Mickdarling

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• Commented on Announcement time!
  Because the technology level and associated time period is so important to the Laundry Files stories, is it your hope, or maybe even insistence that it be a period show? Even just being primarily 10 or 15 years earlier than...
• Commented on WTF
  Re: "...do not make the mistake of thinking that the timing of this experiment, and announcement, is unrelated to the US Congress' budget negotiations." The ONLY reason I could think of for this fusion announcement now was the lame-duck session...
• Commented on Bad news day
  It looks like the Russians are serious about removing themselves from the internet. https://twitter.com/krisnova/status/1500590779047170048?s=21 And https://twitter.com/krisnova/status/1500590797518823424?s=21 Spent some time hacking on my flight and I am seeing some very "North Korea" style responses from the Russian servers. IF they respond...
• Commented on Bad news day
  I think the big tables and space are more coup protection. He seemed very comfortable just a week ago in person with Imran Khan and staff. Here is ~20 secs of video of the photo-op. I just don't read worry...
• Commented on Bad news day
  RE: The social distancing obsession -- bearing in mind he's a politician and politicians are big on handshakes'n'hugs -- suggests he is immunocompromised. I was going to write the same thing about being immune suppressed last night, but did a...
• Commented on Bad news day
  As I have been thinking backwards to what the deals to get this done must have been, the Chinese must be getting pissed that they were sold a bill of goods. Putin obviously needed to not piss them off otherwise...
• Commented on Bad news day
  I expect Reuters has double checked their sources. "Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces -Ukrainian official" https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chernobyl-power-plant-captured-by-russian-forces-ukrainian-official-2022-02-24/...
• Commented on Bad news day
  The more I see, it certainly looks like they are fighting directly at Chernobyl from all the news coverage, tweets, etc. If it is misinfo, it has a lot of buy-in from media and various officials....
• Commented on Bad news day
  My thought about that was that may be how Putin and his 'friends' plan to continue to gain money, goods, and influence. Just the procession of nukes by various countries around the world could cause massive disruption to the world...
• Commented on Bad news day
  I might believe this could be false news from Ukraine because of how awful it would be for Russians to be disturbing this area, but the correction is not a denial that fighting is in the area. The original is...
• Commented on Bad news day
  Charlie, your Tall Tail was just a made up story right? "Advisor to Ukrainian interior ministry says Russian forces entered Chernobyl and that fighting there destroyed a nuclear waste storage facility." https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/1496856147336495112?s=20&t=Py-LLTIHJnEacUlN3JB29A...
• Commented on Bad news day
  Since there is likely to be widespread increase of malware and owning of computers for use in DDOS bot networks, it would be wise to make sure you have your systems backed up with offline backups ASAP....
• Commented on Bad news day
  So the price of bitcoin is down, and the price of gold is up. Anyone know the market trends on tactical nukes? I have a feeling they are more fungible today than they were a week ago....
• Commented on Invisible Sun: Themes and Nightmares
  Now did you pull off the trick of circling back around and having a key decision be the result of the exposure to all the varied cultures, even the least enlightened, and have it save the day?...
• Commented on On inappropriate reactions to COVID19
  I was actually alluding to the fact that the Spanish Flu was first majorly spread at an American Military base in Kansas towards during WWI....
• Commented on On inappropriate reactions to COVID19
  "COVID19 as a bioweapon would have been an excellent choice during the first world war in Europe -- or maybe the second. But in modern conflicts, it's both obsolescent and dangerous." Now there is a premise for a story. Covid-19...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  Check out these sites with different info: https://fivethirtyeight.com/ for data, news, and analysis https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ for data, and analysis https://www.electoral-vote.com/ for data, news, and analysis Electoral-Vote is daily reading for me these days. They break out a ton of the edge...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  Are we already in the outer solar system and I missed it? Was the solar system disassembled in a grossly non-visually amazing way, and I missed? Did we all start living in a simulation?...alright don’t answer that last one. We...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  I think you underestimate the potential in Accelerando for a visual medium. Film/TV are about overcoming obstacles, and conflict in how to to that. Accelerando is an asteroid apocalypse story where the asteroid is our own tech, helpfully an aspect...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  Accelerando would make a great one-off season on a streaming service. Something that could be binged in one go. Probably 6-8 hours of final produced content. If it blew people away you could then hand over follow up seasons as...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  I had what the doctors think was COVID-19 in early March. One month at home coughing, headache, gastro, brain-fog, etc. The weren’t doing testing then unless you needed to come into the hospital. I stayed home. A second month of...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  There should be a throw away line that makes it obvious they are role playing THIS pandemic specifically, then the focus shifts and we hear no more of it....
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  Since the Rules seem to have been Mandela Effected to ask us for a Tweet instead of a short story, here goes my Tweet: I have a handheld device that activates when I glare at it, it undoes mistakes when...
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  “Hey Alice, how are you doing with that new project?” “You mean the Machine-learning Autonomous Data Driven Neural Network Entropic Syntactic System?” “...Um, yeah, you know that’s a really long way of saying non-sense generator?” Alice gives Bob a bit...
• Commented on Tentative hypothesis
  The new Samsung phones do exactly that. Plug them into a USB-C to HDMI cable and plug that into a TV or monitor and a whole desktop OS appears. If you have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you get an...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  After just coming from the largest poker tournament ever at the World Series of Poker. I was curious what the Laundryverse take on tens of thousands of brains doing realtime limited game theory simulations of tens of thousands of other...
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  Hah! I work in entertainment and TV so my odd ideas are based on odd realities. It will mostly depend on the production team, where they are in the process, and how the early process goes from an ‘exec excitement’...
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  The nice thing is that a TV series like this can focus on the content in a single novel, but also use all the other stories for deep foreshadowing, and subtle references, since they have a great roadmap for where...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
  I can see an opportunity for a really horrific moment as the scales fall from “Bob’s” eyes as he both realizes the reason he is the Eater of Souls is directly related to the original algorithmic incantation he made accidentally...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  What about the blind spot of expecting fraud and fraudsters to continue as they have for thousands of years. We swim in scam emails, and crappy crypto coin companies, but there are real trends that could lead to a massive...