LAvery

LAvery

  • Commented on I should blog more, but ...
    So, when does the Tzompantli go up?...
  • Commented on Summer webcomics
    The Devil's Panties: https://thedevilspanties.com/ And of course XKCD: https://xkcd.com/ I also have a feed the recycles old Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County strips....
  • Commented on Shrinking the world
    I also recall being on a flight to the US and a two shuttle flight NASA astronaut being downgraded from Business due to overbooking and ending up sitting next to me. I got no sleep that flight as every half...
  • Commented on Shrinking the world
    One could more or less claim that Jules Verne wrote a whole novel about this. The key plot point of /Around the World in Eighty Days/ (pub 1873) is that Phileas Fogg could get a whole lot of people to...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    Molecular Geneticist Joe Goldstein had a story he used to tell to Medical Genetics classes. When he started out as a practicing physician (probably in the 1950s), he had a patient, a woman who had a child afflicted with a...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    To riff on the late Stephen Jay Gould, languages seem to evolve via punctuated equilibrium, rather than continuous gradual change. I would have supposed that we are now in a period of equilibrium, with little change taking place. Widespread literacy...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    Go back to 1416 instead of 1816 and you'd need an interpreter, although the nobs wouldn't be talking English at all (it'd all be Norman French or Church Latin). Here's an example of the Middle English of that time: Sir...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    I was skeptical, in fact, that Eve would be able to easily communicate in English with folks in 1816. English in 1816 probably sounded very different from the way it does in the 21st century. Although I guess we can...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    Yeah, there are a lot of weird old laws still on the books I believe there are antisodomy laws that make homosexual sex a crime still on the books in some states of the USA. They are, of course, unconstitutional,...
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    To my surprise, I find that /Season of Skulls/ reminds me quite a bit of /Babel: An Arcane History/, by R.F. Kuang. I think that's vague enough not to count as a spoiler....
  • Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
    Johnny McTavish and Persephone Hazard! So pleasant to meet old friends from The Laundry Files once again....
  • Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
    This morning my local (Canadian) paper carries an editorial entitled "King Charles III is not my king"....
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
    The meat-printing plot thread reminds me of the excellent short story "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, available for free here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prasad_01_17/ ....
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    What immediately struck me about that story is that it is very Wallace-and-Grommit-like, but not detectably Stross-like....
  • Commented on I can't even
    ...there is almost certainly still a rump of realists and they can be expected to be horrified by what's going on. It is possible that they'll try to regain control and be forced out, ... That's essentially what happened to...
  • Commented on London Bridge
    I got a 6s because of the form factor - don't want a BigPhone I recently upgraded from a 5S to a 12Mini. The problem for me was that, if you're not running the latest OS, a lot of app...
  • Commented on London Bridge
    Canada's plans for dealing with the death of the Queen are, it appears, a big secret. Ottawa has rebuffed the Star's requests for information....
  • Commented on London Bridge
    Remember, she (although in a distinct legal persona) was also head of state of Canada. Her death is the top news on the website of the Toronto Star....
  • Commented on The ends of education
    The basics are very important. Ha! Not too long ago I got to explain twos complement arithmetic to one of my office-mates. It's frankly a little surprising to me how often, even in these days, it can become relevant to...
  • Commented on The ends of education
    IMHO we send way too many people to college here in the US. For my construction sites I cannot find (even pre-covid) enough masons, cement pourers, pipe fitters, geosynthetic installers, electricians, auto/truck/equipment mechanics, etc. Covid made it worse. None of...
  • Commented on The ends of education
    going back for a first degree in an entirely unrelated field I had greater aptitude for. Well, that's pretty much what I did. My previous degrees were in an unrelated field -- biochemistry. That is no more closely related to...
  • Commented on The ends of education
    I returned to university (something I wouldn't be able to do today) About that -- I returned to university in 2015 and graduated in 2020 with a PhD in Applied Mathematics. So it's not yet impossible for a person to...
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    The usual mechanism for linking brains to the rest of the body for moods is supposed to be hormones — I’m not sure whether it is that simple. It certainly is not. At a minimum you need the autonomic nervous...
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    I have in mind that there was spoof article in the style of a neuroscience experiment, but looking at a transistor radio (or computer?). Can you help with a link? Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. Or are you asking for...
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    The gut-brain axis plus microbiome - both concepts have become accepted as the way humans operate and most likely are necessary for human survival. One thing I liked about Stephenson's /Fall, or Dodge in Hell/ (which remains, at this date,...
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    Re: The Fractal Prince - I still couldn't work out what was actually happening - I have all three books & am still "confused". I read all three because OGH stated on this blog that they presented a realistic SF...
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    *It is either the best or second best (fruit fly researchers sometimes make the claim) UNDERDSTOOD animal....
  • Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
    Here is what makes me extremely skeptical about the way upload is usually understood in SF. For 31 years of my life I worked on the neuroscience of behavior in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The normal Ce hermaphrodite has 302...
  • Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
    If you were to write this, I would definitely read it. Even pay good money for it....
  • Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
    When you say, "we follow the UK succession law", do you mean, "our law is exactly the same as the UK law", or "our law is 'do whatever the UK does'"? Because those are entirely different if the UK changes...
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