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Charlie Stross

About me and Nazis:

Back in 1906 my great-grandpa and his family emigrated to the UK from the part of the Russian empire that became Poland in 1918.

A bunch of their relatives said "naah, life's good" and stayed home in the old country.

In 1939, Nazis invaded and by 1943 they were all dead.

It turns out that FAFO is a REALLY BAD way of dealing with Nazis.

And Trump and J. D. Vance are playing a medley from Hitler's hymn book, at ever-increasing volume.

You know how this ends—if you let it.

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🇺🇦 Mykhaylo :emacs: :clojure:

@cstross you’re totally right. Just a small reminder that Poland was invaded by Germany AND Russia in 1939.

Sharan Volin

@cstross Yeah, there's a very good reason we had "never again" drilled into us in Hebrew school. Sadly way too many people forgot and joined the cult. :(

Charlie Stross

This hotel has been invaded by Catgirl Daleks:

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Mark von Übelgarten

@cstross They have sensors because the builders know how we'll act. So I saw one of these once and instinctively petted her head and she meowed back ...

Charlie Stross

If you stare into the Abyss too long, the Abyss stares into you.

Then, if you're me, the Abyss toddles off in search of a good therapist.

Charlie Stross

What the news won't tell you:

Bibi Netanyahu can only remain in power in Israel as long as he keeps a war burning hot. Hamas in the West Bank is a broken target, so he's turned to a regular substitute—Iran.

Iran is safe for Bibi to attack because there is zero risk of a land war: Syria/Jordan and then Iraq or the Gulf lie between Iran and Israel. It's not next door. So all they can do is lob missiles.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is an Iranian ally, so …

/1

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Alexander Goeres
@Charlie Stross well, they would if there had been artillery shelling from dublin into belfast ...
Michael B

@cstross
What to expect when a post begins with "what the news don't tell you" :
Either a truism or a conspiracy theory. Or a mixture of both.

Seasonal Stompy Robot

@cstross this is a great summary of the current political situation!
However, it's situated against a situation with 80 years of bitter history. He couldn't do these things if it wasn't for that history.

Charlie Stross

"Efforts to restore democracy to the United States, a troubled, oil-rich former British colony with a history of political violence, may have suffered a serious setback this week after yet another chaotic presidential debate, some Americanists say."

aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/9/

Al Jazeera covers the USA the way the US media cover the rest of the world

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Evelyn, who Just. Can't. Even.

@cstross "Propping up democracy in the US has long been a vital priority for safeguarding global peace, given its linchpin status in the Caucasian bloc." *snerk*

Joel Krampus Meador 🌰

@cstross

> After the debate, the data show they are in fact deadlocked in a race to the bottom.

Charlie Stross

Yikes. We seem to be going through a revolution in small-unit military affairs the like of which we haven't seen since 1914-18 …

threadreaderapp.com/thread/182

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Grievous Angel

@cstross side comment: as Trent has pointed out, drones are particularly effective against Russia, although drones do mean quite a big shift in cheap / high volume firepower.

Also: the US mil/ind complex struggles with drones because they disrupt BAU “big iron” spending - hence the //extreme reticence to support UKR// and thereby evidence a changed requirement for defence spending.

Leszek Karlik

@cstross

I foresee the resurgence of shotguns as military weapons, you're going to get specialised anti-drone specialists in every infantry squad.

Also, I think this thread severely overestimates fuel-air explosives, you don't need Space Marine armour to protect soldiers against FAE barotrauma, you need to protect a soldier's respiratory system, the rest is pretty resilient.

MegatronicThronBanks

@cstross
Yeah it's the Charge of the Light Brigade vs automatic firearms all over again. You just can't move large troop bodies or heavy materiel under a drone umbrella.
That era is over.
It also means no war can ever be won again - hey, Israel? You getting all this?

Charlie Stross

Arkansas women (and a few good men) did what everyone said couldn’t be done and on July 5, organizers turned in enough signatures to qualify an amendment to the state constitution to restore access to abortion in Arkansas. The amendment will restore access up to 18 weeks for any reason: covers 99% of desired procedures.

dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/6/

MidgePhoto

@cstross
Perhaps time for some alterations to tax and churches next.

Charlie Stross

Study Finds That 52 Percent of ChatGPT Answers to Programming Questions Are Wrong

futurism.com/the-byte/study-ch

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enoch_exe_inc

@cstross …which is why I don’t use it for that purpose.

Of course, I’ve asked ChatGPT for nonessential programming, like making a Quine in 6502 assembly, and it succeeded in doing that. But for normal work, I don’t dare touch it because if it makes a mistake, then I will have no idea how to fix it.

Pepperbike

@cstross i'm surprised it is only 52% and not much higher.

Pooblemoo

@cstross Hope healthcare, transportation aren't using AI for it because that's a whole lot of risk. They'd better lawyer up for the bugs that cause accidents and death.

Charlie Stross

If you're interested in understanding what's wrong with corporations right now, what's driving our global capitalist omnishambles? This is an amazingly insightful (if long, and entertainment-industry focussed) deep dive into the madness of modern management theories:

docseuss.medium.com/the-bigges

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mpark

@cstross Great article. I'm just confused why all of the subsections start with Linkin Park lyrics.

Robert Atkins

@cstross The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the MBAs.

JamesK

@cstross @sepdroid That really was worth reading. I don’t pay much attention to the game or entertainment industry in general, but the theme certainly resonated with me.

Charlie Stross

It turns out cassowaries have been domesticated—as guard-fowl.

I figure some brave soul grabbed one of the GIANT LUMINOUS NEON MARKER GREEN eggs (the colour of "do not fuck with me for I am deadly" in nature) and ran away with it. Then it hatched, and they fed the giant murder chicken that kept following them around.

<supervillain>
When I get my island volcano base the inland jungle will be patrolled by giant murder chickens LOYAL ONLY TO ME! Take that, laser-sharks!
</supervillain>

It turns out cassowaries have been domesticated—as guard-fowl.

I figure some brave soul grabbed one of the GIANT LUMINOUS NEON MARKER GREEN eggs (the colour of "do not fuck with me for I am deadly" in nature) and ran away with it. Then it hatched, and they fed the giant murder chicken that kept following them around.

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Lauren Weinstein

@cstross Check with a Geiger counter before touching those babies!

Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈

@cstross We should encourage Zuckerberg to adopt these creatures and return him to the soil as is Nature's way.

Mark. Just Mark.

@cstross but have you considered ROBOT murder chicken?
(from Australia's murder chicken capital, Kuranda)

Charlie Stross

Most-followed Mastodon accounts, by rank: holy crap, I'm actually on this list! (Okay, I'm not in the top one hundred: but even so …)

Big take-away is that there are no mega-stars, as on twitter: while news and media are showing up, this isn't where you go to kibbitz on pop stars ripping each other.

most-followed-masotodon-accoun

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Mx Autumn :blobcatpumpkin:

@cstross that’s a good read, and the whole blog has some great content.

Rich Holmes

@cstross "They hired some incredibly talented people to make this happen, and then like five times as many idiots." A distillation of how the world works.

Ian Brown :verified:

@cstross "My team has spun this as a huge cost saving, when really we just applied a fire extinguisher to the pile of money that we had set alight."

Charlie Stross

Seen some distinctly odd toots appearing from accounts in the western US (since roughly start of waking hours in California) saying "battery-electric vehicles are a dead end, the future is [OH LOOK A WOOKIE]". Not people I've ever engaged with previously.

I suspect the petrochemical industry astroturf bot farms have finally reached Mastodon ...

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Ferrichrome

@cstross @lisamelton Ok, let me try: Electric cars are a dead end, the future is bikes, walking and public transportation😁That’s what they want, right?

Curt Thomas

@cstross
Electric cars are a dead end...

...because cars and car centric infrastructure is a dead end. The future belongs to walkable infrastructure supported by train supremacy.

fflavio

@cstross I have seen a lot of posts like that on TikTok and on Apple's news aggregator but not here, mercifully.

Charlie Stross

Oh good grief, I did not expect to wake up today and discover bits of my 2012 novel "Rule 34" were coming true! themessenger.com/tech/bambu-ow

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Medea Vanamonde🏳️‍⚧️ ♀

@cstross last week I was floating ways to monkey wrench 3DP specifically ones printing guns

ptrourke

@cstross Not looking forward to "Missile Gap" coming true, I've got to tell you.

Charlie Stross

Panama Canal’s Continuing Draft Reductions Pose Threat to Trade

Buried lede: it's due to a drought reducing water availability for the locks. Cause is climate change. maritime-executive.com/article

Charlie Stross

Tara Reade, who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, defects to Russia

Excuse me sir I would like to report a fault with this century, it is extremely silly theguardian.com/us-news/2023/m

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Michael Kohne

@cstross Who were her friends in the government, and is anyone looking into them? Because...I kinda think someone should at least have a cursory glance at any gov't employees she hung out with.

Jaime Robertson

@cstross Maybe she and Snowden can share flat in Moscow.

Mike McCabe

@cstross we’re already seeing fallout from the writers’ strike.

Charlie Stross

Implicit corollary: "work makes you free".

Tell me that's not saying the quiet part loud.

DELETED

@cstross

“That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”

-Kim Stanley Robinson

Charlie Stross

The thing I find most suspicious/fishy/smelly about all the current hype around Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT is that it follows, as night follows day, about six months after the bottom dropped out of the cryptocurrency scam bubble.

This is not a coincidence.

Hucksters are chasing the sweet VC/private equity money that has been flushed out of crypto, and AI is the new hotness all of a sudden.

If you're thinking about investing now? Don't: it's too late and you'll be the target of a grift.

Charlie Stross

Update from comments: I'm SURE it's just a coincidence that training neural networks and mining cryptocurrencies are both applications that benefit from very large arrays of GPUs.

If *I* was a VC I'd be hiring complexity theory nerds to figure out what areas of research are promising once you have Yottaflops of numerical processing power available, then place bets on AMD, Nvidia, and (maybe) Intel going there and start seeding the field and hiring PR firms.

Charlie Stross

Seen via Reddit, an opinion about MilSF:

"Power Armor is basically a fursuit for people who want to be robots."

Parenthetically I can't help thinking about all the kinks implicit in spacesuits in general, once they go consumer. I mean, we already know about neoprene/latex kink and wetsuits, right? And spacesuits have all that plumbing down below *and* no touching allowed and, and ...

Spacesuits are the final frontier for bondage gear, amirite?

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@CharleneTeglia

@cstross This is the content Mastodon has been missing, yaaassss

AMS

@cstross I'm having flashbacks to some page-and-a-half overly detailed boobs-boobily description of donning a MCP suit from some "classic" SF.

Killa Koala

@cstross In space no one can hear you scream ... your safe word.

Charlie Stross

Oh dear Cthulhu …

"Someone asked an AI art tool to make a sign language manual, in case you think we'll all be out of a job soon":

twitter.com/twoscooters/status

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The Evil Microwizard

@cstross That dude in the middle right appears to have started bleeding from his nose. I suspect there are one or more cognitohazards present...

BRB gotta get some tissues /j 😅

Perfused with Signs

@cstross Hook that AI up to a 3-D printer, and let the Great Old Ones stalk the earth once more!

kravietz 🦇

@cstross

Here’s the image to save everyone a Twitter click…

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