Mallen

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• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  In response to the mention of Donald Trump potentially being nominated for speaker, there are two problems with that: 1) They can't agree on people LESS divisive than Trump 2) They have a rule that people who are under indictment...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  As you said, your next laundry novel is not a "tie-in". Regardless, it's going to insert it's dripping ovipositor into its reader's brain, implanting it's self fertilized egg and hatching the thought,"role playing games". It sure would be nice to...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  It's not there yet, but I think that AI technology will eventually be able to put a lot of Hollywood scriptwriters out of business. I say this not because I think it will be that good. Instead, due to the...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  I don't know where the idea that pumped hydropower is hard to build comes from. It's easy. The "lakes" they use are usually not natural but are in fact man made. They find a river flowing through a suitable area,...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  It makes perfect sense that your having out there ideas. COVID is known to cause weird cognitive impairment. Another way of saying that is it scrambles your neural net. Its probably the same reason drugs and alchohol sometimes lead to...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Dead Lies Dreaming
  The comment about "state run app stores" alludes a particularly thorny problem that new management, and actually most coverments would have to solve. Especially with American tech companies being coopted for nefarious purposes. How do you deal with the fact...
• Commented on Official Announcement: April Fools Day is Cancelled
  Here's a totally off topic random thought I just had to share. I was making bread, mostly because my girlfriend gave me an an electric pressure cooker for Christmas and I found out you could not only make loaves of...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Choose another city, preferably one outside of California for stories about people without cell phones. They give them out free here in California, paid for by government subsidies. They even come with a limited amount of data....
• Commented on No comment necessary
  ": Can you get 100% Ammonium Nitrate from the Garden Center? (I don't garden, so I don't know." In the us, not since Timothy McVeigh , an associate of a self described "White supremacist Christian militia", blew up the Oklahoma...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  If COVID only spreads through aerosolized droplets in the air,and not off surfaces, why do I need hand sanitizer to sterilize my hands after I touch the surfaces that the droplets landed on, because it doesn't spread from surfaces, right?...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  If the president were to try to order elections delayed, it would result in a legal challenge. Its likely the supreme court would weight in fast and knock it down. But if that didnt happen, its most likely that many...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  People keep saying "when" or "until" herd immunity develops. But thats by no means certain. Its "if" herd immunity develops and there is some evidence that immunity may be short lived. One would hope that if you had it once...
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
  It occurs to me that one thing that our host got totally wrong in one of his novels was that everyone in America forgetting the president exists would beba BAD thing.... ;-)...
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas" (Part 2)
  Perhaps "Boris clung to power" should read "Boris clung to life"......
• Commented on Roll the dice
  "Nothing to do with AI - simple market realities. Pandemic shuts down world, suddenly no need for all the oil slushing through the system - but there is still a cost to storing that oil. Now add in the wall...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  It should be noted, the jet fuel wasnt what actually caused the heat. It just ignited the fire but burned of relatively fast. It was the office co tents that kept burning....
• Commented on Roll the dice
  I watched the towers come down live from the BBC website from a PC in the electronics lab at the university i was attending. (The us websites were unreachable)It wasnt surprising at all.I saw something blow out the side. I...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  The NSA is probably the entity be hi d Bitcoin. Think about whether the public narrative of bit coin makes any sense. Some person on the internet that has a distrust of government and the banking system creates a crypto...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  Another way to make alcohol is to thermal crack longer chain hydrocarbons into ethylene, then add a hydroxide across the double bond. If you were careful to clean up the ethylene you should get a very clean product....
• Commented on Roll the dice
  No, I dont believe what im about to discuss for a moment,but to play devils advocate (pun intended) perhaps your tiny mortal mind is having trouble wrapping its head around exactly what and how the world was intelligently designed. Imagine...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  I used to agree that the 2nd amendment was only about militias. Give heard people ask smugly "what part of to keep and bear arms isnt clear",as if there were no rational.answer. I would always respond "the part about a...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  But radio IS how we do SETI. We may do it differently some time in the future, and at that point we may find ET under every rock. But if my supposition is correct, then its why we dont find...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  Elon Musks vision of colonizing Mars is totally consistent with most distopian future visions of what its like to live on Mars,when you take into account that there's no way Elon Musk would not set him self up as the...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  I suspect that the reason we dont see any aliens is that interstellar space travel is impractical combined with there being only a brief window in which we leak enough radio signals to be detectable. Notice how we are going...
• Commented on Roll the dice
  I see new rules and uncontrolled access to roleplaying materials be a major national.security risk. Consider a half dozen 14 year olds role playing based on rules created by someone with nefarious intent. They go through various motions turning the...
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas"
  The vaccines that are starting trials right now are actually very scary. Dont get me wrong, they are based on brilliant science that has amazing potential, but just for vaccines but other treatments too. They are based on mRNA. (messenger...
• Commented on Yet another novel I will no longer write
  Flour could be an issue. Try a local bakery. Many,at least around here will sell you done flour and yeast. Yeast however is no necessary. Google up "sour dough starter". Essentially, you make some flour paste and leave it in...
• Commented on Yet another novel I will no longer write
  The ships doctor will see you now.... https://images.app.goo.gl/RzcimFCZno2fEZ8T9 I do see this potentially shifting the calculous in selecting where to register a ship. You have ships owned companies in larger powerful western nations who don't want to let ships filled...
• Commented on Yet another novel I will no longer write
  Yea, as a whole, we are screwed. Dr Fauci said yesterday that every state should be shut down. Yet virus deniers have made it a political issue. While the arguments that its leftist hoax to make the current administration look...
• Commented on Yet another novel I will no longer write
  But its a little different over here. While "non essential business" are closed in many places here, there is an argument over whether gun stores are "essential" in these times of crisis, owning a handgun for self defense having been...