Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

@JenMsft

We have a crow here who shows up alone, but every day at around the same time.

I like to think of him as my serial murder.

...I will not learn how to mod just to quench this earworm, dammit.

There is a star system in #stellaris named "Ginagan".

I mention this because for the last hour or two my brain has been trying to tell me about the seven stranded castaways there and their uncharted desert... planet.

(Can the Professor make a starship out of bamboo? Tune in again next week!)

@avatar The heckin' chonker is not your friend.

The problem with assessing people's reactions to nitrogen-gas executions is that the lengthy ritual of execution means that they know damn well what's going on.

If you want to know the true reaction due to the nitrogen gas alone, flood someone's cell without telling them.

Thought for tomorrow:

The opinion of anyone who uses the word "bootlicking" unironically should be discounted to zero, on the grounds that privileging status over correctness demonstrates a capacity for cognition readily replaceable by an awk one-liner.

@isaackuo @swope @nyrath @SkipHuffman @cstross @MeiLin

If you’re selling bitter disappointment in mankind, my local market is saturated.

@SkipHuffman @swope @nyrath @cstross @MeiLin @isaackuo

On the one hand, I get that.

On the other hand, that’s what my friendly local Nazis say, too.

So I’m a lot more cynical about ha-ha-only-serious than I used to be.

* Finality not guaranteed.

My final word on mandatory politics in space, in the form of a very non-canon #eldraeverse outtake.

https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/p/my-final-word-on-mandatory-politics

@MeiLin @nyrath

...on the other side of things, how difficult is it in space (and in habitats, in particular) to _keep_ water purified? On Earth, at least, algae would play merry hell with its function as a reliable store of value.

@MeiLin @nyrath

I am reminded of Radford's work on cigarette currencies, which included noting the disadvantage that actually smoking the cigarettes had a deflationary effect on said currency.

I'm not sure making drinking (and other life-support related activities) deflationary would be good for the water economy.

(Assuming high costs of extraction and purification, of course. If anyone can drag in an iceteroid in their off-hours, it'll have more the Adamsian leaf problem.)

There is no nuclear waste. There is only nuclear wasted.

Also, am I like the last person in the world to realize that literally all magic in #DragonAge is blood magic?

(If lyrium can be blighted to form red lyrium, lyrium is alive. If lyrium is alive, lyrium-fueled magic is blood magic because it's powered by sucking the life out of the lyrium.)

@ilzo @cinebox

I feel like I should note that I'm not arguing that it's impossible, I just want to know the parameters of the possible.

Because I have all these IDEAS involving the Orlesian plastic surgery industry and smug Tevinter magisters preening about these southern barbarians and their meatball surgery when in Minrathous they just use blood magic like civilized people.

"You start with four healthy slaves, and a little bit of totally-not-human-sacrifice later, behold, lyrium tits!"

@ilzo @cinebox

Yeah, plenty of battle scars around the place. On the other hand, it's also possible that this is the case because of a combination of the Chantry and popular prejudices against magic combined with it being a rare, hence expensive, magical specialty, leading to a lot of non-magical healing techniques in use, and non-magical medical knowledge seems not the greatest, elfroot aside.

(Thedas lore summary I found here, for reference: https://www.tumblr.com/dalishious/705175055472132097/magical-non-magical-healing-in-thedas ).