anonemouse

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• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  I'll get back to it, but it's thrown a *lot* of "huhs?" at me in the first few pages. It does that. It's very in media res - it just throws you into the Captain's head, and it'd be weird...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  Now maybe for some foreign (to me) flag carriers that operate at a loss can fly with lower load factors. Or maybe regional airlines (22 in the US alone) operating planes in the 50-seat range might have something to do...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  I'm going to quibble - because apparently that's mostly what I'm here to do these days - with this: Homeowners and fast food restaurants may have to do without power to keep the crops growing. In a famine situation, governments...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  You're suggesting we grow everything we want to eat like the Dutch grow tomatoes (lowest yield globally for 2018 was 2.5 kilos per square metre. The Netherlands' was 50.7). Getting there took a lot of investment, and tomatoes are a...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  That's interesting, is this SOP for the military or a consequence of the typically unarmed British police ("when the guys with guns arrive anyone is warned enough")? Possibly, though in the specific case Northern Ireland has never seen an unarmed...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  It's worth reading Plunkitt Of Tammany Hall to see what (some) politicians' opinion of the introduction of what civil service they have was at the time....
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  Your assumption is understandable... and wrong. "We have concluded that the explanation for such firing by Support Company soldiers after they had gone into the Bogside was in most cases probably the mistaken belief among them that republican paramilitaries were...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  My grandfather was a British soldier in Ireland during the Troubles. Volunteer, not conscript, so I presume what you would call a professional soldier. His section came under fire from a sniper. Sergeant down, and the Tommies panicking because they...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  it also calls a distractingly excessive amount of attention to the scenery instead of the action. Which might, after all, be the point. I'm thinking of Graydon Saunder's Commonweal books, which use singular "they." You think it's a case of...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  Given the hypothesis that liberal democracy is immune to legitimation crises is severely damaged by contact with things like "the opinions of the average taxi driver" ("they're all the bloody same, those politicians") or "an episode of Yes Minister," I...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  does the tarot work? Define "work," having regard of the generally accepted meaning of "the tarot works." (Less short and snarky: the tarot - among other things - may or may not be useful ways to start prying at metacognition...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  In my experience Ireland's topped out at four, three times - though there's no actual limit bar sanity. - Council, European Parliament, President, constitutional amendment referendum -Council, European Parliament, Dáil by-election, constitutional amendment referendum - Council, European Parliament, two constitutional...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  My suggestion from that time was to tell anyone from HK that they were welcome to live in one part of Britain ... NI Would have given the various christian murdering thugs loose then some pause. Would have done ......
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  Ok, but what are "Harga" and "Dibbler"? https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sham_Harga https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  There are very few politicians whose primary goal is to make flyover state voters happy. (Almost all of them are elected by flyover state voters.) That coming to the attention of US foreign policy is the same category of event...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  The Irish government is a rich seam of stupid, for anyone who needs a break: the other obvious ongoing example is - through previous scandal, several applications of "it'll probably be fine" thinking, and general eejitry - needing the Vatican's...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  He may not be The Mandate, but I always think of Warren Ellis' Smiler for some unknowable reason:...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  Wrong here. *deletes ungenerous muttering about Americentrism; it's been a long day* (https://www.bai.ie/en/media/sites/2/dlm_uploads/2018/09/Rule27_ElectionGuide_vFinal_English.pdf, page 10.)...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  You're not allowed report exit polls until voting closes here. OTOH, we vote under the PR-STV system so counting has such inherent drama the count coverage the next day is essentially TV sports for politics nerds....
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  'SRS is an inappropriate term'. I actually did try to do some reading last night, because I was stuck awake and unable to sleep, to try to discover the rationale for this view That many trans people would quite like...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  *Busts out the "words mean things" rant, calling-Idris-Elba-African-American version*...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  that same neologistic recasting of the meaning of 'gender' A supposition: that neologism is in fact a contraction - the 'new' meaning aligns with that of "gender identity," so I suspect what's happened is the standard "that's awkward to say/too...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  And cue my sadly-well-practiced "remember, trans people exist" routine: no Y chromosomes doesn't mean no men. OTOH, it does mean a lot *fewer* men, so let's not reject it prematurely......
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighbours_theme_song...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  *much deleted swearing and death threats* There's earworming, there's musical crimes against humanity, and then there's what you just pulled. (:-P, just in tone doen't carry.)...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  ...have you never lived or worked in an area with a Big House/Big Employer/local equivalent? The loyalty engendered can be baffling. (The example that comes to mind was a big employer that went bankrupt, was convicted of attempting to hide...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  There's stuff like Ferrock out there right now, which while not a magic bullet is better CO2-wise than cement; the problem is that it's a new entrant in a risk-averse market against an extremely well understood competitor, so it needs...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  Possibly violating my own rule about inventing new tech, but one wonders if it's possible to create a benevolent version of Cambridge Analytica, to influence a lot of people at low cost. I'd suggest there's a category error here, in...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  1% chance of dying in any given year sounds like the very first thing I should optimize away. Take the first few years to turn my wealth into influence and corporations that nobody can extract value from by merely having...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE, Part 2
  Those two electoral maps are 99 years apart, for anyone curious....