Xylem

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• Commented on Crying fire in a crowded theatre for pleasure and profit
  (the IDF upper levels want to get rid of conscription, and the officer corps is entirely professional these days). Most soldiers go into officer course while still conscripts. You can, in fact, go into the officer course 6 months...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  There's another saying. I forgot the author and exact wording (PTerry, maybe?): "Revolutions come and go, but the government remains in charge"....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>I'm not yet sure how the Laundryverse ends — it depends, to be brutally honest, how well it keeps on selling Book 14. The protagonists discover they are just characters in a book, and their survival depends on how good...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  Maybe Laundry series is just a prequel to Warhammer 40K. Now to find out who is going to be the Emperor......
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>sending the Host to deal with Da'esh in Syria Wait, why? This is such a waste. Da'esh are perfect cannon fodder against any eldritch stuff. Just open a gate in Iraq and tell them there are demonic infidels on the...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  Some of them get to die. "Call no man happy until he is dead" and all that....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>The New Management is Strong and Stable. Stable for aeons .. “She was called Victoria, because she had beaten us in battle, seven hundred years before, and she was called Gloriana, because she was glorious, and she was called the...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  CASE NIGHTMARE ГОЛУБОЙ Translated to Russian, this is CASE NIGHTMARE GAY. ...I don't want to know....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>>What he has in fact done is hand over a vanquished force of not-quite-humans to a Home Secretary who isn't a big fan of Human Rights even in the case of Homo sapiens and will presumably be pretty happy to...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  Possible off-topic: Did any author ever explored the parallel between Arthur, the Once and Future King, who will return one day from the island of Avalon to save Britain... ...and Cthulhu, The Great Dreamer, who will rise one day from...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>I will be interested to see how you work around John W. Campbell's thesis that no human author can write fiction about superhuman intelligence Charlie already did, several times. Vile Offspring from Accelerando is one. Of course you can write...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  >>>And The One We Don't Talk About is where the plutonium shortfall for the Trident D5 warheads that caused a scandal in the late 1980s ended up. In a physics package permanently installed in the airframe, because although it's got...
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  Let me tell you about the future. No one is going to do anything about North Korea. Developed countries would rather pay them off and avert their eyes when they kidnap people or experiment on their own population or whatever....
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  >>>Not aimed at you specifically, but: what's with the constant presumption the people running these countries are crazy? The entire history of mankind....
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  You know what would be really cool? An ultimatum to North Korea. You have a week to peacefully dismantle your government and re-join South Korea. If you don't, get ready for Fallout 3 LARP. And then, if North Korea decides...
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  Perfectly simple scenario where some part of the national security apparat puts that on a Falcon 9 and it does its best to decapitate North Korea. Musk -- nigh-certainly legitimately -- says "I had no idea!", the NRO --...
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  >>>What you're asking for is impossible, because you're asking for proof that Microsoft's business practices will be (and will continue to be, for the foreseeable future) conducive to not fucking up safety critical systems. You might be able to get...
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  >>>You missed the bit about medical devices, right? It can take multiple years to certify them as safe for use on humans, and the certification — when there's a computer in the loop — applies only to the machine as...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Who let Catina Diamond in? I think they are off their meds again......
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Schools seem to be institutions designed around forced socialization of pre-adults, socialization to fit specific societal goals based on historical requirements (so always a generation or three behind the times). Yes, socializing kids is a very good thing, and I...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  No component of any doctrine I learned about when I was growing up Jewish. If you go to Israel and observe people who consider themselves Jewish, but who aren't actively religious (the ones who have no idea what the word...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  far enough in the future, nanotech that just eats up the problem, That far enough in the future, the nanotech would just eat up people in their homes and reconstruct them at their destination. Or just eat them up. Read...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Individual pods mean bigger taxis. Significantly bigger ones. And claustrophobia triggers. It's probably cheaper and easier to have slightly more somewhat smaller open-plan taxis. But aren't we postulating that some people might find open-plan taxis dangerous, because of possible harassment?...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Not to the same extent, insofar as the presence of third parties usually has an inhibitory effect on peoples' willingness to act out. Larger public spaces (buses, trains) are easier to police and easier to get away from the bad...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  The objection that "you can always pay more to travel alone" is, of course, inherently discriminatory against people who are already marginalized/disadvantaged. Can't the same argument be applied to any public transportation system? A plane, a train, a bus? You...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Because it's overrun by Brits and Americans (citizens of a former aggressive imperial hegemonic power and citizens of the current one). Next? Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure 99% of the commenters here are anti-imperialists. It's more of a typical sci-fi...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  "Capitalism is gone. People will kill you for saying you want to make a profit, and if the recording -- of course there is a recording -- is clear that, yeah, you said that, it will be legal." "Well, there's...
• Commented on The internet of decay
  OK, so here's your exam question from Database Design 101: I assume you are aware of this: Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective...
• Commented on The End of the British nuclear deterrent?
  UK should talk with Israel, I'm sure they can sell some Jericho III missiles......
• Commented on Some notes on the worst-case scenario
  Bangladesh is on the opposite side of the globe from USA. If any country is going to prevent Bangladeshi refugees from moving across the border, it's India. Would they? I don't know. I don't see how American drones would need...