martin089

martin089

  • Commented on Ask me anything!
    I'm sorry for my snarky question. I should have known, actually....
  • Commented on Ask me anything!
    Since you first mentioned it, Ghost Engines was at least two years from publication, and everytime a laundryfiles or laundryvere or other project jumped the queue and pushed ghost engines somewhere between now and fusion power. So I give up,...
  • Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
    In shared falts, there's a few rooms with a dedicated function (kitchen, bathroom ...) plus everyon has ther own room. Couples tend to have rooms only per function: kitchen, sleeping etc. Families are in between, with enough space: Living room...
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    Thanks, dps, Eloise and others for tips re SF and disability. I disagree with the conservation of detail bit: SF is as any kind of story about investigating the human condition. When you can posit a totally different society, tech...
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    I second the blind spot of stories set 100 or 200 years from now. Also second the blind spot of, for want of a better word, utopias - trying to envision possible societies that are mostly livable and an improvement...
  • Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
    I have another counterfactual: You are given the possibility to make most fossile fuel reserves still in the ground useless in a short timespan, say 4-5 years. You have to decide fast, days rather than weeks, the opportunity will go...
  • Commented on On hold
    A question that'S AFAIK not at all connected to previous comments here: One thing I'd be curious about is in how far Cahrlies "notes on the worst case scenario" hold up, mor than a year later. Cahrlie did make a...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    As I tried to say above, KSR told about the messy economy in 2312, he didn't show it. Maybe I shouldn't be harsh on him, it is a wicked problem and exploring this in detail would have told another story....
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    I'll take the cheap shot, at the concept of trophy wife - The wife is a trophy because the prevailing assumption in modern western societies is that marraige is entered freely, out of love and not material concerns. Not that...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    I'm sorry to hear about Hugh, condolences to all who knew him. I recall William Gibson saying in an interview that he didn'T do much world building - meaning he did not have worked out idea how the sprawl works....
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    this is on topic ... Nazis drivin of paypal etc., using more bitoivn and becoming rich all of a sudden. https://mic.com/articles/186438/neo-nazi-wealth-is-rapidly-growing-why-bitcoin Sadly, the article does not (yet) go into much depths....
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    IIRGC*, his criticism of the established theories you mention is that anthropologists found no such barter systems among tribal socieites. Also no direct historic evidence of these barter systems. *If I recall Graeber correctly...
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    Since the question pops up wether bc is money (ok, on here not really), one interpreatation - bc is fictious capital & it's value, like many other assets is basically what the owner hopes to get at a later time....
  • Commented on Silence is ending (soon)
    The question is, drones carrying explosives where predicted (for non state actors!) for years. We haven't seen them yet, of have we? Why? Is there a solid reason, or are we witnessing the hype cycle where everyone talks about an...
  • Commented on Silence is ending (soon)
    Yes, you're right of course! I actually looked up the correct name (in my bookshelf) to google the image, but somehow still wrote the wrong name into my comment ......
  • Commented on Silence is ending (soon)
    Re. childrens books ... Some ideas for illustrators: The Tjong-Khing, who diid a great and very spooky book based on Hieronymous Bosch. An image from which: Alberti Innocenti, who's versiopn of little red riding hood also has a very paranoid...
  • Commented on Trapped in the wrong trouser-leg of time
    I stumbled across this criticism of cryptocurrencies today, which I thought I'd share since this has been a past opic of interest here: Cryptocurrencies Aren’t Currencies. They Aren’t Stocks, Either .. funnily, since I found this the topic here also...
  • Commented on Help Wanted at the Climate Policy Sausage Factory
    Damm! This thread made me think up a carbon sequestration strategy that just might work. Here's the idea: Biochar does not work at large scale or is at least not trivial. This paper (that I've read a year ago, also...
  • Commented on Help Wanted at the Climate Policy Sausage Factory
    The pleistocene park folks claim (IIRC, tbh it's been years since I read the page) that steppes with lots of animals sequester lots of carbon into the soil because of all the trampling, dunno if it really compares to a...
  • Commented on Help Wanted at the Climate Policy Sausage Factory
    Another possible scam: Landscaping firms to do the remdedial measures after a project will need a specific certification, and there are many ways that con go wrong and still make someone (the certifying body) rich. So it turns basically into...
  • Commented on Help Wanted at the Climate Policy Sausage Factory
    I'm not sure it would be a scam, but one could sell seedballs with a mix of seeds all over california to baja california, with a focus on low-maintenance shrubs. the idea beeing that developers, after building their pipline or...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    Another possible epligoue to the Laundry series: The Black Chamber makes a dealwith horrors from beyond spacetime, seeling of 90% of the earth population (most of which happen to be brown). The Black Chambers parts of the deal: take out...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    On the other hand if dark fiction is sufficiently unrealistic or unrelated to real world problems, I can sometimes find it comforting. The problem is when you, while reading, find ways to relate it in real events: When reading the...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    Skim reading German Wikipedia on submainr warefare in WWII finds only one incidient where a german submarine action was treated as a warcrime - Peleus incident, when the commander of the submarine had the lifeboats of a sunk greek freighter...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    Just to be sure, I don't think that the massacre of Leeds is treated as a throwaway plot point in the book - just that the victims very anonymous. Or at least that's my reading, or rather, how I remember...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    I greatly enjoyed TNS, like others I loved the dinner scene & while I generally don't like a strong military focus these parts where well done. There are things I do't quite understand, does anything of Cassie survive in First...
  • Commented on Rejection Letter
    Back on topic ... One, can one of you people who work in industrial IT explain to me how hard it is to update a computer running SCADA? AFAIK the normal order of things is that the PLC does the...
  • Commented on Traveller RPG, Firefly, Dumarest, Vatta's War... are they all "Star Punk"?
    To the multitude of exdamples for downlifting i want to add Ishiguro's "never let me go", while no geneticall downlift happens the protagonists are conditioned in a very scary way and similar to what host described upthread. Also, in awa,...
  • Commented on Traveller RPG, Firefly, Dumarest, Vatta's War... are they all "Star Punk"?
    Is anyone still discussing Rayguns & Rocketry, Harolds new settings and piracy? I skippedtha last 100 or so comments, but I have sort of an idea how to fit it all together. In Harolds setting (he described his world-building hack...
  • Commented on The sudden eruption of news
    thx, this is a a start!...
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