Angus McIntyre

@angusm@mastodon.social

Perfil original

Bruce Sterling @bruces

RE: mastodon.social/@MAKS23/116849

Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, what kind of top-heavy industry puts that many letters in their name

@bruces @MAKS23 It's 'security by prolixity’. They're hoping that the Ukrainians will be too impatient to type the full name into their targeting GPS, and therefore spare the site.

As you can see, it doesn't seem to have worked, probably because the Russians forgot about the possibility of copy-and-paste.

Bruce Sterling @bruces

*These 'hypercanes" sound fun. A planet with routine, normalized hypercane weather that lasted for an eon or two, what would that be like

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercane

@bruces Sounds like the planet Henriada, in Cordwainer Smith's “Quest of the Three Worlds”.

“Can I go out?"

"Why not, sir? You are a true man. You can do what you wish."

"I mean, is it safe for me to go out?"

"Oh, no, sir! The wind would tear you apart or carry you away."

"Don't people ever go out?"

"Yes, sir. With groundcars or with automatic body armor. I have been told that if it weighs fifty tons or better, the person inside is safe.”

Bruce Sterling @bruces

"What happens when we "fork" and the bro in the forkpod next-door is Sam Altman and I can't stand him

@bruces

Maybe they got one thing accidentally right though. Everyone on Earth is living in the Arctic because thanks to the pursuit of this farcical techno-dystopia the rest of the planet is uninhabitable.

H

@bruces I don't agree between choosing between valuing terrestrial life and space exploration.
Imhi, both are interlinked

As in, instead of mining and destroying our planet, we should find asteroids with the necessary materials and get those

If we worked towards doing stuff in space, instead of inside our planet, we could surely have both

P.S. Before the "is expensive" crowd comes in, that's because we currently don't calculate the ecological impact in the expenses.We throw that to the future

H

@bruces I guess it’s just another instance of “fork around, find out”.
On a more serious note, none of these suggested "forks" are actually biologically incompatible, so it seems more like a lifestyle choice, albeit at a larger scale. Since most of the choices fall straight in line with financial capabilities (you can’t have a nice simulation of you running if you’re broke), new options will only widen the social gap some more.