Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

Shorter Duverger's Law Enthusiast:

"If you just play it enough, you can *totally* win the shell game!"

Shorter Duverger's Law:

We get dumb outcomes because we do dumb things because we assume everyone else will also do dumb things.

Which, to be fair, they do.

Okay, that's actually longer. Ahem.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

Today I have heard the term "the Devil's lettuce" for the first time.

Man, if I were a grower, I would name all my strains after progressively sillier snowclones. The Devil's Lettuce. Satan's Cabbage. Lucifer's Cauliflower. Beelzebub's Cumin.

I mean, it would be nice just to be able to say, y'know, hi, guys, thanks for all your hard work, keep it up, m'kay?

Does it ever bother you that you will probably live and die without ever seeing your organs? (Skin aside, obviously.)

@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.