blogging from a to z
Apologies to the folks who came here for the A-to-Z Challenge, looking for B – See, I’m just starting some new drugs right now, one consequence of which last night seemed to be galloping insomnia; so after staying awake all night, I then was off to assist with our farmer’
trope-a-day
The Alternet: Lots of them, if you will, independently invented on lots and lots of worlds. (The Empire’s version is the Dataweave, operating on IIP and mesh network principles.) And then there’s the extranet, which is the Internet-of-Internets that links all of these internets together, although in practice
blogging from a to z
(Alternate words: none.) Among the complexities of dining in the modern age are those introduced by the many different worlds upon which we now dwell, all with different histories, geologies, and ecologies, independently evolved. As children of a single world, this has required a degree of adaptation, whether biotechnological or
trope-a-day
Alternative Number System: The eldrae, and thus the Empire, use base 12 – mostly because the common numeric base was agreed on by the same collective of the philosophically inclined that standardized the language, and they saw no particularly good reason why you should pick a number base just because that’
trope-a-day
Almost Out Of Oxygen: Still happens occasionally, despite every spacecraft’s emergency kit carrying an ample supply of oxygen candles and lithium hydroxide (because CO2 poisoning is what’ll actually get you; or, well, if the thermal management system isn’t running because of the same problem that’s taken
meta
Sorry, no fiction today. This is because of the release of KSP 1.1 preview, and consequently my spending the entire day testing out its new many-parts and many-mod 64-bit support by resurrecting working versions of my Behemoth, Megalodon, and Surprise Eclipse! 10m-parts-as-liquid-fuel-boosters-for-an-Orion heavy-lifters. I’d apologize, but honestly, I
trope-a-day
All There in the Manual: This category, the one you’ve been reading since late 2011.
identity
Vinwi Cyberdemocracy: Does not exist. (The year 6829 marked the collapse of the Shrouded Suns Selfdom’s most successful identity fraud operation, in which they used an automated botnet of false identities, reputation bots, and infojacked social networks to produce and cross-verify almost one million false identities purportedly originating in
trope-a-day
Aliens Steal Cable: Sort of true – despite the various technical problems mentioned in the trope, it is a very popular way to acquire a linguistic and cultural corpus from worldbound civilizations before making contact. But it involves both (a) studying their technology to figure out the signal encoding, and then
trope-a-day
Aliens of London: Well, since no-one ever speaks English, it’s a little hard to say – especially with regional variations – but I suspect a native Eldraeic speaker attempting to speak English without benefit of a translator – (Which depending upon locale configuration would probably produce either Broadcaster’s Mid-Western or Received
blogging from a to z
Hey, readers! This challenge that I did last year? It’s starting REAL SOON NOW. As in LESS THAN A WEEK. So if you didn’t take the opportunity to nominate a word to prompt me with last time, you’d better hurry. Just for your reference, the letters we
trope-a-day
Alien Sea: Obviously – not all oceans are water, y’know. Just look at Ólish, or Galiné, with their golden-black hydrocarbon seas. Or the molten metal lakes on Eurymir’s day face, or the reddish salty brine of terraformed Elémíre, or the literally wine-dark seas of rusty Talentar, or the colloidal