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Fivemarks posted:It and Missile Gap are the only good things Stross has ever done. His Laundry stories are just straight up bad, especially stuff like Equuiod. I tried one of the laundry files books and while not terrible just put it down about 25% through. Dull characters, humor didn’t click, and didn’t like how it seemed that things like Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep are common knowledge & treated as jokes in what is supposed to be a horror story. It’s more interesting in stuff like Delta Green where knowledge of such things is rare and terrifying, and humanity is only still existing because it is so far below the notice of powerful beings.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:42
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Cugel the Clever posted:I attempted to read the first of the Laundry Files books and it didn't click at all after a few chapters. Maybe I'll have to give these a preview, though. I liked them a lot but after the first few Stross branched them out in a different, super goofy direction that I found really unpleasant. He’s not really great with series that go on for more than a couple books.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:45
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Fivemarks posted:It and Missile Gap are the only good things Stross has ever done. His Laundry stories are just straight up bad, especially stuff like Equuiod. Eh. The first Laundry story I read was The Concrete Jungle, and it really clicked for me. But in hindsight, none of the novels really lived up to my expectations after that, and they got progressively less interesting. I'll give Concrete Jungle another read to see how it holds up. https://web.archive.org/web/20091226101514/http://www.goldengryphon.com/Stross-Concrete.html
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Feb 5, 2023 19:01
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Cugel the Clever posted:I attempted to read the first of the Laundry Files books and it didn't click at all after a few chapters. Maybe I'll have to give these a preview, though. Read the first six then i stopped as they became uninteresting.
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Feb 5, 2023 19:02
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Tiny Timbs posted:I liked them a lot but after the first few Stross branched them out in a different, super goofy direction that I found really unpleasant. He’s not really great with series that go on for more than a couple books. I dont remember alot about the laundry files, but I do remember that there was an interesting plot point about the british surveillance camera network being setup for the purpose of being an anti cthulu medusa weapon. Which I thought was clever.
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Feb 5, 2023 19:17
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Fivemarks posted:It and Missile Gap are the only good things Stross has ever done. His Laundry stories are just straight up bad, especially stuff like Equuiod. I have to beg to differ, because he wrote Halting State which was amazing - it's a cybercrime thriller that starts with a robbery in a MMO, and... snowballs. Bonus points for Stross doing things like predicting Scottish independence (which almost happened in real life) as well as foretelling the whole thing about governments spying on everyone's Internet traffic, but several years before Snowden.
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Feb 5, 2023 23:05
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GD_American posted:Yeah Salvation War is pretty goony but worth a read when you want a chuckle. Scratches a Clancy itch and the author wasn't an insane horny chud. There is the bit about how he pretended to be a Hot Badass Female Thai Army Officer online. And Stuart Slade is, in fact, a chud.
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Feb 5, 2023 23:28
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Quackles posted:I have to beg to differ, because he wrote Halting State which was amazing - it's a cybercrime thriller that starts with a robbery in a MMO, and... snowballs. The sequel, Rule 34, is also very good. He had to throw away a couple of manuscripts because people went and actually did the crime he had made up.
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Feb 5, 2023 23:32
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mllaneza posted:The sequel, Rule 34, is also very good. He had to throw away a couple of manuscripts because people went and actually did the crime he had made up. Well, now that's reminding me of a story from one of the writers of Leverage: quote:Apollo Robbins (http://www.istealstuff.com/) runs a crew of professional thieves who consult for law enforcement. He was also our criminal consultant on Leverage. Every few weeks he would visit the writer’s room to advise on the scripts and keep us up to date about new cons and the latest in criminal technology.
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Feb 5, 2023 23:40
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mllaneza posted:The sequel, Rule 34, is also very good. He had to throw away a couple of manuscripts because people went and actually did the crime he had made up. He said that he's probably done with the Halting State/Rule 34 series since everything he wanted to do there already happened in the real world. Laundry Files definitely suffers from the Hornblower problem where the main character gets promoted too high to do fun stuff.
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Feb 6, 2023 00:00
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In war news Bahkmut is in a real bad place right now with multiple large pushes happening right now.
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Feb 6, 2023 00:02
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Midjack posted:He said that he's probably done with the Halting State/Rule 34 series since everything he wanted to do there already happened in the real world. The most recent two books are in the same universe but not involving the Laundry itself. The first is a neat spin on Peter Pan, and the second is like a Sweeney Todd / Mary Poppins mashup. They take place years after the final Laundry Files proper novel, which is at the start of the “new management” under the Black Pharaoh.
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Feb 6, 2023 03:04
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Quackles posted:Bonus points for Stross doing things like predicting Scottish independence (which almost happened in real life) as well as foretelling the whole thing about governments spying on everyone's Internet traffic, but several years before Snowden. 
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Feb 6, 2023 04:09
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Cugel the Clever posted:The Scottish Independence Party was founded in 1934 and concern for state surveillance of the internet has been around forever Sure, and you can argue he just realized some of the anxieties and concerns of the modern age in the book, but it sure felt like he was awfully prescient when I was first reading it.
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Feb 6, 2023 07:59
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Elon Musk is responding affirmatively to Russian propaganda. https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1622558072529985536 This poo poo's going to get very dangerous.
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Feb 6, 2023 16:43
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Not to him.
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Feb 6, 2023 23:58
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https://twitter.com/Seveerity/status/1622673483913207825?s=20&t=uK0IKCGtUhD5T5ERJ3KI3w https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1622580237014892546?s=20&t=uK0IKCGtUhD5T5ERJ3KI3w
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Feb 7, 2023 08:05
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pantslesswithwolves posted:Elon Musk is responding affirmatively to Russian propaganda. Musk stupid so what?
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Feb 7, 2023 16:01
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Fivemarks posted:There is the bit about how he pretended to be a Hot Badass Female Thai Army Officer online. And Stuart Slade is, in fact, a chud. Didn't know about the first, and at least with the second he wasn't so bad that I actively noticed reading the books. Also, apparently past tense, COVID killed him. JudgeJoeBrown posted:In war news Bahkmut is in a real bad place right now with multiple large pushes happening right now. Yeah. The sad part is that it's for even less reasons than the usual futility of war. quote:If you want to discover the madness of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, come to Bakhmut. The battle for the city is now the longest of the war. Russia launched a large offensive to try to take it in July 2022 after it took Severodonetsk, the final major city of the Luhansk region. The truth is Russian troops are dying in their thousands here — and possibly for nothing. The UK Ministry of Defence has outlined Bakhmut’s “limited operational value”: the city’s fall would be useful, but by no means decisive, in helping Russia press further through the Donbas. The fight, therefore, has become almost symbolic. “Bakhmut holds” is now a rallying cry for Ukrainians.
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Feb 8, 2023 03:07
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GD_American posted:Didn't know about the first, and at least with the second he wasn't so bad that I actively noticed reading the books. He pretended to be a Badass Female Thai Army Officer so he could tell everyone that he was right about every insane thing he said. And they had to believe him because this random Thai Colonel lady said so!
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Feb 8, 2023 03:13
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Kchama posted:He pretended to be a Badass Female Thai Army Officer so he could tell everyone that he was right about every insane thing he said. And they had to believe him because this random Thai Colonel lady said so! lol I'm so happy I didn't follow the development of this poo poo and just read it one day for kicks quote:Since my name has been mentioned twice already in this thread, and since I am his great White Whale I should chime in here. I am too tired due to the holiday seasons to write a huge big post so I'll be brief.
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Feb 8, 2023 03:20
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I just read this and it reminded me of some of the posters here: https://medium.com/@sp4uRachel/the-things-we-dont-carry-f0fb2ad5dcf5
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Feb 8, 2023 09:58
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Ataxerxes posted:I just read this and it reminded me of some of the posters here: https://medium.com/@sp4uRachel/the-things-we-dont-carry-f0fb2ad5dcf5 Yeah. It's by an American academic in Warsaw, who set up a volunteer network that helps veterans get to Ukraine, and back home again. It's a bit on the heavy side. quote:I became involved in Ukraine’s war effort through strange circumstances. The night of the invasion, I posted on Reddit offering my airline miles to a combat veteran or medic who wanted to go to Ukraine to volunteer. I meant to find two people who wanted to go and that was it. Instead, I had hundreds of people offer the same and had most of the future International Legion of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine contact me. For the next month, I matched volunteers with donors and helped them get on their way. At one point, one of them asked me what would happen if he got hurt in Ukraine — who would help him get home? I didn’t know the answer to that question. I became the answer. I work with a team of volunteers who help people fleeing the war in Ukraine, including helping people injured on the front line get home. So here's some levity: Pablo Bluth posted:According to this article, they sometimes drop dildos instead of bombs on to be the Russians for a laugh. quote:Later, Coyote is in a playful mood. “What we sometimes also do,” he tells me, “is drop dildos from the drones, just to show them the contempt we have for them. Also, it’s a taste of what’s coming to them — how we’re going to gently caress them.” I ask what happens if they hit a Russian soldier on the head. Everyone laughs. Coyote, still looking mischievous, describes how they sometimes find lists of “heroic deaths” written on the walls of Russian positions they capture. “You know, they have a photo of the guy and under it ‘Vlad was killed by a Bayraktar’ and so on…. Imagine: ‘Here lies Sergei — he was killed by a massive cock.’”
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Feb 8, 2023 11:31
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Hannibal Rex posted:
https://twitter.com/raam_beart/status/1340160868529520640?s=20&t=2yAuJq91E1nqosYdIgZp7g
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Feb 8, 2023 12:01
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loving good swat mate
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Feb 8, 2023 12:14
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UK says they're going to train Ukrainian pilots on NATO fighters article: https://www.ft.com/content/ff8dda4d-9986-4e7b-b57b-2ba2db912d81 https://archive.is/i9Ge9
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Feb 8, 2023 12:29
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That seems like a pretty strong display of faith in that Ukraine is also going to get NATO fighters within the near future. I presume that even if the specific jet they are going to get isn't set in stone yet, there's common elements to NATO fighters that training can focus on to begin with.
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Feb 8, 2023 12:40
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idk about near future, but yeah it does seem to point that way.
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Feb 8, 2023 13:55
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Slashrat posted:That seems like a pretty strong display of faith in that Ukraine is also going to get NATO fighters within the near future. I presume that even if the specific jet they are going to get isn't set in stone yet, there's common elements to NATO fighters that training can focus on to begin with. It's also yet more assertion to Russia that waiting for NATO support to taper off is just not going to work.
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Feb 8, 2023 14:03
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Training on new jets is something that has a years threshold as far as timeline goes, teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly NATO aircraft is definitely a signal that the west isn't going to pack up and go home on this.
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Feb 8, 2023 14:22
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orange juche posted:Training on new jets is something that has a years threshold as far as timeline goes, teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly NATO aircraft is definitely a signal that the west isn't going to pack up and go home on this. For the next two years, probably not. Put any Republican back in the commander in chief's chair and things could change really, really quick. Feels to me like that's Putin's goal in this. Ongoing meatgrinder he can ignore by cracking down on Russian society harder then just wait it out until anything changes.
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Feb 8, 2023 15:28
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bird food bathtub posted:For the next two years, probably not. Put any Republican back in the commander in chief's chair and things could change really, really quick. Feels to me like that's Putin's goal in this. Ongoing meatgrinder he can ignore by cracking down on Russian society harder then just wait it out until anything changes. The US is a major player in providing aid, true, but Europe isn't going to go home on this either. European citizens and the politicians see that Russia is not going to be appeased if they win somehow, they're too deep in the internal propaganda hole. They'll wait a couple years and then try to push further West, because the Perfidious West is now on their border, and widdle ol Russia is just protecting itself by reclaiming the countries that used to be Soviet republics. After all, it is all Russian land anyways, it belonged to the Russian empire in the time of the Tsars. If Russia wins this somehow, I could see a scenario where a wider land war between NATO and Russia kicks off within the decade. Putin's propaganda machine has primed the populace to the level that he could justify starting an invasion of Europe at large and kicking off a third World War, and they would largely accept it. Would it be smart for him to start that war? No, but totalitarian leaders often don't make smart decisions. https://www.grid.news/story/global/2023/02/06/the-us-effort-to-arm-ukraine-starts-in-scranton-pennsylvania/ Also, the US defense industry isn't liable to want to wind back down, building up takes years and tons of money, but also generates tons of jobs and even more money. Politicians love jobs growth in their districts, and defense industry folks pay well to get Congress critters in their pocket. Already the US has gone from producing <17000 155mm shells a month to a predicted amount of 90k/month, and the Pentagon wants to see that increase even further to over 120k/mo, as they're banking on the fact that wars between major nation states look more like WW2 than the War in Afghanistan, which will call for much more artillery and conventional weapons than are needed for low intensity conflict. If it's not Russia this decade then it's China over Taiwan or their horseshit in the South China Sea, war's on the menu, and it's going to happen. orange juche fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Feb 8, 2023 |
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Feb 8, 2023 15:34
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A GOP POTUS is going to have a lot of pressure from the MIC to keep the stuff flowing to Ukraine, so they’ll find some way to placate their base. Unless the president is a Russian asset.
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Feb 8, 2023 16:18
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Herstory Begins Now posted:UK says they're going to train Ukrainian pilots on NATO fighters UK has attempted to drop those tranche 1 euro fighters for a long time, maybe they will offload those to ukraine.
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Feb 8, 2023 18:46
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Alan Smithee posted:The Kasparov's Revenge battalion lol it is really weird seeing that with the stress accents. those aren't actually written in russian, they're only used in texts for people learning it as a second language. they also show up in the english wikipedia pages for russian people, where i assume that was copied from doubly weird since Kasparov has an accepted english pronunciation that doesn't match the russian (stress is on the first syllable and doesn't change the sound the same way russian stress does)
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Feb 8, 2023 18:57
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I can’t believe the MIC might save us from Russian intervention.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:54
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https://open.substack.com/pub/seymourhersh/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream Who had Seymour on their bingo card?
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Feb 8, 2023 20:05
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Hannibal Rex posted:https://open.substack.com/pub/seymourhersh/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream Its a really weird article based off a single anonymous source.
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Feb 8, 2023 20:14
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CommieGIR posted:Its a really weird article based off a single anonymous source. Yeah. Substack seems to be the place to be to launder Russian bot money. I'm just sad that this story is the best they could come up with, but it's going to be interesting to see how much traction it gets, especially in Germany.
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Feb 8, 2023 20:20
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Hannibal Rex posted:Yeah. Substack seems to be the place to be to launder Russian bot money. I'm just sad that this story is the best they could come up with, but it's going to be interesting to see how much traction it gets, especially in Germany. If anything its concerning that an investigative journalist as import as Seymour would push this idea, he has a good track record but the whole article reads as speculation rather than evidence based fact.
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Feb 8, 2023 20:30
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