waldo

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• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  If bamboo finds its way into anything I write, it will be as an invasive menace. We may be at the point where invasive menaces are the best tactic we've got left, though....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  I would imagine that there would be an off switch for use by maintenance and for when the aircraft is sitting stationary at a terminal. I'd also guess that faulty systems can be switched off....
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  "The presence of these two species is yet another reason why I think Cthulhu's stated plan to process the Earth into a Matrioshka Brain is vaporware and at best a cover for some other space-based project." Or perhaps the presence...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  Re "the stars coming right", the obvious and not very satisfying meaning would be that the distance to somewhere else also potentially with a CN problem becomes small enough to arrive/escape. I'm thinking escape, personally, since there is a definite...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  This might be a handy detail, at some point. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-chilling-tale-flies-self-amputation-survival.html...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  "Another reality of rural life is that you spend a lot of time in your car, so that talk radio becomes a habit for many people." And because it's in the car, it's not that easily checked, even if the...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  "Disingenuous"?...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  A query for OGH: You're currently working on a Narnia crossover. Have you read John Braine's 'The Pious Agent'? I wondered at the time we first met Persephone Hazard whether that was on your list. (That was the point where...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  Re the Sleeper in the Pyramid, maybe "freeing Nyarlathotep" hasn't actually occurred yet. The New Management may just be an early stage of that process....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Heteromeles at 834: That is - loosely - how the Traveller 2300 stutterwarp drive works, but using quantum teleportation. (also significantly faster, for playability reasons.)...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  AFAICT even if it does, it's self-limiting: it relies on the coils to generate the magnetic field to contain and fuse the plasma, and any mass big enough to escape will inevitably damage the coils to the point where they...
• Commented on Summer webcomics
  What happens if you go via the Gocomics site? https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Re Mr Prigozhin, I think Wagner is the main target. Prigozhin is secondary. Otherwise, the hit would be on Prigozhin, rather than on the Wagner top brass. So I suspect it's a bit of private enterprise - probably by one...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  "Peter Watts explores the former, in Starfish and Rifters, arguing that intelligence is an evolutionary dead end waiting to be replaced by something more power-efficient. Maybe interesting as we grapple with A"I" and what we actually want." There is also...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I assume you've read Kim Newman's 'Life's Lottery'? If not, do....
• Commented on Summer webcomics
  Maybe some sort of phased-array antenna. Though that would beg the question of why it's only humans. Probably the same thing which allows them to do magic. Hm. BLUE HADES were-squid?...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Norway Maple: Coppered nails? No idea if this works (might need a lot of them) but I have heard of it being done....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Thank you. I did find it suspect, though I am not entirely sure why. Tone of voice, perhaps....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  We are way past 300, so I'd like to ask Heteromeles' opinion of this, please: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/30/2182243/-Before-Fighting-Forest-Fire-with-Fire-First-Tell-the-Truth Superficially it makes sense to me, but I am aware I don't actually understand it....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  We'll have to see what happens with Tesla, won't we....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Unlicensed biolab with infectious agents shut down in California. No idea what's going on here. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/illegal-lab-with-infectious-diseases-and-dead-mice-busted-in-california/...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  "driving range complaints" sounds like an euphemism for being hit in the ear by a golf ball....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  It would be more like 6-800 years ago, I think. I don't think they are building a theme park, at least not in the explicitly feudal way you seem to be suggesting. I am not particularly well informed about what...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  The only level-oriented systems I ever liked were Rolemaster, which would let you learn anything at all if you were prepared to pay the points cost, and Bushido, which made level advances really hard and capped them at level 6...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Sadly, the Smokejumpers site is not shipping anyting at the moment, and it reads to me as though they may not do it again....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  We're well past 300, so this may be worth reading for those interested in robot cars. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/robotaxi-haters-in-san-francisco-are-disabling-waymo-cruise-traffic-cones/...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Holy cow. I literally can't remember the last film I went to see in a cinema, but I might have to go to see that....
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  There is a love story by Ursula Le Guin, in her Hainish sequence, where two persons of different origins (and thus species, though there would be a common ancestry) are taken hostage and develop a relationship which later becomes a...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  The knock-ons would also include very, very rapid pandemic pathogen spread. Maybe not a massively good idea?...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Something about this reminds me of a story called ... ... 'Examination Night', by a chap called Charles Stross. I always felt that was worth further development, though it's clearly more a 1990s Charlie than a 2020s Charlie....