Dave Lester

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• Commented on Shrinking the world
  At the slight risk of a minimal spoiler for Season of Skulls, but directly on topic, I've been looking at Stage Coach travel from North West England to London. Mainly as a way to avoid using the Great North Road,...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Ever get the impression that Charlie's books aren't kinky enough? If John Crace's review of Cleo Watson's[*] first Political Bonk-buster is anywhere close to the truth, then I guess we'll all have to use it as source material. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/30/cleo-watson-whips-digested-john-crace [*]...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Now, recall that nowhere in Great Britain is more than about 40 miles from the sea. Actually, it is 75 miles, and is near Coventry -- or Birmingham Airport. Not that it makes much difference to your point......
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I'm going to have to come out to bat for (some) American food. Steaks: usually better flavoured than UK ones, I'm not sure why. Well aged Welsh Black Beef is better, but my local source went out of business. Cheese....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Is there anywhere where they have really strange traffic laws like "red means go & green means stop"? Not so much a law, more a way of life, but yes: you are thinking of Naples. Having left the Autostrada in...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  A New Theory for the Great Filter https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/planet-earth-stars-x-ray-exploded-b2324343.html (Planets out to 150 light years are in danger from X-rays generated by interactions with gas clouds between a supernova and the planet.)...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Sark isn't in the EU. Correct. But this doesn't mean that it's citizens cannot access the European Court of Human Rights. Just like the UK at the moment....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  It would be more correct to think that by the process of proxy marriage, everything that Eve owned becomes Rupert's. (Even as late as the 1730s, women could not own property in England. Hence leasehold property, and women buying South...
• Commented on Place your bets
  In England, the draconian Libel laws should see off identified trolls who actually libel their targets. The required proof is only "on the balance of probabilities", and the punishment is surrendering much of their wealth....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  What the New Management needs is a disease(s) that causes lots of unhappy symptoms, but doesn't kill anyone [...] That'd be antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea, right?...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  However, there was an Ebola epidemic in 2014-2016... And Marburg is now spreading in sub-saharan cities. (It was previously a rural disease.)...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Charlie, You mention US printed versions, but at your suggestion I bought a hardback copy from your local bookstore in Scotland. For other prospective customers are there any left?...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Whilst I can think of a few reasons why His Awful Majesty hasn't dealt with Rupert personally, or via his own minions, I do hope you'll put a throw in remark or two to explain this oversight to those of...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Then your non-state actor will have a hard problem to solve: locating its targets....
• Commented on Place your bets
  H, #1188 As my boss on the Human Brain Project (Steve Furber, designer of the original ARM chip) has it: “It is not whether the brain operates using quantum mechanical methods, obviously it does, but whether it exploits quantum superposition...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Charlie #1196 I think you may well be right in what you write about convoys, but, … When the Admiralty finally (24th May 1917) got around to using convoys in WW1, they were an instant success. And the reason was...
• Commented on WTF
  Adrian Smith @ 1482 She reported him to HR she "felt threatened" when he "attacked her beliefs" and he was interviewed by them. loathsome bit of entitlement, that perhaps supplying a reason was unwise tho Certainly don't do anything like...
• Commented on WTF
  Flint did his homework as far as technical stuff and official history (battles, dates, ..etc) were concerned, but peopled his 17th century Germany with modern imaginary germans Well, quite! To me -- coming to this without reading the novels --...
• Commented on WTF
  Greg @1025, I'm curious: which tomatoes were you growing that make cuttings worthwhile? (At 200 miles north of you and with something of a frost-trap, I may not be quite so well placed, but my "Gardener's Delight" were a very...
• Commented on WTF
  "A frequency of tens of Herz for 14 milliseconds?" Uh? Yep, that's what it says here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitational_wave_observations As I say the event is: S200114f All I can assume is that it corresponds to a half cycle or so. As I...
• Commented on WTF
  Well, that last effort didn't work out very well, did it? Let's try again (without links, and in summary only). The current issue of New Scientist suggests tracking Alien Spacecraft warp signatures using LIGO, the gravitational wave detector. A proposed...
• Commented on WTF
  So, back to our original question, posed by OGH: (What's your most shocking find on the internet? No limits!) A few weeks ago, New Scientist had a splash about using LIGO to detect hypothetical alien warp drives. (An accessible article...
• Commented on WTF
  Ain't Merican English grand. I read that as Mercian, and was expecting a broad Brummie accent from you....
• Commented on WTF
  But they still politic around saying "fuck me if I can't get off my arse and make something of myself, I deserve to get shafted". Which is classic abused child behaviour. But the step from that to "...therefore no-one else...
• Commented on WTF
  Your takeaway is that the LGB Alliance, a leading anti-trans hate group, is funded by the same lobbyists as brexit, climate change denial, and the barking lunatics who fed Liz Truss her policy platform. It's even worse than that. Truss...
• Commented on WTF
  Unfortunately, once lines are on maps in approved plans, it often takes long and costly lawsuits to get them abandoned, because people have invested in making those lines a reality, no matter how bad an idea they now are. Around...
• Commented on WTF
  It's not implausible: there's a zoo not that far away that has both wallabies (including albino ones) and cassowaries wandering around. Well, that's Christmas dinner sorted out: if you have the cajones to take one on, of course ;) Do...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Elderly Cynic @ 1490 It's unclear whether they had the intention of sending Putin over the edge, but their actions in the period 2010-2021 (yes, 2010) were a main factor in achieving that. By his own admission what sent Putin...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Whitroth @ 1462 Please define "the West". I am 100% sure that every Western military-industrial company, petrochemical company, banking, and a ton of others would not only jump in with both feet, but that in covert ways, I assume they're...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  The other danger is that Russia breaks up, whether on its own or with western assistance, leading to local warlords with nukes. I cannot see the West getting involved in the break up of Russia -- at least until it's...