Julian Bond

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• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  You may not be the person to do it. But we badly need some fiction about 2123. There are babies being born now who will see it. Being held by Great Grandmothers born in 1923....
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares: spoiler time!
  Lewis Shiner's "Deserted Cities of the Heart". Well that was fun. Are the rest of his as good as that one? Yes. Particularly fond of "Slam". He had two stories in Mirrorshades so can be thought of as a cyberpunk...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  The pub was not as full as usual & the age spectrum was even more heavily slanted towards people under 50 - mostly between 20 & 40, often with small children. I note that the guvmint are proposing to tell...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  I have a son who works in a Covent Garden bar so this feels close to home. At large events and gatherings, it's not the person sitting next to me, I'm worrying about. It's the few hundred people I push...
• Commented on COVID-19
  Where are the rich, old people (afraid of the sky) going to hide and ride this thing out? They'll want to isolate themselves as much as possible to stay alive until the vaccine is ready. Which means going full Downton...
• Commented on A serious question
  Seem more appropriate here than the next thread. We were talking about using garlic rubbed on finger tips as a smelly training aid to teach oneself to stop touching your face for Covid-19 reasons. Which got me thinking. Can Vampires...
• Commented on COVID-19
  I'm sure the UK Cobra meeting considered situations where large numbers of people get together in close proximity since football and sporting events got mentioned. I've become fascinated by some that don't seem to get much attention. Prisons. Do prisons...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Reality TV pitch: Deck Runner - Set aboard a quarantined cruise ship. Think JG Ballard - High Rise meets Martin Bax - Hospital Ship meets Burroughs - Naked Lunch. Allocate the participants to different decks defined by social class and...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  At the end of the previous decade there was a fun pair of programmes on UK TV. Moving Wallpaper vs Echo Beach. The first half hour was a sitcom about a group of bitchy and dysfunctional writers working on a...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  I think with energy storage we need to involve some Milos Minderbinder thinking outside the box. "Too Much Electricity that is Too Cheap and Low Carbon" needs to be funded. So we need to find ways of making it generate...
• Commented on Upcoming events
  This suggest we should be looking for systems that can soak up spare capacity. Part of that problem is that a lot of industrial processes like making Ammonia can't be ramped up and down quickly. Even there, perhaps bits of...
• Commented on Whoops Apocalypse!
  Alamut and Ismaili Persia invented sleeper agents and gave us a name for assassins but that was a long time ago. http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hashashin.html Modern state-sponsored assassination wouldn't be mortars or ritual daggers. It's much more likely to be doctored perfume bottles,...
• Commented on Story time!
  Early Token ring networks had some bugs and race conditions where some times you'd get two tokens on the same ring. You had to wait for one of them to come round the ring and then disconnect a cable so...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  I'm reminded again that what North Americans mean by "liberal" and "Liberals" and what people from the UK mean, are two entirely different things. That doesn't mean that either side is wrong, per se. Just that they're using political labels...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  With all the daily chaos as the processes of government in the HoC get increasingly heated, I'm waiting for The Mace to again wake from it's slumber. As the dark, eldritch forces embodied in it take over the mind of...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  Back in the mists of time in the 80s, The Monster Raving Loony Party and the Rainbow Alliance had a plan to end The Troubles. All the islands off the west coast of Europe would unite under the banner of...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  By a spooky coincidence, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968 in the same year that population growth rate peaked at 2.09%/yr. The global population that year was 3.55b. If that growth rate had been maintained ever since then...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Re 100 years in the future SciFi as opposed to 5 minutes. I think I'm right in saying oil will run out before coal. So given our addiction to fossil fuels there will be an extended "Coal Age" post-oil. It...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire ticks most of those boxes. And according to Wikipedia, it's recommended by OGH....
• Commented on Do my Homework
  I find it hard to be quite so optimistic about the Green Revolution and Demographic Transition. Given that global population is growing linearly at 80m/yr and isn't really showing any signs of slowing down. If anything we're growing at slightly...
• Commented on Sitrep
  Waste food -> Methane -> Electricity+Compost may be small scale but it is a real thing. We've got plants near us that seem to have been running commercially for a couple of years. eg. http://www.biogen.co.uk/News/blog-article/Hertfordshires-first-food-waste-to-green-energy-plant-opens There are several landfill sites...
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  On the basis that any sufficiently advanced generation ship is indistinguishable from a planet. I went looking for some stats on data storage growth along with data generation growth on generation ship Earth. I remember IDC producing figures for stuff...
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  Remember the "proper spaceships need beer" thing? I figured it's not a proper spaceship until it includes brandy and cigars for the full steampunk experience. Uncontrolled combustion, naked flames, proof spirits and drunk people in a spaceship; what could possibly...
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  @190. As well as female education, there's also a direct relationship between urbanisation and a drop in fertility rate. And there's some suggestion that the UN is drastically underestimating the level of global urbanisation. But also beware extrapolating the experience...
• Commented on Happy 21st Century!
  In the original population/civilisation/fab question I wasn't really thinking about end user computing but more about embedded processors, asics and custom chips. Since the mid-80s roughly, it seems like everything electrical has an embedded processor. And even more so now...
• Commented on Happy 21st Century!
  We did this once before with Greg on a previous thread. I'm glad you posted the link to the UN demographics group 2017 revision. This is the source, figures and analysis that Rosling (and other related analysts) was using in...
• Commented on Test Case
  Warning: There are rabbits down this hole. I think what was being referred to was an event around Mar 14-15 that is almost perfectly designed to generate conspiracy theories. The Times posted an article titled "Salisbury poison exposure leaves almost...
• Commented on Test Case
  I'm a big fan of James Bridle's subversive art projects. I was looking for another one on "All CCTV cameras are Police cameras" and came across this which seems on topic. http://jamesbridle.com/works/autonomous-trap-001 It's a "Salt Circle" for trapping autonomous cars...
• Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
  Unable to gain altitude faster than roughly 20cm/sec sounds terrible. But out in the real world (unless you live in the Alps or Edinburgh), a UK E-Bicycle means never going below 10mph, maintaining 15mph on the flat and >20 downhill...
• Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
  Answers to that question here in an easily digestible form. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/...