ilya187

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• Commented on Place your bets
  A decade or so back I tried to show a bright college student Dr. Strangelove. They simply didn't get it on any level. Everything from "fear of nuclear annihilation" to "Our precious bodily fluids" completely bounced off her. I see...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  A is for Azathoth, Who listens to flutes B is for Blighted, Gardner’s farm, leaf to root C’s for Cthulhu, Mile-high and squishy D is for Deep Ones, Who smell mildly fishy... https://paizo.com/products/btpy93ju?The-Lovecraftian-ABCs...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I simply could not get past about page 25-50 of "Moby Dick" it's real trash. Why some supposedly-educated morons thought it was a great story is beyond me. I found it significantly more readable in Russian translation....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  the worst aspect of the Laundryverse is that all too plausible go-along-to-get-along by politicians readily complying with 'stuff' to avoid losing their positions (and heads) Or, in this particular case, hearts...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Heteromeles, do you have any feedback on my post #1701? I am curious as to your opinion there....
• Commented on Place your bets
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Jo-djilvo Is this Sam Bankman-Fried at 1:45?...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  No, that was a quote from "Atrocity Archives". I forgot you had it serialized first....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Is it "just" the money, or is he an actual Bond-VillanTM doing it for shits, giggles & vicarious pleasure? If the latter, what can be done about it, because things in human shpe, like him & Vlad the insaner should...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Earlier today I opened "Atrocity Archives" and had a serious case of deja vu. Remember, OGH published it in 2004: They're looking for a breakthrough. Knowing how to deconstruct any opponent's ideological infrastructure and derive self-propagating conceptual viruses based on...
• Commented on Place your bets
  one novel where all the protagonists except the evil bad adversary were LGBT+ Rule 34?...
• Commented on Place your bets
  what's missing from much much of the literature on both non-violence and climate change are things like "grunt humor." Most of the nonviolent literature is deathly earnest An interesting observation, and I think it has to do with the fact...
• Commented on Place your bets
  (recent attack by 'unknown mob') Link seems to be broken...
• Commented on Place your bets
  his only speaking role was in in Mel Brooks's Silent Movie (1976)... his character has the only audible speaking part, uttering the single word "Non!" Alas, non. Marceau played Professor Ping in "Barbarella", and it was a speaking role....
• Commented on Place your bets
  I used to be able to solo 5 hours and have a few soft drinks on the way. My prostrate has decided that now it is about 3 hours and fewer drinks please. My wife is hourly. Objectively speaking, all...
• Commented on Place your bets
  And just because we are way past 300... A female dragonborn paladin of noble birth is the ultimate switch in the hoary "rescue princess from the dragon" trope. Depending on the situation, she can be the knight, the princess or...
• Commented on Place your bets
  "Kids on a farm were free labor. You had as many of them as you could. They improved your quality of life. Kids in a city condo are a destructive house pet that drains your time and money for at...
• Commented on Place your bets
  KSR's novel uses pebbles, fired from 100 or 1000 different directions at precise velocities, all to arrive exact same point and time. In effect coalescing into a large unexpected rock just in front of the jet intakes, just as the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  "The Monkey Wrench" by Gordon Dickson, first published in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1951...
• Commented on Place your bets
  As I said above, state level actors may well become radical environmentalists after a few megadeaths due to heat waves - when the cause is evident. Except state-level actors do not need to shoot oil executives out of the sky....
• Commented on Place your bets
  It only gets difficult when you want to survive the attack and respond to the obvious consequences of the first attack in order to make a successful second one. Notice another sentence in my post to which you were replying:...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Do you mean "civilian quadcopter drones" or are you including the hypersonic toys that DARPA is alleged to have in operation (IIRC the plans are confirmed, the real thing not). That's why I wrote "unless deployed by state-level actors". Yes,...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I never read "The Ministry for the Future", but going by what you described, I do not see it working in real world. Certainly no more than once. Drones are much slower than business jets and do not fly as...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I see what you did there......
• Commented on Place your bets
  It may have been a good plot device in 1950's science fiction, but people who seriously buy it, annoy me. Especially when they are as smart as Penrose....
• Commented on Place your bets
  The fact that Penrose is talking bollocks does not mean that the converse of his claim is true. We simply don't know. You are right. It's just that "I bring down this super-powerful computer by asking it to [insert some...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Here is a pretty good criticism of Penrose's argument: https://sortingsearching.com/2021/07/18/roger-penrose-ai-skepticism.html Note my comment at the end; it is in response to James Naish's comment about computers fundamentally unable to handle logical paradoxes....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Another problem: the growing global middle class is projected by some to consume as much or more than the rich. I suspect this is one of the drivers behind the wealthy trying to impoverish everyone: it's entirely possible that a...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The poor don't give two figs about the long term and will light anything they can get their hands on on fire to stay warm (or cool) today. Including the biosphere. Ugh. On more than one occasion I had run...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Apparently the human brain has difficulty handling relations between more than 50 objects on the screen. Does this mean 50 static objects? When objects are in motion, I cannot keep track of more than ten at most....
• Commented on Place your bets
  The truly ugly part of Handmaid's Tale, is that the bonnets were sewn and put on by the mothers. And female genital mutilation is almost always carried out by women -- women relatives, to be exact....