Dan

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• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  @279 Howard NYC: "funerals are a formalized fee collectible moment for clergy" Yeah, no. Not this clergyperson. I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister in the US state of Massachusetts. I get zero dollars if I do a memorial service for someone...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  I've found Mastodon to be a good platform, though I haven't used Twitter since 2014, so I can't comment on how it feels to current Twitter users. It's worth repeating that Mastodon and Twitter have fundamentally different designs. I've been...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  Youtube has blocked Benny Hill's Ting-a-ling-a-loo song, but someone has it on Internet Archive. I won't put a direct link here, on the theory that the more incoming links, the more likely the copyright police will find it. Using Duck...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  Including religion: where'd it come from (I favour Daniel Dennett's line of argument) Mm, Dennett's view of religion is Eurocentric and dated. In the past couple of decades religious studies scholars have come to a broad consensus that religion as...
• Commented on Dead plots
  "Spy stories: the same." Mm, as much as I'm with you on all the rest, not sure I agree with this one. I'm currently rereading Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories, arguably the first spy stories ever written, and they hold up...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  I love the analogy between artificial intelligence and corporations/government bureaucracies. But it feels like it either goes too far, or not far enough. I think the latter, and it's going to tak a long comment to explain what I mean....
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  And the superpower of commenters on this blog. Implying we are merely characters in Charlie's imagination....
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  allynh @44 said: "Challenge a nerd to write a short story and they will. HA!" Yes, we nerds tend to take instructions literally. However given that Charlie is Ghod here, he gets to change the instructions at any time. Ironically,...
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  [Whoops, a paragraph got left out; I'm writing this on a work-at-home day, and got distracted. After the paragraph beginning "Charlie shrugged," insert this paragraph:] Fletch's phone buzzed, and she read the incoming text. "Jesus," she said. "Moreton is making...
• Commented on Creative writing challenge!
  Fletch watched through the scope as the police moved in on Moreton. She saw him fumbling as he tried to get the key out of his pocket to open the boot of the car. She adjusted the scope a tiny...
• Commented on Normal service will be resumed eventually
  I'm sorry to hear about your mother's death. Not long after my father, my last parent, died, I re-read "The Man Who Loved Numbers," a biography of mathematician Paul Erdos. The biographer quotes a friend of Erdos, who was surprised...
• Commented on Deaths and Deadlines
  Yes indeed, current Anglo-American attitudes towards death and dying are "opaque and forbidding"; I'd even say that is an understatement. And here in the States, attitudes towards grief and grieving are even more troubling (perhaps that's true in the U.K....
• Commented on Sitrep
  Getting back to the notion of sabbatical: The poet Gary Snyder, in a 1973 interview, said: "I like to sharpen my chain saw. I like to keep all my knives sharp. I like to change the oil in my truck....
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Ah ha, Seminary Coop bookstore does have Dark State on their Web site: https://www.semcoop.com/ingram?isbn=9780765337573 For those living in the U.S. but far from a brick-and-mortar store, buy from Sem Coop and Mr. Stross gets his full percentage, you support independent...
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Paws4thot, you are right to point out that there are situations where you pretty much have to buy from online booksellers. I have been in that situation here in the U.S., and managed to find independent booksellers that had an...
• Commented on New Book Week!
  McGill, I'm all for ebooks. But there are other formats out there -- a Kindle isn't necessary....
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Oh good, this gives me an excuse to go either to Borderlands in SF or Dark Carnival in Berkeley to get the book. And hey, Jeff Bezos is the richest man on earth, right? -- my partner used to make...
• Commented on Evolver
  Chordates have been well covered above. What about evolution in other taxa? Arthropods: Arthropods currently constitute something like 80% of all species, so there's already a huge diversity (on the order of 10^7 to 10^8 species). Considered as a phylum,...