A little while ago I met someone whose job is to worry about international affairs and they were worried about operating systems.

After that I started worrying about every end user device in Ukraine shutting down until peace was negotiated.

I think this is actually one of the more clever points Banks makes, although not explicitly.

Fundamentally, the Culture believes that living things (and their definition in this regard is remarkably broad) have a moral right to exist. Therefore, as a society they are not expansionist. In order to remain non-expansionist, the population must be kept stable and this has implications either in childbearing or lifespans. The average Culture human mothers about one child but that means they can’t, on average live forever. Why they choose to have children at all perhaps also boils down to the future generation’s moral right to exist, but also because they recognize that a renewing population means a renewing culture and Culture.

In this light, I believe it’s easy to see immortality as a sort of childish self-aggrandizement comparable to wanting to become the ruler of some backwards planet. Skaffen-Amtiscaw (an artificial entity and citizen of the Culture) even remarks on Zakalwe’s immortality as childish in Use of Weapons.

The Culture never appeals to nature – how could they, they are ruled by their Minds!

(Mind is a sort of very powerful artificial intelligence).

There is a lot of similarities between the Culture and Trek, they are both visions of post-scarcity humanity made impossible by the simple fact that humans could never be that nice.

With the assumption I can choose who I am, I would argue that Banks’ Culture would be my choice. The Culture as a whole is much less vulnerable due to its size and scale and their technology is more advanced. Want cool space adventures? Join Contact or just go travel around in another civilization. Magic adventures? The sleep games and VR is like holodecks but on steroids. Want to live forever? No problem (although it’s frowned upon).

I heard it was Transnistria, but apparently it’s occupied by Russians?

While the sentiment is good, you will also need to stop using Visa and Mastercard and many other things…

Aside from the ones wrongfully detained in the US?

This is interesting. I agree that stealing isn’t the right category. Copyright infringement may be, but there needs to be a more specific question we are exploring.

Is it acceptable to make programmatic transformations of copyrighted source material without the copyright holder’s permission for your own work?

Is it acceptable to build a product which contains the copyrighted works of others without their permission? Is it different if the works contained in the product are programmatically transformed prior to distribution?

Should the copyright holders be compensated for this? Is their permission necessary?

The same questions apply to the use of someone’s voice or likeness in products or works.

He warned the European Union against restricting non-EU companies from European defence purchases, saying this would undermine NATO interoperability, slow Europe’s rearming, raise costs and stifle innovation.

It sounds like they are worried about their military industrial complex. The interoperability line is amusing, that’s what nato has STANAGs for, that different suppliers would be able to provide interoperable systems.

Now what happens?

Pronounced ‘mister sauce’.

Wholesome memes are best memes.

Thanks for sharing this. I have very little understanding of any of this, but it was a facinating read. Please try again and report the results!

In related news, the red square is red, water is wet and the popemobile is an ambulance.

Now what?

Depending on the explosive that should not help. Shaped charges are most effective if they explode a little distance away. It might help if it is a shrapnel based explosive.

Still you wouldn’t probably need a shaped charge to penetrate the armor on a BMP-2 which may explain this approach.

Edit: looking at it more, there is some kind of external armor assembly on the sides, but it doesn’t look like ERA tiles.

I was reading the Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir. She finished it on her own, so I must assume it was my reading.

deleted by creator

That would make sense if it wasn’t mounted in an upright position. If it was just a transport, I imagine it would be hanging off the side.

I get the sentiment but… When sun isn’t shining the negative prices cause problem for baseline power producers who need to turn off their power plants to avoid the zero to negative power prices.

This causes the power prices to become volatile, since the investments for the power plants that run during the night need to be covered during the night only.

Eventually though the higher price volatility will encourage investments into either demand side adjustability or energy storage systems. This will play out in energy only markets.

The other alternative is to implement a capacity market, which will divide the cost of the baseline production across different production hours by paying producers more for guaranteed production capacity.

I tried doing this for my wife but she called the experience strange. I kind of enjoyed it though.

Is there any other reason for him to hate Mondays apart from Jon being away after a weekend?