kaleberg

kaleberg

  • Commented on I should blog more, but ...
    So, are you the science fiction writer who invented the torment nexus? https://www.eschatonblog.com/2023/09/also-give-us-billions-so-we-can-invent.html...
  • Commented on Books I Will Not Write #8: The Year of the Conspiracy
    That plot is so very Ross Thomas. He was always writing stuff like this back in the 1980s. His protagonists were always getting into or stumbling onto plots like this one, and running into the usual round of spooks, US...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    Has anyone actually called someone using a smartphone? The odds are maybe 1 in 3 that someone will actually answer for a voice call. People don't take voice calls anymore. It's usually spam, so unless it is a call they...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    224 Assuming that population growth is the only possible driver of economic growth shows a lack of imagination. I suppose recent history has painted any idea of raising living standards as impossible, even in a story involving ships that can...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    224 Assuming that population growth is the only possible driver of economic growth shows a lack of imagination. I suppose recent history has painted any idea of raising living standards as impossible, even in a story involving ships that can...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    223 A surprising number of Westerns in the 1950s were based on theme of the passing of the gunfighter. Perhaps guns had their place, but that place was in the past. Look at The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Shane,...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    201 - If you live in a US / Canada border town, odds are a lot of Americans scoot over the border to buy their medicines. Meanwhile, the Canadians have stuff drop shipped by Amazon and the like and haul...
  • Commented on Dead plots
    127 - Testing new drugs is insanely expensive because of the inherently low signal to noise ratio. Just switching from one batch of a drug to another can totally wipe out the signal. There are consulting companies that specialize in...
  • Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
    You do realize that while reality shows are technically unscripted, all the lines and action are written by writers who specialize in writing "unscripted" shows. While the pay isn't as good as for a scripted show, the unscripted writers' guild...
  • Commented on What do you know about my inner demons?
    It isn't just the tracking, it's the stupid use of AI to create a custom experience for one no matter where one roams. It's like those ridiculous recommendations from Amazon, Netflix and other such services that assume that if you...
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    That 'The Coming Ice Age' was written by Betty Friedan. That was a familiar name. She later wrote the Feminine Mystique about "the problem"....
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    Immortality doesn't bode well for science if science progresses one funeral at a time....
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    Look up Qian Xuesen. That's what China has been doing since the 1970s with some success....
  • Commented on Do my Homework
    I think science fiction needs to go back to its roots, shit-kicking technology. That's how it ran from Jules Verne into the 1970s when other, possibly more serious stuff took over. We are faced with all sorts of challenges: global...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    I think world building is overrated. Most people care more about story building. Science fiction isn't really about the future. It's about the present. I think Joseph Fink at The Bargain Bin nailed this. It's about our society's current hopes...
  • Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
    The big problem with bitcoin is that it only looks decentralized. If you look at how it works, it gives big advantages to whomever can command immense computing resources and rapid network speeds. When bitcoin first came out it was...
  • Commented on Burn The Programmer!
    I think the big break between magic and science & technology started with the printing press and its ability to disseminate results more widely. Humans have always had expertise and schools and knowledge, but they were limited in range and...
  • Commented on Rejection Letter
    Excellent. For a similar take, on World War II, a show that definitely needs better writers, check out: http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html...
  • Commented on Random excuses
    Thank you for lying on your back, not laying on your back. I'm not a grammar Nazi, but seeing people confuse lay and lie is exhausting. It was like driving past that damned Christain[sic] center at the edge of town...
  • Commented on 2117 revisited
    We're already seeing the rise of renewable energy sources and fossil fuels losing dominance. If anything, they are going to get cheaper and more efficient. I expect the storage problem to be solved. Look back at 1917. The internal combustion...
  • Commented on Wooden Train Parenting
    We were tutoring a friend's teenager for the college entrance exams and were impressed with his vocabulary. He claimed it was all from those Warhammer novels. We worked on his other reading skills instead. I have nothing against modern toys...
  • Commented on Just plain icky
    Schistosomiasis is way pre-western. It was documented in ancient hieroglyphs and sometimes called male menarche since male genital bleeding from the parasite load usually started at around the same age females started menstruating, and probably bleeding from schistosomiasis as well....
  • Commented on Ever Young?
    I'm with S.P.Zeidler. A big chunk of being an adult is about taking responsibility for oneself. That means being able to make one's way in the larger world. In law, my father used to explain, one is an infant until...
  • Commented on Facts of Life and Death
    Brexit might be a big change, but I doubt it is going to be as bad as many think. It is definitely not going to lead to famine. As best I can tell, the people dying of hunger in the...
  • Commented on Sometimes I don't know why I bother!
    I'd suggest Frederique Darragon who started out as the kind of character Jilly Cooper tries to write. You know, a wealthy socialite who sails the Atlantic, plays polo to win even with a broken jaw, model, jockey, samba player. Did...
  • Commented on "Tomorrow belongs to me"
    Will anyone outside of London even notice the economic meltdown? Most of England has already melted down. I get the impression that London did its own Brexit some time ago, back in the 80s. Nine out of ten of the...
  • Commented on Cytological Utopia and the rapture of the eukaryotes
    Why do you think they resurrected ALL of us? They could just be running 1950 to 2050. They could be running perhaps a few thousand of us at full resolution, but the rest at lower resolution perhaps using statistical data...
  • Commented on Cytological Utopia and the rapture of the eukaryotes
    We actually can determine something about the hardware running the simulation. From the 1972 HAKMEM, an MIT classic: ITEM 154 (Gosper): The myth that any given programming language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of powers...
  • Commented on A purely theoretical dilemma
    This sounds like a great way to release our ids as in 'The Forbidden Planet'. A lot of what we learn as we grow up is better self control, including control of what we communicate. You really don't want to...
  • Commented on A purely theoretical dilemma
    There is a bit of truth in that Nature article. Usually, your neurons make up their mind, so to speak, about actions before you are consciously aware of the decision. In a controlled environment, it is possible to predict, for...
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