Charlie D

Charlie D

  • Commented on Dead Lies Dreaming: Spoilers
    Getting back to erased histories in the real world (or somebody's "let's make Trump president" simulation, or whatever it is): my favorite artifact that doesn't fit well at all with history as we know it is the Antikythera Mechanism --...
  • Commented on Countdown to Crazy
    A few late comments on things in Texas, to put things in perspective: the worst hit city there right now is El Paso, where the health system is in a state of collapse. They've brought in refrigerated trucks (lorries for...
  • Commented on Countdown to Crazy
    SpaceX won't be doing a solar power satellite project unless Elon's views on the subject have changed a great deal from 2012, when he expressed them thus: "You'd have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What's...
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    Don't forget Mr. XJ's technically sophisticated schemes to dupe all the billion-plus people living in his country, or his "Belt and Road" initiative to remake much of the infrastructure of Asia, Europe, and perhaps Africa in the image of his...
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    Odd how discussion of Bond villainy on the part of Mr. Z seems to be short of, well... villainy. (I haven't got much, to be sure; he's as retrograde on sexual and racial harrassment at Tesla plants as the Silicon...
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    Also submitted for your approval: Mr. ZK, the proprietor of a web site which he has convicned a substantial fraction of all humans to use to moderate their communications with close friends and family. This web site nevertheless uses complex...
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    "inventor" -> "investor". Oops....
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    Mr. PT is the founder of a defense contractor whose products are designed to help intelligence agencies sort through large volumes of information. It is named after a magic item ("Palantir") which was famously corrupted by malign forces in the...
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    On the flip side, for "T"s, there's also this guy....
  • Commented on Paging Agent 007
    Not sure your Mr. T really qualifies -- he's more a Bond Villain wannabe who's been shuffled into his present position by the machinations of Mr. X. Beyond not being smart enough to be credible as a villain in an...
  • Commented on The Day After
    Unfortunately, in 2018, Democrats are very unlikely to get control of the Senate. They already effectively hold 25 of the 33 seats that are up for a vote that year (counting two independents who caucus with the Democrats). Further, most...
  • Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND
    Hmmm... no mention of the strangely-shaped parasites currently masquerading as the hair of both Boris and that suddenly significant figure from the other side of the pond, Donald Trump? BTW, back in the (apparently) real world, Boris has been spraying...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Meanwhile, it turns out the new Brexit Minister was twittering two months ago about the prospects for trade deals with individual EU members after Britain left. Screenshot here: https://twitter.com/StevePeers/status/753315030884548608 This is getting off to a wonderful start. Truly!...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    So, May has decided to put Boris Johnson in charge of the Foreign Office. Thus, a leading role in Brexit negotiations will be played by someone who recently compared the EU project to Hitler's dream of a thousand-year Reich, and...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Am I the only one actually reading May's speeches? She has several times said Brexit means Brexit. I posted a citation of them a few hundred posts that, but ever since (like, perhaps, others) I've been heeding the warning of...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Just as a reminder to those handicapping the Tory election sweepstakes: Theresa May is already on record as saying that she regards the result of the referendum as final, not adivsory, and has ruled out a second referendum or a...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    To be fair, the Eurocrats' most desired outcome was almost certainly to keep Britain in the EU -- to the extent that they agreed to extra sweeteners on top of the special favors Britain was already getting, if the result...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    I think you are wrong there. The ECJ is supposed to be non-partisan, only interpreting law and treaties. But a dispute over the interpretation of Article 50 (specifically, whether notification of intention to leave can be withdrawn) is a question...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Further on the question of whether you can "undo" an Article 50 notification: say the Brits say they can, and the EU says "no, we have you over a barrel, you can't." Who adjudiciates the dispute? I don't honestly know,...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    So nice - threaten members & potential ex-members, as in "hangings & floggings will continue until morale improves" you mean? That's the current EU leadership's general philosophy of governance, yes. I don't claim that it's a sound one, only that...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Ah, so the money "THEY NEED" is the money that "Leave" has already promised to stop sending to the EU bureaucracy in any event, in really big letters on the side of their goddam bus. (A substantial fraction of which...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    And by the by, if "THEY NEED OUR MONEY", well... what money is that? The 350 million pounds a week that Leave promised to stop paying the EU and divert to the NHS? The EU was listening to that stuff,...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    And "I'm sorry, was that an invocation of Article 50? No? .... err .. WHAT did you say ... err ..." At which point sensible EU political leaders, those whose interest is stability (Merkel & the "northern" states) &...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Note also that the EU authorities are flatly refusing to engage in "pre-talks" preceding the actual invocation of Article 50. So, the best you could do for a second referendum is the Jeremy Hunt proposal of coming up with an...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    I don't think you're missing much. See my earlier comment on or around #524 on this thread for the relevant treaty text. (It's 524 as I write; moderator action might move it a bit.)...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    One note on the "second referendum" idea: it would likely have to take place before Article 50 is invoked (by whatever means) to have any real effect. The relevant text from Article 50 is as follows: 3. The Treaties shall...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    For what it's worth, US Intelligence is spreading the same paranoid theory that you are, with "senior British government officials" backing them up: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/12103602/America-to-investigate-Russian-meddling-in-EU.html On the other hand, this is the same crowd that was working hard to convince the...
  • Commented on "Tomorrow belongs to me"
    I'm not sure the folks in Westminster who'd like a second referendum after the Article 50 negotiations are reading Article 50 the same way I would. The way it looks to me, the UK first has to commit to leave,...
  • Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
    Meanwhile, in Brussels, diplomats are openly mocking Boris's idea that Brexit could be some kind of a la carte thing, where he gets to exit from only those parts of EU membership which he doesn't like: “It is a pipe...
  • Commented on Follow the money: Apple vs. the FBI
    Two comments. First off, while Apple is going into payments, it's not clear that their cash hoard has much to do with that; they're probably making a profit on it already, for an up-front investment that, on Apple's scale, is...
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