Senate
On this day in which we here in the US observe the attempt to make law a 497-page document issued too late to read before the vote, in the form of a non-searchable PDF with handwritten, barely-legible marginal annotations… …an observer from a far distant land might turn to another,
ethics
A reader sent in a trio of interesting articles discussing the nature of property and wealth in a stateless society – and while the Empire isn’t one, obviously, being a joint-stock diarchy, it draws from a lot of the same memeplexes. And so it seems that a discussion of these
temporal mechanics
From Neithe Daphnotarthius the Elder to Neithe Daphnotarthius the Younger, greeting. This message is not the manuscripts you expected to be delivered the day after having your brilliant idea, regretfully. Please understand that the problem we encountered with your brilliant idea was that it was actually an idiotic idea: it
Imperial Navy
(With due apologies to the author of GURPS Lensman, whose work I am shamelessly imitating and which put this thing in my head in the first place…) “Oblong shape and squared-off prow, Writ with words from stern to bow. Drive the mass and make a hole – That’s a Gallie
The Shipping Trade
(…of this.) “Wynérias SysCon, this is CMS Greed and Mass-Energy inbound from Kythera System checking in, emergence point on bearing one-eleven ascending four from stargate, drift seven three eight. Request instructions per previously filed flight plan code niner-three-zero-eleven-one. Over.” “Greed and Mass-Energy, Wynérias SysCon, we have you arriving in Wynérias
Battle of Aktir
Perhaps the most embarrassing of all military disasters in the history of the Worlds is the Battle of Aktir, also known as the Five-Second War, the Last Biochauvinist War, and The Day The Meat Was Tenderized. In its increasing frustration with the increasing numbers of independent digisapiences and digisapient polities
ontotechnology
impossipoint (n.): In studies of paracausality (q.v.), the exact when-where at which a miracle (q.v.) occurs. Named so in part because they are where the impossible happens; named so in part also because the frustratingly subtle nature of miracles makes it bloody impossible to detect one. – Glossary of
meta
This, of course, no longer applies. So, I’m told people would rather have a Discord than a Slack, and some comments I have seen since suggest that it is better for this sort of community. Okay, then. I can work with that.
trope-a-day
(Okay, so I found one more…) Names to Run Away From Really Fast: In the Imperial context alone, Imperial Hand, Fifth Directorate, and any Imperial military officer, agent, or private contractor whose House name is “Sargas” are the chief contenders. In the Worlds as a whole, Operatives of the Conclave
trope-a-day
So why is that a Trope-a-No-Longer-Day, I hear you cry? Well, because I’ve run out of pre-written ones, and the demands on my time these days are such that – especially if I want to keep prioritizing writing at all – I can’t take enough time out to go through
trope-a-day
Creepy Cleanliness: To more than a few foreign visitors, yes. As William Gibson said in Disneyland With the Death Penalty, “Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore’s airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to
pundir
Xenophile Tip #37: However enchanted you might be with the unquestionable beauty, almondine skin and faint almond scent of the pundirar, there are two important things to consider before embarking on a relationship: 1. The asexual pundir reproduce by budding; and 2. That scent? Hydrogen cyanide. – from the Yrnaes 7122