Geoff Hart

Geoff Hart

  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    Charlie wrote [436]: "You don't seem to get it: homelessness is a deliberate political choice." Oh, were we talking about homelessness in [426]? I thought we were talking about repurposing existing real estate. I thought I expressed a good use...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    SFReader [426] wondered: "Re-purposing downtown office buildings... If anyone knows of other cities in other countries also doing office-to-residence conversions, please post a link." No link, but here in Kingston (Ontario) we have a lovely [sic] old penitentiary that's been...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    Charlie noted [291]: "What you missed is that between 0°C and 4°C (above which the ice melts) ice contracts -- the volume occupied by a given mass of water at 0°C is about 10% less than the same mass of...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    ilya187 [275] noted: "Ice shelves are already floating in the water, so they don't contribute to sea-level rise in any meaningful way." Unfortunately, the problem with floating ice is that as its meltwater warms from 0°C to ambient temperatures, the...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    Speaking of archeological assumptions, it's worth looking for a copy of "Motel of the Mysteries" (Davod Macaulay). Maybe in your local library or used bookstore? It's a delicious satire on how we're led astray by our assumptions and guesswork, not...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    whitroth [349] noted: "Where you least expect it?" Milwaukee? My bad. I meant that Milwaukee's the home of monopolistic mass-market beer (Miller, Schlitz, Pabst), which tends to crowd out craft beers. I get where you're coming from about the price...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    whitroth [344] opined: "Beer in America: warning, danger, danger, Will Robinson!" I'm guessing it depends on what's going on in your local microbrewery scene. Having a brain fart, but I think it's the River Street Brewery (in Milwaukee? Cleveland?) that...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    Robert Prior [297] noted: "You've probably also encountered American beer, which is charitably described as making love in a canoe." As the ancient Monty Python joke goes, "because both are fucking near water". But that's badly outdated info, and even...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    Bellinghman [276] noted: "When we were in Palermo a few weeks back, we were rather surprised that at least some of the restaurants by our hotel didn't open until 8:00pm." That's common in Italy and Sicily, since most people eat...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    whitroth [1303} noted: "Oh, and about donating - BSFS, in its building, has something like 15,000 books, just built a mezzanine, and a lot of duplication with what I have." Do they accept tenants? G...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Robert Prior [1293] noted: "In one of the Wasted Talent comics, Jam is arguing with her husband about buying more books (their apartment is full) and brings up wanting another room. He says "I thought you didn't want to live...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    whitroth [1258] noted: "Maybe because we bought HOMES, not "investment properties"? Indeed. For our retirement, Madame and I moved to a home we loved in a community we loved in a city we loved about 8 months ago. Significantly higher...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Rocketpjs [1141] noted: "Canada certainly has its share of racism" Indeed we do. For example, there was this bit a few years ago (pre-pandemic?) in which Montreal's Black police officers submitted an open letter to their management about structural racism...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    David L [912] responded to my suggestion that pairing human oversight with AI to handle the red tape might work: "Those human jobs will be boring for those with a brain who actually think about the proposed solutions and so...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Heteromeles [856] noted: "As with Amazon and book sales, taking over bureaucracies from humans looks to be a place where AI can excel, especially if an AI can provide faster, better service for cheaper, as Amazon did on book sales."...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Heteromeles [675] noted: "Global Jubilee. To solve the problem of wealth concentration, the nation-states declare a Biblical-style Jubilee" Picking nits, and NOT attacking Heteromeles, but this is a big one: it's not Biblical, it's Jewish. Specifically, it's in the Torah....
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Robert Prior [586] updated my context: "Actually, that was part of a thread about how calculus was required but stats wasn't, and I was wondering if making stats the required course made more sense if you were only going to...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    I have fond memories of a plant ecology field course I took one summer. The prof, trying to encourage us to dialogue rather than just sitting and taking notes, told us that he insisted on us asking questions. "There are...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Grant noted "At uni I did 5 days a week, including one all day practical with half a day Wednesday and most other days 5 or so hours of lectures. I compared notes with someone I knew doing English Literature...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Moz: "But then I have to ask: what's the point of humanities? If you're not trying to solve problems or improve things, why even bother? "I know why you suck" doesn't seem very motivating. To me the value of humanities...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    fwiw, Charlie, it's hard to blame SFF authors (or any other authors) for having their words misinterpreted. There's always some sociopath who can find a way to deliberately misinterpret what you've written. For example, it's not like most of Christ's...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    Speaking of longtermism et al., a timely discussion between the wonderful Stephen Fry and John Cleese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ9W_Pq3v0Q Skip ahead to ca. 2.5 minutes for starting the discussion of ethics and ca. 4 minutes for objectivism and longtermism....
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Charlie corrected my error [763]: You're right. I'd remembered "clouds" in the habitable zone of the Venusian atmosphere, but forgot that they weren't water. Guess I was thinking of deep time back when Venus still had water. JohnS wondered [813]:...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Charlie noted [718]: "The upper atmosphere is pretty dry but you might be able to schedule descents to lower altitude to run a vapour trap overnight, then use daytime power to split the water and ascend back to operational altitude."...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Correction: Change "assumes" to "suggests"....
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Charlie [510] noted: "Russia today is the logical outcome of (a) the USSR failing, (b) western attempts to impose neoliberalism also failing (and causing immense misery along the way)" Minor correction: That wording (incorrectly) assumes that neoliberalism is intended to...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    How about a workable "post-scarcity" economy? Something wholly original or something in dialogue with some of what Cory Doctorow's been doing. If you're in the mood for hommage, as you were with "Saturn's Children", maybe set the story in something...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Heteromeles [124] noted: "So no, true shapeshifting was not required by the original stories." My point was that if you're using classic/traditional werewolves, shape-shifting is the sine qua non. You then have options: choose shape-shifting for skinwalkers (thereby doing lazy...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Charlie [85] wrote: "That's not an inversion! (By the end of The Labyrinth Index I think it's pretty clear that all the humans in the expedition Mhari led are either dead or no longer human" Apologies for the lack of...
  • Commented on A fistful of tropes
    Another reason to avoid the cowboys and werewolves: if shapechangers are real, then by implication you'd have to do a fair bit of thinking of how to account for aboriginal beliefs such as the Navajo concept of skinwalkers without slipping...
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