The latter is usually used by Russia and Russian-affiliated to emphasize their claim to the land as part of a larger 'Russian dominion', in much the same way mainland China views and refers to Taiwan.
Just the fact that you continually refer to it as 'the Ukraine' makes me very suspicious...
]]>As an aside, I'm in the middle of 'One Man' and enjoying it (with the caveat that I've read most of Harry's prior works and supported his Kickstarters).
]]>Might we see a similar shift in Texas after Harvey? Probably not as complete as the 1900 shift, given the more intricate economic interlocking present in today's global-scale power structures. The outcome will likely be dependent on the duration of the outages and the ability of relatively nearby areas to take over the missing activities previously centered in Houston. It will be interesting to see which of the other coastal areas benefits from the offsetting of business/trade....
]]>Take it a step further - some IoT lamps are now also incorporating blue-tooth speakers, allowing the malware to have both auditory and visual components. Couple varying flicker rates with sounds that are outside conscious detection but still perceived by the brain, and you've got a recipe for severe brain reprogramming with potential for lots of mental damage, and quite possibly physical degeneration.
]]>So, if we're in a simulation, was the introduced variable a positive one, or a negative one? Are we better off than the world of which we're a simulation, or worse off? And, which aspect of our simulation was varied? It would not be obvious, as from within the simulation we wouldn't have any comparison points to identify the point of departure.
It also is likely to be something that we would not consider to be an element that would be interesting to vary. If you can do one simulation, chances are you can do lots of them. So, our world may be the simulation in which brown hair coloration is the dominant allele, rather than the original in which ginger hair coloration is dominant and brown is recessive.
]]>Why should the FBI need to "provide substantive answers"? They'll either say that it had nothing unknown on it, or they'll slap a National Security sticker on the information. In either case there's no way to verify that they actually retrieved anything from the phone.
This case was never about what was on the phone, it was about setting a legal precedent that Apple can be compelled to backdoor their software. A bogus "we're good now, see you next time" withdrawal allows them to try again; a legal finding against them wouldn't.
]]>Biology issues tend to hit me - I've got an extensive background there, so aspects that run counter to known data are annoying. Case in point - inheriting resistance to an infectious agent where the primary means of resistance is antibody-based. Antibody diversity is generated in somatic cells via random recombination events in the precursor cells. Thus, someone who happens to have an effective antibody against a devastating plague will not be able to pass on that resistance, as the germ cells are segregated well prior to the somatic rearrangements leading to antibody formation. Even if the resistance is due to a mechanism other than antibodies (and related processes), if the resistance could arise from mutations in multiple genes then inheritance patterns for multi-locus traits are going to mean that there's going to be lots of inviable combinations in the generations following from the resistant individuals. Stephen King's 'The Stand' was problematic this way....
]]>I will be voting No Award for all of the candidates who IMHO have affiliated themselves with the Picnic Skunks (of either stripe). This is a slightly more nuanced position than a blanket 'On Slate = No Award'.
I am concerned that a hard-line position on slates will be used against non-Picnic Skunks next year. It is easy to imagine the Picnic Skunks putting a few popular authors on their slate, then chittering away that anyone with a strict 'No Slate' policy is hypocritical if they vote for the slate-included author. (The Picnic Skunks would then, of course, fail to vote for the nominee for the actual award.) I can even see them trying it with Scalzi's 'The End of All Things', but he'd probably figure out an elegant way to eviscerate them. Which would be fun to watch, actually....
While it's worthwhile to ponder the longer-term goals of the Picnic Skunks, especially the rabid variety, I'm not sure that I'm willing to credit them with enough foresight to have a long-term plan that is viable. I suspect they think they have a plan, but if it is a workable one is the open question.
*Thanks to Tim Walters in a comment on the Making Light blog for this:
The rules permitted a contestant to submit any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile. I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross, but Dad advised me not to. "It is within the rules, Kip, but I've never yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic." —Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit, Will Travel
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