Nile

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• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares: spoiler time!
  You've mentioned a progressive dementia afflicting incautious magic users, several times, due to holes being nibbled from their brains when using meat instead of metal-and-silicon as the computation substrate... But we don't get a view of this as a societal...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Try a predicted bit of the future that's probably going to serve up some "Who ordered that?" by 2032: Surveillance Capitalism. We know it's going to get worse in America and Brexitstan. But how much worse? There's only so much...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Good to see it coming out! Are Transreal getting a box of hardcovers for signing?...
• Commented on Omicron
  I would be very glad to hear from a reliable source that Omicron is less-virulent than other circulating strains of Covid. But the numbers aren't in yet, on virulence. They're in on transmissiblity, and the news is genuinely frightening. If...
• Commented on PSA: Publishing supply chain shortages
  Wot he sed... Any chance of Transreal getting an order in?...
• Commented on Invisible Sun: Themes and Nightmares
  Mike from Transreal's been in touch, and I've got my order in! The glimpses I've seen of the book I've seen have compelling plot lines and characters I really, really want to see through to end of their roles in...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Yes, I've been watching this... "That's the real end-game for the money men behind Brexit." It's one of the objectives, and it is apocalyptic for whatever remains of the economy, because it means that all cross-border transactions with the EU...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  Let's be a bit more direct, here: "MuskCoin is required in payment for cargo capacity on Earth-to-Mars shipping" MuskCoin is required in payment for shipping a serf to Mars. It is, among other things, an advance payment for the real-estate...
• Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
  The question is: how can this be undermined? The 'Proof of work' is a proof of authorisation by the Central Bank and I would strongly recommend that this is accompanied by a proof-of-economic-demand in the form of a reserve deposit...
• Commented on A Quick Infomercial
  So that's where my order for Invisible Sun got to! Will it be available from TransReal Fiction?...
• Commented on Covid on Mars
  Looks like you're building the power station at the North Pole, then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_polar_ice_caps The South Pole has a permanent ice layer of frozen carbon dioxide, eight metres thick; it's seasonal at the North Pole but that's fine, too - 'Seasonal'...
• Commented on What happens now?
  "I find it incredible that anyone thinks that it could have been even an incompetently planned coup" So it's a not-really-planned not-a-coup, that has succeeded in the things that failed coups do. Trump doesn't really plan: his way in life...
• Commented on What happens now?
  Trump did not lose money running a casino. The fraudulent 'business' which ran Trump Casinos lost somewhere between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and forty million dollars or other peoples money. People who do not matter to Trump....
• Commented on What happens now?
  You may find this analysis useful: https://eand.co/this-what-trump-always-wanted-and-theres-worse-to-come-fd402567afdd The short version: most attempts at political violence on the national stage fail in their visible objectives. But the strategic objective - destabilisation, the legitimisation of violence, discovering the level of support in...
• Commented on Submarine coming through!
  I cannot tell you how screwed we all are, here in Brexitland, without resorting to the phrase: "We are so screwed, that surgeons were unable to recover the corkscrew" That's us, here; and on the other side of the Atlantic,...
• Commented on So you say you want a revolution
  Brexiting Euratom gets interesting, in unexpected ways. So lets gloss over the expected issue of who's certified as competent to receive medical isotopes or be the duty manager in a power station... Does anyone here know anything about (say) industrial...
• Commented on So you say you want a revolution
  I cannot tell you how screwed we all are, without resorting to the phrase: "Surgeons were unable to recover the corkscrew" But... Me, I got a job in Dublin. Not what I wanted at the time, having my job exported...
• Commented on Upcoming Attractions!
  The Nürnberg session looks interesting! As for dystopia societies... It's rather worrying to think that we are living in 'The good old days', as a future generation might choose to recall it; and I suspect that the worst of times,...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  The short version: I can see an Elder God, or something far, far worse than the Black Pharaoh as you have portrayed him, becoming the Prime Minister, and a wildly popular one, by the use of money, media influence, and...
• Commented on All Glory to the New Management!
  "Even if it costs the odd human sacrifice" I can imagine the Daily Mail headlines that would bring the country 'round to supporting it wholeheartedly. I might even write a couple of them down, on the kind of day when...
• Commented on Infomercial Interlude
  Signed copies at TransReal books?...
• Commented on Infomercial Interlude
  Interesting... I don't know if Derek himself can carry a novel, even with all the fun that can can be had with an arrested-development-teenage-geek catapulted into the thirty-years-later present day. His gaming circle will now have grown up and graduated...
• Commented on A serious question
  I amm being very good, and will treat myself to a GoodBoy!® Doggy-chocolate reward when the moon is full, for not repeating the most toxic responses I gave on Twitter before it occurred to me to come here. However... "Also......
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Look for regional trade figures: last time I checked, Scotland had a net export surplus with the EU, for both manufactured goods and agricultural produce. Also: they are actually exporting seed - mostly, I think, seed potatoes - and that...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Clarkson does have the best interests of the motor industry in mind: that's not necessarily a virtue, and some would weigh it alongside his vices and character defects... ...But I can well believe you, surprising as I find that news...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Tip-top Kipper Trip! Six game-on-for-gammon Little Englanders compete to be The Next Leader of UKIP in 90-second speaking slots and a 2-minute biopic showcasing their Nationalism, xenophobia and "I'm nor a racist but..." dogwhistles, with the winner chosen in a...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  The best bang-per-buck with the lowest risk of apocalyptic retaliation against Iran is to destabilise The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A servile revolt in any Arabian city - including the Emirates - would do it. So, too, would targeted assassinations...
• Commented on Introducing Dead Lies Dreaming
  Successive Republican Presidents have installed a highly effective passive defence against assassination: the automatic succession of the Presidency to dangerously-stupid or psychopathic Vice-president. The Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Council do not want Mike Pence in the White House. For the...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  Am rather intrigued by the rarely unmentioned 4) unknown/knowns I like that observation! However, I define it differently: "Things that we know, but don't realise we know" Consider that an (almost) all-white, all-male, all Oxford-educated upper caste of First...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  The right to human appeal of an algorithmic decision is baked-in to European law, in a directive - the General Data Protection Regulation - which every member state has enacted in domestic law. Someone was thinking ahead, when that provision...