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• Commented on Pushing it back
  Can quipu methods be combined with an abacus layout to create a Stone Age "Difference Engine"?...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  "Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones!" Question: Just how advanced could a purely stone age civilization get? A civilization forced to work with just stone and wood, vegetative and animal fibers, due to inherent lack of metals in its planetary crust. A...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  Design comes before construction. Humanity's first architectural drawing will be forever unknown to us because it was literally written on sand or traced in soft mud. The oldest know site plan is on a granite slab discovered at a 14,000...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  300 comment rule: Capitalism 101 - Capitalism is no fun unless you can crush workers under your heel [[ DELETED BECAUSE OFF-TOPIC -- mod. ]]...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  P.P.S Rationality is over rated....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  P.S. Best SF example of a religious based space program: the Mormon Nauvoo/Behemoth starship in "The Expanse" series. There being no rational or economic reason to colonize Tau Ceti, the Mormons provide an irrational one....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  RE: the economics of space colonization. As much I would wish otherwise, there is just no financial, scientific or defense justification for a large sustained human presence in space. Defensive spy sats, weather and comsats, robot planetary rovers and orbital...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Even better, a video from the always fascinating "Cool Worlds" channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0M-wcHw5A Why Going Faster-Than-Light Leads to Time Paradoxes P.S. I've always had a problem with Star Trek, Star Wars, and every other galactic space opera is their lack of...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  "It was thought early on that the only way to beat an ironclad was by ramming it" HMS Polyphemus was a Royal Navy torpedo ram (only one built out of 4 vessels ordered by the Royal Navy) in accordance to...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Agreed. If Prigozhin really was a Bond supervillain level bad guy he would have used 5 planes simultaneously and make Putin guess which one he was on. Or may he really is a Bond supervillain level bad guy and that...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  If you count Capt. "Shoot first and ask questions later" Kirk as the quintessential Star Trek, then "Lower Decks" already does a good job of satirizing MilSF....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  How about a series of books describing an empire in decline from the POV of the man in the street. Not Asimov's "Foundation". More like HBOs "The Wire". "The Wire in Spaaaaaaace!" With each book focusing on a different theme,...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I would be very surprised if the pilot, co-pilot and crew were not Wagner Group as well....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Getting back to the original question, I just finished "The Deluge" by Steven Markley. Have you ever thought of writing climate fiction (cli-fi)?...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Somewhere Prigozhin is wondering how he could still be on fire....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  You have to hand it to the Russians, always thinking up newer and more complicated ways of "committing suicide". https://www.businessinsider.com/wagner-group-yevgeny-prigozhin-russian-plane-crash-state-media-2023-8 Wagner boss and failed coup leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed in Russia,...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Orwell saw this coming more than a half century ago. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  If MilSF has to be a thing then "All Quiet on the Western Front ... in Spaaaceee" might be entertaining with a Strossian twist. See "Soldier" written by Harlan Ellison for the old "Outer Limits" TV show There's also...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  As for aliens invading and conquering Earth, why both when all the valuable resources a galactic empire could want are in the asteroid belt, Luna, Saturn's rings, Jupiter's trojans, Jovian moons, comets from the Kuiper Belt, etc. where there is...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Speaking of the slave holding American South and how the legacy of slavery has hindered its further development, there is another example: Southern Italy and Sicily (historically referred to as the Kingdom of Naples or - further back - the...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I'm an American. You can't expect me to know anything about Canada. ;-)...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Apparently, Evangelicals now worship Trump instead of Jesus. https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706 "Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching—'turn the other cheek'—[and] to have someone come up after to say, 'Where...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Saw an ABBA tribute band in concert recently. Yes, I'm a grown man who is not afraid to say that he likes ABBA. In fact, my kids love ABBA. Indeed, they love all of my Boomer music from the 50s...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  How about something set in the 'Cloud Atlas" universe or something like it? One of my favorite movies (though many consider it to be an acquired taste). Premise: Transmigration of souls is a real ting with each of us being...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I know it's not 300 comments yet, but... We interrupt this thread to bring you news that Yellowknife (pop.22,000, located lat. 62.4540° N), capital of Canada's NW Territories has ordered a complete evacuation of all of its inhabitants in the...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Just read "Survival of the Richest" by Douglass Rushkoff. How about an apocalyptic novel from the point of those tech billionaires hiding out in their New Zealand bunkers?...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  You must be as old as I am to remember that Saturday morning cartoon....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  "Baby Cthulhu"?...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Phanariots and Janissaries. Janissaries were the slave soldiers of the Ottoman Empire who became too powerful and actually ruled the empire under weak/incompetent Sultans. Phanariots were a Greek minority in the Ottoman Empire that became prominent in the imperial capital...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  The Bad Guy wins (Dr. Doom in a Marvel series where he finally defeats all the heroes and rules mankind, Satan wins the Battle of Armeggedon and God is dead as in Blish's "Black Easter", Man in the High Castle,...