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Crib Sheet: The Labyrinth Index

This is well overdue because I kind of lost track of my irregular series of spoileriffic essays about my novels: it should have turned up in 2019, but I was dealing with a parental death, then trying to get my writing re-started (you might have noticed 2019 was The Year Without A Novel, for the first time since 2007), then COVID19 hit.

So I'm going to try and think myself back into my 2018 state of mind and brain dump whatever I can, and you can ask me fill-in questions in the comments below.

(NB: a Crib Sheet for Dead Lies Dreaming is due in the next few months. I need to catch up on the publication schedule to see where we're at, but as it went paperback in the UK and probably isn't getting a US paperback release, and Quantum of Nightmares is due out next January, you're welcome.)

So, without further ado ...

I wrote The Delirium Brief in 2015-16, then had to re-write it right after the Brexit referendum because satire had died and gone to hell.

A word about satire, which the Laundry Files most certainly is: satire seeks to draw attention to that which is already in the frame but blurred and indistinct by exaggerating and focussing the reader's attention on it. The lifelike is made larger than life, so that it can be examined closely. Why write a story about horrible merchant bankers bleeding their victims dry when you can turn them into vampires and literalize the metaphor? (That was The Rhesus Chart.) Why detract attention from the state's corporate panic to an invasion by having an actually-existing state as the attacker instead of, say, rampaging Elves?

But the events of 2016 broke political satire in the UK, possibly for good. So I had to up my game. I introduced the New Management at the end of The Delirium Brief as a horrible parodic burlesque of the Conservative and Unionist Party: yes they're evil and they want to steal everything that isn't nailed down and grind your proletarian face beneath their boot for all eternity. But nobody wants to read about a bumbling, incompetent kakistocracy so the New Management is also terrifyingly competent (in a way that nobody could accuse Boris Johnson of being). Satire throws a glaring spotlight on the flaws of the real, and that's where we start in The Nightmare Stacks, which I wrote in a blinding hurry in late 2017 as a filler novel (or so I thought at the time).

Detour: my father died in June 2017. He was 93. I had just spent a year working on a space opera at that point, was midway through a second draft, and his death soured me on the project. Yes, I will get back to it soon—probably in 2022, for reasons I'll go into below—but for now it's on hold. But this left me owing my publishers a book. I already knew enough about The Nightmare Stacks to know what I was going to do, so I brought it forward a year. It was going to be Mhari's novel, a Dirty Dozen (or maybe Ocean's Eleven) ill-assorted caper novel set largely in the USA, and the Black Concorde was going to fly. But then reality mugged me again ...

November 2016: Donald Trump won the US presidential election, and by mid-2017 things were clearly running off the rails. The grip of the Beige Dictatorship on UK-US politics had been broken and the radical right fringe was calling the shots. So by 2017, reflecting the disturbance in the force seemed like a good idea ... but how to do that without pissing off whatever remaining proportion of my readership voted Republican in the USA, my largest market?

You will be unsurprised to read that I'm no fan of Donald Trump. (His exit from office did good things for my blood pressure.) And these days I have zero concern for alienating MAGAs and the alt-right. But nobody likes seeing their nation being dissed by a foreigner, and in 2017 it was still conceivable that there were some sane Republican voters.

This is why I picked: (a) a crisis (Lovecraftian, of course) engulfing the USA that punched the same disturbing "this country is being taken over by something horrible, but it's hard to put my finger on it" buttons as Trump in 2016-17 (what happened is a lot clearer today!), (b) deliberately painted a very anodyne and non-hostile POTUS of vague but unspecified party allegience (I imagine him vaguely resembling George Clooney), and (c) tried not to centre the British protagonists too obnoxiously in the resolution of the crisis. Which (d) isn't actually resolved at the end—or rather, it's an Italian Job style cliff-hanger: did they? Or didn't they? Avoid lurching over the cliff into the very un-woke grip of Cthulhu's cultists?

Now, about Mhari.

Mhari Murphy was introduced as a throwaway secondary character in The Atrocity Archve, back in 1999, and I'm not proud of how I painted her back then. (Although some aspects of her behaviour towards Bob were modelled on an ex of mine.) A few years later I'd worked out that Bob was a horribly unreliable narrator, and asked myself: what if Bob's picture of Mhari was as warped as his understanding of everything else in the early books? And that's why I wrote her into The Rhesus Chart, with a lot more depth and a sympathetic background I hadn't worked out in the first book. She turned up again in The Annihilation Score because everything is better with vampire middle managers, and then I realized it was time to make her the central protagonist of her own novel. (The other possibility was Mo, but I'd already written Mo's novel.) (A third possibility was Derek the DM, but I still haven't finished his origin story—a novella I've had in progress for several years.)

Mhari is both a more competent protagonist than Bob, and more vulnerable. She's a PHANG; she needs to drink blood and kill people or she dies, which makes her a useful tool to certain powerful interests. I wanted to bring this out in that first chapter, with the execution scene, and also to lampshade that the New Management is in a very real sense both evil and cruel, but not senseless. (The execution scene, incidentally, draws heavily on George Orwell's essay, A Hanging.) She's a functionary of the New Management, indeed she has been found to be sufficiently useful that his Dread Majesty has given her a life peerage and elevated her to the House of Lords, as Baroness Karnstein, a Carmilla reference (the Black Pharaoh has a very dark sense of humour). She's the chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs, i.e. vampires, which position gives her both the agency to requisition resources and accomplish things within government—she has an executive role by appointment—but also makes her vulnerable to, well, His Dark Majesty's Personal Displeasure. (Much Stalin, very whimsical.) And she has a boyfriend! Who is both a superhero, and a middle-aged guy who cheated on his wife and got a divorce, a semi-estranged teenaged daughter, and a sports car out of it. (All the Laundry protagonists in this book cast dark shadows.)

So. To the plot: the Black Chamber, the US equivalent of the Laundry, is staging what would today be called a deep state coup against the US presidency. (Whoo boy, didn't see that coming.) The difference is that they're the Evil Empire of Evil and they intend to use the USA's not inconsiderable resources to dismantle the entire fricken' solar system to summon their liege and master Cthulhu through computational means, assuming their Plan A (sacrifice a billion people) fails. (NB: there are typographic anomalies in the Kindle ebook edition, replicated in the audiobook version, that result in 109 being rendered as "109" sacrifices. I will not in future be using scientific notation in novels, KTHX ...) They make an end-run around the regular US civil service by means of an invocation which causes people to forget the Presidency and the executive exists whenever they sleep (if only!). The result is a POTUS on the run, protected by his increasingly sleep-deprived Secret Service close protection detail, trying to stay out of the clutches of the horrifying larva that has moved into the telecoms exchange room buried under the heart of the Pentagon.

Mhari is ordered to rescue the POTUS, by no lesser person than the Black Pharaoh. It is unclear whether the goal of the rescue is to help the President or, maybe, sacrifice him: the near-religious faith in the United States of up to a third of billion people over 200 years is a potent source of magic. Either way (spoiler!) plot ensues and at the end of the book the POTUS is free. Luckily Mhari finds an acceptable plot coupon under the Pentagon basement to substitute for the POTUS! So she survives.

But the rescue comes at a horrible price. Along the way, most of Mhari's team—the ones who aren't vampires going in—end up contracting PHANG syndrome, including Pete the Vicar (I really need to work out how he handles the horrifying dilemma of survival) and Derek the DM (and again, I really need to finish that origin story and also work out his final story arc: he was going to be a much bigger character in the Laundry Series than he's turned out to be as actually published).

Concorde: that's a gun I put on the mantlepiece in book 3, I really had to use it sooner or later. A strange but true fact—it's in a museum, I did a walk-through, I have the photographs to prove it!—is that Concorde Prototype 002 has two crew escape hatches in its belly, and a fireman's pole arrangement for the flight crew and engineering team to escape by (with parachutes). So rather than flying the Black Concorde with the gigantic hydrogen bomb wired into it, I decided to use the unarmed verson for the escape sequence—and coincidentally demonstrate why in the Post-9/11 world it's very unlikely that civilian supersonic airliners will ever be allowed to fly over the Continental United States. (Hint: it's not the sonic boom they're concerned about, it's the near-impossibility of shooting one down.) The actual rescue relies on a technique that was actually used successfully between the 1940s and 1960s for rescuing downed pilots and CIA agents: the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS). (It has not, to my knowledge, ever been used with a supersonic carrier aircraft, but with the help of a sufficiently powerful superhero ...)

What's next?

The Laundry Files was derailed by Trump, Brexit, then COVID19. I have no freaking idea how to satirize British politics this decade, and until I do, I'm not going to be able to write about the New Management directly. So I tried to park the series at this point until reality resumes making sense. By way of marking time I began to spin up a spin-off series, the Tales of the New Management: Dead Lies Dreaming is the first in that series, to be followed by Quantum of Nightmares (hopefully on January 11th of 2022). But reality is still front-running me: here's a headline from today's Guardian about a Tzompantli they're building in Trafalgar Square, nothing to see here, no problem with it derailing my new satirical stories about a brutal regime where human sacrifice is routine. (Well okay, this one consists of plaster casts of the faces of 850 transgender people instead of actual human skulls ... but given the windrows of dead from COVID19 that our government is intent on giving us, it feels like reality is stalking my fiction and mugging it for ideas right now.)

There is some way to go in the Laundry Files main series, however. A novella (provisionally titled Escape from Puroland) was due for publication this month. It's been delayed until next March and may get a new title for legal reasons: but it's still on track. As noted above, there's a novella about Derek in progress (A Conventional Boy). And there needs to be at least one final novel wrapping up Bob, the Laundry, and the New Management. Spoiler: the New Management survives (and so does at least one major character from the Laundry). But by the time of Dead Lies Dreaming, about 6-12 months after The Labyrinth Index, the Laundry as such (that is, SOE's X Division) has been broken up and dissolved into the regular machinery of government under the New Management, with its former personnel—the survivors, that is—in some cases rising to senior political positions.

Other stuff ...

I wrote the book four years ago, I've forgotten chunks of it, so feel free to ask me about any nagging details in the questions: I can't promise to remember the answer, though!

979 Comments

1:

More a comment and request for the future:

I found the motives of many participants (especially the Black Pharaoh) thoroughly confusing, except for the "me, me, me" aspect. Normally, I prefer fiction to make more sense than real life, but that didn't grate because it all fitted. However, it DID leave me thinking "I hope that he tidies up some of the loose ends in future books". But I quite understand the problems of producing them. I am expecting 2022 to be more chaotic, incidentally, so I don't expect anything soon.

2:

Loose ends are hard, especially with that much back-story; it's possible the "one last novel" will bloat up to two, or at least something as big as "Invisible Sun" (which at 150,000 words is 50% longer than most of the earlier Merchant Princes books).

Note that "Dead Lies Dreaming" takes place after the end of the main Laundry files story arc, so it gives you an idea of the shape of the world remaining. But there's very little crossover so far. (The Prime Minister makes a cameo appearance in "Dead Lies Dreaming". Persephone Hazard was going to show up for one scene in "Quantum of Nightmares", but my editor said "push it back to the next book", which was quite right. In the third book -- title not yet fixed: it was going to be "Bones and Nightmares" before "In His House" got renamed "Quantum of Nightmares" -- the crossover is explicit, starting with Eve getting a most unwelcome summons from the New Management.)

3:

So long as reality's using you for inspiration, could we convince you write a nice, fluffy schadenfreude souffle of a novel wherein the superrich get rolled to the tune of a 99% redistribution of their assets, and humans start seriously dealing with climate change? KTHX.

4:

Insofar as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is a metaphor for anthropogenic climate change (for "climate" read "magic"), nope.

5:

Can we have the Beige Dictatorship back, please? the New Management is in a very real sense both evil and cruel, but not senseless Like the not-final-solution programs of the NSDAP, you mean? Rheinhard Heyrich was evil & cruel & ruthless, but he wasn't stupid. Ditto Lavrenti Beria, come to that.

until reality resumes making sense - Now, there's optimistic!

6:

Charlie,

Here are my observations:

(1) Derek the DM seemed a bit too powerful a playing piece to risk in an actual operation[*], but then I'm not the Black Pharaoh.

(2) Ditto Mhari, if she was privy to His Blackness' secrets.

(3) Your wierdo elf looks to have some fun left in her.

(4) Pete will starve himself of blood and ... and then what? It needn't be a quiet private death, need it? Feeders leaking out everywhere...

(5) The Black Pharaoh -- being a bit more of a human scale intelligence (because of having a certain affinity for us?) -- might well get caught out making mistakes...

I'm in 110% agreement with your decision to leave the main story arc until you feel an urge to do it (but keep your ideas book filled in). I found the Dead Lies Dreaming side-quest much more fun than some of the latter Laundry-proper books. I figure that that might be that you've got your mojo back after some pretty shit years recently.

[] Recall that _all_ GCHQ personnel were forbidden active service roles in WW2; ditto SIS and SS[*]. My sources tell me that such prohibitions still apply to where you can take your holidays after leaving.

[**] Maybe SOE, too, but who knows these days? You could have good historical fun with Force 136 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_136 Note the role of Walter Fletcher (not real name) who ended up becoming a Conservative MP after making a £77 million profit for SOE on the black market. What a pirate! (There's a record of what he was up to in the Imperial War Museum, a fair amount of which is online.

7:

Insofar as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is a metaphor for anthropogenic climate change (for "climate" read "magic"), nope.

Who said anything about The Laundryverse? I for one would love to see a follow-on to Rule 34 wherein someone engineers a herpesvirus that causes sociopaths to become acutely neurotic, due to handwavium/specific gene expression associated with psychopathy/etc. And the virus gets loose among the global elite and the infectious people who service them.

I'm just fantasizing about how much fun it would be for the many hated world leaders in all fields to suddenly and inconveniently develop burgeoning consciences (live on camera. Possibly preaching, even.), just because they couldn't keep their zippers closed.

Heck, imagine it infecting the Vatican, house of Saud, Moscow, Beijing, NY City, DC... And pity the poor public health doctors who are tracking the spread of the virus, and agonizing about whether to do anything about it or not.

Anyway, I know you don't take requests, but I just needed a nice little summer fantasy to cheer up with before diving into the next round of tapping away at real climate change issues.

Also, I don't remember Labyrinth Index well enough to have any questions, except that the aerodynamics of two humans catching up with a Concorde are firmly in the realm of Marvel fantasy, I think.

8:

Damn, 2018. I've lost years without realizing it.

I read Labyrinth Index twice when it came out, it was so devastating, but it was 2017 when I last read Delirium Brief along with the whole series. That's too many years without reading the whole series.

I need to read the whole series again as soon as I finish reading The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku. (It's about the history of psychedelics driving the development of society from the stone age to now. The Eucharist was psychedelic wine.)

BTW, from the comment @6(4). Pete will embrace his role as a PHANG and become the Red Cardinal. Dressed in a blood red uniform, with the white collar. It will be his sacred duty to serve the Black Pharaoh.

9:

Is Pete's family name still oscillating between "Wilson" and "Russell"?

10:

"I'm just fantasizing about how much fun it would be for the many hated world leaders in all fields to suddenly and inconveniently develop burgeoning consciences"

This. This is one of my favourite daydreams: An airborne cure for sociopathy, freely distributed. Televised, if we're lucky.

11:

seemed a bit too powerful a playing piece to risk in an actual operation[*], but then I'm not the Black Pharaoh

Yeah, that'd be entirely true in a realist-mode setting where human beings are all at pretty much the same end of the magical power spectrum (ie. none). But by the time we get this deep into CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, we're in godlike/demigod territory, or at least superheroes, where some of the players can quite literally set fire to their enemy's hair by thinking.

Mhari ... is senior enough to be a credible personal emissary of His Darkness to a foreign head of state. She's guarded by Officer Friendly, who in superhero mode is a Tank. The two of them are perfectly capable of blowing a hole straight through a squad of vampires. They also have Derek, who probably shouldn't be on the game board at all, but who has reality warping -- or precognitive -- skills that turn the team into an even tougher target. And the crazy elf lady is, well, see "set fire to their enemy's hair" above.

What's happening here is that the Black Pharaoh is playing a game against an adversary or adversaries who are not personally evident, but who are somewhere on the same spectrum. And it's evidently nearing the end-game or He wouldn't be risking such powerful pieces on the chess board.

What's significant is who isn't in play. Mo, for starters, and Bob, the Senior Auditor, Persephone Hazard, Cassie the All-Highest. Also presumably other people we don't know about. Mhari looks senior, but what do we know about her duties beside vampire-wrangling? And Derek presumably blotted his copy-book during the mess in Yorkshire.

Parenthetically, "Quantum of Nightmares" picks up right after "Dead Lies Dreaming" ends, and it's probably not a spoiler to say that Eve gets a very nasty shock (or series thereof) as she discovers just how deep-laid Rupert de Montfort Bigge's plots run, and how they plug into the plan for the revival of the Mute Poet, who is small fry compared to the Black Pharaoh (but nevertheless a god and not to be trifled with).

I shall go look up Force 136 forthwith.

12:

The aerodynamics of two humans catching up with a Concorde are firmly in the realm of Marvel fantasy, I think.

Concorde typically landed at 160 knots, not much faster than a regular subsonic airliner; stall speed was roughly 125 knots.

I mean, it is a civil airliner and has to operate from normal airport runways!

Once you accept "superhero, with super-strength and power of flight", having him able to position in front of a Concorde's flight path and rendezvous with a trapeze/net while the pilots hold it straight and level and try not to crash isn't the most implausible part of the scenario.

13:

Crap, that's a continuity blooper I can no longer fix (because too many books in the past). Can't remember which -- I don't work from a world book.

14:

I shall go look up Force 136 forthwith.

Hunh. That's close to that iced novel I was working on.

Anyway, if you're going to look up Force 136, look up Carl Eifler and OSS Detachment 101. They're superficially the OSS counterpart to the SOE Force 136.

FWIW, I'm more interested in Eifler's failed legacy: NAPKO. That was training Korean patriots into an OSS force to infiltrate Korea and cause rearguard trouble in preparation for the end of the Japanese Empire, a la the JEDBURGHs in Europe.

They trained the Koreans on Santa Catalina Island and had them practice infiltrating the southern California mainland using semisubmersibles and planting fake explosives. There's enough weird supernatural stories from that island in the areas they trained (one being a literal Indian Graveyard), that I keep trying to make a story out of it. The real end of NAPKO was less colorful. They were scheduled to be deployed on August 14, 1945, and by that point, the Japanese had surrendered due to another secret government project bearing fruit. Anyway, the CIA tried to run NAPKO on North Korea when that war broke out, and none of the agents sent in reported back to their handlers. So it was buried in US history, and most of the personnel records were lost in a 1971 fire. For awhile, I could get some copied records out of a Korean university library online, but they changed their logins and I lost access. Oh well. Maybe someday.

15:

Question: where would Dr. Manhattan (from The Watchmen Universe) sit on the Laundry power scale?

16:

I think my assumption was that the Concorde was flying through enemy airspace, so it might have dropped below cruising speed (1341 mph) and even Mach 1 to deploy the trapeze. Going slow over DC, which is a heavily armed airspace now, is to be the turkey in a turkey shoot.

So I was visualizing something more like This, plus or minus a few g.

17:

My dad was reading a book on the modern history of chess shortly before he died.

He mentioned to me that there was a highly-ranked British player who invariably did well at the Hastings International Chess matches - well enough that he was an International Master. However he never went to play in the USSR, so chess seemed to be a side hobby for him.

It turns out that he was a pretty-highly-ranked member of GCHQ, and that going to Moscow for chess matches was, naturally, forbidden.

(My google-fu indicates that this person was likely Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander.)

18:

Quite enjoyed Labyrinth Index. 'Twas nice to see some areas close to where I live being featured. Only question is: what are the Cold Ones mentioned by the Black Pharaoh? My guess is a race of infovores a la the Jotun from The Atrocity Archives, but open to suggestions. I think the book has made pretty clear that the Elder Gods are not a united front, and that there is a secret goal being pursued by all of the Elder Gods in their own way that relates to the Cold Ones. The only question remains is "To what end?" We know that Britain survives, and probably most of the outside world, so whatever accommodation is reached with the Elder Gods can't be too horrible.

19:

I never got far enough into "Watchmen" to meet Doctor Manhattan. (Found it slow to get started and the writing was turgid.)

20:

I gamed out the Concorde in US airspace sequence with a (recently retired in his mid-thirties) RAF officer. All the stuff leading up to it, with hand-offs through various airspace regions using the call sign of a 747, was there to make it expected traffic -- until it was on final into BWI and took a turn for the pick-up zone, which by that point was less than a hundred miles away.

Then drop the trapeze, pick up passengers, and hit the afterburners ahead of the F-16s patrolling over DC (which don't have the legs to catch up with Concorde -- or carry missiles with the range to do so, either).

All the stuff about NATO forces practicing intercepts on Concordes over the North Sea and never quite being able to get a lock on them was entirely true: the reason the west was so antsy about the Tu-22M and Tu-160 bombers is that their flight characteristics resembled Concorde, which meant they were basically unstoppable unless you got very lucky.

(It's only in this century that anyone has gotten fighters into service that would stand a chance -- assuming they were already airborn and in the right place. Even so, Concorde cruises 10,000 feet higher than an F-22 or a Eurofighter, and is faster than they are in supercruise.)

21:

what are the Cold Ones mentioned by the Black Pharaoh?

I honestly can't remember (might be a callback to "The Atrocity Archives", though).

I'll have to re-read the entire series before I try to write the last book. That'll take me at least a month ...

22:

Maybe Peter's family name is actually Russell-Wilson or Wilson-Russell?

Enjoy!

Frank.

23:

Fair enough. What I was also thinking about are the batteries of Stingers on the White House roof and Patriot missiles elsewhere in DC. (e.g. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36728/sam-system-that-guards-washington-dc-just-made-its-lowest-ever-intercept-of-a-mock-cruise-missile). Both Stingers and Patriots are faster than a Concorde at full cruise, although I agree that velocity and targeting are two very different things.

Those missile batteries been tested against mock cruise missiles, and are set up to prevent another 9/11. As you recall, 9/11 was about airliners suddenly veering from their assigned course and heading for the Pentagon, at least in part? A passenger plane suddenly veering off-course and towards DC will of course get shot at. Whether it gets hit or not is another matter.

24:

Stingers? They're a MANPAD; even the upgraded latest model only has a maximum engagement range of 7600 metres. (Which is a hypotenuse: put it this way, a plane flying dead overhead at 30,000 feet is way out of reach.)

There are longer-range air defense missiles around DC, but the flight of the Concorde in "The Labyrinth Index" carefully skirts those batteries.

People overrate the effectiveness of surface to air missiles: unless an aircraft directly overflies a battery that's already on a hair-trigger alert (as happened with MA17 in the Ukraine or UA752 near Tehran) nothing's going to happen. The main air defenses around DC are the fighter aircraft that are on patrol or on standby, and the fact that everything going into that airspace is tracked on radar. If it's something like the Concorde, which has a legitimate call sign and flight plan then aborts a landing squawking about an onboard emergency, they won't pull the trigger -- instead, there'll be a fighter intercept. Which takes time, even with planes in the air.

(The 9/11 airliners weren't simply off course, they were hijacked and flying in the wrong direction for nearly an hour. I came up with a scenario that takes about five minutes, before the Concorde lights its afterburners and cranks up to outrun-an-F15 speed.)

25: 20 - True, but if I had to intercept, say, a Backfire (or indeed a Concorde) with a Typhoon I'd set up for a head-on attack using Meteor. 23 and #24 - Heteromeles seems to make valid points, but Charlie definitely makes valid counterpoints. Also, I'm going to remind everyone who's not Charlie (since he already knows) that Concorde supercruises at M2 on dry power, and a military jet will be on full afterburner to even keep close.
26:

A novella (provisionally titled Escape from Puroland) was due for publication this month. It's been delayed until next March

That's a shame. I was looking forward to it. Any particular reason beyond the title change (that you're able to share)? Looking at goodreads, looks like advance copies went out a while ago so it seems a bit peculiar that a delay happens this close to publication (or not - I don't know too much about the intricacies of publishing beyond what you've blogged about here previously)

27:

I've read every Laundry novel at least twice but I never noticed any real textual evidence for Bob being an unreliable narrator. What specifically does Bob tell us that the actual text later shows to be wrong? Please help, I need someone to reassure me I didn't miss something extremely obvious, i.e. I don't simply suck at reading.

28:

Short version - They were all ready to go when the publisher's legal department expressed a concern about the use of Sanrio's copyright name "Puroland". If they'd done so earlier, s/Puroland/$new_name would have sorted it.

29:

To be fair, if there's any airspace in the world that's on a permanent IADS hair-trigger, it's the National Capital Region. It's not just the Avenger Stingers, but there's also NASAMS batteries covering the whole area, a pair of F-16s on QRA at Andrews, etc. etc. While 16s (and 15s) would have a bit of trouble catching up to a Concorde at full supercruise, it's not impossible, especially if alerts went out across the country.

Likewise, the F-22 is also capable of supercruise itself. Most of the squadrons are in Alaska and Florida, but there are a couple in the 1st Fighter Wing down at Langley who would be well-positioned to catch up with and prosecute an unidentified heavy gone wide.

What a coincidence though; I just finished re-reading Labyrinth Index last night! As good as I remembered it, if not a little more so. Although 10th and H (USSS HQ) is definitely walking distance from the White House.

And one minor typo - in the SA's office you refer to SIS as the offensive agency and "MI6" as the defensive one; presumably that's meant to be a 5?

Anyways, can't wait for Puroland and more details about Long-Term Continuity Ops...

30:

Charlie @ 20 Which strongly suggests that Concorde was forcibly retired on orders from the US Along with TSR2 & the Miles M-52 .... ( What else? ) Yes, I know about the Avro/Canada "Arrow" too ...

31:

Hm, I guess somebody already mentioned the Aestivation hypothesis to you?

So maybe the Cold Ones are either strong god-like entities waiting for a cooler universe, or entities from a cooler universe influencing the past.

Hell, they could even be humanity's descendents[1] influencing the past.

And then, I wonder if some answers need to be answers or left to the imagination of the readers...

[1] Yes, I have read "Manifold: Time", why do you ask?

32:
I shall go look up Force 136 forthwith.

My wikipedia link is perhaps not the most useful starting point. The National Archive's blog on Fletcher's Operation Remorse is a five-parter starting here: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tag/operation-remorse/

I'd have said it was right up your street (Rule 34 financial shenanigans meets Laundry-verse in the real SOE. With additional Tory spice.)

Quotes:

As Desmond Morton (Churchill’s personal assistant) said, ‘It is hot stuff, but so is curry and some people live on that.’ (HS 1/291, 18 Jan. 1944)
33:
What specifically does Bob tell us that the actual text later shows to be wrong?

(Paraphrasing from one of the novels): "Read my lips. Ol' Bat Wings {Cthulhu} does not exist." Technically true. Cthulhu doesn't have wings (but does exist). However, that was an example of a half-truth (which is a whole lie), rather than cluelessness.

I suggest reading the series from the beginning. Keep track of what Bob is saying, and how it lines up (or doesn't) from information that is shown in later books.

Alternately, check TVTropes's entry for the Laundry Files for 'Unreliable Narrator'.

34:

Perhaps the Reverend Pete took his wife's surname sometime after joining the Laundry in a fit of right-on-ness?

Just an idea.

35:

it feels like reality is stalking my fiction and mugging it for ideas right now

Why not write something cheerful and optimistic, then? :-)

36:

So I tried to park the series at this point until reality resumes making sense.

Damn, that's pretty much the same as saying "indefinitely" at this stage! :)

37:
it feels like reality is stalking my fiction and mugging it for ideas right now Why not write something cheerful and optimistic, then? :-)

I can do that for you right now!

... and they all lived happily ever after.

I don't think I'm going to win a Hugo with that -- do you?

38:

And pity the poor public health doctors who are tracking the spread of the virus, and agonizing about whether to do anything about it or not.

Brin had something like that in a short story. Virus that makes people more altruistic.

39:

Alternately, check TVTropes's entry for the Laundry Files for 'Unreliable Narrator'.

Note, going the other way doesn't work — checking the entry for "Unreliable Narrator" for anything on the Laundry files draws a blank.

40:

Have you ever read "The Stone that Never Came Down" by John Brunner circa 1973? It has a plot much like what you are proposing here.

41:

I dunno - try reading my novel, 11,000 Years, and tell me that its reasonably happy ending prevents it from being nominated for a Hugo.

Meanwhile, Charly keeps talking about a novella... there are amazingly few places that will publich a novella. And one - I see noveallas from tor.com, as Hugo nominees, but I can not find how to submit to that, and the page on shorter fiction hasn't been updated since the beginning of '19.

And they don't seem to answer contact email about submissions.

42:

Doesn't need to be a virus ... see last week's publication concerning [u]Toxoplasma gondii[/u] in hyenas (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24092-x). Altruistic behaviour might be one of the effects in humans who are infected, but there may be age and gender differences.

43:

... and they all lived happily ever after. Check out this table, which includes story beginnings and endings purportedly used in various cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_upon_a_time A sample ending: "...and if they haven't died already, they are living happily to this day. "

Was skimming the last part of the Labyrinth Index (first read very late at night) and did not recall that Jimmy Carter won the skull chalice from drunk Leonid Brezhnev in a poker game. (What else was in Stalin's collection?) I've previously praised Jon(/Yarisol)'s first-person (?) combat mage action sequence. Quite fond of that one.

44:

I agree that an infectious conscience doesn't have to be a virus. Thing is, we can basically make viruses now and re-engineer some of them for vaccines. IF it turned out that sociopathy is something that has a simple cause based on cellular mechanism controlled by a gene product that can be tampered with (probabiliy is within a rounding error zero, but...), then it might be possible to rekludge that mechanism with a virus that can get to the relevant organ (presumably the brain, although wouldn't it be cool if it was the gut...).

So there's only one degree of impossibility in this silly little scenario, and it involves inserting DNA code for %Fix. Easy to explain in a story, but perhaps a little boring for the cognoscenti?

It looks like Toxoplasma gondii is a tiny-ass little thing (80 mb of DNA code), but it's 2500 times bigger than the Covid19 genome (30,000 bp of DNA). Plus toxoplasma has a nonfunctional chloroplast descendant in the cell (it's an alga that was chosen to become a parasite, go figure) so there might be a bit more room there. The problem is, Toxoplasma gondii fiddles with vasopressin expression epigenetically, which means rejiggers which genes express products (in this case by methylating genes to shut off their expression). So this psycho scenario only works if sociopathy isn't a genetic disease but a simple epigenetic one involving the expression of one or two hormones, such that somehow engineering T. gondii to rejigger their expression makes all the difference. Tricky.

But this would be a very cool scenario. For one thing, if T. gondii could be engineered to do neuronal epigenetics, possibly even better than Bruce Sterling writing about engineered HIV making dogs smarter as a side-effect of someone trying to hack their brainz. Better yet, toxoplasmosis is a global disease, and Toxoplasmas are phylogenetically within screaming distance of malaria parasites. If we could engineer those into oblivion...

But there's a really fun downside to this scenario: Toxoplasma infects possibly all warm-blooded animals including livestock, but the definitive hosts are cats. It also has various effects in its hosts, including humans (cf: toxoplasmosis) and rodents. And finally, its prevalence declines in livestock declines with stringent livestock hygiene.

So the story becomes something about how all animals, especially cats, become infectiously less psychopathic and more neurotic, at least until people get really anal about cleanliness, at which point human sociopathy rebounds.

This calls for a master of black comedy SF, I think. Any candidates?

45:

Was skimming the last part of the Labyrinth Index (first read very late at night) and did not recall that Jimmy Carter won the skull chalice from drunk Leonid Brezhnev in a poker game. (What else was in Stalin's collection?)

Yeah, that detail...

Google is "your friend" (https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/2016/us-presidents-who-played-poker-162602.shtml?) and purportedly there's a gap in poker-playing presidents between Nixon and Obama. While I like Carter, in the interests of accuracy, one might talk about how Nixon won the skull off Brezhnev when they were playing poker after signing the SALT I accord in 1972 in Moscow. Wonder what Nixon would have anted for that Cold War game?

46:

Maybe Peter's family name is actually Russell-Wilson or Wilson-Russell?

N.B. There is a Russell Wilson who is a popular sports ball player in the US.

47:

A few years later I'd worked out that Bob was a horribly unreliable narrator, and asked myself: what if Bob's picture of Mhari was as warped as his understanding of everything else in the early books?

I didn't wait to finish reading Immortality Key, and pulled out Labyrinth Index. Started reading, and teared up as I read along.

Well done.

BTW, At the end of chapter one, when she's getting drunk, the superhero boyfriend flies in to visit.

The paragraph on page 40, starting with - "Civil Service pay scales..." to the end of the chapter. She sums up her life to that point. Reading that, I feel that Bob's opinion of Mhari is dead on.

I suspect that I will read the book once a week until I understand why it is so devastating.

Thanks...

48:

The only thing that really stood out about Labyrinth Index is the homes with the "To Let" signs.

Not something you'd normally see in America.

49:

I know that the F-22 is "capable of supercruise", but the official definition of supercruise is "level flight at speed above M1.0 on dry power". Wikipedia claims the F-22 can supercruise at M1.8, which is faster than I expected but not enough to keep up with Concorde.

No. Again check Wikipedia, which correctly defines MI5 as the UK's internal security service. MI6, also known as the "Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) is responsible for external threats, like the POTUS...

50:

It's a while since I read The Labyrinth Index too, so while I vaguely remember having questions I think that months and years of discussion here probably made some of them redundant. I do remember a little dismay about Derek's capture, since it seems his story hasn't really bloomed yet (maybe his origin story will grow into a standalone prequel? Maybe there isn't really enough there to make that bloom happen anyway?). I loved the Concorde rescue premise and remember working through quite a bit of the discussion above in my head back at the time. And I grok'd the idea that Mhari had extra mojo she hadn't anticipated herself due to being an emissary of the Pharaoh. I have been passively wondering ever since how that mojo translates into whatever power play Bob, Mo, the SA and anyone else on the transhume side end up bringing to bear on the New Management, but I am taking a hint this isn't going to end neatly.

51:

You're right about the F-22; I thought I'd read it was capable of M2+ supercruise but even Jane's puts it at only M1.6 (albeit based on YF-22 performance).

As for the latter, I think we're in violent agreement - the passage in question is

In the UK, SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, does the spying stuff; MI6, the Security Service, sticks to counter-espionage and anti-terrorism duty.

[It looks like another commenter picked this out too several years ago: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/11/typo-hunt-the-labyrinth-index.html#comment-2056383]

52:

:-) - Depending on source, I've seen the F-22's supercruise put at anything from M1.3 up to M1.8. However you cut it they need afterburner to match Concorde and a tail chase degrades the effective range of an AIM as well.

Now I see the actual quote, yes, that should have been "...stuff; MI5, the security..."

53:

"I'm just fantasizing about how much fun it would be for the many hated world leaders in all fields to suddenly and inconveniently develop burgeoning consciences (live on camera. Possibly preaching, even.), just because they couldn't keep their zippers closed."

There is a small sequence in "Stand on Zanzibar" where the bishop of a fundamentalist church gets a dose of "All-Truth" drug smeared on his pulpit.

Not a very edifying speech.

54:

Charlie, for me the existence of BLUE HADES and DEEP SEVEN always seemed like a type of Checkov's gun. BLUE HADES did already feature in several books, but do you (or did you at some point) have plans to feature DEEP SEVEN (the guys who live in the Earth's mantel) more prominently in the series?

One particular point where I wondered was the description of the interior of the temple on top of the pyramid where it is stated that the seats in the temple are not made for human anatomy. I believe we never explicitly learn for whom they were made, but I always suspected either species of the deep ones, more likely DEEP SEVEN, because in The Fuller Memorandum there is mention of finding unusual non-human bones in archeological digs. Is this a line that you meant to pursue at some point and later dropped, or am I just mistaken in my head-canon?

55:

You are raising the spectre of Galloway Gallagher!

56:

The main point of confusion for me in the Laundry series is over the Black Pharoah vs the Sleeper in the Pyramid.

In the Fuller Memorandum, as far as I can recall, Iris (as high priestess of the local Black Pharaoh cult) was explicitly trying to create a pet Eater of Souls, in order to break down the wall of pain and awaken the Sleeper.

In the Nightmare Stacks and Labyrinth Index, Iris is still the High Priestess of the Pharaoh, but the Pharaoh is not the Sleeper, nor is the Sleeper required in order to awaken him - instead, the Sleeper is the/a rival "sect", to be avoided if possible, and fought if not.

I also seem to recall being quite confused about the role Raymond Schiller played, in both the Apocalypse Codex and the Nightmare stacks - whether he was being run explicitly by the Black Chamber (as hinted at by Alex's presence in his organisation, in Apocalypse Codex), or whether he was running his own operation, subborning Black Chamber assets to his own goal (which, of course, was raising Jesus).

Whether the Sleeper is Cthulu himself, or as is hinted at in The Fuller Memorandum, just one of a chain of horrors necessary to fully awaken Cthulu, I either never figured out, or have forgotten. I'm in the process of re-reading the series now, but have only reached the Armageddon Score.

I've kind of reconciled the question of the Pharaoh vs the Sleeper, as being a question of the series (and the geanology of the Elder Beings) just being less developed so early in the series - i.e. things have subsequently been retconned as Charlie developed a more thorough theory of the world (well, multiverse) underlying his stories; but if there's a better explanation, I'd love to hear it.

57:
Wonder what Nixon would have anted for that Cold War game?

A certain box sitting in government storage since 1936 springs to mind....

58:

One other point about the F22, there's not many of them, and with their historically-low availability rates, it's not inconceivable that on a given day there wouldn't be any in a position to intercept the Black Concorde. Of course, the other benefit Concorde had over the F22 was range. There's no definitive range published, but the F22 can maybe mange 200 miles of supercruise, which is barely one bottle of champagne for Concorde.

We can also decide that the Black Concorde is based on the 'Concorde B' upgrade concept, so it would have longer range, a lower stall speed, and a faster top speed than the civilian version.

The whole sequence reminded me of the many (probably exaggerated) stories of RAF crews sneaking past USAF defences on joint exercises (eg Operation Sky Shield).

59:

"I'll have to re-read the entire series before I try to write the last book. That'll take me at least a month ..."

All the multi book series I have ever read have inconsistencies or big plot holes. It's unavoidable, and I guess rereading one's prose is also probably a big chore.

I manage a software product and looking back I what I wrote 10 years ago is often both embarrassing and bothersome. And I have the advantage of having a compiler to help do a reality check.

60:
The main point of confusion for me in the Laundry series is over the Black Pharoah vs the Sleeper in the Pyramid.

I believe your explanation is more or less correct. It seems to me that in The Fuller Memorandum the Sleeper in the Pyramid was or at least was supposed to be the Black Pharao. That's how I understood it at the time. And also on re-reading the novel nothing really pointed in the direction of them being two separate and opposed entities. For one, the very fact that it's a Pyramid is a strong hint that whatever is sleeping/undead in it should be a Pharaoh.

Later (I am not sure at which point) it was retconned into what we have now: The Black Pharaoh and the Sleeper as two different class-6 entities fighting with each other over dominance, with Iris as the high priestess of the former an Schiller as the high priest/partial avatar/whatever of the latter.

That's how I understand it. But Charlie may of course have a better explanation. It may also be that Bob was either misinformed or just his unreliable-narrator self.

61:

Yes. But, from experience, that is exactly the sort of confusion that arises when management briefs a technopeasant being given a mission. The former very often treats the latter as an unreliable ally, and doles out the minimum of relevant information, often in an obfuscated form. It is often easier to get more, and more reliable, information about your own organisation's plans from a declared enemy than your own management.

62:

Heteromeles @ 7: Also, I don't remember Labyrinth Index well enough to have any questions, except that the aerodynamics of two humans catching up with a Concorde are firmly in the realm of Marvel fantasy, I think."

The Concorde's landing speed was around 187 mph (per Wikipedia). Stall speed in landing configuration would be about 90% of that. So, if James Bond can use the Fulton STARS system, it's within reason that a Concorde dawdling along close to stall speed (pretending to be an Airbus jumbo jet) could catch a flying policeman and a president by trailing a net.

The one thing that upset me about the Labyrinth Index was what happened to Vicar Pete. He deserved better than that.

IIRC, when a PHANG does not feed, the V-parasites chow down on his/her grey matter similar to the way the K-parasites do to other practitioners. I believe Pete would refuse to feed, but I also doubt he would go the suicide by noonday sun route either.

I get the impression that Case Nightmare xxx will eventually pass (if the stars come into alignment due to movement of the cosmos, that implies the stars go out of alignment as well), so might it be possible for Pete to be stored away in one of the circle of protection posters to be decanted at some time in the future where it might be possible to rid him of the V-parasites?

And if it never becomes curable, he's still no worse off than he is now.

I know that's a dangling loose end, but like I said, I thought Pete deserved better.

63:

Yup. However, IRL, Concorde retired for good before Meteor entered service (2016), and AIUI the USAF didn't have anything with the range until AIM-120D came along (AIM-120C and earlier: too short-legged).

As I think I noted in the book, test pilot Brian Trubshaw took one of the prototypes out over the Atlantic and hit the gas to see how fast it would go: it averaged 1500mph for half an hour before he chickened out (fear of melting the airframe), which matches the top speed and vastly exceeds the range of 'most every military plane in service, even before you factor in the ability to do it at 70,000 feet.

64:

Any particular reason beyond the title change (that you're able to share)?

Macmillan Legal expressed reservations about trademark [ab-]use. It'll be reworked with minimal changes and published in due course; it's just that because it's getting a hardcover, it had to be kicked back two release cycles (Tor runs three release cycles/12 months).

65:

I never noticed any real textual evidence for Bob being an unreliable narrator.

Whaaa ...?

Bob gets almost everything wrong at some point! Start with the paperclip audits (which he dismisses as incomprehensible bullshit in "The Atrocity Archive" and then explains as a vital security countermeasure in "The Fuller Memorandum") and work forward. Look at how he perceives Mhari in TAA, and then who she turns out to be in "The Rhesus Chart", "The Annihilation Score", and "The Labyrinth Index". Look at how he thinks of Mo in the first five books, and compare with her unvarnished view of him in the sixth. Or Bob's insistence that Cthulhu doesn't exist ("Equoid") or that vampires don't exist ("The Rhesus Chart") -- although to be fair he learns better in the latter case.

Bob is an amiable but rather blinkered techbro who exudes unquestioned white male privilege and suffers from the dangerous delusion that his competence in one problem domain extends to others. To be fair to him, Bob grows and learns and manages to keep up with the curve -- but if Bob tells you something is wrong or impossible, he's mistaken.

66:

Heteromeles @ 23: Fair enough. What I was also thinking about are the batteries of Stingers on the White House roof and Patriot missiles elsewhere in DC. (e.g. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36728/sam-system-that-guards-washington-dc-just-made-its-lowest-ever-intercept-of-a-mock-cruise-missile). Both Stingers and Patriots are faster than a Concorde at full cruise, although I agree that velocity and targeting are two very different things.

Those missile batteries been tested against mock cruise missiles, and are set up to prevent another 9/11. As you recall, 9/11 was about airliners suddenly veering from their assigned course and heading for the Pentagon, at least in part? A passenger plane suddenly veering off-course and towards DC will of course get shot at. Whether it gets hit or not is another matter."

A couple of other things you might have missed ...

The Concorde isn't flying over DC/Whitehouse/Pentagon. They're north of the city over Maryland. Until just minutes before the pickup ATC still thinks they're a commercial airliner going to Baltimore-Washington International Airport diverting because of an in-flight emergency. They're not even trying to get into Dulles. That alone puts them out of range for the Stingers on the Whitehouse roof.

Another part of the plan has a smaller private aircraft blundering around the southern edges of the DC exclusion zone (whatever it's called) as a distraction to draw any airborne USAF fighters out out of position.

67:

Which strongly suggests that Concorde was forcibly retired on orders from the US

Nope. But it was politics: Airbus at the time were investigating a joint SST project with a Japanese consortium, and Concorde would have rendered it non-viable. (This project was killed by the 2008 financial crisis.)

The official paperwork reason for Concorde's withdrawal was that it hit its 30 year design life limit. It could have continued flying, but the manufacturer of record (Airbus) would have to provide certification for insurance purposes, and tech support. They wanted to charge £50M/year ... per airframe, not for the entire fleet, which made it a non-starter. Grr.

68:

I might have made up the Carter/Brezhnev drunken poker match for Hitler's skull. Just possibly. (It sounded like the sort of thing they'd have done, though.)

69:

Charlie Stross @ 24: (The 9/11 airliners weren't simply off course, they were hijacked and flying in the wrong direction for nearly an hour. I came up with a scenario that takes about five minutes, before the Concorde lights its afterburners and cranks up to outrun-an-F15 speed.)

Additionally, on 9/11, NORAD was running an exercise in the north-eastern U.S. and at first there was confusion at NORAD over whether the reported hijackings were real or a part of the exercise.

I've always wondered if that was coincidence or if the hijackers knew about the exercise & deliberately chose the day to create that confusion; taking advantage of it to delay the U.S. response?

I'm pretty sure the exercise was publicly announced in advance ... like Bush's itinerary down in Florida was.

70:

We can also decide that the Black Concorde is based on the 'Concorde B' upgrade concept

I thought that was explicitly stated in the novel?

(Concorde B had slats, more extensive use of composites, other weight-reduction stuff, which in turn gave it more capacious fuel tanks and a significant improvement in range and the ability to take off and hit maximum cruise speed without afterburners, which were therefore deleted. By some extrapolations a fully developed Concorde B model could have maxed out at a 4500 mile range at >Mach 2 almost the entire way.)

71:

For one, the very fact that it's a Pyramid is a strong hint that whatever is sleeping/undead in it should be a Pharaoh.

Other cultures are famous for pyramid-building ... and especially for putting temples on top of them and conducting mass human sacrifice.

(This is an angle that gets explored in the Tales of the New Management. Hint: if the shadows on the walls of Plato's Cave included both Cthulhu and the Aztec pantheon, what kind of entities cast them?)

72:

Reminder that very bad things happen to good people in this series. As with "A Game of Thrones", nobody is safe.

73:

I'll agree with Charlie's idea, because my original point was about human aerodynamics.

That said, Baltimore airport is 36 miles from the White House per Google Maps, so anything landing there is within Patriot missile range. I'm also quite sure that, post 9/11, all the airports within easy range of the White House got extensive USAF planning workup, simply to deal with an enemy pulling this scenario and either kamikazi-ing a plane or firing a missile from a plane into the White House with a few minutes' warning.

Thinking about it, I even wonder why the Black Pharaoh didn't dump a necromantic nuke into the pentagon, using that supersonic manned cruise missile that he'd snuck into US airspace, rather than pulling out the President? I know, Rule of Cool, but sacrificing both the Uncrowned King and Cthulhu's AOL hook-up might give more mana than simply extracting the President from Washington with the loss of the Concorde and a bunch of people. Of course, it would have made for a bad story and a worse nuclear war, but isn't liberating America from Cthulhu worth it?

74:

I'm guessing that the Pentagon wasn't nuked because the Black Pharoah didn't need to do it. What's obvious to me is that both Nyarlahotep and Cthulhu are minor avatars of What Is To Come. There's no need to throw nukes at each other, just lob a few obstacles onto the critical path for development into a later instar. Eventually they will be allies, but who's going to be in charge relates entirely to who gets their entire being to Earth first.

I don't doubt that whatever tentacled entity ended up in charge of Russia is going to try to trip up whoever winds up in charge of India, (or whatever) and this probably relates to a lot of what's going on in Bob's/Mo's world.

75:

The Black Pharaoh not only didn't need to nuke the Pentagon, the Black Pharaoh was not in a hurry to provoke a US nuclear counter-strike.

I still haven't worked out the ramifications of what CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN does to the global balance of power and nuclear deterrence, but most likely nukes still remain viable (although new possibilities that may make them obsolescent -- not ineffective, just militarily unnecessary -- come along).

(Discursive point: in "Dead Lies Dreaming", set in late 2016, Imp complains that he can't get his hands on any 4K HD cameras for filming -- they're locked up tight, and there's a waiting list for film. This is a shout-out to basilisk weapons. IIRC in either "The Labyrinth Index" or "The Annihilation Score" Mhari or Mo notice the military and/or police demonstrating new body armour and basilisk guns, and spin-offs of Alfar technology don't seem too far-fetched. A huge sea-change in military affairs is plausible in the near-future of the New Management, as the status quo reverts to a weird polycentric model of competing magically-enhanced powers, and the aforementioned magic often trumps the existing military-industrial complex, so that tanks and smart bombs don't necessarily win against witch doctors and tentacle monsters. This makes for a great leveling in international affairs ... and enormous instability. But I'm not going there in the foreseeable future of the series: it'd take at least a couple more books before it's even on the horizon.)

76:

RE: CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. I'd suggest that maybe the Alfar are best as a negative example?

It's another example of the repurposing of military technology-someone in the Alfar summoned something that destroyed their world. It wasn't during a pitched war, but during a political struggle.

We've also got the evidence from the Atrocity Archive that a nuke will close a gate, which is why nuking the Pentagon might actually have been a good thing.

Anyway, it depends. If Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu are lieutenants for the Big Bad, then get rid of the nukes, because they're the one thing that can stop the Big Bad from coming in.

If these two are the Big Bads and they want to keep out something bigger (Azathoth) or Infovores that can eat them for brunch (the Cold Ones being the thing from the Atrocity Archive?) then they'll keep the nukes and limit the uses of gates and magic so that there's no proliferation of the magitech that could bring their enemies into this realm of existence. And in that case, nuking them til they glow and hexing them in the dark might be a good blow-off for this series.

There are other options, I'm sure. You could do a Strossian homage to A Night in the Lonesome October for example.

77:

ACtually just realized I had that backwards. The Atrocity Archive had a gate naturally sealing, while detonating a nuke on the Enemy side of the gate would have let the infovore into this iteration of Earth.

So nuclear policy is critical, and nuking the Pentagon would have been a mistake--if the problem was letting Cthulhu get into this world.

So if Nyarlathotep wants to control Earth and keep the Others out (let alone the infovores), getting rid of nukes is key to the process. If Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep and company are the lieutenants, then they'll push towards a full-out nuclear war to bring their lord and master in.

I'd suggest that we've already got infovores one gate away from Earth and they're known planet killers. And we've got whatever munched the Alfar one other gate from Earth, and it's a known planet killer. Letting Nyarlathotep in to farm our Earth and keep Others from simply eating it may be the least evil possibility.

78:

Stinger... NASAMS... Patriot

A quick guide to anti-aircraft missiles... apologies if I get it slightly wrong, I was never a cloudpuncher ;)

Most missiles are rather limited by their rocket motor, which typically only burns for the first second or few after launch (whatever Hollywood and CGI may show). After that initial acceleration, your missile is a glider with tiny stubby fins which have to balance between "big enough to steer" and "draggy enough to reduce range". Meteor is new, in the sense that it has a ramjet that can power it most of the way to its target.

Anything light enough to put on your shoulder (e.g. Stinger / Igla / Starstreak) is by definition limited to taking on aircraft whose flight path is at low level, directly over your head (early IR seekers had the disadvantage of only doing tail chase, i.e. "shoot at it only after it's dropped its bombs on you"). They're point defence only; fire at anything that's flying over your colleagues a mile away, and you'll miss. Fire too soon / too late, and you'll miss. The higher it is, the shorter your window for a successful engagement. No, you don't have a radar, you're using guesswork. Unsurprisingly, hit rates aren't high.

Anything of a size to hang under the wing of a fighter / sit on the back of a small truck (e.g. CAMM / NASAMS) has rather more energy available, albeit not as much as if Biggles is firing a version of the same missile from 30k feet and Mach 1. It has the option to engage something that's flying past you, not just over you. How far past you is the sensitive bit (it's also affected by the speed/altitude of the target); and about now, the professional air defence types start muttering about isoleths.

If you want true "area air defence" (e.g. Patriot / S-300), the missiles are carried on a large truck, or towed; they weigh from 700 to 1800kg, and are twenty-ish feet long. Even then, their ability to engage a high-altitude, high-speed, crossing target is limited. If the missile is only going a few hundred knots faster than its (Mach 2 and running fast) target, it's a race between Concorde getting past the maximum range before the missile runs out of kinetic energy or steering authority...

79:

Talking of evil paranoid control freaks, it is to be hoped that Patel gets her knuckles rapped for interfering in the policing process, which she is certainly not supposed to do. I know "XR" are idiots, but some of Patel's antics have now come out in court ....

Like Charlie says, it's almost impossible to do satire.

If the current fascist controlpolice bill passes in unmodified form, I can see vast numbers going to jail & juries refusing to convict & - of course - even more protest, setting up a vicious circle

80:

The nuke wouldn't open the gate. It would give the thing that lived on the other side enough power to make it through the gate/open the gate further. So it wasn't "nukes open the gate" it was "nukes give infovores energy." So nukes might or might not be a problem in the future.

81:

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE

It turns out that this piece is so late that "Dead Lies Dreaming" is already out in paperback in the UK. There isn't and won't be a trade paperback from Tor.com in the visible future as it continues to sell well in ebook, which is the new low-end/cheap format. And (fingers crossed) I have delivered "Quantum of Nightmares" and it is hopefully on the way to publication in January.

So, although I'm not going to do it for a week or two, the next blog essay will be the crib sheet for "Dead Lies Dreaming".

82: 63 - Yep. Still, my point was really that you can't easily shoot down anything doing M2.0 when in a tail chase orientation. 70 - Not sure I agree with you about deleting the afterburners; they were used to accelerate from about M0.9 to M1.3. 75 - Imp complains that he can't get his hands on any 4K HD cameras for filming -- they're locked up tight, and there's a waiting list for film

Well, those cameras were either 4K HD, a digital format, or they used wet film, but not both!

83:

A waiting list for film cameras; nobody's getting the digital kind.

84:

The plot point from book one about infovores finding nukes quite tasty...I can imagine some spivvy mate of a senior tory (or some of the middle managers I've endured under) coming up with an incredible, foolproof, get rich quick scheme for getting rid of nuclear waste. Just feed it to this gibbering horror I stumbled across. What could possibly go wrong?

85:

Greg, I believe it's too early for off-topic comments. Usually it's not encouraged before #300.

Returning to topic, I've been thinking some more about the deep ones. Where are they actually on the magic scale? Specifically: how powerful are they compared to Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep etc? And how do they feel about the elder gods fighting for control over Earth? From what we know about their powers they would be capable of doing enormous damage to the human surface population, maybe even to the point of wiping them out. They haven't done this yet, simply because humanity hasn't managed to seriously get into their hair yet. But it's clear that they wouldn't hesitate to retaliate if the surface dwellers would ever seriously annoy them.

So the question becomes: what would it take for Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, or whatever entity is now controlling Russia (and the rest of the surface countries) to get on DEEP SEVEN's bad side? And how would they react in that case? For instance: a huge tsunami covering all of the British isles—or even Britain suddenly sinking to the bottom of the sea—would be akin to a huge human sacrifice … a sacrifice not to Nyarlathotep. I guess that would seriously mess with his power base and his plans.

So, could that be a possible endgame? The deep ones decide that they don't want their home planet to be a playground for those pesky elder gods. How would that play out? If my suspicion is correct that the chairs in the temple above the Pyramid were made for DEEP SEVEN, this would imply that DEEP SEVEN were watching over the imprisonment of the sleeper. And that would imply that they defeated him at least once already. So they could do it again, and by extension also the other elder gods of the same power level. I wouldn't expect humanity to survive this fight, however. So the deep ones would not be the cavalry coming to humanity's rescue.

The existence of the deep ones also has ramifications for the Alfär, by the way. Were they aware—fleeing from a planet that was conquered by elder gods—that they were attacking only the third most powerful indigenous species on Earth? On their own Earth they were hiding deep underground. Could they even do that on this Earth without violating the territory of the deep ones?

86:

MSB Charlie specifically mentioned "Satire being dead" in the UK post-Brexit & we now have a fascist sympathiser ( at least ) in the Home Office ....

87:

Going from the Jennifer Morgue, the Deep Ones are not autochthones, and thus can get trapped in summoning grids, aka pentagrams. The Cthonians are listed as paleosophonts, so who knows how long they've been on the planet, and whether they colonized or were just here all along. The absence of deep ecosystem remnants in the lava of oceanic islands kind of says they're ETs as well, but that OGH's call to make.

And this does get interesting, though. The Cthonians would be in a lava about Cthulhu's plan to dismantle the planet and make a matrioshka brain, but perhaps they can get parasitized too? Or possibly Cthulhu's avatars aren't sufficiently clued in about how many species are using Earth as a refuge and are just sucker-baiting the CIA into letting them in for some other purpose? It's not like the CIA hasn't been fooled before.

On a separate note, I do seem to recall that the Deep Ones' aerial vehicles display a disturbing resemblance to the UAPs that filled the US news last month. Were those flying, van-sized tic tacs an intentional reference, or just reality riffing off Charlie yet again?

88:

Okay, I'll do a triptych: can humans be trapped in summoning grids on other worlds? That could be fun. More to the point, can Alfar and/or equoids be trapped in summoning grids on Earth? Inquiring minds do want to know.

89:

Halfway through re-reading it now. One thing that puzzled me first time round and continues to do so is why the OPA are choosing to take such a long term route to bootstrapping a God as the Matroskia brain plan, compared to whatever the Black Pharaoh is up to? Was it just part of the satire of everything in the US being bigger and better or is there a an in-universe rationale for it?

90:

I'm on page 149 where Derek is talking about The Gray Man. I discovered something interesting about the concept.

If the Gray Man goes to the same restaurant over time, the wait staff suddenly "sees" you, where before you were invisible. They don't just "see" you, they suddenly feel that you are the most important person in the room, and they all come and shake your hand. They have vast smiles and are drinking in your presence, so pleased to "see" you.

New waiters will of course not see you at first. Then other waiters will come across the room to say, Hi, and by contagion the new waiter will pick up the same impression and suddenly "see" you as well.

It's disconcerting when it happens, but you have to roll with the new "celebrity" or it creates a dissonance.

91:

We've been told several times that BLUE HADES has plans for riding out the current kerfluffle, plans that they do not share with the surface apes. Some kind of super-wards around their cities and they hibernate until the Stars Aren't Right? Their whole population swims through portals and everyone moves to parallel worlds for a while? Something more exotic? Whatever the answer, there's strong evidence that they've been through this before and the whole thing is a nuisance rather than the end of (their) world.

It's suggested that the antics of humanity are about as important to BLUE HADES leadership as the plight of orangutans in Borneo is to the UN General Assembly. Not only do they have other things going on, we can't even imagine most of those things.

As for DEEP SEVEN, I like the suggestion that they're not ignoring us; rather, they haven't noticed us. Maybe a few hobbyists have sent probes to the outer-space regions - not just far up where it's so cold the rocks solidify, not just even past that to the water layer, but all the way up to where the rocks stop entirely. This plausibly attracts as much attention as high-altitude balloon probes or ionospheric radio conditions attract among humans. ("Nothing up there can affect us. And what could live up there, anyway?") DEEP SEVEN already deals with outer space aliens high up in the water layer; it's implausible that outer-outer-space life would be a priority to them.

92:

I hope nobody objects if I drop in a paste of my thoughts from two years ago since by then I came a little too late in the appropriate thread for anyone to really read...

In terrible order.

a) I loved Mo and especially Mhari as narrators, and all the subtle distinctions put in (down to different notation for footnotes, although that might have been a publisher issue). Republic of Me biology analogies were great.

b) Theory: In DI, OPA nudged Schiller towards the UK both to clear him out of their turf, but more importantly, to draw out the already-incarnate Nyarlathotep and possibly get him and the Sleeper engaged in a mutually-destructive conflict while projects THRESHOLD and GODWAKER march on unchallenged. In book four, I'm inclined to believe them that what happened was a snafu - he managed to suborn his OPA watchers and cut the organization off.

b i) THEORY: BLUE HADES did nothing about Schiller because by the point his plan was in motion beyond reasonable limits he started his game in earnest, genociding the population of the UK would be very easily suborned into immanentizing the Sleeper.

c) Theory: More than playing a Xanatos gambit against an elder god, Auditor Michael Armstrong is a genuine, if moderate Nyarlathotep cultist. CONSTITUENCY was basically taking a genuine cult he helped shield (since Iris was competent it wasn't too much work) and justifying what happened in a way to keep her out of the consequences. This is why, for instance, His Dread Majesty was so blase about Iris keeping her Continuity Ops geas - in the end, it's service to him through a proxy.

Granted, he's got plans that he's told Mhari about before geassing her to silence, but those are a kind of bee feeder counterpart to a honeypot, both in terms of increasing his personal power within the New Management and more so, keeping people like Mhari from getting desperate and doing something dumb. As he said, it's important to keep hope and while sugar water isn't honey, it will keep the bees alive during winter.

Can't say I'd blame him either - I feel like joining with someone/something stronger is pretty much the only hope humanity has in the situation, and it might be how the other species survived their CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. And given Bast is non-canon/relegated to the RPG, I guess His Dread Majesty might be the next best choice. (He's definitely doing better than the current UK government brick'd)

d) Will we ever get a Jonquil story/book? While I liked what happened, I was a bit disappointed at her getting shut out of the story so quickly. Personally I was hoping the path Mhari would take would be bundling her off with Yarisol. (can you spell comic relief) For one, there's little one could do to make an autistic cultural authoritarian look disloyal that HDM and even Iris wouldn't eyeroll at, so her main role would be mostly shut off - besides, I'll go out on a step and say they'd both count as heavy arcane support. After all, J was noted to have a strong magic aura around her.... and while Yari thinks she's an awful mage... well, asides from this being memoirs of Mhari (who hates her), Yari calling someone bad at magic is like Bobby Fisher saying someone plays chess badly. Same goes for general competence - I mean, she seemed to carry a bit of an idiot ball here but not only was she competent in TFM... she also managed to successfully hide for six years with her mother interrogated and interned in Camp Sunshine.

e) Speaking of Camp Sunshine...given how boring the place was by necessity, and Derek GMing for everyone... I can't help but imagine that a meeting between him and Iris would lapse towards old campaign stories with the onlookers going "wut". Furthermore, a crackficcy part of me wonders if he ended up on the "politically unreliable" list for screwing Iris's character over at some point :P

f) Will any stories/books/we in the future actually deal with Czernobog? I happen to be from what likely ended up in his sphere of influence so I'm naturally curious to think how's my country doing in the Laundryverse. (Total aside - given the extensive contacts the US and UK had with BLUE HADES... I can't help but wonder if the Darvaza burning gas crater in Turkmenistan was a result of Soviet liaisons with DEEP SEVEN. After all, the enemy of my enemy...)

Anyhow, thanks again for writing a great series, I'm looking forwards to any continuations there might be in the future!

93:

Or possibly Cthulhu's avatars aren't sufficiently clued in about how many species are using Earth as a refuge and are just sucker-baiting the CIA into letting them in for some other purpose?

Loss of institutional knowledge is a thing, especially with long-term classified programs!

The CIA and the Black Chamber knew about DEEP SEVEN in the 1960s and 1970s, but that's 40 years ago, so an entire career duration: likely nobody now working there (as of the Laundry Files dateline) remembers this stuff at first hand, and because it was classified, who would have been read into the program?

Yes, the TLAs have librarians and publish meaty compendia of documents about declassified projects. But if the project isn't declassified, vanishingly few people will still be aware of it, and they're probably not in charge of making decisions at "dismantle the moon" level. Those who are making such policy decisions are not going to be receptive to dusty junior archivists saying "er, there might be a problem here due to left-over residue from this 40 year old project", especially once the $100Bn project budget starts to get allocated to golfing buddies ...

As for the deep ones, I'm not sure how explicit I made it (or in which book) but there were some indications that they were withdrawing from Earth's oceans completely, by means unspecified. The apes pissed in the pool once too often and there's enough magic floating around that merely killing them would be a very bad idea.

94:

The OPA gave up on human sacrifice after Schiller fubared the entire process for them in "The Apocalypse Codex". Computational methods are ... well, how many computers does it take to stack up to one human brain? Hence the scale of it.

95:

Will any stories/books/we in the future actually deal with Czernobog? I happen to be from what likely ended up in his sphere of influence so I'm naturally curious to think how's my country doing in the Laundryverse.

That's difficult, because I try to write in places I've actually visited or in places nobody can visit because they're imaginary or historical settings (howling exception: I've never been to St Martin -- but then, neither have most of my readers). Hence the next novella being set in Japan, in a theme park I've spent a day at.

But right now, I've never visited any part of Europe east of Poland, or any part of the former Soviet Union, and thanks to COVID19 (to say nothing of politics) there's zero prospect of me doing that in the foreseeable future. Which makes writing an entire novel set there kind of problematic.

96:

Thanks Charlie.

Another one - the Opa have their own flavour of vampires, presumably obtained once the events of the Rhesus Chart got disseminated. Presumably due to them having at least a couple of low level resources in the Laundry?

What’s more interesting is the origin of the dragon at Crested Butte. Presumably that’s one of the Alfar contingent, and a playing piece Mhari is not fully in the loop on?

97:

Hah. We're more like south of Poland, but entirely fair point. When I first asked this, it was before the current worldwide mess, so the possibility space had been vastly different.

Thank you for a reply!

98:

A very annoying side-effect of Brexit is that the shitweasels in Westminster are so opposed to permitting free movement with the EU that they refused to ask for a visa waiver scheme -- which was offered by the EU -- for artists, musicians, and similar on tour, because it would require reciprocity, meaning letting in foreign artists, musicians, and etc.

(As the creative sector in the UK is bigger than car manufacturing and aerospace combined this is absolutely insane, but it's from a government led by Boris "fuck business!" Johnson, who have already trashed fishing and agriculture, not to mention long-haul logistics, so it's about what one could expect.)

Anyway, when travel resumes again, I can go and visit the USA using an ESTA visa waiver permit (cost: £25, lasts for two years). But if I want to go to an SF convention anywhere in the EU and speak or do a panel discussion, it requires a £200 visa for each trip, to each destination country. I can attend as a regular tourist but being a speaker is pretty clearly ruled out.

And I tend to do a lot of walking-around type research on these trips.

Right now there are no in-person SF conventions to travel to in the first place, so it's not worth worrying about. But if the asshat Tories don't do something about a creative sector visa waiver scheme before, say, mid-2022, it will leave me with a bit of a problem.

And given the way they've allowed Brexit to result in empty food shelves in supermarkets in a capital city, I'm not optimistic about them fixing anything.

(/end political rant)

99:

I hate, and try to avoid, Planet of Hats syndrome in my writing.

So you may take it as plausible that there is more than one parasite species that causes V-syndrome (it's a symptom, not an organism), and there may be more than one thing in the Laundry universe that matches the approximate description "dragon".

(Alfar "dragons" are bat-winged and barrel-bodied flying things with tentacles, i.e. Lovecraftian: hexapod worms with a pair of wings midships might well be something else entirely.)

100:

Given that the whole Brexit thing seems to be (at least at the public level) an exercise in jingoism, I suspect that there's also a strong whiff of "protecting English culture" behind that decision. They don't want any foreign artists coming in and corrupting English minds with trash. And why should Brits need any inferior foreign so-called art anyway?

101:

Oh, totally! Only it's set by fools who have no idea how the arts work, what the arts even are (hint: world-beating computer games industry in UK is a big part of it), or that the UK is actually a major exporter of creative content, or that some institutions (eg. orchestras) rely on high-profile foreign soloists to drive ticket sales and need to tour overseas to pay their overheads, and so on.

It's not just that it's narrow-minded English jingoism, it's also that it's low-brow uneducated English jingoism at that, pandering to the prejudices of property developers and under-educated pensioners who read the Daily Mail religiously.

Also (drum roll) the arts have a notorious liberal bias, just like the sciences. Can't think why.

102:

And, if you doubt any of that, try listening to Bozo the Clown any time he is attempting to answer an ad hoc question rather than delivering a prepared speech.

103:

who read the Daily Mail religiously

To be honest, I read the Daily Mail religiously.

In that I read it with the same perspective I read the bible — as a horribly prejudiced collection of rantings from the dim past, which some people unfortunately take literally. :-/

104:

Did we ever settle how Mhari is supposed to be pronounced? I tend to think of it as Vari (rhyming with starry) but I am not sure if that is correct.

105:

Given the misspelling (deliberate on Charlie's part), I think it may be pronounced "Mari". If it actually used the Gaelic spelling "Mhairi", then the pronunciation would be "Vari".

106:

Interesting related thought: the demons that appear in most magical summoning grids all seem to be nude. First question: is this a side effect of the summoning? If not... I can see a human going OUCH as they try to leave the summoning grid.

Then taking off their belt and throwing one end through the grid, and pulling it back, breaking the constrainment.

107:

I'd not heard of the Planet of Hats, but yeah. One thing that happens in the universe in my novel is that cultures aren't spherical with a median density - there are classes, and subcultures (people in the Society who have been partly "reeducated" are lawer than ordinary people, and the ones who were fully reeducated are just above robots). And then there's the folks on the ships who don't approve of attacking the Paladin....

Not everyone in every culture agrees with everything, unless you've got downright mind control. There are even some folks who consider themselves "Republicans" (US), who loathe IQ45 and his followers.

108:

I think that's accounted for by the commercial advantages of titillating your readers, plus the urge of the artist to describe the demon. "It has two of those, and three of those, and one of these things, plus" - give Lovecraft his due - "...lots of tentacles."

109:

Michel2Bec @ 59: All the multi book series I have ever read have inconsistencies or big plot holes. It's unavoidable, and I guess rereading one's prose is also probably a big chore.

In my experience, reading my own text for the 10th time that week and trying to pay any attention to it at all is not merely tedious it is impossible. I guess its a relative of the problem security guards have in paying attention to TV screens where nothing significant ever happens.

I've sometimes wondered about making a software tool for fiction writers. The plot would be represented on a diagram a bit like these. For every scene in the plot there would be a box on the diagram linked to a data structure with the actual text of the story plus metadata like the location, the date/time it happens and and a brief abstract (e.g. "Alice and Bob argue about money. Bob storms out."). Arrows between boxes would show causal relationships between scenes, including the characters involved. That way you could easily review the story from the point of view of any given character to check for discrepancies. If you want to rearrange the plot, or move the big reveal a bit earlier, you can do, and you can then check just the related scenes for inconsistencies.

Obviously if you are just telling a simple linear story about Alice and Bob then this doesn't get you very much. But if you have a complicated plot with a bunch of threads that cross over at intervals and then all come together at the end then it might be useful. Of course this means you wind up doing a bunch of maintenance on all the metadata, but its probably nicer than trying to find plot holes in the middle of a long manuscript.

Since we have at least two authors here I thought I'd ask: does this sound like an intriguing idea, something to run away from screaming, or something in between?

110:

Since we have at least two authors here I thought I'd ask: does this sound like an intriguing idea, something to run away from screaming, or something in between?

Yes.

111:

You are correct.

112:

The plot would be represented on a diagram a bit like these.

Yeah, nope: plot emerges accidentally from character and can be redirected drastically by a serendipitous twist of dialog.

Also, planning out a plot before you start writing adds a time-consuming extra stage to writing a novel. Time-consuming extra stages are bad (if you're trying to earn a living).

Finally, for folks who do work that way, Aeon Timeline already exists.

113:

Paul @109

For me, the whole purpose of writing the books is being able to read the books.

If I can't read and enjoy my own stuff, then who will.

The purpose of writing the story is to translate it from my mind to the page where it does not randomly change. Then I can keep adding to the story on the page, fleshing out the details that I "see".

I am constantly surprised by what is on the page as I read along, and can suddenly see that I "missed" something and add it to the page so I can read it next time.

I'm watching John Vervaeke's series on cognition, and he is describing what I've seen all these decades.

Ep. 1 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Introduction

114:

You sound like a pantser.

115:

I am indeed mostly a pantser. (I do sometimes use an outline, but mostly I keep it all in my own head where I can rearrange it more easily without an outlining tool to get in the way.)

In other news ... "Quantum of Nightmares", the sequel to "Dead Lies Dreaming", is officially off to production, which means it should be published on January 11th (USA: on the 13th in the UK, because different publishers' schedules don't necessarily mesh perfectly).

Which is a huge relief because it's a bigger, gnarlier book than its predecessor!

116:

The first (as yet unsold) book I wrote was in full pantsing mold. The second, which I've almost finished, had more structure - a well-understood plot from start to finish, but only the broadest of outlines. I'm not sure that's a trend or not... I do have one fully-outlined book, but I don't know yet how it feels to write the thing. I guess we'll see...

117:

mostly I keep it all in my own head where I can rearrange it more easily without an outlining tool to get in the way,/i>

How do you keep track of continuity? Rely on your memory? Proofreaders? Something else?

118:

I don't know what OGH does, but I'm fundamentally insane about continuity, at least inside of one book. Everything I write is full of notes that say things like "Did Face-Cleave properly quote what Break-Elbow said on page 56?" or "Does this spell fully obey the rules for magic discussed in Chapter Nine?"

119:

Charlie Stross @ 72: Reminder that very bad things happen to good people in this series. As with "A Game of Thrones", nobody is safe.

I understand that even if I don't like it. Just a bit disappointed they happened to Pete.

Never watched "A Game of Thrones" ... or read the book it was based on. Just not my cup of tea. When it's all villains & no good guys, it just doesn't appeal to me.

And for all the compromises they've had to make and things they've done, Bob & Mo & Alex & The Senior Auditor ... Iris & Mhari are still "good guys" even if they are all doomed.

Them all being doomed also makes me a bit sad too.

Game of Thrones OTOH ... I don't know of any character in it who's worth my caring about their fate, so I can't be bothered to watch it.

PS: I ordered the paperback of Dead Lies Dreaming from a large on-line retailers' U.K. subsidiary today.

Noticed that even though it is "A***.co.uk", it's actually "sold by" ... A*** EU S.a.r.l...

120:

Charlie Stross @ 83: A waiting list for film cameras; nobody's getting the digital kind.

I wonder if you could make a basilisk gun from a film camera? Perhaps adapting the auto-focus circuitry?

121:

Heteromeles @ 88: Okay, I'll do a triptych: can humans be trapped in summoning grids on other worlds? That could be fun. More to the point, can Alfar and/or equoids be trapped in summoning grids on Earth? Inquiring minds do want to know.

Didn't Basil store his "food" in a summoning grid that was printed on one of the old posters in that warehouse?

122:

Didn't Basil store his "food" in a summoning grid that was printed on one of the old posters in that warehouse?

And Persephone Hazard and the auditors occasionally met inside similar systems so as not to be heard.

So far as I know, we've got at least three magic circles: --The summoning grids from Atrocity Archive and Jennifer Morgue --The stasis field that Old Basil used --The protection spheres that the sorcerers use, which magically supply oxygen inside even though they are separated from reality...

Apparently humans can reach through summoning grids, but non-autochthones cannot, so Ramona Random can get trapped when a grid gets energized up under her hotel carpet in Jennifer Morgue, but whatsisname from accounting can get instantly zombified by reaching into a live summoning grid in Atrocity Archive.

Being the tedious nuisance I am, this makes me wonder whether a human would get trapped by a summoning grid on the other side of a gate, while the Alfar (or Equoids, or Deep Seven. Or Bob) could get trapped by a summoning grid on our world.

The other nuisance-y thing I'd point out is that laser-built summoning grids have some interesting failure modes. Were I trapped in one, I'd take off my shoes, use one on each side to stop the beam, and wander out. Or possibly have real fun with a mirror, or a bit of crystal jewelry that diffracts beams...

123:

That tool sounds like something great... for someone who's a critic, or an upper level student in college, looking at a book.

Writing? Not so much.

And I'm not exactly a pantser, rather, at some point, something tells me to sit down and start typing, and the story itself tells me where it's going. This is, I think, one step beyond the characters taking over, and telling you what they're going to do.

124:

Charlie @ 112:

The plot would be represented on a diagram a bit like these.

Yeah, nope: plot emerges accidentally from character and can be redirected drastically by a serendipitous twist of dialog.

Also, planning out a plot before you start writing adds a time-consuming extra stage to writing a novel. Time-consuming extra stages are bad (if you're trying to earn a living).

Finally, for folks who do work that way, Aeon Timeline already exists.

Might be a useful tool for maintaining continuity AFTER the book is finished. Instead of charting out the plot in advance, you have a chart of where the plot went in case you ever need to refer back to it later.

Wouldn't necessarily have to be the Author who made the chart.

125:

Might be a useful tool for maintaining continuity AFTER the book is finished. Instead of charting out the plot in advance, you have a chart of where the plot went in case you ever need to refer back to it later.

There are lots of Gantt tools (which that look like).

I can see uses when writing a book — possibly not for the author, but certainly for the proofreaders. I was proofing a book earlier this year and noticed that the timelines didn't match — a couple of days had just vanished (presumably during multiple rewrites). I now tend to jot down a timeline for myself so I'm not always rereading sections counting days trying to figure out if I missed something or the author did.

126:

I've sometimes wondered about making a software tool for fiction writers. The plot would be represented on a diagram a bit like these. For every scene in the plot there would be a box on the diagram linked to a data structure with the actual text of the story plus metadata like the location, the date/time it happens and and a brief abstract (e.g. "Alice and Bob argue about money. Bob storms out.")

As already noted, some software will already do much of what you imagine. Barring the graphical representation, check out yWriter for software that lets you write prose that way. Like, exactly that way; your post sounds like someone who saw a friend use the program and is trying to remember the details. This is an absolutely wonderful word processing tool for the authors who write this way; not everyone does, or may simply find the differences between it and the M$ Word paradigm too much. It's also handy for game masters trying to keep track of tabletop RPG campaigns.

Scrivener is of the same family, but professionally made and more feature rich. It's 'Corkboard' view may approximate the graph you had in mind; it's been too long since I played with a trial version of the program.

Both are excellent choices for writers; if you just want to see what the fuss is about I suggest downloading yWriter for free and finding out if the software's production paradigm suits your creative style.

127:

Scrivener might not do it directly, but it's possible the Scrapple companion app might. I went and looked because I couldn't remember whether Scrivener has a plug-in API (looks like a "no"), but that would be the obvious pathway. I'm pretty sure the metadata capability is already there.

128:

Incidentally there are approximately a zillion academic writers out there who'd love to see a Scrivener extension to use it with their favourite reference manager, so there's appetite for extensions. Without catching up on blog discussions about it in the user groups I'm not sure what the developers position is on that at the moment.

129:

Maybe I'm just not the audience for Scrapple, but it seemed like more fiddlework than utility. Compressing four dimensions into two dimensions distort thing anyway.

On the PC, Scrivener's a bit less stable than Word, so rather than tying it into crashworthy knots of unusual size with semi-functional add-ins, I think it's simpler to output the scrivener document with pseudorefs [[REF]] in place, then insert the references on Word. I did that on Hot Earth Dreams, including the reference table AND the Index, both of which I built in Word.

130:

Me @ 109: I've sometimes wondered about making a software tool for fiction writers.

Thanks to everyone who responded. Lots of useful info. The fact that there are already programs that do stuff similar to this is actually a positive: if nobody else is already in a market then its probably for a good reason. The trick is to find a niche within the market that is currently not well served. Robert Prior's point about proof readers might be this.

I'm not in a position to do anything about this now, but its definitely moved up a notch on my "something to try" scale.

131:

I don't use it myself, and without investigating it properly I can't know for sure, but I probably agree with what you say. It's just less fiddlework than making something like it from scratch, if that's what you wanted.

Me, I sort of live in Endnote and write mostly in Word, but I don't write fiction or non-academic stuff much these days. Maybe one day some of the book ideas I've had over the years will coalesce into the right sort of weave. Or I'll untangle the knot that has the fiction-writing tied up. No idea, sorry :).

132:

How do you keep track of continuity? Rely on your memory? Proofreaders? Something else?

All of the above. Also an intimate familiarity with regular expression searching and a corpus of each entire series in a searchable form. There are occasional lapses (eg. Pete the vicar's family name getting the Schroedinger's Cat treatment) but it mostly works. Also, for the first 9 Laundry Files books I managed to keep the same copy editor across 3 publishers -- actually, Marty Halpern was the acquiring editor for the first two books at Golden Gryphon, then was a freelance CE subcontractor for Ace and Tor.com -- which meant he had some familiarity with the series. Since the move to Tor, while my acquiring editor is Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the actual editing on the first three books was done by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who has been a Laundry fan for a long time. COVID19 disrupted everything, but the edits on "Quantum of Nightmare" were done by my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, who is another very long term reader of mine for obvious reasons (and used to be an editor before she turned agent): PNH then did a second edit pass.

I also have a bunch of beta readers.

133:

are still "good guys" even if they are all doomed.

My editor made me kick a significant scene near the tail-end of "Quantum of Nightmares" back into the third book: the one where Eve is visited in her office by a terrifying emissary of the New Management -- Persephone Hazard.

So they aren't all doomed (but the survivors are definitely compromised).

Noticed that even though it is "A.co.uk", it's actually "sold by" ... A EU S.a.r.l...

Yeah, Big River Co are flagrant tax dodgers. Amazon UK employs over 6000 full time staff, pumps out more than £10Bn a year of products to British customers ... and makes such a big loss that it doesn't pay corporation tax. Meanwhile, Amazon S.a.r.l. in Luxemburg, where corporation tax is 2% (compared to the UK's 15%-ish) has about 200 employees and turns over many, many billions of pounds (not Euros) of business.

This arrangement goes back long before Brexit; no idea what they're going to do to launder the money now that the UK is outside the EU, but they've obviously got something in place already. Feh.

134:

As a fan, I'd just like to express my thanks to Marty, Patrick, Teresa and Caitlin, as well as to yourself, for the entire series,

135:

The protection spheres that the sorcerers use, which magically supply oxygen inside even though they are separated from reality

Plot point: they don't supply oxygen. The only oxygen inside is that which arrives when the sphere is created. You can asphyxiate if you stay inside for too long: CO2 poisoning is, however, far more likely. This is why they're only used for short periods of isolation.

Somewhere there is a chibi-Laundry story (that probably won't ever get written) in which some idiot civilians fooling around accidentally summon Bob, and after politely refraining himself from eating their souls or setting fire to their fingernails he decides to have some harmless fun with them.

136:

Might be a useful tool for maintaining continuity AFTER the book is finished.

As mentioned, I work in Scrivener. A side-effect is that, by writing the book, I generate an outline as I go. Which is indeed useful for keeping track of things and/or restructuring the order of scenes after the event.

A problem with this stuff, however, is that you can end up spending more time tagging scenes with metadata and keywords (who appears in the scene, what they're discussing, etc) than you do in actual writing: it's almost always easier, when you move a 1500 word scene up or down the timeline by half a chapter, to fix the continuity issues by simply giving it an edit pass (reading 1500 words properly takes about 5 minutes and you know who's names/interactions you're looking out for if you do it as soon as you move the scene).

Which leads me to cough up a few rules of thumb I apply when writing:

  • The perfect is the enemy of the good -- don't over-polish, you need to ship the product sooner rather than later

  • Every novel is a first novel -- unless you're working to a formula so cookie-cutterish that only the names change, every time you set out to write a new novel, you're learning how to write that particular novel for the first time. There will be false starts and mistakes: don't sweat it.

  • With enough eyes, all bugs are transparent -- Torvalds' law of code also applies to writing ficition -- but, corollary: there are never enough eyes (something's gonna slip through, guaranteed)

137:

@136 (something's gonna slip through, guaranteed)

That's a feature not a flaw.[1]

If you were to correct every error, produce the "perfect" book, then that world would come into existence. That's why at least one person in the production chain adds errors to prevent that.[2]

[1] Islamic rug weavers would introduce deliberate errors in the rug because:

"Only Allah is perfect"

[2] That's the danger of Indy publishing. Someone will one day create the "perfect" book and that world will come into being, or worse yet, those characters will appear in our world, spontaneously Retconning our Reality.

138:

Charlie @ 135: Plot point: they don't supply oxygen. [...] This is why they're only used for short periods of isolation.

Unless someone has been watching Apollo 13, or has the bright idea of getting a rebreather set.

What happens to the heat? Presumably it also stays inside the sphere. A resting human produces ~100W. Assuming the air is the only heat sink and you have a sphere of radius 1m, that is 4.1m^3 of air, with a mass of about 5.1kg. The specific heat capacity of air is conveniently ~ 1 J/g/C, so around 5,100J will cause a 1C temperature rise. At 100W = 100 J/sec that takes 51 seconds. Call it a minute.

If we start with room temperature air at 18C and assume things get dangerous at a web-bulb temperature of 30C, then thats 12C temperature rise, which will take 10-12 minutes. I haven't run the numbers on humidity: I'm assuming that the humidity is going to hit 100% pretty quickly thanks to breathing and sweating. Of course if you can pack a dehumidifier as well as a CO2 scrubber then that is going to be extended somewhat, but dehumidifiers are also going to generate heat, so its probably worse than nothing. The only way around this that I can see is to pack a large block of ice, wrap it in a blanket, and cuddle it as necessary to keep cool.

139:

worse yet, those characters will appear in our world, spontaneously Retconning our Reality.

Where do you think Donald Trump came from?

140:

The summoning grid would have to be big enough for several big potted plants, or the technical version thereof. Also, each participant brings Styrofoam cooler full of ice. The lid has two holes, one of which is covered with a small fan. Don't forget your D-Cell batteries to run the fan. (We cooled an AC-less van that way on a run across the Mojave.)

A sensor turns the summoning grid off for one minute when the temperature hits 30C. A big fan turns on, circulates the old air out of the building, then the grid turns back on.

141:

To repeat, we've got at least three levels of magic circles/spheres.

  • Ye Olde summoning grid, suitable for holding in otherworldly beings. Basically a pentagram, made with lasers or conducting paint/ink/etc. Energy and matter exchange across the boundary are normal. Why a two dimensional pentagram holds three or more dimensional beings is not explained.
  • B. Ye newish Magic sphere. A riff on the standard magic circle from Wicca and occultism. Air doesn't pass through the spherical boundary, nor does (apparently) energy, but time does pass equivalently on both sides. This is primarily used for security of those within the sphere. What happens on the bottom of the sphere is left unexplored. I, for one, would not create one of these infernal spheroids in an office environment, due to the cost of opening up the floor/ground underneath to repair and reconnect all the pipes and wires severed by the underground side of the sphere.

    III. Ye Niven/Vinge stasis sphere. Same as a magic sphere, but now with new no-time passing option. Used by a vampire to store his food. Left unexplained: how V-parasites can get mana out of a stasis sphere, with time passing on one side but not another. There's probably a star drive or perpetual motion machine hidden in that explanation. But in general, don't set up a stasis sphere over a sewer line...

    And note that this isn't a slap at Charlie. Anyone who's fooled around with pagan magic and has any sense of three-dimensional geometry finds pentagrams and magic circle/spheres rather humorous, given that limbs and heads normally stick out of them, and pets and small children wander through such boundaries without harm...

    142:

    I read it. The part about Italy running to a military dictatorship was probably echoing rumors about coups (Google Di Lorenzo).

    143:

    I don't think it's the only one. Miraculous in(ter)ventions saving the world isn't a new theme.

    The new sauce here, for anyone who wants to tackle it, is the schadenfreude of writing about people who are deeply addicted to power, and whose superpower is a lack of conscience, empathy, and compassion, who suddenly develop all these and be crippled by these amazing gifts, because they have no idea what to do with them. To me, this is a cheerful but pitch black comedy, which is not something I know how to write. I'd love to read it though.

    144:

    people who are deeply addicted to power, and whose superpower is a lack of conscience, empathy, and compassion, who suddenly develop all these and be crippled by these amazing gifts, because they have no idea what to do with them

    Assuming this happens suddenly world-wide then the ex-sociopaths just go and become monks or something to atone for their sins, and everyone else goes off to rebuild society. Wells wrote that story in "In the Days of the Comet".

    If it happens sporadically to some but not others then I guess it depends. Nobody is the villain of their own life-story; everyone perceives themselves as the hero, even if they never get around to anything particularly heroic. That applies to sociopaths just as much as anyone else. So to the person affected, and to anyone else, it probably looks like the onset of a strange mental illness.

    "Did you hear about Joe? Suddenly gave all his money to charity and went to live in a monastery."

    "That's funny. Pete did something similar a few months back. I hope it isn't catching."

    At the more productive and intelligent end of the spectrum the result probably looks more like Bill Gates, who decided to switch his prodigious talents from making money and crushing competitors to improving the lot of humanity.

    I can imagine some interesting scenes between the suddenly-reformed sociopath and their dependents; what do you say when Dad suddenly declares his intention to give away the fortune you were expecting to inherit? A strange sort of kitchen-sink drama would ensue.

    Meanwhile, in an obscure lab somewhere in Cambridge (pick one), a microbiologist is hot on the trail of the cause of this outbreak of philanthropic soul-searching...

    145:

    What happens to the heat? Presumably it also stays inside the sphere. Infovores are excellent cooling devices. Just need to engineer a class of small, controlled(, short lifespan?), unintelligent infovores.

    146:

    Nahhh.... That creature who appeared isn't actually a monster, it's a person in a spacesuit.

    147:

    Charlie, however this all ends, I'd really rather that it didn't end with us here looking like the Alfar on a dying world....

    148:

    Actually... I can't remember - does the White Violin eat souls? Do infovores have souls? Who else has souls - does the Pharaoh? Nyarlathotep?

    And if they do, and the While Violin were to eat them, just how powerful would it be?

    149:

    At the more productive and intelligent end of the spectrum the result probably looks more like Bill Gates, who decided to switch his prodigious talents from making money and crushing competitors to improving the lot of humanity.

    Nah, he just hired some very expensive spin doctors and PR flacks.

    Then he spent too long with Epstein and Maxwell, which appears to be what the divorce is about.

    150:

    The 5-season television series, Lucifer, goes there. Divinities, angels and demons develop as characters, even grow souls, while on earth and interacting with human beings.

    "It is based on the DC Comics character created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg taken from the comic book series The Sandman, who later became the protagonist of a spin-off comic book series [Lucifer], both published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint."

    The television series just concluded (on Netflix) last month. There are many different delights in the course of its progress, to what, at the end episodes, appears the inevitable conclusion. It's some of the sharpest writing, honest depictions of character growth and development, and inquiry into the moral and spiritual dimensions of consciousness. What makes it even more delightful, is because it is located in Los Angeles, within the cities' millieux devoted to the trendy and shallow. It's one of the best things I've ever watched on 'tv' (streaming -- don't own a set).

    151:

    That's a thought. I'll have to look that up.

    I was thinking of something perhaps a bit different, perhaps not. Part of the perennial problem of Great Men (read 'pathic success stories) is that their heirs tend to be more normal people, stuck with their results of their Ancestor's passions with no way to get out. By dosing a Big Man with whatever-it-is, this whole story gets telescoped into one person becoming the owner of something he no longer wants.

    And that makes it a story about karma. A Bezos, A Putin, or various others can't just sell off everything they own and move to a monastery, because being compassionate isn't about locking oneself away in a cell for a life of prayer and penance. Instead, they're stuck with unwinding the messes they've made, while the people they've hurt demand a justice and the Big Men feel like maybe there's a reason to give it to them, whether or not they can.

    And if you really want to tighten the screws, add in a dose of Altemeyer, about how the spreading wave of compassion suddenly makes the world's problems a bit easier to solve, because the alpha assholes are getting themselves out of the way. So not only are the Great 'Paths of the world suffering, the mythology that supported them is disintegrating around them too. Give them an easy way out to the monastery. Oh no, that's entirely too easy...

    152:

    Troutwaxer @ 140: The summoning grid would have to be big enough for several big potted plants, or the technical version thereof. Also, each participant brings Styrofoam cooler full of ice. The lid has two holes, one of which is covered with a small fan. Don't forget your D-Cell batteries to run the fan. (We cooled an AC-less van that way on a run across the Mojave.)

    When my family took it's first trip out to California in 1960 we joined Route 66 in Tulsa, OK. There were various businesses along the route in western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle that serviced travelers. One of the items they sold were "air conditioners" that fit in a car window.

    They were basically a hollow tube that held ice. They were open at the front and had a vent down the side. You hooked it over the window & rolled the window up. As you drove along air flowed in the open front end of the tube, was cooled by the melting ice and "cool" air flowed through the window into the car.

    I looked them up on the internet and it seems I'm mistaken about the ice, but that's how I remember them (from 60 some years ago & my memory is probably not perfect anymore).

    https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule-firestone-thermador-car-cooler-swamp-cooler/

    A sensor turns the summoning grid off for one minute when the temperature hits 30C. A big fan turns on, circulates the old air out of the building, then the grid turns back on.

    Using a heat sensor, you might not be ready when the bubble goes down.

    I think a timer would work better. A bell goes ding 30 sec before the bubble drops so it doesn't catch everyone by surprise, allowing those inside to have their defensive apps ready just in case there's something unpleasant lurking outside.

    153:

    That's basically the plot of John Brunner's 'The Stone That Never Came Down', if'n you're wanting a book in that vein.

    154:

    whitroth @ 146: Nahhh.... That creature who appeared isn't actually a monster, it's a person in a spacesuit.

    It was something that appeared to be wearing a spacesuit.

    155:

    in an obscure lab somewhere in Cambridge (pick one), a microbiologist is hot on the trail of the cause of this outbreak of philanthropic soul-searching

    That sounds rather familiar:

    http://www.davidbrin.com/fiction/givingplague.html

    156:

    Foxessa That is actually the main plot driver ( Apart, of course, from loads of cynical laughter ) of "Good Omens" Crowley & Azrafale have been with Humanity for so long that it's rubbed off on them & are taking the Humans' side against the monstrosities of both "Heaven" & "Hell" - which are both versions of hell from Humanity's p.o.v. I wonder how the Gaiman sequel will go ....

    157: 141 B - That would be reasonable, in an Einsteinian universe. 152 Swamp cooler - Not surprised about this. The base idea was a classic way of keeping dairy from spoiling if you didn't have access to a fridge. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
    158:

    Did you get the color "green" form the "Under a Green Sky" extinction scenario?

    https://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928

    159:

    Learned about Czernobog from "American Gods".

    Anything "American God"-ish about the Laundryverse?

    Does Cthulhu dwindle to insignificance if people just stop believing in him?

    160:

    Hope not. Ward got the sky color wrong on that book. While he is (so far as I know) a competent paleontologist, especially with his ammonites, he has issues with other things, as do we all.

    At least in my experience, he tends to strike out when he gets into atmospheric chemistry. His great theory book (Out of Thin Air), which purported to explain the great patterns in evolutionary innovation as related to oxygen concentration in the atmosphere, foundered almost immediately because he used an outdated model for variation in atmospheric oxygen concentration in deep time, and the updated ones showed a different pattern that didn't support his theories.

    Incidentally, you can find out a bit more about sky color under different atmospheric chemistry at https://www.orionsarm.com/page/321, which references some articles that it would have been good for Ward to read. So far as I can tell, a climate changed Earth will have a pearlescent white sky, and green is a hard color for an atmosphere to have. And that ugly white sky is something anyone who's been in a smoggy city has already seen.

    Note that I don't mind Ward being wrong, because at least he tries. Being wrong is part of doing science. Out of Thin Air makes for an excellent what-if book for using to create alien worlds, just as the aquatic ape theory does (imagine if becoming secondarily-aquatic pushed a species to increase its intelligence? Heck, worked for dolphins). But they don't seem to work very well in explaining our world.

    161:

    Good news - they're doing a sixth season of Lucifer...

    Amusing would be Miranda Hart getting a role ;)

    162:

    Pity, a green sky seems like the perfect color for the apocalypse.

    163:

    Green sky would indeed by scary. That said, the apocalypse sky is already here, around many cities and during heat waves. It's just not very evenly distributed yet.

    164:

    When you get temperature of 32-34°C just outside Glasgow ( About a week back ) you know something has gorn worng.

    166:

    A dirty rice-paper sky. A sky of death and the blankness of a hippie share-house dishwater, the wilderness of the space ready to be written into.

    167:

    H is there an equivalent source for the properties of metals at low temperatures?

    It's not that I don't believe Charlie's account of Fimbulwinter, you understand, it's more that I'd like to see where the troubles start, and which metals are affected.

    168:

    Nope. I wrote "The Concrete Jungle" in 2002, and that book was published in 2008.

    169:

    Does Cthulhu dwindle to insignificance if people just stop believing in him?

    Maybe, but it's very hard to get rid of gods by pro-actively disbelieving in them, and if you're part of an organization trying to suppress, say, Cthulhu, then if you mostly succeed in abolishing belief then your own organization is going to lose impetus to promote disbelief and there'll be resurgence ...

    (This gets explored a little in book 3 of the new series.)

    170:
    • 1 -

    Charlie @132:

    I also have a bunch of beta readers.

    What about your research assistants? They never can never catch a break./s

    • II -

    Heteromeles @143:

    whose superpower is a lack of conscience, empathy, and compassion, who suddenly develop all these and be crippled by these amazing gifts

    Spider Robinson wrote a short story in which somebody develops a drug called "The Whole Truth". The protagonists slip it to Important People1, usually just before the Important Person is about to give a news conference or an important interview. The recipient gets the overwhelming compulsion to (1) tell the truth about any question asked them and (2) set the record straight about all of the lies that they have ever told in their life2.

    When the drug wears off, the recipient has a horrible freak-out at the destruction of their career. Second-order effects are also covered in the story, but I won't spoil them here. Can't remember the story title, but it was included in his collection Melancholy Elephants.

    • C -

    Paul @144:

    Nobody is the villain of their own life-story; everyone perceives themselves as the hero

    "I thought I was the protagonist. Turns out I'm just background filler." True of pretty much everyone.

    • Four -

    Heteromeles @151

    Instead, they're stuck with unwinding the messes they've made

    Reminds me of the end of PTerry's Small Gods:

    [Brutha:] "Simony?"

    "Yes?"

    "I'm making you the head of the Quisition."

    "What?"

    "I want it stopped. And I want it stopped the hard way."

    "You want me to kill all of the inquisitors? Right!"

    "No. That's the easy way. I want as few deaths as possible. Those who enjoyed it perhaps. But only those."

    (I wrote the date I bought it in the front of my copy. December 27, 1993. Where does the time go?)

    ~~~

    1Yeah, the protagonists effectively roofie people. It's for the greater good.

    2In this fictional world, the blinders that people wear that give them convincing reasons for why they did bad things also disappear, so they can objectively see when what they did was bad. In the light of all-too-many real-world cases, that seems pretty naive.

    171:

    I dunno. I may have seen it once or twice, but I know I've read that it's associated with an incipient tornado.

    I would have thought a red sky, and I don't mean sailors' delight.

    172:

    Almost sounds like a quote from the first few sentences of Neuromancer.

    173:

    Have you checked the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics?

    I mean, if you lived nearby, I'd invite you over (assuming you're fully vaxed) and pull out my copy....

    175:

    Also https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198570547.001.0001/acprof-9780198570547 Experimental Techniques for Low-Temperature Measurements: Cryostat Design, Material Properties and Superconductor Critical-Current Testing Jack Ekin

    176:

    Re: External things making people behave better.

    In the late 60s/early 70s, some of the cognoscenti joked about trying to slip a large dose of LSD into Richard Nixon, in the hope of stopping the Vietnam War.

    Thanks to the above, we've actually established that dosing people with magic nitrogen, magic LSD, or magic diseases, is its own little trope in SF. That's cool. I think there are changes still to be rung on this, but it's a thing.

    177:

    I've seen a green sky, and while it wasn't a tornado, it was an unpleasantly strong storm. Green skies on Earth usually register something very unusual going on in the atmosphere, just because they're so hard to get under terrestrial conditions.

    I forgot one other thing: a few years ago, the climate scientists got some good modeling evidence that one of the problems with a climate changed Earth (around CO2=1000 ppm) is that many of the clouds go away, particularly in higher latitudes. This is one of the reasons why the temperature gradient between poles and equator flattens out during a hothouse Earth: there's a lot less cloud cover. While that off-white sky is one thing that shows up during hot, hazy weather, a pitiless blue sky is also symptomatic of hothouse Earth.

    It's another issue. GRRM got serious mileage out of "Winter Is Coming." Our problem is "Summer Is Coming," but that doesn't sound so scary until you're confronted with blistering heat, long-term drought, and horrendous fires. Similarly, a bright blue sky sounds like a vacationer's paradise, until you realize that's all you get, except for the occasional hurricane. Overcast and fog actually are wonderful things that we'll miss when they're gone.

    178:

    A Question og governance & control & accountability I came across THIS headline OK? Wondered what their profits were, to be able to afford this - & got a nasty shock. This grubbyy, incompetent, privatised corrupt tory scam-company, since 2007, have been fined, or paid out £235.9 million in fines for mismanagement of the environment .... What to do? Sack &/or jail all the directors? You can't close the company down, as people will then be without water at all. Nationalise without any compensation? If you do that, you still have the problem of finding someone both competent & honest to run the show, of course.

    179:

    If you'd fed Tricky Duckie LSD, would anyone have noticed? ;-)

    180:

    The novella:

    • Rule Golden by Damon Knight

    Addresses that concept of forcing people to "Do unto others".

    I have it in hardback as, Three Novels, along with The Dying Man and Natural State.

    It's available as an ebook in:

    Rule Golden and Other Stories

    I have the book sitting beside my desk as a "touchstone" to read when needed.

    181:

    Presumably actively trying to get someone to disbelieve in a god is analogous to asking someone not to think about purple elephants?

    182:

    Re the Stasis Sphere it’s been a whilst since I read the Rhesus Chart but I recall it was strongly implied that Basil defrosted his meals before chowing down on them.

    183:

    Might mocking Cthulhu count as undercutting belief in him?

    184:

    For the triple word score.

    Am I right in thinking that in the Hotline Scene with the Nazgul it’s the first time it’s been explicitly suggested that the Senior Auditor isn’t entirely human as he sweats blood? Or do we write it off as a magical side effect?

    185:

    I can't remember the scene clearly.

    I will note that folks on Mahogany Row (which includes the auditors) are typically very strong ritual magicians, who have managed to evade K-syndrome for reasons which might include not being entirely human any more.

    (By the end of the Laundry story arc, there will be plenty of survivors who remember being human; there is rather more doubt as to whether any of them still are ...)

    186:

    there is rather more doubt as to whether any of them still are

    But this raises another question: If they are no longer human, is it a problem for them? And is it a problem for the people around them, who still are human?

    I am leery of assumption that "ceasing to be human" is automatically a bad thing.

    187:

    Presumably actively trying to get someone to disbelieve in a god is analogous to asking someone not to think about purple elephants?

    Yeah, that's hard. What was I supposed to think about again?

    Having Cthulhu as the god of the Singularitarians, by the author of Accelerando, is, to me, a truly joyous evolution.

    Rather than disbelieving in Cthulhu, I'd personally rather see the blow-off of the Black Chamber trying to instantiate Cthulhu further by starting the conversion of the Earth into a Matrioshka brain, only to have Deep Seven take extreme umbrage and process them into high entropy lava instead. People who plan such messianic engineering keep forgetting how much heat and pressure the Earth has under our very shallow crust. They might dream of converting all this "raw material" into computronium, but it's going to take a very long time to cool off, especially in a vacuum. And in the meantime, those who like the heat are going to be...unhappy about such developments. Perhaps all those "fracking" earthquakes in Oklahoma are a sign?

    Similarly, the Deep Ones actually don't have a lot to fear, so long as they minimize their contact with the surface. Building any device that operates in the abyss is always a chore for surface dwellers, and the pressure gradient does favor the Deep Ones.

    188:

    H Iceland, right now?

    189:

    "Having Cthulhu as the god of the Singularitarians, by the" co-keeper of Fluff...

    190:

    https://markhammetals.com/the-best-materials-to-use-in-low-temperature-environments/

    was interesting. Including the use of Iconnel 718 -- an alloy I'm quite happy to use at room temperature.

    191:

    Iceland, right now?

    Perhaps. The key unsettling thing is that the surface biosphere, both on land and in the ocean, depends on having plate tectonics recycling elements. Without tectonics, no surface life. If it turns out in the Laundryverse that the Cthonians are responsible for plate tectonics as a side-effect (or deliberate action) of their mantle-based biosphere, then yes, we do indeed owe our lives to them. Presuming the Deep Ones know this already, they would be extremely respectful of Them Below That Make Life Possible.

    This is an interestingly different argument about the reason for natural evil (e.g. why would a beneficent God allow natural disasters to happen?). It turns out that things like wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves are necessary preconditions for human life to exist on Earth. They're not in themselves evil, for without them we wouldn't be here. Evil isn't about these titanic forces running roughshod over our little plans. Rather, the evil is more in putting people in harms' way without telling them or getting their consent. People can and do choose to live near active volcanoes, but putting a subdivision downslope from an active vent and selling the homes as safe little slices of paradise can be seen as evil.

    192:

    What's happening in Iceland? The big news seems to be they are adopting a 4-day working week, which sounds pretty awesome to me. Free trade deal with the UK seems less so, and there's still a pandemic problem there by the looks of things. Are they fracking volcanos or something? Doesn't sound very Icelandic...

    One thing from Iceland is the prediction for increased volcanic activity due to climate change, due to the glaciers that otherwise hold some eruptions in check melting (I've come across this as part of my interest in health systems, because the Icelandic health department is allowing for more frequent vulcanism in their strategic planning).There's a growing literature in geoscience about this and apparently a heap of evidence from geological time. I'm not clear what role the additional venting of greenhouse gasses might play in accelerating climate change, but it's one of the areas where there is possibly a positive-feedback effect, as is the case with the high-level clouds H mentions above. It's also one of the reasons I think the models we rely on are probably overly cautious, and that most likely we're already done for. At this point we usually quibble about definitions of doom that work for everyone before moving on.

    193:

    This isn't quite off-topic: a friend on a mailing list posted this, and I think there are enough people who could use it.... https://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html

    Sample: We will prioritize group-based problem-solving across spatial and temporal scales.

    194:

    Re "beneficient deity": if you've got a deity dealing with an entire planet, at least, if not a solar system, I have grave doubts that it's going to be concerned with the collateral damage, as you are when you cut your finger chopping veggies.

    If they're in charge of a tribe of, say, 5,000, maybe, but a whole planet?

    195:

    Wait... fewer glaciers mean more vulcanism? Are you trying to suggest that all the pics of dinosaurs, with volcanoes in the background, is not that unreasonable?

    196:

    Iceland just has a very photogenic volcano erupting at the moment, so that's what is going on.

    As for volcanoes and glaciers, perhaps the search term is "isostatic rebound." Glaciers are heavy, and when the weight goes away, the ground underneath it rises. If there's lava down there, the rocks are more flexible, and also interesting cracks may make the volcanoes erupt more often.

    197:

    I recent heard "Our hammer is [X]" where [X] is the class of problems that their company's system is exceptionally well suited for. (They were not Thor. :-)

    198:

    Overcast and fog actually are wonderful things that we'll miss when they're gone.

    You're not wrong. One winter years ago I observed that the convention center in Portland Oregon was packed with people and wondered aloud why people would want to come to Portland in February. And then I realized that really I'd just answered my own question. Winter weather tends to a certain kind of day: a few degrees above freezing (average high 8C, average low 3C), gray overcast, and rainy; variation comes from how much overcast and how much rain. A day might have hard rain, soft rain, intermittent rain, a constant fine drizzle...

    As a local joke has it, "Last winter was pretty dry; it only rained twice. Once from September to February, and then February to April."

    So why choose Portland for a national convention? Because their options include Chicago (average high -3C, average low -10C, weather often exciting). Or Minneapolis (-8C to -14C, with possibilities of Much Snow). The prospect of going someplace reliably cool, gray, damp, and slightly manky sounds just fine in comparison...

    199:

    Plus decent public transportation, good food, and the best bookstore in the US...

    I like Portland.

    200:

    The measures between countries don't compare well, but it seems like Portland is about the same size as Brisbane, at least in terms of population (both roughly 2.5 million in the metro area, and up to around 4 million in the surrounding region).

    201:

    Who knows? According to the English Broadcasting Corporation, a foppball game tomorrow is more important than things like Iceland volcanoes, trade deals, climate change, presidential assassinations and resultant unrest...

    202:

    Portland If you read THIS article you will see how utterly fucked-up US transportation is, even in large cities. I knew it was bad, but really .... At a long-ago SF con ( One of the Brightons ) I was asked on the Monday, by a group of USA-ians: - "When does The Train leave for London?" In those days it was 3 an hour - a fast, an every-3rd-lamppost & an intermediate ... it took me some time to persuade them to simply roll up to Brighton station & get on the next one (!)

    203:

    I mean, if you lived nearby, I'd invite you over (assuming you're fully vaxed) and pull out my copy....

    Yep, fully vaxxed, but living in Manchester, so I don't think I can take you up on your "cool" offer.

    In return I could show you how to make a neuromorphic infra-red basilisk gun; since I have the real hardware.

    All I need is a copy of Charlie's neural code ;)

    204:

    And, for the record, you'd get an hourly direct services from Paddington to Penzance and Cardiff, Euston services to Glasgow Central, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and King's Cross to Leeds, and Edinburgh via York and Newcastle upon Tyne in period.

    205:

    And, for the record, you'd get an hourly direct services from Paddington to Penzance and Cardiff, Euston services to Glasgow Central, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and King's Cross to Leeds, and Edinburgh via York and Newcastle upon Tyne in period.

    And you try telling the young people that nowadays.

    206:

    Portland

    Greg, I've been to that part of the USA quite a bit (Pacific north-west). I have in particular traveled between Portland and Seattle multiple times, including: driving, train, and commuter plane.

    By far the slowest way between the two cities was the train -- although the second class seats had as much leg room and bum width as first class in a UK intercity service, the buffet car had vegan options for sale along with decent real ale, and the experience was reasonably civilized.

    But things are set up in the expectation that you will drive or fly, and if you can't drive, flying beats the train. Even on a 20 seater turboprop it's well under an hour, and even with post-9/11 security theatre, the door-to-door time was under three hours. Driving: about four hours. The train was late (Amtrak is always late, except on the East Coast corridor) and it ended up taking nearly five hours.

    Once you get into Portland itself, though, the trams are as good as those in Manchester or Nottingham and they're free inside the city centre, which is something the UK could really do with copying.

    207:

    You forgot that CrossCountry trains also do Penzance to Inverness via Edinburgh -- am pretty sure they go via London, too, and there are at least one an hour hitting Edinburgh.

    The real gotcha for visitors is that if you want to go the full distance, or even most of it, the last service of the day may leave inconveniently late. For example, the last CrossCountry train from Leeds to Edinburgh runs at 2008 and gets in around 11pm. Miss it and you're stuck (so I always aimed for the 1908 -- or caught a local to York and changed, which meant I could travel by ECML or XC, subject to ticketing conditions).

    208:

    I like Portland Oregon too. Weird. Quite European in many ways.

    About a decade ago, I presented a paper there during a conference on genetic and evolutionsry computation. Using meta genetic algorithms to optimise parameters of genetic algorithms to solve a family of closely related problems.

    For my sins, I'd also worked previously in a secret bunker in an undisclosed location on diplomatic communications. As the systems engineering manager, my clearances were unusual. Including compartments and caveats whose mere existence was "burn before reading"

    When the emergency response room was renovated, I quite officially and legally acquired some odds and ends headed for the scrapheap at auction. Which is why our toilet has a quite spiffy CABINET SUBMISSIONS sign above it.

    209:

    “ I am leery of assumption that "ceasing to be human" is automatically a bad thing.”

    Probably not, but I’m betting there is lots of authorly fun to be had telling tales about things that still think they are human, and the consequences of said contradictions, especially if you are writing horror or dark SFF.

    210:

    Probably not, but I’m betting there is lots of authorly fun to be had telling tales about things that still think they are human, and the consequences of said contradictions, especially if you are writing horror or dark SFF.

    You bet.

    To some extent, fetishization of "humanity" goes with a Christian eschatological world view, insofar as animals don't have souls and get into heaven, and neither do other non-humans -- it's just for humans (and the Jeezus-accepting subset at that).

    But then, you look at the folks who want to transcend humanity and all too many of them are vile shitebags like Peter Thiel, entitled wankers like Elon Musk, and so on.

    Humanity, for my money, is an overrated condition -- but in-humanity is worse and the jury is out on post-humanity.

    (Also remember that Lovecraft's aversion to "subhuman things" was based on his loathing and phobia for everyone who wasn't just like him, i.e. a white male protestant aspirant to patriarchy. So lotsa scope for satirizing Lovecraft's world view if you write a story in which the Bad Things win.)

    211:

    One more about world turning honest, though the change is more offstage than in most: "Leg. Forst." by Clifford Simak. It's the one about the galactic stamp collector.

    I'm wondering whether a lot of Simak should be filed under dream logic.

    212:

    Which strongly suggests that Concorde was forcibly retired on orders from the US

    Or going in another direction, was why it way always a money sink.

    213:

    No I didn't; the Penzance - Inverness train routes via Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, and NOT London. You see why I didn't mention it?

    214:

    Euston to Glasgow may have generated a covid super-spreader event the Monday before last; the line was blocked for 4+ hours by a broken down goods (freight) train and several trainloads of passengers heading to Glasgow or Edinburgh (x-country from Manchester) were left milling around on the platform at Preston station for all that time. Given that Preston is pretty close to one of the covid hotspots, northern folk tend not to ignore everyone else around them, and masks were discarded over time, my daughter reckons things could have been managed better ( especially after she realised she had caught the ^&* bug ).

    215:

    lots of authorly fun to be had telling tales about things that still think they are human, and the consequences of said contradictions

    Even more interesting (IMO) is the opposite -- people who know for a fact that transcending humanity is possible and think they have achieved it, but actually have not.

    But then, you look at the folks who want to transcend humanity and all too many of them are vile shitebags like Peter Thiel

    216:

    ...Euston to Glasgow may have generated a covid super-spreader event the Monday before last... It the platform was outdoors, probably not. (Unless the air was very still, and even so risk is reduced.) This database covers through early 2021 (updated sporadically since) so it doesn't cover Delta, but it still should mostly apply: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c9jwMyT1lw2P0d6SDTno6nHLGMtpheO9xJyGHgdBoco/edit#gid=1812932356

    See also https://kmswinkels.medium.com/covid-19-superspreading-events-database-4c0a7aa2342b - the database is unreliable (including reporting biases) but is interesting.

    There is one case (USA1052), a landscaping company, 11 cases, that is listed as "Outdoor"; most of the rest are "Indoor", the remainder either "Indoor / Outdoor" or "Unknown". (Yes, public health guidance and measures have been (uhm) sub-optimal in many countries, if the intent was to limit spread of SARS-CoV-2.)

    217:

    Portland is a Gibsonian Distopia.[1]

    Antifa took over the center of town and waged nightly riots trying to torch the Federal Buildings. While BLM mobs marched through the suburbs shouting, "Wake up mother fucker, wake up."

    If you go to YouTube and search on "Portland riots", or "Wake up Portland" you will see tons of video. Many shot by the rioters themselves.

    This is one of the few articles that touches on it.

    Leaving Portland

    • Notice how he is telling his story from a distance, not buried deep in the different mobs. That's important.

    I opened a Story folder when things started and watched how everything was covered locally but was ignored/dismissed outside the region. This all makes for a fascinating story of dueling paradigms.

    I see each group as being under a geas where they each see the world in only their way, not reality. Then the clashes of those dueling viewpoints. Each seeing the "Other" as the monster that they must fight.

    Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany, comes closest to what I am seeing here.

    This is going to be a major series.

    [1] William Gibson

    218:

    It the platform was outdoors, probably not.

    I think you underestimate how many people were involved (multiple trainloads) and how small the platform area in question was (smaller than you'd expect, going by Amtrak stations). Also it's in a British station, so probably under cover except at each end -- think of the weather.

    219:

    Ah, that explains a lot, not that you'd know if from the English Broadcasting Corporation "news".

    220:

    Further to this, I found some maps and photos of Preston station quite easily - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_railway_station

    221:

    To some extent, fetishization of "humanity" goes with a Christian eschatological world view,

    I think it's a bit more than anything derived from any religion of any stripe. "I am a people therefore people are important, more important than other non-peoples."

    I've been watching a half-fun anime about a schoolgirl who gets reincarnated as a spider in a dungeon in a fantasy world. It's only half-fun because the story is told partly from the POV of other reincarnated people who are elves and human and the like in this fantasy world and it's not as funny or interesting when the show focuses on them. Kumoko the spider has to fight to survive and she eats anything and everything she kills to develop her abilities and evolve into stronger forms. The fanboys in the online forums have been cheering Kumoko on as she slaughters all sorts of creatures, including intelligent ones like dragons and elves and then suddenly she's killing and eating humans and now the fanboys are saying she's become evil because she's killing and eating 'people' i.e. us.

    222:

    Portland is a Gibsonian Distopia.[1] Antifa took over the center of town and waged nightly riots trying to torch the Federal Buildings. While BLM mobs marched through the suburbs shouting, "Wake up mother fucker, wake up."

    I'm going to suggest you think about the political leanings of the people who tell you those stories. It might be educational to consider what advantages they might hope to gain.

    223:

    As a useful bit of sanitizing brain bleach, google "Oregon Founding White Supremacy" You get articles like this one on a very long list.

    The short version is that Oregon was founded originally as a white supremacist utopia, where no black immigrants were allowed even before statehood. Since then, the northern part of the Willamette Valley (the Corvallis to Portland corridor) has become substantially more liberal. But, as with California, get outside the urban diversity, and the place becomes uncomfortably white. Uncomfortably, that is, if you're not white, and especially if you're not white and not male. Oregon is still 87% white, 2% black, and Portland's the whitist big city in the US.

    So when someone says "they grew up in Oregon and are moving out of Portland because of Them People" (a paraphrase of the article you cited), Scott's question about their political bias is extremely important, because the default is right wing. Since 2016, the far right has tried to retake Oregon by causing trouble in Portland, and that leads to some creatively biased reporting.

    224:

    Also, I assume that the toilet facilities are inside… so the crowds would have mixed in there.

    225:

    Yeah, indoor exhalation sharing is how most (SARS-CoV-2) transmission is happening, though people (well, males at least) usually don't linger in public toilets. Delta is more infectious though, so it may change the risk calculations. One next step would be to ascertain how much breeze was blowing perpendicular to the platforms at the time and how much the airflow is blocked. wunderground.com has freely accessible weather history, but not close to that station. A proper incident study would also examine/characterize surveillance videos, perhaps with AI techniques. (e.g. mask wearing especially indoors - no reported superspreader events AFAIK where the index patient was masked.)

    226:

    @223 and @224:

    Thank you, that is a beautiful example of what I'm talking about. Each group is under a different geas and sees the world their way and sees the "Other" as the enemy.

    I'm looking at the way Plato's Cave can be used. That there are many "caves", not just the one as in the parable. That each group is subject to their own unique "shadow play" on the wall.

    That guy is writing the essay from his viewpoint, his "cave" and the fact you guys are interpreting the essay from your viewpoints, your "caves" is a profound driver of the story.

    This is similar to other stories that I have read or seen as movies, but I'm too close to the "wall" to remember which ones. I suspect that once I start laying out the series in broad strokes that I will remember more examples than just Dhalgren.

    Ah...

    "There are no such things as Vampires."

    "What is this word 'President' that you are using."

    "Are you of the Body?" - Star Trek: Return of the Archons

    Yikes! Now the examples are coming. I knew that I could depend on you guys to help me find the answers.

    Thanks...

    227:

    I'm looking at the way Plato's Cave can be used. That there are many "caves", not just the one as in the parable. That each group is subject to their own unique "shadow play" on the wall.

    Certainly. And once you sell an audience on a shadow such as "Antifa took over the center of town and waged nightly riots trying to torch the Federal Buildings" the audience will stop asking who those people really were, or what they really wanted, and maybe even whether violence against people out on the streets was justified.

    228:

    Don't tell me you believe in the concrete milkshakes and the completely unsubstantiated brain bleed from the same guy that saw a "No Drinking" sign in a UK neighborhood and decided that the reason must be that the Muslims took over and the UK was under sharia law?

    Thank you saving my time by showing I never need to read what you post ever again.

    229:

    Perhaps he's confused about what anti-fascism is, and thinks that antifa is a pejorative, rather than an exercise in direct democracy with a long and storied tradition on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Besides, I liked parts of the Portland protests. When CBP started lobbing tear gas at the white Portlanders, they responded (men and women) by bringing their hockey sticks and slap-shotting the tear gas back into CBP lines. Meanwhile, there were contingents of "suburban dads" (also obviously white) out with their battery powered leaf blowers blowing the tear gas back at CBP. The Migras then had to go out to buy their own leaf blowers to deal with their own tear gas.

    Made me want to get a leaf blower for the first time in my life. Of course, when one side is using chemical munitions and the other side ripostes with leaf blowers, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

    230:

    the audience will stop asking who those people really were

    It's been noted up here that for some odd reason both the police and violent protestors buy the same boots. Odd coincidence, that.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/undercover-cops-tried-to-incite-violence-in-montebello-union-leader-1.646775

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/05/cana-j05.html

    (If you look at the dates on those incidents, that's a pattern of using agents provocateurs over more than a decade.)

    231:

    While it's referred to as the Security Service, its abbreviation is BSS or SyS for obvious reasons.

    232:

    While I was vaguely aware of this stuff previously, nonetheless I'm finding such revelations intensely depressing. That's not unusual, there are many intensely depressing things to discover, read about and remark upon these days. There are uplifting things too, I suppose, but it seems to require a choice about how you want the world to be, at least in your head.

    233:

    Same author? That would indeed be interesting. Do you have a URL?

    234:

    I know this is a bit late for the Rhesus Chart crib sheet questions, but how did Basil plan around foreign in occult intelligence agencies? We saw as early as Jennifer Morgue that there is some communication and coordination between the Laundry and their counterparts in other countries, and if the subject of vampires came up at a meeting and the Laundry representative just says "don't be silly, everyone knows vampires don't exist", it would raise some questions. Did he just hope that the subject wouldn't come up? I can't remember if this was addressed in the book but the question just suddenly came to me in a severely delayed bout of fridge logic.

    235:

    Preston Station is quite large, actually. 7 full-length ( i.e. 12-coach ) platforms ... And, believe me, since it's all on viaduct/embankment, the wind tends to blow through, quite effectively. In the days of steam, it never filled up with smoke, anyway!

    SS The one I remember about Portland was an ex-US Army vet, who went along to see how bad it was - & got smashed over by Trump's unmarked "federal" agents - all on film, too! "Antifa", yeah ... maybe not.

    skulgun That's unfair - allynh has already said thanks for the view through a different Overton Window. However - have you a source for that bonkers "No Drinking" sign report? ( As I see Troutwaxer also asks )

    236:

    Para 3 - "No drinking (alcohol)" in public is a quite common bylaw these days, and the excuse given is usually "public order".

    237:

    how did Basil plan around foreign

    That didn't occur to me.

    Most likely, though, Laundry staff based at Dansey House wouldn't even think to mention vampires in a meeting with their opposite numbers, and if the oppos mentioned it they'd dismiss their concerns and then forget the matter. It'd take concerted, prolonged badgering by a foreign intel org to get anywhere, long before which point the FIO in question would probably start thinking "hey, the Brits are so far in denial about vampires that maybe there's something fishy here and they're weaponizing them?" -- At which point the FIO adds two plus two and gets eleventeen and therefore drop the question like a hot potato (while getting extremely paranoid about the Laundry).

    Basically, Basil has Renfielded an entire intel organization, and from the outside it is going to look either like the Laundry is working for the vamps, or the vamps are working for the Laundry, and either way that's very bad news and you should quietly back away while reaching for a stake and mallet.

    238:

    Administrative note wrt. discussion of Portland, Antifa, etc.

  • This is not the right place for it.

  • This blog is anti-fascist. I last updated the moderation policy in 2008, and I've just gone back and made it explicit in clause (3); Nazis and Nazi-apologists on this blog will be banned on sight. I do not provide a platform for people who want folks like me dead. Antifa is, simply, a contraction of "anti-fascist"; by that definition I am Antifa, and the only reason you don't see me on demonstrations/marches is solely that I'm sufficiently old and infirm that it's not practical to do that stuff.

  • I'd also like to note for other Brits present that white supremacism and racism is a pervasive undercurrent in US society that is oddly difficult for an outsider to identify. It's like trying to identify where the smell of decay is coming from when a rat died in your wall space: it seems to be everywhere, and it's foul. If I catch a whiff of it in my blog comments I will sanitize them, and Allynh is treading perilously close to the line.

    239:

    No Drinking" sign report

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drinking-rules-leave-us-writer-dazed-kx6fl3vlv https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/islamic-england_uk_5b87fde3e4b0cf7b0032f6d5 https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journals-andy-ngo-writes-cowardly-islamic-england-2018-8?op=1

    Take your pick.

    (Sorry, I'm in the habit of providing multiple sources for the same thing in the vain hope that it passes through the epistemic closure of my Fox-viewing parents' brains, among others)

    240:

    True, it's not exactly warm and cosy in the winter, and it has a very high roof. On the other hand I believe they've built a bunch of crap around it now so it's more shut in at the side than it used to be. And it could certainly become a stagnant greenhouse like most stations with an overall roof can under the right conditions, ie. not a lot of wind and a gross excess of passengers such as you would naturally get if several full-length trains all tipped out there unscheduledly. Lots of room, but I reckon several full-length trains all tipping out there unexpectedly would still quite easily fill all that room up and it would get like bloody London under those conditions. I'm sure it would then have just as much potential for disease transmission as yer average Trump rally.

    Still, I have long held the opinion that it is a bad idea to go to Preston, because every time I go to Preston for anything more than changing trains something horrible and shit happens and makes me wish I hadn't. I see that it would now be a good idea to delete the "changing trains" exclusion and add "catching plague" to the list of potential horrible and shit things.

    241:

    it seems to require a choice about how you want the world to be, at least in your head

    One of my elderly relatives has for decades had a policy of not reading or talking about depressing news, because it's too depressing. They are now being blindsided by the effects of climate change and wondering why no one has done anything and why weren't they warned…

    Sometimes reality intrudes whether you want it to or not.

    242:

    Charlie,

    Since I am apparently under attack for pointing out what is commonly available on YouTube -- after all, you guys were saying how great Portland was -- I will spend my time writing. Delete my posts if you want.

    The story opened wide up because of the useful comments from the others. I generated a ton of pages after my last post. I don't do "Villain speak" that well. The guys made the story work.

    Thanks to all.

    BTW, To the question about "Antifa" @228 and @230, here is an interesting lecture. Basically, "Antifa" is not what it says on the label.

    Antifa: History and Tactics | Andy Ngo

    The important part of the lecture is the audience. They give me remarkable insight into their worldview as well.

    Thanks...

    243:

    Allynh, with all due respect if you're citing noted neo-nazi grifter Andy Ngo as a source for anything, it suggests you're so far down the rabbit hole that you've lost sight of daylight.

    244:

    Apropos looking at different political viewpoints…

    I've recently started getting multiple emails a day from PenceNews*. The latests one has a quote supposedly from Karl Marx: "Democracy is the road to socialism … Socialism leads to communism."

    Whether or not the quote is an actual one, it's interesting that the justification for limiting democracy is that it's the slippery slope to communism — so to save capitalism we must sacrifice democracy. Says a lot about what the American right actually values…

    *Apparently at least one of the American Robert Priors is a Trumpist Republican who still hasn't realized that his email address isn't just his name at gmail.com, because I now get multiple emails a day from various right-wing sources and congresscritters.

    245:

    Unless a pseudonym is involved, Michael J. Totten and Andy Ngo are two different people.

    246:

    Echoes of Senator Hammond's 1858 "Mudsills" speech in there too.

    I think what's going on in Trumpistan is that a bunch of right wing history majors are retooling what they learned in school for the service of their current masters. This is an extremely venerable practice, dating back at least to the Hellenistic period, wherein academics wrote paeans proclaiming the divinity of those who ruled them, in part so that their institutions would get funded.

    But getting back to the Mudsills and other crap from the Slave Power conflict leading up to the US Civil War. You can get a readable take on that from Dr. Heather Cox Richardsons' books, notably To Make Men Free which is a history of the Republican party. I'm diving into it because I'm fleshing out my earlier notion of a "Lincoln Lived" alt-history by trying to imagine what the US would have looked like if Lincoln had not just avoided assassination, but fully joined the radical wing of the republican party. These were the people who had as a party plank "All Men are created equal," and believed that if it was possible to enslave anyone, it was possible to enslave everyone. Imagine if that ethos had seriously gone up against monied racism in late 19th Century America.

    247:

    Yeah. Gotta agree with Charlie on allynh.

    Note, allynh, that you are close to becoming a victim of the right-wing fear machine's attempts to give you a serious scare. Eventually you will come to believe that voting and acting from the far right is the only way to save yourself. This is basic psychology - grab the victims by the amygdala and don't ever let go - and Andy Ngo is without the slightest doubt one of the practitioners of this black art.

    As for the article by Michael J. Totten which you first presented, note that at least two issues of propaganda are present. First, he doesn't mention the history of Oregon's exclusion of Black people - and he's obviously researched Oregon's history. Second, he doesn't mention the right-wing violence - present in Portland at least as often as the left-wing violence - that the Portland police have been carefully and deliberately ignoring for years. (Antifa is there because the facists are there.)

    I think Charlie is very much right that you are at risk for going down the rabbit-hole, and you need to find more honest/knowledgeable people for your serious political reading before Ngo's grip on your amygdala solidifies.

    248:

    Heading back towards the Laundryverse, I'll pitch a couple of my guanomaniacal ideas for non-serious consideration.

    One is that magic as "applied mathematics" is missing a bunch of stuff. It's obvious from the first that Laundryverse magic has both analog and symbolic components. I could say digital for symbolic, but since neither physical digits nor numbers are directly involved, I'll go with symbolic magic. The basic difference is that analog magic involves manipulating flows of mana, and modifying characteristics like amplitude, frequency, and possibly phase (is this where gates come from?). Symbolic magic gets instantiated on smartphones and in Enochian verbal procedures. I got really confused, but it's obvious that both components are present. Gates seem to be analog devices, while many soul-related spells seem to be symbolic.

    Now, changing gears without a clutch, let's go to the second idea: what to do about liches and other undying sorcerers? In the old AD&D world, of course Lich souls were kept in phylacteries, which is just too antisemitic to use. However, the idea of a box containing mystic writings (which is what a phylactery is) is key to what makes liches so hard to discorporate. So let's change the language. Instead of using a problematic term, let's call the magical documents "Articles of Incorporation." They're part of a process whereby a natural human becomes Incorporated as a being largely of symbolic magic. Their Articles of Incorporation define their existence. They are the source code of the Incorporated Person. Combine this with a regularly updated state vector (the infamous soul jar, but it as easily could be a ledger and a diary), and it's possible to reconstitute such a person by using their source code (Their Articles of Incorporation) and whatever their most recent recorded state vector was to reconstitute them. So long as these two items are protected, they're very hard to get rid of.

    Nothing antisemitic about saying that liches and other undead are corporate persons whose existence is bound to the existence of a file of papers somewhere, plus a ledger and diary of transactions...

    Here endeth the guanomania.

    249:

    That's a really interesting idea, though I think making liches into "corporate persons" is a little too obvious. It needs one additional layer of abstraction, so keep the concept but call it something else. Maybe a "Sigilized Backup Persona" or something. You'd have to bring in a bunch of eaters to run the code, so there would be a time limit on the usefulness, which might make for some suspense.

    250:

    Well, I was trying to find a term that was as obnoxious in its own way as the old use of phylactery. To be fair, I don't think Gygax was any more a raging anti-semite than I am. He was looking for a term that encompassed magical documents in a box, and picked in a way that in retrospect is really problematic.

    But the real poke here is some version of "Articles of Incorporation" as the magical document. Probably calling them "Incorporation Codices" is closer to a suitable obfuscation, while still causing anyone in business law to choke on their latte, which is also kind of the point. And which also sticks a petite thumbnail in the eye of anyone who says that "corporations are people, my friend."

    251:

    THIS is the video I was talking about. A 53-year old ex-USN veteran, standing quite still, being gratuitously beaten by Trump agents. Obviously a dangerously provocative "antifa" agent, bent on trouble ( not)

    252:

    "And which also sticks a petite thumbnail in the eye of anyone who says that "corporations are people, my friend.""

    One of my fantasies is a million protesters outside the Supreme Court, all holding signs that say "Corporations Are Not People."

    I like "Incorporation Codices."

    253:

    Bill Arnold @ 197: I recent heard "Our hammer is [X]" where [X] is the class of problems that their company's system is exceptionally well suited for.
    (They were not Thor. :-)"

    "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

    254:

    Essentially this happened with the Fugitive Slave Act, which meant anyone could point to anyone anywhere and declare that person an "escaped slave." This did more than anything to radicalize the average Northerner against the slaveocracy and slavery. And very quickly. If the average Northern voter (white, male) didn't care particularly about slavery one way or another, he did NOT want slavery expanded, due to wages, etc. The other thing the average Northerner knew about slavery was the 'white slave sex trade', the fancy market, where generations of slaves were whiter than his own daughters, and sold into sexual service. It was the most lucrative of all the slave enterprises.

    This average white Northern male voter realized w/o any trouble his own girls could be taken down there and sold if anyone chose to accuse one of being a run away slave. The provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act was the accused could not testify and no one could testify in favor of the accused. And for every accused runaway slave the courts and even judges in some place received 'compensation.'

    IOW, They pushed and pushed and pushed the expansion of slavery everywhere, breaking treaties and laws, all in the name of protecting their peculiar institution and its property. They pushed so hard that Abolition become inevitable, once They pushed the nation into the War of the Rebellion.

    255:

    "They pushed so hard that Abolition become inevitable, once They pushed the nation into the War of the Rebellion."

    And they're getting close to that right now. I keep running into people for who pacifism is a way of life, and they don't plan to start the second civil war, but they'd be happier than most imagine to end it with enormous finality.

    256:

    paws4thot @ 202: Who knows? According to the English Broadcasting Corporation, a foppball game tomorrow is more important than things like Iceland volcanoes, trade deals, climate change, presidential assassinations and resultant unrest...

    I'm having trouble processing the Haiti assassination. Haiti hasn't been in the news for years.

    It seems like not since Aristide was overthrown the second time; not even for any of the hurricanes that have devastated the Caribbean in the last several years ... and then this sudden assassination & it seems like the unrest has been a long time building, not just an after effect of the assassination.

    257:

    See Gladstone's Three Parts Dead for magic entangled with law.

    I loved the first book, but never got further with the series. Do people recommend the rest of the series?

    258:

    I keep running into people for who pacifism is a way of life, and they don't plan to start the second civil war, but they'd be happier than most imagine to end it with enormous finality.

    Maybe you are not trying to be cryptic, but I read this sentence several times and I still have no idea what you are talking about. Who are these people and what exactly are they hoping for?

    259:

    "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Yeah, that was the meaning. The interesting bit was that the speaker thought enough of the audience to trust them to know the reference, and they mostly did.

    260:

    Charlie Stross @ 206:

    Portland

    Greg, I've been to that part of the USA quite a bit (Pacific north-west). I have in particular traveled between Portland and Seattle multiple times, including: driving, train, and commuter plane.

    By far the slowest way between the two cities was the train -- although the second class seats had as much leg room and bum width as first class in a UK intercity service, the buffet car had vegan options for sale along with decent real ale, and the experience was reasonably civilized.

    But things are set up in the expectation that you will drive or fly, and if you can't drive, flying beats the train. Even on a 20 seater turboprop it's well under an hour, and even with post-9/11 security theatre, the door-to-door time was under three hours. Driving: about four hours. The train was late (Amtrak is always late, except on the East Coast corridor) and it ended up taking nearly five hours.

    Once you get into Portland itself, though, the trams are as good as those in Manchester or Nottingham and they're free inside the city centre, which is something the UK could really do with copying.

    OTOH, inter-city rail service in the U.S. could be better. It could serve a lot of smaller communities (I think maybe some kind of hub & spoke system) in a more ecologically friendly way. Many of those communities aren't accessible by air anyway, you have to drive for miles & miles to get to an airport that has even a 20 seat turboprop from a "regional" carrier.

    Here in North Carolina, I'd like to see day service (morning & evening) connecting Greensboro with Asheville and Raleigh with Wilmington (with urban light rail/trolleys to take you out to the beaches.)

    We used to have those services, and I'm pretty sure the tracks are still there. Freight trains still use them.

    I'd like to see the government nationalize the tracks & rebuild them along the lines of the interstate highways; double (or triple/quadruple) tracks all the way & replacing all the grade crossings with overpasses/underpasses. Let the railroad companies use the rails on the same basis trucking companies use the highways, by paying highway use taxes.

    I'd also like to see more inter-modal services à la the Eurotunnel (Chunnel?). Amtrak has an Auto Train service between Lorton, VA and Sanford, FL, but I'd like to see it expanded to more locations with more terminals. Even if it only ran once a week between D.C. and L.A. it would still be more economically & ecologically friendly that flying & renting a car.

    And there really should be hubs in any major U.S. city (more than 1 million population?) and certainly at least one hub in every state.

    261:

    paws4thot @ 220: Further to this, I found some maps and photos of Preston station quite easily - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_railway_station

    Google Image Search gives you a lot of them, but I had to use "Preston railway station in Preston, Lancashire, England" for my search term because otherwise more than half of the results are for the station in Preston, Victoria, Australia.

    262:

    I keep running into people for who pacifism is a way of life, and they don't plan to start the second civil war, but they'd be happier than most imagine to end it with enormous finality. Maybe you are not trying to be cryptic, but I read this sentence several times and I still have no idea what you are talking about. Who are these people and what exactly are they hoping for?

    I suspect they would be quite happy if every racist bigot, fascist, and hatemonger would fall screaming into the sky and after a very long passage go to God for reeducation. Or whatever the Rapture is supposed to be.

    I'm learning that pacifism properly done can be considerably more powerful than violence. That said, it's a discipline. Having to use it over and over and over and over and over again grinds. And when your opponent's negotiating stance is "give me everything I want or we'll destroy the world fighting," it should be understandable for the pacifists to wish their opponents would just go away permanently and leave the world at peace.

    263:

    Scott Sanford @ 222:

    Portland is a Gibsonian Distopia.[1] Antifa took over the center of town and waged nightly riots trying to torch the Federal Buildings. While BLM mobs marched through the suburbs shouting, "Wake up mother fucker, wake up."

    I'm going to suggest you think about the political leanings of the people who tell you those stories. It might be educational to consider what advantages they might hope to gain.

    I'm going to suggest reading the whole article before making up your mind. Seems to me what he's against is a criminal political element, and that criminal element exists on both the right AND on the left. Seems like in Portland it has manifested as radical anarchists taking over the Portland protests. The protests ended when the riots began (or more like, the riots began and brought the protests to an end).

    "Protests are not riots, and riots are not protests. Protests are constitutionally protected activities vital to any functioning liberal democracy. Riots are violent crimes punishable by imprisonment. Activists, journalists, and politicians alike have a terrible habit of using the terms interchangeably."
    "If you read nothing but conservative media, you might think most of the city had degenerated into a war zone. If you read nothing but left-wing analysis and reports, you likely came away with the impression that even most of downtown was doing just fine. Local journalists did a consistently excellent job describing the society-wide effects as well as the what, when, where, how, and why, but right-wing national media magnified the scale of the problem while left-wing national media downplayed it."
    264:

    Gygax didn't write all the D&D canon; indeed, he kind of buried Dave Arnesen and wossname (the third guy)'s contributions through superior PR. And then it turned into a huge commercial machine by the time AD&D was coming out. I'm not sure who came up with Liches/phylacteries, but I'm pretty sure it was attributed to one of the other TSR staff. (Which is not to say that Gygax wasn't a raving misogynist who systematically drove women out of the early RPG community, and IIRC had some other insalubrious views.)

    265:

    Heteromeles @ 223: So when someone says "they grew up in Oregon and are moving out of Portland because of Them People" (a paraphrase of the article you cited), Scott's question about their political bias is extremely important, because the default is right wing. Since 2016, the far right has tried to retake Oregon by causing trouble in Portland, and that leads to some creatively biased reporting.

    It's also extremely important to look closely at your own political biases & maybe read what he has to say before passing judgment.

    "It would make a more dramatic story, I suppose, if I told you that we were driven out or that we fled, but the truth is more prosaic: we had decided to move more than a year earlier because houses are cheaper almost everywhere else in the state. We were so close to downtown that we could see the skyline from our front yard, and we paid a premium for it. We could get more house for less money if we moved. So we slowly spiffed up our home, packed what we wanted to keep, donated what we no longer needed, and put our house on the market."

    It's not left or right here. He's lamenting EXTREMISM's effect on Portland.

    "Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, left-wing extremists battled it out with right-wing extremists in and around downtown, turning the central business district into a Thunderdome and the city as a whole into a poster child for urban dysfunction."
    "And that was before the perfect storm of 2020."
    266:

    The one I remember about Portland was an ex-US Army vet, who went along to see how bad it was - & got smashed over by Trump's unmarked "federal" agents - all on film, too!

    Yes, there was all too much of that sort of thing. It got caught on camera a lot, too.

    Inconveniently for the apologists, and raising questions of their strategic competence, the Portland police also tear gassed the mayor, which promises to complicate budget discussions for years to come. I'm not a particular fan of Ted Wheeler but I've never wanted to lob a grenade into his face...

    267:

    I am admiring your technique, Scott. (I remember the discussions last year.)

    268:

    Yes, strong rec for the entire series! And everything else Max has written, especially "Empress of Forever" and (co-written with Amal El-Mohar) "This is How you lose the Time War".

    269:

    Foxessa That "pushing" you refer to has a current counterpart in this country, where the ultra-Brexshiteers & vultures are similarly pushing for an overthrow of normal government, inside existing laws ( A classic Fascist/utra-right trick if you know about it ) Back-pressure is already building .. BoZo can only "win" if his currently-legal coup continues AND he wins the next election ... Interesting Times. And in the USA, where as some have noted: "We have to oppose Democracy to save Capitalism" & the other trope: "We do not live in a Democracy, we live in a Republic" - the latter is particularly scary to an outsider ...

    270:

    "We do not live in a Democracy, we live in a Republic"

    Echoing Madison, who reserved the term "democracy" for Athenian-style direct democracy. By his definition, all Western democracies are actually forms of republic.

    Interestingly enough, it appears that other writers of the constitution disagreed with this definition, and asserted that the new country was, indeed, a democracy.

    Looking through the top ten hits on Google for "what is the difference between a democracy and a republic", most seem to assert that the main difference is that in a republic there is a written constitution to protect minority rights, while in a democracy the minority has no such protection.

    Given that limitation, I guess Canada is a republic, as is Australia. Even Britain qualifies — although its constitution isn't codified into a single document it still has one.

    I wonder if the reason for the current popularity of the phrase is the names of the American political parties? Asserting that America is not a democracy but rather a republic also implies that the natural ruling party should be the Republicans rather than the Democrats.

    271:

    in a republic there is a written constitution to protect minority rights

    And is seems to me that a key aspect of the BLM protests is that the written constitution has done and is doing a piss-poor job of protecting the minority from the majority.

    272:

    Well, as we have so many friends in Haiti, and Haitian friends here, and its a big part of our professional work, both historical and musical of the USA, we have been paying attention all along and getting updates.

    Haiti dropped off the map due the utter disaster the international effort made of helping Haiti 'rebuild.' They brought cholera to Haiti, which had never had before, the UN troops raped the women and girls, particularly the very young ones, behaved like occupying barbarians -- which, yes, in Haitian eyes they were. And the billions provided to rebuild the infrastructure was stolen, and the Clintons got their boy Martelly installed, who did a lot of the stealing and let things really go to hell, and refused to leave office, running away to Miami - from where he is now begging Biden to muster the US military and put him back in office.

    273:

    I'll agree that I needed to read the article more carefully. So I did. And then I reread it, to see if I could get his timeline to be less confused. And I couldn't. What happened when? Hard to tell from the text, which is a real problem.

    I'm also bothered by his characterization of the mayor as squishy. As someone who mistakenly voted for Bob Filner (oops) and who watched Kevin Faulconer fuck up the response to a hepatitis outbreak in 2018 AND lose the Chargers to LA, I wish we had Portland's mayor back then. Probably now even. Anyone who thinks mayors weren't in over their heads in general during the pandemic wasn't paying attention. Squishy is being in over your head during a normal year, a la Faulconer.

    Second problem: googling "Oregon Black Lives Matter" just to get to the timing and scale of the protests, I find things like this (Nov 2020): https://www.opb.org/article/2020/11/23/portland-protest-racial-justice-oregon-black-lives-matter/.

    Turns out the hordes of anarchists I thought were trashing downtown Portland were a few dozen idiots (read the article, which is why I called them idiots). Those anarchists are not antifa, and they're not the Black Lives Matter. Indeed, they were overheard arguing about whether to accept the invitation to join a BLM protest or go smash windows because no one tells them what to do (per the article). A few dozen isn't a huge movement, it's a photogenic nuisance.

    So that's my take on my biases. How about yours?

    I've got other things to do, sadly, or I'd start diving down the sewer of where the right-wing Oregonian protestors got off to. They were there, now they're not. That's a puzzle in itself.

    274:

    And is seems to me that a key aspect of the BLM protests is that the written constitution has done and is doing a piss-poor job of protecting the minority from the majority.

    well the specific minority the constitution was intended to protect was the rich, after all

    275:
    While it's referred to as the Security Service, its abbreviation is BSS or SyS for obvious reasons.

    Not to me it isn't; they'll always be the SS to me!

    I first came into contact with them here: https://www.venues.ox.ac.uk/our-venues/examination-schools/

    There was a chap sitting alone at a table during the "milk round". A friend went up to them and asked what sort of job they were offering. They couldn't tell you who they were, nor what the job involved. The guys over at SIS said that at least if you asked them -- persistently -- this time they'd tell you they were calling themselves the "Security Service", which was an improvement on previous years.

    I was going to say that most of the secret establishment did not scare me -- excepting the SS. Then I remembered the look I got from Daphne Park ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Park ) glaring at me from high table when I crashed there for lunch (it was close to the Maths Institute).

    Given the people she did kill, I probably got away quite lightly. If you want a mental image I suggest Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

    276:

    Oh yes, about the SS.

    At a meeting in the Home Office (Academia meets British Security) you always got the impression that they regretted the Allies won WW2. And that if it was up to them they'd get out the pliers right now and set to.

    GCHQ had some interesting stuff we talked about -- and if my RAs would have signed up to it we might have tried to do a secure ARM chip.

    277:

    Scott Sanford @ 227:

    I'm looking at the way Plato's Cave can be used. That there are many "caves", not just the one as in the parable. That each group is subject to their own unique "shadow play" on the wall.

    Certainly. And once you sell an audience on a shadow such as "Antifa took over the center of town and waged nightly riots trying to torch

    I will point out that the writer does not appear to accept the bullshit narrative that "Antifa"=="Radical Anarchists". I don't think you should accept it either.

    ... or attribute to the writer something he didn't write. Far from being some right-wingnut anti-progressive white supremacist, he appears to me to be a "left-libertarian" small 'd' democrat.

    He doesn't mention antifa at all except to note that a candidate for mayor who stated "I am antifa" refused to speak out against the violence and managed to lose the 2020 election to a mayor who was only "half as popular as Donald Trump" (who "received a paltry 7.5 percent of the vote" in the downtown district where the riots occurred).

    278:

    Troutwaxer @ 245: Unless a pseudonym is involved, Michael J. Totten and Andy Ngo are two different people.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Totten

    279:

    Here in North Carolina, I'd like to see day service (morning & evening) connecting Greensboro with Asheville and Raleigh with Wilmington (with urban light rail/trolleys to take you out to the beaches.)

    We are somewhat headed that way. But slowly. I flew into Greensboro a couple of years ago and then caught the train to Raleigh. But had to spring $30 for the cab ride in Greensboro.

    The state owns a non trivial amount of track and right of way due to decisions made 100 years ago or more. But it is a hash of legal status. More importantly passenger rail lines have issues of safety that keep them from running on freight only tracks. Clearances and such. (I was associated with the 11 stop somewhat heavy rail plan around here 20 years ago and much of the crazy final costs were due to the amount of work that would be needed to make freight tracks passenger safe.) (Oh, and things like the NCSU station having a 50+ foot elevation from normal people level to track level and what that would cost to build in ADA terms plus utility relocations.)

    As to your other point about the feds taking over the rail lines. Without an incredible amount of eminent domain take overs in the $trillions you can't re-work the US rail system much more than tweaking it. Straightening curves and such chews up a LOT of dirt.

    Look at where Capital Blvd (real local windage here) has to narrow down to 4 skinny lanes to go under the CSX overpass. That's a $50+ million cost (maybe double that) just to widen it to allow the car lanes to match the road work just finished. Ain't gonna happen any time soon. And when said overpass is closed it is a 100 mile detour for the railroad which does NOT make them happy.

    Our brand spanking new Union Station (designed by a client of mine) was a $60+ million project. Of which 2/3s was dealing with tracking issues.

    280:

    I wonder if the reason for the current popularity of the phrase is the names of the American political parties? Asserting that America is not a democracy but rather a republic also implies that the natural ruling party should be the Republicans rather than the Democrats.

    As best I can figure out from the comments of some of my relatives on FB, it is a way of saying "so what if the President doesn't get a majority of the country to vote for him" and "The Senate is what keeps this country great" and so on.

    Engaging said relations never goes very far till the name calling starts.

    281:

    Bill Arnold @ 259:

    "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

    Yeah, that was the meaning. The interesting bit was that the speaker thought enough of the audience to trust them to know the reference, and they mostly did.

    For me the interesting bit is the speaker appears to think having a hammer as the only tool in their kit is a good idea.

    282:

    "I'd like to see the government nationalize the tracks & rebuild them along the lines of the interstate highways; double (or triple/quadruple) tracks all the way & replacing all the grade crossings with overpasses/underpasses. Let the railroad companies use the rails on the same basis trucking companies use the highways, by paying highway use taxes."

    That's not too far distant from a description of our current setup, if you screw your eyes up. Except they don't do the bit in bold. They can't even get their act together to put wires up without fucking it up so expensively that they run out of money and then get scared of the whole idea. Instead they do the equivalent of building one interstate highway, with so few intersections you can count them on your fingers, sited so they don't actually intersect with anything and you have to get out of your car and find some other way to go several miles before you get anywhere useful. And they tell us that there isn't an alternative of spending the money on actually useful projects instead, but only one of not spending it at all, for no reason other than pure wankerism and the suitability of a single huge scheme for diverting large amounts of the money into their own pockets, out of a total which seems to grow by another 30 billion every time you look at it; and they justify the idea by (a) appealing to whatever aspect of improving the railways in general sounds most appealing at the time they say it and (b) citing it as the magic bullet for any and all aspects that need specific local improvement, wherever they may be, although the real justification is a matter of how dare France and Germany have something and us not have a shinier one, never mind that it is useful for their geography but not for ours.

    283:

    Foxessa @ 272: Well, as we have so many friends in Haiti, and Haitian friends here, and its a big part of our professional work, both historical and musical of the USA, we have been paying attention all along and getting updates.

    Haiti dropped off the map due the utter disaster the international effort made of helping Haiti 'rebuild.' They brought cholera to Haiti, which had never had before, the UN troops raped the women and girls, particularly the very young ones, behaved like occupying barbarians -- which, yes, in Haitian eyes they were. And the billions provided to rebuild the infrastructure was stolen, and the Clintons got their boy Martelly installed, who did a lot of the stealing and let things really go to hell, and refused to leave office, running away to Miami - from where he is now begging Biden to muster the US military and put him back in office.

    Yeah, it's always "the Clintons" fault.

    284:

    So likening Totten to Ngo is probably not a fair move in this debate.

    285:

    It needs one additional layer of abstraction, so keep the concept but call it something else. Maybe a "Sigilized Backup Persona" or something.

    Some kind of Non-Fungible Token, inexplicably both useless and expensive...

    286:

    Wrong. What you're saying is indistinguishable from "both-sides-ism".

    Seem to miss the white-wing who started one of the fires in Portland, to blame it on the BLM protesters.

    And then there's the report that just came out: https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelmingly-peaceful-our-research-finds

    And then, we are talking about Oregon. My Eldest, who lives with her husband in Klamath Falls (and is about to relocate to upstate NY, because she can't take it any more), tells me about the neighbor four doors down, who gardens... wearing a handgun. No, I'm not making this up, this is fact.

    287:

    Manchester - UK?

    Cool... when a late friend of mine gave me it as a birthday present in the seventies, he commented that I was the only person he knew (and by then, he was the systems programmer at Philly Community College) who would actually appreciate it.

    Basilisk gun? Perhaps you could send me an encrypted copy of the plans? I do live in the DC 'burbs, and there's some folks that need to be frozen....

    288:

    ROTFLMAO!

    But then, you're at "corporations are people", and I have this picture of the corporation's headquarters building humping itself out of the foundations, and along the road.

    289:

    I bought a "5 mi laser pointer" when I thought a lot of people were going to go to the Capital for the 6th, until the mayor begged everyone to stay away.

    I've also run into Kratman (one of the few that the infamous Sanford Patreon article mentioned) in a thread on faceplant started by Eric Flint... and he got to "let the civil war roll". It that happens, my edged weaponry isn't enough, and I will get, say, an M-14, for self defense.

    290:

    Yes. I'd really like to see the US nationalize the main lines, at least, of all the railroads, then charge them, and bring them up to passenger standards.

    Remember that until Amtrak was created, all the Class-1 (and some smaller) railroads ran passenger trains, and most, other than the (literal) milk runs, they were high speed. (we're talking 90mph up.).

    291:

    David L @ 279:

    Here in North Carolina, I'd like to see day service (morning & evening) connecting Greensboro with Asheville and Raleigh with Wilmington (with urban light rail/trolleys to take you out to the beaches.)

    We are somewhat headed that way. But slowly. I flew into Greensboro a couple of years ago and then caught the train to Raleigh. But had to spring $30 for the cab ride in Greensboro.

    There are by my count five round-trip services between Greensboro & Charlotte, four between Raleigh and Charlotte. There used to be passenger service from Greensboro to/from Asheville, predating Amtrak. I don't know why it didn't extend east to Durham (and destinations east of Durham).

    My father's sister lived in Asheville and she would take the train to Greensboro where we would pick her up when she came to visit. I'm guessing in those days different Railroads served Durham-Greensboro and getting a transfer from one line to another was complicated. I do remember that at least on one occasion she was able to take the train from Durham when she was going back to Asheville, so it might have been about schedules & timetables & such.

    After passenger service to/from Asheville was discontinued (some time in the late 50s or early 60s?) she learned to drive & bought a car.

    Greensboro still has a nice old vintage station. It integrates both rail & bus service.

    I remember when they demolished the old Durham, NC train station to make way for a parking garage, even though by then I had already abandoned Durham for Raleigh. In a way that was why I abandoned Durham. They were tearing down EVERYTHING to make way for parking garages. Plenty of parking but no reason to go downtown when there was nothing but parking.

    Looks like the old Durham train station was demolished about the same time passenger service between Raleigh & Wilmington was discontinued (1968).

    I've seen the proposed new Amtrak route map that includes Wilmington, but I don't know anything about how I'd get to the beach from there.

    292:

    For me the interesting bit is the speaker appears to think having a hammer as the only tool in their kit is a good idea.

    It's so much simpler that way. You don't have to waste any time thinking before you go to work hitting things…

    293:

    David L @ 280:

    I wonder if the reason for the current popularity of the phrase is the names of the American political parties? Asserting that America is not a democracy but rather a republic also implies that the natural ruling party should be the Republicans rather than the Democrats.

    I never thought of it explicitly that way, but there may be something too that.

    As best I can figure out from the comments of some of my relatives on FB, it is a way of saying "so what if the President doesn't get a majority of the country to vote for him" and "The Senate is what keeps this country great" and so on.

    Yeah, but the correct answer is E: None of the above

    The U.S. is neither a democracy nor a republic. It's a hybrid; a Constitutional Federation of nominally representative (more or less) "democratic" states sharing power (and responsibility).

    It is a Union built upon multiple levels of "democratic" governance ...where "democratic" means government is ultimately answerable to the people through elections; elections that are not suspended nor postponed due to emergencies, nor overturned by mob action.

    294:

    Pigeon @ 282:

    "I'd like to see the government nationalize the tracks & rebuild them along the lines of the interstate highways; double (or triple/quadruple) tracks all the way & replacing all the grade crossings with overpasses/underpasses. Let the railroad companies use the rails on the same basis trucking companies use the highways, by paying highway use taxes."

    That's not too far distant from a description of our current setup, if you screw your eyes up. Except they don't do the bit in bold. They can't even get their act together to put wires up without fucking it up so expensively that they run out of money and then get scared of the whole idea. Instead they do the equivalent of building one interstate highway, with so few intersections you can count them on your fingers, sited so they don't actually intersect with anything and you have to get out of your car and find some other way to go several miles before you get anywhere useful. And they tell us that there isn't an alternative of spending the money on actually useful projects instead, but only one of not spending it at all, for no reason other than pure wankerism and the suitability of a single huge scheme for diverting large amounts of the money into their own pockets, out of a total which seems to grow by another 30 billion every time you look at it; and they justify the idea by (a) appealing to whatever aspect of improving the railways in general sounds most appealing at the time they say it and (b) citing it as the magic bullet for any and all aspects that need specific local improvement, wherever they may be, although the real justification is a matter of how dare France and Germany have something and us not have a shinier one, never mind that it is useful for their geography but not for ours.

    Yeah, I screwed that up a bit.

    It should actually be double tracks with no grade crossings all the way, with occasional triple/quadruple tracks where needed to alleviate congestion.

    Streets & highways have two lanes to allow traffic to flow in both directions simultaneously, and some streets/highways have additional lanes to handle increased traffic. I think a national railroad network should be at least that intelligent.

    295:

    There's an old Mullah Nasruddin story about how the Mullah was afraid he was going to be robbed on a trip, so he bought a saber and a dagger. When he got to his destination, his friend asked how his trip had been.

    "Terrible," he said. "I was robbed!" "But you had those weapons," his friend noted. "Why didn't you stop him?" "I was so busy trying to figure out how to hold the saber in one hand and the dagger in the other that I didn't notice the thief picking my pocket," the Mullah replied.

    Remember, the "let the civil war roll" crowd failed on January 6th, while the nonviolent organizers now have the ear of the president. Just because you're mesmerized by the theoretical power of violence doesn't mean it's the best or only solution.

    296:

    whitroth @ 290: Yes. I'd *really* like to see the US nationalize the main lines, at least, of all the railroads, then charge them, and bring them up to passenger standards.

    Remember that until Amtrak was created, all the Class-1 (and some smaller) railroads ran passenger trains, and most, other than the (literal) milk runs, they were high speed. (we're talking 90mph up.).

    I "remember" that Amtrak was conceived as a way to rescue intercity passenger rail service that was being abandoned as unprofitable by the railroad companies. It was intended as an interim measure to allow passenger rail to die quietly.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Formation

    Don't get the cart before the horse.

    297:

    "Remember, the "let the civil war roll" crowd failed on January 6th, while the nonviolent organizers now have the ear of the president. Just because you're mesmerized by the theoretical power of violence doesn't mean it's the best or only solution."

    And it gets worse for the Right from there.

    What they don't realize is that it's too damn late. Look at the population numbers for blacks, hispanics, jews, muslims, LGBTQ+ people, Liberal/Progressive whites, etc. Even with overlap they add up to at least 65% of the population and the ammosexual right tends to spend their money on way too many guns and not enough bullets. That's if one insists on assuming a military solution, and as you've noted, that's not necessarily a good idea.

    If you don't assume a military solution then the only real problem here is that those groups I listed above don't vote rationally and in numbers equal to their population.

    Sigh. I gotta get involved myself. I wish there was a group which (1.) has politics I like and (2.) uses tactics that make sense to me. Unfortunately, charisma is my dump stat, so I'm not going to be organizing that one.

    298:

    Heteromeles @ 295: There's an old Mullah Nasruddin story about how the Mullah was afraid he was going to be robbed on a trip, so he bought a saber and a dagger. When he got to his destination, his friend asked how his trip had been.

    "Terrible," he said. "I was robbed!"
    "But you had those weapons," his friend noted. "Why didn't you stop him?"
    "I was so busy trying to figure out how to hold the saber in one hand and the dagger in the other that I didn't notice the thief picking my pocket," the Mullah replied.

    Remember, the "let the civil war roll" crowd failed on January 6th, while the nonviolent organizers now have the ear of the president. Just because you're mesmerized by the theoretical power of violence doesn't mean it's the best or only solution.

    Besides an M-14 is a terrible choice for a personal defense weapon, even if you have the training to use it. The M-14 is designed to kill on the battlefield at ranges 300m and beyond; nothing else.

    I think it's stupid to keep any firearms around the home for defense (and I DO have the necessary training - years of it1), but if you're going to do it anyway, the M-14 is the wrong one.

    They're all the wrong one, but that's a different argument.

    1 ... which is why I think it's stupid.

    299:

    Hey Charlie, I've got a question for you. It sounds like you're either going to give us an ending in which the original denizens of The Laundry fail, or things are very ambiguous in terms of who won/lost.

    What do your editors think about this plan?

    300:

    They Won. Holy Fuck how are you posting still and not understanding this.

    They literally tortured or killed or "vanned" (get in the car... it's like the helicopter, it's a one way trip) or made to suicide everyone else.

    That's True: That's how it works.

    "They Won": Just not how they thought they'd won.

    Your Nervous Systems are like Trees and Quantum Links are like Magnetospheric trails.

    "Good Shot Sir"

    Turns out:

    Arc-Light Protocol is kinda a thing.

    301:

    Meh, fuck it.

    100% Arc-Light Protocol.

    "You lick the electic nootropic torture web, whelp, we'll stop your heart / burst your Brain".

    What the FUCK do you think you've been doing to Iraqi prisoners, little kids stuck in Homes and so on?

    This shit. Right here. Right now.

    ~~~

    In Other Words: there's a shit load of you linked to a system that is just the baby precursor to more sophisticated stuff [YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM IS HACKABLE: BUT ONLY WE CAN BEND THE RULES]

    ~

    You want it "real": we can map your entire neuro-structure then burst it at salient points. Heart, Brain, Groin, etc.

    H.S.S: you're basically walking body-bags now. For realz.

    302:

    You did say you know nothing because of reading / hearing nothing about Haiti for years. . . .

    Whereas I, on the other hand, have, and do, and know the history. Make of that what you will but the Clintons are in it up past their eyeballs, particularly while HRC was Sec of State.

    303:

    whitroth @ 286: "...tells me about the neighbor four doors down, who gardens... wearing a handgun. No, I'm not making this up, this is fact."

    Heinlein used to do yardwork wearing a handgun in an external holster. I saw the photo.

    304:

    I'd wonder whether Was this when he lived in semi-wilderness in Colorado, or did he also garden with a gun when he lived in cities?

    Semi-wilderness in Colorado makes at least limited sense. In town? Not nearly so much.

    305:

    JBS It was intended as an interim measure to allow passenger rail to die quietly. Same here ... the railways were privatised & "Railtrack" (shudder) set up, because, in spite of the evidence, it was assumed by the tory right that the railways were in permanent decline ( they were not ) & this was the way to manage that decline, whilst lining our friends' pockets, of course.

    Troutwaxer NOT too late for the fascists - yet - if they can rig the next 2 or 3 half-&-full-term US elections ( Which they are doing, yes? ) then they will have won. This has still got to be stopped. [ Someone twist Mnuchin (Sp?) arm, hard, please? ]

    Meanwhile... I'm vastly relived that England lost the Lumberjacking/Poofball last night ....

    306:

    They Won. Holy Fuck how are you posting still and not understanding this.

    Are we talking about the Italian football team here?

    307:

    I've been mildly surprised to see the "Top to Top" yacht full of kids on youtube taking casual walks along the shoreline in Norway... carrying a rifle!

    And then I remembered that they have bears there. The other sort of bears... the ones who sometimes decide humans are just another prey species.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk0YLiRBMnE

    308: 269 - Particularly when combined with the "want of understanding" that is evidenced when you try to explain that a democracy is a state where the legislature is selected by a voting procedure, a republic is one where the head of state is a non-hereditary (and non-inheritable) post, and hence the Yousay is both a democracy and a republic. 272 - Thanks for that. My interest is at least partly as a reflection of just how crap the English Broadcasting Corporation "news" has become. 279 - Perhaps, rather than rebuilding tracksides to "increase clearances", you should look at building passenger rolling stock to a slightly smaller loading gauge? That's how come the UK's APT-E and Pendolinos are slightly narrower than other stock. 298 - JBS, I've had a variation on this argument, where I assert that a firearm is the wrong weapon for home defence, because most people who are shot "defending their home" are shot with the weapon that the intruder took away from them. Comments?
    309:

    I've been mildly surprised to see the "Top to Top" yacht full of kids on youtube taking casual walks along the shoreline in Norway... carrying a rifle!

    For a moment I was confused, and then I saw that it's Svalbard you're talking about.

    Yeah, my understanding is that, outside the settlements, you are pretty much required to carry a rifle in case of polar bear attack. On the other hand, if you do kill one, you can be fined — basically for getting into that situation in the first place.

    310:

    could have been for snek if they have poisonous ones there, aiui you can get mini shotgun loads for handguns which are quite convenient

    311:

    JBS @ 263 (quoting Leaving Portland):

    Protests are not riots, and riots are not protests. Protests are constitutionally protected activities vital to any functioning liberal democracy. Riots are violent crimes punishable by imprisonment. Activists, journalists, and politicians alike have a terrible habit of using the terms interchangeably."

    Would that it were so simple.

    Unfortunately there have been many cases where people peaceably assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances for years or even decades. Then one day there was a riot. Suddenly their grievances were headline news and the politicians who had been ignoring them as unimportant were being forced to take a position. Executive actions were signed, laws passed, and change finally occurred.

    The Stonewall Riots are a case in point; there had been "homophile" political organisations for decades, but they had achieved nothing. Then one night gay people stood up to heavy-handed policing, and the world began to change.

    The 1967 Detroit riots are another example, and in my country we had the Brixton riots. Both led to marked change in policing. The police don't much care about peaceful demonstrations, apart from the overtime costs. But everybody remembers the nights they spent standing in a line having petrol bombs hurled at them, and they don't want to do it again. Further up the line a riot is seen as a failure of government; inquiries are held and career-ending conclusions are made. All of this focusses minds in a way that a few thousand people waving banners does not.

    This isn't meant to justify or excuse everything that every rioter does. But when the law is merely a cloak for injustice and repression, breaking the law becomes the only option. That is true in Hong Kong, and it is true in many parts of America.

    How should the media cover an event where some people are waving banners and others are throwing bricks? There are lots of individuals in the crowd. Some want to protest peacefully. Some believe that it is only by throwing bricks that they can draw attention to their cause, and some are intent on mayhem for its own sake. How is one to summarise this? Are the banners or the bricks the most important thing to lead with? Is it a demonstration with a few rioters, or is it a riot with political banners?

    312:

    Paws The classic example from history of a non-democratic republic is ... Venice Which was a plutocratic oligarchy, IIRC, with the "right people" in charge.

    Oh yes, difficult to find, but I have "been told" that when the poofball is on, domestic violence increases markedly & when the "home" team loses, it really spikes. How nice.

    313:

    Oh der QUote from the Indy What science has to say about talking to yourself in lockdown 'Really struggle' Bradley Walsh to undergo surgery as The Chase host talks…

    If you’re feeling like a lot going on right now – you’re not alone. In just two days, the Policing Bill passed through the House of Commons, the Elections Bill was introduced, and the home secretary’s Nationality and Borders Bill was published as well. Forty-eight hours is a long time in politics. The effects won't hit until after BoZo calls a snap election to entrench his fascist friends? Full link

    314:

    you can get mini shotgun loads for handguns which are quite convenient

    I've fired shot loads out of a handgun[1], patterning them on a standard ply target at about five metres. The spread of shot was atrocious, not surprising since handguns have rifled barrels. The impressive thing was the hole in the middle of the target from the shot capsule which didn't disintegrate much as it exited the barrel.

    At any sort of range the spread of shot would mean that the snake or other venomous varmint would probably be unhurt, getting close enough for the shot cone to do serious damage to the varmint means, well, getting close enough for the varmint to deal out serious damage in return.

    [1] I got the shot loads when I bought the pistol, about half a dozen or so rounds mixed in with some assorted other ammo.

    315:

    Semi-wilderness in Colorado makes at least limited sense.

    A handgun won't stop a bear. What other critters are that dangerous?

    316:

    where the right-wing Oregonian protestors got off to. They were there, now they're not.

    I've driven around Oregon. By US state standards it's small: drive 500km east and you're in Idaho, but frankly, for all but the first 200km you might as well already be in Idaho in terms of culture and politics.

    I am about 90% certain that the right-wing protestors in Portland -- and a good chunk of the supposed "antifa rioters" -- were white supremacists from the back country who'd driven for a couple of hours, max, to get to the evil, corrupt, degenerate sin-hole of Democrat-voting Portland with the goal of showing everyone how bad things were in a city run by hippie scum. (To paraphrase how they think.)

    It's like Scotland, where we get occasional demonstrations by the "Scottish Defence League", a counterpart to the English Defence League (ie. neofascist head-bangers), who mysteriously always turn up aboard coaches with English number plates that were rented for the day, and who wave English flags (Cross of St George) rather than Scottish flags (the Saltire).

    317:

    (Pigeon is talking about the British railway network here.)

    Instead they do the equivalent of building one interstate highway, with so few intersections you can count them on your fingers

    Just look at the Scottish motorway network.

    Granted, the population of Scotland is low enough that we don't need many huge motorways -- but the general standard for Scottish motorways is that they're two lanes wide plus hard shoulder (in each direction) rather than the three lanes plus hard shoulder in England (widening to five lanes using "smart motorway" controls in some very congested stretches).

    Upshot is, we get uphill stretches where everything slows right down whenever one HGV decides to overtake another that's crawling.

    Underprovisioning of capacity is always a problem -- saves money initially but costs hugely more in delays during operation, and vastly expensive to put right later.

    (Which is why I actually think they got the plans for HS2 almost right; the only mistake they made was in starting construction in London and working north, whereas it'll get done better and faster if they'd started in the north and worked south towards the capital.)

    318:

    "I am about 90% certain that the right-wing protestors in Portland -- and a good chunk of the supposed "antifa rioters" -- were white supremacists from the back country who'd driven for a couple of hours, max, to get to the evil, corrupt, degenerate sin-hole of Democrat-voting Portland..."

    That's how I read the situation.

    319:

    What do your editors think about this plan?

    They don't get a say.

    :-)

    (Longer answer: I'm not going to ask them until I'm ready to write the book(s), which won't be for some time. And when I do ask them, I'll be polling for marketability, not for "is this any good"? Remember, an editors job is to run publishing workflow and ensure that they commission and produce titles that are overall going to sell. Putting the capstone on an existing successful series is always going to sell, unless the series is already dying, in which case they won't buy the book inthe first place.)

    320:

    Interesting. Thanks.

    321:

    Why should they and/or your publishers actually care as long as we keep buying the books? (And I think I've got the complete set)

    322:

    How should the media cover an event where some people are waving banners and others are throwing bricks?

    Not about shouldactually covers those situations.

    Back when Mike Harris was the populist neocon premier of Ontario there were lots of coordinated protests against funding cuts. (Note: these cuts weren't really about saving money — the government was quite happy to spend $25 million to save half a million if the right program was targeted**.)

    At one protest there was no violence, just thousands of peaceful protesters with flags and chants, some pushing strollers. Global TV reported that clearly the protesters weren't serious as this was just an excuse for a day out with the family. The next day (literally) there was a small episode of violence — a car drove into a picket line of protesters and one of them hit the hood of the car with their sign as they were about to be run over — and global TV reported that this this violence* proved that the protesters were just out for trouble and should be suppressed for public safety.

    Same station used aerial clips taken five hours after a protest was over to "prove" that the protest leaders had exaggerated the numbers present.

    There was also an episode where one of the premier's aides went out to 'talk to' the protesters, approached them in front of a TV camera (Global), and threw himself back into the bushes claiming they had pushed him. Another TV camera to the side clearly showed that they didn't approach him, he threw himself, yet Global kept running the clip showing the 'assault' and the aide talking about it without acknowledging that it was fake.

    *For Canadian standards of right-wing, so quite a bit to the left of Fox.

    **This specific example is from the program that researched water pollution.

    *Hitting the vehicle with a sign, not driving a car into a crowd of people.

    323:

    As I said. Daily rail rides across the state are slowly coming back. The state (with fed money tossed in) is gradually increasing service. But it take buckets and buckets of money. For just minor improvements. When last I looked into the money, things like putting a crossing gate where a road crossed the tracks to allow a faster passage at that point costs about $1.5 mil. And that would only knock a few minutes off of that stretch. And there are dozens of such things across the state where routes could be made faster but each minute of time decrease can cost a $1mil or more.

    And all of this came to a screeching stop March 2020. And will slowly have to resume again as riders return.

    324:

    Perhaps, rather than rebuilding tracksides to "increase clearances", you should look at building passenger rolling stock to a slightly smaller loading gauge?

    Unless I'm misunderstanding your point, that would decrease freight capacity of the route. And that would be a non starter. The freight lines along the middle Atlantic coast would love to go back 150 years and pick better and wider routes. But that also isn't going to happen.

    We have several choke points through Raleigh where there's only 1 track and any down time results in 100 miles or more of detour. Not to mention lots of dead end deliveries.

    That rail project I mentioned up thread started out as a $250mil max 11 stop rail system between the local population centers. Many local politicians wanted to look at things like Portland and Seattle have. A mix of light rail and rubber tired trams down streets and dedicated rights of ways. But the PTB seemed to want to run a railroad and the only way to do that was to share the track with the local freight lines. After spending $50+ mill on planning, designs, and eminent domain purchases the price had grown to $750mil and the project was killed. Most of the extra costs were due to trying to use freight tracking as a way to SAVE money.

    A similar thing happened just a few years ago with a similar system proposed to connect Chapel Hill and Durham. It WAS to be a light rail setup. But then at the last minute before serious work was to start Duke University/Medical Center pulled out due to concerns about the rail electricity power interfering with their MIR and similar as the line passed next to those facilities. And without the Duke stop(s) the entire thing no longer made sense. Another $50mil (I think) gone.

    People are still wondering how Duke was on board for years then this suddenly became an issue. Either it's a faux issue to cover up something else or some at Duke were seriously out of the loop till the last minute.

    325:

    I have "been told" that when the poofball is on, domestic violence increases markedly & when the "home" team loses, it really spikes.

    https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/09/domestic-violence-surges-after-a-football-match-ends

    More academically:

    "Controlling for the pre-game point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by 4 or more points) lead to a 10 percent increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game, and is larger for more important games. "

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712874/

    Restricted access, but looks relevant:

    "The study found two statistically significant trends. First, a match day trend showed the risk of domestic abuse rose by 26 percent when the English national team won or drew, and a 38 percent increase when the national team lost. Second, a tournament trend was apparent, as reported domestic abuse incidents increased in frequency with each new tournament."

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022427813494843

    More detailed description here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/england-football-alcohol-domestic-violence/

    More recent paper here that apparently contradicts some of the first one (about expected outcomes):

    "We study the role of alcohol and emotions in explaining the dynamics in domestic abuse following major football games. We match confidential and uniquely detailed individual call data from Greater Manchester with the timing of football matches over a period of eight years to estimate the effect on domestic abuse. We first observe a 5% decrease in incidents during the 2-hour duration of the game suggesting a substitution effect of football and domestic abuse. However, following the initial decrease, after the game, domestic abuse starts increasing and peaks about ten hours after the game, leading to a positive cumulative effect. We find that all increases are driven by perpetrators that had consumed alcohol, and when games were played before 7pm. Unexpected game results are not found to have a significant effect."

    https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1781.pdf

    This one separates out female and male perpetrators. What I don't notice it doing is looking at relative size/strength. As most men are bigger/stronger than most women they are more likely to be able to 'get away' with violence — any teacher will tell you little kids generally don't bully bigger ones — so not certain if the difference is actually gender-linked or if that is a proxy for the ability ot hit without immediate retaliation.

    326:

    Back to 179 and dosing Nixon:

    Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was a classmate of Nixon's daughter Tricia, and so was invited (under her birth name, Grace Wing) to a school reunion at the White House.

    Slick says she planned to bring Abbie Hoffman as her date and spike the punch but unfortunately :-( the Secret Service realized who she was ...

    327:

    ""Public Transport's what we dread" she said to me. But we can end it if you take it logically. There must be fifty ways to kill a project!"

    328:

    People are still wondering how Duke was on board for years then this suddenly became an issue. Either it's a faux issue to cover up something else or some at Duke were seriously out of the loop till the last minute.

    Having seen how often Facilities makes decisions without actually consulting users, I'd bet on out of the loop. And if people were consulted it was probably management not technical staff.

    329:

    Paws: look at building passenger rolling stock to a slightly smaller loading gauge? That's how come the UK's APT-E and Pendolinos are slightly narrower than other stock.

    If you've ridden Pendolinos or Voyagers you would know that the narrower loading gauge (due to tilt) makes them less than comfortable because it translates to narrower seats/seat pitch.

    While the UK track gauge is just about okay, the loading gauge is narrow by modern standards -- both for freight and for pax. Trouble is, widening it requires widening lots of tunnels, which with only two (or even one) tracks in situ requires lengthy closures while the work takes place.

    330:

    Re: Oregon right wingers...

    That's not quite what I meant. Early on in the Trump era, right wing "protesters" descended on Portland, as they descended on Berkeley, to beat upon the defenseless heads of liberal snowflakes. In both cases, they got various body parts handed to them. Given how many martial arts schools there are in Berkeley at least, this should have surprised exactly no one, but the right wingers took that defeat hard.

    But we're talking about Portland, where a bunch of right wingers got embarrassed and...disappeared? Yeah right. Where did they go?

    In Portland, there's an apparently small group of "anarchists" who are going around vandalizing stuff. And then Faux, Onan, and other right wing networks amplify this to say that the antifa are destroying America, and people like allynh get their amygdalas twirled up into a tizzy and write problematic things about left-wing activists and get all in their feelings when challenged on it.

    Without getting into the liberal/antifa/black bloc/anarchist/agent provocateur spectrum, I'm still wondering who right now the Portland anarchists are. I'll admit that it's entirely possible, if there are a few dozen of them, that they're actual True Believer anarchists. It's also entirely possible that they're right wing trouble stirrers. It's even possible that they're both, depending on who's paying or what phase the moon is in.

    This is something at least half the people reading this are saying "well, duh," but allynh's useful example shows that other readers don't get this. And they should. Displaying the symbols of anarchy while breaking windows doesn't make it an organized antifa action. It just means that a vandal was displaying anarchist symbols when they were photographed. It says nothing about their motives, affiliation, or even why they happened to be photographed just then.

    331:

    here was a small episode of violence — a car drove into a picket line of protesters and one of them hit the hood of the car with their sign as they were about to be run over — and global TV reported that this this violence* proved that the protesters were just out for trouble

    Interesting that they focussed on the protestor with the sign as the violent person, not the driver (who should have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon).

    332:

    Protests vs.Riots.

    Here in Raleigh last year we had two waves of such.

    Protesters were loud, noisy, and broke a few windows. But mostly went home when it got dark or the curfew time approached. Then the rioters came out and tried to break into stores and loot, trash some cars, and in general create mayhem.

    The protesters, POLICE, city government, and business owners I know who PARTICIPATED in the protests (after boarding up their buildings) all agree on these descriptions.

    Then there were/are some who called them all rioters and said all should be tossed in jail. Guess the politics of this group?

    333:

    I'm still wondering who right now the Portland anarchists are

    I will note that the UK's noteworthy 1970s Trotskyite group, the Revolutionary Communist Party, mutated into the Academy (formerly Institute) of Ideas, led by rightwing peer Baroness Fox, who stood in euro-elections as a Brexit Party candidate, i.e. to the right of the Conservatives. Other affiliated goons include the odious homophobe and racism-apologist Brendan O'Neill, and Munira Mirza, director of Boris Johnson's Number 10 Policy Unit. The group appears to be a major part of the Koch funded right wing network in the UK.

    So: communist accelerationists, or a hard right ideologically-driven false flag operation? Why not both?

    334:

    Actually, a big-enough handgun can stop a bear. In Grizzly/Polar Bear country, big enough means .357 or larger. And it's a good idea to actually practice with one of these guns if you're going to carry it, because the recoil can be rather painful, and accuracy is quite important when using it against a bear.

    Getting into the bigger question of handgun defense of the home, AFAIK the problem is not that some thug will walk up and take away the gun you're pointing at them. It's worse than that. In the US at least, the most likely negative outcomes for owning a gun are:

    --You shoot yourself, accidentally --You shoot yourself deliberately --You shoot a family member or a pet (accidentally or deliberately) --One of your family members shoots themselves or another family member, accidentally or deliberately --Your gun gets stolen --You use it to run amok during a psychotic break or similar.

    I don't have hard numbers, but I suspect that using a gun in defense of a home happens less frequently than do the outcomes on this list collectively. Crimes are relatively rare, and being able to stop a crime with a gun is rarer still. Kids getting shot while playing with family guns are at least as common, if not more so. Add those to suicides, and justifying a gun in the house gets harder.

    Note that I'm not particularly anti-gun. I just believe in numbers more. I'd also point out that being able to actually use your gun isn't cheap, since you have to regularly blow through ammo on the range to stay in practice, especially with a pistol. Having a gun lying around just in case gets back to that Mullah Nasruddin story I posted yesterday.

    335: 324 Para 2 - If you're claiming that the width of passenger stock decreases the capacity of the way to carry freight stock, you're not just misunderstanding me, but also wrong unless the total frequency of movements is more than the route can handle. 325 - Wrong sport; There's a low probability of the combined score, never mind the score difference, in a soccer game reaching 4 points. Or did you actually mean USian handegg? 329 - Maybe I'm slimmer than you then? I find the Pendolino adequately comfortable.
    336:

    I'd also point out that being able to actually use your gun isn't cheap, since you have to regularly blow through ammo on the range to stay in practice, especially with a pistol.

    And as most people who train regularly to kill people will attest; shooting at paper target by appointment is not quite the same as a firefight in your living room at 3 am when you were sound asleep 1 minute earlier.

    337:

    That's not unusual. IIRC, some of the most ardent neo-cons under the Bush II administration started as communists in college some decades earlier. Heck, that kind of happened in the former USSR en masse.

    Also, libertarian anarchism is a thing, starting with "government isn't the solution to problems, government is the problem." This fits well into the notion that the US is a three-system society: capitalism for the poor and working class, socialism for the middle and upper classes, and anarchism for the super-rich. Many people, especially on the right, aspire to the values of the super-wealthy. They are also quite rightly skeptical about what government does for them, especially in more corrupted states and municipalities that cater to the super-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

    338:

    Displaying the symbols of anarchy while breaking windows doesn't make it an organized antifa action.

    If you remember the campaign for Women's Suffrage, it wasn't unheard of for a (male) thief to scrawl "Votes for Women!" on the wall beside the broken shop window where they'd just nicked something.

    339:

    #325 - Wrong sport; There's a low probability of the combined score, never mind the score difference, in a soccer game reaching 4 points. Or did you actually mean USian handegg?

    Some of those articles were about English football, some American. The results seem to be the same — losing when you expect to win is bad for the weaker members of a fan's household.

    340:

    mhari .. pronounced

    i grew up around untold herds of variations on this theme .. moy-ra, mwirrah, may-ree, may-wah, 'n' stuff.

    i tend to subvoc muh-harry, alike to something south-asian, but then glitch over to thinking it's perhaps meant to be more of a moy-ree thing.

    341:

    some of the most ardent neo-cons under the Bush II administration started as communists in college some decades earlier

    In many cases the ardency of belief is more important to the individual than what they actually believe in. Road to Damascus conversions are a lot more common than most people realize.

    Altemeyer gets into that a bit in his definitions of right-wing and left-wing authoritarians — his right/left split is between status quo and change, not economic philosophies.

    342:

    Para 1 - Really!? An 0.357" Magnum is more powerful than a Webley 0.38" or a Colt Model 1911 I think.

    Paras 2 and 3 - Agreed about the bulleted list. However, that was not my point. My point was that "most people" are not actually sufficiently sociopathic to shoot a home invader, but believe that they are, right up until they are actually confronted with an actual person rather than a paper target in a striped jersey!

    343:

    If you're claiming that the width of passenger stock decreases the capacity of the way to carry freight stock, you're not just misunderstanding me, but also wrong unless the total frequency of movements is more than the route can handle.

    I've somewhat lost how your replies address my point. In the US there are separation rules for tracking when freight trains can be on the next track over and they pass each other. Slightly smaller gauge passenger trains are not enough to create the required separation for track already laid down with freight only in mind.

    344:

    Slick says she planned to bring Abbie Hoffman as her date and spike the punch but unfortunately :-( the Secret Service realized who she was ...

    When Cokie Roberts got married, Pres LBJ and a pile of secret service attended the reception. Her father was Hale Boggs an influential Congressman at the time. She was waiting for it to all blow up as some/many of the friends of the groom were draft dodgers and leaders of various anti-Viet Nam war groups.

    The event went off peacefully.

    345:

    Well, at that rate you've clearly not expressed yourself very well because I thought you were talking about clearances, which are distances between stock and trackside furniture. Now you seem to be actually talking about the dynamic gauge of a piece of stock.

    346:

    All the local articles referred to it as clearances between tracks/trains.

    Separated by a common language.

    347:

    "Magnum" refers to an extra large power load which means a faster moving and/or heavier bullet.

    And to be honest if I'm carrying for bear protection I might be interested in expanding bullets to boot.

    348:

    On bears:

    The most common type of bear in the US is the American Black Bear (who despite the name, aren't all black) and they're about the size of a large man - males average 250 pounds or so, females slightly smaller.

    Grizzlies and Polar bears are ENORMOUS, but they're uncommon. So if you need to stop a bear, most normal handguns will do the trick, most of the time, just as they would for a human.

    You're vastly more likely to hurt yourself or another human than to need it in case of bear attack.

    I say this as someone who owns a bunch of guns AND has bears pass through his yard on the regular.

    349:

    Heteromeles @ 334: In the US at least, the most likely negative outcomes for owning a gun are: ...

    That is an interesting suggestion. I've posted a question over on the Politics Stack Exchange site. We'll see if anyone has any numbers.

    350:

    if you need to stop a bear, most normal handguns will do the trick, most of the time

    When my brother-in-law was doing fieldwork in the Rockies, they carried long arms for bears, not handguns.

    351:

    Yep.

    We have bears go through town twice a year. Black bears. Raleigh is in their path between winter and summer habitats. And since I live very close to the green way system here, they get spotted a few blocks from me. Just 2 or 3 weeks ago one was walking through back yards down the street.

    Which rattles a lot of folks since we are what was once exclusively suburbs but now have an urban center just a few blocks from here also. 20 story buildings don't scare them. But they really like the green way that lets them go from one side of the city to the other with water all along the way. Our green ways are mostly sited along creeks.

    The local experts say to just stay away. Go inside if you see one. They are really not interested in the people unless you leave a picnic out for them. At times they go after the seeds in bird feeders.

    I guess it will make the news big time if they are noticed using one of the pedestrian bridges that cross our 6 lane highways.

    352:

    Re organizations - have you looked at the DSA? Their tactics, for the last five or six years, have included getting people elected.

    353:

    Did he do that regularly, or just for the pic? And where was he living at the time?

    Oh, and when was this - the fifties? sixties? seventies?

    354:

    Charlie Why not both? Indeed, that is exactly how the 1975 EU referendum played out. On alternate days, there were nutters outside my local station, from the BNP (fascist) & Trot/communist parties. Fun could be had by referring to whichever the "other" lot were on any day & telling them that: "Your friends were here yesterday!" and watching the foaming take place .... ... following on to "H" ... Colour me unsurprised - the switching in both directions between Communism & Roman Catholicism is a fairly well-known phenomenon. As in "Which murderous lying philospohy are you grovelling to this week?" - see also Rbt Prior.

    355:

    When Amtrak was formed - the previous 20 years, esp. with the development of the Interstate system, trucks were taking a lot of freight from the railroads, and cars were taking it from the passenger lines.

    And, as I've noted before, in the US, passenger travel was often a loss leader for the freight. With freight going down, they wanted to cut the loss.

    Since about 2000 or 2005, rail traffic in the US has gone up, a lot. But, of course, the railroads, leasing lines to Amtrak, don't seem to understand how they're viewed (giving passenger train traffic priority would be great publicity, but nope).

    356:

    Re rct JBS, if I feel that I'm forced to buy a firearm, it's *not for "home defense", it's to get together with neighbors to defend ourselves against invdaing fascists in vehicles. (You may not have heard the white wing idiot saying, after the elections, during the vote counting, that the fascists should "surround Philly, and intimidate them". Yes, they are that stoooopid.)

    357:

    "peaceably assumble", "then there's a riot". "Riots" start, from my reading or presence, when either there's a triggering event (like someone attacked by the cops, and people are standing around, and do something), or when the cops attack peaceful protestors.

    They don't just "happen".

    359:

    Even I know the old saying: "The riot didn't start until the cops showed up!"

    360:

    There are weapons called "snake guns". The one I saw had a short barrel, but I don't remember if it was one handed or two. It may have used some sort of shot.

    My late wife, who was horrified, and I were quite pleased to note that this does not shoot through two walls in an immobile home, though it does damage the picture and frame it went through, leaving perhaps a 3-4cm hole.

    (Her ex had not only left it in the cedar chest, which she was going through, but the moron had left it loaded.)

    361:

    Wolves, maybe, coyote, puma, snakes... I mean, it's not Australia, but....

    362:

    Underprovisioning - as I learned from the sr. systems and network guy, a buddy of mine, in the late nineties, you do not plan for average, you plan for max.

    Most managers, however....

    363:

    Oh. That's not quite all that I'm looking for in an editor. Maybe it's that I'm only recently writing, but I want them to criticize, and tell me how to make it better.

    Walt sure did for 11,000 Years (though I wish I'd edited the very first page more....)

    364:

    $1.5M for a crossing gate? Are they buying a new shovel and crane for each one? That ought to be bring a MOW (maintenance of way) train out, shovel on one, dig holes, plunk in cement with fittings, come back a few months later, after the concrete's set, plunk in the crossbucks and light, and leave.

    365:

    And we're all using DOS computers.

    Signaling. Siting. Permitting. Signaling. Power. Road changes if needed.

    Come one. It's not 1895.

    Train tracks are not 2 steel rails nailed to some logs sitting on some rocks. And haven't been for a very long time.

    366:

    Well, then it's perfectly clear that, as a matter of public safety, sportsball games should not be broadcast.

    Or perhaps only in sportsball auditoriums, where there is adequate policing.

    367:

    Yeah, the Secret Service were serious spoilsports....

    368:

    To expand a bit. Most rail lines in areas like North Carolina travel through suburbs and small towns. The burbs were not there when the RRs first appeared. And the towns were smaller. And so what if a train that made 30 stops stayed under 40mph most of the time. But now to be a train that crosses the state with 4 to 10 stops they want to go faster. And the system was not set up that way. So they have to upgrade crossings, signaling, track maintenance, etc... All kinds of things. What was an X RR sign for 60 years means that the train has to go slow. To go faster they have to change the crossing to gates, signals, and other things. It all costs money. Some not so much. Some a lot. And each project only cuts minutes off. Not hours.

    369:

    And how much would it have cost to retrofit a Faraday cage?

    370:

    Wolves, maybe, coyote, puma, snakes...

    All of which are well-known for attacking gardeners…

    Now, if the neighbours had badly-trained dogs allowed to run free, then a gun might make sense.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180228112528.htm

    Puma kill one person every 5-10 years. Bears 1-2 a year (mostly in national parks). Snakes 10-15, cows 20, dogs 30, insects 100, deer 200*…

    https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-animals-us-dont-include-sharks-crocodiles-dogs-cows-2019-8?op=1

    *OK, by getting hit with cars, not actually attacking people. But I find it interesting that the death toll from deer is an order of magnitude higher than other animals that people are more scared of.

    371:

    I think it's more than the sportsball. I suspect there's heavy drinking involved as well.

    372:

    Stop being ridiculous. You do the wiring, no, a lot of the wiring's already there, you add a control box (come on, that costs more than a high-powered server? I'd guess < $40k), the concrete's no big deal. Are you going to say that the railroad software is so badly written that they have no easy way to add or remove a crossing without recoding? That ought to all be just data.

    373:

    I agree. The only reason I can see, in the last, say, 30 years for gardening with a handgun is if your neighbor is a psycho, or has a dangerous dog that he lets out. ' Oh, that's right, for folks in the exurbs, there is the danger of dog packs, from the assholes "Ah live in th' country, Ah can let mah dog out to run."

    374:

    Interesting that they focussed on the protestor with the sign as the violent person, not the driver (who should have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon).

    That's right-wing for you, eh?

    During the same time period, when I was picketing at a school, I got told off by an old British chap* because I was apparently ungrateful for what the veterans had fought for in WWII, and people like me should be put in a camp where we wouldn't inconvenience decent people (like, presumably, him).

    He was old enough that he might have fought in the war. Seemed a little unclear on the reasons behind it, but they do say everyone fights for their own reasons, so maybe his were King, Country, and the right not to be delayed 30 seconds before registering for a free activity…

    *No idea where in Britain he came from, my ear for accents isn't that good.

    375:

    that costs more than a high-powered server?

    Likely does. Hostile environment (temperature, vibration, power spikes…), serious need for redundancy and failsafe modes, costs of service disruptions during construction, requirements for inspections and certifications after construction finished, insurance… it all adds up.

    376:

    Why carry a gun when you can use the hoe or a rake you're working with? Or a machete, for that matter?

    Actually, for Heinlein, he might deserve a pass. Presumably he was trying to figure out what it felt like to be a dashing and heavily armed protagonist, for his next blockbuster. Or maybe he wanted to impress his fans about observing proper social distancing? Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Most of us mere modern mortals would have a little hassle with the local SWAT team if we pulled a gun-RAH gardener routine. Besides which, we've got cosplay to work out these issues with, and RAH did not.

    377:

    Troutwaxer The riot didn't start until the cops showed up! This exactly happened here, at the end of the vigil for Sarah Everard ... the entirely peacful demo was winding down - a couple of people were making speeches, when a group of male cops invaded an all-female demonstration, yeah, really, here. Didn't go down well, especially as The Duchess of Cambridge had attended earlier - which should have been a "hands-off" signal to stupid plod, but wasn't.

    whitroth There are differences ... In Cardiff, when there's a Rugby International, there are usually about 120 extra plod, mainly for crowd direction & to sweep up the hopelessly-pissed afterwards & dump them somewhere ( NOT the jail ) to sober up/find a way home ... They have been known to manage with 80 extra. When "Wembley" was closed for rebuilding & they had ponceball matches ... all police leave in the whole of Wales was cancelled ....

    378:

    Oh my god with the guns for bears nonsense! Why do so many people fantasize that you need a damn gun to protect yourself from bears?*

    I worked in the Northern BC and Alberta backcountry for over a decade. I have encountered, without exaggeration, hundreds upon hundreds of bears. One day I saw 13 bears including about 5 cubs. I have seen Grizzlies, Brown, Black and Kermodes of all sizes.

    I have been surprised by bears countless times, I have listened to bears rummaging outside my tent. I have had a bear run past me - close enough to touch- to grab a bag from the pile of stores behind me.**

    Now I live in a community that has bears as a common neighbourhood occurrence, along with coyotes, raccoons and occasional cougars.* I've come out my front door rushing to work and surprised a bear standing beside my car in the driveway (he ran off, I went back inside for another cup of coffee).

    People who do not live around bears have a fantasy of a vicious, snarling predator that will kill you. That is so vanishingly rare and unlikely that it hardly bears discussion.

    The right weapon to deter a bear is a can of mace, and possibly an air horn. The other thing to do is not be a damn moron with your food and behaviour while in bear country.

    You don't need a particular type of gun, or ammunition or whatever. You need to keep your distance from bears, know what to do when you encounter a bear, and make damn sure you don't endanger the bears by being stupid with food or garbage.

    That's it, the rest is just more ammosexual wanking about their fancy bang sticks.

    • I exclude polar bears from this rant, because they are obligate carnivores and I have no experience with them.

    ** Poor bear took the bag into the bushes and tore it open. No food but a can of mosquito repellent, which he bit into, receiving a mouthful of pressurized Deet. Hopefully that put him off humans and human stuff forever.

    * Cougars are a concern for small children, but they are also so rare and smart that I have never actually seen one - though I'm sure many have seen me.

    379:

    A friend of mine, who for the record is a Trotskyist, looked into this and her conclusion was that it was untrue and based on the sort of association of attending non-Trotskyist groups, or at Trotstkyist groups sometimes for as little as one meeting. She does not address more recent developments such as wherever Sp!ked Magazine came from.

    https://indefenseoftoucans.gitlab.io/2021/02/01/trotneocon.html

    380:
    I guess it will make the news big time if they are noticed using one of the pedestrian bridges that cross our 6 lane highways.

    Or when they dress up in trench coats and hats and pass themselves off as human in low light conditions. Maybe after bears discover fire?

    381:

    I was being serious.

    Some of our green way trails cross the major roads with these bridges. And the bears around here mostly follow the green ways. But likely would not cross the bridges during the day or early evening.

    As Rocketpjs noticed. In general they don't want to interact with people. Unless the food smell is just plain great and they are hungry.

    382: 346 - Or by journalistic misreporting. Now whether that's a "don't care" or a "don't know" thing... 347 - Well, my understanding was that a Magnum handgun had a large, stronger cylinder/chamber (as applicable) to accommodate the more powerful load. 354 - This is where it shows that I (and Charlie) are younger than you. We won't have been at the polling stations for that one to know which loonies (if any) were there as polling agents. 360, #361 - Australia; spider guns? ;-) 372 - Go and watch Unstoppable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstoppable_(2010_film) When doing so, pay close attention to the mimic board that forms a background to most of the yardmaster - FRA inspector scenes. Every time you install or modify a crossing, that board has to be modified. Starting to see where the costs come from now, given that it's driven by safety critical software? (sources various, but include programmers, drivers, conductors (UK guards Greg) and a yardmaster) 375 - Yeah, all that too. 378 - The only "Kermode" I know is a professional chef. He's not dangerous, unless you serve him undercooked meat!
    384:

    You do the wiring, no, a lot of the wiring's already there, you add a control box

    If we're talking about level crossings, you need to tie the control box into the track signaling circuit. You need feedback from the crossing to the control room so that dispatchers know its state and can warn approaching trains to hold short if it's open. You need the motorized barriers, you need CCTV to monitor the state of the barriers (and provide a recording in event of an insurance claim due to an accident), and you need regular maintenance.

    I can easily see a properly-implemented level crossing costing north of a million to build -- and a regular supplement in inspection and maintenance costs.

    What did you think it was, a couple of farm gates?

    Also remember that for running at speeds over 78mph, railways need in-cab signaling, which these days means trackside radio-frequency comms and (again) feedback so that dispatchers know if they've got two trains running towards each other, or one train running at speed towards another that's parked up. (Track circuits are all very well but they can fail due to icing/flooding/damage.)

    385:

    I'm pretty sure the most dangerous thing you are likely to encounter in most bear country is the weather.

    Been walking in a couple of places that theoretically had them but no encounters.

    The big white ones are a different matter, but the number of people who have to worry about them are just a rounding error.

    386:

    Re "people who do not live around bears have fantasies that bears will kill you...."

    Please! We're Americans! We have people stuooooopid enough to want to take a selfie with a bison.

    sigh

    388:

    "Cover Junior's face with honey so we can get a picture of the bear licking it off!"

    389:

    When I said "costs more", I was thinking of the trackside control box, and I still don't think that would cost more than a high-power server. The wiring for wiring it into the traffic control system has to already be there - not ever crossing is a grade crossing, and so the wiring necessary must already be in place.[1]

    Adding to what the dispatchers see: that's what I was saying about that should be just data. It should NOT require developers writing new code/redoing the whole thing.

    All the at-crossing stuff is what I was saying about plunking in the concrete, and control fittings.

    Basically, most of the infrastructure is there, and it should be relatively minor to install. If it's not... then I knew people who worked like that.[2]

  • Near me, if I go one way, I go over an overpass. Maybe a mile away, if I go the other, it's a grade crossing with crossbucks. All the wiring, radio, etc has to already be there, between the grade crossing before the overpass, to reach the grade crossing after it.

  • As I said, it should be a matter of "location", grade corssing, new, and other required data. If not... when I worked at the Scummy Mortgage Co, halfway through my time there, they fired the other CICS programmer. A month or so later, I was working on some code, and found - I am not making this up - his "algorithm" for "is it a leap year". It was, "if it's 1977 or 80 or 84 or 88 or 92, it's a leap year." Remember, mortgage co? 30 year mortgages? This was 87 or 88. I went to my boss... who told me "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But it's broke, it won't work after '92" "We'll fix it then.

  • 390: 384 - Go and watch Unstoppable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstoppable_(2010_film) When doing so, pay close attention to the mimic board that form a background to most of the yardmaster - FRA inspector scenes. Every time you install or modify a crossing, that board has to be modified. Starting to see where the costs come from now, given that it's driven by safety critical software? (sources various, but include drivers, conductors (UK guards Greg) and a yardmaster). I know, but it's a tense drama and fact checks well against actual US practice. 387 - I don't know what you meant to do, but that is not a normal hyperlink, so I'm treating it as malware, and suggest that Charlie does so too. 389 - Hint. Mortgages are not safety critical software. They're not even availability critical in terms of reliability. Railroad signalling systems are both safety and availability critical. In Unstoppable, we see and hear why (horse trailer scene, and "We're talking about a missile the size of the Chrysler building").
    391:

    Please! We're Americans! We have people stuooooopid enough to want to take a selfie with a bison.

    In the last millennium there was apparently a TV series about animal attacks (on humans). A comedian at the Fringe Festival lampooned it with a skit "Animal Attacks Stupid American" (this was in Canada, where American tourists have a bad reputation in our national parks).

    "There I was, minding my own business, poking the bear in the scrotum with a sharp stick, when for no reason at all it suddenly attacked me!"

    (Or it might have been "Animal Attacks Stupid People" but told with an American 'redneck' accent — it's been a long time and memory is fading. Pretty certain about the 'poking in the scrotum' and 'no reason at all' bits, though.)

    More seriously, when you enter a national park in the Rockies you drive past many billboards explaining that you are in bear country and how to behave, you get personally handed brochures on the subject by a park warden who also personally warned you… there is no way to get into the park without this. Again in the last millennium an American family on holiday stopped when they saw bear cubs at the side of the road (as most people would), but dad decided to put his toddler with the cub for a video — and apparently videoed the mother bear running back to protect her cub. Dad sued Parks Canada because somehow they were responsible for what happened to his kid…

    392:

    paws @ 390. It isn't malware, it's a hamfisted attempt at a hyperlink to the Wikipedia page on Kermode bears. Not my skillset at all. By all means do a workaround and just search for Kermode bears on your engine of choice.

    Robert @ 391. There was an hilarous SNL skit with Bill Murray where he was hawking a book about being mauled by a bear. The interviewer asked if he planned to write any other books: 'I hope not!'

    393:

    In counterpoint, there's this: https://www.theglobalist.com/the-strange-path-of-neoconservatism/

    My take was mostly from my poking around to find out the histories of some of the Bush II staffers, which seemed to have a liberal phase.

    Anyway, if you're interested in this instead of pointless discussion about what kind of load ammosexuals should shoot off in the direction of bears, feel free to find other references, and we can genteelly sling references at each other in perfectly cromulent left wing intellectual fashion. That could be fun.

    My general take is what Robert Prior said, that extremists have some tendency to swing from one extreme to another, while it takes a lot of work for a moderate to get radicalized, although that can happen too.

    394:

    Foxessa @ 302: You did say you know nothing because of reading / hearing nothing about Haiti for years. . . .

    You're wrong. You can't even accurately quote what I wrote:

    "I'm having trouble processing the Haiti assassination. Haiti hasn't been in the news for years."1

    "Trouble processing" is not "know nothing".

    Whereas I, on the other hand, have, and do, and know the history. Make of that what you will but the Clintons are in it up past their eyeballs, particularly while HRC was Sec of State.

    Whereas, YOU, on the other hand appear to be blinded by right-wingnut Clinton Derangement Syndrome hysteria blaming "THE CLINTONS!!!!" for every wrong that has ever occurred in the world.

    NEWS FLASH: Haiti is an independent country. THEY bear primary responsibility for their own political turmoil ... along with the UN Peacekeepers who failed in their primary mission.

    But that's obviously all Clinton's fault as well!

    HE was an average DEMOCRATIC President who didn't have sense enough to keep his damn pants zipped.
    SHE was a slightly above average Secretary of State who hewed closely to President Obama's foreign policies.
    She would probably have been a better President than her husband, and absolutely would have been a better President than the Psychopath in Chief we ended up with instead.

    It's time to let go of your knee-jerk hatred of the Clintons. And you owe me an apology.

    What I have been able to discover so far from NON-QAnon sources is the assassins appear to beColumbia mercenaries along with a pair of Haitian-American "translators" recruited over the internet.

    The basic argument behind the politics is that the 2015 Presidential election ended with a runoff (Moise led with something like 35% of the vote) that was not held & then the election was nullified. A second election was held in 2016 (Moise won with 56% of the vote). The Haitian President is elected for a 5 year term. Moise contended his 5 year term ended in 2022. Opposition parties contended the term ended in 2021 as if the 2015 had gone through.

    The Haitian police have identified a Haitian-American "Doctor" living in Florida as the mercenaries paymaster. Where did he get the money? He was bankrupt in 2013, which suggests to me someone in Haiti's "political" opposition actually financed the assassination. Sanon may be nothing more than a front man.

    1 ... apparently Haiti isn't a "football" powerhouse, so their internal troubles don't rank very high in international news reporting. Hardly ever seems to be any news about Haiti in the Google News aggregation (except for hurricanes, earthquakes & other natural disasters).

    395:

    Thanks! I felt (some of) the currents but didn't know some of the actors. A newer, wordier piece, by the same author: The Neocons Are Responsible for Trumpism (March 7, 2016, Michael Lind) (The history is OK, if not the analysis.)

    396:

    p>Greg Tingey @ 305: JBS

    It was intended as an interim measure to allow passenger rail to die quietly.

    Same here ... the railways were privatised & "Railtrack" (shudder) set up, because, in spite of the evidence, it was assumed by the tory right that the railways were in permanent decline ( they were not ) & this was the way to manage that decline, whilst lining our friends' pockets, of course.

    Maybe not. The law that created AmTrak wasn't intended to sell off an existing government resource for the benefit of the ruling party's donors. That would not come for another decade until Ronnie Ray-gun became President. AmTrak actually represents Congress in 1970 doing its job, to "promote the general Welfare".

    397: 389 - Hint. Mortgages are not safety critical software. They're not even availability critical in terms of reliability. Railroad signalling systems are both safety and availability critical. In Unstoppable, we see and hear why (horse trailer scene, and "We're talking about a missile the size of the Chrysler building").

    Ok, it's becoming clear to me that some of you don't understand what I've been saying. So, speaking as someone who spent decades as a programmer, "data driven" means that your software displays the data in a defined manner. Adding new datapoints does NOT require rewriting your code. We're talking something that should take hours, not many months.

    As an example, when I was a subcontractor, supporting the City of Chicago 911 system, what the 911 calltakers saw on their screens did NOT have to be rewritten every time a road was closed, or ripped up, or opened.

    The City would dump a datafile from their GIS software, and we'd import it into Oracle, and our software displayed the data, no code rewrite. The original programmers were, let us kindly say, "naive and inexperienced". They'd get the data dump from the City, and try to load it using Oracles stupid database loader, it would fail, they'd find the record that failed, massage it, and repeat. It took weeks of terror, because you COULD NOT HAVE AN ERROR.

    We're talking life and death here. The calltakers can't send the cops, or the ambulance, down a closed road, for exmpale.

    I was given the job of "fix it". I wrote a preprocessor that validated the data in the records from the City, and spit out a file of bad records. Note that before, they had to fix the same records over and over, and fix newly bad records. With my preprocessor, I'd get the file, call the City, "Hi, got a file with bad data records." "Thanks, send it over", and once or twice like that, and the records loaded. And it was fixed in City records, as well.

    That's "data drive". So, just possibly, I know what I'm talking about.

    399:

    My general take is what Robert Prior said, that extremists have some tendency to swing from one extreme to another, while it takes a lot of work for a moderate to get radicalized

    Yep: extremists are extremists first; the specific ideology they latch onto is an afterthought depend on their situation. Because tendencies towards authoritarianism or grandiose thinking or whatever are emotional stances rather than the outcome of introspective reasoning.

    400:

    paws4thot @ 308: #298 - JBS, I've had a variation on this argument, where I assert that a firearm is the wrong weapon for home defence, because most people who are shot "defending their home" are shot with the weapon that the intruder took away from them. Comments?

    That's certainly part of it.

    Break-ins where they steal your guns; break-ins where they steal your guns & you happen to arrive home while they're still inside and they shoot YOU in "self defense"; situations where stupid home-owners shot would-be intruders who were running away (Manslaughter at least) and went to jail for it.

    Plus, military firearms (and their "civilian" derivatives) are designed so the bullets penetrate. They penetrate bodies, but they also penetrate walls.

    Most negligent homicides in the U.S. are committed with home defense firearms (i.e. that wasn't an intruder, it was one of your kids trying to sneak in after curfew); ditto for most domestic homicides and double-ditto for suicides by firearms.

    I used to tell people if they had to get a gun for home defense - get a shotgun.

    NOW I just tell them they're stupid if they went to have a gun around the house.

    OTOH, if you live on a ranch out west where lions & tigers & bears (Oh My!)1 roam freely and are likely to ambush you when you walk out to the main road to retrieve your mail, having a gun makes sense.

    1 ... or wolves & coyotes, elk & moose, bison ... just don't shoot the Water Buffalo

    401:

    Yes. same article. I clipped the last 1 off by accident (was cleaning a longer URL).

    Re Haiti, piece (note the date) complaining about right wing political weaponization (misinformation/influence ops involved) of the Clintons' very real and long and large relationship with Haiti. (Looking forward to Foxessa's response though :-) The Clintons Didn’t Screw Up Haiti Alone. You Helped. - Trump has turned Haiti into the new symbol of Bill and Hillary’s crookedness. If only things were that simple. (Jonathan M. Katz, Sept 22, 2016) Some of the links are interesting.

    402:

    Paul @ 311: BS @ 263 (quoting Leaving Portland):

    Protests are not riots, and riots are not protests. Protests are constitutionally protected activities vital to any functioning liberal democracy. Riots are violent crimes punishable by imprisonment. Activists, journalists, and politicians alike have a terrible habit of using the terms interchangeably."

    Would that it were so simple.

    Unfortunately there have been many cases where people peaceably assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances for years or even decades. Then one day there was a riot. Suddenly their grievances were headline news and the politicians who had been ignoring them as unimportant were being forced to take a position. Executive actions were signed, laws passed, and change finally occurred.

    But that's not what he was writing about.

    It IS, however, that simple. People have the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Period. Full stop.

    Criminals DO NOT have the right to usurp those peaceful protests and use them as cover for criminal activities.

    OGH said no more Portland, so this is my last reply on the topic.

    403:

    Well, I'll speak up for the bolt-action shotgun I used to have many years ago. For shooting shells, it sucked because of the recoil and the broken autochoke on the end. However, the rick-rack of the bolt sliding out and back was quite loud and intimidating. Since it was basically a cheap 12 gauge pheasant gun, the barrel was long enough that bayonet tactics were pretty easy. Never had to use it in self defense, which was the best part of all, because I can opine that it would have been good for home defense without any evidence to the contrary.

    Anyway, if you've got the money for a gun and ammunition for home defense, my suggestion is really simple: --Splurge on a good alarm system --Get a bunch of panic buttons --Use them as necessary.

    Having your house scream bloody murder and call the cops is better than getting in a gun battle. Anyway, friends of mine got caught in a home invasion team robbery where they broke in, took the daughter hostage, broke into the master bedroom with the daughter going first as a shield, ziptied everybody, waterboarded the husband to find out where the valuables were, and threw their phones in the fountain so they couldn't call for help. Getting in a gun battle probably would have gotten the daughter killed. Afterwards they invested in an alarm system and insurance covered the loss. Messy, but it's not clear where arming the homeowners would have made any difference.

    Oh, and if the alarm's not enough, two more suggestions: --Get a big, strong dog who really loves you and your family (or get a couple of them). --Get an opinionated and hyperaware little yappy dog or three to wake the big dog up if the house gets broken into.

    Purportedly in China they used Pekingese for the alarm dogs and mastiffs for the guard dogs. Might be apocryphal, but Chihuahuas and Rottweilers could also work, provided they're all properly socialized.

    And if you like dogs, this is probably more fun than shooting off firearms.

    404:

    David L @ 332: Protests vs.Riots.

    Here in Raleigh last year we had two waves of such.

    Protesters were loud, noisy, and broke a few windows. But mostly went home when it got dark or the curfew time approached. Then the rioters came out and tried to break into stores and loot, trash some cars, and in general create mayhem.

    FWIW, the "protesters" didn't break any windows. That was all on the rioters who came in later to use the protests to camouflage criminality.

    405:

    https://www.losangelesblade.com/2021/07/07/alleged-trans-incident-at-upscale-la-spa-may-have-been-staged/

    Alleged Trans incident at upscale LA Spa may have been staged

    On June 24th, Instagram user “cubaangel” posted a video of herself angrily confronting a staff member at the Wi Spa in Koreatown, accusing them of letting a disrobed transgender person into the women’s section of the business.

    There is increasing doubt among law enforcement and staff at the Wi Spa whether there was ever was a transgender person there to begin with. Anonymous sources within the LAPD tell the Blade they have been unable to find any corroborating evidence that there was a transgender person present on that day.

    Similarly, a source at the Spa told the Blade there’s no record of any of its usual transgender clients on its appointments guest list on the day in question. Treatment at the Spa is by appointment only, and most of its transgender clients are well known to the staff.

    The anti-trans protest was a mix of religious fundamentalist street preachers, QAnon conspiracy theorists chanting “save our children,” and Proud Boys. Black-bloc (like Antifa) and trans activists engaged in a counter protest at the same time, and violence erupted. Right wing personality Andy Ngo, who coordinates with far right groups when they’re looking to engage in violence on camera, was also there.

    A right-wing protestor drew a gun on a person recording the event and told him it was “something to shoot you with.” A videographer wearing a vest marked “PRESS” was struck from behind by a right wing protester with a metal pipe. Another anti-trans protester stabbed two people: a pro-trans counter protester who was reportedly hospitalized by the wound, and a fellow anti-trans protesters while she was attempting to help him off the ground. The LAPD quickly declared the protest and counter-protest unlawful assemblies and dispersed them.

    406:

    barren_samadhi @ 340: > mhari .. pronounced

    i grew up around untold herds of variations on this theme .. moy-ra, mwirrah, may-ree, may-wah, 'n' stuff.

    i tend to subvoc muh-harry, alike to something south-asian, but then glitch over to thinking it's perhaps meant to be more of a moy-ree thing.

    Don't know why, but this came to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHtmmbAftU

    407:

    whitroth @ 356: Re rct JBS*, if I feel that I'm forced to buy a firearm, it's *not* for "home defense", it's to get together with neighbors to defend ourselves against invdaing fascists in vehicles. (You may not have heard the white wing idiot saying, after the elections, during the vote counting, that the fascists should "surround Philly, and intimidate them". Yes, they are that stoooopid.)

    So you're going to be just as stupid as they are? Oh well, it's your funeral.

    PS: Ever fired an M-14? AR-15?

    408:

    I thought I made it clear, but let me try again: I'm not responding to you again. You've decided that any time I disagree with something you said, I'm insulting and talking down to you.

    Which has never been the case, but whatever. No more repsonses.

    409:

    paws4thot @ 390: #387 - I don't know what you meant to do, but that is not a normal hyperlink, so I'm treating it as malware, and suggest that Charlie does so too.

    I think he just screwed up posting the link.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear

    411:

    whitroth I have a fairly senior signalling engineer as a friend & fellow-drinker ... sorry but not even wrong It's amazingly complicated, the number of systems that have to be tied into & all work together in parallel & 99.99999% reliable & fail-safe .... LC's are a nightmare ... here, as far as possible our railways are trying to get rid of them, though that simply cannot be done in a large number of cases .....

    JBS WHAT THE FUCK is "Negligent Homicide"? IS that equivalent to "manslaughter" or some wierdo US variant?

    @ 407 Inside a house, a sword in one hand & a club or dagger ( Short pointy sharp thing, anyway ) is going to be better than any handheld firearm.

    ( whitroth/JBS - children! Please don't? ) On a similar vein ... allynh has been badly misinformed, not necessarily his(?) fault - remember how I was nearly conned by the Brexiteers? Of course, now I know better - help him to know better, yes?

    412:

    Negligent homicide is pretty much what you'd expect - causing the death of another through criminal negligence. A kind of involuntary manslaughter - in the US some states define it as that and sometimes it's a separate category. In English law it's manslaughter by gross negligence, I think.

    413:

    Longtime lurker here. This is a fun read with all the classic ingredients

    https://medium.com/on-the-trail-of-the-saucers/ufos-arent-russian-or-chinese-and-the-pentagon-knows-it-8e7d563637cf

    BLUE HADES in Hillary’s emails?

    Some kind of psy-op on Podesta I guess. Thought you folks would find it entertaining at least.

    414:

    That's what these people are doing.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/999929259/a-would-be-trans-and-queer-haven-in-rural-colorado-just-wants-to-be-left-alone

    I wouldn't want to be in the situation in the first place, but homeless trans women often find a real catch-22: men's shelters won't take them, women's shelters won't take them, and over a certain age LGBTQ youth shelters won't take them, either.

    415:

    whitroth and JBS: Game theory says that the best chance for both sides to do well in an "iterated prisoners dilemma"* situation is to maintain a proper tit-for-tat retaliatory stance. That means that when someone does right by you, do right by them in return. When someone does wrong by you, do them harm in return. Then - and this is important - when someone stops doing wrong to you, it is necessary to forgive and return to a posture of rewarding the person who does right.

    America is starting to look like a place where one side has either stopped using negative retaliation, or been placed in a situation where they are unable to retaliate when necessary. This is a combination of rightwing ugliness and a left (more-or-less "lead" by the Democrats) which is either unable or unwilling to do the unpleasant part of tit-for tat.

    What we're talking about right now is how to rescue something from those ashes.

    Mark, I'm not sure you understand JBS's past and his very good training in the use of weapons, including personal participation in our government making some rather bad errors - and he has rather remarkably learned the right lessons from observing this. JBS, Mark's done his time on the political front lines protesting bad behavior on the part of the government, and has been doing so for multiple decades. Maybe you guys should give each other a little more respect.

    • If anyone doesn't think we're in an iterated prisoner's dilemma, consider that we all have to give something up to survive humanity's earlier mistakes. And never forget that we're all going to die here.
    416:

    Fun summer read. Thanks!

    For everyone else, a cheery reminder from The Annihilation Score:

    "I take the lift down to the basement with Ramona and Mhari, where we find a near-featureless blue-black lozenge squatting on the concrete floor of the car park."

    Looks like OGH has been channeling again...

    417:

    I wouldn't want to be in the situation in the first place, but homeless trans women often find a real catch-22: men's shelters won't take them, women's shelters won't take them, and over a certain age LGBTQ youth shelters won't take them, either.

    Lesbians fleeing domestic violence have problems too, as keeping their abusive partners away can prove problematic in a women's shelter that assumes the problem is men…

    (Don't know how common this is, just that it's happened often enough to be in the news in the last few years.)

    418:

    Somnuyap @ 301/302 Missed your nym this time. That was a bit fiery. we can map your entire neuro-structure then burst it at salient points. Heart, Brain, Groin, etc. Including the enteric nervous system, for warning shots and etc. (MD, dubiously: you say that your colon is messaging you in Morse Code when you're alone?) Though leveraging chaos (if that's what your saying) is blunt[1]; more challenging would be things like shocking mental schemas into new configurations.

    We're just: LOVE/INTEREST/HOPE Those, but rather more than those.

    [1] The literature on epilepsy/chaos is voluminous and contentious. e.g. Analytic Quantification of Shilnikov Chaos in Epileptic EEG Data (Bastian Seifert, Dennis Adamski and Christian Uhl, 29 November 2018)

    419:

    "Australia; spider guns? ;-)"

    I did see some for sale. Imagine a flyswatter crossed with a nerf gun. I don't think they sold well.

    420:

    Some kind of psy-op on Podesta I guess. Thought you folks would find it entertaining at least.

    Well, I agree that it's likely a psyop. But I wonder--is SuckerInt a thing? It's conceptually simple, although perhaps hard to do: You tell tall tales and see how they spread. It's not a bad system for checking for leaks. Or for spoofing the enemy. Or for trying to track networks of communication.

    Anyway, telling lies around outsiders is a tradition that's certainly thousands of years old, as is spreading tall tales, and I know folklorists track this stuff, so the intellectual tools exist. And I know that the US Army weaponized the tactical use of staged BS in WW2, so they've got form for this. So that's most likely what's going on.

    The one possible check someone could do is to go through the rest of the Podesta trove on Wikileaks* and see whether he'd entertained tall tales from other sources about other things or whether his emails (like the communications here) are always sober, completely factual, humorless, and also free of sarcasm.

    *Perhaps machine learning would help?

    421:

    I know that I'm responding to a really old comment, but I wanted to flag that Portland sadly ended the fareless transit service in city center back in 2012. It's particularly annoying because it made traffic there a little bit less bad. Transit's still very affordable (and Seattle's gotten much better as its light rail has expanded), but it's no longer free because we can't have nice things.

    422:

    --Get a big, strong dog who really loves you and your family (or get a couple of them).

    After we had a break in 30 years ago the police told us it was a LOUD dog that mattered. Actual size wasn't important as they would never be seen. They said they NEVER had to deal with break ins at houses with a loud barking dog that would wake up if strangers got close to the house.

    423:

    When we were burgled we got the alarm and a small, not very noisy dog. But ultimately with the dog living indoors the alarm system was left off more times than not. Ultimately we kept the now defunct alarm beacon on the outside of the house but also placed pretty visible cameras. We're now on the second dog since that time. The cameras in the living room came in handy when he was recovering from hip surgery and we wanted to keep an eye on him when we were both at work. At least he sounds like a much larger dog when he barks, though I'm sure all the local miscreants have seen him by now on walks.

    Oh, and I have a 2-foot long steel shoehorn from Ikea. I keep it next to the bed and actually use it to help put on some shoes. While the bedroom window would be a challenging climb, the metal Venetians are anchored at the bottom, which I think will mean I get enough noise before a climber gets inside to provide an opportunity to do some really useful work with the shoehorn. I've thought of sharpening the edges of the "spoon", but that would make it less practical for putting shoes on, and also hard to explain to the police.

    424:

    Actually, if you want the best self-defense item, here's a review of one.

    425:

    What I want for home-defense is the cocking mechanism of a shot-gun. Not the whole gun, just the part that goes "ka-chick-click!"

    You hear someone wandering around your house at night, you make the shotgun-cocking sound while your partner calls the police.

    426:

    That's hilarious. I actually have a normal-size Opinel craft knife like the one in the video. It came free with re-subscription to an Oz woodworking magazine I get, has their branding burnt into the handle.

    I missed my opportunity to comment on the military training course that teaches 17 different ways to kill a man with a spoon, 15 of which do not involve sharpening the spoon. Usually the person explaining that they have received this training is a small woman who is also expert in data science. This is a common trope, no?

    Not sure about the ka-chink sound, but I'm sure there must be an app for that. I'd like to think "Hey Siri, release the ferrets!" would work better. But for stupid hysterical raisins ferrets are still illegal in Queensland.

    427:

    Actually, a big-enough handgun can stop a bear. In Grizzly/Polar Bear country, big enough means .357 or larger.

    Indeed. My uncle was in the US Army with a guy from Kodiak Island in Alaska, and if you were to guess about the apex predator found in a place called Kodiak you'd be exactly correct. One day when out walking he came around a turn to find himself face to face with a large bear, surprising both of them. The bear reared up and growled; the human replied by pulling out a revolver and putting a magnum round right between its eyes. The bear did not fall down but stood there stunned for long enough for the guy to retreat briskly back the way he came and put as much distance as possible between him and the bear.

    428:

    Well, if a .357 magnum is a stun-gun for a Kodiak bear, I for one am happy. No need for the bear to die due to the bad luck of getting startled by a human.

    429:

    I find it interesting that the death toll from deer is an order of magnitude higher than other animals that people are more scared of.

    People may shout "Lion!" or "Shark!" but the most common warning is "Duck!"

    430:

    I remember reading once that a survey of convicted burglars discovered that many of them saw NRA bumper stickers as an advertisement that there were probably lots of guns to steal in the house.

    In our experience being burgled it happened during the day while we were at work. All 5 times, 4 of them in a 6 month period. The 5th I happened to be stopping home for lunch and found a bunch of our possessions piled up on our kitchen table.

    431:

    Some helpful information here:

    https://www.ncis.org.au/publications/ncis-fact-sheets/animal-related-deaths-2/

    Most animal related deaths in Australia from 2010 to 2017 involved falling from a horse.

    I was sure it would be cows!

    432:

    flyswatter crossed with a nerf gun

    They were awesome once you removed the stupid string that held the swatter to the gun, but required a lot of skill to use correctly. Like a fly swatter them work best from above and behind the fly. Also work on mosquitos.

    Sadly no automatic one was ever made, I would have loved a clockwork rotary cannon version even if it only fired five or six shots.

    https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/ylo-fly-assassin-gun-swatter-flies-mosquito-insect-guns-pistol-swat-shoot-pw-fa/ still made, $* Australian (about $6 US, but luckily Kogan offer finance if you can't afford the cost up front)

    (does not work on bears. Not even koala bears)

    433:

    I should probably put my hand up as someone who works for a burglar alarm manufacturer but does not have an alarm system at my house. No reflection on my employer, or their willingness to install one at no cost to me, more that I am self-insured and there are people here most of the time. So the alarm system would mostly generate false alarms, and anyone wanting to burgle the place would need to be very lucky to avoid whoever is home ringing the cops.

    I am increasingly fond of "improper" camera systems, with battery backed wifi cameras that have their own uSD cards and a phone app that can connect to them. Those are less than $AUS100 each and will charge and run off any 5V ish supply - tucking a $20 "USB" solar panel onto the roof for each outdoor camera seems to work quite well. The advantage is both cost and resilience - someone wanting to avoid them has to locate and remove each camera individually. Plus they run for a week or two off the battery, so you can put them in fun places and take them down to charge them every week or so.

    (I have a proper DVR/NVR plus PoE camera setup... in a box under my bed. The actual camera system is 3 of the cheap battery cameras).

    434:

    H & DDDD Those possible "Red Hat" or possible "alien" UFO's report ... OK, but it's from wikileaks, who are a Russian front, as is Assange [ HINT: I will never forgive Assange for deliberately trying - & almost succeeding - in trashing the debate & knowledge on Global Warming. Which is why I consider him & them of being agents of Rosneft ..... ]

    Troutwaxer NO USE AT ALL outside the USA or wild areas, elsewhere. the shotgun-cocking sound Yeah, what's that funny noise?

    435:

    NO USE AT ALL

    Which is why I like "Hey Siri, release the ferrets!*" so much better. That I suppose weasels would work just as well. Or snakes.

    *May require an Apple Homekit compatible ferret cage.

    436:

    As with all such “.357 Magnum just bounced off” (or “9mm defeated by frozen clothes”, “5.56 just didn’t work” stories), there’s a much simpler and more likely answer.

    The firer missed, and the bear wandered away from the loud noise…

    437:

    Coda to the Euston/Glasgow line blocked Preston station story - my daughter, now recovered and showing epic timing, made the return journey yesterday evening...

    ( for those outside the UK, this coincided with flash flooding in London that closed Euston station for several hours ). This time she was on the first train allowed back into Euston (4 hours late) and so avoided being disembarked at Watford Junction which already had several hundred people from other trains waiting for a bus service.

    Oh, and I can confirm that double-vaccination does not prevent people catching covid.

    438:

    Nope. You want a really good speaker system, and a recording of the growl of a furry crocodile / land shark. Better yet, a second one joining in from a different direction. People can be negotiated with, but…

    I wonder about performative declarations of firearm ownership. We’ve got sturdy doors and windows, decent locks, an alarm, and (now) a large cuddly yellow dog with a big dog woof. We also live half a mile from a Police HQ. That’s fine for us :)

    I’ve lived in a house where a personal protection weapon was necessary (Northern Ireland during the Troubles, as a child); I’ve been a soldier, and had the fun of training other infantry soldiers in skill-at-arms. Guns aren’t a magic wand; as others have pointed out, in the overwhelming majority of real life cases, the gun in the house is more a risk to your family than a shield.

    439: 392 - So there is. :-) I don't know what you did, but my HTML is only up to copying and pasting the actual link, not to creating a custom text over the web address, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear . 397 - OK, you've worked with a GIS, with an emergency call handling front end. That is not the same thing as a railroad signalling system although the main issues appear similar. The signalling system has to show the identity, speed, routing and ideally crew and stock make-ups of every train, and the status of every signal, every level crossing, every turnout, pass every change in status of signals, level crossings and turnouts to the correct other assets, every track restriction, every stretch where a crew is working (lineside, possession of one track or total possession), anything else I've not remembered...

    These all have to appear on a mimic map, which may not have a consistent ground scale.

    400 - JBS, cheers; we basically agree the problem(s) then, despite the misplaced beliefs of the NRA. 409 - So I discovered (see comment above in response to 392). Treating unidentifiable links as malware is just one part of personal security. 411 - As per above, I agree whitroth badly underestimates the complexity of a modern signal mimic panel... 419 - I was "trying" to be satirical; I should have known better!! 427 - A wet film camera loaded with Eastman film? ;-) 432 - And drop bears? ;-) 437 - (1) Thanks (2) English Broadcasting Corporation was more concerned with flooded roads.
    440:

    But for stupid hysterical raisins ferrets are still illegal in Queensland.

    You know they're trying to eliminate feral cats in Aus and NZ, right?

    Ferrets are predators that act like scaled-down cats on crystal meth.

    441:

    This YouTube video shows the inside of a modern "ROC" ... A giant "signal-box" that controls many miles of track, signals, points, stations & trains. I've been inside a few ( Not the one shown ) They handle a LOT of safety-critical information in real time.

    442:

    Oops Correction - I hadn't realised - that is an US "ROC" - the Brit ones are even more complicated, because we have very intertwined systems & layouts HERE is a UK one - Rugby, covering most of the W midlands, including Brum ....

    443:

    Cheers Greg, and thanks to all at SMRT Trains who enabled the production and release of those videos (and I did say I knew I'd missed something upthread).

    444:

    s/US/Singaporean - You're right that UK (and US too) ROCs can be even more complex, potentially having responsibility for permanent way and stock moving over 100 miles from the centre...

    445:

    Inadvertant triptich, but still...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_operating_centre shows the sorts of areas that UK ROCs now cover, although it's light on interior shots of the control rooms.

    446:

    I've worked in safety-critical software, though not on railways. It's not as simple as saying "data driven". Yes, updating a data file is a lot faster than writing code, but the update still needs to go through the full QA cycle, and that is the expensive bit.

    In high-integrity systems the data files are considered part of the software for good reason. Quite apart from the likelihood of clerical errors in a "trivial" update, you never know if your minor update to a data file is going to trigger some latent bug in the code. The infamous "256 axle" issue should give you an idea of the kind of problems that can occur. The Swiss signalling system uses a piece of hardware that counts the wheels going over it. It has an 8-bit counter, so a train with exactly 256 axles will register as zero, which is interpreted as "no train" by other components. The "solution" is to prohibit trains with exactly 256 axles. Its easy to imagine a similar bug happening with the 256th crossing.

    But that's just the start of the headaches; these are not just simple unified systems that were designed and installed in one go. Railways, like any organisation that has been going for a long time, have lots of computer systems doing all sorts of jobs. Some of these boxes are decades old. When a new requirement comes along there is often a design choice to be made: do we modify the legacy system, or do we put a new box on the side to handle the new requirement? Often the cheapest, fastest, lowest risk solution in the short term is the new box, so that is what is done. Over time this leads to a plethora of boxes on the sides of boxes, all with special-case interfaces to other boxes, and all doing some vital part of the overall job. Changing anything in this system needs to be done very carefully because every box has its own configuration files, they all have different formats, and they all need to be consistent because otherwise bad stuff happens.

    You also have the problem that the entirety of the system is understood by only a few people, who then become bottlenecks for any kind of updates. I was in one organisation where we had exactly two employees (one of whom liked racing motor bikes) who really understood some of the key configuration files from a big old legacy system. This thing was originally developed in the 60s for another organisation and then bodged into working for us. Pensioning off this legacy system had been a goal of the organisation almost since it was installed. I attended the retirement party of someone who had spent most of their career working on that, and it still wasn't done. The lack of expertise wasn't for want of training; both the existing experts had attempted to train new people up, with partial success. But it was just too big and complicated, and people assigned to it tended to leave rather than get trapped with nothing else on their CVs.

    (Incidentally, in the UK unattended crossings are being phased out because too many accidents are happening, and that's before you get the idiots.)

    447:

    a Crib Sheet for Dead Lies Dreaming is due in the next few months. I need to catch up on the publication schedule to see where we're at, but as it went paperback in the UK and probably isn't getting a US paperback release

    Why? Ebook is the new paperback and it's not worth killing trees at the low end any more?

    [Proud owner of signed hardcovers from Transreal though.]

    448:

    What happens if a train has 257 axles? Does it register as having one axle?

    449:

    Correct. Mass market paperback sales in the US fell off a cliff in the past two decades -- but ebooks took up ALL the slack in my royalty statements. In fact I stopped getting mass market releases in 2016 at Ace (there's no MMPB of "The Nightmare Stacks") as previous MMPB sales had dropped below the 10,000 mark. ("Singularity Sky" sold over 55,000 in MMPB, back in 2003.)

    The mass market channel -- it's a distribution system, not a book format -- collapsed in 1991 in the UK and never recovered. All UK paperbacks are sold as trade (i.e., like hardbacks -- sale-or-return-for-credit, not sale-or-proof-of-destruction-for-credit); the small format paperbacks are simply small trade editions sold at a lower price point. Which is why I still get "small" paperback editions from my UK publishers (who are also geared up to do print on demand profitably in editions as low as 50-200 copies: the British print and distribution system works very differently from the US one).

    450:

    There's obviously no such thing as a train with one axle, so other elements in the network presumably have code for

    IF axlecount < minimumnumberofaxles THEN axle_count += 256;

    somewhere.

    If a lone locomotive is moving around -- with, say, 3 axles because it's a shunter -- it's safer to count it as 259 axles (i.e. occupying a much longer stretch of track) than to count it as non-existent (track is unoccupied, so something else can be routed through it).

    451:

    FYI "release the ferrets!" was the tag line for an episode of the US TV comedy "Two and Half Men".

    I assumed the initial reference was to that. Its use fits with the discussion.

    452:

    I can somewhat see the 256 axle thing on a Swiss oriented system. 60 or so car train max size doesn't seem unreasonable given the geography there. I can see a programming who doesn't think outside the box or is working in a really memory constrained system making that mistake.

    In other places, Australia, India, US, etc... there are typical ore trains 3 to 5 times that size.

    453:

    NO USE AT ALL outside the USA or wild areas, elsewhere. the shotgun-cocking sound Yeah, what's that funny noise?

    One of the things that made me laugh recently was a work of fiction in which the highly-trained heroine "recognised the sound of a safety catch clicking off". Yeah, riiiighttttt. Released carefully, no sound at all. Probably not audible past a couple of meters anyway, and certainly not a distinctive noise (there are lots of different designs for them).

    One for the "Firearm Tropes of Fiction" :)

    454:

    According to the Twitter thread, the axle counting is a safety measure: axles are counted in and counted out, and as long as the net axle count /= 0 you know the section of track is occupied. If a broken train inadvertently leaves a truck behind this system will detect it because the section of track will continue being shown as occupied.

    I have no knowledge of the system beyond that, so I won't speculate further about the details.

    One thing I will say about systems engineering is that it is complicated and difficult. There is a saying that "an engineer is someone who can do for one dollar what any fool can do for five", and its true. One way that engineers manage costs is to think hard about requirements. Somewhere there was a requirement for an axle counter, and part of that requirement will have been the maximum number it had to count up to, which will have been derived from the trains being run at the time. I'd guess that number used to be less than 256, so some engineer concluded that 8 bits was enough. Then the train length increased and this problem emerged.

    It's also quite possible that a train with over 250 axles has never happened on this railway and never will, but the engineer who made the 8-bit decision also made sure that the constraint was properly documented just in case, and that constraint has quite properly made its way to the relevant staff handbook. Contrast this with the 737-MAX incidents, where the crucial bit of information did not make its way to the pilot manual.

    Systems Engineering is full of stuff like this. As long as one person can understand every detail of the system and all the interactions then you can avoid a lot of the headaches. The discipline of system engineering has arisen because there are many systems which are "more than a brainfull", at which point you need systems to manage the complexity of the system being designed.

    Then when something goes wrong the public are shown 5 isolated bullet-points pulled out of thousands of pages of documentation and says "How could they have been so stupid?". The answer is simply that before the accident those 5 bullet points never got into one brain at the same time. (Along with lots of cases where nobody cared or the problem was suppressed by management or whatever).

    455:

    On the subject of GIS vs. train crossing, I think whitroth is philosophically correct, but perhaps not practically so. The system should be designed so new data can be dropped in and have it work correctly, but the realities are probably more complex.

    456:

    I realize I am very late to the party, but a couple of thoughts on Concorde as a bomber or recon aircraft. It really can't be easily caught by any existing fighters as it departs the area and heads for home. That is nice and fits what the story needed, but that doesn't make a military Concorde a great bomber or strike/recon aircraft.

    To fulfill those roles, the aircraft needs to get to a certain point on the ground and take pictures or release weapons. The most useful intercept is on the way in, before it has dropped bombs or gotten the information. It also means it is flying towards the air-to air or surface to air missiles, so it can't easily outrun them. Speed makes the intercept harder in some ways but it certainly creates a massive IR target.

    The US developed an aircraft that could leave the Concorde literally in the dust. The XB-70 could see the Concorde cruise speed and altitude of 2,158 kph/18,300 m and raise it by a thousand kph (3,219 kph) and 5,000 meters (23,580 m). However, it was canceled because Soviet SAMs could reach twice the height and nearly half again the speed (SA-5 Gammon, 40,000 m at 4,900 kph). Thus they went for stealth and standoff missiles instead.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-200_(missile)

    457:

    Yep. While the RAF insisted on adding attachment points for a bomb bay to Prototype 002, they never seriously considered turning it into a bomber. At best, there was a proposal to use Concorde as a platform for Blue Steel after retiring the Vulcans from that role in the 1970s. Blue Steel was actually deployed -- a British design, after the USA dropped out of the joint Skybolt project in the 1950s -- but was retired anyway as the UK strategic deterrent moved entirely to Polaris SLBMs from the mid-60s onwards -- the Navy won.

    Similarly, the USSR considered modifying the Tu-144 airliner into a missile carrier. It was to be equipped with the upper stages of an SS-20 IRBM; in event of a nuclear exchange it could scramble and carry the missile well away from its dispersal airfields. Again, this was cancelled because the SS-20 first stage was a perfectly good rocket and could be launched at short enough notice that the carrier SST was redundant (and hugely expensive).

    The use of Concordes in the Laundry Files is mostly for photorecon over off-world black sites, and required room in the passenger bay for a team of sorcerers to open a gate: entirely speculative and not (I hope!) based on any actual practical scenario. And the black Concorde, of course, was a suicide weapon; no means of ejecting the bomb, just light the afterburners and crank it up to maximum power, hoping that the wings don't melt before it reaches the target.

    458:

    One way that engineers manage costs is to think hard about requirements. Somewhere there was a requirement for an axle counter, and part of that requirement will have been the maximum number it had to count up to, which will have been derived from the trains being run at the time.

    If you've worked with systems design long enough you discover that requirements are NEVER complete. And a bad situation is when you ask questions about the holes you notice and get told to just "use your judgement" or words to that effect. But with it a "don't talk to the users as you will upset them" it can get scary at times.

    I've seen that way too many times. At all sizes of companies and projects.

    459:

    In AI and space news,

  • In 2010, China tested a submarine drone that can independently destroy an enemy sub https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4244419

  • A Swiss company named Zoundream uses ML to automatically translate the cause of baby cries. The company is talking about using it for early detection of divergences such as autism. https://zoundream.com/research/

  • Chinese video game companies are using facial recognition software to limit how much time minors can spend playing. As the Guardian points out, this has huge applications for the wider internet. It may now be possible for internet sites to put age-appropriate filters on their content. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/11/proof-of-age-verification-online-facial-analysis-data-protection-act

  • Advertisers are again investigating modifying dreams to sell ads https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/05/advertisers-targeted-dream-incubation

  • Chinese researchers found in simulation that hitting the 500m diameter asteroid Bennu with 23 LM5 rockets simultaneously can divert an asteroid 1.4 times Earth's radius. I wonder how many Starships it would take to have the same effect? https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/chinese-researchers-propose-deflecting-armageddon-asteroids-with-rockets-2021-07-07/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101955_Bennu

  • Virgin Galactic made its successful flight with Branson on board. Bezos is up next Tuesday

  • I wonder why Musk hasn't launched any Starlink satellites in the past 1.5 months?

  • 460:

    is working in a really memory constrained system making that mistake,/i>

    Somewhere in the thread someone mentioned that the hardware was relay-based. In any case, it was described as a hardware limit.

    461:

    I wonder why Musk hasn't launched any Starlink satellites in the past 1.5 months?

    The Starlink 30 mission is due to fly later this month, followed by no fewer than four Starlink missions in August and five in September (plus a couple of other Falcon 9 payloads, including an ISS resupply mission), and a Superheavy/Starship test flight in August. (Both Superheavy and Starship are expected to soft-land in the ocean but won't be recovered. These are prototypes, not the finished thing.)

    462:

    Back around 1980 or '85, I read an article in the City Paper, an alternative paper in Philly. In their article, someone had done a survey of men in prison, and a burglar alarm would deter 20% of them... while a dog, of any size, would deter 60% of them from breaking in.

    463:

    Old, old SCA story. Guy was mostly asleep, wearing nothing but socks (he got cold feet), and hears noise downstairs. He looks, and there's two guys inside the screen door, piling stuff by the door. He grabs his steel broadsword, and comes running down the stairs screaming "BLOOD FOR ODIN!!!". He reported that the two ran through the screen door to get away.

    464:

    I don't know if this is worth continuing, but if they can add streets, bridges, and buildings in a 911 calltaker system, I suspect similar code - if it isn't actually done by the same contracting company - adding a stop, or other data is not a big deal. Assuming, as someone mentioned, the systems engineering is done correctly. And with anything like any of such systems, there will be cycles of verification. Always. And there will be some manager trying things that failed on the previous version of the system, as a final check.

    465:

    Yes, and it reminds me of the 911 center.

    466:

    Yep. And in a lot of places, there gets to be a "that's so-and-so's baby", and you deal with that whenever it needs to be dealt with, in addition to whatever they put on your plate. The number of folks who actually understand the system is far, far fewer than the users.

    And management, of course, always wants it to be fewer.

    467:

    "Don't talk to the users" always drove me nuts. When I worked for the Scummy Mortgage Co, the manager designed the UI for the system that data on new mortgages was entered. I mean, of course, he knew "Everything".

    The users, on the other hand, told me that they all HATED it, and took down all the information on pad and pencil, and only entered data at the very last step.

    468:

    Identifying "autism" from baby cries. When the parents can't identify the cause.

    I'm really getting tired of this - either there's a MASSIVE pandemic of autism, or a lot of people are "diagnosing" variations in normal behavior as an "illness", or "divergence".

    469:

    On the subject of GIS vs. train crossing, I think whitroth is philosophically correct, but perhaps not practically so. The system should be designed so new data can be dropped in and have it work correctly, but the realities are probably more complex.

    There's an assumption there, which I think is both philosophically and practically incorrect. Namely, that "system" and "data" are separate entities. They are not, because each makes assumptions about the other. The data is part of the system. Somewhere in the system design is a contract (in effect) between data provider and data user, specifying in great detail the effects of every combination of input data (including the invalid ones). Writing a correct specification is hard.

    Moreover the "data" here isn't a geospatial database, it's a model of a real-time signalling system. There's no way you can test it by simulating every possible combination of events, so how do you ensure your model is correct, and remains correct after you've added a few unrelated features that inadvertently add up to 256 axles?

    471:

    either there's a MASSIVE pandemic of autism, or

    There is. Or rather, autism was systematically underdiagnosed before the 1990s and we're still playing catch-up; in particular, recent research says it's much commoner in women than was previously believed, they're just better at "masking" by developing scripts for social interaction (because girls are forcibly socialized more thoroughly than boys).

    (I'm pretty sure I'm on the spectrum (per self-administered tests); I'm not trying for a formal diagnosis because I'm closing in on 57 and it won't change anything significant in my life at this point, but it would explain everything about my childhood and adolescence.)

    472:

    Greg Tingey @ 411: JBS
    WHAT THE FUCK is "Negligent Homicide"?
    IS that equivalent to "manslaughter" or some wierdo US variant?

    Hmmmm ... not sure how to explain it. I thought it was pretty obvious. You're negligent & someone dies as a result of your negligence.

    I guess it would be a lesser degree of "manslaughter" - a killing resulting from negligence rather than from intent.

    473:

    For a closer view of ROC's Start here & then select a sub-area. You can watch these for HOURS. The ouptuts are effectively realtime. Rugby ROC covers about half of the offering shown, but, of course, they will have more details. There will also be "Train Control" who can over-ride the signallers as to priority of movements, plus CCTV for all Level Crossings, plus electrical power-supply networks for keeping the trains going ... Note that each individual train has its own reporting number.

    Nancy Not now, but in the past some carriages had THREE axles, usually with the middle one having quite a bit of spring-controlled side-play. I've ridden in one on a preserved railway - a remarkably smooth ride, actually. And a 2-6-2T loco will have 5 axles, won't it?

    David L That, of course is the appalling problem with "Strict Liability" legislation. "But we've covered all the possibilities!!" "NO - you fucking well haven't!"

    Charlie @ 471 Yeah, well, been there, done that, got the T-shirt & the bruises & scrapes.

    474:

    7. I wonder why Musk hasn't launched any Starlink satellites in the past 1.5 months?

    The next batches due are said to also be the next version of the satellite. Speculation is that this may have needed the production line to be altered sufficiently that a shutdown was easier than trying to work round the changes. They've also been waiting for JRTI to arrive on the west coast (which it now has) so they can start launching Starlink from Vandenberg. The new droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, is at sea on its way to catch Florida launches.

    475:

    What I'm reading between the lines of this discussion is that railroad signalling systems go back much further than computers, particularly much further back than advanced theories of how data should modify code and vice-versa. So in trying to make things work you're essentially dealing with methods, theories, and assumptions which in some cases go back more than 200 years, and may still involve analog components. Then all this has to be integrated by systems which can talk to anything from a modern 5G transmitters to two cans tied together with string.

    Non-trivial doesn't begin to cover it.

    476:

    The other side of this is that disciplinary methods for children have changed in the last several decades. I think that "minor" issues which would have been resolved by stricter discipline (note: stricter discipline is not necessarily a good thing) are now making it through to adulthood.

    Having raised a couple rugrats to something which vaguely resembles adulthood, I've seen the good and the bad of this play out. Some of the problems my kids have are certainly the result of less discipline. On the other hand, they don't experience the problems of having received too-harsh discipline. I just wish I'd managed to thread that needle a little better.

    477:

    modern 5G transmitters

    Railroads made a few pennies by stringing fiber along their tracks. They had a much easier time of it than the phone companies and others in terms of long distances. They had the right of ways with only their stuff on the dirt.

    Unlike the AT&T right of way through my back yard. Which has been there since the early 1930s. The 50 or 100 pair copper buried has been out of service for a few decades or more and putting down fiber would involve lots of pissed off homeowners. Even though they have every legal right to do so. The easement is attached to a LOT of deeds. I traced it back one time when I got into a small snit with my neighbor.

    478:

    Heteromeles @ 420:

    Some kind of psy-op on Podesta I guess. Thought you folks would find it entertaining at least.

    Well, I agree that it's likely a psyop. But I wonder--is SuckerInt a thing? It's conceptually simple, although perhaps hard to do: You tell tall tales and see how they spread. It's not a bad system for checking for leaks. Or for spoofing the enemy. Or for trying to track networks of communication.

    I believe it's been discussed here before (maybe several times) that QAnon has all the characteristics of a weaponized Alternative Reality Game.

    Anyway, telling lies around outsiders is a tradition that's certainly thousands of years old, as is spreading tall tales, and I know folklorists track this stuff, so the intellectual tools exist. And I know that the US Army weaponized the tactical use of staged BS in WW2, so they've got form for this. So that's most likely what's going on.

    The British were the great masters of deception on WW2. All the U.S. Army brought to the mix was a bit of Hollywood Special Effects and the manpower for set building on an industrial scale to give Patton's fake army additional verisimilitude.

    It was a JOINT ALLIED operation, but it was originally conceived by the British.

    479:

    Ok, really, I'm going to stop, because with ycts it's clear that you don't understand the way I learned, from a number of places I worked from the eighties onwards, how data is part of the "system", but not part of the software.

    That's a very long discussion, and as it's straight IT, not really appropriate for this blog, esp. since there are no infovores coming down the lines....

    480:

    Heteromeles @ 424: Actually, if you want the best self-defense item, here's a review of one.

    I disagree. Y'all are still looking at getting TOO up close & personal. The best self-defense is one that drives an assailant off without endangering yourself, your family or your neighbors. I'll second the suggestion for a large, LOUD dog.

    That's my "professional opinion" from 30+ years in the military & 15 years working for an alarm company. Never once during all those years did I ever hear of anyone coming home to find burglars in their house and being attacked by the burglars setting their dog on them.

    Plus I have personal experience from several break-in attempts during the 45 years I've been living here.

    When I first moved in here, I had a pair of St Bernards. One time someone tried to get in and the dogs didn't bark. I discovered the break-in attempt in the morning from the open window and a copious amount of blood on the window sill & puddled on the floor below it.

    Over the years since the St Bernards I've had a bunch of mongrel dogs (mainly rescues before dog rescues became a thing). In all that time, there have been only two "successful" break-ins and both times were during periods when I didn't have a dog.

    They got into my car once and stole my cell phone & a checkbook I had left in the glove box. The other time someone got in through a front window (same one) and fled through an unlocked basement door taking my chain saw-with them.

    The first thing burglars try to do once they get in is open a back door so they can make a quick escape and it appears the burglar was scared off almost as soon as he got in ... probably by the cat. The chain-saw was sitting on the floor right next to the basement door.

    In both instances, the police knew right away who the culprits were, but because I couldn't give them a serial number for the chain-saw, they couldn't get a warrant. Same person or persons both times, but the Police didn't have sufficient evidence to allow them to make an arrest.

    They were living in a house down the street & weren't paying their rent or their bills (utilities). Their electricity was cut off & they resorted to cooking on a hibachi in the kitchen; set the house on fire & were then finally evicted by the property owner.

    481:

    Damian @ 426: That's hilarious. I actually have a normal-size Opinel craft knife like the one in the video. It came free with re-subscription to an Oz woodworking magazine I get, has their branding burnt into the handle.

    I missed my opportunity to comment on the military training course that teaches 17 different ways to kill a man with a spoon, 15 of which do not involve sharpening the spoon. Usually the person explaining that they have received this training is a small woman who is also expert in data science. This is a common trope, no?

    Maybe. I've never heard it about a spoon. It was always "15 ways to kill someone with a ball-point pen" (FWIW, I only learned about half-a-dozen of them).

    But basically, ANYTHING can become a weapon if you know how to use it as such.

    Not sure about the ka-chink sound, but I'm sure there must be an app for that. I'd like to think "Hey Siri, release the ferrets!" would work better. But for stupid hysterical raisins ferrets are still illegal in Queensland.

    Maybe because of Australia's experience with rabbits as an invasive species and/or feral house cats?

    482:

    I really should probably let this pass, but since I was the nutcase who suggested:

  • Get an alarm system with a panic button
  • Get dogs C. Get a big old shotgun to make racking noises with with and to use as a club D. Get the most ridiculously outsized folding knife Opinel makes
  • It's worth contemplating the vague possibility that I (in some alternate universe?) might...conceivably...have ever-so-slightly absurdist sense of humor, and be making comments about most people's automatic desire to get an assault weapons for home defense.

    Yes, humor is personal. With me in particular, it's worth realizing that my normal answer to the question "are you joking or are you serious?" is "Yes." And it's worth going back to basic logic classes to parse that out.

    483:

    arrbee @ 437: Oh, and I can confirm that double-vaccination does not prevent people catching covid.

    They do, however, for the most part, appear to reduce the symptoms to sub-lethal levels.

    484:

    You know they're trying to eliminate feral cats in Aus and NZ, right?

    Oh absolutely. But cats are legal in Qld (we try to encourage cat owners to keep them indoors or at least enclosed, some people even comply) and ferrets are legal in NSW. The "stupid hysterical raisins" I was referring to date back to a time when agriculture rather than wildlife was a concern, but certainly these days it's about wildlife (well "biosecurity"), and there's no good reason why the ban should be lifted. See:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-01-24/fear-of-feral-ferrets-prevents-legislation-in-queensland/9355888

    The agriculture minister cited is actually my local MP (though he has a different cabinet job since the last state election). 129 signatures is nothing, almost in itself demonstrates the interest is tiny.

    I also probably need to mark humour better. Perhaps because there are none in Qld, I'm going with ferrets being inherently funny, at least till they get into the henhouse/possum nest/echnida burrow.

    485:

    Two and Half Men

    Gah, you're probably right. I had in my head it was from somewhere and that's probably it. Still, I obviously need to mark humour better. :)

    486:

    Opinel? You're the first person I've ever heard mention that maker.

    Want to buy a set of Opinel carving knives, cheap?

    487:

    I also mentioned this:

    https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/omtaenksam-shoehorn-anthracite-50385222/

    Seriously folks, don't sharpen your shoe horns. Blade injuries to the heel can turn septic really easily before you notice...

    488:

    We have real swords and daggers, not wall hangers....

    489:

    True. Especially since with that much curve on the blade, you'd be better off shanking them with it and beating them about the head than slashing with it.

    Instead of sharpening them, you could get two, tie them together, and make the world's least elegant nunchaku. That would be a misdemeanor where I live, but perhaps it would be legal for you?

    The best idea I've had is that you call it a "ninja kunai" and say you were schooled in Nin-Something-Something.

    490:

    No, because you'd overcharge me for them, even at cheap. If you didn't follow that link I posted earlier (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLkd61qew5g) you really should. It is, in fact, a very big Opinel. And it's perfect for home defense. And barbecues.

    491:

    I got them from someone, 20 years ago, I think, and never used 'em. There are some things * want to get out of this overcrowded small house.

    Oh, btw, I have a still-in-the-box R/C RadShack boat that the folks I bought the house from left....

    492:

    paws4thot @ 439: #392 - So there is. :-) I don't know what you did, but my HTML is only up to copying and pasting the actual link, not to creating a custom text over the web address, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear .

    Everything I know about HTML comes from highlighting a text here, right clicking and selecting "View Selection Source".

    For embedded links I made a kind of template that I keep in the text file (Windoze Notepad - HTML-tags dot txt) I use to compose replies:

    <a href="https://some_URL" rel="nofollow"><i>Text to be hyperlinked;</i>;</a>

    I just copy & paste the URL in place of h****://some_URL (in between the quotes) & type in whatever text I want to be linked. I keep some other bits & bobs of HTML in the text file where I have my templates & keep track of the last comment I read.

    #400 - JBS, cheers; we basically agree the problem(s) then, despite the misplaced beliefs of the NRA.

    I'm not an NRA member. I was for many years part of the actual "well regulated militia" (i.e. the North Carolina Army National Guard) mentioned in the Constitution & Second Amendment.

    The NRA is not what it used to be or what it was originally intended to be. It got hijacked by ammo-sexual wackos in the late 70s.

    493:

    Torp @ 447:

    a Crib Sheet for Dead Lies Dreaming is due in the next few months. I need to catch up on the publication schedule to see where we're at, but as it went paperback in the UK and probably isn't getting a US paperback release

    Why? Ebook is the new paperback and it's not worth killing trees at the low end any more?

    You can carry a paperback book in a rucksack full of sharp pointy objects and never have to worry about cracking the screen or the battery dying before you finish reading it.

    And after you do finish reading it, you can swap it for a different paperback at MWR.

    494:

    Namely, that "system" and "data" are separate entities.

    Not to mention users/customers/subjects…

    My favourite line from the old Star Cops series: "People are part of the system. It's dangerous to forget that."

    495:

    I'm pretty sure I'm on the spectrum (per self-administered tests); I'm not trying for a formal diagnosis because I'm closing in on 57 and it won't change anything significant in my life at this point, but it would explain everything about my childhood and adolescence.

    Me too. I took the screening test they give kids to see if they should have the (expensive) formal test, and I scored high enough that if I was currently a student I'd be near the front of the line for testing.

    I found it useful for two reasons. One, it explained so much about my childhood, and left me feeling a lot better about several mortifying episodes from my teens. Two, I could learn some of the skills they explicitly teach in the autism program at school — it wasn't too late to get better at interacting with people.

    496:

    Old, old SCA story. Guy was mostly asleep, wearing nothing but socks (he got cold feet), and hears noise downstairs. He looks, and there's two guys inside the screen door, piling stuff by the door. He grabs his steel broadsword, and comes running down the stairs screaming "BLOOD FOR ODIN!!!". He reported that the two ran through the screen door to get away.

    Hell, that happened to a friend of mine! Only one burglar and she grabbed a big ass kitchen knife, but as in the first tale the bad guy ran like, well, like a screaming banshee was after him...

    497:

    You can carry a paperback book in a rucksack full of sharp pointy objects and never have to worry about cracking the screen or the battery dying before you finish reading it

    You carry a smartphone, right? Maybe even a ruggedized one? Weighs half as much as a paperback, can be dropped in a stream and pulled out and it still works, shatterproof screen, drop-proof and dust-proof? And enough storage to hold a couple of thousand ebooks. If that's a bit too small/off-brand for you, Samsung do a bigger ruggedized phone (link goes to the civilian/retail version, they also target corporate and military customers with a sibling at about 5x the price).

    You could even carry a USB solar charger if you're worried about power. (Yes, it weighs about as much as two paperbacks: but it's got multiple outputs, enough to charge a friend's phone at the same time as your own.

    Yeah, we're all of a certain age here -- but for anyone under 20, smartphones have been around since before they learned to read, and indeed are their main entertainment and reading device.

    498:

    Martin @ 453:

    NO USE AT ALL outside the USA or wild areas, elsewhere. the shotgun-cocking sound Yeah, what's that funny noise?

    One of the things that made me laugh recently was a work of fiction in which the highly-trained heroine "recognised the sound of a safety catch clicking off". Yeah, riiiighttttt. Released carefully, no sound at all. Probably not audible past a couple of meters anyway, and certainly not a distinctive noise (there are lots of different designs for them).

    One for the "Firearm Tropes of Fiction" :)

    During the D-Day invasion, American paratroopers were issued a "cricket" to help them identify each other in the dark - one click for challenge, and two clicks for response.

    In the film The Longest Day there's a scene about those "crickets". Author Cornelius Ryan interviewed a number of veterans in writing his book, so I'm sure the scene is "representative" of many experiences rather than relating a specific incident.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lWIN6ktdKM

    PS: Glocks don't have a safety catch.

    499:

    More useful info about that phone: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover_pro-10001.php The good news is that it has a dedicated uSD slot and headphone jack so it would actually work for me. Samsung do the software better on the whole, if you're willing to buy into their ecosystem.

    But I think I prefer the Cat FLIR phone: https://www.gsmarena.com/cat_s62_pro-10358.php if I was going to buy a an unfair phone.

    Also, I prefer my solar chargers rigid because you get more power and longer life out of them. Flexing silicon crystals is just not a good idea. But the general principle is sound.

    500:

    Charlie Stross @ 471:

    either there's a MASSIVE pandemic of autism, or

    There is. Or rather, autism was systematically underdiagnosed before the 1990s and we're still playing catch-up; in particular, recent research says it's much commoner in women than was previously believed, they're just better at "masking" by developing scripts for social interaction (because girls are forcibly socialized more thoroughly than boys).

    (I'm pretty sure I'm on the spectrum (per self-administered tests); I'm not trying for a formal diagnosis because I'm closing in on 57 and it won't change anything significant in my life at this point, but it would explain everything about my childhood and adolescence.)

    THEY still don't know what causes autism, but I think it might be low level pre-natal exposure to various chemical pollutants in the environment, particularly those that mimic hormones (can access the cellular receptors that hormones connect to). We know they affect development in animals, so why wouldn't they affect humans?

    So in addition to better diagnostic tools that have been developed since the 1990s, I think the actual incidence of autism may be on the rise as well. But don't blame vaccines. That's bogus & the guy who promulgated that "theory" was a quack & a swindler.

    I might be on the milder end of the "spectrum" myself, but they didn't have the tools to diagnose it back when I was a child, so the psychologists just told my Mom I was "high strung". Today it would probably be diagnosed as Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)

    OTOH, at least they didn't drug the shit out of me trying to make me "NORMAL".

    501:

    Troutwaxer NO Mechanical signalling systems were DIGITAL - they were either "on" or "off" with mechanical lever-frames that ensured that outcome. I've seen more than a few of these, & they are amazing pieces of design & engineering. They were updated with "EP" signalling at the turn of the 19/20th C to miniature levers ( In polished brass! ) with miniature locking-frames, which would also only accept valid inputs. In some respects, modern software engineers ought to learn from their lessons.

    502:

    Troutwaxer @ 475: What I'm reading between the lines of this discussion is that railroad signalling systems go back much further than computers, particularly much further back than advanced theories of how data should modify code and vice-versa. So in trying to make things work you're essentially dealing with methods, theories, and assumptions which in some cases go back more than 200 years, and may still involve analog components. Then all this has to be integrated by systems which can talk to anything from a modern 5G transmitters to two cans tied together with string.

    Non-trivial doesn't begin to cover it.

    Not just between the lines. Many of modern computing's pioneers were members of the model railroad club at MIT and were modeling real world railroad systems.

    503:

    Reading the discussion/argument on railway signalling systems, for some reason I'm reminded of this xkcd cartoon:

    https://xkcd.com/793/

    504:

    Troutwaxer @ 476: The other side of this is that disciplinary methods for children have changed in the last several decades. I think that "minor" issues which would have been resolved by stricter discipline (note: stricter discipline is not necessarily a good thing) are now making it through to adulthood.

    Having raised a couple rugrats to something which vaguely resembles adulthood, I've seen the good and the bad of this play out. Some of the problems my kids have are certainly the result of less discipline. On the other hand, they don't experience the problems of having received too-harsh discipline. I just wish I'd managed to thread that needle a little better.

    Discipline does not have to be "harsh" to be effective. In fact, I believe "harsh" discipline is rarely effective. Nor is strict discipline the same thing as "harsh" discipline. My own upbringing was fairly strict, but rarely (if ever?) "harsh".

    The biblical exhortation to "spare the rod, spoil the child" doesn't refer to beatings, but to the shepherd's "rod" (crook) used to guide a flock. You don't beat the sheep with the rod. Why would you use it to beat your children?

    You want to guide them onto the path of righteousness, and that's what discipline is for.

    505:

    Damian @ 485:

    Two and Half Men

    Gah, you're probably right. I had in my head it was from somewhere and that's probably it. Still, I obviously need to mark humour better. :)

    If I'd never seen that and had to guess, I'd have said it was probably from the Monty Python Show.

    Poe's Law applies equally well to humor, religion and politics, and Deadpan doesn't come through so well in writing.

    506:

    "Discipline does not have to be "harsh" to be effective. In fact, I believe "harsh" discipline is rarely effective. Nor is strict discipline the same thing as "harsh" discipline. My own upbringing was fairly strict, but rarely (if ever?) "harsh".:

    I wouldn't have gone for harsh in any event. I fell down rather badly for _ reasons* _ when it came to being appropriately strict where various issues are concerned. (I wonder whether either of my kids will read the part in the book I'm currently writing where the Orc's mother apologizes for their childhood as being aimed at them.)

    • Not bloggable reasons. Suffice to say it was the old, tragic story, but by the grace of the Goddess tragedy was averted.
    507:

    p>Charlie Stross @ 497:

    You can carry a paperback book in a rucksack full of sharp pointy objects and never have to worry about cracking the screen or the battery dying before you finish reading it

    You carry a smartphone, right? Maybe even a ruggedized one? Weighs half as much as a paperback, can be dropped in a stream and pulled out and it still works, shatterproof screen, drop-proof and dust-proof? And enough storage to hold a couple of thousand ebooks. If that's a bit too small/off-brand for you, Samsung do a bigger ruggedized phone (link goes to the civilian/retail version, they also target corporate and military customers with a sibling at about 5x the price).

    You could even carry a USB solar charger if you're worried about power. (Yes, it weighs about as much as two paperbacks: but it's got multiple outputs, enough to charge a friend's phone at the same time as your own.

    Yeah, we're all of a certain age here -- but for anyone under 20, smartphones have been around since before they learned to read, and indeed are their main entertainment and reading device.

    I have a smartphone now. But IIRC, the first iPhone was announced in January 2007 and I retired from the Army in June 2007. We were not permitted to have personal cell phones of any kind while I was in Iraq. The cell phones we did have were Official Use Only and did not connect to the local net.

    I did have a personal laptop. Two of them in fact. The screen on the first one got smashed when I put it in my rucksack. I had to buy a replacement & have it shipped to me via APO New York. It took 30+ days to arrive. In the interim I used a MWR computer in an "Internet Cafe", mainly for email as we were limited to 30 minute sessions before we had to sign off so someone else could get on. For Official Use I could share the computer in the company office, but that only connected to the Army's intranet. Non-DoD sites were blocked.

    After I got my second computer I could do email in my quarters & save it to a USB stick (16MB) to take to the MWR computer, where I could also download any new email to take it back to my computer; which freed up most of my 30 minutes for general internet use.

    Plus, MWR did not stock eBooks (and still does not AFAIK), but they had plenty of paperback books.

    And, AFAIK, the Army still strongly discourages deployed soldiers from using personal smartphones for internet "down range" because they're a security risk. The U.S. Army recently banned Fitbit & internet fitness tracking apps for deployed troops:

    https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/06/devices-and-apps-that-rely-on-geolocation-restricted-for-deployed-troops/

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072

    MWR = Morale, Welfare & Recreation in case you were wondering.

    508:

    Reread "...where the Orc's mother apologizes for their childhood as being aimed at them.

    DAMN! My Freudian slip is showing!

    509:

    (Paraphrasing from one of the novels): "Read my lips. Ol' Bat Wings {Cthulhu} does not exist."

    Really? I don't remember anything of the sort at all :/

    Alternately, check TVTropes's entry for the Laundry Files for 'Unreliable Narrator'.

    Thank you!

    510:

    (Paraphrasing from one of the novels): "Read my lips. Ol' Bat Wings {Cthulhu} does not exist." Really? I don't remember anything of the sort at all :/

    Check out Equoid: https://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/ Not a novel, so you're both half-right.

    511:

    Whaaa ...?

    Call it déformation professionnelle if you like. I've probably had a certain dweebery hammered into me over the years when it comes to, uh, source criticism of historical documents, especially the journal kind.

    Start with the paperclip audits (which he dismisses as incomprehensible bullshit in "The Atrocity Archive" and then explains as a vital security countermeasure in "The Fuller Memorandum")

    I can't say I've sampled every available edition, but in my copies of the books Bob doesn't do that. He thinks they're annoying and he seems to imply they happen with a frequency that borders on abusive. But he never says no justification is being offered, nor does he say anything else about them we later learn is wrong. When we got to see what the point of the audits was in Chart, I thought Bob's conspicuous-in-hindsight whingeing in Archive, Morgue, and Memorandum was just really masterful foreshadowing.

    Look at how he perceives Mhari in TAA, and then who she turns out to be in "The Rhesus Chart", "The Annihilation Score", and "The Labyrinth Index". Look at how he thinks of Mo in the first five books, and compare with her unvarnished view of him in the sixth.

    I know how you feel about your characters; I've seen the Annihilation Score crib sheet and some other instances of Word of God. I'm just wondering if I should have been able to tell from the books themselves that Bob is blinkered and unfair whereas Mo is telling the "unvarnished" objective truth.

    It's clear they both press different emotional buttons in their respective significant others than they would have thought. But this happens to every person in every relationship. (Why yes, I am speaking from experience.) It wouldn't have made me dismiss either of them as unreliable, much less "horribly" unreliable.

    Bob and Mhari don't seem to really contradict each other even on the emotional buttons level: if Bob can have become a different person in the years between Archive and Chart, then surely so can Mhari.

    Or Bob's insistence that Cthulhu doesn't exist ("Equoid") or that vampires don't exist ("The Rhesus Chart")

    Hold up, unawareness of vampires was also afflicting the two narrators we're being told are reliable.

    As for Equoid, I have to admit I didn't know it was there; it's not in my copies of the books :/

    512:

    Thank you; I replied before I saw Charlie's comment pointing out Equoid.

    513:

    JBS The biblical exhortation to "spare the rod, spoil the child" doesn't refer to beatings, But 2000 years of christian practice says otherwise, eh?

    514:

    Andrew Wakefield (the vaccines >> autism guy) was most certainly a crook, had his medical license withdrawn in the UK after an investigation, and his published paper retracted with an apology by the journal in question.

    (Also: vaccines with the preservative he pointed to had been around for a long time before his claimed origin for the rise of autism. Also-also: he had a pecuniary interest in alternative treatments ...)

    515:

    There have been various studies that note the prevalence of engineers among the grandparents of those with autism…

    But diagnosis has improved. My mother spent a career as a primary school teacher; I can remember her in the 1970s/1980s being one of the first teachers in her school to talk about dyslexia (and yes, she trialled some of the early diagnostic tests on the rest of us). These days, dyscalculia and dysgraphia are more like to be heard than “they’re just dim, don’t bother” of my grandparents era.

    One of the reasons we chose the school we did for our sons, was the strength of its “Learning Support” department. They pointed out that they gave support to about a third of the secondary school (and had succeeded in destigmatising themselves); youngest benefited from their help, and has the exam results he needs for the universities of his choice…

    516: 497 You carry a smartphone, right? - Wrong. I have a cheapie with no camera, no capability to load, never mind display, e-pubs and a battery life of about 14 days. 498 - According to Wikipedia, the Glock entered production in 1982CE. 501 - Yep. Binary IO device, and built in data validation.
    517:

    For anyone interested in the history of railway safety, Red for Danger by LTC Rolt is an excellent read. A friend of mine was one of the last operators at Hammersmith signal cabin on the London Underground. A huuuuge edwardian era system controlling one of the busiest bits of railway in the world. Apparently it was a lovely thing to operate.

    Other fascinating areas of mechanical logic include things like EP control on electric trams and rolling stock, and automatic machine tools. I spent 6 months running a 1946 Lorenz gear shaping machine, the design was incredible. Did pretty much everything bar brew tea for you. Very little margin for error in setting though, pulling the start lever was a bum twitching experience every time!

    518:

    A fair way past 400, here's an article about a serious sail transport project in the works:

    https://splash247.com/longchamp-commits-to-greener-transatlantic-shipping-with-neoline/

    It's been an attractor here before, as it relates to several topics notably including supply chain in a post carbon world.

    519:

    We were not permitted to have personal cell phones of any kind while I was in Iraq. The cell phones we did have were Official Use Only and did not connect to the local net.

    Anecdata from a friend who was in Iraq with the RAF at roughly the same time, maybe a year or so later: phones were allowed, but there were issues. In particular, he had to make sure everything was switched off when convoying from one site to another, and warn his airmen about nasty tricks near the border: GSM phones with international roaming would sometimes roam onto Iranian cellco networks and the IRG liked to play dirty psywar tricks like snooping in on calls and later phoning the family back home and telling them their loved ones had been killed by an IED. Security was a concern -- even before smartphones added high grade differential GPS and stuff like exercise tracking apps that phoned home to a server that might not be terribly secure (and could be used to build up a map of personnel movements around secure installations).

    But at this point, smartphones are so ubiquitous that AIUI the emphasis has moved to infosec education among the ranks rather than trying to enforce a ban and driving the problem underground.

    520:

    Re Bob as unreliable, Charlie has given you some things that Bob just gets plain wrong, which he learns more about later in his career. (Paperclip audits, for instance.)

    For me though, "The Atrocity Archives" established this pretty damn well from the outset. Bob starts the book with a "yeah, I'm a bit clumsy and not totally down with this spy stuff" account of a break-in, and plenty of self-deprecation about his skills. So far, so standard for a fantasy book showing you the world through a novice's eye view.

    Then we have the training session. A self-described clumsy nerd engages trained (he invokes LEAP training) reflexes to club a possessed colleague to death with a fire extinguisher without a moment's hesitation. And under geas to guarantee honesty, we have the self-assessment that he's substantially more skilled than the professor running the training. (And professorships don't just get handed out with a cup of coffee.) Within the first couple of chapters of meeting him, we already know there's more going on in his head than what he's actually telling us.

    Then he meets the Artists Rifles. He already has strong enough skills to hold his own alongside elite special forces in combat - they take point, but he's their secret weapon. Angleton's training methods are certainly along the lines of "if duffers better drowned", but the Laundry isn't so short of resources that Bob is the only person available. Which should suggest a scary degree of competence.

    So either Bob is a massive Gary-Stu (and yeah, we do have to point out that a somewhat-out-of-shape geek is writing a character who's a geek able to fight alongside the SAS ;) or his self-description as just being just an average geek who's survived more through luck than ability is not entirely accurate.

    I would note too that ex-soldiers, and especially ex-draftee-soldiers, have this problem. The way we define "humanity" in civilian life tends to leave people who've seen active combat as "not entirely human" by the civilian definition, and it's the cause of an awful lot of mental health issues. Bob's apparent self-blindness is his way of dealing with that, and Mo calls it out fairly explicitly in "The Annihilation Score", but anecdotally this kind of compartmentalisation is not at all uncommon amongst ex-servicemen.

    521:

    "Equoid" isn't published in the UK; rights are held by Tor.com in North America. (There may be a Laundry short story collection in the UK at some future point, but first I need to write another novella before I've got enough material. If it happens, "Equoid" will definitely be part of it.)

    522:

    writing a character who's a geek able to fight alongside the SAS

    He's not really fighting alongside them: he's a technical specialist they've brought along and who isn't so useless they have to carry him.

    But the real tell in "The Atrocity Archive" is that Angleton takes him on -- that's DSS Angleton, the Deeply Scary Sorcerer everyone is terrified of -- and does so really fast. (Then we see more Bob in "The Concrete Jungle", kicking ass and taking names, before we even get to "The Jennifer Morgue", where for all his complaining, Bob is up against a Bond Villain. Who do you send to take down a Bond Villain? Well ...)

    523:

    I'm reminded of the Senior Radar technician/scientist who was taken along on The Bruneval Raid

    524:

    Speaking of Bond Villains, Elon's latest toy takes him another step along the path...

    525:

    Ferrets have been known to run up pant legs, this tends to really grab one's attention, fortunately, I know this 2nd hand. I also heard the scream when a coworker, out for a smoke on break, had a feral rat run up a pant leg.

    526:
    "Equoid" isn't published in the UK; rights are held by Tor.com in North America. (There may be a Laundry short story collection in the UK at some future point, but first I need to write another novella before I've got enough material. If it happens, "Equoid" will definitely be part of it.)

    Could I suggest some more tales of out-station agents pre-Nightmare Green?

    How about the Chelsea Flower Show?

    527:

    Nope.

    I'm writing barely any short fiction these days.

    The last two Laundry stories (other than the climactic novel(s) are: "Escape from Puroland" (waiting on a new title and some changes to avoid risk of unpleasantness), and "A Conventional Boy" (planned for several years, needs writing).

    528:

    re vaccines/autism/Wakefield: Harry Brewis (hbomberguy) did a video about the whole affair a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc

    A little longish, but quite illuminating (the shit just keeps piling up; it's really amazing).

    529:

    As we're well past 300 I hope I'm allowed a follow-up question to the topic of Bitcoin from a few posts ago:

    I have understood that Bitcoin transactions are limited, basically each newly mined Bitcoin allows for a very limited amount of transactions with existing Bitcoins to be made. Have I got this right?

    But then there is a hard limit on how many Bitcoins can be mined in total. According to expectations some time in the future (2040?) the last Bitcoin ever will be mined.

    So, what happens then about transactions? When the last Bitcoin is mined, does that mean that no transactions of Bitcoins will be possible ever again? Everybody is sitting on their wallet, but there is no mechanism any more for transferring Bitcoins from one wallet to another, or turning them into cash? Wouldn't then their effective value become zero? And wouldn't that lead to crashing their value as soon as the last Bitcoin is on the horizon? Shouldn't they therefore be in a downwards spiral already?

    What am I missing? Or is my impression simply false?

    530:

    a coworker, out for a smoke on break, had a feral rat run up a pant leg.

    isn't that just like, a rat?

    531:

    Bitcoin is a global ledger, where consensus is based on the hashes of the blocks in the ledger; a miner "claims" a block by finding the magic numbers needed to make the hash begin with enough zeros to have it get added to the global ledger.

    The first ever Bitcoin block was empty of transactions - instead, it contained only newly minted Bitcoins. As time goes on, the block becomes a mixture of newly minted Bitcoins and transactions; a transaction on the Bitcoin ledger consists of both the actual transfer the sender wants to have happen, and a "fee" for the miner who puts the transaction into the global ledger. Eventually, all blocks added to the ledger will be just transactions - the miner collects the transaction fees only, and does not get new coins.

    In theory, this means that you can mark a transaction as "important" by offering a higher fee with your transfer request - that incentivizes the miners to add your transaction to the block they're mining, in the hope of claiming its high transaction fee. Equally, if you offer a tiny transaction fee, the miners are less likely to add your transaction to the blockchain.

    So, once all 21 million Bitcoins have been mined, the ledger will still march on - but instead of miners being rewarded with new coins, they will simply collect transaction fees from users.

    532:

    On the subject of autism:

    https://news.sky.com/story/a-national-shame-mps-demand-an-end-to-some-autistic-people-being-detained-for-years-12354630

    When Sharon Clarke's autistic seventeen-year-old son was having difficulties with his mental health, she called a crisis line.

    She thought Ryan would be out of hospital in "a matter of weeks", but that was 15 years ago. Ryan, now aged 32, remains detained in a forensic psychiatry unit more commonly used to house criminals.

    He is one of around 2,000 people with autism or learning disabilities who are being kept in long-term institutional care. Ryan with his family Image: Ryan with his family

    Even though Ryan is not a criminal, his mother says the unit he lives in is "very much like a prison". He has been in long-term segregation for five years which Sharon Clarke describes as "horrendous and shocking".

    She believes his condition has seriously worsened over the years as he has become institutionalised.

    Because Ryan is being detained under the mental health act, his family cannot make decisions about his care. This, his mother says, "is something that needs to stop".

    An aside: Autism cannot be a pandemic, because autism is not something that needs to be cured. Yes, treatment options and assistance may be needed to help them and other neurodivergent people integrate into society, but the goal is integration, not suppression. Especially egregious is Applied Behavioral Therapy (ABA), which every autistic adult I have ever talked to equates to torture of the same sort as gay conversion therapy.

    533:

    Whilst looking for a properly edited copy, I found one seller claiming the volume was first published on Jan 1st 1684 (sixteeneightyfour).

    534:

    Bob is up against a Bond Villain. Who do you send to take down a Bond Villain?,/i>

    I thought Mo was Bond, and Bob was the Bond Girl (who the villains were supposed to think was Bond to distract them from the Real Bond). Did I get that wrong?

    535:

    Pet shop rats are a thing. Not only for snake food.

    536:

    People who work in medical labs likely think of rats in the feral and not category.

    537:

    Any number of Bond girls have been badasses in their own right. And of course this might be more of Bob's "Aw shucks," routine.

    538:

    Although I have the complete collection on BluRay, I haven't watched more than the second Casino Royale (which I actually saw in the theatre when it came out). Was under the impression that in the earlier films the Bond Girls were eye candy, but that's based on hearing other people talk about them.

    My takeaway from that scene was that Mo was more badass than Bob and he knew it. Not insisting on that interpretation, and haven't read the book in years. (Too many new books, too little time — which is also why I haven't watched the Bond films yet.)

    539:

    One of my nieces 'rescues' experimental rats. She gets them after the experiment is finished, and tries to give them an enjoyable life for the little time they have left (usually about a year). This is apparently A Thing with a network of people who do this.

    540:

    @524: Wow, they called a big drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas'? I strongly suspect someone at Space X has been reading Banks.

    Re: Autism. I spent 11 years working as a support worker in a 'community living' home with a couple of men who had severe developmental and behavioural issues. One of those men was on the far end of the spectrum and had a long history of violence.

    He had been a candidate for a padded room, 50 years ago he would probably have been lobotomized. 30 years ago he had multiple violent outbursts a day. When I started there 18 years ago he was down to one every couple of weeks, a result of a lot of support. When I left he hadn't been violent in over a year (though my leaving did result in some pyrotechnics on the day of). He (and his roommate) had a successful business, took care of their home and continue to be productive members of society. With 24 hour support from staff, but the point is it can be done.

    The point is that when I read about people being locked up in Bedlam because institutions don't know what to do with them, that is a monstrous proposition. Their human potential is squandered and it is a stain upon us all.

    541:

    Mo was definitely higher than Bob on the badass ranking, at least while she had the violin. Not sure who ranks who at this point.

    As to Bond girls, it's been awhile since I watched a Bond, film, but the last one I watched had Grace Jones as the Bond Girl, and I'm pretty sure she could have kicked my ass!

    542:

    Pet shop rats are a thing.

    not the most likely variety to be scuttling up your leg when you're on a smoke break though i'd have thought

    543:

    Wow, they called a big drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas'? I strongly suspect someone at Space X has been reading Banks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship#Names

    544:

    Definitely. I think we've discussed this here previously.

    545:

    You got it right but I wasn't going to spoiler my own plot twist!

    546:

    After we had a break in 30 years ago the police told us it was a LOUD dog that mattered. Actual size wasn't important as they would never be seen. They said they NEVER had to deal with break ins at houses with a loud barking dog that would wake up if strangers got close to the house.

    So, um, would the neighbors of the loud dog get any say in this arrangement? Because I have one near me now and I'm contemplating crimes far more heinous than a mere break in.

    547:

    So, um, would the neighbors of the loud dog get any say in this arrangement? Because I have one near me now and I'm contemplating crimes far more heinous than a mere break in.

    I live in the burbs. Apartments and such would be a different situation.

    The dogs we had after the break in would bark out the front window but in general not when in the fenced yard. Or for people we let in.

    When we take care of our daughter's two big dogs they tend to bark at all dogs they can see through the front window walking by on the side walk (but we're getting that down to bark and not bat shit crazy) and at dogs in the nextdoor yards that start barking at them. After a while (since ours were always the loudest) we started watching in person and via security cams. My daughter's dogs never bark first. Always in reply. So when the one "yap yap" dog on the other side of the mansion's fence starts in we sound much louder but we don't get much worked up as it never starts on our side.

    Now our the last dog we owned was interesting. There were two dogs in a bordering yard and the fence was see through. Smaller and larger. Smaller would go absolutely nuts with larger just going along. Our older 70 pound dog got to where for what I guess was dog amusement would walk up to that spot in the fence and just sit and watch the other two go absolutely nuts. And never make a sound. Just sit and watch.

    548:

    Yeah. I have a neighbour's dog who's loud most of the time. It's linda like the car alarm that goes off every time a squirrel approaches — at this point if a burglar showed up most of the street would actively not see anything.

    549:

    There's a trick to having a loud dog--have a smart loud dog.

    My mom had a dog who was in love with his voice. He was a hound dog who bayed and bugled, and made the hills echo, this being a rural canyon. Fortunately he was friendly, and loved the delivery men and the mailman. And the other dogs, and the neighbors. And my mom and other people. Being smart, he had a different vocalization for each one.

    Then there was the nasty jackass who lived down the road and liked to harass my mom. So one day he filed a complaint with animal control to get the loud dog removed. Fortunately, all the other neighbors loved the loud dog, because he told them who was on their road at all hours. They all filed affidavits saying how they had no problem with his barking, and the case went away, although the nasty jackass didn't.

    So the moral is this: try to make sure your loud dog is friendly with and serves everybody around you, and isn't just an nuisance-y alarm system that needs to be walked regularly.

    550:

    You can't expect Musk to call his ships Moonrakers after all. That would be too on the nose.

    551:

    Mo is already in Mahogany Row before Bob gets promoted. (Which would be a "dead man's shoes" promotion if both he and the person previously in that role were (a) fully human and (b) fully alive; but anyway.)

    My read is that they're different skillsets though. Mo and Johnny are pure battlefield badasses. Bob and Persephone are ritual magicians, which lets them deal with problems on a different level from simply killing it with overwhelming firepower.

    But after Angleton dies and Bob fully inherits the Eater of Souls, he doesn't just outrank Mo, he outranks Lecter. That's a cursed artifact which even the Senior Auditor couldn't control - and the new-and-improved Bob stops it with a word.

    552:

    Was under the impression that in the earlier films the Bond Girls were eye candy, but that's based on hearing other people talk about them.

    By Goldfinger they were definitely eye candy, named provocatively, and mostly sociopathic. And used the later to effect in the movies.

    553:

    Charlie Stross @ 514: Andrew Wakefield (the vaccines >> autism guy) was most certainly a crook, had his medical license withdrawn in the UK after an investigation, and his published paper retracted with an apology by the journal in question.

    (Also: vaccines with the preservative he pointed to had been around for a long time before his claimed origin for the rise of autism. Also-also: he had a pecuniary interest in alternative treatments ...)

    Yeah, that's the reason I described him as "a quack & a swindler".

    554:

    Martin @ 515: There have been various studies that note the prevalence of engineers among the grandparents of those with autism…

    But diagnosis has improved. My mother spent a career as a primary school teacher; I can remember her in the 1970s/1980s being one of the first teachers in her school to talk about dyslexia (and yes, she trialled some of the early diagnostic tests on the rest of us). These days, dyscalculia and dysgraphia are more like to be heard than “they’re just dim, don’t bother” of my grandparents era.

    One of the reasons we chose the school we did for our sons, was the strength of its “Learning Support” department. They pointed out that they gave support to about a third of the secondary school (and had succeeded in destigmatising themselves); youngest benefited from their help, and has the exam results he needs for the universities of his choice…

    Yeah, but medical science (and medical scientists) still can't tell us why Autism & related "disorders" appear to be on the rise at a rate higher than better diagnostic tools can account for. I'm not sure they even know where to start looking for the cause.

    It's good that it's being de-stigmatized and that educators have better tools to support those "on the spectrum", but it would be better still if "THEY" could figure out how what causes Autism (& related "disorders") and how to prevent it.

    "Disorders" in scare quotes because I want a better word that doesn't imply that those "on the spectrum" are somehow broken ... but I don't know what that word might be.

    555:

    paws4thot @ 516: #498 - According to Wikipedia, the Glock entered production in 1982CE.

    ... and didn't have a "safety catch" then either.

    556:

    ...didn't have a "safety catch" then either.

    Is "glock" German for "stupid?"

    557:

    You can't expect Musk to call his ships Moonrakers after all. That would be too on the nose.

    You mean too on the nosecone, am I right?

    ...

    I'll let myself out...

    558:

    ...didn't have a "safety catch" then either. Is "glock" German for "stupid?"

    It may be German for complicated integral trigger safety thingie.

    560: 537, #538 - Well I'd not like to be the one who called Wai Lin or Jinx anything other than equals for Bond. 555 - I thought we'd already covered "safety catch", and was just pointing out that it post-dates WW2.
    561:

    I did some reading. Apparently modern glocks can be ordered with a "real" safety. They've had the "complicated internal trigger safety thingy" since they were invented. It probably keeps a glock from discharging when it's dropped, for example, but doesn't render the trigger unpullable. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not.

    562:

    A friend, in the late seventies, I think, told me about an apartment building in NYC, where this guy broke in. The neighbors down the hall were treated, minutes later, to the sight of him running, followed by a short, slender woman, completely nude... and brandishing one of those African spears they sell for your wall.

    But then, esp. for women, I have the opinion that a lot of jerks think in terms of "she's just a girl, she won't use it", whereas if you pull out an edged weapon and come at them, their mindset shits to "JESUS H, She's a psycho! Run".

    I figure the same thing with me - if I ever had to pull a steel sword, they'd start thinking of cooks with meat cleavers, and run.

    563:

    Without discounting that there may indeed be disease or chemical causes for detrimental neurodiversity, here are some other things to think about.

    One is that there's this very human but tremendously annoying tendency to parse "diversity" as a problem known as "abnormality" and to penalize and/or treat it.

    Another is that standards of care and resources to care have increased enormously in the last century, real shortfalls not withstanding. People who have serious issues now were more likely to die young in the past.

    A third issue is that a number of things that are now problems were not problems in the past. People who have poor tolerance for interacting with other humans were not cripples in a rural past, where they could spend most of their time away from other humans, hunting, foraging, fishing, farming, or herding. Indeed, someone who got along better with horses than with humans could be more valued than someone who got along well with people, but who struggled to interact with nonhuman species and only had a score of people to interact with. Imagine a stereotypical math professor (Erdos, for example) trying to live as a forager. Both disability and ability are situational.

    I suspect there are more issues, but even the interactions among these three make for a lot of complexity and resulting diagnoses of severe abnormality.

    564:

    I see, so mining is an effort to own all land, and then you get rent forever.

    565:

    Reminds me of my late wife, and our big dog (curly-coated retriever, ~ 65-70lbs). He was smart. It didn't take him long to understand what I wanted, when I said "sideways" (rather than run in front of me...). We'd be walking along the street, and I remember some teens coming the other way, commenting on the dog, and asking, "is he a bad dog"? My late wife asked him, "Are you a bad dog", and he had somewhere between a baritone and a bass voice, and he barked.

    The kids backed away.

    566:

    Charlie Stross @ 519:

    We were not permitted to have personal cell phones of any kind while I was in Iraq. The cell phones we did have were Official Use Only and did not connect to the local net.

    Anecdata from a friend who was in Iraq with the RAF at roughly the same time, maybe a year or so later: phones were allowed, but there were issues. In particular, he had to make sure everything was switched off when convoying from one site to another, and warn his airmen about nasty tricks near the border: GSM phones with international roaming would sometimes roam onto Iranian cellco networks and the IRG liked to play dirty psywar tricks like snooping in on calls and later phoning the family back home and telling them their loved ones had been killed by an IED. Security was a concern -- even before smartphones added high grade differential GPS and stuff like exercise tracking apps that phoned home to a server that might not be terribly secure (and could be used to build up a map of personnel movements around secure installations).

    But at this point, smartphones are so ubiquitous that AIUI the emphasis has moved to infosec education among the ranks rather than trying to enforce a ban and driving the problem underground.

    I'm pretty sure my cell phone wouldn't have worked in Iraq even if I had tried to sneak it in. I don't think U.S. cell phones were compatible with international networks at the time (2004). I don't know if they are today.

    I don't know what special precautions might have been required using the OFFICIAL USE phones that were issued because I wasn't high enough on the food chain to rate being issued one. I just know U.S. forces had their own networks.

    The FOB I was assigned to was less than 20 miles from the Iran border, and every morning while doing PT I could see the Zagros Mountains in Iran backlit by the rising sun. In the evening the mountains were lit up by the setting sun, but most days the sky was so full of smog from the brick factories just outside of our FOB that it was mostly just a brown haze.

    Many of the convoy operations I participated in came even closer to the border, within 5 miles or so, but you couldn't see very much except for the scars from the Iran/Iraq war.

    The last day I was in country was particularly clear & I climbed up on top of the building I lived/worked in and took photos of snow capped peaks on those mountains in Iran. I took 5000+ photos during my tour, but not enough of them captured the beauty I saw there. That's my biggest regret about the whole adventure.

    I expect someday Iraq veterans may get to return to Iraq the way Vietnam War vets get to visit Vietnam today, but I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime. I wish I could go back as a tourist. There's so much I'd like to visit; beautiful things I only glimpsed for a moment through the window of a speeding HMMWV ...

    567:

    Charlie Stross @ 521: "Equoid" isn't published in the UK; rights are held by Tor.com in North America. (There may be a Laundry short story collection in the UK at some future point, but first I need to write another novella before I've got enough material. If it happens, "Equoid" will definitely be part of it.)

    As it happens, "Equoid" is the only Laundry Files book I have in hard cover. Subterranean Press 2014. I found it from an online bookseller in Canada (IIRC).

    568:

    Adrian Smith @ 530:

    a coworker, out for a smoke on break, had a feral rat run up a pant leg.

    isn't that just like, a rat?

    Never had a rat try to run up my pant leg, but there some BIG DAMN RATS running around on the rebar when I was working as a rod-buster (iron worker, reinforcing) on the Shearon-Harris Nuclear Power Plant. Three hundred feet straight up on the side of the containment building. And feral cats chasing them.

    569:

    Robert Prior @ 534:

    Bob is up against a Bond Villain. Who do you send to take down a Bond Villain?

    I thought Mo was Bond, and Bob was the Bond Girl (who the villains were supposed to think was Bond to distract them from the Real Bond). Did I get that wrong?

    That's the way I read it, but they did give him the car (even if it wasn't an Aston Martin) and he got all those other cool gadgets to play with to distract the villain into thinking Bob was the Bond character.

    570:

    Gilbert Gottfried reciting the Lintany Against Fear. TRIGGER WARNING: The end of this goes badly off track, and includes much sexual obscenity.

    https://www.cameo.com/v/60eb070e06c104001d38adca?fbclid=IwAR2Apk3WexOPYJ6i99paVM98jV89cJhpYonBURZZZ2Q_ZMB8HS01fEAQy44&_branch_match_id=943836296480567940&utm_source=SMS&utm_campaign=ViewCameoCompletedSMS&utm_medium=system

    You may need to try a couple times to load it.

    571:

    Troutwaxer @ 541: Mo was definitely higher than Bob on the badass ranking, at least while she had the violin. Not sure who ranks who at this point.

    As to Bond girls, it's been awhile since I watched a Bond, film, but the last one I watched had Grace Jones as the Bond Girl, and I'm pretty sure she could have kicked my ass!

    IIRC, the villain had set it up so that the scheme was linked to some kind of Spy Movie Trope which constrained the Laundry's response to follow the script of a certain well known spy movie series. So the Laundry sends Bob equipped with all the Bond paraphernalia, paired with Ramona as the "Bond Girl" to distract the villain who knowing the script is prepared in advance to thwart all of Bob's "Bond" like moves.

    But it's also a comment on sexism, because the villain fails to recognize is that the trope allows for TWO Bond girls, the good Bond girl and the bad Bond girl, and Angleton is subverting the trope by pulling a gender switcheroo - Bob is the "good girl", Ramona is the "bad girl" (the Grace Jones part from A View to a Kill) and it's Mo who is issued the "license to kill".

    The villain expects "Bond" to be male and fixates on Bob, and his scheme falls apart when it turns out that "Bond" is a SHE in this version of the trope.

    But for me, the real fun part is that the actual mastermind behind the plot (a chthonian?) was the white Persian cat.

    572:

    I had pet rats (also known as fancy rats) for many years. I would give them an hour of exercice outside their cage, using my bathroom. When the hour was over I would pick them up, place them on my shoulders and return them to their cage and feed them.

    They got used to this. So, after a few weeks when about an hour of exercice had gone by they would, without being prompted, climb up my pant legs then up my sweater, and perch themselves on my shoulders. There, they would for me to return them to their cage and feed them.

    573:

    Troutwaxer @ 556:

    ...didn't have a "safety catch" then either.

    Is "glock" German for "stupid?"

    Austrian I believe ... or maybe Swiss. Glock handguns DO have a "safety", just not a "safety catch" or de-cocking lever. Glock says it's a safety.

    I'm not a big fan of Glock, because they have had problems with negligent discharges when dropped. The Beretta did not.

    That's one of the reasons why Beretta beat them out in the competition to choose a new U.S. Army standard sidearm to replace the old M-1911 pistols and why SIG Sauer beat them out in the recent competition to replace the Beretta.

    The new M-17/M-18 (SIG Sauer P320) uses a striker firing mechanism (without an external hammer) similar to the Glock, but has an "ambidextrous thumb safety" that Glocks lack.

    574:

    Troutwaxer @ 561: I did some reading. Apparently modern glocks can be ordered with a "real" safety. They've had the "complicated internal trigger safety thingy" since they were invented. It probably keeps a glock from discharging when it's dropped, for example, but doesn't render the trigger unpullable. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not.

    It doesn't always keep it from discharging if it's dropped. Of course any firearm could discharge if it's dropped, but the Glock appears to be much more prone to doing so than other designs incorporating a "safety catch"

    575:

    In re: Heteromeles @ 563:

    Those are all good reasons why I don't like the word "disorder". It implies a brokenness that I don't think is appropriate.

    576:

    The talent agent asks what the act is called and fear, litany and obliteration say in unison, The Aristocrats!

    577:

    The Jennifer Morgue is probably the best book in the series.

    I'll list the mainline books from my favorite to my least-favorite:

    The Jennifer Morgue: Definitely the most fun of all the books, particularly the relationship between Bob and Ramona. I should probably watch a couple Bond movies and read it again.

    The Atrocity Archives: A good introductory novel. I've ranked it near the top mainly because the chapters where Bob and Mo are in the alternate reality where Hitler won are an amazing example of scary, creepy writing; perfect high-test nightmare fuel. Charlie, I'd be in heaven if you tried your hand at serious horror!

    The Nightmare Stacks: Another fun novel. It moves fast and the idea of the manic-pixie girlfriend being a real pixie is just terrific, and I love watching Alex start the book as a bit of a wimp and end the book as a grade-A badass.

    The Fuller Memorandum: I love the way this book shows the perfect cascade of one failure after another. As things get worse and worse the book gets better and better, and plays very well with the trope of the villain as a top-notch boss!

    The Annihilation Score: Mo gets her day to both shine and describe the action, and I love both her POV and the way she disintegrates throughout the plot.

    The Labyrinth Index: Better than most of the nth books in any series, but not one of my big favorites for a couple reasons; first, that I couldn't get over the description of Cthulhu as some kind of person-suit wearing wasp-larvae, and second because the whole depiction of how America works under a supernatural crisis doesn't work for this native of the U.S. It just didn't quite feel right.

    The Delirium Brief: More Schiller, but not in the U.S. so it doesn't make me terribly uncomfortable. But it had a bit of the feeling of (1.) a transitional novel, and (2.) a bit of a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks feeling." Not a bad book, but definitely not up to the best in the series.

    The Apocalypse Codex: By any sane measure this is one of the best books in the series, but as an inhabitant of the U.S. it makes me really uncomfortable, so I haven't read it more than 2-3 times. It's definitely NOT comfort reading for any American, and the vision of he U.S. is startlingly accurate, at least in religious/cultural terms. It sticks the landing like it was Simone Biles, but it's very hard to read.

    The Rhesus Chart: Vampires. In a Lovecraftian reality... ~sighs~ The one really good thing about the book is that it brings Alex and Mhari into the series, and they're both good characters, particularly Alex, who's progress from schlub to badass is one of the amazing arcs in the later books.

    I also just had a "writing as a British espionage writer" revelation. After the New Management comes in the real/secret Laundry is in a very similar situation to the Circus at the beginning of "The Honorable Schoolboy." It's not hard at all to imagine the SA as Smiley.

    578:

    P.S. The timed crying in The Annihilation Score is amazing. Simultaneously functional and completely over-the-top batshit-level fucked up!

    579:

    Austrian I believe ... or maybe Swiss. Glock handguns DO have a "safety", just not a "safety catch" or de-cocking lever. Glock says it's a safety.

    Apologies to those for whom this is egg-sucking; Austrian (it's SIG who are the Swiss mob). I should also note that nearly all my experience is with long weapons, very little with pistols; in my era, the thinking was that for the weight of a pistol, you'd be better off carrying another two 30-rd magazines for your rifle.

    The Glock "safe action system" is that they have a trigger safety (and a couple of mechanical interlocks to supposedly stop it going bang if dropped or hit). Hence AIUI the advice for Glock users: "Keep your finger off the trigger. No, keep it off the trigger. Really, KEEP IT OFF THE TRIGGER"; when the British Army selected it as their new service pistol, they also specified a rigid holster that completely shields the trigger area.

    By contrast, most other pistols have safety catches on the outside; occasionally magazine safeties (no firing unless a magazine is fitted - see the Browning 9mm); and sometimes grip safeties (no firing unless the pistol grip is held firmly - usually appearing on American designs). SIG introduced "decocking levers" that didn't cause as much of a problem, I think because you then needed a heavier trigger pull to recock the pistol and fire it.

    580:

    Right wing populist suffering from ... hiccups: After 10 days of hiccups, Brazil’s Bolsonaro may need surgery - Brazilian president’s office says Jair Bolsonaro is suffering from an intestinal blockage and may need emergency surgery. To be clear, some suspect that it may be causally related to a previous stabbing: His office said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that Bolsonaro, who has required several surgeries since being stabbed in the abdomen at a political rally in 2018, was suffering from an intestinal blockage. but there are other theories: A specialist in Brasília told O Globo that Bolsonaro’s hiccups could be caused by the dental implant because of oral and phrenic nerve relationships. The specialist said it was unlikely that the stabbing had anything to do with the hiccups.

    581:

    Para 3- That is nothing to do with "being a Glock"; it is the second rule of gun safety regardless of make and model. The FIRST RULE is, of course, "Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot at".

    582:

    The FIRST RULE is, of course, "Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot at".

    Which creates a lot of interesting horse and cart order issues with police cultures where pointing guns is commonplace.

    583:
    But for me, the real fun part is that the actual mastermind behind the plot (a chthonian?) was the white Persian cat.

    AIUI the cat is indeed an avatar for the chthonian entity. I am not sure, however, what this entity's plot exactly is, as the chthonians usually don't interact with humans at all. Or is its intention simply to thwart the Bond Villain's plans by any means necessary? I have to admit that it has been quite a while since I read TJM, so my memory is fuzzy about it.

    584:

    It's not hard at all to imagine the SA as Smiley.

    Interesting thought, but I'm not entirely sure I follow. Do you mean the way that at the beginning of The Honourable Schoolboy not only is Smiley restoring an organisation that has been thoroughly corrupted, but is also dealing with a new government with a different view on the use of spies (as in, you shouldn't use them)? Or that Smiley's competing with the "cousins" to a large extent? I can sort of see "the vibe of the thing" being a bit aligned, though I'm not so sure about direct parallels...

    586:

    Para the last - Charlie has denied this, but I've always thought that Angleton is at least a bit like George Smiley spymaster.

    587:

    I'm pretty sure my cell phone wouldn't have worked in Iraq even if I had tried to sneak it in. I don't think U.S. cell phones were compatible with international networks at the time (2004).

    You were either on Verizon, whose CDMA tech at the time was only used in Japan and South Korea, or possibly one of the other also-ran US networks who used GSM but on weird frequencies not used internationally. My friend was a Brit so using a 2G GSM phone at the time, i.e. the international standard.

    I think you're right about the veterans not getting to go back and visit within your lifetime. In Vietnam, there was at least some pretense about the US military being invited in by the South Vietnamese government: Iraq was a bare-faced invasion followed by a fucked-up occupation.

    588:

    It's definitely NOT comfort reading for any American, and the vision of he U.S. is startlingly accurate, at least in religious/cultural terms.

    It probably helps that (a) I'm not from a Christian background at all, and (b) although I'm not an American, I've spent probably a couple of years in total in the USA, and more years working for a US multinational overseas, which is distant enough to still have an alienated viewpoint but close enough to be partially enculturated. (Did I mention having been trained to write in idiomatic American English in the early 1990s, as a technical author? That sort of thing.) Oh, and (c) had American editors all along.

    But it's almost impossible to get a story set in another culture note-perfect. Much easier to write a person from culture A (your own) visiting culture B (the setting, which you're at least familiar with).

    589:

    I haven't read the Smiley books. Not one of them.

    590:

    What was involved in being taught to write idiomatic American English?

    Bolsonaro reminds me of a hiccough cure I just read about-- try to make yourself hiccough immediately after you hiccoughed. The description made it sound effective, but I haven't tested it.

    It's at least easier to teach than my hiccough cure-- there's what I can only describe as a hiccoughish feeling between hiccoughs. Pay attention, feel it, and make it go away.

    591:

    What was involved in being taught to write idiomatic American English?

    I don't know if this is a part of it but the difference in what constitutes the use of single or plural verbs feels like speed bumps as I read non US English writers.

    Doesn't matter who is "right". It just doesn't fit with what decades of usage tell my brain is to be expected.

    592:

    The Smiley books were groundbreaking in their day, much like Len Deighton. In terms of "atmosphere", they apparently nailed it - unsurprisingly, as David Cornwell was a member of the Intelligence Service for several years...

    ...I liked the apocryphal story that the some of the slang he invented for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was adopted by Service members...

    593:

    Supposedly the "mob" in the NYC area adopted mannerisms and slag from the Godfather movie. To an extent that later many thought Mario Puzo had done a great job researching such and got it so right.

    594:
    But for me, the real fun part is that the actual mastermind behind the plot (a chthonian?) was the white Persian cat.

    Surely this was a caththonian entity?

    595:

    ...at the beginning of The Honourable Schoolboy not only is Smiley restoring an organisation that has been thoroughly corrupted, but is also dealing with a new government with a different view on the use of spies...

    Yes. You're pretty much seeing what I'm seeing.

    596:

    Angleton is modeled after a different spymaster, one who worked for the OSS? Or maybe the CIA?

    597:

    It's long been enlightening to me, as an historian generally*, but particularly as one whose specialty is the history of the US and institutional slavery and the consequential institutional racism of all our systems from political to economic to criminal -- that between them, Puzzo and Coppola created the origin mythology for Italian Americans, and how they became Americans. Not only does it follow the original origin mythology of this US from colonial times, which is the single man with a gun performing justified violence to set things right -- most of all it was done via screen, which propagated that origin myth as historical reality. All of which shows how very young this country is, that we can trace these matters without difficulty via documentary history -- and so young are we that movies and tv and recording are part of our documented history.

    *As to how history gets made, and so much of it is consciously made-up. For one big instance that we can also trace in terms of documentation, see Charlemagne and his conscious, directed use of ecclesiastics, poets and minstrels.

    598:

    The Honourable Schoolboy is a novel that's all about limited successes in a landscape of terrible failures, and how that ultimately plays out.

    It is the also story of the Circus (a British intelligence organization,) just after Philby had done his work and been exposed, though Le Carre doesn't call him Philby. All the networks have been rolled up by the Russians, the organization has had to demobilize all its foreign outposts, the agent-runners Philby managed have all had their agents sent after useless targets, etc. The Circus is a pile of smoking, bureaucratic wreckage.

    However, Smiley, (who's nothing like Angleton, pretty much his opposite, in fact) is determined to go onto the offense as soon as possible. So he calls in one of the part-time agents who hasn't been blown by Philby and sends him off to Southeast Asia just as the U.S. is winding down the Vietnam War, to follow up the one reliable lead Smiley has about how he can strike back against his Russian counterpart.

    The prose is amazing, the literary targets are clear, the bureaucratic and interpersonal ugliness has been carefully written to be just barely bearable by the reader, and there's very little violence.* It is, in short, an absolute classic of the genre and every word is note-perfect, with the exception of the fact that it was written in the mid-seventies, and the reader must adjust for a couple racial insensitivities. (It was very, very good with regard to race for the time, but is not up to modern standards. Nonetheless, all the Asian characters are fully realized human beings who are not badly stereotyped.)

    It's definitely one of my favorite books, and I'd very strongly suggest it, whether for Laundry-related purposes or just for pure enjoyment.

    • There are definite similarities to the plight of George Smiley's' Circus and the Laundry's situation after being outsourced. I'd expect that the Senior Auditor's priorities and Smiley's are also similar...
    599:

    I've been wondering whether people could get a little slack for handling heat though genetic engineering for big ears (preferably foldable in case of cold) and/or a liftable fin on the back.

    My hypothesis is that the super-duper rich might feel too secure to want to do something like that to their children, but the fair-to-middling tech rich might think it's a good bet. And genetic engineering is presumably only going to get cheaper and more reliable.

    I find it surprising that an animal as large as an elephant gets significant cooling from ears which aren't very big compared to the elephant.

    Mobile ears can also be used for emotional expression and probably as a sort of dance.

    600:

    I find it surprising that an animal as large as an elephant gets significant cooling from ears which aren't very big compared to the elephant.

    You'll need the network of blood vessels as well, and flapping would also be useful.

    And of course, to get the proper cooling effect you can't wear hair styles that cover the ears…

    601:

    The Cat and the Cthonian...

    I'd always taken it that the Cthonian, being somewhat undead at that point, had possessed the cat, as well as using the GRAVEDUST phone system to talk to the human, as well as geasing the human nine ways from Sunday to do what they wanted.

    They, because I'm not sure how gender works with Cthonians.

    Anyway, when the cat got offed (sad!), the Cthonian revived, thrashed around, and was sent back to the sea floor after killing a few mooks and baddies.

    Now...about them Cthonian thingies. Thinking about it now, I see strong parallels between Branson, Musk, Bezos, and the two Cthonians who set out to conquer the upper world. It's not like the Cthonians are a serious threat, with two coming up to deal with our low-pressure environments, and the Earth is already set (via plate tectonics) to recycle elements stranded on the surface back to where the Cthonians need them. So arguably, the Cthonian in this case is as guanomaniacal as the tycoon he suborns.

    Why would the Deep Ones fear the Cthonians? No real idea, unless the Deep Ones really are an abyssal life form. If this is the case, their most productive gardens will be around thermal fields, and these only last a matter of decades. And are dependent on the Cthonians. If this is the case, not pissing off Them Below seems like a perfectly reasonable long-term strategy for the Deep Ones to insure their food supply. Retaliating against the Cthonians is ridiculously difficult, due to their environment.

    The one thing the Deep Ones could do to annoy Them Below is to fire off something like Cumbre Vieja or trigger a big landslide on any active volcano over a mid-ocean hotspot. The reason is that hotspots islands, like the Canaries, Galapagos, and Hawaiian chain, are about as close to the Cthonian environment as we can get on the surface. You get these godsawful landslides on volcanoes because the lava piles up, sheet on sheet, gets to a supercritical angle, then shears off (often through between-sheet failure) with the rather large blocks falling into the deep and making a really big and non-directional tidal wave. Problem is, taking that much weight off an active volcano may well trigger an eruption. This sucks, literally, for nearby Cthonians. While they have to tolerate it naturally happening, I suspect the ones local to an triggered eruption might take offense at someone triggering such a landslide for political reasons, same way you'd get annoyed if someone broke your sewer line being careless.

    Also, I've seen models of what would happen when the Hilina Slump goes. It's downslope from Kilauea, and as such is basically pointed at South America. However, the worst waves from the slide (300 meters, perhaps?) curl around the shores of the Big Island and hit Maui and the rest of the chain before anything else. Assuming the simulation is accurate, a big landslip is more like a bomb going off than a gun to be fired at long range. Also, the slide displaces water at 200 mph, so deep sea beings don't particularly want to be in the area either.

    Now if you want some sick speculation, it might be that a faction of the Deep Ones were promoting CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, as a way to get a large transfer of materials from the surface to the deeps. The abyssal plane is one of the bigger nutrient deserts on the planet, so getting metric butt-tons of stuff raining down is industrial manna from heaven to a deep sea industrial society. Unfortunately, the ocean's taking up half the CO2 we surface monkeys are emitting and going anoxic in the process, so the Deep Ones should now be in the business of fighting climate change by getting the monkeys to switch to a magic-based economy not based on fossil fuels (ahem!), and also towards getting human numbers down so they don't think seriously (ahem!) about deep sea mining or make the various abysses too oxygen-poor for the Deep Ones. The Deep Ones have vastly superior technology, but I seriously doubt they have the same volume of military resources as those on the surface. So they do better being strategic than, say, using UK/US industrial bludgeoning tactics to get their way.

    Long story short, the Deep Ones may well support The New Management.

    602:

    Maybe Ramona was there to get some nano-tech into the vicinity of Mahogony Row, or some such. Maybe here is a gift (mind-control device) for you (so you'll unleash the Black Pharoah instead of calling on something else for help) when Schiller shows up in the UK, or whatever.

    Also, are we assuming that the Laundryverses's Deep Ones already have a relationship with Dagon and Hydra?

    603:

    I have always understood it was the case that a lot of Vietnamese knew that, in general, the draftees did not want to be there, plus there was respect for each other (cf Phred, in Doonesbury).

    604:

    I'm suspecting there's other issues with him. Part of the reason is that I read, 10 or more years ago, that there was a medical cure for hiccups, and they used it on some woman who had been hiccuping for over a year: you give the patient a mask, and they breathe pure ammonia, then quick give them O2.

    605:

    Have you ever read Gilbert Shelton (of the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros) version of the American Revolution https://www.amazon.com/Give-liberty-revised-American-Revolution/dp/B0000E9UO6

    ? Let me put it this way: women have a lot more to say. Oh, and the "shot heard 'round the world"? It seems a bunch of militia showed up, waiting for the British, and they, naturally, waited in the inn. The drunk in the company "liberated" a bottle of champagne, and when they were outside, lined to, to face the British, he finally got the cork to come out....

    606:

    O gosh is The Honorable Schoolboy good. But then so are so many other of the author's titles. It's difficult for me to choose which ones I think are best.

    Even the books where we may now view the background scenery differently because we've learned more, remain, in terms of what was known at the time, superb works.

    The "new world order" threw the author off his stride for a while, but the old world order returned, i.e. Russia the bad bad bad, and the US the fat bumbling fool, with the now extra dolloping of leader of international fascism.

    So sorry the author died, though at least filled with years and good living, and true to his convictions to the end.

    607:

    You need to keep your distance from bears, know what to do when you encounter a bear, and make damn sure you don't endanger the bears by being stupid with food or garbage.

    And we just had our 4th one in the last month. This time it was an adolescent spotted in a tree of a large local hospital complex parking area. A few cops kept everyone away. And after a day or so they put out jelly donuts and sardines. He came down, had a quick snack, then headed off. Likely to the greenway that is nearby to continue looking for a new place to live in the mountains since he was a size that mama likely recently told him to go away.

    608:

    you give the patient a mask, and they breathe pure ammonia, then quick give them O2

    If you make a human being (or any other mammal) breathe pure ammonia, that will kill them quickly and painfully. Ammonia is weakly soluble in water -- like the fluid lining your lungs -- forming ammonium hydroxide, which is strongly basic (alkaline).

    609:

    It was a cure for the hiccups. No one said the patient had to live.

    610:

    I recently read all the Smiley books, most of them for the first time (I'd read Tinker Tailor as a standalone several years ago but didn't really remember it that well). Of the series, I think I liked Honourable Schoolboy the best... not least since it's one that will most likely never become a movie (back in the day, there wasn't a serial of it with Alec Guinness because the required location travel was too expensive for the time... today it would be more about the way its expansiveness is different in its appeal to the quite claustrophobic books before and after).

    611:

    Damien & others I TRIED just ONE "Smiley" book - "A small town in Germany" BORING BORING, Boring, boring & dull & uninteresting & plodding ... What the bloody fuck is supposedly so good about this trash? ALSO: "le Carre" was notorious for saying: nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity w.r.t. the "Satanic Verses" ... well mate, you can stick that where the sun don't shine! [ OTOH he was correct about Brexshit ]

    612:

    A Small Town in Germany wasn't a Smiley book. And I would agree that Le Carre could sometimes go on rather boringly. This is why I'd suggest Honourable Schoolboy - it's got a good balance between descriptive passages and "stuff happening."

    Le Carre himself wasn't happy with "Small Town."

    613:

    I TRIED just ONE "Smiley" book - "A small town in Germany" BORING BORING, Boring, boring & dull & uninteresting & plodding ... What the bloody fuck is supposedly so good about this trash?

    Well, that was one of his first books; and making a sweeping and insulting assertion about a respectable and respected body of work, based on a single data point, seems... foolish.

    Perhaps you might want to try another; considering that if quite so many people are rather enthusiastic about the books, that perhaps your opinion needs reexamined rather than theirs?

    (Dad was enthusiastic about the HUMINT aspects of "A Perfect Spy"; particularly the recruitment and handling aspects of the story)

    614:

    Charlie Stross @ 587:

    I'm pretty sure my cell phone wouldn't have worked in Iraq even if I had tried to sneak it in. I don't think U.S. cell phones were compatible with international networks at the time (2004).

    You were either on Verizon, whose CDMA tech at the time was only used in Japan and South Korea, or possibly one of the other also-ran US networks who used GSM but on weird frequencies not used internationally. My friend was a Brit so using a 2G GSM phone at the time, i.e. the international standard.

    It was GTE Cellular. I got my first cell phone some time in the late 80s (1988-1990). It was an analog phone similar to the Motorola bag phones, but without the bag. I got it because I was traveling extensively for the alarm company. I had a pager so they could contact me, but I couldn't always find a a pay phone in a convenient location traveling some North Carolina back road (because my customers were all over the state & not always in big cities - people out in the country need nearby stores & that's what we mostly did, provided service for small store chains no matter how Podunk the "town" their store was located in).

    But I bought it for MY convenience, so I could make phone calls. The company did not pay for it.

    I started with Cellular One. There weren't many choices and they had the best coverage here in NC at the time.

    Cellular one were acquired by Sprint who were acquired by General Telephone & Electronics and eventually became Altell who were purchased by Verizon a few years ago. At each acquisition, the two networks would get added together, so I never saw coverage diminish as you might think would happen in a corporate merger.

    But IIRC it was still GTE at that time. And probably not CDMA, because I had to get a new phone when it became Altell (and again when it became Verizon) even before I got the iPhone. I really just have a cell phone so I can make phone calls, although I do occasionally find other uses for things it can do.

    I took a picture of something this morning so I can show it to my doctor at my next appointment.

    I think you're right about the veterans not getting to go back and visit within your lifetime. In Vietnam, there was at least some pretense about the US military being invited in by the South Vietnamese government: Iraq was a bare-faced invasion followed by a fucked-up occupation.

    The Iraqis could have forgiven the invasion if it weren't for the fucked-up occupation that followed.

    There are still American Soldiers in Iraq, even if they are not there as occupiers. My old National Guard unit was there again in 2019, NW Iraq fighting ISIL in eastern Syria; they were there at the request of the Iraqi government (participated in driving ISIL out of Iraq) ... not my old unit specifically, but as part of U.S. forces providing assistance to the Iraqi government in their fight against ISIL. It was just their turn in the barrel again.

    615:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 590: What was involved in being taught to write idiomatic American English?

    For one thing we use the letter 'u' a lot less frequently, & our cars have a hood, while theirs have a bonnet and what they call a "hood" is what we call a convertible top.

    Bolsonaro reminds me of a hiccough cure I just read about-- try to make yourself hiccough immediately after you hiccoughed. The description made it sound effective, but I haven't tested it.

    It's at least easier to teach than my hiccough cure-- there's what I can only describe as a hiccoughish feeling between hiccoughs. Pay attention, feel it, and make it go away.

    The best cure I've found for hiccups (there's another idiomatic Americanism) is hold a paper bag over your mouth & nose and try to breathe normally. I think it's something to do with CO2 building up in your blood soothing (calming? paralysing?) the nerve that's spasming.

    You can get appropriate size bags for free from McDonald's et al.

    616:

    JReynolds @ 594:

    But for me, the real fun part is that the actual mastermind behind the plot (a chthonian?) was the white Persian cat.

    Surely this was a caththonian entity?

    Hmmmm? Don't know whether to groan or cheer? ... or purr.

    617:

    you give the patient a mask, and they breathe pure ammonia, then quick give them O2 If you make a human being (or any other mammal) breathe pure ammonia, that will kill them quickly and painfully. Ammonia is weakly soluble in water -- like the fluid lining your lungs -- forming ammonium hydroxide, which is strongly basic (alkaline).

    https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/erj/6/4/563.full.pdf

    Ammonia, smelling salts, and lemon are listed in the above article as home remedies. The idea is to SNIFF them, presumably to disrupt whatever periodic signal in the vagus nerve is causing the spasms.*

    The article goes into other causes of extended hiccups. Abdominal surgery is one of them, and I'd suggest getting perforated with a knife is pretty close to the same problem. Treatments for long-term hiccups do not involve putting ammonia into your lungs, but rather things like metoclopramlde, chlorpromazine, and baclofen.

    *Interesting anecdata: one of the major TCM meridians runs right down the front line of the body, from the tongue to the perineum. At least part of this course is structures connected to the vagus nerve. It looks like fiddling with signalling on the vagus nerve may affect pretty much every organ that's enervated by part of the vagus nerve. This might be part of why sticking needles in some part of the body connected to this nerve affects other organs also connected to the nerve. It could be signal hacking, worked out empirically by doing things like trying to get rid of hiccups.

    618:

    This all is delightfully interconnected; hundreds of millions of years of evolution of tetrapods with inner worms: Review: Microbiota-gut-brain axis: enteroendocrine cells and the enteric nervous system form an interface between the microbiota and the central nervous system. (2020) And yes, the vagus nerve is involved (it's like 80 percent afferent neurons): From these results, the vagus nerve and the ENS are considered to be important to the neural pathway modulation of the constitutive communication between the gut microbiota and the brain. However, to identify the nerves affected by the microbiota, further study is needed. Furthermore, to determine whether the effects are due to the direct stimulation of vagal afferent nerve terminals or are secondary to the effects on the ENS, more study is required.

    619:

    On the subject of feline overlords, this talk explains a great deal.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uNOLQGk7QLk

    620:

    Oh, Sprint. Utterly incompatible with everyone else on the planet, basically. I'd forgotten about them.

    (My first cellphone was a Nokia GSM phone from my employer in 1995; I got my own cellphone after they went bust in 1996 so I could stay in touch while doing on-site contract work, and again: it was a GSM phone. In fact, I stuck with GSM right up until 3G (WDCMA) came along and I had a month-long trip to Japan in 2007. Japan was one of the handful of places other than the USA that didn't do GSM, but WCDMA just about worked there, and by the time I got home the advantages of 3G were obvious (mobile data!).

    621:

    For one thing we use the letter 'u' a lot less frequently, & our cars have a hood, while theirs have a bonnet and what they call a "hood" is what we call a convertible top.

    Yep.

    Also "pavement" = "sidewalk", "lift" = "elevator", and a raft of less-obvious word alternates. Different plural possessives. Weird assumptions about all sorts of things, from consumer protection law to what the number plate on a car signifies and how the roads are paid for and what public holidays exist (and when). I'm pretty sure that rabbit hole goes at least halfway to the Earth's core!

    622:

    People in the UK mostly don't use "gotten". I was shocked when I heard that. How do you live?

    I think "got" is used instead.

    "Gaol" rather than jail.

    A biscuit is something like a cookie, but the boundaries aren't exactly the same.

    People who proofread non-British writers to make sure they've gotten (or got) British English right are called Britpickers.

    http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/Britpicks.htm

    623:

    "Gaol" is rather archaic - typical UK use is "prison"...

    As a child going from early years UK education to the US system (at an international school), it was interesting - and I can still mostly switch from UK to US and back without too much trouble. Mum, being a teacher, insisted I do some extra work to cover those things that I would be missing from UK education (mostly spelling). We don't have the same fascination with cursive handwriting...

    For instance, we in the UK rub out pencil marks with a rubber, not an eraser; and pencil marks are grey, not gray. "Bloody" was a rude word (we tend to say "I have a bleeding nose"). Your posterior is your "bum", not your "fanny" (that's a term reserved for female genitals; "fanny pack" is a "bum bag" here). Sir Pterry in "Good Omens" made the point that a fagot is a stick of wood for throwing on a fire (although it's another archaic term rarely used other than as the NATO reporting codeword for the MiG-15).

    As for foodstuffs, we spread jam on our sandwiches, not jelly (what you call Jello, we call jelly); it's aubergine, not eggplant; courgette, not zucchini; and a decent fry-up involves bacon and eggs, not ham and eggs.

    Paddington Bear might be disappointed, as I'm not sure whether the USA has discovered marmalade ;)

    624:

    Doing language changes by era would be a major challenge, but worthwhile for people who want to get their historical fiction right.

    I realize that torch means flashlight, but I just don't visualize it that way.

    Marmalade has been a standard (though not especially common) food in the US since the 50s, but I have no idea whether it's quite the same thing as UK marmalade.

    625:

    a raft of less-obvious word alternates

    When the manager at my first job arrived in Canada he caused a problem by asking one of the secretaries for a rubber. Fortunately he wasn't the only new Brit to join the company so he had someone to back him up that he wasn't being rude.

    The phrase "knock you up" also has a different meaning (at least it did in the 80s).

    "Fanny" refers to a different part of the anatomy here.

    626:

    I have no idea whether it's quite the same thing as UK marmalade.

    It's sweeter with not as much flavour. My mother makes her own marmalade because the North American stuff just doesn't taste right (and UK imports are so expensive).

    Chocolate is definitely different.

    "Chips" here are "crisps" in the UK, while English "chips" are "fries" here.

    Bacon is very different. American bacon is much fattier (over half fat).

    British pancakes are what North Americans call crepes.

    627:

    Grey and gray are both words that mean "grey" colour, but gray is a mixture made from other colours. "Bloody" is used, amongst other usages, to denote the residue from a bleeding wound, such as "After my recent nose bleed, I had a bloody hanky (pocket square)". A "faggot" is a pork meatball.

    We do make jelly for sandwiches, but it's a slightly different process to making jam, jelly involving filtering the fruit mash to produce a clear condiment rather than an opaque one. In which context I have discussed marmalade with USians, and indeed Canadians.

    Oh yes, and it's coriander, not cilantro!

    628:

    Looks like electric puddle jumpers are getting more capable. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/united-airlines-buy-100-19-seat-electric-planes-heart-aerospace-2021-07-13/

    In 2018, 74% of business travel within the US was within a range of 250 miles, per the DOT. "Still, at 123 miles, the median one-way distance for business trips is greater than that for trips with other purposes. By comparison, the median distance for pleasure travel is 114 miles and for personal or family business trips the median distance is 103 miles. Long-distance commuting trips have a median distance of 69 miles. " https://www.bts.dot.gov/bts/bts/archive/publications/america_on_the_go/us_business_travel/entire

    629:

    "Fanny" refers to a different part of the anatomy here.

    For added fun, try Australian/UK English differences!

    For example, in Australia, Durex is a brand of Sellotape (UK) or Scotch Tape (USA).

    In the UK, Durex is a brand of rubber (US).

    Hours of endless confusion in general stores!

    630:

    Oh yes, and it's coriander, not cilantro!

    No it's not. The plant Coriandrum sativum has multiple names indeed, but around here, cilantro is the leaves, stems, and (if you're doing Thai cooking) roots of the plant. Coriander is the seeds.

    Similarly, nutmeg is the seed of Myristica fragranas. Mace is the aril (fruit coat) that covers the seed.

    And if you want to get really goofy, define the following words: currant, red-currant, and gooseberry.

    631:

    I have never eaten a better marmelade than the one that was imported from South Africa to Canada in the 1980s. It was slightly sour and had thick pieces of fruit in it. It came in cans while every other marmelade came in glass jars.

    632:

    On another site another thread I once saw someone suggesting a new word class "Sordophone" for all those words that are perfectly normal/"accepted in polite company" in one language and downright dirty in another

    And someone that said that all words in all languages probably has a dirty equivalent in another language...

    633:

    I should point out here that there's something sadly missing from this discussion: dialects and jargons!

    I'm quite sure that there are more regional dialects of English spoken in the UK (or were) than are spoken in the US. I'm also quite sure that regional dialects overlap less than one might think, thanks to migration, slavery, and different imperial histories. The same is true of words borrowed from other languages.

    And then there are the sciences. Non-scientists think that there's this divide between scientists and non-scientists, so that humanities majors get utterly lost at science parties. Problem is, there's so little overlap between, say, computer science and botany, that at a party we're far more likely to talk about shared hobbies or the arts than we are about our work. It's so common that I was at a party when someone noted that there were no non-botanists present. A sigh swept the room, followed by laughter, and we started to talk shop. One of the happier parties I remember, actually.

    Think about the code switching for a second: there are numerous jargons that are not used when outsiders are present. The science example is one, but it's pervasive throughout society, whether due to business, gender, subculture, formality, social status, age, security...

    634:

    It doesn't just come up writing historically accurate romance. I'm running into that same problem trying to write fantasy. You can't have a character discussing "biology" but they can discuss "physiognomy." Someone isn't "stressed-out" but they are "strung too tightly."

    "Machiolations" aren't an obscure word having to do with castle defense, they're the lastest and greatest, a technical marvel that will change history; my characters pass an Orcish castle where, damn the expense, they're tearing out the crenelations and rebuilding them as machiolations. There are ongoing, current debates on my world about whether it's worth trading the longbow's rate of fire for the crossbow's ease of use and greater stopping power.

    And I must confess that I'm having a lovely time with sayings and expressions. One Orc, (if I don't cut his bit) is not "all hat and no cattle" but he is "all tusk and no battleaxe." I'm having trouble with "You’ll never get to the bottom of this!” So far the best I have is "You'll never fully clean that carcass" but that doesn't work terribly well.

    635:

    In the UK, Durex is a brand of rubber (US).

    I briefly attended a school in America when I was six years old and had never heard the word "eraser" before. There is a family-favourite story about me loudly insisting to my teacher that I needed a condom.

    636: 630 - Contrarywise - Coriander is the leaves and stems, roots if applicable, and/or seeds, whether whole or ground. 633 - Aye, fit like Loon? 634 - I think you mean machiclation? In which case they're aka "murder holes", oh and should supplement rather than replace crenellations.
    637:

    Bike magazine some time in the 90s: "You call a slapper a tramp, a tramp a bum, a bum a fanny and a fanny a puh-seh." Part-variant also used by Nanny Ogg in Witches Abroad.

    And a fag is a CIGARETTE. Or sometimes an exhausting chore. A fag end is the burnt out stub of a cigarette, a fag break is a pause from work to smoke a fag, a fag packet is the container they are sold in, and a fag packet calculation is one trivial enough to be performed with nothing more than a fag packet to write on. It does NOT mean what it does in the US. That meaning is known, but not without pausing for thought. Say "fag" to any Brit and they will automatically take it to mean a paper tube with tobacco in it, even if they come from Newcastle and confuse everyone else by calling them tabs.

    638:

    How about "All bellow and no battleax"? Hypothetically, a tusk is still a weapon, though I grant I've never heard of orcs attacking with them.

    From the Britpicker's link:

    ""Plush" in America appears to mean luxurious, comfortable or similar. In Britain it is the name of a sort of long-pile, open-textured velvet, usually used for furnishings and soft toys. The American meaning seems to be creeping in here, which is just to say that outside of fandom I've seen it used that way in Britain several times now and by at least two writers, but all in the same newspaper and all since 2005."

    I've seen a shift in American English to "plushies" for what used to be called "stuffed toys".

    639:

    You're half-right about the spelling, but not otherwise. A machicolation was a sort of very narrow hoarding, but made of stone rather than wood. Imagine a crenelation which sticks outward from the castle perhaps a foot further than a regular crenelation, with holes beneath it which allow the downward firing of arrows, dropping of heavy objects, etc. directly downward and/or parallel with the castle wall.

    Murderholes, or meurtrières were holes cut into the ceiling or side of a passageway and used for arrows, boiling water, (not oil) spears, etc.

    Machicolation:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Craigmillar_machicolations.jpg

    Murderhole:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bodiam_murder_holes.jpg

    640:

    More like "tusk" as a defining physical feature of Orcs. (Though I'd hate to get bitten by an Orc, particularly if they also have canines.)

    641:

    #630 - Contrarywise - Coriander is the leaves and stems, roots if applicable, and/or seeds, whether whole or ground.

    I'm guessing you don't use coriander or cilantro much in cooking? They're used different ways in different dishes, and they certainly don't cook or taste the same. I've got family members who will eat dishes with coriander in them but refuse cilantro, because to them the leaves taste unpleasantly like soap but the seeds are citrus-like.

    It's really worth reading the Wikipedia article on coriander if you don't get it. Just as you don't substitute mace for nutmeg, even though they're from the same fruit, you don't substitute cilantro for coriander or vice versa.

    One thing to realize is that San Diego, thanks to its proximity to Mexico and its population of Southeast Asian expats due to US military policy and the number of bases here, is flooded with people who use the different parts of the plant differently. We differentiate because it really does matter which part of the plant you use for what.

    They're even differences in growth. In my yard, it's difficult to grow cilantro, but easy to grow coriander. The reason is that my yard's a bit too hot and dry, so the plants bolt almost immediately. I don't get many useful leaves (cilantro), but I sure do get a lot of seeds (coriander). Problem is, my wife far prefers cilantro to coriander...

    642:

    Re: Tusks and orcs.

    Part of the fun among the biologists is that tusk tends to drift off to hippo and pig land (also whales), while fang tends to denote carnivores.

    Anyway, tusk has associated meanings of on an herbivore, or a tooth that's modified for dueling and/or defense, while fang seems to be more about killing and gathering food.

    So let's think about this, and contemplate what it would mean if orcs had a more porcine nature. Kind of like wild boars, for instance: --They're on the herbivorous side of omnivore. --If they have upper and lower tusks as in a pig, the teeth clash and keep each other sharper. Good for gnawing roots. Or other things. --They're extremely intelligent, but said intelligence is underrated by non-orcs. --They're extremely social, especially as children, but said sociality is underrated by non-orcs. --They're unexpectedly sneaky for their size. --They're unexpectedly fast and have more endurance than most realize. --They've got extremely acute senses, especially smell --They're hard to kill, you need heavy-duty weapons to kill them. --They can be really loving to those they bond with.

    These guys would be kind of fun to put in a story, actually. The closest I've seen in RPGs are the Gloranthan trolls in Runequest, who were underground humanoid pigs who echolocated.

    643:

    Waaaay back when I was managing software engineering for ParcPlace in SillyCon Valley, I hired a colleague from UK. Unsurprisingly I had several gay people on my staff.

    Pretty much the first words out of his mouth on the first day were “where can I bum a fag?” Later that day he managed to make a left turn onto Lawrence Expressway . On the wrong side of ...

    644:

    I'll point out, just to confuse the issue, that outside English, a fagot can also be a bassoon or a green bean.

    Fair useless word, all told.

    645:

    Somewhere there's a webcomic with a vegetarian species of Orc, where the author was probably thinking along those lines. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name and have no idea of the URL. If I think of it I'll pass it along.

    My approach to the Orcish species was something more based on culture. I asked myself why Elves and Orcs fought, and I came to the conclusion that Orcs were a species which lived by herding, and perhaps had specialized instincts for doing so, while Elves want as large a forest as possible for all kinds of reasons, including an expanding population and the forest as a mana-generator, and naturally people who wanted a forest would come into conflict with people who wanted large areas of grassland, and the oldest legends of each species involve Orcs burning Elven forests or Elves spreading disease to the Orcish herds.

    So the history of my Orcish country, Osseinland (the land of Bone*) is that there were twelve tribes, each of which raised/herded a particular kind of animal, so there was the Sheep Tribe, the Goat Tribe, the Cow Tribe, etc. As their technology advanced these tribal lands evolved into Shires, all ruled over by an Earl or Countess, with subsidiary Baron(esses) to handle the minor issues, but since the past is never really gone, only a socially-blind fool would ever raise pigs on land which owned by the Goat Tribe five-hundred years ago...

    • An important Necromancer, wife of the first Orcish King.
    646:

    https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/775746-treatment ammonia's listed under "non-pharmacologic treatments".

    And I assure you, it's possible to breath a good bit of pure ammonia and live. For example, if one is doing a purification using a soxhlet extractor, and is using pure liquid ammonia in the purification, and the thin little bitty tube breaks....

    647:

    Our marmelade is quite good. Oh, right, by "our", I mean the three fruits (lemon, orange, and grapefruit) marmalade I made last year, and which we have a small jar or so left....

    Whoever suggested larger chunks, presumably of the skin, thanks. I'll try that next time.

    648:

    Re regional dialects. I read - it might have been in Sapir - that before WWI? WWII? there were 236 mutually incomprehensible dialects in the UK. Before WWII, in the US, there were six.

    649:

    And let's not forget a faggot of wood.

    650:

    I can vouch for that. whitroth was kind enough to send me a small jar, and it was delicious!

    651:

    Marmalade ... I'm going to have to gird my loins, or something, & pick lots of Limes from my greenhouse & make Lime Marmalade. It's an awful fiddle, because you have to carefully rind said limes, then remove the inner pith ( As in "Taking the pith" ) & then cut the now-cleaned rind into small strips. Then comes the easy bit - you add 80% of the fruit-weight in sugar in the cooking cauldron, heat up to a "rolling boil" & wait for it to go all mud-volcano on you. Turn heat OFF - & get it into clean, warm jars, as fast as you can, before it sets like a rock. There you go - grown-in-Walthamstow Lime Marmalade!

    652:

    Bacon is very different. American bacon is much fattier (over half fat).

    Which is why it is cooked first in the skillet (same word?). Then you don't have to grease it before cooking other things.

    Says he who eats bacon once every year or few these days.

    653:

    I'm also quite sure that regional dialects overlap less than one might think, thanks to migration, slavery, and different imperial histories.

    I grew up warshing clothes. And spent 7 years in Pittsburgh with yenz and rhet up abounding.

    Rooming with a Jesuit educated fellow just after college drove out most of my southern dialect. Then traveling around the northeast for business in the 80s took care of the rest.

    Now I'm more thinking that part of the rural / urban divide in the US is also due to education and business. Those who have higher degrees and operate in business circles around the country tend to speak a different language than those to do not have the degrees or the wider business experience.

    654:

    Wrt. your orcs, you maybe want to read "Chasm City" by Alastair Reynolds. Which features a very memorable uplifted pig ...

    655:

    Slice the rind... interesting. I usually use a box grater, on the course side (not slices). Hmmmm

    656:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 622: "Gaol" rather than jail.

    Isn't "jail" just a phonetic spelling of how "gaol" is pronounced?

    And why isn't "slough" spelled "slew"?

    657:

    Martin @ 623: As for foodstuffs, we spread jam on our sandwiches, not jelly (what you call Jello, we call jelly); it's aubergine, not eggplant; courgette, not zucchini; and a decent fry-up involves bacon and eggs, not ham and eggs.

    Paddington Bear might be disappointed, as I'm not sure whether the USA has discovered marmalade ;)

    Jam will have noticible pulp or crushed fruit. Jelly is just jam with the fruit parts strained out leaving only the juice for flavoring. And then there is Preserves which is similar to Jam, but has whole chunks of fruit in it.

    Jello is a brand name for a gelatine product.

    I've had bacon in the U.K. (Scotland) and it's more like our ham than it is our bacon. The Canadian Bacon that comes in the McDonald's breakfast sandwich is similar to U.K. bacon. U.S. bacon is made from sliced "Pork Belly".

    I'm pretty sure least one breakfast at a Bed & Breakfast in Glasgow included both types of "bacon" (plus sausages).

    U.S. marmalade is quite similar to the marmalade I encountered in Scotland, if a bit sweeter. We do like our sugar over here.

    658:

    Paws4thot's point is that right-Pondian English doesn't differentiate between parts of the plant; see Tesco's opinion on what 'coriander' means.

    659:
    cooked first in the skillet (same word?)

    Frying pan, at least in my dialect.

    660:

    Something is back to front there. Teddy bears and Cthulhu and the like are cuddly toys. Nobody started calling them "plushies" until quite recently and I always took it to be an Americanism. Similarly it is nothing new to make a comment like "cor, this is a bit plush" on encountering a luxuriously furnished room, referring to the luxury and general squishiness rather than the fabric. It is possible that the word has been used for the fabric in cloth trade jargon for a long time, but I have no idea if that is actually the case. It is only recently that I might expect anyone who isn't a professional cloth-user to refer to the fabric as anything other than "that stuff teddy bears are made of, you know", or at the most "plush velvet" or "that really plushy material" where it is an adjectival qualifier denoting a quality of the fabric rather than a noun denoting a particular type.

    661:

    "And why isn't "slough" spelled "slew"?"

    ...as in the immortal words of John "Rabbie" Betjeman:

    Come friendly bombs and fall on Slew It isnae fit fur humans noo There isnae grass tae graze a coo Swarm over, Death!

    662:

    Back on the Bitcoin front, Malaysian police have destroyed 1069 Bitcoin mining rigs.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kv739/police-destroy-1069-bitcoin-miners-with-big-ass-steamroller-in-malaysia

    Meanwhile others are moving to Kazakhstan, where electricity generated by fossil fuel is still cheap.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57811959

    663: 641 - Yeah, and I've capable of using any one or more of the 6 (counting dried leaf separately) identified parts in a dish, depending on the dish. 647 - I'll pass thanks, because allopurinol and grapefruit are a painfully bad combination when you get urates crystallising in your joints. 651 - Way kewel. 660 - as in "Fluff, the plush Cthulhu"?
    664:

    "And why isn't "slough" spelled "slew"?" Because we just love to confuse Johnny Foreigner. ‘Slough’ can be pronounced about eleventy-seven ways depending on what it ‘means’. The sluff of despond. The slew running down to the river. The wonderful town of slow (rhymes with ‘ow!’) And so on. In general though, ‘ough’ is A Tough Problem that roughly ought to be run through.

    665:

    An ex-colleague of mine had a couple of cuddly toys on his desk at work. One was another of the Elder Gods (I can't recall which), and the other was a Treponema Pallidum.

    666:

    Charlie Stross @ 629:

    "Fanny" refers to a different part of the anatomy here.

    or added fun, try Australian/UK English differences!

    For example, in Australia, Durex is a brand of Sellotape (UK) or Scotch Tape (USA).

    In the UK, Durex is a brand of rubber (US).

    In the UK, Durex is a brand of rubber (US).

    When you mentioned the "rabbit hole" of U.K./U.S. language differences going half way to the Earth's core, I was thinking "... and bores out through to the other side!. See also: Engrish (... and Spanglish)

    Lotsa fun to be had all around.

    668:

    People have been posting a pic on faceplant: "it was the best of shires (pic of Hobbiton), it was the (picture of Lea & Perrins bottle).

    669:

    paws I'm on Allopurinol too - not sure it's working too well, mind.

    whitroth Ah, we may have the prblem of disinguishing between "W Indian" Limes - green with fairly hard skins - can be grated and .. Actual Indian Limes - yellow, with much softer skins, which you can't grate, but must cut up with a Mezzaluna or v large kitchen knife to make the "cut" in the marmalade .... The latter is what I've got growing in my greenhouse, of course.

    670:

    David L @ 652:

    Bacon is very different. American bacon is much fattier (over half fat).

    Which is why it is cooked first in the skillet (same word?). Then you don't have to grease it before cooking other things.

    Says he who eats bacon once every year or few these days.

    And it should be a cast iron skillet ... although I wonder can there be any other kind? If it isn't cast iron it's a frying pan, not a skillet.

    Anyway, I've begun baking bacon (U.S., sliced pork belly variant) in the oven using a broiling pan. The grease drips through the slots & gives me bacon that is BOTH crispy AND chewy, and doesn't have to be drained to get the grease off. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake for 18-20 minutes. Flip the slices over at 10 minutes if you want to.

    Another method I tried was putting the bacon in a cast iron skillet and covering it with water to the level the skillet will hold without slopping over. Cook over high heat, and as the water boils away skim the grease off with a spoon. Reduce the heat gradually until it's down to low by the time there's no water left in the skillet. The bacon turns out pretty good, but it's labor & time intensive because you have to stand there & tend it the whole time it's cooking. With the oven method I can set a timer and check it when the timer dings.

    I buy bacon in a big package from Costco (thick slices, smoked, but not "cured") and freeze it. I use strips of waxed-paper to separate servings (2 strips), wrap the whole in parchment paper & put it in a big (2 gal) zip-lock freezer bag. It's easy to peel off as many servings as I want to cook and defrost in the microwave whenever I want bacon ... about once a month.

    671:

    Well, Bag End is just down the road from Worcester, after all...

    672:

    timrowledge @ 664: "And why isn't "slough" spelled "slew"?"
    Because we just love to confuse Johnny Foreigner.
    ‘Slough’ can be pronounced about eleventy-seven ways depending on what it means’.
    The sluff of despond.
    The slew running down to the river.
    The wonderful town of slow (rhymes with ‘ow!’)
    And so on. In general though, ‘ough’ is A Tough Problem that roughly ought to be run through.

    I was just goofin' on slough/slew (and hadn't even thought of sluff ... thunk of ???), but I really would like to know if I'm correct that gaol is pronounced jail?

    673:

    Another though has come to mind. With all the discussion of Orcs & language, I wonder ...

    Do Orcs wear Crocs?
    674:

    "Re regional dialects. I read - it might have been in Sapir - that before WWI? WWII? there were 236 mutually incomprehensible dialects in the UK. Before WWII, in the US, there were six."

    The US situation was even more complicated than that. Many areas in the Midwest and Texas spoke German, or a Scandinavian language, and parts of the Mississippi Delta (Mississippi, Louisiana, an part of Texas) spoke French creole. Parts of rural New England spoke Quebecious French.

    A lot of these languages didn't die out naturally, they were suppressed. During WWI, it was considered seditious to speak German. All German language media was shut down.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_States#Persecution_during_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language_in_the_United_States

    This of course excludes the native languages and those spoken in immigrant communities. Italian was quite widespread.

    Funny note: these was an unsuccessful movement to make English the official language. Teddy Roosevelt was a huge proponent of the idea. https://www.pennlive.com/americanhistory101/2007/03/did_theodore_roosevelt_really.html

    675:

    Greg: what dosage? I'm more or less pain free on 100mg a day, but you can be prescribed up to 800mg. Also I'm used to lime marmalade being made with Americo-Caribbean green limes, same as Key lime pie.

    676:

    Wrt. your orcs, you maybe want to read "Chasm City" by Alastair Reynolds. Which features a very memorable uplifted pig ...

    Did you read the rest of Revelation Space series? "Redemption Ark" has an even more memorable uplifted pig, and he returns in "Absolution Gap".

    677:

    "I really would like to know if I'm correct that gaol is pronounced jail?"

    People usually spell it like that these days, because the older spelling is just too silly.

    678:

    JBS @ 672: "...but I really would like to know if I'm correct that gaol is pronounced jail?"

    According to one of my favorite sources, Wiktionary, you're correct. They have a recording:

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gaol

    679:

    Problem is, my wife far prefers cilantro to coriander...

    Sure, but Paws was right the first time too. It isn't that (outside the USA) we don't distinguish between ground dried coriander seeds and fresh coriander leaves and stems, it's just that we don't have a special word for the latter. Pre-internet, the word "cilantro" was largely unknown in Australia, for instance, and because fresh coriander is used so widely here, calling it "cilantro" is still more likely to cause confusion than anything. If you don't believe me, here is a link to some for sale in an Australian supermarket chain.

    I'm pretty sure the first time I came across the word "cilantro" was in an online discussion about people for whom it tastes like soap, something I hadn't heard of before either, though I've since met at least one Australian sufferer of this unfortunate condition. And I think you yourself supplied the origin of the US term: Spanish via Mexico. I think that here the association with SE Asia is considerably stronger. There's been a huge influx of expat Vietnamese bakers to Australia, for instance, and it's become more normal than not for bakeries here to offer a pretty good banh mi, even if they are not Vietnamese. But as an ingredient it jumped out of the culturally-associated niche a long time ago.

    680:

    Here's something that people might find interesting. This person on Youtube has put together what south-eastern accents in England sounded like, from the 14th to the 21st centuries.

    What the presenter does is start in 1346 and skip ahead 60 years at a time until he gets to 2006. Some of the pronunciation is conjectural, but he's pretty good at giving his sources.

    Honestly, it was mostly gibberish (to me) until the late 15th century. Have to brush up on my language skills before I hop in my time machine, I guess.

    681:
    I TRIED just ONE "Smiley" book - "A small town in Germany" BORING BORING, Boring, boring & dull & uninteresting & plodding ... What the bloody fuck is supposedly so good about this trash? ALSO: "le Carre" was notorious for saying: nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity w.r.t. the "Satanic Verses" ... well mate, you can stick that where the sun don't shine!

    Greg,

    Cornwall/Le Carre was a member of SIS, who's principal job was to set up and run a tunnel into East Berlin in order to tap the telephone system.

    If his novel is boring -- then in my opinion -- this is just a reflection of the reality of spying (ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies). It's high stress, but essentially dull.

    Now I realise we're participating in a literary blog, but the Alec Guiness Smiley BBC box sets are worth watching. I've used them for training material in my line of work. "When did Smiley realise who'd betrayed the General and why in "Smiley's People"?" But they are slow, slow, slow! That's part of their charm, but also an accurate reflection of the realities of spying.

    The alternative you are probably seeking is something a bit more Bond-like: sabotage and explosions. But in reality SOE had a somewhat "mixed" war. SIS focuses on two parts of the job: patient agent cultivation (field-work) and painstaking analytic work on the raw material once its been acquired (desk-work). For an example of the analytical style of work look at the Royal Navy's Operations Research Unit based in Liverpool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Approaches_Tactical_Unit , and especially Janet Okell. A 20 year old beating an Admiral five out of five times!

    Anyway, I don't see Angleton as being based on Smiley. As I mentioned at the top of this thread, he comes across as more of a Walter Fletcher character. (A real SOE hero, despite his 19 stone weight.) Perhaps the Senior Auditor is a more Smiley-like character.

    And Alec Guiness' Smiley is based on Maurice Oldfield -- the real head of SIS that Cromwell introduced Guiness to.

    682:

    The only occasion where I have recently heard ‘gaol’ pronounced as ‘goal’ is in a recent Abney Park album where Cap’. Robert gets it wrong in a rendition of the “A drop of Nelson’s blood”. Aside from that it’s a very fun album. “Technoshanties”

    683:

    On Greg's other remarks, I found this:

    https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/12/164984367/salman-rushdie-john-le-carre-end-literary-feud

    Taking Cornwell's remarks in total, and in context, I think he has a point: it's essentially one that a lot of people make when the context shifts to thing they care about. I personally think it's unfair to hold Rushdie up against such a point, given The Satanic Verses is really such a harmless and witty story that is clearly not intended to mock anything but the self-importance of certain sorts of people, whatever their religion.

    We recently saw the same sort of debate touched off in Australia, Lionel Shriver spoke at the Brisbane Writers' Festival with a strong claim that a writer's right to explore any sort of character whatsoever is absolute and (somewhat more tenuously) should be free from criticism for doing so. This second part was not welcomed by several fellow writers in attendance from various diverse backgrounds. It's a topic that is worth exploring with good will, rather than passion, I think (the way that Cornwell and Rushdie sort of finish up in that NPR piece).

    But I recommend Peter Carey's novel A long way from home, which arranges an interesting sidestep around the issue. Here's a radio interview with Carey where he talks about the context including having turned down an invitation to a Pen International event chaired by Rushdie (warning: my memory of the interview from 3 years ago might be faulty, but that's the gist).

    684:

    Orcs are not that evil.

    685:

    With all this talk of different kinds of Orcs, nobody has mentioned "The Last Ringbearer"? by Kirill Eskov?

    Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the racist elves.[2] For example, Barad-dûr, Sauron's citadel, appears in chapter 2 as

    ...that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic. The shining tower of the Barad-dûr citadel rose over the plains of Mordor almost as high as Orodruin like a monument to Man – free Man who had politely but firmly declined the guardianship of the Dwellers on High and started living by his own reason. It was a challenge to the bone-headed aggressive West, which was still picking lice in its log ‘castles’ to the monotonous chanting of scalds extolling the wonders of never-existing Númenor.

    The tale begins by recapping the War of the Ring. The Ring itself is a luxurious ornament, but powerless, crafted by the Nazgûl (a group of ancient scientists and philosophers who take turns as the Nine to guide Mordor through its industrialization) to distract Gandalf and the Elves while Mordor built up its army. Aragorn is portrayed as a puppet of the Elves who has been instructed to usurp the throne of Gondor by murdering Boromir (whom he had discovered alone after Merry and Pippin were captured) before Gandalf removes Denethor. Arwen, being 3000 years older, holds Aragorn in contempt but uses their marriage to cement Elvish rule over Gondor. Faramir has been exiled to Ithilien where he is kept under guard with Éowyn. The Elves have also corrupted (using New-Age style mysticism) the youth of Umbar, which they aim to use as a foothold into Harad and Khand.

    Why has this not been made into a movie?

    686:

    So who is the Smiley of the Laundry-verse? Who is the Karla?

    For that matter, who is the Laundry-verse's James Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld?

    Is there a Cthulhu worshipping version of Spectre?

    688:

    And of course, the Council of Elrond with Jack Black.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do9xPQHI9G0

    689:

    Well, in any discussion about Orcs, there has to mention of "Grunts" by Mary Gentle.

    It's about what happens after the Last War. :-)

    690:

    Grunts is absolutely awesome. I've probably read it a dozen times.

    691:

    Two more from British English:

    "Poll" for what I'd call an election.

    "Jab" for what I'd call a vaccination.

    I think there was a piece by GK Chesterton mocking the self-proclaimed efficient Americans for using longer words than the English.

    692:

    I think that usage around the word "poll" isn't really that different. Poll, vote, election, plebiscite, referendum... I could easily be mistaken, but my impression is that these mean roughly the same thing across all the Englishes.

    "Pants", however...

    693:

    paws Allopuriniol - 100mg tabs, twice a day

    Duffy Because it won't hold together under its own weight

    694:

    If Allopurinol at 200mg/day doesn't seem to be working for you, explicitly ask your GP about your urate levels; I'm not prescribing for you, but much higher levels of Allopurinol can be prescribed if required. Also, look at your diet against high urate foods, and work your way through, progressively cutting them out one by one until you find the one(s) that are triggers for you.

    695:

    I derive a certain amount of adolescent amusement from knowing that USians wear their vest and pants on the outside. And men visibly wear suspenders. ;)

    696:

    I think there was a piece by GK Chesterton mocking the self-proclaimed efficient Americans for using longer words than the English.

    I will note that "automobile" for "car" sounds vaguely comical to British ears.

    And there's a deplorable American tendency to invent horrendous neologisms where perfectly good words already exist. For example, from time immemorial we have "embark" (or "board") and "disembark" for getting on/off a vessel. Which work perfectly well for airliners as well ... but no, they had to invent "deplane" because why use a perfectly good word when you can verb a noun?

    697:

    Charlie, Nancy,

    My particular English (US/UK) word distinction is "momentarily" -- as in: "We will be disembarking momentarily".

    698:

    Oh, also: when you're in a meeting and suggest tabling an issue, in the USA that means postponing it for later consideration. In the UK? It means the exact opposite -- it means the item is now on the table for immediate debate.

    699:

    ... all of which suggests that it might be possible to write a story (probably quite short) where a US audience and a UK audience get a completely different experience.

    (Not sure anyone -- short of a total nerd -- would actually do it, mind.)

    700:

    In the original post Charlie wrote:

    November 2016: Donald Trump won the US presidential election, and by mid-2017 things were clearly running off the rails. The grip of the Beige Dictatorship on UK-US politics had been broken and the radical right fringe was calling the shots.

    First, thanks for the link to the "Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship" post. That was from before my time on this blog. It included a link to the the Iron Law of Oligarchy, which was particularly interesting because I had reached the same conclusion independently. The basic thesis is that any organisation develops a "leadership class", partly because running a big organisation is a specialist job requiring training and practice, and partly because once this class develops it starts to act in its own interests to preserve and increase its power. Part of this power is the power to select its own membership. Hence ""Who says organization, says oligarchy."

    Some threads ago I was in a long discussion on this blog about the prospects for socialism (meaning Socialism Classic, where capital property is abolished and the means of production are communally owned). I complained that socialists had no plan for what they wanted to replace capitalism with, and in particular how they would manage the emergence of a leadership class. So I am not surprised to see that this has already emerged as a question on the Left, albeit one that they have never really tried to address.

    (By the way, back then Niala pointed me at Murry Bookchin's "Social Ecology" ideas, so I downloaded a book of his essays. Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. He had excellent critiques of both capitalism and Socialism Classic, but his own ideas were no more developed than anything else I have read. They seemed to be nothing more than unsupported assertions that organising at the level of towns would somehow make it all work right.)

    In the "Political failure modes" post Charlie wrote that democracy has two supposed benefits; it legitimises political opposition and it enables a peaceful and orderly change of power. But he says that all the alternatives on offer are essentially the same because the political parties have converged on the same beige set of policies, and the leadership class within each party are careful to exclude anyone who might threaten their cosy duopoly.

    Of course the democratic processes in all democratic political parties mean that this degree of control is severely limited. (Note: I'm using "democratic" to mean an organisation where the members of the organisation get a free vote on issues like leadership from time to time; I don't want to open a debate about "no true democracy" here). Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn both managed to use these processes in popular insurrections to seize control of their parties from the Beige leadership, and if Corbyn had been a bit less crazy in the past (e.g not cosying up to terrorists and anti-semites) then he might have had a credible shot at Downing Street too.

    (Was Boris Johnson an insurgent in the same vein? Not sure.)

    But has this really changed anything? I'd argue not. In the UK the Labour party is firmly back in control of Kier Starmer, who bleeds beige. The new American president is beige. Boris Johnson's leadership is starting to draw questions from inside his party about exactly how he is going to deliver his "levelling up" policy after the failure of Brexit to deliver a bold new vision for Britain. In France Macron is having similar difficulties. So it looks like the Beige Ones are either back in charge or will be soon. And of course they never really went away; having a non-beige person as leader does not immediately change the entire leadership class overnight.

    There is a bit of political theory called Hotelling's Law. Imagine a long beach with two ice-cream sellers. Potential customers are evenly scattered along the beach and will buy an ice cream from the nearest vendor. Logically the best place for the two vendors is at the 1/4 and 3/4 points, because then no customer has to walk more than 1/4 of the beach. However if one of the two vendors then moves a bit towards the centre, the watershed at the centre will move a bit too, so this vendor will capture more of the market. The other one moves in response, and pretty soon both vendors are standing at the middle of the beach, with customers at both the extreme ends complaining that they have to walk a very long way to get an ice cream.

    This is a rough approximation to political parties; logically there should be a party on the Left, about half way between the centre and the extreme Left, and a similar party on the Right. However the two parties are pulled to the centre by the simple logic of this being a way to capture more votes.

    This is disrupted by insurgents; a new ice-cream vendor notices that there are lots of under-served people at one extreme or the other, and sets up in business. At this point the situation becomes unstable, but experience suggests that the end-game is a return to duopoly.

    (In the real world of course it's not so simple; tribal party identification and orthogonal issues like Brexit serve to make life more interesting).

    From the "Political failure modes" post:

    So the future isn't a boot stamping on a human face, forever. It's a person in a beige business outfit advocating beige policies that nobody wants (but nobody can quite articulate a coherent alternative to) with a false mandate obtained by performing rituals of representative democracy that offer as much actual choice as a Stalinist one-party state. And resistance is futile, because if you succeed in overthrowing the beige dictatorship, you will become that which you opposed.

    So my prediction is a return to power of the Beige Dictatorship. Sooner or later Johnson will be ousted by his own party. Starmer will either get a grip or be replaced by someone with a bit less charisn'tma, and we can all go back to sleep until the next time.

    (but nobody can quite articulate a coherent alternative to)

    And that is the fundamental problem. As I've said here before, I'd very much like to see a coherent alternative to capitalism. There was a time (roughly from 1900 to 1970) when Socialism Classic looked like it might be one. Of course we now know that doesn't work. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall I rather assumed that socialists would have gone back to the drawing board to figure out something that would work, and I was both surprised and disappointed to find that no serious attempts on this front had been made (or if they have, I have yet to find out about it). A few writers have published thoughtful critiques of Socialism Classic, but nobody has yet provided a coherent theory about what to replace it with. In the absence of such a theory all we are left with is a choice between shades of beige; shall we increase or decrease social security spending by a few percent? This is why I am careful to distinguish Socialism Classic from modern socialism, which is merely a pinker shade of beige.

    701:

    Poll, vote, election, plebiscite, referendum... I could easily be mistaken, but my impression is that these mean roughly the same thing across all the Englishes.

    Roughly similar but not identical.

    Here in Canada, "voting" implies a definite decision with all concerned members of the electorate having a chance to vote, and the results of the vote being binding. "Polling" implies sampling voters and the results being indicative of a future vote.

    Plebiscite and referendum are synonyms, and voters express their wishes on a question directly, but an election is always of representatives who supposedly convey their constituents wishes to a legislative body.

    Speaking of referendums, over here "non-binding" means that the results of the referendum are considered but the government can ignore them if they want, while in UK English the results of a "non-binding referendum" are considered an imperative that must be achieved by any means necessary — which greatly confuses us poor colonials…

    702:

    assertions that organising at the level of towns would somehow make it all work right

    Wondering if anyone asserting that has actually worked at the municipal level? It can work wonderfully well, it can also be a mess or horrendous disfunctionality. As a teenager I lived/worked in a small town of 5000 people, and the municipal government and administration were full of cronyism and nepotism.

    The residents of Walkerton, for example, were not well served by local control of water safety.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak

    703:

    The most dangerous linguistic confusion.

    Pavement

    Do you drive on it, or walk on it?

    704:

    I would hazard a guess that most British-English speakers can translate American-English easily enough - it's so overwhelmingly dominant on the internet that one has little choice.

    What I tend to notice more than the word translations is variances in rules of grammar. Use of prepositions is the one that comes to mind: read through a typical American-English article, and it's remarkable just how many prepositions that should be present are not.

    The ones that I really notice

    • "A speech on Thursday..." is contracted to "A speech Thursday ..."
    • "I wrote to Fred about ..." is contracted to "I wrote Fred about..."
    • "One hundred and ten ..." gets contracted to "one hundred ten ..."
    None of them actually make it impossible to figure out what's going on, but every time I encounter such, it breaks the flow of my concentration, in either written or spoken communication. It's a bit like someone tickling me while I'm trying to read, I guess.

    705:

    if Corbyn had been a bit less crazy in the past (e.g not cosying up to terrorists and anti-semites) then he might have had a credible shot at Downing Street too.

    Eh, no: you missed the implacable hatred for Corbyn that was prevalent within the PLP and the Tory-leaning press. Corbyn was a hold-over from 1970s Labour, the party that Neil Kinnock went to war with internally in the 1980s and which was vanquished by John Smith and Tony Blair. The PLP MPs were all beige, professional politicians: Corbyn was much closer to the authentic grass-roots socialism the party rank and file wanted, but nobody in the establishment could tolerate that and -- the key difference from Trump -- Corbyn was essentially running on principles and was too decent to fight dirty.

    (You can tangentially blame him on Ed Miliband, who tried to reinvigorate Labour's leadership by changing the leadership election process to reflect popular opinion in the party at large -- with no clue that the change would let in Corbyn.)

    my prediction is a return to power of the Beige Dictatorship. Sooner or later Johnson will be ousted by his own party.

    Problem: Johnson's parliamentary party has been taken over from within by the fascist hard-right. UKIP has shriveled because UKIP voters now have MPs they can enthusiastically campaign for. BXP is gone because Johnson delivered what they wanted. Most likely the Tory leadership will swerve rightwards, not back towards the centre, after Johnson: my money is on Priti Patel, either as his successor or next but one, and she's pretty clearly an authoritarian xenophobic populist who makes Theresa May look like a liberal.

    (Scotland is Different, and Englandshire's rapid drift to the right is putting enormous strain on the union -- which the English nationalist politicians don't care about, because they're really English supremacists who don't recognize how fragile the union is. But that's another story.)

    706:

    they had to invent "deplane" because why use a perfectly good word when you can verb a noun?

    Well some of us use "get on" and "get off". Say he whose wife recently retired after 30+ years with an airline.

    707:

    Here in Canada, "voting" implies a definite decision with all concerned members of the electorate having a chance to vote, and the results of the vote being binding. "Polling" implies sampling voters and the results being indicative of a future vote.

    Same in the US.

    But we have elections where people vote at polling places operated by poll workers.

    708:

    Do you drive on it, or walk on it?

    Both.

    In the US pavement is a surface which covers dirt or gravel. Generally to facilitate transportation.

    709:

    [Finally caught up]

    @629 "thong". In the UK women wear them under their clothes. In Oz people wear them on their feet.

    (My boss is a Queenslander and used the term without thinking at our summer party yesterday.)

    @581 In basic training for the army (back in 1980 or so) we were told "Never point a gun at someone - even if you think it's unloaded - unless you're willing to kill them."

    710:

    I'm not a professional railway signalling engineer, but because of my hobby (https://www.simsig.co.uk) I'm a pretty expert amateur one.

    @450: Charlie, axle counters don't measure the length of a train. Traditionally, from about 1900 onwards, trains were detected using a "track circuit". This is a very simple device: you stick a voltage across the running rails in one place and try to detect it at another place. If you can detect it, there isn't a great big hunk of metal like a train between them (and there also isn't a break in either rail).

    This works in most instances, but there are some places were it doesn't, such as wet tunnels. So someone invented the axle counter instead. At various places along the track you put a couple of metal detectors right by the rail. As a wheel goes past, you can tell which direction it's moving. If you count the movements in each direction at each end of a piece of track, you can tell whether any wheels are still between the two counters. That's all it tells you. If the counter reads zero, you send the same indication to the rest of the signalling that you'd do when a track circuit is detecting the voltage - "line is clear", as opposed to "line is occupied".

    (Technical details: there are two detectors on each rail for redundancy. If one detector unit goes wrong, you can combine two adjacent sections into one until it gets fixed. Unlike track circuits, it can't spot a broken rail and it doesn't play nice with road-rail engineering equipment that can be put on the track in the middle of a section.)

    @397 Modern signalling systems are data driven, not code - the code very very rarely changes. A single interlocking unit only controls a few dozen devices - for example, the Ely area in Cambridgeshire requires three separate interlockings to control it. The ROCs being discussed here control tens or even hundreds of interlockings. To, for example, change a level crossing will only require changing the data for that one interlocking.

    BUT that change is not trivial and the entire interlocking must be re-tested before it can go live. The data is complicated for a large number of reasons. I can testify from first-hand experience that it's very easy to make an error that you don't spot despite all the testing you've done. Until the customer does (thankfully our simulations are that, not real railways). A million pounds to upgrade a level crossing sounds about right to me, if a little low. As someone else pointed out, there are a lot of things to be done.

    @446 It's not unusual for old equipment to be left in place, at least partially, rather than take the risk of making changes. At some mechanical lever boxes you would have a lever that had to pulled under some circumstances but didn't control anything. This would be because it used to control something, the something had been removed, but it was easier to make the bobby push and pull the lever than go through the effort of redesigning and testing the (mechanical) interlocking.

    More recently, I've seen red signals sitting there, light on, with no track for them to control. Again, it's easier to leave it there than rewire the interlocking - current flowing through the lamp proved that the (now removed) junction is protected against a train approaching that signal at night and colliding with another train on the other track.

    And for some years there was an absolute ban against making any changes at all to the signalling in the Edinburgh area, or even using some possible routes through the layout, because the wiring was so fragile. It's now all been replaced, thankfully.

    711:

    @450 - sorry, I left a bit out.

    The Swiss axle counter system will just have had an 8-bit unsigned number for each section. So if 256 axles go in, it starts at 0 and counts 1, 2, 3, …, 254, 255, 0 and reports the section as empty. If 257 axles go in it will end up with a value of 1 and report it as occupied. As the 257 axles go out the other end it starts at 1 and will count 0, 255, 254, …, 1, 0. In each case, the count of 0 might cause a brief flicker of the indication on the panel, but it would be hard to spot.

    A count of 1 isn't reported any differently to the rest of the signalling, even though you don't have 1-axle trains; it's just "occupied". It might raise an alarm on the technician's display, but that's a separate matter which the signaller won't see.

    712:

    paws "high urate foods" - such as? Remember that, apart from onions ( because I can't grow enough of them ), I don't buy vegetables - they are all home-grown & my intake of "hyper-processed" foods is minimal.

    Paul / Charlie ONE of the problems with Corbyn is that he's STUPID, another is that he has learnt absolutely nothing since 1975 & a third is that he is rabidly anti-EU. The fact that he's a "true socialist" is almost irrelevant at that point. "modern socialism" is actually a flavour of "Social Democracy" - something Britain has almost-never had, more's the pity. Charlie ... no Corbyn was a hold over from early 1930's Labour & Lansbury, who refused to rearm against the Nazis .... Unfortunately correct about the tories - we just have to hope that they don't get a majority at the next election ....

    Clive F Not detecting broken rails is the major failure mode ( pun! ) of Axle-counters & a great vulnerability IMHO. I've just learnt that, in the Cornwall resignalling, there will still be a mechanical box at Liskeard ( Jn for the Looe Branch ) with lower-quadrant or rotating mechanical arms, interfacing with fully-modern colour-light arrays on each side at Plymouth & Truro/Par ... Again, because it's simpler & easier to do that.

    713:

    I think you and Paul are each half right: The right will have a long day in the sun first, somewhere more than ten and less than forty years, years then things will swing back to the center, or even go left a little, but think Roosevelt, not Corbyn.

    And while the Tory press hates Corbyn, It also looked to me like he could have navigated Brexit a lot better than he did - 'nuf said on that I think, we talked that one to death, except perhaps to say that we want our politicians (Corbyn) to be informed by their ideology, not to be prisoners of their ideology.

    714:

    Before you can discuss socialism, I think you need to define your terms. What is "Socialism?" Is it bog-standard Russian Marxism, or is it something like the system in France or Germany, which many Americans would define as "socialism?" It's one of those words that's freighted with emotion but has very little real political meaning, which is why you can't find coherent policies connected to it. You can define yourself as "socialist" and act like anyone from Roosevelt to Pol-Pot.

    As to the beige dictatorship, I think the problem is that it exists to inhibit thesis, antithesis, and synthesis from doing their thing. The problem is that it therefore learns very slowly, and politically speaking the winning backlash against it is the one which conforms best to shaved-ape politics, not the one which is better informed about science or the current realities.

    715:

    However the two parties are pulled to the centre by the simple logic of this being a way to capture more votes.

    Which explains so well why both Republicans and Democrats have steadily moved to the right over the last generation…

    716:

    As annoyed as I am over the Democrat's many failures in U.S. politics, they are doing an excellent job of taking advantage of the Republican's flight towards the right, and will eventually pick up a lot of votes. It won't happen in time and their policies will be shit when it happens, but the Republicans are leaving a lot of political breathing room on the near-right, and the Democrats would be silly not to pick up the slack.

    717:

    I should probably have written,... and strategically speaking the Democrats would be silly not to pick up the slack.

    718:

    "not cosying up to terrorists and anti-semites"

    ...which is the right-wing media soundbite misrepresentative way to describe challenging the establishment narrative of spotless white on one side (the one Britain is on) and unrelieved black on the other, when the true picture is more of a canvas covered all over with different sized splotches of different shades of grey but still recognisable as a heavily-graffitied snapshot of the decision to move the British navy over to oil firing. Someone who sticks a pin in a hundred years of official denialism that the whole fucking mess is basically our fault in the first place and presents a credible threat of destabilising the whole tissue of self-justification with prime ministerial authority is not someone to be treated lightly by all the vested interests in maintaining it.

    As for the "anti-semitism" bit I am aware that the "official" definition has been hijacked to conflate criticism of the state of Israel with opposition to people of Jewish descent, but I decline to accept such an obvious perversion of logic, and deplore also that it makes it impossible to distinguish accusations of genuine bigotry from mere political disagreement.

    "...Of course we now know that doesn't work. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall..."

    We know that it works well enough to keep going for 70 years even under overwhelming disadvantages, both the external ones of being a second-class player against most of the rest of the world continually trying to make it unworkable right from the start, and the internal ones of the historical baggage from the upheaval of WW1 and the revolution and from habits of thought and politics ingrained in "the Russian character" by centuries of Tsarism, which pretty much compelled it to institutionalise various suboptimal aspects which seem unnecessarily extreme to unsympathetic external observation. We do not "know it doesn't work"; we know it does work but can be pulled down with enough time and perseverance.

    719:

    Oh, also: when you're in a meeting and suggest tabling an issue, in the USA that means postponing it for later consideration. In the UK? It means the exact opposite -- it means the item is now on the table for immediate debate.

    Yes, this one trips me up all the time because I spent some years staffing state legislative committee meetings in the US.

    720:

    "Not detecting broken rails is the major failure mode ( pun! ) of Axle-counters & a great vulnerability IMHO."

    The trouble with axle counters is that they are devices to indicate a particular state, but they do not report that state directly and continuously; instead they report a representation of it derived from a couple of point measurements. There are all sorts of situations in both software and hardware where doing this sort of thing looks attractive as a workaround when you need to know some state which is difficult to get at directly, but it has an amazing number of ways to go wrong and it looks a lot less attractive when you've met some of them. Charlie's error-handling suggestion at #450 makes me shiver...

    Axle counters are basically a regression to the methods used before track circuits which also relied on section occupancy as a derived variable, updated by human observation from signal boxes or sometimes from treadle bars. Track circuits seek to improve on this situation by measuring the variable directly, whereas axle counters seek to improve on it by improving the reliability of the spot observations, which certainly helps but does not remove the basic disadvantage.

    Fiddling with the system while trying to run trains through it may be common practice, but it is a bad idea at the best of times; derived-variable systems are much less robust against failures induced by such fiddling, and axle counter systems are particularly so due to the technical complexity. The accident at the Severn Tunnel from this cause was exactly the sort of thing (or one of them) that I expected to happen when I first heard of axle counters being tried.

    The Swiss counter overflow thing was simply inexcusably bad engineering. It's the sort of thing you can put up with in an experimental bench lash-up just to see if an idea works, but as soon as you know it does work you need to be getting rid of the artificial case you've put in where it doesn't, otherwise it will start messing you around straight away. Leaving such a really obvious guaranteed failure in a safety critical system should never have happened, and is evidence of multiple instances of unrestrained testicular response to gravity.

    As regards correctness of modifications to interlockings, I might suggest that this is one area where the much-derided (including by me) "formal methods" might be a useful approach. The logic involved is very simple; the problem is that there is a heck of a lot of it and it runs away from humans' ability to keep track of it all - not merely as regards manual verification, but also as regards devising automated test procedures to cover all eventualities. The logic is also very tightly specified, and many of the components of the system have gone a long way towards provability already as a result of informal evolution; it strikes me that it should be within the bounds of possibility to generate a signalling system from formally-proven interconnections of proven modules, such that any proposed modification can be submitted to the proof framework and dependably shown to be correct or not.

    721:

    Pigeon No - the "Marxist" version of socialism - communism simply does not & cannot work, because of what a calvinist would call original sin - people want their own stuff & their own patch, & their own way of doing things, be it ever so tiny & NOT state-controlled ( OR church-controlled - note* ) everything, down to the local corner shop selling exactly the same stuff as everyone else - they want VARIETY. OTOH. "soft-socialism" - Social Democracy works extremely well indeed - look at, um, err: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Benelux & a lot of other places, too. Note*: "It was if all the walls of the houses in Geneva had been turned into glass"

    722:

    However the two parties are pulled to the centre by the simple logic of this being a way to capture more votes. Which explains so well why both Republicans and Democrats have steadily moved to the right over the last generation…

    Yes, but...

    Thing to realize is that what constitutes "right" and "left" in the US keeps shifting, to the point where anyone who thinks it's left, right, and center, has waaaay too much whitewash in their eyes.

    US politics for the last century has been about coalition building. Here's an oversimplified look at the coalitions.

    There's the Whigs, who tend to embody the New England-style sensible government solving problems approach (spoiler alert, I'm in this bloc). They tend to get grandiose on the government solving people's problems, and tend to be far too intellectual for the mainstream. Most environmentalists float around here.

    There's the (wannabe) Slaveowners, who tend to be wealthy and have no problem exploiting people for profit. They're as old as the pharaohs, basically. Most big-business types tend to fall in here. Altemeyer's Authoritarian leaders tend to be here.

    There's the Progressives, who, as voiced by Lincoln(! Yes, these were originally the radical Republicans) believe in the Declaration of Independence-based idea that all men are created equal, and if anyone can be enslaved, everyone can be enslaved. This is where many non-white/male people currently stand, for obvious reasons, as well as the environmental justice people. Most of these people aren't conservation-minded environmentalists, because they want everyone to have a more equal piece of the pie. As a result, they tend to think The Pie will grow forever, while the more scientifically inclined unfortunately know that we're rapidly running out of Pie of any sort.

    There's Churchianity, in a rainbow of flavors, but these are people who organize around their centralized belief hierarchies. These are NOT all white conservatives, because Black Churches, immigrant mosques and temples have been central to organizing a bunch of communities. That said, they tend to be more values focused and conservative, although there are progressive churches too.

    There's the right wing authoritarian followers, per Altemeyer. They want to blend in and follow strong leaders. Many of them are churchgoers, but again per Altemeyer, they tend to mouth rather than practice the values of their groups.

    There are the marginal Anarchists, who want to see it all burn down, because they have no place in the existing orders.

    Then there's the Conservatives, who pretty much want things to stay the way they are, because life is hard enough without adding in major changes and they got their piece of the Pie. This is probably the single biggest group on the map, but aside from NIMBYs, they tend not to be too organized.

    Now currently, the Democrats are a coalition consisting of the Progressive/Radicals (aka the mainstream Democrats and the black voters who elected Biden) the Whigs (aka the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, who will work with Biden but wanted Warren), much of non-white Churchianity (you'd better believe the Black churches helped Biden win), and the more apolitical and liberal Slaveowners (who are basically following the money).

    The Republicans, meanwhile, have a bunch of the Slaveowners (especially those whose business interests coincide with Republican politics), most right wing authoritarians, white and many Hispanic evangelicals (the big new Churchianity, now in the midst of a plethora of identity crises), and most of the anarchists (the Alt-right).

    Conservatives in this case tend to vote Independent or not vote at all, so they're the swing vote. They don't want the country to be in an authoritarian system, but equally, they've got theirs, and they really don't want to think too hard about how much of that is a result of privilege and luck, rather than hard work and following the rules, so Democrats have to be careful not to scare them Getting them to vote for one of the two major coalitions is what drives a lot of "centrist politics" in the US.

    Thing to realize is that the Black vote used to be more Republican, because the Democrats were on the side of the Slaveowners until LBJ in the mid-1960s. These coalitions form and re-form, and values change even within them. For example, Black Americans tend to be more Conservative than Whig (as ID'ed here), but institutional racism tends to radicalize them. Thus, the notion that Democratic domination is inevitable due to increasing racial diversity in the US is problematic, because on average, most non-white people would prefer to be conservative, not progressive, let alone Whig.

    This also explains why dealing with climate change is so effing difficult: only one bloc, the Whigs, see the problem as huge and want to deal with it. Almost everyone else is only starting to deal with it because it's wrecking their lives regardless of what they care about.

    Hope this helps.

    723: 696 - And, of course, "enplane". 712 - Foods that cause you to produce urates, which then aren't processed properly and crystalise in your joints. You'll need to do your own research; my best suggestion would be to start at https://patient.info/ I know about my case of gout, but not necessarily about anyone else's.
    724:

    Allopurinol 300 mg, once daily for me - and keep my feet warm. Cold feet is a trigger for me. I haven't had an attack since 2001.

    Food triggers, I've no idea. I eat a lot of red meat and not much veg because of IBS. I don't eat much fish these days because himself objects to his food looking back at him (and the bones), and we eat mushrooms weekly. I've largely stopped with fizzy drinks and alcohol.

    725:

    JReynolds @ 680: Here's something that people might find interesting. This person on Youtube has put together what south-eastern accents in England sounded like, from the 14th to the 21st centuries.

    Enjoyed that.

    726:

    Cold feet is a new one on me.

    Sugary fizzy drinks are a major trigger, but red wine and hard cheese aren't.

    727:

    Robert Prior @ 715:

    However the two parties are pulled to the centre by the simple logic of this being a way to capture more votes.

    Which explains so well why both Republicans and Democrats have steadily moved to the right over the last generation…

    Does it?

    If both parties are moving right (or left), only one of them is moving towards the center. The other is moving away.

    728:

    Pigeon @ 718: As for the "anti-semitism" bit I am aware that the "official" definition has been hijacked to conflate criticism of the state of Israel with opposition to people of Jewish descent, but I decline to accept such an obvious perversion of logic, and deplore also that it makes it impossible to distinguish accusations of genuine bigotry from mere political disagreement.

    Also diminishes the power of the term as an argument against REAL anti-Semites (Neo-Nazis, Jew haters, ...).

    729:

    I'd very much like to see a coherent alternative to capitalism. There was a time (roughly from 1900 to 1970) when Socialism Classic looked like it might be one. Of course we now know that doesn't work.

    I hope you have read Red Plenty, about the generation or so after WWII during which the experiment seemed to be working. We can see now problems with a planned economy, but back in the 1960s nobody had the economic theory or mathematics to describe why this could be troublesome. Back then the wheels had yet not come off the Soviets' little red wagon and for a while things looked like they were going great.

    People can debate the period when Soviet socialism could be viewed as the future of the world. I'll bookend it with the end off WWII and the end of the Prague Spring, because nothing announces to the world that you don't believe in your own ideology like invading another nation for trying to implement that ideology.

    730:

    Sorry, I left the sarcasm tag off.

    It's a simplistic argument that is more a just-so-story than an actual explanation. Because if it was actually an explanation of a real phenomenon, then both American political parties would be moving to the centre, rather than both moving to the right (over the last generation or so).

    And has been mentioned before, the American political spectrum is missing a whole chunk of the left, by (say) European standards.

    Frank gave what looks like a better explanation than I've seen in many articles on the subject (possibly because Americans already know that stuff).

    But Hotelling's Law seems to be one of those over-simplified models that doesn't actually model the real world.

    731:

    I am aware that the "official" definition has been hijacked to conflate criticism of the state of Israel with opposition to people of Jewish descent

    From personal experience, that has been the case since at least the early 90s.

    732:

    Huh - not familiar with the Indian limes.

    733:

    But... where would the US be without deplane?

    Boss, boss, deplane! Deplane!

    734:

    I really need to write my political book.

    In Marx's time, "capital" was close to identical to "capital plant". Now, they move, and they're not really it. My thought on socialism is to nationalize capital.

    As I'm typing this, I see it would work really well. Modern 1% don't have the stocks and money in their own name, they have it in holding companies, making it hard to tax. By nationalizing the capital - for example, all the loans, etc, over $10M that is on Intel's, or Wells Fargo's balance sheets, means the 1% do not control that any more... and gives the rest of us control (aka "voting") over it.

    735:

    Actually, that's due to the 1% heavily investing in media, and brainwashing the public.

    Faux "News" should be shut down for violating election laws, being that they're dumping billions of "in kind" to the wrong wing.

    736:

    And for me, spending more than half my life in sf club meetings.

    737:

    Huh - not familiar with the Indian limes.

    I had to look that one up too. If Google is to be trusted, Indian lime is short for "West Indian lime," which Americans know as "Key lime." It's also called bartender's lime and Omani lime, for what it's worth. Scientifically it's Citrus × aurantiifolia, a citrus hybrid from C. hystrix x C. medica originating in Southeast Asia.

    The things we normally get as limes in American grocery stores are closer to "Persian limes," aka "Tahitian limes." These are a triploid cross between key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia) and lemon (Citrus limon).

    If you're thinking Argh, they're all just citrus! Congratulations! You've found something even more complicated that trying to figure out how modern humans, Denisovans, Neanderthals, H. longi, and others all fit together.

    738:

    There is an American left, but the media would rather tell us that "Clinton is a liberal" and pretend that Extinction Rebellion is crazy than actually discuss the real American left.

    739:

    For U.S. Customs and Border Protection citrus fruits are easy to classify. There is only one class: "throw it away".

    Citrus fruits can't be brought in the U.S., whatever the type or the quantity. You have an orange in a jacket pocket? Throw it away. You have a crate of limes in your trunk? Throw it away.

    740:

    Robert, I don't think most Americans know about politics. I just deal with it every week. The group I flagged as Whigs are what most Europeans would see as the Left.

    The bigger point is that anyone who sees a single spectrum of politics from right to left in the US really shouldn't be driving a car, given how badly they're depth perception is failing them. I don't care how many times some braying jackass told you that there's a political spectrum. There is not a single dimension you can line everyone up on.

    It's not Right versus Left, it's how very different people live in the world, and trying to herd these different breeds of cats. Sometimes a critical issue (like individual freedom) may cause people to make common cause on the right , sometimes they may congregate on the left.

    At the moment, we're pretty much stuck with death-cult fascists and everyone else. That's not a spectrum of right versus left, that's a sucking hole in the fabric of reality that some people are trying to enlarge*, while everyone else is trying to seal the hole while we circle it with increasing speed.

    *To prove their loyalty to a cause they don't really believe in, and/or because they think it will make them money and nothing else matters, and/or they think they'll get it ALL OVER WITH by trying to utterly destroy things.

    741:

    Also diminishes the power of the term as an argument against REAL...

    Which has become problematic wrt fascists and nazis of late. It's also a problem for many economically-far-right countries that "socialism" as a term of abuse has been so perverted that there are past US presidents who would count as socialist extremists in the current US political system.

    A lot of this is actually the point. It works two ways: one side broadens the definition of the term so as to include more of the people they don't like; while on the other hand are people who want to so dilute a horrible term that it becomes useless. Generally both approaches are used simultaneously, sometimes by the same people - it can be hard to tell which approach is dominant with some people.

    742:

    SS nothing announces to the world that you don't believe in your own ideology like invading another nation for trying to implement that ideology. Like the failures of christianity & islam, you mean?

    whitroth Bright yellow when ripe & not as sour as the Caribbean variety Wiki entry the one illustrated is nowhere yellow enough! Here is an advertisement, that gives a much better actual picture. Mine look very much like that picture, dribble.

    H Citrus cross/inter/selective breeding - try all the "varieties" of Brassica oleracea then ...

    Moz Eisenhower would now qualify as a dangerous socialist leftie, yes?

    743:

    I think you're thinking that a "political spectrum" is/should/will be like a white light spectrum, with all values representing more or less equally. I see it more like a mass spectrum, with large peaks representing "political parties", and background in between. Sample - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ObwiedniaPeptydu.gif

    744:

    Tangential to the spread of Englishes subtread, my wife and I are trying to watch a Finnish series called Bordertown on Netflix. Unfortunately, I guess inevitably being Netflix, it's dubbed with American accents. The translation is so-so and the dubbing itself, the voice actors, are sort of okay but not great. And added all together it seems to make it unwatchable, so we've given up on it. We'd strongly prefer to see it with the original Finnish soundtrack and English subtitles, and this used to be the norm for television here (especially since 1980 when the marvellous public broadcaster SBS was established, which specialised in this sort of thing... in fact a copy of a movie with subtitles by SBS translation services is a wonderful thing).

    But it's an interesting cultural perspective thing. American TV made in America with original American actors is fine, it's what it is and some of it is fantastic. You better believe we'll be binge-watching season 6 of Better Call Saul when it's released next year. But the sort of stealthy Americanisation of stuff from elsewhere can be really grating, especially if there are regional US accents in play that obviously make no sense in context. I think there really are Americans who don't understand why other folks might have a problem with that, and to them this is "anti-Americanism", whatever that is. There was even someone here who seriously suggested US English should be seen as "normal" as there are more Americans than Brits these days (long story short: there are not more Americans than people who speak English, perhaps even as a first language, on the Indian subcontinent).

    But it's a very privileged sort of complaint, so not something to take a really long way. If anything, the Chinese century will have plenty of the same thing but with Mandarin... though I guess that will be more evenly spread.

    745:

    The logic involved is very simple; the problem is that there is a heck of a lot of it and it runs away from humans' ability to keep track of it all - not merely as regards manual verification, but also as regards devising automated test procedures to cover all eventualities.

    It feels like it ought to be possible to come up with some simple templates that will handle 99%+ of situations so that it would be very easy to verify. But, as someone who has read lots of control tables, I am still amazed by the number of special cases you run into.

    "Geographical interlockings" were a good attempt to address this. For those not aware of the term, you had a set of standard modules representing signals, points, crossovers between two tracks, and so on. These had the design tested to death and were then shipped in a standard form. Then at the actual site you simple plugged them in together to replicate the actual layout on the track and it all just worked.

    Except that it didn't - you still need to do lots of hand design to handle all the odd cases.

    I'm also sceptical about formal methods, but in the true sense of the word - you need to know where and when they are applicable. A good use was about 25 or 30 years ago, when some researchers did a formal methods analysis of the protocol used to connect two SSI interlockings together. Their model showed that it was possible to have a cross-boundary route with the first part locked (and the signal clear to yellow) but the second half unlocked so that a conflicting move could be signalled. When BR tried it out, they found that it could actually happen!

    My LL.M. dissertation touches on this a bit. See "bug in the code" about half way through.

    746:

    Worked example - Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Central_station#Signalling and the subsequent sub-section on electrification (that's right, not all EMUs operating out of GCS use the same voltage).

    There are 15 high level platforms, feeding onto 3 dual track main lines, and it is possible (not likely in some cases but possible) for a train going to any down destination to be marshalled on any platform.

    747:

    "Clinton is a liberal"

    She'd fit right in with Canadian Conservatives.

    Except for being female — our Conservatives are still the party of misogyny*.

    Look at how Kenney is slamming nurses in Alberta, for example. After a year and a half of high-risk* 12 hour shifts, no control over workplace, watching people die alone, etc, what's their reward? A 3% pay cut so the men* can rebuild the economy.

    **Compared to Tory politicians, certainly.

    *All the models in the UCP 'rebuild the economy' ads are manly men doing manly things like construction and farming. No women, no intellectual work, no caring work…

    748:

    Charlie @ 705: Corbyn was much closer to the authentic grass-roots socialism the party rank and file wanted, but nobody in the establishment could tolerate that ...

    The Labour leadership ditched 1970s-style cloth-cap socialism because ever since Margaret Thatcher those polices have consistently lost elections, and Kinnock and Blair wanted to be elected. That's democracy. That style of socialism was based on mass blue-collar labour, but once mass blue-collar labour became a sufficiently small minority of the working population Labour ceased to be able to win elections merely on the back of the blue-collar vote. Meanwhile the rest of the country was contemptuous of what it saw as a bunch of people who felt entitled to be paid out of subsidies paid for by the taxes imposed on the rest of the population.

    Its an intriguing thought experiment: suppose that Corbyn had been able to present a modern vision of socialism instead of some back-to-1970 nostagia.

    Problem: Johnson's parliamentary party has been taken over from within by the fascist hard-right. UKIP has shriveled because UKIP voters now have MPs they can enthusiastically campaign for. BXP is gone because Johnson delivered what they wanted.

    Well, again, that's democracy. There are a lot of people who think that way, and many of them vote. I know how those people think because my parents were regular Daily Mail readers, and reckoned it a more reliable source of news than the dangerously lefty BBC. They would be horrified to have been called "fascist", but they were certainly nationalist, anti-European, and borderline racist in the "I'm not racist but..." way. The Conservative party is simply responding to the wishes of the people who vote for it.

    749:

    That's still only showing a single dimension for political alignment. Which is the real problem — there's more than one dimension to political views.

    (Although some voters only have one dimension they consider, in some cases in a binary fashion. Single-issue voters are a thing.)

    I've seen two-dimensional graphs that do a better job of capturing the diversity of political views — some of them even have the same axes. A problem for visualizing is that there's more than three possible axes, so whatever graph you have is dropping elements.

    750:

    Unfortunately, I guess inevitably being Netflix, it's dubbed with American accents.,/i>

    I was told decades ago that very few Americans want to watch something with subtitles, so if you plan on selling to a mass audience you have to dub. And if the English sounds 'funny' (ie. non-American) you lose more of your audience, so you want American voice actors…

    On the flip side, very few Americans prefer subtitles, and few of those are like you and won't watch dubbed films/programmes, so dubbing loses you fewer viewers than subtitling.

    751:

    Troutwaxer @ 714: Before you can discuss socialism, I think you need to define your terms. What is "Socialism?"

    I rather thought I had. I said I was talking about Socialism Classic, which calls for the means of production to be collectively owned and controlled. So that excludes any system in which a generous welfare state co-exists with a basically capitalist economic infrastructure (banks making loans, private ownership of capital goods, shareholders getting dividends etc). I'm aware that the term has been broadened by the American economic right to become a bogey-word for any policies that they disagree with, but I object to that redefinition of the word. Apart from anything else it makes it too easy for the right to play equivocation games instead of discussing policies on their merits.

    752:

    Pigeon @ 718: As for the "anti-semitism" bit I am aware that the "official" definition has been hijacked to conflate criticism of the state of Israel with opposition to people of Jewish descent,

    There is legitimate criticism of the state of Israel, and there is cosying up to known anti-semites. Corbyn has repeatedly shared platforms with people who assert the Blood Libel and deny the Holocaust.

    753:

    paws & Clive There's also the phenomenon of "backlocking" which could, occasionally happen with mechanical frames ... And has now been found ( Oh shit! ) to be all-too-possible with all forms of " electronic" signalling from NX panels up to the latest ROC's. The cure is ... bring all trains to a stand, power the whole thing down & then re-start .... this can "take some time", with potentially every train between say/approx, Milton Keynes & Crewe on one axis & Worcester & almost-to Derby in the other, standing at "reds" ... um.

    Paul Its an intriguing thought experiment: suppose that Corbyn had been able to present a modern vision of socialism instead of some back-to-1970 nostalgia. Impossible, because Corbyn is incapable of learning anything new ... And later FORGET "Socialism Classic" - what we NEED is social democracy & even that is being slowly destroyed by the creeping fascism enveloping us.

    754: 749 - Golden Software Grapher. A graphing package that can do multiple axes, and even 3-dimensional plots, and still remain readable. In any event, I was suggesting the spiked plot as better representing political parties on $issue than a pure spectrum. 753 - Greg, I am aware of the issue, and the reset methodology. If you've been following the conversation, you're already aware that I'm arguing that signalling systems are highly complex, no more complex than that.
    755:

    Well, by my count, there are at least four axes in the graph of American politics, not one:

    Wealth to poverty

    Race

    Religiosity

    Region

    So your first problem is that if you remap a four dimensional cloud of points onto one dimension, you've horribly distorted the data cloud, probably to the point of uselessness. That's why trying to map politics on a single right-left axis is so problematic.

    But it's worse than that.

    Only wealth is an actual continuous variable. The others are categorical variables that tend to be remapped as continuous variables. For instance "How white is someone from Vietnam, compared to Hispanic, compared with Indian, compared with African American?" I just mapped that on some rubric of skin color, except that's BS too, not because humans don't show a diversity of skin colors, but because African Americans show most of that diversity, but they get lumped at the black end, no matter what their skin color actually is.

    Region takes in two dimensions (latitude and longitude), but gets mapped as North vs. South (based on a civil war where the Republicans were the radical left) except that it now more measures urban versus rural more than North versus South, which is why Michigan, a stalwart in the Union Army, now maps as politically South.

    Religiosity: Do Quakers map as Christians religiously? No, they tend to be to the left of the "spiritual but not religious" crowd. And where do Hindus, Muslims, Spiritual but not religious, pagans, and atheists fall on a map based on stereotypes about different Christian sects and their likelihood to vote as their leaders tell them too?

    So that's how badly the categorical variables map as single continuous dimensions.

    But it's worse than that too.

    The axes are not orthogonal to each other, and they tend to be hierarchical. For example, billionaire Oprah Winfrey most likely votes democrat, although her wealth would cluster her with the Republicans. This is a guess on my part, but she's African American, and race trumps with wealth. And I could go on with how the rest of these break down, but that would take even longer. Wealth and religion is particularly hard to disentangle.

    This is why the political spectrum is such a really, really bad organizing principle in US politics. The data do not support it and do not map onto it. While left and right are convenient rhetorical labels, that's really all they are.

    It's simpler to talk about parties, the Democrats and Republicans. You can label them Left and Right if you want, but that's going to distract you, so go with parties. They try to find ways to get enough of the really different and mutually hostile people in the US to make common cause to win elections. That's it.

    The reason Hillary Clinton shifted from Republican to Democrat wasn't because of a "rightward slide" in politics, it was because, in larger part, the Democrats formed a coalition that she could work within, while the Republican coalition excluded her and her interests. That coalition started to form when LBJ signed acts favoring Black Americans and "lost the Southern Vote for a Generation." (See how this plays on both the Race and Region axes? That's why those "axes" are bullshit)

    And about the Beige Authoritarians: It would be great if environmental groups could swing power in the US, but with the Republicans trying to dismantle everything we've done, we're stuck caucusing with and being mostly ignored by the Democrats if we want any voice at all. That is, unless democrats are dying in multi-billion dollar environmental catastrophes every year, in which case yes, it's a good idea to listen to the environmentalists for a change, which is where we are now. But so long as our votes are forced by the politics of the opposing coalition, why should our leaders do any more than pay lip service to our interests? That lip service to people forced into one coalition by the actions of the opposing coalition is the essence of Beige Authoritarianism, at least in my opinion.

    756:

    If you're talking about bog-standard, "everything is owned by the state" kind of stuff, no that doesn't work very well. I'm not sure a good version of "collectively owned and controlled" has ever really been tried.

    The only place I've ever seen anything like "collectively owned" it is the world of software, where it's not hard to find free-as-in-beer versions of all the necessary software tools to build anything you want - and that works fairly well, though perhaps because people who can make it all work together and actually build something useful are rare-enough that the economics of scarcity kicks in.

    757:

    @744- Are you sure Netflix doesn't have the subbed version hidden? They default to annoyingly dubbed because they've a/b tested and get higher viewer retention with the dubbed versions, but the original is usually there somewhere. More detail in this Radio Times article- https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/netflix-subtitles-dubbing-settings-foreign-language-shows/

    As for gaol, it's done for. You'd have to be as pompous as Rees-Mogg to still use it.

    758:

    I'd qualify that quite a bit. "Everything owned by the state" worked pretty well when the local God-King owned the land. "Collectively owned" worked (and works) for many island cultures, for most necessities other than land and boats.

    The problem is one of scaling, rather than one of kind. Sharing food works great in places where "eat it before it goes bad" is important, and where most of the people you're sharing it with are relatives to one degree or another. It doesn't work so well with a billion people, because cheating is difficult to punish.

    But note that places like Hawai'i went from clan-based ownership to state owned, precisely because the old system broke down as the population grew. I'd even argue that may have been why Russia went communist long before Germany did. The German model of ownership scaled, while the Russian model immiserated the many, and made revolution more palatable than enduring.

    So the challenge for any system, including especially captialism, is how it scales up or down. Capitalism, for example, doesn't work as well in small isolated populations, where sharing works better, for example.

    759:

    That use of table not in my UK experience from many years experience at TU conferences and serving on SOC / CBC committee.

    Its a procedural to punt something of the order paper into the long grass.

    760:

    “If both parties are moving right (or left), only one of them is moving towards the center. The other is moving away.” This only works if one of the parties is actually to the left of centre. This is most definitely not the case in the USA. Dems are pretty seriously conservative by most standards. Republicans are currently so far off that the blue-shift is giving anyone watching serious sunburn.

    761:

    “blue-shift”- wait, what? I’m sure that made sense when I thought it.

    762:

    Are you really making the argument that "local god-king owns the land" is the same as "Soviet-style communism?"

    I'd get my stick and chase after you, but I've got a lot of yard-work to do today and I'm hoping to get a little more done on my second book,* so I'll just sigh unhappily and get on with life.

    • I'm about ninety-percent done, but I've got one more day of smoothing out all the stuff I dumped into the middle of the book before I can write the climax.
    763:

    “Unfortunately, I guess inevitably being Netflix, it's dubbed with American accents.” Is there some reason that you can’t change the subtitle and audio settings? We pretty much always set to ‘native’ audio and English subtitles.

    The most hilarious example I can remember was hearing Depardieu’s voice in “Marseille” being dubbed as a Chicago-gangster. Blech!

    764:

    You're not convincing me there's an issue here. Grapher can map several different Y axes against a single X, so say wealth, race, religiosity, region all against number of people. You can get a 2 week trial from https://www.goldensoftware.com/products/grapher/trial .

    765:

    You're not convincing me there's an issue here. Grapher can map several different Y axes against a single X, so say wealth, race, religiosity, region all against number of people.

    Add authoritarianism*, so at least five axes.

    How many dimensions do you need before a graph doesn't really present the data or show the relationships that exist between the not-completely-independent views/beliefs of voters?

    (Also, Grapher is $540 — not the kind of software most of us have enough use for to warrant purchasing it.)

    After reading most* of Altemeyer's book I feel it necessary to point out that his "right-wing authoritarian followers" are right-wing in the classic Conservative support-law-and-order-and-the-existing-system way. In Communist Russia they'd have been Party members.

    **For some reason the epub I downloaded from his website shifts every page down by about an inch, so I couldn't read the bottom few lines of every page. Very odd, and not certain how to fix it.

    766:

    How many different colours can you discern? I can certainly do 8, and enumerated the same 4 used in the comment I was replying too. SO I reckon I could plot 8 variables against a common X axis.

    I'll give you that Grapher is a non-trivial purchase, but my point is that it exists, not that it's cheap.

    767:

    Since Robert and I both come from ecological backgrounds, I'll simply point out that I'm used to dealing with data sets that graph on 20-30 dimensions, and the data are not only of low-quality, they're not normalizable.

    One example is when you do a bunch of plots and list the number of plants in each species per plot. Collecting the data is easy: I've done it with minimally trained volunteers many times. Doing analysis on the data to find the major patterns within it? Not as easy.

    The problem is that you can create a data graph where each axis is the number of plants of each species in each plot. If you do 100 plots, with say 50 species, you get 100 plots graphed as individual in a 50 dimensional space, where each dimension is the abundance of one species in a plot. Problem is, most of those plots are of the form (3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0...) . When you graph this, you get the infamous "dust bunny distribution" where all the graphs of plots in species-space either create a cloud of dust around the origin (plots may have no plants), or they line up at zero along most axes (they've got a few species in a clump, and most species are absent). Such a distribution cannot be made into anything resembling a normal distribution, so statistical methods that depend on normal distributions give you misleading results if you're careless enough to apply them. If you take a class in vegetation sampling, you spend a lot of time on this.

    So when Robert and I point out that the problem isn't the graphing software, it's that you're using multiple axes of problematic categorical data and treating it wrongly as if it's continuous data, that's where we're coming from. We've both done it for a living, him more than me.

    And yes, if I was bored enough, I could make a series of Excel graphs showing the political axes in five dimensions. I've done worse than that for publication. The problem is Garbage In, Garbage Out, not which software to use to graph the results.

    768:

    @746 - I thought everything electrified in Scotland used 25 kV AC. The 6.25 kV stuff went long ago and I didn't think you had any DC except the trams.

    @753 - that's not my understanding of "backlocking", which is a legitimate signalling process.

    And why would any fault require the entire ROC to be brought down, rather than just the relevant interlocking?

    [If you want to take this offline, I don't have a problem with that.]

    769:

    When I lived with my late ex in FL, in the back yard was supposed to be a lime tree. The fruits it grew, though, were a) yellow, b) huge - literally the size of a softball (half again the size of the cricket ball wikipedia shows), and c) as she used to say, "battery acid".

    Eisenhower - with 90% top tax bracket? Oh, Stalin!!!

    770:

    NOTE: from here on out, I will refer to the left as RED, and the Right (the Wrong) as white.

    About your axis - region, I would have agreed with decades ago. Now, it's wrong: what you want is rural/urban. Almost all US cities tend red, while rural tend white (except in areas heavily populated by Blacks).

    771:

    I think you meant red-shift, as they headed wrongward approaching lightspeed.

    772:

    Re Paul's "Marxism Classic" - I really do have to write my political book, so I can legitimately call myself a markist.

    In Marx's time, ownership of the physical plant was capital. Now... especially since the 1% get out of paying taxes by borrowing and living on that, is to nationalize capital, trust funds, banks, everything over, say, $10M or $20M.

    Which got me thinking: why do we need private or commercial banks? Why not a national bank for everything? I mean, in the US, bank accounts < $250k,I think is the current limit, are federally insured. Why not the whole thing?

    773:

    As it happens, people can, have, and frequently do run various dimension-reduction routines over American legislative voting and mass surveys.

    While, yeah, individual issues sometimes matter, it turns out that a single dimension that looks like "broadly economic left-right" explains 85-90 percent of whatever they're looking at. A second dimension that's harder to pin down but looks like it has a bunch of racial stuff loaded onto it gets you another 5-10%.

    The stuff Heteromeles is talking about... it's real, but it's mostly noise, or stuff that a thin smear of highly-informed and highly-concerned people pay attention to but almost everyone else ignores. They just plain don't seem particularly relevant to the actual axes of disagreement in American politics.

    Democrats as a whole haven't been moving to the right. Overall, this is a silly thing to think as Democrats in the 60s or 70s included a large rump of extremely conservative southern Democrats who are just gone now. The Democratic median now is about where the median nonsouthern Democrat was in the 60s or 70s. It's the Republican median that's marched off to la-la land, to and past the previous peak of aggregate conservatism in the late 19th century.

    774:

    from here on out, I will refer to the left as RED

    Actually, as a child of the 20th century I think the modern usage of red to represent the Republicans is appropriate.

    Think about it. When we were growing up "red" was used as a pejorative to represent people who were dangerous enemies who were willing to burn down the world before admitting defeat, who were governed by a single party, which spied on its own citizens, which used force against its citizens when they protested, which meddled in other countries' affairs to further their ideological interests…

    Honestly, which American political party does that sound like?

    775:

    Clive F AIUI it's "possible" - I don't think any ROC has spectacularly failed that badly - yet. OTOH, before 3 Bridges went live, I got caught at Croydon one day when VIC panel went down completely for a couple of hours .....

    whitroth I'm a Marxist - Groucho for preference .....

    776:
    Big Brother IS watching.

    From the Guardian: A private firm sells hacking software to governments for both IOS & Android that can install itself on your smart phone without you having to click on a link or even answer the damn phone. The software can turn the phone's camera & audio on to film & record you without you knowing and can track your location as well as revealing who you've been talking to.

    See also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/ft-editor-roula-khalaf-among-180-journalists-targeted-nso-spyware

    The editor of the Financial Times is one of more than 180 editors, investigative reporters and other journalists around the world who were selected as possible candidates for surveillance by government clients of the surveillance firm NSO Group, ...
    777:

    Niala @ 739: For U.S. Customs and Border Protection citrus fruits are easy to classify. There is only one class: "throw it away".

    Citrus fruits can't be brought in the U.S., whatever the type or the quantity. You have an orange in a jacket pocket? Throw it away. You have a crate of limes in your trunk? Throw it away.

    ... or eat it on the plane while you're on your way home to the USA.

    That's what I did with the Mandarin Oranges I got in China (only had a couple left when we got on plane in Beijing). Left the peels in the trash bag the flight attendants brought around. The airlines have procedures for that.

    Individuals may not casually bring citrus fruit into the U.S. But the U.S. does import a lot of different foods including citrus. You just have to follow the Commodity Import Regulations:

    https://usacustomsclearance.com/process/importing-food-into-the-us-what-you-need-to-know/

    https://epermits.aphis.usda.gov/manual/index.cfm?action=guidePageP&COMMOD_ID=73&dspNavBar=1

    You can usually find your fancy limes (or Mandarin Oranges) at one of the many specialty grocers here in the U.S. Some imported & some grown here in the U.S.

    OTOH, REAL Scottish haggis ...

    778: 767 - And that's a separate problem; well 2 actually, but Grapher can do things like bar charts, not just scatter charts, which addresses one of them by "using appropriate software and chart types". The other one is that you've decided to move the question from politics where no-one actually wants anything more than whether big-endians or little-endians are the majority, to a biology question. 768 ref #746 - Yes, that's the case now, but it wasn't in the 1960s. 777 - Interesting. I'd love to see the software that turns on the camera on a Nokia 105. (hint; there's no hardware for it to interact with)
    779:

    I'm really not sure the economic explanation works, because there are poor and rich on both sides. More importantly, it fails to explain the huge push to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters, the failure to grapple with climate change, or the urban/rural split.

    The other thing is that you're parsing "the democrats as a whole" as not including the southern democrats pre-civil rights. That one I REALLY have to disagree with, because the South is what defined the democratic party and it's power for over a century. They WERE the majority of democrats. When they moved to the Republicans is when a lot of moderate and technophilic Republicans (including myself) switched parties to the democrats. That's about different blocs forming a coalition, not economics driving left and right.

    This is even true for environmentalists. Up until the early 1990s, about one-quarter to one-half the environmental community was republican, specifically Teddy Roosevelt republican. They had no problem with the notion that conservation was conservative, or that hunting or ranching, properly done, could be good land managemen (and we all ignored the racism inherent in the movement). Bush and Gingrich forced them out of the Republican party, and also forced a split between those who valued Republicanism more than conservation (e.g. rural farmers, ranchers, and hunters) and those who wanted conservation (increasingly suburban middle class outdoorsy people). The environmental justice contingent and the conservation contingent work closely together now, but it's a hard learning experience for both sides.

    So no, I don't think this is a thin smear on top of a unidimensional economic trend. Not at all.

    780:

    Greg Tingey @ 742: Moz
    Eisenhower would now qualify as a dangerous socialist leftie, yes?

    Him and Saint Ronnie the Ray Gun ... or at least they'd both qualify as RINOs (as does Abraham Lincoln judged by modern criteria).

    I don't think you can quite be considered a "dangerous socialist leftie" unless you are a former Democratic President.

    781:

    See also Forensic Methodology Report: How to catch NSO Group’s Pegasus (18 July 2021, 17:00 UTC)

    I just went through my iPhone's settings, disabling unneeded access permissions. iPhones have way too many settings. (This is after having done it a couple of months ago; found a few I had missed previously.)

    IMO NSO group should be vigorously dismantled. They actively support evil, and net-damage Israel's reputation.

    Note that the report says (essentially) that NSO group often/usually burns zero-days to root phones. That may mean (probably does) that they buy such exploits on the dark markets. (Any solid evidence of such would be damaging to them. )

    782:

    I disagree, as another one from the 20th Century. Fascists are quite happy with surveillance - for example, the party of "smaller government" wants eyes in your doctors' offices and bathrooms.

    And no, I refuse to let you take our flag away from us. (#insert TheRedFlag).

    783:

    I don't get that, since we're not {teapot teapot} mad!

    784:

    I betcha Grapher can't do procedurally generated Chernoff faces.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoff_face

    A more recent appliation:

    https://www.r-bloggers.com/2017/06/chernoff-faces-in-ggplot2/

    .

    785:

    Just so y'all will know where I'm coming from ...

    I use the expression “the left” advisedly; I make a distinction between between being a liberal & being leftist, considering myself to be the former. I like the word “liberal” because it has two meanings, the current American definition of supporting New Deal/Great Society-type policies, and the more old-fashioned definition of favoring limited government. Since I vacillate between these two states of mind all the time, it feels appropriate to call myself this, even though the two definitions really contradict one another.
         One-Sided Wonder by Anne Cunningham.

    That expresses my own political beliefs quite well. I see myself as an old fashion New Deal/Great Society Liberal Democrat with strong CIVIL Libertarian tendancies. For me, the Preamble to the Constitution sums it all up.

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    I do regret that it took the the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments to explain to some folks who We the People are, but nobody's perfect & we hardly ever get it right on the first try.

    I believe in capitalism & free enterprise AND I believe government can best "promote the general welfare" by restraining capitalism's excesses and providing a social safety net for those capitalism leaves behind.

    While government action might best be a last resort after all others have failed, no one should go hungry, go without medical care or suffer from homelessness or joblessness or lack of a living wage. Government should provide a minimum framework for the care of those who cannot care for themselves. Not compulsory, but available.

    And I believe that's achievable without the government having to take ownership of the "means of production". Government should do no more than needs doing while at the same time ensuring that those things ARE done.

    786:

    #767 - And that's a separate problem; well 2 actually, but Grapher can do things like bar charts, not just scatter charts, which addresses one of them by "using appropriate software and chart types". The other one is that you've decided to move the question from politics where no-one actually wants anything more than whether big-endians or little-endians are the majority, to a biology question.

    The programs I used as an ecologist all came from sociology and political science, so it's the same question. Sociologists have the luxury of studying only one species that can actually speak for itself, so they developed the statistical programs for dealing with things like oh, politics, wealth, authoritarianism, racism, and so forth. Ecologists, being "statistical bottom-feeders" merely adapted the programs for multi-species situations.

    That's why this still applies. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

    787:

    H No Here, at any r ate, you are flat wrong. The Corbynistas, in particular are absolutists, want no truck with Social Democracy & EVERY SINGLE TIME - let the fascists win. The level of STUPID is painful to watch ... JBS is correct: The Democratic coalition is undermined by the hard left refusing any compromise. ... Foxessa - might be true in the USA - but it certainly is true here, unfortunately.

    788:

    My point is that the Republicans are supporting/doing what stereotypical Cold War Commies did (as per news reports) when I was a child. They're behaving just like "the Reds" in Cold War era pop culture.

    790:

    paws4thot @ 783: I don't get that, since we're not {teapot teapot} mad!

    I'm not quite clear on what it is you "don't get", but if it's about the haggis, it's because the recipe includes sheep's lungs. The FDA/USDA bans animal lungs from ALL food sold in the U.S., imported or otherwise.

    You can get haggis in the U.S. (apparently McKean's of Glasgow moved their operation to Bangor, Maine in 2004, so their haggis is made here in the USA) but it won't include sheep's lung.

    I believe there's been a recent (tentative) agreement between the U.S. and Scotland that will allow Scottish haggis to be imported once again, so long as it does NOT contain sheep's lung among the ingredients.

    791:

    where it's not hard to find free-as-in-beer versions of all the necessary software tools to build anything you want - and that works fairly well,

    Well yes. Mostly. Errrr.

    As those of us who have been around for a while are dying off, who picks up the various serious bits that everyone uses. NTP is a big one here. SSL realizes they have problems and are trying to fix them.

    And many of the zero days seem to be caused by people including old code that has been abandoned and not even realizing it as it's 3 to 5 layers below the level they are working at. Or a fake iteration on github.

    A variation of this came up in a discussion on the Mac munki system 5 or 6 years ago in terms of github and how do you make sure you're getting the "real Greg" software and not a project someone else named "munki" or some such. There was no real idea of a good fix in the discussion but this has actually happened a few times in the last year or so.

    792:

    How much does sheep's lung contribute to the haggis experience?

    793:

    Almost all US cities tend red, while rural tend white (except in areas heavily populated by Blacks).

    I don't know how it was when you were in Austin but currently Dallas tends to D and Fort Worth to "R". With all kinds of odd mixes in the smaller cities around DFW area.

    And for those who don't know, smaller means something like Plano which is 280K people but considered a suburb of Dallas.

    But in general I'd go along with your point. In general.

    794:

    The 2016 and 2018 POTUS elections were won by "smears" (some literal :-), and via the electoral college). The Georgia runoffs that switched control of the US Senate to the Democrats were won by "smears". US elections are often very very close, decided by very small margins and (often carefully marketed) spoiler candidates. The recent Israeli election was decided by smears. Etc. In 2016, like 10-14 days before the US Federal elections, I was mocked for worrying about late breaking influence operations to boost the electoral prospects of the US Republican party. The downstream consequences of Trump's election will have, in the fullness of time, killed at least hundreds of millions of humans.

    I have been missing rainbows. (One today, though weak.)

    795:

    iPhones have way too many settings.

    And yet they seem easier and with fewer settings than modern Androids. (I want both to give me a reasonable way to put the settings up on a 27" or larger display with the ability to click through lots of boxes without the constant back and forth a handheld screen size requires.)

    Both are caught in a squeeze between features, apps that want to be in your underwear, and security for the end user.

    796:

    when VIC panel went down completely for a couple of hours

    Translation please? Googling VIC panel in the US doesn't help with this one.

    797:

    Yeah, it made sense in my head just long enough for me to hit ‘submit’. I have no idea how any part of my brain could possibly have let that one out. I blame my second dose of moderna for allowing a 5G hack of my brain.

    798:

    I'm really not sure the economic explanation works, because there are poor and rich on both sides.

    Okay?

    Take a matrix of legislative votes or survey responses. Run some kind of dimension reduction over it. The usual ways to do this are with item-response models or models that more directly incorporate some notions of spatial voting, but you can do it with principal components if you really want to. But the dimension you recover is going to be the primary axis of conflict in that group.

    The dimension you get is going to be some arbitrary thing, but you can look at it to see who's on which ends and so on to get a sense of what the dimension means. If you do this to elites like Congress, the first dimension you recover, which correctly explains 85-90% of votes and has a high proportional reduction of error that I'd have to look up, looks like it has an awful lot of broadly economic left/right content to it. Same in nearly all state legislatures. The second dimension you recover, which gets you another few percentage points, is weirder but seems to have a lot of racial content. If you do this to people in the mass public answering a survey, you'll get something that's more simply partisan.

    The other thing is that you're parsing "the democrats as a whole" as not including the southern democrats pre-civil rights.

    The opposite. Claims that the Democrats are marching off to the right are silly because "the Democrats" within living memory included a bunch of people to the right of Genghis Khan.

    So no, I don't think this is a thin smear on top of a unidimensional economic trend. Not at all.

    But yet, actual disputes that define national-level politics are only a little more complex than unidimensional. Everything else is about explaining that last 10-15%.

    799:

    I think we agree, the problem is we're using the same words in different ways.

    For example, if a person is trying to parse what constitutes "right" and "left" in US politics, to see if they're basically coalitions of people who can work together, or whether there's a spectrum, it's important to not use " broadly economic left/right content to it" as the criteria, because that's a circular argument.

    Similarly, "Claims that the Democrats are marching off to the right are silly because "the Democrats" within living memory included a bunch of people to the right of Genghis Khan" is a circular argument, because it presumes that there is a left-right axis to begin with.

    The third point is one that may be less evident, and that has to do with voter suppression. Why suppress votes based on race if that axis doesn't matter. One might equally suggest that that axis is huge and scary, and is being kept out to keep the game of politics in a configuration that one side can win consistently. You can't deduce that from the way congress votes now, unfortunately, because the past is about description, not prediction.

    Finally, there's a math problem. If you have two coalitions (clouds of points), the first axis any ordination will recover is what separates the two clouds. The second axis is going to be something that applies to both point clouds equally. That second axis is going to be messy, if, for example, the democratic coalition splits on race, while the Republican coalition splits on wealth or religiosity. Since these two secondary axes aren't orthogonal to each other (race correlates somewhat with religiosity), you'll get a weak and hard-to-interpret set of correlations with the second axis.

    But the key point is that the structure of the data cloud will always recover a left-right spectrum, because US politics is structured to have two big parties, and the centroids of their power define a line in the space where they differ most. This doesn't tell you whether this line is a useful way to describe how party coalitions come together, because it's going to appear in any two-party system. You could easily call them the black-white spectrum, or the Donald and Joseph categories, or whatever.

    To pick an absurd example, if we had a beige dictatorship, where two parties were politically identical, but at odds because of the way the system was set up, the axis that separated them might correlate most strongly with something like tie and dress color (purple for the inclusives, green for the transhumanists, whatever). This correlation isn't informative, obviously, because you're tracking the label, not the underlying politics. If you want to understand how the system will evolve and/or fracture, you have to look at things like who is excluded and who's pulling the financial strings, and those are different questions entirely.

    Hope this helps.

    800:

    More tech news

  • China is continuing its secret plan to develop its suborbital spaceplane. To me, this reads like an autonomous Virgin Galactic plane. Like the XS-1, it reads like a solution in search of a problem. https://archive.is/D8dtk

  • The latest Economist has a special section on China's corporate sector. I won't link those b/c they're behind a paywall. However, here are some highlights

  • a. DeepGlint is China's leader in facial recognition technology, "the most important tech company no one's ever heard of" b. Horizon Robotics is working with VW and Bosch to develop self-driving technology c. China has ~3400 multinational corps, roughly the same as the US + Western Europe d. CATL is the global leader in EV batteries. They're transitioning from lithium ion batteries to high nickel batteries, which have higher energy density e. Xi is using the pandemic restrictions to get rid of foreigners. The expat population has declined by 30% compared to 18 months ago. Dk if these numbers include HK and Macau?

  • This tweet partially shows the Chinese LV development, both existing and in development. It includes engine characteristics https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6PY5mGVgAAPpmL?format=jpg&name=large

  • The brain interface technology has achieved an incremental breakthrough: allowing a paralyzed individual to type with his mind. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/15/paralyzed-man-brain-waves-sentences-computer-research

  • Enjoy Bezos' flight on Tuesday.

  • 801:

    "Once Bezos goes up Who cares if he comes down? That's not my department Says Werner von Braun!"

    802:

    Are you sure Netflix doesn't have the subbed version hidden?

    Well I'll be... yes it does, and I've just demonstrated it to my wife, so we'll be watching that later. Much obliged! So the move into the interwebs does bring some benefits after all.

    As for gaol, it's done for.

    Have to agree, though legacy usage remains (e.g. Ballad of Reading Gaol, and all the places, I'm thinking of the Australian ones but there must be plenty in the UK too, that used to be called So-and-so Gaol but are now called things like So-and-so Correctional Facility, So-and-so Secure Mental Health Unit or So-and-so High Security Prison).

    803:

    You aren't riffing on Mark Russell by any chance? I have a faint memory of him singing something similar way way way back when.

    804:

    The most hilarious example I can remember was hearing Depardieu’s voice...

    Funny, an example I had in my head was Depardieu in Cyrano, and the line "...et c'est ... Mon panache!". And wondering how awful a dubbed version would be, unless you had Depardieu read it.

    Mind you, I had an experience like that with the Luc Besson movie Subway, which I'd seen in the cinema with subtitles, but later could never find it on video without Jean Reno dubbed unrecognisably, never mind the others.

    806:

    In Communist Russia they'd have been Party members.

    Absolutely, and this is the bit that makes it really confusing for some people who see the "right-wing" thing as really attached to some intrinsic singular meaning, unfortunately. Altemeyer himself has discussed this as a shortcoming with the terminology he originated, but can't really change it now. Some people think it makes sense to refer to the RWAs in Soviet Russia as Left-wing Authoritarians, but it doesn't actually make sense (for a lot of reasons that probably are not worth getting mired in explaining): at least, it misses some really important distinctions.

    807:

    This correlation isn't informative, obviously, because you're tracking the label, not the underlying politics.

    And I guess this comment sort of answers a question I had in my head, but hadn't asked yet, about why you assigned the name "Whig" to the vaguely technocratic environmentalist group of scientifically literate actors. I was curious enough to double check my first impression: that it did't align at all with either the UK or US versions of actual Whig parties from history, so I suspected something like this was at play.

    I'm interested, particularly in relation to the beige dictatorship and neoliberalism... the way administration is a technical discipline, say, therefore while consensus best practice might veer in a direction that does not align with genuinely better outcomes, there should at least theoretically be a best practice that does align and would be encouraged with the correct settings. I'm not sure if that's a meta-technocrat approach, but maybe it's the perspective we're talking about. Asking for a friend and all that.

    808:

    David L Three-character code for a station in the UK - & often a major "signalbox" controlling similar area. So: "VIC" is London Victoria, even though it's actually in an incredibly ugly building just outside CLJ ( Clapham Jn ) - and it is two panels in the same building, each controlling the separate ex-LBSC & ex-LCDR lines. It was a most impressive display, though control of most of it has now been migrated to the 3 Bridges & Ashford ROC's

    809: 784 - I'd be surprised if anything can do programatic Chernoff faces as a native format. The only time I've seen them as an actual data set, they were a telemetry flat file "database" that took 6 people a day to assemble.

    OTOH, once you've done one in Grapher, you keep the same order and nominal range (X'min to X'Max and Y'Min to Y'Max) for each data set and you'll can produce Chernoffs from data sets at the rate of about 1 every 15 minutes.

    786 - Well, I am none of an ecologist, a sociologist or a politician. My serious answer to "what is your job title?" is "software engineer". The classes of problems I'm most used to encountering Grapher in are presenting X, Y, Z, VX, YX, VZ, against time, or 3D geological plots. 790 - Joke, hence the "{teapot teapot}" comment, but based on a widespread (if apparently incorrect on our part) belief that the FDA believes haggis to be a vector for scrapie and BSA. If your statement about animal lungs is correct, well that depends on the butcher: serious comment, since many retail butchers make their own haggis on a much smaller scale than McKean's and MacSween's do. 808 - Which does make some sort of sense; I don't think I've ever been on a train in or out of London Victoria (other "Victoria" stations are available) that didn't go through Clapham Junction!
    810:

    After reading most* of Altemeyer's book I feel it necessary to point out that his "right-wing authoritarian followers" are right-wing in the classic Conservative support-law-and-order-and-the-existing-system way. In Communist Russia they'd have been Party members.

    Yes! This was absolutely the case.

    Personality type matters more in politics than the overt ideology, if anything the ideology is chosen to suit the personality (satisfying to the individual's emotional needs and world-view).

    So aside brief revolutionary periods (during which parties such as the Bolsheviks and the NSDAP tend to undergo explosive growth), most members of successful revolutionary political parties tend to be authoritarian followers -- law'n'order conservative types who have latched onto the new order as that which they want to support.

    Mao's cultural revolution was a botched attempt to fix this in China, by kicking out the Confucian bureaucrats who were creeping back into the CCP at grass roots level. (Turned out that authoritarian followers were really good at enthusiastically waging cultural revolution, and mistook non-authoritarian thinking of any kind for the enemy.)

    Again: Lenin tried to purge the party in 1921-22, but failed to pry Stalin (and his fellow-travelers) our. This always seems to happen when the vanguard party grows too fast and takes on board people who would have cheerfully denounced and/or hanged the founders: and it always happens too late.

    811:

    OTOH, REAL Scottish haggis ...

    McSween's Vegetarian Haggis (which is vegan: it was invented during WW2 as a rationing workaround and proved popular enough it's sold to this day) is totally legal in the US. But try convincing a US Customs officer of that!

    As I understand it, even locally-produced Haggis is pretty much a black-market thing in the US because of food standard cooties attached to any use of offal. Which results in large amounts of perfectly tasty edible meat being thrown away or consigned to pet food use, dammit.

    812:

    This always seems to happen when the vanguard party grows too fast and takes on board people who would have cheerfully denounced and/or hanged the founders: and it always happens too late.

    Blast, there is a story idea in here... weeps due to personal inadequacy to see it through

    813:

    McSween's Vegetarian Haggis (which is vegan) is totally legal in the US. But try convincing a US Customs officer of that!

    Life's not long enough!

    814:

    Troutwaxer @ 762: Are you really making the argument that "local god-king owns the land" is the same as "Soviet-style communism?"

    Well, when your God-King was named Stalin or Mao, that was pretty much the case. Even when the God-King was called Brezhnev it was still very simlilar, because what you could do with the land (or anything else) was dictated by the God-King's priesthood and they were still the same people appointed in the same way.

    And as for the dynasty of God-Kings called Kim...

    815:

    whitroth @ 772: Which got me thinking: why do we need private or commercial banks? Why not a national bank for everything? I mean, in the US, bank accounts.

    From an economic point of view the job of a bank is to turn short-term loans (i.e. bank deposits) ito long term loans (i.e. 20-year mortgages, purchase of 5-year company bonds etc). Under capitalism banks have no other job than making those loans where they think it will produce the best return on investment.

    Once you have a national bank owned by the Government, the politicians will start to meddle. They don't care about RoI, they want money to flow to voters, and in particular the voters that can make a difference in their re-election.

    Some examples:

    In the UK in the 1960s and 70s the nationalised industries, particularly coal and car making, became notorious for soaking up government subsidies.

    In the US this is "pork barrel politics"; the government spends money on stuff it doesn't need, and some of that money gets spent employing people (Q: Why not just give the money directly to those people? A: That would be Socialism). Latest example: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/an-alabama-lawmaker-just-wants-nasa-to-fly-sls-doesnt-care-about-payloads/ and https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/legislation-requires-nasa-to-build-sls-test-article-after-initial-flights/?itm_source=parsely-api

    In China state-owned banks provided cheap loans to unprofitable state-owned enterprises, and hence became insolvent themselves. See here starting around page 48. However over the last decade this policy does seem to have been toned down, or maybe it has just been masked by other economic growth.

    In the UK and US there are no state-owned banks (except for the tail-end of ones nationalised after the financial crash of 2011), so this kind of spending has to be done out of taxes, which makes it more visible. A state-owned bank would find itself being required to make non-commercial loans to favoured companies despite the fact that there was no realistic chance of the loan being repaid. This would be masked by making bigger loans until the state-owned bank collapsed. Not good. But until the point when it collapsed the looming problems could be masked by over-optimistic projections about the future.

    816:

    Blast, there is a story idea in here...

    Its one of the major themes in the Merchant Princes series after the revolution in New Britain.

    817:

    The site you linked to perpetuates the modern myth that vitamin C reduces gout. This is comparable to the 1960s/70s myth that vitamin C exacerbated gout. The truth is that chemical Uralic acid assays are subject to positive interference from vitamin C and enzymatic assays have negative interference from vitamin C. It probably has no effect on the disease just the serum results. It’s very difficult to get clinicians to understand these details. Typically for a research paper they will just ask the lab for the basics of an assay before publication. It’s considered an unimportant detail. Part of my research coordinator post in an NHS hospital was explaining these details. .

    818:

    At least in theory, you could run "basic banking" on the model of the UK's NS&I; it's a government owned bank that is not permitted to issue loans, only to accept deposits. Deposits it does accept are treated as loans to the government, which prevents political attempts to force it to loan out cheap money to a favoured project - to do that, you have to lend money from the government directly, and claim that it's ringfenced to NS&I deposits, not coming from general taxation.

    It would not be difficult for NS&I to offer a current/checking account with standing orders, direct debits, and an online-only debit card (EFTPOS) so that you cannot have an overdraft with NS&I.

    This then provides everything you need to be a functional member of modern society (able to replace carrying large amounts of cash everywhere), but without the political risk involved when a government-owned bank issues loans. And existing retail banks still offer services NS&I can't - overdrafts, personal loans, credit cards - and "simply" have to compete with an entity offer the basics at a fair price when it comes to deposits. NS&I could, after all, be the only retail banking entity that charges a fee for a basic account, on the grounds that it cannot subsidise retail banking from its loans business.

    819:

    iPhone changed uric to uralic

    820:

    Altemeyer himself has discussed this as a shortcoming with the terminology he originated, but can't really change it now.

    In hindsight, "conservative authoritarians" might have been a better choice. Although maybe not, as there are Conservative Parties in many countries.

    Status-quo Authoritarians?

    821:

    I'd go for "reactionary authoritarians". It emphasizes that they're always reactive against change.

    822:

    Simon Farnsworth @ 818: At least in theory, you could run "basic banking" on the model of the UK's NS&I;

    I'm assuming that you're replying to my explanation of why a state-owned bank is a bad idea.

    Yes, but that misses the point. whitworth was suggesting that a state-owned bank do everything that a bank does, which includes issuing loans. The banking industry has two sides. One side takes deposits, and as you say that side can be done on the "basic bank account". The other side makes loans to individuals and companies. From an economic point of view its this side that is the important one. The deposits are merely a mechanism to get the cash to loan out. Hence what I said about "converting short term loans (i.e. deposits) into long-term loans".

    If the national bank merely keeps the money under the metaphorical mattress then nobody can get a loan for anything, and investment stops.

    (In reality of course you would get entities appearing which look and act like banks, and have the same systemic vulnerabilities as banks, but aren't called banks and aren't regulated as banks. China had that problem too.)

    823:

    I'd argue just for "authoritarian." The characteristics that are missing from this discussion are the typical hypocrisy, the emphasis on maintaining the superficial norms of group identity, and on being outwardly happy and "good," whatever the actual situation is. All of us have some part of this, but for those who score high on Altemeyer's tests, that's the major part of their identity.

    This gets again at the problem of a political spectrum. Basically, the major difference between the US and UK is that the culture of US politics has a system of two major parties, while the culture of UK politics has multiple parties that form coalitions into the ruling party and the opposition. In both cases, the "in power" versus "opposition" points tend to form a line between them (two points define a line), that line typically is about what they disagree about, and that's taken as the political spectrum. The players and their values change over time, we all know that. Unfortunately, we keep using "the political spectrum," as defined above, as if it was important and real, even though it keeps being redrawn as the coalitions change.

    I'm just suggesting that the politicians' view, about assembling coalitions to take power, might be more useful for a practical understanding, and that the political spectrum is more useful as a rhetorical device that's largely bullshit in the technical sense (something that's used to win arguments, where whether it's true or false is largely irrelevant). I'm quite sure that this is a well-developed political theory somewhere, and that other people have come up with the accepted terminology for this whole phenomenon.

    As usual, I'm just repurposing terms as I go along. That, actually, is a problem with handling large dimensional datasets. It's possible to see what's going on in three or more dimensions (I normally work in four, because I got sensitized to change through time by climate change). But text is one-dimensional. It uses words, and the organization of sentences and paragraphs to try to capture the higher dimensions of reality. But when you try to map four dimensions onto one dimension, distortions are inevitable.

    824:

    It's worth pointing out that the Maoists see the Tai Ping Rebellion of the 19th Century as a forerunner of their communist revolution a century later. The reason I bring this up is that the Tai Pings were rebelling in part against the Opium trade that the British had forced on the Chinese, to make up for the debt the British were running up drinking Chinese tea. But they were also rebelling against what they saw (correctly) as a corrupt bureaucracy.

    That's the key point. Confucius was a reformer, and Confucianism is about how to organize a society properly. It's not inherently corrupt, but the ways in which it was instantiated in both China and Korea ultimately led to massive corruption. Why? Same reason democracies in the US and UK got corrupted--the grifters flock to power and money. Any system can be corrupted.

    Anyway, the Tai Pings were led by a Hakka dude who read a Bible handed out by a Jesuit Missionary, had some spiritual insights of some sort, and decided he was the brother of Jesus Christ, put on Earth to overthrow the Manchus (who were not Chinese but conquerors) and to overthrow the whole mandate of heaven and social system and set up God's kingdom in southern China. Comparisons to the Taliban--and the Maoists--are quite apt. The death toll from the Tai Ping rebellion was on the same scale as that from the Great Leap Forward, too, in the 20-50 million range.

    825:

    I'd argue just for "authoritarian."

    IIRC, Altemeyer found that there are differences between reactionary authoritarians* (RWA) and radical authoritarians** (LWA). So it makes sense to differentiate between them.

    *Using Charlie's term

    **And offering one for the opposite type that Altemeyer identified.

    826:

    The very Republican Larry Correia has similar orcs in his Baen-published Monster Hunter International series. Here's a free taste: https://www.baen.com/tanya

    827:

    One big nation bank.

    This means it will do the bidding of those in power. Maybe not at first but eventually.

    At least until we invent amoral AI who will put the population's interest first. And not decide they are doing bad things and kill off most of them to make the remaining have a better life.

    And having a large national bank works great until it doesn't. Then everyone gets whacked.

    Small local banks are great. But they can't finance "big" things. And I was awakened to reality when I found out that most local banks in the US are started with the intent of being bought out by a larger bank once they get to a size where they are a nuisance to the possible buyers. So if you have a spare $mil or few and can wait around 5 to 10 years for your money back, a new local start up bank is a great investment. Well most of the time. If you cashed out in 2006 with stock in a larger bank that couldn't be sold for a few years, well, oops.

    828:

    Except in those states which have abandoned polling places for universal vote-by-mail (Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado).

    829:

    The Stratford Festival in (oddly enough) Stratford, Ontario has done Cyrano de Bergerac several times, most recently in 1994 and 2009. The same actor (Colm Feore) played the lead both times.

    In 1994, the final line of the play (very moving in French)

    CYRANO (rouvre les yeux, la reconnaît et dit en souriant): Mon panache.

    wound up being a laugh line - I was in the audience. Very jarring!

    In the 2009 production, they'd learned their lesson. When Cyrano was talking, he'd periodically switch to doing a couple of sentences in French. This was usually not a problem - I was able to follow some of them even with my limited knowledge of the language. And when I wasn't, you could make out what he was saying from context.

    In that production, Feore delivered the last line in French. No laugh from the audience, very moving.

    (One of the many annoyances of COVID was that Feore was going to be playing Richard III in the 2020 Stratford season. He's an amazingly gifted actor.)

    830:

    On Whig, I agree that's not the best label, although I think I'm not the first person to use it. Just think of it as a code. Current exemplars are Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders. But the same impulse seems to have produced everything from abolitionists to suffragists to prohibition, and both the outlawing of marijuana and its reintroduction. They've been both pro-tech (think 1990s Silicon Valley) and anti-tech (see Warren et al's attack on current social media companie). It's currently considered progressive and far left, but 150 years ago they were radical republicans, just like Abraham Lincoln got pulled towards. And he started out a Whig. So....

    As for technocracy and the search for optimal solutions, that's fine. Another way to think of this is to give more power to the scientists and intellectuals to run things. You know, the way universities work? And we all agree that universities tend to be bastions of good governance, sparkling in their lack of corruption, and definitely not in it for the money... Well, any system can be corrupted. And that's my warning about technocracy too.

    Getting back to what I wrote, many of the labels are deliberately askew. Independents are conservative? Well yes, they tend to want things to not change. But they're not authoritarian particularly either, except when they are. And anarchists get parsed as scarily far left, except that now, the biggest bloc of US anarchists caucus with the authoritarians on the alt-Right.

    And slaveowners instead of corrupters? What was I thinking as a label for those who put making money ahead of all else? How rude of me, just because they owned slaves and American politics for a century and more. Slavery is illegal, but exploiting people is just business. Totally different things (/sarcasm). And everybody exploits some low-paid worker, so I can't really call them exploiters without everyone falling into that dark pit (that they created. With our acquiescence, perhaps?).

    And so it goes. The labels are arbitrary, the groups are amorphous, and there's a lot of something like intersectionality in the way that many people have multiple identities and can fit in several of these groups. Slaveowning whig would label a tech billionaire at the moment, if anyone was silly enough to use my labels seriously.

    The question is whether, silly or not, seeing a bunch of labeled groups play politics for power is more useful than the left-right spectrum or not.

    831:

    It was a comment about language usage, not how elections actually work.

    832:

    You've read The Authoritarians more recently than I have, but I seem to recall that he went with right-wing authoritarians in his work because he couldn't find enough left-wing authoritarians to get a useful data set. I also seem to remember that he distinguished between right wing authoritarian followers, and authoritarian leaders. But it's been awhile. I'll have to go back and read it again.

    833:

    The very Republican Larry Correia has similar orcs in his Baen-published Monster Hunter International series. Here's a free taste: https://www.baen.com/tanya

    I'm unsurprised. Orcs have been portrayed occasionally, notably in the AD&D 1st edition Monster Manual, as fairly porcine. If I wanted to play on that, I'd take the actual characteristics of pigs, rather than their metaphorical associations, and run with that.

    835:

    Oh please! Are we also going to haul out the whole "communism is a religion" trope? No. Just no.

    836:

    "Mon Panache." The translation we used when I played the role of Cyrano in school had it as "my white plume," referring to the unstained feather in his cavalier's hat, and that had been set up several scenes before, when Cyrano criticized someone for allowing their "white plume" to be stained after doing something slightly dishonorable during battle.

    837:

    Post puppies I won't touch anything by Correia, but as I write them both Elves and Orcs were once the creatures of an elder race who practiced a magical version of genetic engineering and bred them for specific roles. Once that race became corrupt and offended the gods they were no longer around to referee land-use disputes and the series of eternal wars, each the climax and end of a civilized Age, began.

    838: 817 - Well, my personal research says that both statements about vitamin C are "sometimes true". That is, they are both true for some but not all persons having the abnormal uric acid crystalisations in some joints that are commonly referred to as gout. Hence my at least implied argument that you need to experiment by cutting 1 or 2 of the listed foods out of your diet at a time until you effect an improvement in your condition.

    This is based on having (had) 3 or 4 blood relatives (some women) who had gout.

    835 - If we do, then so is more or less any other political "thingism".
    839:

    Oh yes, and "pignose" is a term of prejudice for Orcs.

    840:

    Politics is religion-like when it puts ideology above reality, trying things that fail every time but trying them again anyway. Like Republicans and Laffer-curve tax cuts. Or the UK Conservative approach to crime and sentencing which results in higher incarceration and recidivism than other European countries. Politics is less religion-like when policies are evidence-led or technocratic.

    841:

    Oh please! Are we also going to haul out the whole "communism is a religion" trope? No. Just no.

    I had thought that "God-King" was understood as sarcasm here (see the previous threads about Elon Musk as God-King of Mars). So I hadn't planned to look at the topic. But since you mention it...

    Communism itself is of course an ideology not a religion. The problem arises from the Reactionary Authoritarians, for whom the two things are pretty indistinguishable. Once the RAs have been taught to believe something they will (1) refuse to consider the possibility of error, and (2) attempt to inflict that belief on everyone else by any means necessary. It doesn't matter whether the belief is in a supernatural deity or a possibly deceased superhuman leader; to them the official Book is perfect and unquestionable (e.g. Bible, Mein Kampf, Little Red Book, Communist Manifesto). Cases where the superhuman leader was socialist or communist are of course just a subset.

    Having said that, in China there was the odd tale of the mangos, which are best understood as analogous to the magical relics of Catholic saints. And of course there is the veneration of Lenin's body in Moscow, despite his express wish that this NOT happen. However even Stalin's cult of personality never reached the level of a religion.

    842:

    In the Stratford production, the translation was "My panache!" {audience laughter}

    Props to you for being Cyrano. That guy is on stage for 99% of the play, seriously!

    btw, have you seen the movie "Cyrano, My Love"? (French title: Edmond). It's basically a French reworking of Shakespeare in Love, except instead of Shakespeare + Romeo and Juliet, it's Edmond Rostand + Cyrano de Bergerac. I found it funny as hell.

    843:

    H Disagree about "Whigs" being prohibitionist That impulse is pure authoritarianism.

    WTG & Paul Except that Communism Classic is - exactly - trying, again & Again & AGAIN the same failed methods - just like religion. I have said, elsewhere that the logical end-state of Communism is, actually N Korea, ruled by God-Kings even Stalin's cult of personality never reached the level of a religion. - actually, it did, right down to the Inquisition, torture & death of unbelievers

    844:

    H Disagree about "Whigs" being prohibitionist. That impulse is pure authoritarianism.

    Not so much. Drunkeness was seen as a universal scourge, especially by women, when temperance was a thing. Prohibition got passed IIRC in a somewhat eccentric way. The US war on drugs was definitely more racist and authoritarian.

    I agree that both were problematic for similar reasons, but the "whig" thing I'm trying to get at is the commonality of listening to women, and using big government to try and improve society.

    While I tend to break this way politically, I'm also excruciatingly aware that this approach can go horribly wrong, although the body count ends up being lower than with other political failures (especially when authoritarian leaders get involved, cf IQ 45 et al recently). This isn't an argument about who's better, it's about how to classify a diverse set of political styles and how they bounce off and cling to one another. I'm simply arguing that the idea that they're all (disorders?) on a left-right spectrum hides more than it informs.

    845:

    Thanks. That sounds delightful!

    846:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 792: How much does sheep's lung contribute to the haggis experience?

    No idea.

    847:

    Unfortunately, that reminds me of... I think it was DD-WRT. My last router (inside the provider's), said it supported USB printers, to serve them as network printers.

    Well, except for mine, and a few others - winprinters.

    So I installed DD-WRT. I have never seen as ludicrous a project as that. People didn't discuss the latest releases, they discussed their "favorite build" by one builder or another. I updated it once or twice, then became too afraid that another would screw everything.

    848:

    David L @ 793:

    Almost all US cities tend red, while rural tend white (except in areas heavily populated by Blacks).

    I don't know how it was when you were in Austin but currently Dallas tends to D and Fort Worth to "R". With all kinds of odd mixes in the smaller cities around DFW area.

    And for those who don't know, smaller means something like Plano which is 280K people but considered a suburb of Dallas.

    But in general I'd go along with your point. In general.

    I think that's backwards ...as a general rule Urban areas tend towards Blue (i.e. Democratic) because there are more younger & minority voters and rural areas tend towards Red (i.e. Republican) because more of the voters are old white people.

    849:

    David L @ 803: You aren't riffing on Mark Russell by any chance? I have a faint memory of him singing something similar way way way back when.

    Tom Lehrer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

    850:

    First, let me thank Charlie for his forebarance, and - not meaning to insult anyone - but this is one of the few places I have access to where an idea can actually be discussed intelligently, by people who often have a background in whatever. (AKICIF, and all that.)

    Simon and David L - 818 and 827. Thank you for your discussions. When I first posted, I knew there was something in the back of my head... and dunno why I couldn't remember Glass-Steagel. So it should absolutely be two separate banks, one for investment, one for other banking.

    One can, of course, only do what might work for now, to prevent corruption. Scum will find ways... well, until we have AI advisors.

    It seems to me that the non-investment bank could include loans and mortgages under, say, $1M US (housing prices in the US, in some areas, are insane).

    Sure, elected officials, and appointed ones, will screw around. However... right now, corporate execs are screwing around for their own personal benefit, and we, the people, have zero control over them.

    Yeah, markism is getting pretty radical: nationalize the banks, nationalize healthcare, and cut the medical insurance industry down to 100th of what they are now....

    851:

    Greg Tingey @ 808: David L
    Three-character code for a station in the UK - & often a major "signalbox" controlling similar area.
    So: "VIC" is London Victoria, even though it's actually in an incredibly ugly building just outside CLJ ( Clapham Jn ) - and it is two panels in the same building, each controlling the separate ex-LBSC & ex-LCDR lines. It was a most impressive display, though control of most of it has now been migrated to the 3 Bridges & Ashford ROC's

    ... like our airport is RDU.

    852:

    paws4thot @ 809: #790 - Joke, hence the "{teapot teapot}" comment, but based on a widespread (if apparently incorrect on our part) belief that the FDA believes haggis to be a vector for scrapie and BSA. If your statement about animal lungs is correct, well that depends on the butcher: serious comment, since many retail butchers make their own haggis on a much smaller scale than McKean's and MacSween's do.

    It's correct insofar as what you can find out from a U.S. Government web site if you Google "Why can't you buy Scottish haggis in the U.S.?" I can't think of any reason the FDA/USDA would lie to me about it, but after the last four years ...

    I don't believe there's currently any ban on importing British beef, but there was a ban on Canadian beef a few years ago due to BSE being found in a herd after one of the cows was sold to a slaughter house in the U.S. I'm pretty sure it was caught before any meat from the diseased cow could be sold to the public, so there wasn't even a recall.

    I think that ban has since been lifted; resolved by consultation under NAFTA with the entire herd being put down & A LOT of testing to ensure it hadn't spread to other cattle in Canada.

    853:

    Drunkeness was seen as a universal scourge

    IIRC, the standards of the time were different. A "drunk" was someone who was falling-down drunk in the morning. Average alcohol consumption was more than 7 gallons per person per year (three times current levels).

    The big push for prohibition was the Women's Temperance Movement — the people who were most at risk of being beaten by drunken men.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/03/women-alcohol-drink-culture-prohibition-temperance

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkAcC5L8Ysk

    854:

    I don't believe there's currently any ban on importing British beef, but there was a ban on Canadian beef a few years ago due to BSE being found in a herd after one of the cows was sold to a slaughter house in the U.S.

    Back when I used to donate blood, for a while the question was have you been to the UK within some range of years? If you answered yes they would still take your blood but it would go into the research only collection. Then the question became have you eaten beef in the UK? Now I think the question is gone. But I haven't donated blood for about 10 years.

    855:

    Anyone who turned off their iPhone WiFi support as soon as that format-string-as-SSID bug publicly surfaced a few weeks ago (I did; chances were pretty good that it was an RCE vuln, and it apparently was); apple released iOS 14.7 with the problem supposedly patched. (The update didn't break my phone.)

    856:

    It doesn't matter whether the belief is in a supernatural deity or a possibly deceased superhuman leader

    In many cases it is the belief in The Market. With von Mises and Hayek as the prophets.

    857:

    Jbs@785 writes:

    "And I believe that's achievable without the government having to take ownership of the "means of production". Government should do no more than needs doing while at the same time ensuring that those things ARE done."

    Biden's administration looks to be making impressive strides in that direction, getting monthly $300 per kid checks out to families with children. Want less of something, tax it, want more, subsidize it. More kids is a major long range economic stimulus.

    There've been three generations now already, during which people have come to accept benefits of cheap effective contraception, so with the costs of health care, housing and education rising much faster than wages decade after decade, governments need to subsidize kids if they want growth. Or even if they just want to maintain a steady state without growth, but avoid negative effects of population decline including deflation, recession and debt default.

    Plus it's something they should have been doing all along anyway to promote the general welfare, but better late than never. Since pregnancy in modern societies can be and mostly is a matter of deliberate conscious commitment, it's high time for nation states to come to terms with the pill like their citizens have. Either that or welcome back the high levels of immigration from a century ago.

    For what it's worth, my father got a purportedly humorous greeting card from a coworker back in the 1950s on the occasion of my birth. The card, which I found in a scrapbook, reads: Congratulations! On exemption number four, (open the card for the punch line) on your tax deduction score! So even back then, there was kind of a nudge nudge wink wink acknowledgement of a similar policy at least for those who could afford to itemize deductions. This new method seems fairer.

    858:

    Biden's administration looks to be making impressive strides in that direction, getting monthly $300 per kid checks out to families with children.

    He's reinvented Family Allowance!

    https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/family-allowance

    859:

    Eric Hoffer wrote a truly excellent book titled 'The True Believer' in 1951 that explains a lot of the core function of political extremes and actions. It was required reading at some point in my political science degree and I've kept a copy around ever since. I highly recommend it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

    He particularly speaks about the somewhat frequent and externally inexplicable switching from hard left (i.e. Marxist) to hard right (i.e. Fascist), pointing out that the two extremes have far more in common with each other than with the center. Other axes (Axises?) have militant Islamicists like Daesh, extreme Buddhists (Sri Lanka), the various extremist cults that seem to populate the US and elsewhere.

    There are many hard right-wing political leaders who began as campus Marxists. Steve Bannon comes to mind, and Hitchens back in the day.

    A need for belonging and predictable rules is a prime motivator, as well as a need to be a 'part of something meaningful'. It doesn't have to make external sense as long as it is internally consistent, or at least the contradictions can be patched over or ignored. This is why we have people willing to die for a cause, the desire to subsume oneself in something larger and more meaningful.

    Closer to reality and the center was have plenty of people willing to take risks for the common good. Soldiers, firefighters, medical personnel all come to mind, and many others. There is a difference between contribution and fanaticism, and many are compelled to fanaticism.

    If I were to predict the next axis of extremism I think it will probably be along the green continuum. We already have the reactionary end of it, extremist planet burners coal rolling, I suspect as things progress we'll start seeing more than a trivial fringe of extremists at the deep green end as well. The rest of us will have to find a way to navigate the middle, as always.

    One theory is that the extremes define the parameters of the Overton window. So radical green activists don't get what they want, but they make it possible for constructive engagement to happen further to the green end than otherwise. Similarly, fanatical Qnuts won't get whatever it is they want, but they make it possible for their 'partially sane' allies to continue with their agenda.

    860:

    it's high time for nation states to come to terms with the pill like their citizens have. EXCEPT the US has not ... Birth control & Family Planning & Contraception bar you, as a nation, from receiving US health aid, thanks to the fucking christians ( Pun deliberate )

    862:

    I said: "christians" - I didn't specify further - I think I know how batshit the US evangelicals are ......

    863:

    I think I know how batshit the US evangelicals are ......

    Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if you underestimate them…

    864:

    Rbt Prior Only 200 metres from me, a group of extreme US-evangelicals took over an almost-derelict chapel building & proceeded to annoy ALL the neighbours ( They are or were called "Potters House" - their main loonie-base is now further away, but they still own that building. They managed to get atheists, catholics, CofE, muslims & Uncle Tom Cobbley to want them OUT, like yesterday. The arrogance & self-assured smugness was really unpleasant. Seriously, dangerously bonkers - they are an "Bible is inerrant" group, f'rinstance.

    865:

    Eco extremists are already among us. You'll find that the arsehole who shot all those people to death in the NZ mosques was a self-described "eco-fascist", amongst other things.

    866:

    Keithmasterson @ 857: Jbs@785 writes:

    "And I believe that's achievable without the government having to take ownership of the "means of production". Government should do no more than needs doing while at the same time ensuring that those things ARE done."

    Biden's administration looks to be making impressive strides in that direction, getting monthly $300 per kid checks out to families with children. Want less of something, tax it, want more, subsidize it. More kids is a major long range economic stimulus.

    Yeah. I like Biden. I even voted for him. He's not my ideal for New Deal/Great Society liberalism, but he's a damn sight better than what the other side had to offer.

    Can't let perfect become the enemy of the good.

    867:

    Why I will never be a vegetarian/vegan:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6nQKj7Kh4A

    868:

    I know this is a radical notion (so far), but I am convinced that within 40 years some government is going to bite the bullet and make child-raising an occupation, and will start paying people a competitive wage to do it.

    Once it happens in one place, it will suddenly not be so radical any more.

    869:

    Eco extremists are already among us. You'll find that the arsehole who shot all those people to death in the NZ mosques was a self-described "eco-fascist", amongst other things.

    This is where you fall down Allynh's wormhole if you're not careful. He thought that antifa were fascist terrorists, when they're anti-fascists.

    Eco-fascism, as actually practiced, is just a rather stupid form of fascism.

    As a slur used by the Right, it's the idea that Nazis were the first environmentalists and that environmentalists are therefore Nazis. This is utter bullshit, along the lines of the Nazis all being socialists.

    Most environmentalists took a look at how badly Earth First and more extreme left-wing groups fared, and completely abandoned violence as a tool. Yes, the Earth would be better off if there were fewer than a billion people on the planet. However, killing off seven billion people will leave the Earth worse off than leaving them alive, in a totally non-paradoxical way. If you think about it, mega genocide involves things like total and/or nuclear war. Even if they don't, getting rid of people leaves all sorts of waste dumps, dams, and similar nasties unattended and this is bad for the environment. So we environmentalists don't bother with that noise. We instead try to get people to do the right thing.

    Eco-fascism, as practiced by some on the Alt-Right, is the idea that what's killing White America's ability to have a 1950s lifestyle, with all the gas our cars can consume and lots of deer and ducks to gun down, is that there are too many non-white people in the world. Therefore, getting rid of everyone who is not white will allow True Americans (read whites) to enjoy a proper American high octane lifestyle, while camping out, hunting, and all that good stuff. Notice that this is heavy on the fascism, and rather clueless on the eco.

    I strongly suspect that the NZ Mosque shooter was a follower of this idea, which is why he targeted a mosque and not a stock exchange.

    870:

    Wow, there are just so many things going wrong in that video :)

    871:

    I would have written something covering this, but you've saved me the trouble. I think it's actually an interesting reductio ad absurdum for the "the extremes of both sides are interchangeable" argument, because it shows why that is a superficial conclusion to reach. In some ways it's similar to the problem with the RWA name: the things that people are extreme about are usually different, and grouping the extremists together is actually something that happens because from the perspective of some kinds of observers, the distance between the way some others present themselves and their normative expectations and experience is the only aspect that is really visible. So for some conservatives, wearing dreadlocks on one side is just as extreme as killing people, or proposing to kill people, on the other side.

    That said, the furthest I'd seen environmentalists in Australia go was spiking trees. This was seen as especially violent, even when they labelled where in the forest the spiked trees were, heck even when they labelled the individual trees. Same with spoiling fuel tanks. Currently speciality items for chaining yourself to things are regarded as violent, go figure. In some ways it'd be nice to have genuinely violent extremists to drag the Overton window over and cast sense onto the scene, but who would want to be those guys? (cf "Are we the baddies?" again). But merely advocating for a planned exit strategy for the carbon industry that makes jobs and workable lives for the people who are currently coal miners is "extreme", apparently, so we obviously have work to do, lest it be done for us, apocalyptically.

    Who am I kidding, the "done for" thing is already a fait accompli, isn't it?

    872:

    One of my ... favourite? ... bits of genuine property damage in an environmentalist context was a log truck getting torched in Bombala (NSW south coast). After some fucking terrifying reprisals and Police shitfuckery it turned out that the owner of the torched truck had been shagging the wife of another log truck driver. Who was not amused, and torched the offenders truck as revenge (I don't know what happened to the wife).

    It's the old rule... violence is far more common in some communities than others, and greenies are not often violent. You can argue about whether that's being smarter, learning from experience, or just being a bunch of soft city folk. But men who work insecure jobs in a dangerous industry... they are much more likely to use violence.

    873:

    Potters House" ... They managed to get atheists, catholics, CofE, muslims & Uncle Tom Cobbley to want them OUT, like yesterday.

    When you get described as a cult in the intro on the "we try to be neutral wikipedia" you know you've gotten near the edge.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter's_House_Christian_Fellowship

    875:

    Ooh, yes the Eden-Monaro forests, with the Harris-Daishowa pulp mill. I didn't participate in the actions there, but knew a few people who did. I recall the popular charge was "intimidation", and 3 friends of mine were arrested for walking down a road, which was apparently enough to "intimidate" a lone logger driving the other way. Of course, with the number of "intimidation" arrests, people could then claim that the protestors were violent... well at least "intimidating", which is the same thing right? ISTR the most derring-do those guys actually did get up to, however, was doing their sit-ins in slings up just below canopy level.

    876:

    JBS Can't let perfect become the enemy of the good Tell that to the Corbynistas, who would rather have the tories in power, when it comes down to it ...

    877:

    I'd point out that, as a group, most of us aren't diehard nonviolent actionistas, and part of that shows up in our joy at reading the rather violent Laundry books.

    But yes, properly done nonviolence isn't supposed to be pleasant. It's a clash about power, and being a violent person stuck in the situation where you lose if you lash out and lose if you don't lash out is pretty miserable, even if you win big by giving up your position and working with the other side. American society, at least, spends billions of dollars glorifying violence, and getting more by giving up on violence just feels anti-American in so many ways. Anti-British too, for that matter.

    But if that's too complicated for some, just remember:

    Nazism is not socialism, even though it means national socialism Anti-fascism isn't fascism, even though it has fascist in the name Eco-fascists aren't environmentalists, even though there's eco in their name. Nonviolence isn't violent, even though there's violence right there in the name.

    Is propaganda about lying and labeling? Yes, that's exactly what black propaganda is. But black propaganda isn't practiced by black people only, even though there's the word black in both names.

    878:

    Speaking of Black in the Laundryverse...that whole thing about The Black Pharaoh is very much out of Lovecraft, but why do superpowered aliens follow the racist color-coding of capitalism?

    It would be nice to see this subverted a bit too.

    879:

    Left-wing Labour supporters detest the Tory scum and fought against them tooth and nail in the last election. Keir Starmer and his Blairite supporters can't find enough nice things to say about the current inhabitant of Number Ten and don't appear to be doing anything to get elected next time other than hoping that Tory voters might vote for him by mistake next election because he's Tory-lite but that's never worked for the Lib Dems in the past.

    880:

    Speaking of subversion, there's a book out there that's about the same age as the Laundryverse: Ron Eglash's African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. It's a fun read for those into ethnomathematics, and it's about the widespread indigenous use of elements of what we consider fractal math in African culture, from architecture to counting to religion.

    While I know that this is impossible due to the New Management trilogy...

    Given the fact that the Laundryverse is based almost exclusively on Europe, North America and (how do I say this) white people, it's too bad we don't get an end to the series which points out that Voudoun and its sister religions have been doing fractal-based magic for millennia. And they're able to exorcise the world of the CASE NIGHTMARES that European colonial powers have cooked themselves into by not having a proper understanding of the relationship between math and religion, especially the religion they stole from African sources, including ancient Egypt. This was the through-line in HBO's version of Lovecraft Country, incidentally.

    I suppose that version will just have to be published on April 1, 2022: technological civilization is saved by a Nigerian Prince of the Old School.

    881:

    Nojay Really! Do you, like me, want BoZo & his semi-fascist lying crooks OUT, or not? Promoting Corbynista "policies" will never, ever do it. I suspect that Starmer is keeping quiet, because, in spite of all the evidence we can see, the sheeple Brit, esp English-rural public still believe every lie BoZo tells them. It's called "Keeping your powder dry" or something.

    882:

    "It's called "Keeping your powder dry" or something."

    Which is an approach I normally despise. But I think in this case it's more a matter of not getting in your enemy's way when s/he's making a mistake. Realpolitik would seem to say that Labor should let the shelves be empty for a year or three, while complaining just enough that nobody sane can "blame the left." I'd imagine that the next election will be rather difficult for Bozo & Co.

    883:

    I should add, historically, that the Great Depression in the U.S. rubbed everyone's face in just how bad the Republican ideas of governance were, and the result, once Roosevelt came it, was Democratic control of Congress and the Senate for something like five decades.

    884:

    was a self-described "eco-fascist", amongst other things

    Emphasis on "fascist". Turns out he was a white supremacist of the blood-and-soil variety. For them, the eco bit is always about ensuring that only the white race owns any land. Hitler's whole Aryan yeoman peasant farmer riff, in short, with added antisemitism, islamophobia, and homophobia on top.

    TLDR: neo-nazis frequently claim to have environmental concerns, but on examination it's always about driving everyone who isn't a neo-nazi off the land so they can have more lebensraum.

    885:

    It would be nice to see this subverted a bit too.

    A bit too late to retcon at this point, unfortunately.

    886:

    Thinking about things African, I think Lumley had a couple ideas about the Cthonians being based in Africa, and he also contributed a couple anthropologists/archeologists and eev/ill books to the Mythos, including the hideous G'harne Fragments, which came from West Africa.

    How to wrangle that into a happy ending for Earth in the Laundryverse is another matter, of course, but I agree with you; it would be very nice if ancient wisdom from indigenous people saved the day, though I'm not sure modern high-tech humans would like living under Coyote, Raven, or Spider Woman any more than we like living under Nyarlahotep.

    The thing is that indigenous people from around the world have probably been talking to each other for fifty years or so, and it wouldn't surprise me if their shamans have been comparing notes... Damn, I may have to commit Fan Fic!

    By the way, did anyone hear about the recent discovery of Thelonious Monk's unreleased record about Olde English? It's called "Straight, No Chaucer."

    887:

    I think you give Starmer and the PLP far too much credit for playing n-dimensional chess when, in fact, they're clueless in the face of a 100% hostile mass media campaign and have lost contact with their own base. (Since 1992 they've been overrun by party apparatchiks of the beige oligarchy variety, who would rather throw an election to the Tories than allow a genuine left-wing government to get into power.)

    888:

    Democratic control of Congress and the Senate for something like five decades.

    Southern Dixiecrats were in control of Congress and the Senate resulting in Jim Crow and the Confederacy in all but name. It took another thirty years of effort after Truman et al to break the racist Democratic deathgrip on American society and the result was an immediate shift of the racists to the Republican side, a clear indication that it was the racism and not the political stances that mattered to those in charge.

    889:

    I don't think it's truly impossible to retcon.

    However, it's impossible to retcon without giving up on Bob, Mo, Persephone, Alex, the SA, etc., as anything but deluded dupes who for some odd reason imagined that the long-term outcome of "human-directed computational demonolgy" was better than the presence of Cthulhu or Nyarlahotep, and I don't think the audience is willing to go there.

    You could certainly add a parallel structure of indigenous shamans who've been quietly talking to one another for the last few decades and are discreetly taking action, and that would certainly be believable, but I also don't think the audience would be happy at all to see them going after Mo or Eve, which would be not just believable, but inevitable.

    Even worse, if Bob Howard and Twilight Raven teamed up that would cause suspension of disbelief would snap like high-tension wires in a Godzilla movie. (Also, Allen Dean Foster already did that one in Cyber Way, which is a pretty good book, BTW.)

    All this aside, I like the idea.

    890:

    I wouldn't argue at all that racism has continued unabated right up to the present. However, having the Democrats be dominant in Congress was very, very good for the economy and very good for the average working person. Not so good if you were Black or Hispanic, of course, but Roosevelt's New Deal did amazing things for the common person in the U.S., as did Johnson's Great Society.

    The Republicans of the early 1900s were rich idiots. The Republicans of the current day are racist, rich idiots.

    891:

    Actually, I can think of one way to bounce it:

    The reason humans today are of majority-African descent could be that the Eurasians of ca. 25,000 years ago let in an ice giant, triggering the last glacial maximum after a long line of glaciations that may have been unnaturally triggered. The surviving humans in Africa cut a deal with Nyarlathotep in their continuing struggles against the Cold Ones. The remnants of that deal are the Cult of the Black Pharaoh. And possibly the cult of the Sleeper. One could even suggest that the reason for humanity's weird history (300,000 years that are almost all blank, then boom! civilization) isn't about human genetics, but about being a side show in Old Ones' transdimensional wars against the Cold Ones, with most of our history having been scoured off the planet by the ice, wild interglacials, and all the changes that went with that mess*.

    This might suggest why the Nazis thought it was a good idea to contract with an ice giant, although that went terribly wrong.

    So will someone let in an ice giant as a cure for the Black Pharaoh and climate change? It's the kind of logic that certainly would have form for certain readers of the series. And certain characters.

    Given my 0.0% success rate in predicting where the series goes, I confidently predict that This Won't Happen. But it's logical.

    *I prefer the suggestion out of Tyson Yunkaporta's Sand Talk that the reason we've got so few ancient remains is that most people over history preferred exposure to let human bodies go back to nature, rather than burying bodies. The burials we've found are thus surviving anomalies, not normal and thus signifying that humans were rare in deep time. He's just speculating, but as an Australian aborigine, he's closer to people who did/do practice exposure burial, so he might have a point.

    892:

    I think perhaps it's more nuanced. FDR's New Deal IIRC included the Dixiecrats and largely excluded the Blacks and Hispanics as the price of that alliance to get it through Congress. Blacks continued to vote Republican as The Party of Lincoln--when they could vote. It wasn't until the Civil Rights era with JFK and LBJ that democrats took the side of non-whites, and thereby lost the dixiecrat bloc to the Republicans.

    893:

    Your history still needs a point in the past where both sides got booted off the Earth. It could either be a battle which both sides lost or the presence of a third force, but at this point I think the series has been retconned a couple times already and it's time for OGH to finish it and move on to something new and fresh. Maybe revisit the indigenous people's thing 5-10 years after the end of the mainline series.*

    Thinking about it a little more, the SA never actually tells Mhari, (or was it Mo? Have to reread) any details of the Secret Plan. Maybe the Laundry has been facilitating the indigenous conversation this whole time, providing comms expertise and otherwise staying out of the way? This would obviously be paid-for in cash out of a secret fund and be totally off-the-books.

    • Mundane Earth years, not in-series time.
    894:

    Yes. It's definitely more nuanced, and you're not remotely wrong. Keep in mind that I was discussing 3-4 decades of history in a paragraph!

    895:

    I think Mo was in on the Secret Continuity Plan.

    There are a couple of possible ways to finish it up that I can see. One is the kaiju battle between Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu and some ice giants, with humans acting as the tipping point and forcing concessions out of the Old Ones as the price of victory. This ensures the survival of civilization into the New Management era.

    Another is that someone finds out what the full contract between Nyarlathotep and humanity is, and wields the enforcement clauses in a way that binds Nyarlathotep to insuring that humanity survives. I'm thinking of the way developers so conveniently forget all the little disadvantages in the plans and contracts they agree to--when no one's watching. This is where an old through-line of indigenous knowledge about living successfully with the Black Pharaoh in residence is a critical thing. And probably African too.

    Note that these are not mutually exclusive. And since I've written them here, they're Not Going To Happen. So we'll be surprised!

    896:

    Damian @ 870: Wow, there are just so many things going wrong in that video :)

    Considering the guy ain't from around here, he can be forgiven for using the wrong sauce.

    897:

    I highly recommend the Bonewits Cult Evaluation Framework, as a way to decide if something's a cult. (For those who've never heard of the late Isaac Bonewits, he had, for real, a bachelor's degree from US Berkeley, in Thaumaturgy. Only person I ever met who could curse in five languages... of which three were extinct, and one revived.

    http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html

    898:

    Yeah, not sure about living under some of those deities, either. Though for something like that, I highly recommend one of the Hugo-nominated novellas, Ring Shout, by Djelli Clark. Hard to read, but brilliant.

    And about that Nigerian Prince of the Old School... as long as it doesn't involve helping him get $25M USD out of the country....

    899:

    That would be UC Berkeley. Which has a "Build your own major" option. Which they tightened up after Bonewits got his Thaumaturgy degree, because they weren't cool with handing out DIY bachelor's degrees in the study of magic, for some reason.

    900:

    Wonderful. An Ice Giant. And exactly how would Surtr take that? Didn't you consider the Jotun aren't exactly a unified group?

    901:

    RE: African fractals. Worth reading the book or finding the TED talks. Anyway, here's a sampling: multiple west African religions are polytheist. Among their deities (using the Voudoun example) are

    --Legba, who is associated with disorder, randomness (especially random binary choices), and positive feedback, symbolized by a forking decision line --Dan the serpent god, associated with order and limit cycles, and symbolized by a serpent either recursively biting his tail or crawling in a sine wave pattern. --Mawu the creator god, halfway between order and disorder, symbolized by fractals, such as a multiply forking decision tree. Other creators in nearby religions are symbolized by fractal patterns that include log spirals at different scales.

    Their thought purportedly is that the most powerful forces in nature (like water, fire, and wind, and creation itself) are in the chaotic realm between randomness and order. They symbolize these deity/concept/forces with things like log spirals and recursive patterns at multiple scales.

    These are all ancient folklore well-embedded in multiple cultures, especially in West Africa.

    Given the way the Laundryverse works, traditional magic based around this kind of thinking is actually worth exploring. It also might explain why Lovecraftian magic seems so ugly compared with European ceremonial magic. The latter largely runs off Cartesian classical math. It turns out that really old-school Voodoo embodies some concepts straight out of fractal math. And that might have made it seem horribly ugly to old incels like HPL.

    902:

    It wasn't as though he made up a fake field - he learned multiple languages, and his original 20page bibliography was legit.

    On the other hand, I don't suppose that "tightening up" had anything to do with the governor who signed his diploma, Ronnie Raygun.

    903:

    I should add, historically, that the Great Depression in the U.S. rubbed everyone's face in just how bad the Republican ideas of governance were, and the result, once Roosevelt came it, was Democratic control of Congress and the Senate for something like five decades.

    Also add that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are now the same parties they were then, except in name.

    Back then the Democrats were the party of segregation and Jim Crow, while the Republicans were still the party of Lincoln.

    904:

    indigenous people from around the world have probably been talking to each other for fifty years or so

    No 'probably' about it — they are talking to each other.

    At least in our world; no idea about the Laundry universe.

    905:

    If you don't read it already you might like a webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court, which features a very concrete divide between European-Style magic/science and the untamed spirits of the forest, led by a very fractal Coyote.

    The first page: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1

    Coyote: https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1070

    906:

    "Back then the Democrats were the party of segregation and Jim Crow, while the Republicans were still the party of Lincoln.

    Yes, absolutely agreed. But they also backed Roosevelt when he about fixing the U.S. after the Great Depression. It's true they were unwilling to have Black or Hispanic people governed by the new social contract, "The New Deal" but they are also responsible for the fact that such a contract existed at all. Democrats were also the party of unions... and so on. It's history dude, you get your good all mixed up with your bad.

    907:

    Hey, stop the insults. I thought HPL was voluntarily celibate.

    908:

    Roosevelt when he about fixing the U.S. after the Great Depression.

    The depression in the US didn't really end until we got into WWII.

    The big difference between Roosevelt (and most of the D's) and the R's is he/they tried. The R's said it would all work out if we do nothing.

    The economy in the US didn't really start working again until the US Navy buildup in the very late 30s. Which created 1000s times 10 or 100 new jobs building ships, planes, support systems and getting sailors into the Navy. And to which the point was to allow us to just flat out stay out of the war. (Which was why almost all the money went to the Navy with a trickle to the Army.

    Prior to WWII so much of what Roosevelt did was good for many individuals and created some nice things but didn't create a working economy. Yet this was much better than letting people starve till the "silent hand" worked it all out.

    Pearl Harbor happened and the government then gave everyone a job. And after the hangover of all the service men coming home for a couple of years after the war the economy did sort of fix itself (GI bill and such played a big role here) and we left the depression behind. Well except now people know how to game the system till it breaks big at times.

    Lack of data, the slowness of data, and very incomplete theories of economics all made it hard to do anything well. The biggest thing though was trying. Which the R's didn't want to do.

    909:

    First, thanks for the link, I think I've got a new comic to follow.

    Second... um, er, in chapter 2, the boy in her class.... Isn't that Calvin?!

    Speaking of whom, I assume y'all have seen the explanation of UFOs? https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=369286881225504&set=a.261773351976858

    910:

    Hey, stop the insults. I thought HPL was voluntarily celibate.

    You're not complaining about me calling him "old?"

    It's frustrating: there's nothing like 4 years of Trump, MAGAts, QANONs and the resulting #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo to make a naif like me realize that one of my favorite authors growing up would (how to put this politely) spit on my politics now?

    I guess the only legitimate road forward for the Mythos is Reconstruction, 21st Century style.

    911:

    Under the same general heading of "patterns in nature", something fractals are typically invoked in relation to, thereby a sort of superset, I'll leave this here without further comment (because speculating content that hasn't been written yet and committing that speculation to writing is a way to make it less useful):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphogenesis

    912:

    Some(/much) of the secret sauce for indigenous magicians(/sorcerers(esses)/wizards/etc) is entheogens, some well known (e.g. DMT in various preparations), some less well known. (erowid.org for source material; name will go on lists in some jurisdictions.) (Not belittling the traditions that look at boundary states/chaos/cusps - some reading queued up!) Since these substances push minds into oft-complex states that are not easily mapped to (and very different from) baseline states, I'd be very surprised if various nation-state-level magical actors (and others) in the Laundry universe were not exploring entheogen-enabled magic and indeed working with at least some indigenous adepts and their traditions/training. Mix some nootropics and direct neural stimulation (and meditation) in and it could getting [interesting] really quickly. (The current UK government has banned such substances, for reasons. :-) I mean, a single quant in The Rhesus Chart bootstrapped a group of vampires by discovering an enabling mind state. And that was just vampires.

    913:

    Oooh! I think you're correct. The Laundryverse would weaponize things like ayahuasca very quickly!

    Just to nitpick, however, I think Alex did do the math first.

    914:

    Troutwaxer @ 882 YES - I suspect you are a bit extreme - but we really don't know at this point how bad it is going to get, so you may be entirely correct. Charlie Agree about the 95% hostile media campaign. But we are NOT GOING TO GET a "real" left-wing government - OK? Settle for, even if temporarily a left-beige, because it is FUCKING BETTER than this crowd of borderline fascists. yes?

    915:

    routwaxer @ 882 YES - I suspect you are a bit extreme - but we really don't know at this point how bad it is going to get, so you may be entirely correct.

    I'll point out that Troutwaxer and I currently live in a country where the test for Republican rank and file is to not get vaccinated and play Russian Roulette with Covid19 as a sign of true loyalty to the cause. And reputedly most of the elected and media personalities already got vaccinated. So yeah, we're sensitized to extremes at the moment.

    916:

    Nope. Already been done in RL. The CIA and others were testing psychedelics, both in looking for ESP, and as a weapon, and they were too unpredictable/not controllable.

    917:

    p>Greg Tingey @ 876: JBS

    Can't let perfect become the enemy of the good

    Tell that to the Corbynistas, who would rather have the tories in power, when it comes down to it ...

    Rather proves my point I think.

    918:

    Robert Prior @ 903:

    I should add, historically, that the Great Depression in the U.S. rubbed everyone's face in just how bad the Republican ideas of governance were, and the result, once Roosevelt came it, was Democratic control of Congress and the Senate for something like five decades.

    Also add that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are now the same parties they were then, except in name.

    Back then the Democrats were the party of segregation and Jim Crow, while the Republicans were still the party of Lincoln.

    While the Democrats had not been able to come together as a NATIONAL party since the American Civil War, being still in thrall to the Dixiecrats when FDR was first elected in 1932, the Republicans hadn't been the "Party of Lincoln" for more than 50 years.

    The Republicans were already bought & paid for by The Money and Wall Street Banksters as early as the 1870s. BOTH parties were "the party of segregation and Jim Crow".

    919:

    David L @ 908:

    Roosevelt when he about fixing the U.S. after the Great Depression.

    The depression in the US didn't really end until we got into WWII.

    The big difference between Roosevelt (and most of the D's) and the R's is he/they tried. The R's said it would all work out if we do nothing.

    Lack of data, the slowness of data, and very incomplete theories of economics all made it hard to do anything well. The biggest thing though was trying. Which the R's didn't want to do.

    I will say this for Hoover; his primary motive for doing nothing is he didn't believe the Federal Government was permitted to act.

    He believed that under the Constitution the responsibility and the power for relief belonged to the States. It's an argument the GOP is still making today. The difference is that Hoover, for all his faults, wasn't a lying hypocrite about it like today's GOP.

    920:

    Heteromeles @ 915: [T]routwaxer @ 882 YES - I suspect you are a bit extreme - but we really don't know at this point how bad it is going to get, so you may be entirely correct.

    I'll point out that Troutwaxer and I currently live in a country where the test for Republican rank and file is to not get vaccinated and play Russian Roulette with Covid19 as a sign of true loyalty to the cause. And reputedly most of the elected and media personalities already got vaccinated. So yeah, we're sensitized to extremes at the moment.

    Good news on that front in my own family. I've been worrying about my brother and he called me today to tell me he's going to get his first shot tomorrow.

    He's not a die-hard Trumpist, although he does uncritically accept the GOP's Anti-Clinton/Anti-Obama rhetoric.

    It was more like the Springsteen song "Growin' Up" "When they said sit down, I stood up". His boss told him he should get vaccinated and he thinks his boss is an asshole & doesn't want to give him the satisfaction ... FWIW the boss IS an asshole.

    I didn't really argue with him about it earlier. I knew that would just make him dig in and become more stubborn. But I did suggest he could get vaccinated and just lie to his boss about it; not give him the satisfaction ...

    I also asked him what he thought would happen to his wife and daughter if he did get sick & die? Would they be able to keep their house or would they lose it and have to move in with his in-laws. I think that's what may have finally moved him.

    His wife is profoundly deaf and slightly retarded (not innately so, but held back developmentally from childhood neglect). She wouldn't be able to survive on her own and he definitely doesn't want her to have to move in with the family that did so wrong by her.

    Plus she does have a little money from a job working at a sheltered workshop and he knows her family would steal every penny of it.

    921:

    If you don't read it already you might like a webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court,

    Been following that for years. Got all the books in hardcover.

    Also recommended:

    Stand Still, Stay Silent, a mostly-cheerful post-apocalyptic webcomic: https://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=1

    Lovely art, really really lovely art. Interesting mythology. Also have all the hardcover collections (two so far).

    The Delilah Dirk series is also worth hunting down — a swashbuckling adventurer and her tea-drinking sidekick. Read the first few chapters online to see if it's your thing: http://www.delilahdirk.com

    (My grandnieces are getting complete sets when they're old enough to understand them.)

    922:

    most of the elected and media personalities already got vaccinated,/i>

    Well, Fox News has vaccine passports internally — without one you are greatly restricting in what you can do — yet they publicly denounce them.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-covid-protocols-vaccination-passport-memo-tucker-carlson-2021-7?op=1

    923:

    https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-were-so-fucking-angry-at.html The rude pundit has amusing comments, if you don't mind frequent profanity. If "Drumph!" would make as much noise about vaccines as he does about the unfairness of getting more votes than the last time and losing, we wouldn't have this problem.

    924:

    For those looking for more webcomics to read, my suggestion is Camp Weedonwantcha. It's finished its run (creators have gone on to other things).

    925:

    Robert Prior @ 921:

    If you don't read it already you might like a webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court,

    Been following that for years. Got all the books in hardcover.

    Also recommended:

    Stand Still, Stay Silent, a mostly-cheerful post-apocalyptic webcomic:
    https://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=1

    Lovely art, really really lovely art. Interesting mythology. Also have all the hardcover collections (two so far).

    Sometimes found it a bit difficult to read during the year of Covid-19

    The Delilah Dirk series is also worth hunting down — a swashbuckling adventurer and her tea-drinking sidekick. Read the first few chapters online to see if it's your thing:
    http://www.delilahdirk.com

    Never quite got into the Delilah Dirk strip.

    Some others that I still follow or follow occasionally:

    Sluggy Freelance: https://sluggy.com/

    Sinfest: https://sinfest.xyz/

    Girl Genius: https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php

    926:

    If you ever feel like it, here's a question for your brother: in '17 and '18, with the GOP in full control... why is it that they never arrested, charged, and took to court Hillary?

    I'd love to see any reaction other than obfuscation... no, that's the right word, malarky.

    927:

    May I assume that your nieces are already going to be getting Phil and Katja's Hugo-winning Girl Genius?

    928:

    Camp Wedontwancha? There's a techie sf group that was originally out of Chicago, GT. They have an annual campout/convention/party every year in the Yooper Peninsula of Michigan. They play in a state park, on 30 or 40 acres of stamp sands, where nothing will burn, shooting off rockets, and bowling ball morters....

    A few years, they made t-shirts. They got one of those circular clothes lines. On the outside, they hung the t-shirts. from the middle line, they hung bags of dye. On the innermost circle of line... they hung blasting caps.

    The t-shirts read "Camp Wannamakeabigboom".

    929:

    I love the idea of indigenous magic users getting involved in the Laundry series, but I strongly suspect OGH has plenty of work writing his own ideas and needs little help from us.

    On top of that, a pasty faced Scot in Edinburgh writing novels with indigenous magic and culture as a major plot point is fraught with hazard at this point in history. Very, very easy to get wrong, and horribly wrong at that. Extremely difficult/impossible to get right. I can say with 100% certainty that such a novel would be the literary equivalent of Riverdancing in a minefield here in Canada at least.

    If we are going to blue sky, I'd love to see OGH give license to BIPOC writer to integrate a story into the Laundryverse. I'm a big fan of Nalo Hopkinson and think she'd do something incredible with the Laundry or a parallel Caribbean occult organizationt that has been completely ignored by the Laundry and all their US and European counterparts because they tend to ignore everything that isn't White and Eurocentric.

    930:

    One of the things I think about sometimes is Zelazny's Lord of Light. How amazing and inclusive it seemed when I first read in the 1970s.

    How badly it would go over now.

    932:

    If it didn't seem to be of Irish origin I would suspect that "malarkey" and other variants are all erroneous attempts to spell "malarchy".

    933:

    If you ever feel like it, here's a question for your brother: in '17 and '18, with the GOP in full control... why is it that they never arrested, charged, and took to court Hillary?

    Her defenses are much too slippery for them; Trumpists can't get past her buttery males.

    934:

    This was once a common word in the US - I believe I heard my father use it occasionally, and the current, duly-elected President of the US has been known to use it. It's from a time when you would not say "bullshit".

    935:

    If we are going to blue sky, I'd love to see OGH give license to BIPOC writer to integrate a story into the Laundryverse.

    Drew Hayden Taylor

    Indigenous writer from Curve Lake, Ontario. Well worth looking up.

    936:

    Re the Black Pharaoh, it's possible that this name is analogous to "black hole".
    In other words, it's an ice giant. Somebody probably said that already.

    937:

    A couple of things.

    One is it's interested how I said "African Fractals" and people went African=Indigenous=American Indian=cultural appropriation.

    Just. Wow.

    That, in itself, is a reason OGH should include something from Africa to counter THE BLACK PHARAOH, whose basic name and identity are AFRICAN. Anyone who thinks the BLACK PHARAOH should be an identity for a being out of Norse Mythology like a Jotunn? Yeah. No.

    For example (and note this will not happen, this is just an example): you put someone from Nigeria who speaks impeccable English into the Laundry, have him get the attention of a couple of Senior Auditors (attention in the form of, "Oh shit, he knows more than we do, we can't hurt him, and he doesn't want to eat our souls.")

    Have him (or her) explain a bunch of stuff they do not know about working with Lovecraftian critters. Possibly elide some extra cool notion. For example: perhaps the Cult of the Black Pharaoh was around more than 22,000 years (or whatever) before there were even pharaohs in Egypt, and the fact that the planet is still around should imply that they know what they are doing.

    Whatever happens in this scene leads somehow to a Series Level Blowoff that provides the end of the Laundry series, the transition to The New Management, and a somewhat more sustainable approach to dealing with CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, courtesy people who have dealt with these monsters before and decided that privileged white buggers desperately need some education before they give away the store to these Troublemakers from Outside.

    This avoids the racism and cultural appropriation inherent in the black dude prancing around with juju fetishes in a leopard skin (or whatever), and really subverts the readerships' expectations. I mean, if people aren't parsing the Cult of the Black Pharaoh as at least Egyptian...sheesh. That's just begging for a massive plot twist.

    And haven't y'all noticed how many ZOMBIES there are in this series? The walking dead are, um, from Haitian folklore...? I mean, how black is that?

    938:

    I think the modern, technical use of bullshit has superseded malarkey, which used to mean much the same thing. Malarkey (meaningless talk, nonsense) popped up in the US in the 1920s and was spread by an Irish American cartoonist.

    For what it's worth.

    939:

    ice giants are out of The Atrocity Archive. They're purportedly some sort of infovore.

    Anyway, Azathoth is the black hole*, not Nyarlathotep.

    So far as the jotunn/ice giant/infovores go, they popped up in Atrocity Archive, and OGH refers to Cthulhu battling against "The Cold Ones" in The Labyrinth Index. I'm just eagerly beavering away, linking the two and BSing up a way to finish the Laundry Series and usher in The New Management.

    *The mindless daemon sultan in the center of our galaxy. We owe our very existence to its mindless and bottomless apetite. You want a god that's bigger than the Earth or the Sun, that one's it.

    940:

    I mean, if people aren't parsing the Cult of the Black Pharaoh as at least Egyptian... sheesh. That's just begging for a massive plot twist.

    I think you underestimate the human tendency to romanticize something, try to use it in ritual, and decide that what they spoke to in ritual is actually what they think it is. But you didn't speak to what you thought you were addressing, and this is the worst case scenario. Now you're in terrible trouble because what you contacted wants nothing more than to put your soul in a jar, torture it at parties, and dance to the music of your screams. Or worse, possibly much worse - like you landed on the shoulder of a beekeeper and alerted it to the possibility that your hive can be harvested and put into a box!

    This is why the Church of the SubGenius advises people not to pray. You never know what might be listening.

    941:

    Interesting news:

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/dna-pulled-thin-air-identifies-nearby-animals

    Apparently you can (likely) pull identifiable DNA from the air (at least as far as identifying species). Wonder how long it will take until you can identify individuals — and what the effects of that will be on society…

    942:

    Put your soul in a jar, and torture it at parties? Gee, no imagination.

    Reweave your body into a very, very long thread, then weave it into a carpet. You're conscious, and feel everything. When It is annoyed, it jumps up and down on the rug.

    Creatures of Light and Darkness, Zelazny

    943:

    Yeah, one of my favorite books ever.

    There are much worse things than weaving someone's consciousness into a thread. You should look me up in my Subgenius persona. (Or better yet, don't.)

    944:

    I've been polled ... random telephone survey.

    Opinion poll on the environment (the natural world) & science & politics & whether they should have gone ahead with the Tokyo Olympics ... the one question I did not have an opinion on.

    Looked 'em up on Wikipedia and it says the poll is "highly respected, and is often cited by journalists and pundits around the world".

    Nice to have a phone call from someone who is not trying to sell me solar panels, extended warranties or wanting to make me a "cash offer" on my house.

    945:

    Nice to have a phone call from someone who is not trying to sell me solar panels, extended warranties or wanting to make me a "cash offer" on my house.

    I've received three calls this morning from a robot claiming to represent Service Canada who are about to cancel my social insurance card, as well as several yesterday from subcontinental chaps with offers to clean my waterfowl…

    946:

    whitroth @ 926: If you ever feel like it, here's a question for your brother: in '17 and '18, with the GOP in full control... why is it that they never arrested, charged, and took to court Hillary?

    I'd love to see any reaction other than obfuscation... no, that's the right word, malarky.

    Never gonna' happen. I doubt he'd have an answer. He's not really politically inclined. He's not pro-Trumpolini, he just doesn't like the Clintons. Like I wrote, he's just contrary, ... THEY said sit down, so he's gonna stand up!.

    I'm pretty sure he didn't vote in the election ("they're all the same", "my vote doesn't count anyway", ...). I have had THAT discussion with him before.

    That's the beauty of our democratic system, IF you choose not to vote, you can still bitch about who won the election.

    947:

    Similarly, except that the only one I actually answered was "supplying a scam telephone call blocking service". Things got a touch nasty when I told them how bad a job they were doing!

    948:

    Heteromeles @ 938: I think the modern, technical use of bullshit has superseded malarkey, which used to mean much the same thing. Malarkey (meaningless talk, nonsense) popped up in the US in the 1920s and was spread by an Irish American cartoonist.

    For what it's worth.

    Malarkey is mostly harmless, whereas bullshit is malevolent.

    949:

    paws4thot @ 947: Similarly, except that the only one I actually answered was "supplying a scam telephone call blocking service". Things got a touch nasty when I told them how bad a job they were doing!

    My answering machine died, so I've started answering calls again (at least until I can get a replacement). But there's no point being rude to a robot. It just isn't that satisfying.

    LIVE telemarketers OTOH ...

    And occasionally there IS a call that's not offensive. The only problem I have with opinion polling (genuine opinion polling, not PUSH polling) is that often my ideas on a subject don't fit neatly into the [strongly agree] [agree] [neither agree nor disagree] [disagree] [strongly disagree] model they're constrained to follow.

    950:

    LIVE telemarketers OTOH ...

    During lockdown I started just chatting with them. Politely, but seeing how long I could keep them going in circles. Being obtuse, misunderstanding, forgetting, rambling off on tangents… After a while I noticed I was getting fewer calls with an actual person there.

    often my ideas on a subject don't fit neatly into the [strongly agree] [agree] [neither agree nor disagree] [disagree] [strongly disagree] model they're constrained to follow

    I saw an article a few weeks ago about allowing people to give multiple responses and using the same math you do for quantum systems to analyse the responses. Apparently the responses and more illuminating as they can tease information out of the ambiguity of answering both agree and disagree to the same question.

    951: 949 - This was an actual person; well 2 actually since I asked to speak to the first one's manager and got to speak to a recognisably different person (different sex and accent). 950 - I tend to answer these surveys randomly, to the extent that I sometimes actually do roll a D10 to generate my answers.
    952:

    Robert Prior @ 950:

    LIVE telemarketers OTOH ...

    During lockdown I started just chatting with them. Politely, but seeing how long I could keep them going in circles. Being obtuse, misunderstanding, forgetting, rambling off on tangents… After a while I noticed I was getting fewer calls with an actual person there.

    It often depends oh how many prior telemarketing calls I've already received trying to sell me the same thing. If I'm in a good mood, it's a polite (reasonably polite) "No thank-you. Goodbye" and hang up.

    If they're already on my shit list, I will sometimes engage them with questions of where they're calling me from - city, state, street address & room number, strongly hinting I'd like to drop by in person to persuade them to STOP BOTHERING ME!

    often my ideas on a subject don't fit neatly into the [strongly agree] [agree] [neither agree nor disagree] [disagree] [strongly disagree] model they're constrained to follow

    I saw an article a few weeks ago about allowing people to give multiple responses and using the same math you do for quantum systems to analyse the responses. Apparently the responses and more illuminating as they can tease information out of the ambiguity of answering both agree and disagree to the same question.

    Yeah, that sounds like a good way to do it.

    953:

    paws4thot @ 951: #950 - I tend to answer these surveys randomly, to the extent that I sometimes actually do roll a D10 to generate my answers.

    IF I understand it, a D10 is a die with 10 faces ... How do you map that to a 5 point scale? I might want to give that a try if polling becomes oppressive. But so far, I only get pinged for real polls a couple of times per decade, so they're still enough fun that I don't care to try to screw them up.

    And again, PUSH polls OTOH ... (but those only show up rarely as well).

    954:

    IF I understand it, a D10 is a die with 10 faces ... How do you map that to a 5 point scale? It is, so 1 or 2 is "strongly disagree" (or SA, depending on mood), 3 or 4 is "disagree"...

    955:

    Phone scams: I've gone to waiting 3-4 sec. Most auto-hang up, if it's a robocall. All the others... I now start screaming "this phone number is on the national do-not-call list, so I could sue them....

    Email... well, I just got one a bit ago suggesting we could meet for fun, which I thought was a good idea, so I went down and kissed Ellen (not that she sent the scam).

    956:

    If they're already on my shit list, I will sometimes engage them with questions of where they're calling me from - city, state, street address & room number, strongly hinting I'd like to drop by in person to persuade them to STOP BOTHERING ME!

    Doesn't work, in my experience. The addresses they give are invariably false. Which makes sense, given they're actually sitting in a cramped facility somewhere in India.

    957:

    Robert Prior @ 956:

    If they're already on my shit list, I will sometimes engage them with questions of where they're calling me from - city, state, street address & room number, strongly hinting I'd like to drop by in person to persuade them to STOP BOTHERING ME!

    Doesn't work, in my experience. The addresses they give are invariably false. Which makes sense, given they're actually sitting in a cramped facility somewhere in India.

    It works to some extent. It usually doesn't take them too long to get the message & go away. I've enjoyed the call even if they haven't.

    It's not the only way I handle telemarketers. If I'm busy and don't have time to play I just tell them FUCK YOU! and hang up.

    958:

    I got a PHISHING call this afternoon. Automated call from "Am*" that someone had made a $900 purchase on my Am* account - "Press 1 if you did not authorize this purchase, press 2 to authorize it".

    Kind of slick, didn't ring any alarm bells at first.

    Pressed 1 and got switched to a call center. The agent wanted me to open a web browser and search for a web-site ... not sure what was supposed to happen next, I could barely understand him & had to ask him to repeat himself several times and never found out what web site he was trying to direct me to.

    By then, I already had my account pulled up and could see there was no spurious purchase, so I just hung up on him. Wish I'd written down the telephone number from the Caller ID, but it was probably fake because I do remember it had my local area-code, and I'm pretty sure the dude was NOT calling from here in North Carolina.

    959:

    Caller ID, but it was probably fake because I do remember it had my local area-code, and I'm pretty sure the dude was NOT calling from here in North Carolina.

    Caller ID for these calls is worthless these days due to what has to happen for SS7 to allow calls to be placed via VOIP. Any number can be faked.

    Some of this may be somewhat fixed soon with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN

    I haven't dug into how this will work outside of the US.

    960:

    Caller ID is worse than useless except for personal callers who's number(s) you also know, given the number of legitimate organisations who use a central 0800 number or "number withheld" (UK data), and the ease with which scammers can fake an apparently legitimate UK STD number.

    961:

    VOIP was implemented in a manner which ruined Caller ID for screening calls.

    I was no longer working in telephony by the time VOIP was a thing, so I'm not familiar with all the technical details, but the little I learned had me face-palming that everyone apparently missed the problem… or thinking that no one really cared about the problem — I never did decide which was more likely.

    I'm leaning towards 'incompetently missed', as when I was involved in rolling a computer network out to an entire school board the technical experts didn't understand why students might vandalize equipment, and the administration didn't understand that the purpose of a prototype was to diagnose and fix problems before the final design.

    962:

    I never answer a phone call if it is not a number already in my phone book, or otherwise identifiable. If it is legitimate, they will leave a message.

    963:

    Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

    964:

    And then, based on my experience, you get to spend the next 2 weeks trying to ring them back, where you probably would have answered a call that identified as "your exchange" + "9E6" rather than "number withheld".

    965:

    “ As for the deep ones, I'm not sure how explicit I made it (or in which book) but there were some indications that they were withdrawing from Earth's oceans completely, by means unspecified.” Will they leave a note saying “So long and thanks for all the fish?”

    966:

    Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

    How many of us already do this, I wonder?

    967:

    Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

    It is still a game of statistics. That you will likely win most of the time.

    In the US, Canada, and assorted nearby places, we have area codes, exchange prefixes, and then local numbers. xxx-xxx-xxxx. Number portability makes this some what meaningless except to know where someone physically was when the number was assigned.

    I get calls all the time from my area code and exchange but some random 4 digit number. I think once or twice that 4 digit number has matched someone in my address book.

    Some of us have to deal with calls from other states (or that might appear to be so) that we really really want. That tech support call to continue the 3 hour process you're 2 1/2 hours into. A new client where you're expected the call but don't know the number. And I got a call yesterday from "Cisco" which made sense based on some work I was doing. It was spoofed and I told them to "Do not call me again." which is a magic phrase with legal meaning in the US. At least to callers who are willing to follow the law.

    Getting back to the original comment, since people may have gotten a cell phone when living with parents in Portland OR and now have the same number while living down the street from me in North Carolina it gets hard to decide when to answer.

    At least now I get a 95% or so accurate voice translation by T-Mobile which pops up in my messages a minute or so later so I can decide to deal or not without listening to the voice mail.

    968:

    I'm leaning towards 'incompetently missed',

    Much of the Windows' malware fun of the last few decades can be traced back to the original OLE designers never comprehended that anyone would try and do anything malicious. Just didn't enter their thought process. At all.

    The phone system spent a century where only "phone companies" would generate calls. And the protocols had no security as a result. So the folks from that background seemed to be oblivious to the problems that VOIP presented. I know a few of them (now retired) who just don't get that SS7 is badly formed for such things. The are very smart people who just shake their head no when you try and talk about it.

    970:

    And then, based on my experience, you get to spend the next 2 weeks trying to ring them back

    That never happened to me. Over last 12 months or so the only entities which called LEGITIMATELY called me and left messages and whose number I did not recognize were a bank, a hospital, and insurance company, and I think once iRobot Corporation. They all leave detailed messages and are very easy to reach.

    971:

    As an aside, now that I mentioned it:

    iRobot has the most comically inept customer service I have encountered in at least 5 years. Love their product, but iRobot's internal communications seem to be still in DOS era. And I do not mean the competence of individuals I spoke to, they were quite knowledgeable. I am talking about them having no idea what other customer support people had already said or done.

    972:

    "...the Federal Communications Commission are requiring use of the protocols by June 30, 2021."

    Obviously, not done implementation.

    973:

    "Do not call me again". Actually, the legal phrase is "I request and require that you remove me from your telemarketing list."

    I tested this, back in '98, and told one "take me off your telemarketing list" got an argument... and then I said the Magic Words, and she read a script presumably taped over her hutch.

    ALL of them now are crooks. 100% Either they're spoofing it, and calling from a call center in India. Yelling at them "this number is on the do not call list" gets, maybe, "oh, I'm sorry".

    Well, except for the crooks from the Friends of the Police or whatever they call themselves. They no longer argue that I can't tell them to take me off their telemarketing list (they're "charitable", so they can ignore the do-not-call list), but there's two of them with almost identical names.. and the real one is pissed at the others, who are crooks, plain and simple.

    974:

    ilya187 @ 962: I never answer a phone call if it is not a number already in my phone book, or otherwise identifiable. If it is legitimate, they will leave a message.

    Which is what I will go back to doing once I get another single-line, non-wireless, telephone with a built in answering machine (like the one I had that failed a couple of weeks ago.

    On my iPhone I have it set up so that only callers on my call list cause the phone to RING. All other calls have a quiet "ding" ring-tone that tells me there was a call. You can leave a voice mail, and if I want to talk to you I'll add you to the phone book and set the ring-tone to ring through.

    I ordered this one. It's the same model as the one I had (that was at least 10 years old when it failed).

    https://www.amazon.com/AT-Standard-Answering-Backlit-Display/dp/B007B5VH0E/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=AT%26T+CL4940&qid=1627251138&sr=8-1

    The image that accompanies that page amuses me because I have a "Charlie Johnson" in my phone book; those who DO have the ring tone on my iPhone. Charles S. Johnson, Jr. You can find HIM on Amazon too.

    975:

    "I am talking about them having no idea what other customer support people had already said or done."

    You say that as if there are organisations that are not like that?

    976:

    Either they're spoofing it, and calling from a call center in India.

    That's virtually all the non-robocalls I get. The Do-Not-Call list has no effect on them, as they are out of its jurisdiction. Which is why I waste their time, to create an incentive for them to take me off their list.

    Sometimes, if I'm in a pissy mood, I'll wonder out speculate about how their parents must be so proud, to have raised a son who makes his living as a criminal trying to scam money from poor grandparents…

    977:

    When I was getting people, 90% of whom had really heavy Indian accents (no, I don't know which Indian language the accent is from), I got them to hang up on me, when I said, "If your grandmother knew what you were doing for a living, she'd be ashamed of you."

    Most of them now, though, are robocalls, and if they answer, it's "Rachel", or....

    978:

    The Indian boiler-room operations have been using the robocall with "Press 1 to speak to a representative" for a while now. I have a Caller-ID display box that has the useful feature of displaying very long numbers (including the country code), and also "INTERNATIONAL" - which works even if they've spoofed a local call.

    I use the "Would your mother be proud of you?" response quite a lot. (Also "Network Support" - vaguely related to $Dayjob - if they're pretending to be Openreach or other internet/comms provider.) and some of the others are simply invited to FOAD.

    979:

    Chris Suslowicz @ 978: The Indian boiler-room operations have been using the robocall with "Press 1 to speak to a representative" for a while now. I have a Caller-ID display box that has the useful feature of displaying very long numbers (including the country code), and also "INTERNATIONAL" - which works even if they've spoofed a local call.

    I use the "Would your mother be proud of you?" response quite a lot. (Also "Network Support" - vaguely related to $Dayjob - if they're pretending to be Openreach or other internet/comms provider.) and some of the others are simply invited to FOAD.

    My replacement desk phone w/answering machine arrived yesterday, so I'm back to screening calls.

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