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• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Miracles still happen! Yesterday it was in the news that apparently even some Republicans find that George Santos (or whatever his actual name is) isn't fit to be in the House of Representatives. Of course that doesn't mean that any...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Re: units of measurement I for one actually don't really care which units USians use for measuring what. I don't live in the US, so I have no need to know. But I would really appreciate if they would translate...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Sorry, forgot a few items: the rich get all sorts of traps and autonomous weapons, order their subordinates to set them up, and then what? Who dies when a trap works or an autonomous gun shoots someone? Who dies? The...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Here's something which should have gone to the "fistful of tropes" post: I've just reread The Atrocity Archive, and I'm thinking about the relation of sacrifice and magic. In the laundryverse sacrifice is one conventional way for creating mana (which...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  @ Charlie and others who reacted to magical violence-ending: I agree, the general idea needs more refinement in some areas (and therefore the "no exceptions"-clause was a little premature): surgery: in our current reality a patient needs to sign a...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  What could be done now, by some benevolent overlord, to stop the attacks on innocents? I believe the first step is to acknowledge that there is no benevolent overlord. (And all people/organisations/countries/nations who believe that they are a benevolent...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  @Greg (and Moz): Perhaps British cities should look into the concept of edible cities. Here's more: The Edible City Network And before you all jump on the point that this could never work in the UK due to its latitude,...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Two questions to the resident USians: Other than this current New York trial, aren't the others expected to be trial by jury? How large is the MAGAt population in the US? And now a follow-up question: Isn't it likely that...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  about Star Wars: I usually put it this way: it was a fun trilogy (minus the Ewoks). It's a shame they never made any of the promised sequels…...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I dunno! Did the NAZIS in Germany ever take retribution against jurors whose decisions didn't suit them? That's a somewhat odd question, because: what do you mean by 'jurors'? There is no such thing as 'jurors' in the German...
• Commented on Minor updates
  So, you have finally succumbed to one of the house sale bots whose phone calls you've mentioned a couple of times? What made you take the offer?...
• Commented on Minor updates
  To drop the horror pretense for a second, the Holy Spirit as I understand it is a spirit of universal agape love (aka compassion, rather than eros or amor). Manifesting it is extremely difficult: most people have family members...
• Commented on Place your bets
  It seems like a typical US-misconception that you need a huge truck to tow anything. https://www.google.de/search?q=Käfer+mit+Anhänger (Yes, many of the pictures are of model cars, but there are some real ones as well.)...
• Commented on Place your bets
  David L: Lots of new cars in the US have had a spare tire as an option for years. My daughter’s 2014 didn’t come with one. Saves weight in smaller cars to the extend it raises the MPG rating a...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Hmm... interesting. I read somewhere that they're Christians. I guess the source was wrong. Well. It depends. No, it doesn't depend. Yazidism (as a religion) is completely independent from other religions. It is a religion of its own, and...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Exactly which jurisdictions apply here is clearly a question for the Laundry legal services department! Except that by Dead Lies Dreaming the Laundry doesn't exist anymore. So it's probably up to His Dread Majesty. But anyway, the question of...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Sack of hammers. Of course something quite similar already exists....
• Commented on Place your bets
  And then he got on Trump One and flew to Nyork. Who could have imagined that? Well, I for one wouldn't have. Because my most recent information (from this very community, by the way) was that the plane stood...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Current charges are under state law, not federal. The president has no power to pardon a state conviction. No supreme court and no congressionally passed law can change that. Once Trump becomes president again and the Republicans take both...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Also: Yes, Charles has always spoken German very well. I believe that both he and his father have conducted long interviews with German media in fluent German. I don't know whether this capacity has spilled over to his sons, though....
• Commented on Place your bets
  The giveaway was Chas' perfect pronouncination … The giveaway for what? Please elaborate. (Disclosure: I haven't followed the visit at all, apart from the brief summary in yesterday's evening TV news and a press review this morning on the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Unless he is actually imprisoned is there anything to stop him being elected president if its a state (rather than federal) charge? You're wrong in your intuition that being actually imprisoned would stop him being elected. There's nothing preventing...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Meanwhile, Brexitland's new prime couple are on their first state visit to a EU member. Any thoughts on that? (In Germany, the most noteworthy (and controversial) detail seems to be that punk rocker Campino was wearing a tailcoat (as was...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  …here's what one Japanese travel blog has to say about The Most Kawaii Place in Japan… I honestly can't say whether that article is meant seriously or just bathed in the thickest possible sarcasm. Poe's law in action....
• Commented on Place your bets
  I really don't want to go on with this, but dear little Adolf's own writings go on & ON about being christian, ok? No, they don't. See the excellent History for Atheists on the topic: https://historyforatheists.com/2021/07/hitler-atheist-pagan-or-christian/ Also, you might...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  pyramids with temples on top are canonically not Egyptian You're right, that should have been obvious. I blame the word 'pyramid' for my conceptual blindness. The meso-american buildings are strictly speaking not pyramids, precisely because they have a flat...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Do you know where the rest of the Lovecraftian gods ended up? You put Nyarlahotep in the U.K. and Cthulhu in the U.S, but where are Dagon, Hastur, Yog Sothoth, Ithaqua, etc? Also, is Cthulhu explicitly "The Sleeper in...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Not specifically related to Quantum of Nightmares, but to the Laundryverse in general: I, for one, would really like for DEEP SEVEN to get involved in the affairs on the surface of the planet at some point. I'm waiting for...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Please read what I wrote a little more carefully. I don't assume that anybody here would want to use or even advocate violence. I get that you're only discussing possibilities. But what worries me is that you all seem to...
• Commented on Place your bets
  An ossuary is a place containing all the bones of the dead soldiers An ossuary has nothing particularly to do with soldiers. It's simply the place where the bones are stored after a grave has been dug up and...