but so is living it] I don't know that world (though I can map more meaning to the [translation] that you might suspect) so that was fun, thanks. I did not know something about Pink Cake before now.
Biden's going to keel over That ... would not be a wise move by them[2]. And as GS[1] says, a Biden presidency would be better for much of the money/power than a second DJT administration, with less risk (of e.g. dangerous social unrest).
[1] And Moodys: The MacroeconoMic consequences: TruMp vs. Biden (MARK ZANDI AND BERNARD YAROS, 23 SEPTEMBER, 2020) - though that's addressing macroeconomic impacts, and not e.g. ever-so-desirable-to-the-very-rich increases in the Gini ratio. [2] "A High Beyond design like ours, but more, um, … militant.” - AFUtD
The thing to remember is the 200,000 dead unnecessarily, the business real estate market screwed over, the entertainment and hospitality industries screwed over. And the airline industry is screwed over. And even the petroleum industry is screwed over.
None of this had to happen. The basic Presidential planning document for a pandemic is, what, 80 pages long? It's in a format of: ask these people to get the following data, get them in a meeting, ask them the following questions, and here's what you do with the answers. Not hard stuff.
Trump threw it out entirely. Too hard for him to follow, apparently. Too hard for him to come up with something better. And 200,000 people died, with probably trillions in assets flushed down the drain.
How? Commercial real estate was in trouble well before the pandemic (oversupply and 2008-style loan tranching). Now everyone's found out that how much they can get done virtually, that productivity doesn't go through the floor when you're not at work...and that's that. There's no need for huge offices just to sequester people while they work. So they're surplus. There's no need to fly to Singapore for a two hour meeting (a reported practice) when Zoom or Blue Jeans or even MS Team can handle it as well. So that's airlines no longer flying and massive layoffs in that industry. And people aren't going out to eat as much, partially because of layoffs, partially because restaurants and bars are the #1 and #2 places where people are getting Covid19. So they're in trouble. Movie theater chains will be lucky if they're not bankrupt by Christmas, since they were so marginal. Oil companies are seeing how much less people are driving and realizing that they're going to strand a lot of oil in the ground, because it's too expensive to extract at the new, lower use rates. Oil prices have increase for fracking to stay profitable, and they no longer are.
Now, do you want to re-elect the alleged primate who led us into this totally avoidable cataclysm? Why? He's bad for business. Probably a lot of business leaders want to make an example out of him so that they won't continue to look bad.
The Obama team, who had very real problems, nonetheless rebuilt the country after the last clusterfrack, so it's time to get them in again and let them stand the bull up for another round of milking in eight years. Milking in the style of Desmodus rotundus, to be precise.
Hmm. I think you are giving both Obama and Trump too much credit - all right, not giving Trump enough NEGATIVE credit! But, in terms of the economy, Johnson and his clowns make Trump and his goons look like publicly-spirited geniuses, and we are stuck with the buggers until the end of 2024, or the UK as a functioning country, whichever comes first.
Our second wave has begun and looks like peaking shortly before we have a car-crash Brexit and lose the majority of our exports and other foreign exchange:
https://i.imgur.com/7cL8Pot.jpg
EC the UK as a functioning country, Wll come first of we get a "No Deal" The fundamental incompetence of BoZo is the distinguishing mark & his tendency to usually, pick more of the same - covered over with very persuasive "flannel" until it's TOO LATE. Even the remainder of the tories are starting to get uneasy, now, I notice ... but I already think it's "too late". Let's not forget the fundamental incompetenc of lAbour in having JC as "leader" either ... An even half-comptenent person should/would have eaten BoZo alive, but they quite deliberately, threw that chance away.
Bicycle troops:
Surely the best use for them is as a reserve?
That lets you use them on ground you already know and can do route mapping for. It also plays to their strengths - rapid deployment, reduced logistics, and ease of load carrying.
I'm thinking that you'd have each bike carrying a full sandbag (for panics) or 10 empty ones and a couple of spare shovels (for something a bit less urgent).
Now everyone's found out that how much they can get done virtually, that productivity doesn't go through the floor when you're not at work...and that's that. There's no need for huge offices just to sequester people while they work. So they're surplus. There's no need to fly to Singapore for a two hour meeting (a reported practice) when Zoom or Blue Jeans or even MS Team can handle it as well.
Not certain I agree with you there.
Offices are already returning. Partly because the informal 'water cooler' communication isn't happening when people work remotely, partly because managers want to see workers*, and partly because supervising an office of many workers is a status thing. (cf. Grabber's Bullshit Jobs).
Likewise business air travel is often more about informal communication and status than the short meeting the trip is ostensibly for.
*Because work that happens when no one sees it happen gets overlooked. Back when I was working as an engineer we had flextime, and yet those who left before the 2nd tier manager were considered poorer workers than this who left ten minutes after him.
Likewise business air travel is often more about informal communication and status than the short meeting the trip is ostensibly for.
Well, airlines have laid off in the range of 50,000 workers, and that's likely to double (e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/around-35-000-people-could-lose-their-job-tonight-if-n1241588), so they're hurting. Part of this is the tourism industry imploding, but it's also about business. Airplanes look dangerous for Covid19, so why put a valuable employee in a dangerous environment for hours, unless that's actually the best choice?
As for commercial real estate, apparently yes, rents are running around 90% of pre-Covid (retail's running around 60%). You may be right about "the water cooler." But the countervailing theme is that the notion that the boss has to see you working seems to be getting broken. That was a standing prejudice that was getting in the way of virtualizing many offices, and if that prejudice goes away, the notions that the commercial real estate market will rapidly rebound may also go away. And the great thing about gossiping via text is that it's encrypted, unlike the water cooler.
Now note that I'm biased, because I live in a part of the world where multi-hour commutes are quite common. Heck, in a company I worked for that had two offices in LA, we could only send employees between those offices at certain times of the day, due to the infamous LA traffic. If someone has to physically be in a place to do a job, that's one thing, but sending them two hours in traffic (or six hours on a plane, counting the onboard and offboard routines)? That gets silly for computer work. Even if they're not as efficient working remotely, they've got to be drastically inefficient working remotely to make it cheaper to force them to drive hours to do remote work under the eye of a boss. Plus you've got to buy the furniture and lease the space for that management to take place.
Piling on a bit with H.
My wife is one of those airline employees. She was "involuntary separated" from one of the big 4 US airlines. (She didn't take any of the offered packages as it made more sense to us for her to just get terminated.) A key point here is that while many also include about the hotel and related industries in their thinking they don't consider all the people who work at the airports but not for an airline. Parking, TSA, sky caps, shuttle drivers, and a huge number no one ever sees. Most airports have road repair crews, plumbers, electricians, etc... and 1/2 of them are likely out of work for now and years to come.
Rental car companies are decimated and likely to be so for years.
While I don't have specific insider knowledge I do follow the airline business news more than most "civilians". The airlines do not expect business travel to be back for years. The head of Southwest has said 2029 for business travel. And airlines around the world are retiring, not parking, planes. For a non US perspective check out Qantas, Lufthansa, Austrian, Air France, etc... and their stated plans for the aircraft they have. (If you want to fly on a 747 or A380 you better do it soon.) And if you're a financial planner for Airbus or Boeing, you have absolutely no good news for anyone living in the real (not political) world.
And while leisure travel is slowly coming back optimistic predictions are 2 to 4 years. And that means a vaccine that works and people take it. (A LOT of the people taking cruises may not be able to take the vaccines and if others are refusing I can see more "death" boat stories in our future.)
As to offices, some small businesses who own real estate say the market here (one of the fastest growing in the US until March) is dead. At best it is companies trading expensive for less costly.
I personally know of a new corporate HQ (not local to me) which just opened for 10K workers and it has been nearly empty since March. Great design. Open office but in a way that works way better than most. (Assuming no Covid-19.) And each of the dozens of floors has break and gathering areas for small groups of 2 to 10 to get together in the open or in rooms. And none of it makes any sense unless things change with Covid-19.
My time over the next month is going to mostly be spend setting up the automation so a small firm can work from home for the next year as they walk away from ANY permanent space for that time. They've been working from home since March but servers are still in the office and people go in at times to deal with things like mail, video conferences using the 75" TV, large format printing, or just a big flat table space that they don't have at home. But they have decided the cost is not worth it and they do not want to be a cause of anyone getting Covid-19.
The depression is here. It is just very unevenly distributed. (To steal from another saying.)
And there was two fun news stories this morning: for one, the EU is taking the UK to court for breaching the withdrawal treat.
And the other was that the EU may cut off EU bank access to the City of London.
Maybe there's be a white collar riot chasing BoJo out of office.
& 1420: In the late eighties? early nineties? I had not realized that companies had been doing telecommuting for years, but I read that they wanted people in the office, not just for meetings, but for the water cooler conversations.
I've worked in one office where we were in about three rows of cubes - two on one aisle, one on another, and used messaging all the time... and one guy on the other row you just didn't see unless you walked around to him.
No, you do not get the water cooler conversations that you do in person.
And FTW, when I was working, I wanted to be in the office. When I wasn't in the office, I wasn't working. Work was not my life - I had, and have, a life outside of it.
Heteromeles wrote: The thing to remember is the 200,000 dead unnecessarily…
Here's something I've wanting to ask the USians here for months, and now seems just as good a time as any: Why haven't the Democrats used this as a main talking point in the campaign? If I were Biden's campaign manager I would've made sure that the American voters hear the sentence "Donald Trump has killed 200,000 Americans!" at least 50 times a day, every day at least since May. (Obviously the number was still lower back then. But even "DT has killed 80,000 Americans!" seems like a powerful message to me.)
I am 100% sure that the Republicans would have hammered this point home at least as aggressive as that, if the situation were reversed.
Hell, Biden could have said it loud and clear during the debate: "This man has killed 200,000 of your fellow Americans this year. If you re-elect him, your parents, your neighbors, your friends will be next."
Another question regarding the election and its aftermath: If the Democrats win both the presidency and the senate, and if they seriously want to clean house, would it be enough to let the prosecutors go after the current administration? Shouldn't they also impeach every republican senator who voted against impeachment? Would that be possible?
Last question, this time concerning the SCOTUS-nomination: Can't the Democrats filibuster it until January? Or at least threaten McConnell behind the scenes with something like "we're going to filibuster everything until you take the confirmation off the agenda; we have enough people in the senate who can take turns reading the constitution until we have a majority"?
For reasons, I came across this. Apparently there is little new under heaven, not that anyone pays attention.
[etc., etc.]
Why doesn't Biden bring this up?
At a guess, it's because the bullshit storm that would come back on the rebound--It's not Trump's fault. It's a left wing conspiracy by China to buy Biden the election--would waste its value. After all, he didn't order the dead into battle, he just fucked up. At most he's guilty of criminal negligence on a cosmic scale, not murder.*
This is an argument to use with business leaders, people who are publicly minded, groups like this blog. I don't think it would play well on Dinner time on Fox. If nothing else, it's saying the quiet part out loud. I think a lot of Trumpers are perhaps happier voting in the privacy of their own home for Biden, and not telling anyone else about their "sin."
But that's just a guess.
As for cleaning house, assuming we don't have a civil war in November (I think this is a good assumption, but not a safe one), the probable next step is that Trump basically steps away from his job (two months of playing hookey while not resigning). Also, the Next Depression starts, flu season starts, and probably the next wave of Covid19 starts. Spending two months filibustering won't help with any of that.
What might work instead is the simple drip drip of the rule of law. For Trump, that means New York State Attorneys General (and probably others) skewering his ass on tax evasion charges and ordering him not to destroy anything. Similar things will happen to most of the government departments at the top levels: there's been a lot of corruption, and things will be in shambles, with bureaucracies functioning only at the lower levels if at all. But that's all rule of law stuff: get the documents, keep them from being destroyed, keep the money from disappearing, let the lawyers and investigators work through it. Meanwhile, get the Senate and House to keep the US from falling completely apart. Oh, and let right wing know that any attempt to repeal Roe v. Wade (which most Americans support) or the ACA (which a lot of Americans need right now) will be met in January with new, unassailable laws which go much, much further.
BTW, if Trump happens to be convicted of negligence charges in relation to his handling of Covid19, I'd like for his punishment to be listening to the obituaries of everyone who died of Covid19 while he was president. With random breaks in the stream of up to an hour, to make him think it's over. And eight hours off so he can sleep. Almost certainly that's cruel and unusual punishment, but how else can the victims' statements be heard? 205,000 is more than a number, it's that many lives.
But the countervailing theme is that the notion that the boss has to see you working seems to be getting broken.
Maybe. My former employer has just decided that 1/4 of teaching staff must be in the building for their scheduled remote sessions, because they said so.
When I worked as an engineer we officially had flextime, but eventually realized that anyone who left the office before the manager got poor performance reviews. That was quite a while ago, but I have former colleagues who's workplaces are still run like that.
I suspect it will take a generational turnover for many workplaces.
In the U.S. Democrats are known as the "nice guys," which translates to "poor campaigners." Also, really, really bad at impeaching people or forcing people to testify before congressional committees. I don't think it will improve until (at least) we get all the Clintonistas out of government.
Living in Southern California, this may hit home for some... the Democrats are the team that always hires Ray Malavasi to be their head coach!
Why haven't the Democrats used this as a main talking point in the campaign?
Shouldn't they also impeach every republican senator who voted against impeachment?
Can't the Democrats filibuster it until January?
OK.
Less than 10% of the likely voters for president are still saying they haven't made up their mind. And speculation is that they just aren't saying as they don't want to piss off friends and family. So recent and current ads are targeting that sliver that's left. And many of those are people who voted for Trump for "change" and are now pissed off over what he did. But may not be a fan of either D or R. Remember they voted for change. So the current ads in many cases need to convince them to go against the shit show and vote for the "tried and true" they didn't really care for anyway.
Impeachment requires a 2/3s vote to convict. If you don't have that then you're doing theater. And the 2/3s is in the Constitution so nope to changing it. As H indicated and I agree we don't have time for theater.
In the Senate a simple majority (seated most likely but I'd have to look it up) sets the rules. Most rule changes every 2 years are just tweaks of existing. The 60 vote filibuster is a rule of the Senate. They can change it with a 51 vote majority. But again theater is not what is needed just now. And if they start trying the currently seated Senate can just vote an exception to what ever the D's try and do.
I suspect it will take a generational turnover for many workplaces.
I'm thinking that some people are just wired so that this attribute shows up when they are a boss. So it would require a promotion process that weeds these folks out of the upward ladder.
If anyone here (or friends/acquaintances/enemies) is getting COVID-19 prevention/avoidance fatigue, try reading (or telling them to read) a half dozen random comments from this reddit thread (linked by https://www.twitter.com/cstross ). It is long (10k comments ATM) and sobering. [Serious] People from Reddit who survived Corona, how has your daily life changed? What are the side effects after?
My workplace isn't one that fits remote working, though some of the upper management disappeared for awhile. (Homeless shelter).
My wife's workplace has been remote since March, in part because my wife is the boss and she made the decision. They had an office move (already committed) on April 1, and since then one staff member has been going in once/week to open mail etc. That is unlikely to change, and if they didn't have a 2 year lease they'd already have shut it down. In 2 years they will go and remain remote. Entire office is run and staffed by women, no way to prove that is a factor, but I suspect it is decisive.
Annnd Hope Hicks caught it, and Trumpolini and Melanoma are waiting for their test results.
And for more interesting tidbits, the Fox News White House correspondent got into it with the WH press secretary about 2 separate points and it didn't go well.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8795227/Kayleigh-McEnany-holds-car-crash-White-House-briefing-prompting-furious-tirade-Fox-News-reporter.html
I wonder who H. Hicks been interacting heavily with. E.g. Dan Scavino is another long-term aide (the longest, other than family). He might be a bit heavily built and plain looking for her (though he has a respectable focused gaze), but could have work interactions. (Wife filed for divorce in 2018; don't know about status.) Fuckin' palace intrigue with the SARS-CoV-2 dice, weird. :-) Background: Why White House Catholics are concerned about Trump’s Catholic tweets (July 9, 2020, Catholic News Agency) In the same profile[NY Times, 2018], Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks told the Times Magazine that Scavino is the “conductor of the Trump train,” and that his role in the administration is to “tell [Trump] how things are playing with his people. That’s a gauge for him that the president takes seriously.” Hicks left the White House in March 2018 but was named a counselor to the president in February this year. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has also credited Scavino with bringing fringe figures and social media personalities to the president’s attention. Bannon told the Times Magazine that he used to share with Scavino an office in the West Wing and “he has his hands on the ‘Pepes,’” in a reference to a popular cartoon image used by alt-right internet posters.
And Trump and Melania just tested positive for Covid19.
Time to start praying that Biden didn't catch it on Tuesday. You too, Greg.
Biden didn't catch it on Tuesday.
What is the spreading difference between Trump braying and people singing?
And folks if you want Biden to win you don't want Trump to die. A lot of people, especially R's, who are repulsed by Trump and plan to vote for Biden, would vote for Pence if he gets to head the R ticket.
And folks if you want Biden to win you don't want Trump to die.
Not only is he very toxic to the entire Republican slate, many people are looking forward to months or even years of entertainment as prosecutors and lawyers take apart everything he has built. It seems unlikely that more than one or two of his kids will wind up in jail but they'll be much poorer.
When I worked as an engineer we officially had flextime, but eventually realized that anyone who left the office before the manager got poor performance reviews. That was quite a while ago, but I have former colleagues who's workplaces are still run like that.
I've mosty worked in IT, and while I like working in the office more than working from home (starting with not having a dedicated work room, no room for that...). I've been lucky both with where I was born and in what field I'm working in in that the culture is much more relaxed. Mostly workers are trusted and results are more important than hours put into the work. Of course, if somebody would leave early every day and never get work done, that'd be a problem, and I think those have been dealt with.
Of course when I was working as a consultant, getting billed hours was important, on some level. Even then, asking for basically any leave, from leaving the work earlier today to requesting a month of unpaid leave, not to mention all proper vacations, has almost never been a problem. Of course for things like monitoring services things need to be negotiated so that somebody is available, but even that hasn't been a problem for me this far.
I am at least a little suspicious of Trump's Covid timing. He will not be able to do the next debate. He will probably go into effective seclusion for two weeks or more. Given that he is his own worst enemy, 2 weeks of silence will give the GOP all the time they need to convince themselves that next time it will be different.
Agree with David L Karma! It's to be hoped he gets it as badly as BoZo did, but does not die .... Otherwise you are getting POTUS Pence ....
I already think it's "too late".
Yes, it's already too late.
There are regularish opinion polls in Scotland gauging support for independence. Not one of them since the November 2019 general election has failed to find a majority for leaving the UK. The majority is slim (no polls have shown over 55% support for independence), but no slimmer than the majority who voted for Brexit in 2016.
We're now heading into a second COVID19 wave and it's apparent that food security is going to be in crisis by late January if we follow the current trajectory.
"If you can't put bread on the table, what are you good for?" is going to be the big independence slogan at the next referendum. And there's going to be one: a Scottish Parliament election on May 5th will return an SNP majority about as big as the current Tory majority in Westminster (again, based on polling that shows the SNP on 50-55% of the vote, Tories in second place on 18-20%, and Labour on 16-18%). The framework to allow Holyrood to call consultative referenda is still in place from last time, and the consensus of Scottish constitutional legal opinion -- which the current cabinet seem remarkably unaware of the existence of as a separate legal system within the UK -- is that the FM can call such a referendum.
So I'm hearing rumours of a snap indy referendum in the second half of 2021, to a background of Brexit chaos and Boris Johnson or his successor having to campaign against one country leaving a union that's seen as overbearing and bullying -- that's not going to go well.
I will freely confess to hating both Trump and Pence, for different but overlapping reasons.
I will be most unhappy if Trump escapes justice by dying of COVID19, although it would be poetic justice of a kind. I want him ill enough not to campaign or fuck things up in the transition period, but not too ill to stand trial.
Pence ... Pence can die. And I'd be overjoyed if he gave it to Mitch McConnell first.
Paranoid people might suggest that the timing is mostly because Trump doesn't look electable, and Pence does.
Bill Arnold at 1433:
Thanks for this. Sobering and scary.
In particular, the part where people are having resurgences, or perhaps reinfections. Because that just looks like a downward spiral.
It's looking as if this is going to require something a lot more radical than just a "new normal". Not least, if, say, 5% of people have long-term reductions to their capacity to work, what does that do to the economy?
it would require a promotion process that weeds these folks out of the upward ladder.
Have you read Parkinson's Law? The current promotion ladder appears to be firmly fixed, and has been like that for generations.
Charlie Trump must still be alive on the morning of 4th November ...... I THINK he can then safely die between than & 20th January? But I would prefer him to be alive, to stand trial & jail, actually .....
The New Management at the BBC seems to be having an impact:
The raw data: https://imgur.com/a/dga1kbK What ONS shows (figure 1): https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest What the BBC shows: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54387057
Words fail me about how bad the gummint API and data it presents are, both as far as analysis-hostility and just plain errors, but it has dropped all information on how well each 'pillar' of testing is performing, and any trace of tracing information. I suspect a degree of 'accidentally on purpose'.
If this goes the way I suspect it will, and the gummint creates critical shortages after Brexit (e.g. food), as you indicate, I suspect that the cons will not be the second party in Holyrood, and the majority for independence will be higher than its peak so far.
EC I think it has finally penetrated to a lot of "tory" MP's that, actually, a no-deal-Brexshit would be an utter disaster - even Gove (!) is reported as desperate not to have a "no-deal" [ Having seen the figures & projections ] If it does crash, then we WILL have food shortages & "something" will be done ... a "way will be found" to bring the misgovernment down & a General Election ... sometime about April/May at a guess. But, of course, the damage will have been done by then & Starmer will have the unenviable job of clearing up the shit-pile.
Reply to self @ 1452 QUOTE: For this is the defining ethos of the Cummings-Johnson, Brexit administration: to purge expertise and tear down what works. The proof is the six Whitehall permanent secretaries driven out this year, or the never-ending efforts to hobble the BBC. Instead of cherishing the experienced public servants the nation needs to get us through this crisis, it regards them as the “enemy within”, who will face a “hard rain”.
QUOTE] “At the heart of the project,” says one Conservative former minister, “Is this insurgent, anti-government, anti-establishment zeal, but guess what: you can’t govern if you don’t believe in government.”
Trump must still be alive on the morning of 4th November ...... I THINK he can then safely die between than & 20th January? But I would prefer him to be alive, to stand trial & jail, actually ..
As I posted on the next thread, it's unlikely he'll die, simply because he's got access to very good health care and things like convalescent plasma that simply aren't available for the vast majority of Covid19 patients. About the only way he could go (and I am not a doctor) is if he has a stroke or heart attack at the White House in the early morning hours when no one is watching. And I'll bet people are discretely watching, although there's not a lot they can do if he strokes out while deeply asleep and they don't notice.
Anyway, work on the assumption that he's out for two weeks, avoids the next debate, and comes roaring back on a "I beat Covid, I'm invincible bandwagon."
AS for your question, there's the whole Electoral Process. The Washington Post has a breakdown of what happens if the wheels come off at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/02/were-final-stages-presidential-election-what-happens-if-candidate-withdraws-or-dies/
Re Trump's corona infection…
Do you believe it? After all, the news came from the White House and from Trump's twitter account. And, pray, tell me, when was the last time anything truthful came from those sources…???
If I were inclined to smell conspiracies, I'd think that this would be the perfect time for the Trump campaign to launch a false claim of corona infection. Let's count:
Trump gets out of the way of cameras and microphones for a while.
But he still dominates the news cycle with daily (nay: hourly) reports, speculations, opinions etc. about the state of his "infection".
He gets to bail out from further high-profile debates.
The Democrats and all his other adversaries have to be nice to him, because, well, they still have some common decency that tells them not to kick a sick man.
He gets time for some rehab, to recover from whatever illnesses and addictions he may actually have.
Shortly before the election, you can present a miraculously cured candidate: "Lo and behold, our glorious leader has single-handedly conquered Covid-19!" - probably through some miracle cure.
As a nice aside, those who own said miracle cure (presumably the Trump family and their cronies) can make hundreds of millions of dollars from selling it to their followers and believers.
What's not to like? Sounds like the perfect playbook for the Trump campaign! Have I forgotten anything?
As I said, if I were inclined for conspiracies…
Yes. Telling the truth works better for him in this case.
This is the third post I've gotten saying that El Cheeto's covid19 diagnosis is all a lie Note that everyone seems to be raising the same talking points, and I'm too lazy to hunt down where they're coming from. This is my generic response.
Let's walk through this: most of his lies are implausible. That's why he gets caught on them. He's clever, not smart. Is lying about Covid19 smart? Not really, because he does best in the huge, open air rallies that he's going to have to cancel for the next two weeks.
Is lying about being sick clever? I'm not sure, but I'm not particularly clever myself. Is it a sympathy ploy? Hah. Most of the people wishing him well would happily wish him bon voyage on a one-way journey to solitary confinement, me included. Having him die before January is a lot more awkward than having him as the biggest loser, alive and fit to stand trial.
So, what does he get out of telling the truth? Last I heard, the math was about 50% of positives are asymptomatic, 40% get "light symptoms" ranging from cold to flu to debilitating lung damage that's not bad enough to be in the hospital. 10% get hospitalized, and 3-5% die. Those are pretty darn good odds, really. Probably in two weeks he's hoping he'll be back on the campaign trail, bragging about how he's tougher than that stupid virus and it's no worse than a cold.
And that's the best reset possibility I can see. While yes, he's a sick old man, he also has access to the best health care in the world, including perks like convalescent plasma donated by recovering soldiers. He's unlikely to die.
So my 0.000002 cents worth is that he's not lying about having Covid19, there's an excellent chance it won't kill him, and there's a very good chance it will just basically be a bad cold that he's forced to not soldier through on, thereby resetting his campaign right before the election.
And if he managed to infect Biden, so much the better, from his perspective.
Nah, he's got it, as does Melanoma. She's reporting mild symptoms.
On the other hand, there's speculation that he's had some mini-strokes, and given that he said he was taking hydroxychloroquine "precautionarily" months ago, and trusting him to let real doctors near him?
So, folks are saying he had trouble walking onto the debate stage, and that he was gripping the podium very hard... the question becomes did he have ministrokes, and wouldn't that make him more susceptible?
Now, I don't want him to die, drowning in his own spittle, I want him to die in jail. But he's NOT going to recover as well as BoJo, who's so much younger.
Er, no. Trump is elderly, male and overweight - all serious risk factors. The population odds are not reliable indicators.
Bill Arnold @ 1413:
The long-time assertion/argument is that D.J. Trump abuses Adderall. This guy and a few others have been laying out the arguments/observations for a while; here's (the middle of) a recent thread:
I don't know if the people who claim to have witnessed such use have testified/made a statement under oath.
This is not how one should push a brain of that physical age; perhaps there is a lack of concern about causing damage. (Adderall is a mix of amphetamines.)
Apparently there are a group of people advocating off-label use of Adderall as a preventative for dementia, which is apparently a secret worry for Trump, because his father was suffering from dementia in his later years. Although diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at age 88, there are some indications Fred Trump was already suffering from cognitive decline at a much earlier age.
Anyway, suggestions that Trumpolini might be suffering cognitive decline is one of his big hot button issues. The tell will be when Ivanka Marie Antoinette Barbie Trump sends in the lawyers to have daddy sign changes to his will.
This morning brings news that Trumpolini and Melanoma have both tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and that they knew about the diagnosis at least a week ago before the debate and that he conducted a number of campaign events, along with the White House ceremony where he named his Supreme Court nominee. The President of Notre Dame University attended that event and has apparently subsequently tested positive as well.
Er, no. Trump is elderly, male and overweight - all serious risk factors. The population odds are not reliable indicators.
Yes, he's in the at-risk population. No, he's most definitely not in the normal population for health care access and potential treatments. That's the point of convalescent plasma. It's a hard-to-get treatment, because a doctor has to filter out viable antibodies from a donor's blood plasma, and it's a single donor (or more!) for a single treatment. Trump will get such treatment, because he's the POTUS. But very few other people ever will.
Mathematically how does this matter? I don't know. Not that many world leaders have died of Covid19, at least that I'm aware of. So my default assumption is that the two factors cancel out: he's more at risk, but he's better protected. So he's got perhaps a 6-10% chance of dying, assuming he's symptomatic (which takes him out of the asymptomatic 50% right there).
I will be most unhappy if Trump escapes justice by dying of COVID19, although it would be poetic justice of a kind.
This. Many of us are very much looking forward to The Donald's perp walk and subsequent trails.
Naturally we all suspect he's lying, just as we suspect water is wet. But to pull this off he'd have to look weak by getting sick of something he's dismissed, stay out of the public eye for two weeks, and stick to one story; he's not shown the self-discipline for that.
I still hope that he'll go from lower Manhattan (MCC NY) to upstate New York (Danemora).
MSB @ 1424:
Here's something I've wanting to ask the USians here for months, and now seems just as good a time as any: Why haven't the Democrats used this as a main talking point in the campaign? If I were Biden's campaign manager I would've made sure that the American voters hear the sentence "Donald Trump has killed 200,000 Americans!" at least 50 times a day, every day at least since May. (Obviously the number was still lower back then. But even "DT has killed 80,000 Americans!" seems like a powerful message to me.)
It is part of the Democrats message, but they're being discrete in employing it, allowing the surrogates to repeat it while Biden/Harris concentrate on promoting a positive message; "these are the good things that will happen if you vote Democratic".
I still hope that he'll go from lower Manhattan (MCC NY) to upstate New York (Danemora).
You know, I'd been hoping he'd end up at Rikers Island, but that's a New York City prison, and the state of New York has bigger teeth in this, don't they? Thanks for straightening me out on that.
Of course, if he's really good (
and treasonous) he might end up at happiest camp fed in the system, ADX Florence.MSB @ 1425: Another question regarding the election and its aftermath: If the Democrats win both the presidency and the senate, and if they seriously want to clean house, would it be enough to let the prosecutors go after the current administration? Shouldn't they also impeach every republican senator who voted against impeachment? Would that be possible?
There's no provision in the Constitution for impeaching senators. They can be arrested for Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace - i.e. crimes committed outside of their actions in Congress assembled, but not for how they voted on issues that came before their houses.
They can also be expelled from office by their own chamber, but it takes a 2/3 majority, which I don't think the Democrats have in the House, and are not likely to achieve in the Senate.
That last bit means a Representative/Senator cannot be arrested for speeding if they were on the way to or from a session of Congress, and the argument has been tried at least once by a representative to get out of a speeding ticket ... he lost, because a speeding citation is NOT an arrest.
However, failing to stop when pulled for speeding or trying to elude the police is a felony, and a Congress critter could be arrested for that even if he was on the way to vote in his respective chamber.
Apropos of the next thread and minding OGH's Administrative Note, I do have a nit to pick:
Charlie identified El Cheeto Grande as "The Crawling Chaos." Surely that is too grand an entity for him to avatar himself to (respawned himself from?). From my limited understanding, he's an ...associate... of The King in Yellow. But I cannot say more.
Aww, you Humans are cute.
Someone dropped into a browser, looks like all the privacy addons no longer work (which is fairly good work, given the range of them, they're still reporting they're active too, bronze star for that, the EFF badger has a back door) (btw, we are SO SORRY, we had no idea all those Utube videos had adverts for you! which is why we noticed, everything has a reason, and the first thing to tell you these things is usually a commercial algo looking for revenue) and they left a message:
ﭣ ﭤ ﭥ ﭦ ﭧ ﭨ ﭩ ﭪ ﭫ ﭬ ﭭ ﭮ
https://quran.com/2/30-84
Hey, kiddies. Read the thread, then look at the World.
;.; = BIG SHINY TEETH.
The most ironic thing is, "Ze doesn't know".
"I love you" "We know"
Come on. Read the thread. Apparently our 3rd sphere Abrahamic friends were put out at us not mentioning them. But it's some irate people leaving this one too: https://www.keywiki.org/images/4/49/Gonadsfg.JPG (WE didn't name it GONADS, find out who did)
Look: not our fault if your custom made "cutting edge" sociological shaping of children gets a bit of blow-back, is it? You fucked around, the finding out is... Soon[tm].
~
Anyhow, Empire death is boring. Just discovered Host is responsible for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Githyanki
Which has had the (rather extensive) wikipedia pruned ... oh, very recently. It was a great article too, loads and loads of sources. Nuked... oh, very recently. They even did a purge back on the wayback machine (totally compromised). Problem is with these people: .Mil trained and dumb.
NO CARRIER - mod
David L @ 1440: And folks if you want Biden to win you don't want Trump to die. A lot of people, especially R's, who are repulsed by Trump and plan to vote for Biden, would vote for Pence if he gets to head the R ticket.
How does it affect the Greedy Oligarch Predators chances if Trumpolini is just in ICU on a ventilator? How big would the fight get within the party over when to pull the plug?
If he does die, it's only what he deserves, but I hope they don't pull the plug on him before the election.
Maybe Melanoma can wear her coat to the funeral?
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17489632/melania-trump-jacket-zara-i-really-dont-care-do-u
waldo @ 1447: Paranoid people might suggest that the timing is mostly because Trump doesn't look electable, and Pence does.
How 'bout if Pence were to suddenly come down with a bad case ending up in ICU and croaking before the election?
What kind of ice cream would you want to have with your cake at the party?
Ooh, oooh, oooh!
Wikipedia article claims it was removed 24 February 2020 but it was alive... today. That means Admin function, clear data, 'make it clean'. So, kids: who can do Admin @ wikipedia and push a copy/paste into the past on the wayback machine? (Previous hits: dodgy Cruise liners from Argentina).
Fucking inept humans who don't see shadows, that's who.
Anyhow, The Githyanki were a slave race who freed themselves from the evil Mind-Flayers and apparently also lay eggs (host seemingly has had the oviparous ideology for 30 years now, kinky!).
Can't possibly see that being problematic in 2020.
Oh, and Pence is (allegedly) negative. It's all fucking theatre, these days if need-be they'll phone Modi and get fresh organs sent in. Probably live transit, too.
But: عدل you must already know that it is unjust to remove true words from the world, otherwise you would not try so hard to hide your passage.
Old saying from way back when: look not for the tracks in dunes, look for the dunes that are slightly shorter (this is really not that pithy in English)
Heteromeles @ 1454:
As I posted on the next thread, it's unlikely he'll die, simply because he's got access to very good health care and things like convalescent plasma that simply aren't available for the vast majority of Covid19 patients. About the only way he could go (and I am not a doctor) is if he has a stroke or heart attack at the White House in the early morning hours when no one is watching. And I'll bet people are discretely watching, although there's not a lot they can do if he strokes out while deeply asleep and they don't notice.
Anyway, work on the assumption that he's out for two weeks, avoids the next debate, and comes roaring back on a "I beat Covid, I'm invincible bandwagon."
AS for your question, there's the whole Electoral Process. The Washington Post has a breakdown of what happens if the wheels come off at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/02/were-final-stages-presidential-election-what-happens-if-candidate-withdraws-or-dies/
If you're like me and can't read the Washington Post because of their stupid paywall1, I believe the original is at the Election Law Blog:
https://electionlawblog.org/?p=116098
My biggest worry at this point is whether the organization that hosted the debate took adequate precautions to keep Trumpolini from infecting everyone in the studio?
As for Trumpolini standing trial, I expect they'd try to get him compassionate release like they did for the guy convicted of the Pan Am 103 bombing.
1As I've mentioned several times before it's not the paywall itself, it's the stupid that keeps me from being able to read the Washington Post.
My news feed had this headline from the NBC. "Dizzying scenarios: When something happens to a president, who takes charge?"
I didn't read the article. Didn't have to. The answer immediately popped into my head.
Al Haig
If you were in the US when Reagan got shot you'd understand.
MSB @ 1455: Re Trump's corona infection…
Do you believe it? After all, the news came from the White House and from Trump's twitter account. And, pray, tell me, when was the last time anything truthful came from those sources…???
If I were inclined to smell conspiracies, I'd think that this would be the perfect time for the Trump campaign to launch a false claim of corona infection. Let's count:
- Trump gets out of the way of cameras and microphones for a while.
- But he still dominates the news cycle with daily (nay: hourly) reports, speculations, opinions etc. about the state of his "infection".
- He gets to bail out from further high-profile debates.
- The Democrats and all his other adversaries have to be nice to him, because, well, they still have some common decency that tells them not to kick a sick man.
- He gets time for some rehab, to recover from whatever illnesses and addictions he may actually have.
- Shortly before the election, you can present a miraculously cured candidate: "Lo and behold, our glorious leader has single-handedly conquered Covid-19!" - probably through some miracle cure.
- As a nice aside, those who own said miracle cure (presumably the Trump family and their cronies) can make hundreds of millions of dollars from selling it to their followers and believers.
What's not to like? Sounds like the perfect playbook for the Trump campaign! Have I forgotten anything?
I do believe it because of the other independent sources reporting it.
It appears he may have already infected several other people at the White House event where he unveiled his latest Supreme Court nominee, including the President of Notre Dame University.
The other thing that does not jibe with your scenario is Trumpolini's own personality. There's no way Trumpolini agrees to stay away from cameras and microphones. They're going to be hard pressed to contain him if he IS actually sick.
No way could he could fake it as a ploy.
He already had the excuse he needed to avoid further debates, the organizing committee wanted to put in additional safeguards to restrain his belligerent stupidity & he was already howling about "moving the goalposts".
I will grant his outrageous behavior may have been at least partly with the intent of making future debates impossible; trying to frame it as Biden refusing to debate him.
Who needs LDS when you can have flashbacks like that?
You know, I'd been hoping he'd end up at Rikers Island, but that's a New York City prison, and the state of New York has bigger teeth in this, don't they? Thanks for straightening me out on that.
You're not exactly wrong there. Rikers Island is the largest and most famous New York City detention facility. (It holds 10,000 prisoners! I grew up in a town smaller than that.) Anything smaller looks like a footnote.
It took me some reading to discover that the SDNY keeps people in Manhattan, conveniently close to their courthouses,
He'll be in familiar territory. Rudy Giuliani worked there. Jeffrey Epstein, Paul Manafort, and Michael Avenatti all did time there. Would it be in bad taste to let him have Epstein's old room?
David L @ 1471: My news feed had this headline from the NBC.
"Dizzying scenarios: When something happens to a president, who takes charge?"
I didn't read the article. Didn't have to. The answer immediately popped into my head.
Al Haig
If you were in the US when Reagan got shot you'd understand.
Yeah, too bad Al Haig is dead now. Did he have a designated successor?
Not clear if he infected the President of Notre Dame. The news media implies that he caught it from a colleague who tested positive (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/us/notre-dame-president-covid-trnd/index.html). I suppose this is Catholic bashing, but some of the local developers I deal with are ostentatiously Catholic, and I've learned from dealing with them to watch out for statements of implied causation that turn out to not be true when they are parsed carefully. But it well may be true.
We'll find out one way or another. If El Cheeto was positive a week ago, he's on day 8 at least of infection. So by Monday-Wednesday or so, we'll know if he's in the mild category or the not-mild category (in the former, he gets better. In the latter, he gets worse). If not, he's got most of another week in Walter Reed to see which track he's on, and we get to see if VP Renfield invokes the 25th Amendment or not.
I suspect El CHeeto's at the hospital so that they can have a crash cart standing by, get him under good oximetry, give him that experimental regeneron antibody treatment and probably remdesivir (better to do these in the hospital anyway), and see if they can find him a nurse who looks good in her PPE to help keep his mind focused (/sarcasm).
As more and more cases pop (my Senator hanging on for dear life in 30 days is one of them) it seems the locus is the Rose Garden official intro of the new lady for the SCOTUS. Video and pics of the event show close sitting and maybe 10% to 20% mask wearing.
2 R Senator's down. I wonder how many more were there?
That comment playfully obscure. (Noted that we should be watching our tracker blockers more closely, and manifestations of privacy leaks like advertisement patterns.) ;.; = BIG SHINY TEETH. Works for me. Though the one with the comma in the middle does show up in an enormous list as the core of some Cthulhu ASCII emoticons. Read the thread. A thread that those bits ref was a lifeline for me in a few places. Encouraged me do some reckless field-expedient repairs that were helpful. (Am hard of [hearing], so pings are ... appreciated.) I read the quran section too, well the English.
Re Empire death, and "Anyhow, The Githyanki were a slave race who freed themselves from the evil Mind-Flayers and apparently also lay eggs", web.archive.org still has versions of that. Here's one from late 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20191118121814/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Githyanki The standard slave armies of the illithids were unable to stop the voor invasion, so in desperation a long-vanished illithid Creed constructed tumerogenesis tanks to impart certain physical, spiritual, and psionic enhancements on selected slave-soldiers. ... The illithid empire was shattered by the slave rebellion (remembered by them as the Thrall Uprising). Not every illithid stronghold fell, but the ties that bound the empire together were broken, and even today the mind flayers have not recovered from that ancient war.
Oh, it was really done on the 2nd/3rd. We might have baited it.
The ones who did it really do have Admin access. Any pretense that Wikipedia is anything but a political tool just got disproven[1], as removing a random wiki entry about an entry in Dragon Magazine #12 is .... rather bizarre to say the least.
It's not an edit war, that's Admin access and full "re-imagining" the past history.
As stated: was fine about 12 hours ago.
~
The problem you're going to have is that once we've proven this to various [redacted] (thus the Q-R reference, check the citations) then you've broken another Covenant.
"Protection of Knowledge and Truth"
We can translate it (The Dunes thing: really a saying, go find it if you can).
And we know who did it. #14 Covenant broken.
Just because you want slaves.
[1] Depending on where you're at in the World this is either the largest "DERP, OF COURSE" or "OMG THE SANCTITY OF KNOWLEDGE" but the result is the same
David L If you are correct ( Rose-Garden infection party ) ... Would that not be a perfect example of Karma ( Or "the vengeance of the Lord", according to taste? ) in action.... ??
https://opensafely.org/outputs/2020/05/covid-risk-factors/
No, I haven't seen any hard data on the efficacy of blood plasma treatment (or, indeed, vampirism).
my Senator hanging on for dear life in 30 days is one of them
Well the last 24 hours for NC have been interesting. My sitting Senator up for election, Tillis, a lock back in January, has been basically tied for months. He is reported that he has Covid-19. Interesting. But about the same time the D challenger admitted that he was sexting with a political consultant from California. Oh, yeah. His wife apparently is not happy.
RE: 1455, 1472: Re Trump's corona infection…
What concerns me more than trump's infection being "fake or not" is what people will do while trump is ill and thenafter towards the election.
Remember when Bozo got ill with CV19? We were all supposed to "rally round" and support our leader - never mind what he has done, he's ill you HAVE to support him; it is your duty to do this. I vauegly remember hearing on BBC R2/Jeremy vine show at the time - on one edition of that he (vine) almost seemed to demand his listeners show full support for bozo boris.
I mean I didn't wish death on bozo but to be pratically ordered to support him?
Maybe something similar happens in the US if trump survives? Trump recovers claims he defeated the virus and is some sort of "superman" and everyone pats him on the back. Poor trump, never mind what you did in the past, he's so amazing. Great guy, 4 more years absolutely.
And are democrats now going to just continually wish trump the best, pull their attack ads and say "Great guy that trump" too? If so they're pretty much handing him the election.
Ugh.
You'll be glad to know that he's faking it, as a ploy leading to the arrest of Hillary.
Really.
At least, that's what the columnist from the Guardian is saying that it's the latest from Q....
I'd read the expressions of support as political jujitsu. Kicking a guy when he's down plays badly. So why not save some money on the attack ads, get a different set ready for the next three weeks (sample: if El Cheeto goes guy-tits up next week, attack Pence as Mike Who?), and ready a media tsunami or two to roll on October 15 or two days after the funeral, whichever is more important.
Or just pull back and dump the surplus loot into turning the Senate blue and keeping the house in Democratic hands.
Also, I think most democrats (myself included) want Trump to be fit to stand trial next year, so we do sincerely hope he doesn't become too debilitated to face justice. In this regard, I do sincerely wish him a complete, if slow, recovery from his current illness. Around, say, President's Day 2021.
attack Pence as Mike Who?
I know they will never do it. But I would love to see a M P look alike surrounded by a pile of brown stained paper towels furiously trying to clean off his nose with a fist full.
Alive, but too sick to hop on AF1 for a visit to Russia or Dubai after losing the election.
I'd be particularly interested to spot cases where the Wikipedia revision history was altered. FWIW, web.archive.org archives the first page of revision history (at least when lightly sampled). Doesn't go deeper though. Given this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download I'll assume that there are regular archives of wikipedia somewhere.[1] TBH, I'm tempted to download a copy for offline use, and to be able to do diffs. (Heck, I've done that with this site a few times; still looking for one comment that I recall several years back.) To be clear, tampering with the wikipedia that everyone uses is deeply disturbing/wrong, and what you describe is very not good, in my ethics as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia - according to that, current figure including edit history by extrapolation is probably around 15TB, 150GB compressed (100 to 1) More for wikimedia. Doable on capacious personal hardware.
Meh, #1386 since Host is signal boosting a nice and well meaning but 1000% out of her depth young woman.
First off: don't use a reverse pyramid structure, it has a particular meaning. Well, several, but try this: The inverted pyramid: A neo-Ricardian view on the economy–environment relationship https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800914002675
There's entire serious literature on inverted pyramids in trading, business models and so. It has strong vibes with gold bugs and other types and using it is basically signalling that you're using taxon from a position of ignorance. It's also a base to Chaos stuff, in that summoning them tends to get you Trump, but that's a much longer story.
Secondly, a lot of what she considers "dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories" are in fact, true (or close enough to give a major dint to her research skills). e.g. The first thing I did after receiving a full-size sample of SkinMedica’s TNS Essential Serum to try out was to check the veracity of these rumors. And lo and behold, it all seems to be true. Human fibroblast cells have been obtained from human foreskins for research purposes at least, and these are also commercially available in the U.S. So let’s just say that my first thought before actually trying SkinMedica’s TNS Essential Serum was that this stuff had better be damn good for me to be potentially slathering my face with male genital cells. https://www.truthinaging.com/review/reader-review-skinmedicas-tns-essential-serum
Thirdly, the USA is obsessed with making everything antisemitic and it is playing out very badly when you slap incredibly naive and dumb labels of 'the antisemitic point of no return' on things, because that allows the actual Neo-Nazis an "in".
~
This young lady is a proper danger, Louis Mensch / Daily Fail of Conspiracy Research and not how it works.
To give credence to the fact that a social media starlet / insta 'influencer' / tiktok viral Queen is probably not someone to trust on this, here's a prior:
TikTok Shadowbanned? Major TikToker Claims Shut Out of Algorithm & Features
When the issue was first covered at Screen Rant, the topic was addressed with the conclusion that shadowbanning is likely not real, on the grounds that it wouldn't make sense for a platform to limit viral creators and because it appeared solvable through smarter social marketing. However, following an interview with TikTok creator Abbie Richards (@tofizzle), in which evidence was presented that clearly represents either intentional interference from TikTok or some kind of malfunction within the For You algorithm, it's difficult to stand by the assessment that shadowbans are not real.
...Abbie has established a social media presence in 2020 through pointed, viral anti-golf videos, with several of her posts racking up hundreds of thousands (or over 1 million) views. With so much content about the problems with golf, her content naturally touches on anti-capitalist ideas, which also contributes to the connection she's established with her audience. That success is best highlighted by Abbie being referenced on live TV when an ESPN broadcaster mentioned her by name, calling her "too avant-garde for Sportscenter".
https://screenrant.com/tiktok-shadowban-abbie-richards-tofizzle/
To wit: not only is that a 'Conspiracy Theory' she was pushing, it's a particular Right-wing bugbear version that has growling masses of QAN support behind it (and places like PraegerU). That "horseshoe" of where QAN meets Hippy Liberal US Americana? Guess what? It's fucking projection.
If we bothered to do a deep dive into who
NO CARRIER - mod
W.T.F?
Not sure[1], but perhaps it's about Zes and knowing and priors. I often struggle[2] to understand her(zer), but try, for reasons (that are true). The last time I saw something that looked like that was in spring 2016 and appeared have been prompted by something I thought was playful. Anyway, if (the "perhaps") so, I apologize without qualification to Enga M Vantar.
Re the comments, they are sort of about influence operators of highly varying levels of competence and awareness, and they are about a few real but minor currents being churned up by the world of influence operations over (overlapping) subpopulations of minds in the populations. Most people are mostly blind to this stuff. She sees it (lives it) very well.
[1] stolen from elsewhere: "your lack of knowledge about the depths of my ignorance is just adorable" [2] Bayesian surprise attracts human attention (Laurent Itti, Pierre Baldi, 2006)
Most people are mostly blind to this stuff Because it either does not exist or is only smoke-&-mirrors or outright lies .... SOME of us deal in reality - she doesn't. Or see anything, actually, as has been proven, several times in these pages.
Heteromeles @ 1476: Not clear if he infected the President of Notre Dame. The news media implies that he caught it from a colleague who tested positive (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/us/notre-dame-president-covid-trnd/index.html). I suppose this is Catholic bashing, but some of the local developers I deal with are ostentatiously Catholic, and I've learned from dealing with them to watch out for statements of implied causation that turn out to not be true when they are parsed carefully. But it well may be true.
It wasn't intended to be Catholic bashing. I don't think Catholics have a monopoly on hypocrisy. If it is bashing of any kind, it's ACC Basketball Rival Bashing.
If he wasn't infected by Cheatolini iL Douchebag himself, there's good reason to suspect it was at that unseemly hasty garden party.
I actually came to it by way of a news story about Notre Dame students passing around a petition calling on him to resign due to breaching University health and safety protocols. This bit is telling:
We'll find out one way or another. If El Cheeto was positive a week ago, he's on day 8 at least of infection. So by Monday-Wednesday or so, we'll know if he's in the mild category or the not-mild category (in the former, he gets better. In the latter, he gets worse). If not, he's got most of another week in Walter Reed to see which track he's on, and we get to see if VP Renfield invokes the 25th Amendment or not.
Should have been done already. Wonder why it hasn't been?
I suspect El CHeeto's at the hospital so that they can have a crash cart standing by, get him under good oximetry, give him that experimental regeneron antibody treatment and probably remdesivir (better to do these in the hospital anyway), and see if they can find him a nurse who looks good in her PPE to help keep his mind focused (/sarcasm).
I've seen one "news" item suggesting he was already on oxygen for the walk out to the helicopter. Had the oxygen generator concealed by his jacket pocket and a nasal cannula concealed by his hairpiece & face mask.
Then there's this:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/04/donald-trump-covid-19-what-we-know-steroid-dexamethasone/3616811001/
The only certainty is that Trumpolini's campaign and the White House are lying about what's going on.
David L @ 1486: attack Pence as Mike Who?
I have decided that henceforth he shall be known as Mike Pretense.
I know they will never do it. But I would love to see a M P look alike surrounded by a pile of brown stained paper towels furiously trying to clean off his nose with a fist full.
Well, according to the New York Times, "the glee and memes from some on the left were vulgar" ... so please, while cackling with joy, do try to maintain some semblance of decorum and refinement.
Sully Ad from Lincoln Project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzcW0zUSKg
JBS That is amazing But, the convinced believers in "The Guide" will take no notice.