Eric de Rode

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• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  The great leap backwards. I think it's more that that. There are two sides to this. One is the Labour Party being the incumbent government during the pandemic, and in the past year some truly awful weather that has wrecked...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  for pedalpunk try Sean McMullen SOULS IN THE GREAT MACHINE...
• Commented on WTF
  Eric Flint's theme was that blue collar Americans - and Germans - are smarter and more competent than they're given credit for. In the 1632 series both the Americans and the locals were freed from a system that had been...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  Charlie @1046 I'm sure we could handle variable incomes - assigning parts to another tax year etc Greg @1050 Yes of course people would try to cheat. So we just shrug our shoulders and give in? We need to deal...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  90% hah. Let's make it 100%. If we combine it with an UBI set the 100% tax bracket at 10 time UBI. Set all the tax brackets at multiples of the UBI, 0 for additional income up to 1 UBI,...
• Commented on The gathering crisis
  I think the reason the Industrial Revolution took off in the UK where in other places it fizzled out is due to the confluence of many stream supporting each other. And it didn't start with steam. It started with sheep....
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  There is the interesting philosophical question - is suffering real if you don't remember if? I believe that we have real life examples of this in surgical procedures. AIUI the patient is given something to induce amnesia along with the...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  Sometimes loss of technologies can just be a change of focus. Inappropriate technologies dropped, and new ones added. In dark age Europe there may have been technologies lost, but also new ones gained - the mould-board plough, horse collar, stirrups,...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  One of the main reasons for the gun violence in the US is attitude. The belief that "I need a gun to defend myself". Even otherwise reasonable people buy into this, and have a pistol by the bed. In NZ,...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  It seems likely to me there was a historical Jesus. He probably would have felt at home on this site, seeing as his message was 1. Billionaires are bad 2. Treat each other decently 3. Even those who look and...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Jesus guns babies - maybe she's been reading psalm 137...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  I'm inclined to think that billionaires are just a symptom of a more fundamental problem - that companies' purpose is to make money. Some companies produce a useful product or service, but that is just a side effect. As their...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  Codex Sinaiticus is in Greek...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  The "New" testament was written in Greek, possibly some parts were a translation of Aramaic original. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament Latin version was later (and only used in the West) [[ changing markup links to work now - mod ]]...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  I think that's what Jesus tried to do. But it got hi-jacked - first by Paul then by so many others. With Islam, the veiling etc was part of existing culture. The Koran gave women certain minimum rights (owning their...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  Yes the Netherlands is different. They have recognized that the main cause of death and injury to ordinary cyclists (excluding mountain bikers and racers) is cars. Instead of doing something about that (serious cycling infrastructure, laws that put the onus...
• Commented on Holding pattern 2022 ...
  And thus mandating helmets also contributes to global warming, by discouraging cycling. It is particularly discouraging to the idea of hopping on a bike for a short trip (to the shops etc). When you need a helmet, and then also...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Populations expanded in Africa 40,000 years ago https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090728223022.htm...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I did mean large in Paleolithic terms, compared with ice-age Europe...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I would suggest the Neanderthals never died out. What you have is a tiny population of Neanderthals, and a very large population of modern humans in Africa, successive waves of new arrivals over the millennia and some enthusiastic interbreeding. So...
• Commented on Obligatory Hugo eligibility post
  You should post this under the "Oh 2022" thread - there's a big discussion on renewables and storage...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Euuropcar has no maximum age (at most branches in the UK), so go for it, hire a car!...
• Commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  I've just finished Invisible Sun. Just one complaint, it's too short!...
• Commented on Lying to the ghost in the machine
  Interestingly, I had the opposite problem when I visited Cornwall. Google kept sending me down these narrow lanes (barely wide enough for a car, and you may have to back up half a mile if you meet someone coming the...
• Commented on What happens now?
  Maori is pronounced with a glide between adjacent vowels, so "maori" is almost 3 syllables ma (a as in far) glide to o (as in pot) the ri (like ree but cut short). The pronunciation of r is fluid. It...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Moa. It is now believed they are descended from South American Tinamous (not ratites but closely related) and did fly over....
• Commented on No comment necessary
  Agreed. But mostly I just ride along in my own happy world, binging my bell at pedestrians as I come up behind them so they don't have that "suddenly a cyclist" experience, and occasionally slowing to walking pace when there's...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  Hi Moz, please don't take it personally. I don't expect everyone to be like me, and I don't really hate racing cyclists (some of them are my friends, we just disagree) , I just find some of the things they...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  So you hate that they ride fast on the paths but also hate that they refuse to use the paths and ride on the road? Absolutely! I hate mountainbikers riding on walking tracks, and I hate racing bikers riding on...
• Commented on No comment necessary
  Well I upgraded my bicycle by adding an electric motor - for a few hundred dollars it's the best upgrade. Now I can turn it on if there's a headwind or a long uphill. I like riding to work, or...