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cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I think to celebrate this pointed political statement I may take a hike to the nearest MacDonalds and drink a Farage.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

I look forward, with some trepidation, to a future in which colloquial English has attached a distasteful connotation to 'a farage'.

That is to say: even more distasteful than the face of Brexit, Question Time, and archetypal gammon from the rear.

I hope that I can (anonymously) popularise

"The sneaky glee of farting silently, followed by a burbling slither of dismay“.

Meanwhile, I hope that you enjoyed your milkshake.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Surely I can't be the only person whose first reaction to seeing a company is named "Hugging Face" is to wonder if they sell Alien xenomorphs bloodily bursting out of human abdominal cavities as a service?

I mean, what were the founders THINKING?!?
https://mastodon.social/@verge/112450968041276837

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

Hmmm... “xenomorphs bloodily bursting out of human abdominal cavities as a service?“

Gotta be a market for it, worse things have made men 11billionaires.

And what if - walk with me here - WHAT IF... A cabal of scaly aliens with sinister dentition and indelicate digestion are just trying to raise capital to support their traditional way of life?

It is, in the truest sense of the word, a humanitarian investment opportunity.

golgaloth, to writing
@golgaloth@writing.exchange avatar

Your characters can no longer tell if they're asleep or awake.

#WritingPrompt #AmWriting #writing

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@golgaloth

Good grief, a duvet made of bacon rashers!

How come I never get dreams that good?

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I am deeply regretting that for my political satire series I went with a head of government who is merely a faceless Lovecraftian Elder God with a skull-collecting hobby.

He seems kind of understated these days.

Should have picked a cross between the South Dakota Puppy Shooter and Liz Truss instead ...

hairyears, (edited )
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

Be careful what you wish for.

If you are a 21st-Century science fiction writer, be very careful indeed in what you might 'suggest' rather than predict in fiction.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

Also... His Dread Majesty The Black Pharaoh executes and eats the souls of those who disappoint him.

This might be safer than the current processes of recycling failed politicians, especially the former cabinet ministers.

Especially, and very especially indeed, former Prime Ministers.

We cannot yet imagine the horrific damage they can do.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@darkling @cstross

If you are right, you raise a most disturbing possibility.

Could it be, that some cultist or christian fundamentalist has delved beneath the deep foundations of the House of Lords, and removed a dark foundation stone with an inscription in Old Enochian:

"This place is not a place of honor...

"No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here..."

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

Are you aware that such a creature actually exists, the 'heads' being demented cultists who believe themselves to be spiritual successors to psychopathic former politicians?

I can find no better explanation for The Daily Mail and BBC News & Current Affairs.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross

I hear, from recent news reports, that the head of the Right Honourable Lady, Liz Truss, was conveyed in an elaborately-decorated jar of formalin to Mar-a-Largo, to burble praises at the once-and-future President of the United States.

I am sure this was intended as a gift, and
no sinister motive can or should ever be inferred.

In all probability, she is the first known case of a shoggoth rejectecting organ transplants, and the Cabinet Office couldn't think what to do with her.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@fanf

Thank you for that image, @fanf

Might I add a little detail to this moral and political cesspit, this septic isle, this Anglo-Saxon Trotterdämmerung?

The officer presiding over the blasphemous midden, far beneath His Dread Majesty, is a decomposing walrus, the Lord Privy Seal.

His Lordship and his charges (or discharges) are neither governing nor holding authority to account: they are, with elaborate ceremonies in archaic Anglo-Norman pig-Latin, merely going through the motions.

mjg59, to random
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer avatar

We shipped a Fedora release called Beefy Miracle I do not understand the Uwubernetes complaints at all

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@mjg59

Don't get me started on Microsoft's misimplementation of CSV files.

digitalraven, to random
@digitalraven@retro.pizza avatar

I hate to have to link to the x-birdsite, but https://twitter.com/ToughSf/status/1769958999279927787

Rocket propellants are often fun. This one is designed to fuck things up on a magnitude that's up there with Project PLUTO, by using elemental fluorine reacting with liquid lithium heated by cesium-137.

For when you absolutely positively have to fuck literally everything that so much as looks at your exhaust funny.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross @digitalraven

There's always the hope that someone will try putting out a Caesium fire with water: although it might be less energetic than firefighters' foam spontaneously igniting on contact with fluorine.

The glaring omission is that they didn't try FOOF, the super-duper oxidant available to any cheerful and insouciant chemist who relishes the vigorous oxidation of Oxygen by Fluorine, and knows it's someone else's problem to store the stuff.

Anyone spring to mind?

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross @digitalraven

Mean while, read all about FOOF -

https://edu.rsc.org/magnificent-molecules/dioxygen-difluoride/3010858.article

Practical rocket scientists will be delighted to discover that FOOF is used in the Nuclear industry, and is therefore available in bulk quantities to the discerning gentlemen of aerospace engineering.

I wonder if used FOOF is available at a discount, and I would be delighted to read any commercial correspondence on the matter.

Even, or especially, if it is unflattering to those involved.

LeftistLawyer, to disability

Houston, we have a …
Is there a doctor in the house?

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@LeftistLawyer

A rough 'eyeball' examination shows that the disability rate rose at 20% per yearuntil mass vaccination, then 10% a year for the following three years.

As far as I can tell without more data - and a more rigorous analysis than eyeballing it - the 10% year-on-year increase is still happening.

With current rates of infection, there is no reason to believe that this will level-off next year, nor the year after.

A heathcare and economic disaster is already baked-in to the numbers.

cstross, (edited ) to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Lower back pain sucks. Just saying.

(My office Aeron with lumbar support, and memory foam mattress in the bedroom, had fooled me into thinking I was getting better faster than I actually am. Five minutes in a waiting room chair corrected this misapprehension ...)

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@Sonikku @cstross

I would blame it all on the ancestral error of descending from the trees; others here go further, and insist that emerging from the sea and attempting to exist on land was an appalling mistake which should be reversed without delay.

Others, with lower intellectual aspirations, did not descend from the trees: they fell out and we refer to them as Conservatives. They work unceasingly to ensure that their return to the long-unclimbable trees will be assisted by the rising seas.

hairyears,
@hairyears@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross @Sonikku

Yes, the first paragraphs is paraphrased, with the failing aid of distant memory, from Douglas Adams.

The second owes a debt to Nora Batty, who expounded deep philosophy from the High Pennines, in refusing a proposal of marriage from Compo.

All else is my own invention.

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