ADennis

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• Commented on Catching Up
  So's the cat I haven't got....
• Commented on Placeholder? Placeholder!
  No. Slightly deeper, faster breathing, and an intent stare at a point about a handspan away from the bridge of the searcher's nose, doesn't matter what point on that circle so long as you keep it consistent. A slight whimper...
• Commented on Sometimes I don't know why I bother!
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald - the original for every naval and space-naval Hero Captain from Hornblower to Harrington. The adventure-stories-for-boys and space-opera versions are toned down considerably from reality....
• Commented on A plaintive request
  That's how the Reichstag Fire ploy works. The world is full of idiots with matches: you just have to let one through when you're ready. Cut a budget here, have an attack of Pearl Harbour Syndrome there. Something'll work. As...
• Commented on A plaintive request
  Who believe, instead in their actual "god" ... Well, that's a straw man that will surely never kill again....
• Commented on A plaintive request
  It might be possible to let an existing coup run its course instead of stamping it down early, maybe use agents provocateur to nudge them on, but staging it completely is impossible without being found out. This. You never actually...
• Commented on The Nightmare Stacks: US Launch
  I wonder about the Doctrine "to be seen is to be dead" - extrapolation from existing warfare or made up to make the alfär style of battle more distinct? "If you can be seen, you can be hit. If you...
• Commented on The Nightmare Stacks: US Launch
  That wasn't so much of a problem for me: I know plenty of people with no critical thinking skills and less aptitude for research and infinitesimal idea of any learning resource they're not led to by the hand and spoon-fed...
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  That would definitely have been us. Fair brings back some memories, yes... it is from the same period of my life that I know that chainsaw fencing just doesn't work, nailgun nails are ballistically unstable after about two metres of...
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  Oh, and the other thing: bigger machines are actually easier to operate. Counter-intuitive, I know, but there's a few years of personal experience backing this up on everything from 25-tonne excavators down to a little half-tonner I rented for a...
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  Well, that is pretty much how we built the railways: swarms of navvies with picks and shovels to dig things, and horses for locomotion. The "steam navvy" didn't make its appearance until nearly everything had been built already. It was...
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  Also, if there is any human involvement - construction workers will break anything, and large size is the only defence. This is actually somewhat unfair. Construction workers are generally able to use things within their duty cycles/limits, not least because...
• Commented on The Nightmare Stacks: US Launch
  I anticipate explicit arguments from a lot of folks that since the alfar are not human, they cannot have human rights, and thus it is legal to do... anything you want to them. Well, you could try that, but a....
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  There are a lot of situations where you actually need a big heavy bastard of a machine: if you're digging or earthmoving you're almost always building right after and having a 10-15 tonne digger on hand gives you a lot...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  But, you know, I've never seen her drink a glass of water....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  Yeah, let's go with that....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  As long as it doesn't taint the flavour of the precious bodily fluids her kind craves, she's fine with it....
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND
  You'd think, yes. Not a species notably concerned with the decencies, your tories....
• Commented on Cyberpunk 2.0: Political economy, energy, and the future US
  We've now given up on them as a bad job and pulled most of them down. Not all of them: the ones where the design and construction cockups could be remediated have been and remain as cheap housing. There's probably...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  And, of course, Gideon is out. So we got that goin' for us, which is nice....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  The parliamentary electorate was 70.1% of the population in 2014 - the most recent figure the ONS has easily findable. That gives us a 26.4% Leave vote as a fraction of the whole population. That's a top-end estimate: electoral registration...
• Commented on We'll all go together when we go
  But could you train them to herd Tories? Give me a representative population of Tories and a sufficiently large cat - panthera pardus at a minimum - and I'll give it the old school try. Pay-per-view alone would pay the...
• Commented on We'll all go together when we go
  Hostile AI isn't on anyone's list. I think we're all assuming it's going to retcon itself out of existence by sending more and more badly-programmed infiltrator units back in time to the wrong historical nexi....
• Commented on We'll all go together when we go
  Long familiar, and long annoyed at it....
• Commented on We'll all go together when we go
  What are you, some kind of Godless Communist? They have that money because JESUS says they deserve it! The poor lack money for the same reason! You're talking about contradicting GOD'S PLAN FOR HIS CREATION! And so on....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  I believe the politically-correct formulation is that The Unions Had Grown Too Powerful, And They Were Ruining The Country....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  Not sure you can make judgments about someone's character based on a Desert Island Discs appearance. Especially not of someone with a media team who'd handle the scripting of it....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  He's on the telly now insisting he's not dropping out....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  You're both right in the sense that the argument about whether we play chess or not is part of the game....
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  Rags-to-reasonably-comfortable used to be, if not easy, at least within the grasp of someone reasonably intelligent with a capacity for hard work. I'd like to see that reinstated. The rest is a massive rant that I'm choking down because I...