AaronB

AaronB

  • Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
    Invisible Sun...50% longer than previous books in the series. Ah, good. I was thinking it might take an awful lot of plot to get from the close of Dark State to a satisfying ending, more than would fit in a...
  • Commented on Books I Will Not Write #8: The Year of the Conspiracy
    > ...conspiracy ring to generate arrests for the FBI It's always good to include bits of recent history for verisimilitude. > By which time the moment will have moved on. I always appreciate how you blend some good cozy escapist...
  • Commented on Tentative hypothesis
    Snooty answer: because professionals use different tools. You could also say that Hilti power tools are unpopular compared to hardware-store brands, or that plate compactors and pavement saws are unpopular because only a small percentage of folks own them. Practical...
  • Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
    So in the Laundryverse, if you don't clap for Tinkerbell everyone dies horribly?...
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    We're nearly to 600 comments and not a single mention of my favourite term for BTC, "Dunning-Kruggerands." I am disappoint....
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Have been banging my head against "but I don't know that it can't work" type arguments a lot recently. Saying "then quit bothering people who do know and do whatever it takes to find out" doesn't seem to work. "Never...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    You (and I) may not approve of the goals of the Iranian government, but you've got to admit they're persistent in the face of overwhelming opposition, What made the most lasting impression on me in Palimpsest was the strategy of...
  • Commented on Busy busy busy
    ...and the Authority, the shadowy not-a-mafia-honest who own and operate the gate (nobody knows who they are or exactly where they live or where the gate is located because if anybody did, well, slower-than-light invasion fleets are always an option...
  • Commented on Gratuitous Self-Promotion: the US West Coast Remix
    Looking forward to seeing you and your lovely in Portland again. Will try to get us all a table a little earlier this time. Time was, you had to cross the San Joaquin valley at night, but y'all should be...
  • Commented on A purely theoretical dilemma
    Heh. "Being able to read minds would be of limited value without the ability to also write minds, considering all the blank media out there." -- Anthony de Boer...
  • Commented on Maneuvers in the Dark
    Sunday, 10:00 AM Room: Marina 2 Right and Wrong: AIs and Us Oh, if only Jeph Jaques could participate. He's a big fan of Banks and Stross, and his "Questionable Content" webcomic, while not SF-focused, has long explored themes of...
  • Commented on Introducing new guest blogger: Heteromeles
    Yay! Darling Wife manages an organic fertilizer (AKA "soil food") distribution company and is big on supplemental mycorrhizae, while our Best Friend is half of a nursery that specializes in climate-appropriate landscape plants. So even beyond my native bio-neepery, my...
  • Commented on An Apology
    Oh my, I did not know of this! Looks like quite a bunch of writers!...
  • Commented on An Apology
    My apologies, I meant "contemporary-ish" in the "not Sci-Fi, set in the present universe and time, no explicit worldbuilding" sense. It is a different sort of difficulty, probably not far off from the sort of tetris-y stunt-writing that got us...
  • Commented on An Apology
    A genuinely new series, eh? So nothing like, say Machael Ransour and Spartin Mingfield in a not-perceived-by-the-author-as-broken Eschaton-verse? Dang! I could imagine Charlie writing some excellent contemporary-ish military / political thrillers under a pen-name. However, they might be a hard...
  • Commented on A small research question
    Only skimming the thread due the high squick-factor, but... Here's a brood parasite that evolved from its host into a separate species: http://smithsonianscience.si.edu/2014/08/new-species-ant-offers-compelling-evidence-controversial-theory-species-formation/ I cannot even imagine what sorts of brood parasites could evolve in the Other Dimensions, but the...
  • Commented on Brief hiatus
    Unrelated but... Good news: Looks like we have a funding model that can supplant embedded ads as a way to pay for Internet (and real world) stuff. Bad news: It's worse. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/29/the-big-business-of-internet-bigotry.html...
  • Commented on Brief hiatus
    Ah, The Roxy. Like Spartacus, one of the last tenacious remnants of old Vaseline Alley. They turned the Steam Baths into a luxe hotel, the one big dance club into a fancy theatre and everything else into variations on the...
  • Commented on Upcoming events
    Looking forward to your visit to Portland. I'll note that there is a decent pub (The Moon and Sixpence) and a beer hall / bicycle shop (Velo Cult) ~200m north of the Hollywood Theatre. If you're staying downtown, I second...
  • Commented on Oh dear
    In completely unrelated news, looks like Randall Munroe has been visiting a land rather like the LaundryVerse....
  • Commented on The Rhesus Chart: Chapter One
    Engineer/techie tips: * If you want an answer, don't ask a question. Answers are boring. Instead, assert the wrong thing. You will be corrected in loving detail. * If you want someone to work hard on a task, assert that...
  • Commented on "Write me something fresh and new, but make it just like the last one"
    Sheesh. When I (and most folks) read a book on Behavioural Psychology (in this case, You Are Now Less Dumb) all I get is an appreciation for the enormous role of narrative in human thought. Charlie skims an article on...
  • Commented on Schadenfreude
    Regarding post-capitalist societies, I wonder what folks think of the "RICH Economy" that His Holiness Robert Anton Wilson advocated as a solution to the Automation Blues: http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-RICH.html...
  • Commented on Schadenfreude
    Odd thought occurred to me as I was doing the wash the other day... Bitcoins seem like what would happen when a lazy techie got involved in a labor-backed currency like Ithaca Hours. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Hours ) "Oh, that looks like...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
    We're entering a period of stagnation. No new musical genres in the past 20 or 30 years. No new art movements in the past 20 or 30 years. No new literary movements or genres in the past 20 or 30...
  • Commented on Books I've written
    Also, sorry for offtopic but: Has anyone set and printed copies of Scratch Monkey on an Espresso or something? I'm tempted to run one off at Powell's, but suspect that there are gotchas....
  • Commented on Books I've written
    I've learned a little about how stories are written by reading a lot of Warren Ellis and yourself. The both of you cram so much into so little space that there just isn't room to file off the sharp edges....
  • Commented on The map is not the territory.
    Who is Nate Silver? Lior K. is making a joke, I think. Nate Silver runs http://fivethirtyeight.com which presented very good maps and predictions regarding the 2008 and 2012 US Federal elections. Nate was accused of Left-wing bias because his models...
  • Commented on The map is not the territory.
    Speaking of extrasensory perceptions, note the "motorboating" sound when you see the nuke detonate. As one of the commentators notes, it's the sound of the camera's vacuum-tube sound amplifier reacting to the EMP. With my 1:1 scale map of North...
  • Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
    You may have just driven the final nail into Charlie's Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis. Perhaps. A critter with good mirror neurons can vaguely learn how to use a tool by watching another critter. A critter with a sophisticated theory of mind...
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