M. Ellis

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• Commented on Outage report
  About three to four years ago, after the 2015 MacBook Pro laptops had come out and before the arm transition was announced (much less wildly successful), I was looking at the future of the Mac and was getting very concerned....
• Commented on Outage report
  Congratulations on the new laptop shiny. My old personal laptop was a MacBook Air (refurbished!) from 2013. I have a new MBP14" and it is easily the best computer I have ever had the pleasure of using. If I could...
• Commented on That sinking feeling
  So I went and did a little more research, looking at current fleet commanders (Rear and Vice admirals) and higher, and here's what I came up with: Northern Command: surface Southern Command: surface Pacific Command: surface Pacific Fleet: fighter pilot...
• Commented on That sinking feeling
  Did a quick search against Wikipedia and of the last Chief of Naval Operations guys, going back to 2000, they are/were, in reverse chronological order: sub, sub, surface warfare, surface warfare, surface warfare, and then a former pilot. In fact,...
• Commented on That sinking feeling
  I took that article with a huge grain of salt to start with, and the idea of a wing-in-ground craft based in the arctic seems absurdly dangerous in all but the most benign weather conditions. I just love the idea...
• Commented on That sinking feeling
  Well if nothing else, looks like we might get ekranoplans back... Still not worth it....
• Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
  I would love nothing more than to see an impeachment, but given the need for 67 Senators to vote for removal, I can't see the House voting for articles even if the Democrats control both the House and Senate. I...
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Whups, and there I go not paying attention to the Author's notes... sorry....
• Commented on New Book Week!
  US Kindle Edition page 333 'French ironclads arrived to take up their basing rights in Tehran in 1926'. Presumably this should be one of the Persian empire ports in the Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean, since Tehran itself is over...
• Commented on New Book Week!
  It is Windsor. It used to be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha but they changed it in WW1 because it sounded too German for the time. Victoria was the last Hanover. Wrong Elizabeth, which will quickly become clear once you have a copy....
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Ended on multiple cliffhangers, even. A veritable cavalcade of cliffhangers, so many that I was actually a bit nonplussed. I firmly believe in Murphy's Law and dramatic coincidence, but I think there was one too many for my taste. They...
• Commented on Book day!
  And I'm now strongly reminded of Octavia Butler. What's a better end in the Laundryverse: abhuman nightmares that remember being human and still have something of the cultures that spawned them, or actual humans ground down to near paste, with...
• Commented on Book day!
  That's absolutely true, and I'm sure you've spent much more time than I have considering what 'continuity of self' means, in general and how it specifically applies here. Heck, Cassie's a perfect example of a composite personality with vastly different...
• Commented on Book day!
  BTW, as someone who became a father for the first time in his early-to-mid 40s, a Bob & Mo cope with being parents unexpectedly late in their lives would be really entertaining, but given the world they live in, I'm...
• Commented on Book day!
  Mo being maybe-pregnant (and yet undecided if she is or not) is interesting, because it neatly sidesteps one of my worries about why she might've survived (and why she might still be Mo instead of a strongly Mo-like entity). It...
• Commented on Report on Seat 14C
  So far the only things I'm having trouble truly disbelieving are the pilot of the F15 not realizing that the 777 pilot is sun-dazzled, and that the remnants of the FAA (after the privatization/giveaway of ATC and most FAA facilities...
• Commented on A taste of nightmares to come
  Cursing my travel schedule. This would've made perfect beach reading in Crete, and it's out a few weeks too late. Looks great though....
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  I'm going to agree with David L. here. Jackson might've been effective at getting his policies accomplished, but many of his policies were particularly appalling. (I will, however, give him keeping the Union together during yet another of the myriad...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  That's a tricky formation. Turns out there’s a surprising number of presidents who held the rank of General, per Wikipedia: Arthur Eisenhower Garfield Grant Harrison, B. Harrison, W.H. Hayes Jackson Johnson Pierce Taylor Washington Presumably you're including Washington and Eisenhower....
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  Having read both The Goblin Emperor and all of YAFGC (several times), they're almost nothing like one another, other than both delighting in using and abusing genre tropes. Beyond that, The Goblin Emperor reads like a very internal novel. There...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  I’m not going to try to translate the last post, but the overall tenor of CatinaDiamond’s posts are a combination a 90s Cypherpunk movement with the (ostensibly) more benevolent aspects of Anonymous and some implication of a Culture-style ‘we will...