Zompist Bboard Again

But now I wonder: If you scale up the prices of long-distance calls back in 1982 (when the movie was released) to interstellar distances, would six million dollars actually have been enough for the first three minutes? This can't really be answered without thinking about the technology involved, an...

Completely silly, completely random question: One of my favorite jokes from the movie Airplane 2 is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D372SW-OhKA It's probably only funny for people who remember both public payphones and how expensive long-distance calls used to be. But now I wonder: If you ...

The project has not failed yet! I did some more research on the platform, which seems to be OK, and definitely NOT a vanity press. I think the technical problems can be solved. So I will give it another try! Well, good luck! Makes me wonder why someone though that that platform is a vanity press. P...

More generally, I'd say how much bad historical influences damn something depends on to which extent it has what might be called "intellectual content". I wouldn't want to follow a philosophy that was invented by a fascist, but if I would learn tomorrow that the inventor of the ballpoint p...

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 5:49 pm Babbage pretty much invented the concept of computers as we know them

Not really; IIRC, his ideas were mostly forgotten for a while, and then later redeveloped by others.

Finally another article I found today discusses the relationship between computing and the need to discipline industrial workers. It begins with this rather striking and damning point: The blueprint for modern digital computing was codesigned by Charles Babbage, a vocal champion for the concerns of...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 2:07 pm and what I would spell as neah (this is not really a written word)

What is that? Some kind of local version of "no"?

I don't know about the details of this, but I'm pretty sure that the US and Canada had the one or other kind of free trade agreement for decades. Nonetheless it is a ridiculous narrative to assert that Trump is not tariffing due to tyrannical anger but because "it's only fair" and "d...

just talked to a Trump glazer tryna tell me this: if so you do know trump only did those tariffs because Canada has been tariffying that amount for years now and Trump only wanted to make it even/fair. I think that's fair, I didn't know Canada had been tariffying us that amount for years already, I...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 11, 2025 8:33 am or possibly some learnèd French loans

*grins*

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 9:29 am Granted it often feels like this forum is the only place that hasn't noticed the connection between the tech industry and far right politics.

Sigh.

https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?t=1598

Trivial vent: last night, before falling asleep, I wrote some stuff on my cellphone. It's kind of frustrating like how much a chunk of text can look on a cellphone, and like how little it then looks once you've transferred it to a computer.

As new writers may not think in terms of word count, here are some baselines. My story "The Rogues" is 7,700 words. Raphael's book of essays is 30,000 words. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is 45,000 words. "The Hobbit" is 95,000 words. LOTR is 480,000. Thank yo...

And many people say it isn't really science fiction. Rather, high fantasy with science fiction props. Indeed, it works much like Lord of the Rings or similar stories. Sure, but I'd say most science-fiction contains at least some elements that are closer to fantasy. Anyway, for a somewhat harder exa...

I have some more thoughts on bradrn's feedback, after having thought about it for a while. bradrn, I now plan to rewrite the opening paragraphs at some point. But whether that would, from your perspective, be an improvement might depend on how fundamental your problems with the opening are. I want t...

rotting bones wrote: ↑Thu Mar 27, 2025 3:10 pm
I worked without sleep all night. I still didn't finish writing this dumb research draft.

Damn. Good luck.

Apparently, Trump is pulling Stefanik's UN Ambassador nomination because he's worried about losing her House seat in a special election. Hm.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 27, 2025 12:52 pm
I don't see taking place in the future as germane to the label "science fiction" at all. Entire subgenres (e.g. steampunk) exist which are primarily set in historical times.

Completely true, of course. Even Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

Not really fun and actually rather boring fact: For somewhat complicated reasons, earlier this week, I copied as many of my personal files as possible into one large directory somewhere on my pc, with no subdirectories whatsoever. Most of the personal documents, and all of the music files, other sou...

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Mar 27, 2025 10:06 am

How can it be science fiction if it isn't fiction?

Fair point.