andyf

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Commented on Place your bets
fractional reserve banking,,, if you read about it and don't panic, you didn't read it properly...
Commented on Place your bets
the problem with the whole 'god is outside of time so those 'days of creation' in genesis' line it says morning and evening they are literal actual days which is slightly problematical seeing at the actual cause of days wasn't...
Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
I dunno about using ballons against the Russians.. they had a balloon problem, they ended up with laser armed aircraft in 1989 to deal with it. i daresay they still have the plans...
Commented on Make Up a Guy
on the subject of smart animals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmnkUHMBqRA they may just be missing the voicebox < and thumb>...
Commented on Decision Fatigue
saw the crater- realised it wasnt a cruise missile- so rhetoric saying it was is Dangerous. crater too shallow for the sort of things the Russians are sending. it being lined up with powerlines, I thought, can't be an accident....
Commented on Strong and Stable!
my pet theoy behind the obesity/ diabetes epidemic... breakfast cereal. so the first thing your pancreas gets in a day- a huge glucose spike. obviously, your system scrambles to get it down, resulting in rebound low blood sugar and hunger-...
Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
I'd buy it!...
Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
just finished reading 'Brexit uncovered' I don't think the UK is going to survive. We're going to get Balkanized ....
Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
its funny, the same lot who are obsessed about someone else's foetus are fine with actual kids being shot up. < oh the hands wring ,thoughts and prayers,> 'but mah rights'...
Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
I was arguing with one such a while ago...I said ' you do realise that Grizzly Admas didn't make his own ammunition?'...
Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
it looks to me like the seastate was such the Moskva couldnt use its Gecko missiles, the Neptuns fly so low the S300s couldn't engage before they got too close. and the CIWS propably missed. nobody has ever < as...
Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
On the subject of lasers as a weapon... problems arise. You have to get rid of the waste heat. where the air is thick your range is going to be shorter. and if the incoming missile is fast, you'll have...
Commented on Omicron
why dont they grow trees, convert them into charcoal- extract the wood gas as fuel, then landfill the charcoal.? surely that would work?...
Commented on An update on the revolutionary experiment
Well rather than homemade explosives,,, which the redneck 'gravy-seals' might have problems using.. If they were to have a sniping capaign against fuel tanker drivers on major roads.... how long until the drivers would refuse to travel and the country...
Commented on A death in the Firm
on the subject of the bible,,, this guy has a lot of illuminating data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLviKiEuj30...
Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
ever see the film 'virtual nightmare'?...
Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
105 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBpF_Zj4OA 204: my wifi network is called ' MI6 surveillance van' i like to imagine it causes panic...
Commented on So you say you want a revolution
Well I work for a seppo company that makes car seats for Toyota. The only parts we get that aren't from the continent are the seat foams and some bolts. SO this no deal brexit the oligarchs and gammons have...
Commented on Dead Lies Dreaming: Spoilers
powerline networking... a lot less hassle than that...
Commented on Countdown to Crazy
oh no... you shouldnt ban 'mein kampf' it should be picked apart in school, as an example of dunning krueger, hate and poor education being the most dangerous mixture of anything. worse than FOOF and dimethyl mercury...
Commented on The Laundry Files: an updated chronology
my problem with the concept of a soul... its pointless duplication. You have the brain running - it produces the mind. we know its the brain doing this because psychoactive drugs work. Under anaesthetics , you don't register the pain...
Commented on Introducing a new guest blogger: Sheila Williams
Imagine a dark-dystopia, where the only men brave enough to chance the chtonian denizens of the rock strata are the Morris men. The only men shielded by ritual from the horrors of the dark .. the Morris miners......
Commented on Introducing a new guest blogger: Sheila Williams
I for one welcome our new editor-overlord!...
Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
the way cat claws grow, a succession of shells.. that could be the way. but that would rule out the babyrusa-type tuskhorn...
Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
78: can't see why a horse analogue couldn't have plaited tusks as a horn. Perhaps it would fight differently, fencing as opposed to ramming? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc and as for Mary Poppins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic...
Commented on No comment necessary
985 , 988... nipolite... the Nazis managed to make an explosive structural enough to make Panzerfausts out of. 1016- ammonium nitrate can be rendered capable of spontaneous combustion if it comes into contact with other nitrates.... sodium / pottasium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters...
Commented on No comment necessary
a thought about using ammonia as a fuel- its screamingly toxic....
Commented on No comment necessary
I had a dig about , it turns out that sodium/ potasium nitrate can make ammonium nitrate so agitated it spontaneously catches fire......
Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
I'm still puzzled,,,, is the 9 billion names of - actually insane? doing a weird freeform fiction thing? trying to roleplay as a culture mind? or just a mass of personalities travelling in a loose formation?...
Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
these electrical tattoos...... OC tattoos , ive read of them before,,, Pandoras star...

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Heteromeles commented on Place your bets
I'm actually more interested in optimistic sf and futurism, but I think to be believable it has to account for pessimistic ideas. Perhaps the "issue" is that many of us associate fantastic, gratuitous violence with entertainment, rather than the horror it really is. We're the kind of crowd that has to stop and decide whether RPG means "Role Playing Game" or "Rocket Propelled Grenade," and who guffaw at military humor whether or not we ever served. From my limited and largely irrelevant perspective, what's missing from much much of the literature on both non-violence and climate change are things like...
ilya187 commented on Place your bets
what's missing from much much of the literature on both non-violence and climate change are things like "grunt humor." Most of the nonviolent literature is deathly earnest An interesting observation, and I think it has to do with the fact that in both US and UK so many people have served in the military, the "grunt humor" is commonly recognized. War fiction did not create grunt humor, it utilized it, and it was able to do so because the audience in these two countries easily recognizes it. There is no similar phenomenon in either climate or non-violence literature[1] because climate...
Nojay commented on Place your bets
There's probably a few dozen bucks worth of gold, palladium, copper etc. in such a rangefinder. If people think they can make money ripping out catalytic converters from under cars for the scrap value then junking out the shiny bits of something that's breadbox-sized and easy to schlep out of the tank storage yard via a hole in the wire fence is the way to go. Selling off the entire tank chassis as scrap steel on the hoof/wheels for ten bucks a tonne is a bit trickier with lower cash return for the effort. Most folks who restore old armour...
JohnS commented on Place your bets
Pigeon @ 1691: I've been waiting all along for someone to point out that eco-protesters disrupting airports by fucking around with toy aircraft near the perimeter is something that has already happened, and been in the national news, and I'm pretty sure had people discussing the news items on here. That episode provided clear confirmation of what was already pretty obvious, that there simply isn't any point escalating such demonstrations to the level of actual destructiveness: merely buzzing flies around combines fully effective disruption with minimum effort and the most positive effect on public reactions. Yeah, but sooner or later...
JohnS commented on Place your bets
Rocketpjs @ 1698: For the purposes of a tank or artillery spotter I can't imagine needing range accuracy to less than 1 metre, but my practical knowledge of ballistic stuff is close to zero. I suppose you would prefer a device that is mounted on the tank so you don't have to stick your head out. Pigeon @ 1699: Yes, there are similar things available for marking out construction sites and so on. The thing about tank ones is they're intended to be able to see through smoke and other particulates on a battlefield, so they use a much fancier...

Responses to Comments from andyf

Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
“Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)

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