Is it me or this plan is just unhinged? Not just politically bad, or imbalanced, or whatever. But actually fantastical, not meant for implementation. In fact I can’t think of anyone who’d accept it, not the zionists either. It seems headline-driven policy. It’s just intended to make noise.

At least Oslo was shitty but conceivably workable for some values of workable.

This is talking about tariffs and SEZs in the middle of rubble.

Translation sets a certain distance between you and the work, that is inevitable. But so does time, for example. Should you not read anything from earlier than the 1950s because language has changed?

Good news on nuclear, awful news on gas, but considering the German fake energy transition is powered by it, it’s perhaps inevitable.

Also this just annoyed me more than it should:

Nuclear power is a carbon-free source of electricity but it is not typically labeled as green energy, like solar, wind and other renewables. Generating power this way requires mining and processing uranium to create nuclear fuel, an energy-intensive process that produces emissions.

Unlike wind turbines and solar panels, which are made from butterfly shine and faery sighs.

My understanding is that Firefox can’t generate and store them by itself, it needs some other mechanism.

Oddly, I have a friend who’s not much into SF but absolutely loved Quicksilver (and the whole Baroque Cycle). She also enjoyed Anathem. But Cryptonomicon or other Stephenson’s books left her uninterested.

I suppose it’s a matter of taste then. I don’t really mind the expository style. Incidentally, Greg Egan is also one of my favourites, and I’d say he does use some amount of exposition, for example in Diaspora, or the Orthogonal Series (amazing work).

I liked Anathem a lot. I think I enjoyed all of Neal Stephenson’s books up to (but excluding) Seveneves, whereupon I gave up on him. Anathem is one of my favourite books.

The whole notion of monks in space seems absurd because of how people see monks. But this is both ahistorical and contrary to the way they work in the book. Copernicus and Mendel were monks. And these particular ones were all about learning maths and theorics (physics). They didn’t optimise for technology, because they weren’t allowed, but they optimised for learning, for extracting information out of tiny details. I think they’d do alright in a scientific(ish) mission.

I get why people say this, but I like his digressions. It’s not just a matter of learning something new (though occasionally one does) but of how he uses language to express it.

Fantastic! I’m back in. Thank you so much.

I think PTH is not around, not sure about Apollo.

Heh, wrong type of tracker. :)

Excellent job, Wolfkiller.

Oh, and buying fossil overpriced energy in the bargain too. How truly good.

What was it that did it for you, the hypocrisy, the lack of contact with reality, or the blood lust?

Wow, it’s like he chose those examples on purpose to make his argument as ridiculous as possible: open borders (except for all the people forbidden to leave), regular elections (except now they’re indefinitely postponed)…