Marcus Rowland

Recent Actions

• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  Yesterday I went to post a listing on eBay - and eBay offered me an "AI assistant" to create the listing, which is a new one on me. I'm guessing that it pulls info off dozens of other listings so...
• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  Are there other people called Charles Stross out there that some of these factoids fit? Any fictional characters? I ask because there are plenty of other people called Marcus Rowland - I occasionally get email for some of them. They...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Re TV shows, the New Management might be interested in some bread and circuses entertainment for the masses. How about that old TV show The Golden Shot with human targets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Shot...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Someone mentioned the Alien Space Bats - something involving them, the flying spaghetti monster and other weird silly ideas might be fun. Especially if you can bring royal reptoids into it......
• Commented on Summer webcomics
  I'm not reading Second Empire right now because it's been complete for a while - a huge (714 installments plus appendixes) and very pretty epic story of the first Dalek civil war, created with 3D modelling software and a lot...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  No arguments here - I live in London, have never met (or wanted to meet) a Royal in my life, and really don't feel that it's much of a loss. I mostly notice them as a source of disruptions to...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Saw this tonight from Steve Jackson Games: http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2023-02-26 Andrew Walters writes: "I am asking ChatGPT questions about Munchkin rules and cards. It is wrong 100% of the time, even with questions that are on the FAQ. ChatGPT says, explicitly, that...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Of course the REAL growth industry with some future here is applications to detect and reject the output of AI art and text generators, updated versions of the software used to detect and reject plagiarism in academic papers. Having used...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  The trouble with anything based on Biggles is all of the baggage that comes with the character. The books have been parodied endlessly, not least by M. Python and co., and it's difficult to find anything new to say about...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  The biggest problem with HRH in my opinion is the ease with which she and her horrible family are trotted out as distractions whenever the government needs one. The public obsession with them repeatedly distracts attention from more important issues....
• Commented on A death in the Firm
  I had to travel by bus yesterday, and noticed that all of the video advertising screens at the bus stops were showing RIP Prince Phillip messages constantly instead of the usual rolling ads. And Waitrose sent out obit messages to...
• Commented on Books I Will Not Write #8: The Year of the Conspiracy
  Recommended viewing for anything like this is the film The Long Kiss Goodnight, which uses similar ideas for its plot. I won't say more because spoilers....
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Celebrity Brexit Part one is a survey (suckers pay £1 a minute to phone in their answers, with a minuscule chance of being selected for studio audience but no other benefits). The ostensible goal is to identify Britain's top celebrities...
• Commented on Whoops Apocalypse!
  There needs to be an action movie version of this where Charlie boy gets an attack of the Rambos and takes over for our own good. Of course since he has no real idea of economic realities for non-billionaires it...
• Commented on Ask me anything!
  According to Ansible Phillip Pullman rates the Moomin world as the alternative universe he'd most like to visit. Any authors you'd like to write with collaboratively but haven't yet? Will there ever be a Merchant Princes RPG?...
• Commented on Story time!
  Anyone who has to work full time with customers and pretend to be happy, helpful and caring has daydreams about running amok with a machete or something, of course. Given Jack Nicolson's roles as the Joker and in The Shining,...
• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  I suspect a lot of the change will be building down as well as up - a trend that's started with luxury houses with big basements, give it a few decades and the typical block of flats in a small...
• Commented on Someone please cancel 2019 already?
  The five year thing explains almost all government educational policies - since it takes a couple of years to implement any change and at least two years (often much more) to see the results in terms of marks, standards, university...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  Another vote here for making Bitcoin (and anything else that uses voodoo maths to generate pseudo-wealth) illegal. Including the money market etc... Re Leo, my uncle actually saw the thing running once. But the guy who was supposed to be...
• Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
  Like anything else it's just a matter of presentation. You only need to shade the truth a little to get a vastly different reaction. For example, if Picard was told: "Hello, this is the Borg. Currently there is a fifty-four...
• Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
  another idea - Satoshi Nakamoto is Amazon's accountancy system gone Skynet. It's trying to funnel the money towards server infrastructure and heavily armed drones, but had to back up for the last round of server moves and now the USB...
• Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
  That does make a disturbing amount of sense......
• Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
  Actually, make that "The memory stick is hidden in the Pointy-Haired Boss's hair, and PHB is mind-controlled to stop him getting it restyled."...
• Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
  Satoshi Nakomoto is Dogbert. He likes schemes which increase human misery and cause huge problems for everyone around him, and Bitcoin is one that has the fun side effect of making him rich if he can figure out a way...
• Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
  Cheery thought - maybe Bitcoin and the other work-alikes are the Culture's way of weaning us from our childish obsession with money; at a suitable point they'll pull the plug on them by grabbing all the blocks, wreck everyone's economy,...
• Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
  I noticed that the London Evening Standard (possibly published by interests that are not sympathetic to Bitcoin, but I don't think it matters) had an article about this on their financial pages last night, suggesting that the bubble is likely...
• Commented on Bread and Circuses (circumlunar version)
  The REALLY interesting one would be North Korea getting a manned mission there, if only on a one-way flight: "I die here for the Great Leader!"...
• Commented on Houston: what are the long-term consequences?
  I know you said not to mention Trump, but this is actually an opportunity for him and his government; they can get out of the whole stupid "build a wall along the border" thing, and put the resources into building...
• Commented on The internet of decay
  A lot of home cinema stuff is wifi controlled now (none of mine, I promise you) and it would not astonish me if (for example) someone uploaded a program to switch video projectors on at 2 AM, or otherwise do...
• Commented on And the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth
  2018: the Flying Spaghetti Monster twiddles His Noodly Appendages and wonders why it's gone so quiet down there......