Mitch Wagner

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• Commented on Dead plots
  There have been several alternate history stories in which the South won the Civil War and slavery persists into the present day. Most recently, the folks who produced Game of Thrones had an idea for an alt-history TV series on...
• Commented on Dead plots
  While catching up on this thread today I was thinking about how the failure of US Reconstruction was the basis for the Lost Cause. So yeah maybe it didn't exist in name when ERB was writing a Princess of Mars,...
• Commented on Dead plots
  ... Feel free to name one thing invented by Bill Gates. I’ll name you two: Microsoft Corporation, and the business model of selling software as something separate from hardware....
• Commented on Dead plots
  Charlie Stross: my appetite for American-centric parables about the evils of racism is negligible. Why is that? I can think of two possible reasons: You are not American, nor an American resident. Too parochial, not taking into account how American...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Re current dead plots/tropes, the same culture shift that makes the "cop" protagonist more difficult has also (hopefully) killed off any sympathetic character or setting in the U.S. adopting the "Lost Cause" view of the Civil War, or portraying Southern...
• Commented on Dead plots
  A friend noted recently that "The Marching Morons" is prescient, with its storyline involving a group of self-appointed elites who appoint a dimwitted huckster as chief executive to carry out the elites' program of genocide. The huckster in that novel...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  I think that civilization will absolutely survive, and still be here in 100 years. That's what I find intriguing about Charlie's original post. It assumes that we're not going to have a Singularity, or alien invasion, or invent time travel,...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  The way to get company towns to work is to provide housing as part of the wage. Greetings, American, and welcome to the 22d Century! If you liked the 21st Century, where losing your job meant losing your health coverage,...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  For a newer version, you can google "vanlife" or "van life," which is a growing problem around here in certain neighborhoods. It's a problem where I am too -- San Diego, California. They live near the beach. People who live...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  I enjoy solitude too. I'm fine with an apartment building. I've lived in apartments. But the kind of dorm arrangements or boarding houses I discussed above makes my skin crawl. On the other hand, I can and do enjoy solitude...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  I recall reading that modern ideas of physical, visual and auditory privacy are relatively recent -- like in the past century or two. Previously, people shared big rooms, with servants for the middle class and servants and courtiers for the...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  VR & telepresence for the elderly and physically disabled. My father-in-law was 90 years old when he died in 2000; still mentally alert but as frail as eggshells and barely able to walk. His equivalent in 2119 will live in...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Ummmm ... thanks, guys? :) My mind just skipped to a possible AskReddit post, which I then submitted....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Sorry, "federal," not "federated."...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  What do you mean when you say the UK is more federated than the US, then?...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Levenger sells fancy ballpoint and fountain pens with stylus nibs on the reverse end....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  "... the UK is more federal than the USA." If by that you mean that the individual countries(?): England, Northern Ireland, Scotland(?), and Wales have more autonomy than US states, then I find that believable....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Desks with holes for inkpots were common where I was in school in Brooklyn, New York, until I was about eight years old (second grade here in the US). And I haven't thought of that in nearly a half-century! We...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  "Tactical sporran" would be a good name for a podcast....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  I get the general gist. The specifics are confusing....
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  It's as if the UK was multiple different countries. :) I thought I understood the difference between the UK, Great Britain, and England, but then I watched the video linked in the preceding paragraph. Now I realize I don't understand...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Not a 2015 purchase, but I love this LG Electronics LG Tone Pro Wireless Sterio Headset. It's my desk phone, personal phone, and I use it to listen to podcasts when I'm out walking the dog, about 90 minutes per...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Second the endorsement for the Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard. It's got a nice typing feel, but so do many other mobile keyboards. The thing I like best about the Microsoft is that it travels separately from my iPad. When using...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  The Onyx device sounds overly compromised to me. When I use my iPad mini, it's because it's a fully functinal tablet -- indeed, I wish it did more, not less. When I use my Kindle Paperwhite, I want a single-function...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Second the endorsement for Ulysses. Some idiot wrote an in-depth review in March. Scrivener is too complicated for me, and Byword is too simple. Ulysses is just right. And unlike Scrivener, Ulysses has a companion iPad app AND an iPhone...
• Commented on Clickbait spasm: 14 gizmos I used in 2015
  Charlie - Interesting. If Wikipedia is correct, you're about three years younger than I am. And yet fountain pens were old-fashioned and obsolete when I was a boy. I don't think I even saw one outside of a museum, movies,...
• Commented on The present in deep history
  SFreader (#279): "We can keep our bodies going (more or less) but there's little that can keep our minds from falling apart." I'm intrigued by a possible solution to the opposite problem: In my family, I've seen people in their...
• Commented on The present in deep history
  Graydon - Of course you are correct about cities and agriculture existing in the Americas prior to European colonization. This is covered in some detail in 1491, which I have read and loved, as well as in Bill Bryson's "At...
• Commented on The present in deep history
  Graydon - Good point re: settling of Australia and the Americas. I'm giving myself a dope-slap in the forehead now. Amend my earlier post to read settling of Australia and the Americas BY CIVILIZED PEOPLE. And I'm using "civilized" here...
• Commented on The present in deep history
  dpb - The African Diaspora has been just part of an overall global diaspora fueled by advances in transportation and technology: The migration of people all over the world, and settling of the American and Australian continents....