dsrtao

dsrtao

  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Have you done a comedy at a longer length than short stories? Set up a Xanatos Gambit? Girl and her Dragon? Meddling kids? (Arguably the crew in Dead Lies Dreaming fills this role, but they aren't really kids.) A murder...
  • Commented on Summer webcomics
    Questionable Content is mostly set in an alternate universe Amherst, Massachusetts, or Northampton or Easthampton, all of which are nearly indistinguishable from each other unless you live there. There are five colleges there, the largest being the University of Massachusetts...
  • Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
    So even if you could build a maser and a suitable yagi-antenna out of proteins, the signal would still not be strong enough to get out of your skull. Which is why telepathy uses external antennae supported by calcium...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
    Scalzi's symbionts/parasites were (visibly) macrobiota physically colocated with the kaiju mountains, but the things we see in Charlie's multiverse are microscopic and only partially present in their host's universe. Leto II had a largely mental ecology, plus of course his...
  • Commented on Make Up a Guy
    Here's the thing that might lead to a slippery slope (or not): suppose the reboot process was really fast. All the companies that swore they would have self-driving cars in just three years have discovered variations on the same problem:...
  • Commented on Make Up a Guy
    In Linda Nagata's Vast, the human-upload Nikko is piloting an STL (but incredibly powerful: 0.4c) spaceship being chased by an alien warship which is just barely capable of more velocity. As the novel starts, the chase has been going on...
  • Commented on Make Up a Guy
    "Think Like a Dinosaur" is apropos: the teleport tech is a remote duplicator, and after the copy is confirmed, the original is of course destroyed. Unless something goes wrong... Similar situations appear in Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol universe, and...
  • Commented on Make Up a Guy
    Once upon a time at least seven years ago, sAdrian Hon emitted... art? at http://ahistoryofthefuture.org/ -- and offered several selections for free. I was so taken with the Neuroethics Exam (dated 2066), that I decided to take it seriously and...
  • Commented on WTF
    "school district required kids to wear a Kevlar backpack to school." As they say, citation needed. I can find lots of requirements for clear or mesh backpacks. The googling of kevlar backpacks turns up people building and selling them, but...
  • Commented on WTF
    I'll just point out that the Yale secret society, Skull and Bones, is sometimes called Order 322. I would bet a shiny nickel (or similar value) that this is a prank/hoax along the lines of The Yes Men, by someone...
  • Commented on Upcoming blog outage
    I've had worse reactions to flu shots (a day or so of achiness and lack of energy) than to any of the four COVID vaccinations so far. Reactions seem to be extremely idiosyncratic. Good luck, Charlie....
  • Commented on Upcoming blog outage
    I'm still responsible for mail servers, at work and at home. Work is slightly more aggravating because of the users and their odd devices and demands. (Always needing more disk space!) The most bizarre and difficult thing to overcome is...
  • Commented on London Bridge
    I propose the following measure for forms of government: what is the minimum number of people I need to bribe to get an otherwise unpopular law passed? This may be much easier in situations where one party is used to...
  • Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
    Perhaps it wouldn't work for the UK, but for the Commonwealth countries still basing their authority in the Crown -- why not formalize the virtualization of that authority? On EIIR's death, declare that Canada recognizes and mourns the death of...
  • Commented on Omicron
    Am I right in thinking the Guard know what their members' civilian specialties are and allocate them to roles accordingly? Yes, very much so. That doesn't stop them from doing odd things (my brother-in-law is a high school math teacher,...
  • Commented on Omicron
    Pulling this from way back in #182: News story: Maine, NH, and NY are mobilizing the National Guard to help with medical issues of overworked and understaffed. This isn't going to work. The National Guard is a part-time militia. Guess...
  • Commented on Omicron
    Yes, that MarkDown. Let's test with the preview button: [I am in brackets] (I am in parentheses) but brackets followed by parens makes a link an asterisk for a bullet point emphasized text inside a pair of asterisk really emphasized...
  • Commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
    "Society trains us to respect the property rights and bodily integrity of others. No hitting, no biting, no stealing are lessons any kid has to learn" These things work because they tend to perpetuate themselves better than the alternatives. Most...
  • Commented on A serious question
    Are we allowed to argue with your assumptions? I note that there's no assumption about the reverse transformation taking time or a refractory period. I shall argue that astronauts were so closely monitored that Mike Collins's lycanthropic status was observed...
  • Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
    Eight states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont -- have an interesting "fusion voting" system where candidates can be listed under multiple parties, and it both keeps track of how you voted for a...
  • Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
    US-centric answer, but I suspect it can be translated elsewhere. It turns out that the price of a politican is a remarkably small fraction of a billion-dollar per annum budget. A single million will grab the attention of basically anyone...
  • Commented on Creative writing challenge!
    SNAP. All the lights dimmed for a moment, and the machine on the cluttered desk emitted a small puff of foul black smoke. The whine of the cooling fans stopped. "Aw, shit." Flip pulled the electrode set off. "Are you...
  • Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
    Storage of rice and pulses: you want three things: dry, vermin-proof, and liftable. Any sort of sealable plastic or metal containers are good, wooden ones are crap, and plastic bags are nearly useless because mice and rats don't consider them...
  • Commented on Upcoming events
    Not a typo: SharkNinja is a maker of vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances. A coworker left to work for them a couple of years ago....
  • Commented on Ask me anything!
    Just a reminder that assholes are useful organs that do quite a lot to keep your body healthy. Trump, on the other hand, is a malignant tumor of narcissism and quite possibly a serial raper of children -- I hope...
  • Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (1)
    Then what did the vote against a no-deal Brexit mean?...
  • Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (1)
    Supposing the EU vetoes an extension, and supposing Parliament continues to faff around not doing anything much; given that they have voted against a no-deal exit, does that require May to wait until the last few seconds of March 28th,...
  • Commented on Someone please cancel 2019 already?
    A corporation is not a person. Only natural born persons are "persons" and only natural born persons have rights. Why do you hate AI?...
  • Commented on Peak Brexit
    If they're in range, firefighting water pumps are excellent anti-drone defenses. 100 meters is a plausible knock-down altitude, and you don't have nasty lead or steel projectiles coming back down. Airports tend to have firefighting equipment to hand; possibly even...
  • Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
    You are all ignoring a basic tenet of modern political thinking: this is a post-truth era. The correct thing to do is to assign the deal-making to a junior attache while loudly announcing that Brexit is taking place on December...
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