Nick K

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• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  "how far was the fall"...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  The pilot of the F-35 called 911 I liked the bit where the ambulance person asked "how far war the fall" "about 2000'"...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  ...and OGH gets a mention in the comments...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Not on-topic but interesting bioregenerative life-support system...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  ...and again but with saner Markdown Putin's Colder War?...
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/russia-claims-new-weapons-is-based-on-new-physical-principles/ar-AA1gBsuE?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=92065b26c736488897a923236f52126f&ei=90 Putin's Colder War?...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Don't over-egg general relativity. The first proven prediction was in the 1960s ]...] . precession of orbit of Mercury 1915(?) - bending of light 1917 - gravitational redshift of a white dwarf 1954...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  From the south-east, the Eurostar is a lot faster, relatively, not just because it's quicker to get to central London, but because most of the airports are so evil. It depends. I can catch a bus to my nearest airport...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Actually, you can hang on to rationality, just with a set of natural laws that are entirely different from what we are accustomed to. You need not invent your own world: our quantum reality is quite confusing enough for most...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I wonder if something could be done with the noir hard-boiled private detective set in the future. Larry Niven’s “The Meddler” or Alastair Reynolds "The Prefect"...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Re: Room-temp semiconductors Those of us around since the days of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons and cold fusion. We wait a bit for such reports to be vetted for a while. [grin off] see also Magnetic Monopoles and Poly-Water...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  You might enjoy The Box, a very readable story about the development of containerization. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/the-box its also available as a kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy-ebook/dp/B01772PS00...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Actually, Python's use of indentation is fairly sane; I don't love it, but don't loathe it, either. I'll raise you fstab, make, C, etc., where tabs and an equivalent number of spaces are syntactically different. I've never liked tabs so...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  That was true, but it was used more as an excuse than a reason. If I recall, the regulation was "no devices not approved by the GPO". When the GPO was asked how to get a device approved, the response...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  I've noticed that kind of thing in general fiction coinciding with the rise of concern in general society over the very basic rights for women, like being allowed to own property or run companies or vote. In SF on the...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  But wasn't the uranium mined from Australia? (I have no idea on the path of British bomb uranium but Aus does have a history of uranium mining.) So the logic is because the uranium came from Australia the UK...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  No. At the very least, vertebrates could easily have evolved to become hexapods, in which case a centaur-like shape is plausible "hexapodia is the key" A Fire Upon the Deep...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  I reckon an interesting and poignant story of unrequited love could easily be written [...] I'm sure I recall a story where humans fell hopelessly in love with various aliens. It was some sort of fault in our wiring...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  UK weather - when I was checking my local weather forecast for today on weather dot com there was a short video on the weird rain forecast for the UK. Very spotty - some areas would get very heavy downpours...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  re: Y2K Cranks I followed a Y2K thread. One guy was saying everyone within N miles (I forget what N was, 20? 100?) of a 7/11 was going to be toast come Jan 1 2000. He was presumably hold up...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  By chance that link showed an old WWII pill box. These were common when i was a child in the 1950s but they can still b sen occasionally. in what circumstances do they ever go away? If you live in...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Were Roman roads and roadways reused and upgraded by the improved British roads of the 17th - 19th centuries? Did railroads follow the same alignments as the Roman roads surveyed centuries before? Did these new British road have any military...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  As has been said, toilets discharging on the track on the UK mainline was only just banned in the last couple of years. I think there's still an exemption for heritage railtour stock on the main line, but that will...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Those for whom any form of rehabilitation is possible are very few, indeed. Most peple, I reckon over 90%, possibly 95% can be persuaded to improve/reform. I suspect you have a "not" missing, as those two sentences appear to contradict...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  As an American of Irish Catholic descent I assure you that it is OK to stop being offended over anything relating to a situation that ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It's been a quarter century And you...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Interestingly, this was also true in my primary school, which was a full-on, CofE church-school, with church parade every Wednesday and RE taught by actual clergy - who were good communicators, too. I think religion was too real for us,...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Interesting. The end of the continuous tech boom? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/11/techscape-zirp-tech-boom...
• Commented on Place your bets
  We've been failing in facing that western democracies have become in-all-but-name some form of gerontocracy "western democracy" is not equal to "United States system of government" Most western democracies don't have particularly elderly people running the government...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I have been in a lot of argumeents with closet Penrosians what is a "penrosian". I'm aware Roger Penrose has some nutty ideas, but which particular nutty ideas are you talking about? by saying that there is some weak evidence...
• Commented on Place your bets
  One of the characteristics of British railways in the modern age is going through bouts of changing the names of people's jobs to something stupid. the DLR opened in 1987. Even an old git like me wouldn't characterise this...