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@cstross Fantasy story premise. A wizard casts a spell such that each week (day?) the richest person in the world dies. (It's magic, it can work out what that means and who that is.) And then ... ?
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Christopher
@dearlove@mathstodon.xyz
mastodon 4.7.2Graduated in mathematics over 40 years ago. Spent career in engineering R&D (communications and security). More RFCs than other publications. Retired. These days I spend too much time on some probability software (ask for version to run locally free, website coming). Also a problem setter for New Scientist and a trustee of the Friends of my local museum.
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Joined February 07, 2023
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@harib_murshidi@mastodon.social @patrickhadfield@mastodon.scot Actors need to pick one as their stage name - or.a variant such as Kris. The rest of us get called both, sometimes after asking, sometimes not. Maybe same for them in private. But if you insist on Chris there's Rock, O'Donnell and more.
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@patrickhadfield@mastodon.scot Of course with Evans, Hemsworth, Pine and Pratt making it big Christopher is currently having a good innings. but there's also a long tail of other Christophers like Lee, Lloyd and Plummer. And more. It's a good name. [Of course this doesn't affect the point being made. However successful Christopher are.]
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@shayman@cosocial.ca A prime ≥ 5 must be of the form 6n±1. (6n±1)²-1 = 36n²±12n = 12n(3n±1) which is obviously a multiple of 24 if n is even, but if n is odd 3n±1 is even, so it is a multiple of 24 again. So it's really a property of numbers 6n±1 rather than just primes.
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@rashunda @pluralistic See Tom Scott's latest video series (YouTube or elsewhere) touring England counties. Two so far free and the bell casters and paragliders show massive amounts of expertise from experience. I suspect these will not be the last examples.
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@davidtheeviloverlord @cstross Clarke was right, and Asimov wrong, when Clarke made HAL have a prime directive set by people who valued security above human lives.
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@cstross I thought about the no termination, but decided that my wizard considered that acceptable collateral damage to avoid recurrence. I also had some thoughts on gaming the system, but decided that things would be more interesting if I left that - and whether the spell is known, unknown but deducible, or unknown - out for others to comment.
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@bweller@mstdn.social @rsabourin@pdx.social @RuiSeabra@mastodon.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr Collecting slide rules is a thing - I know someone who has written books on the subject and a regular newsletter. (The only slightly unusual side rule I ever had - found in my late father's effects - I donated to him. I'm not a slide rule collector.)
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@xeno@hexokina.se I doubt it's deliberate like that, but you can sometimes use a London Underground train as a bridge at Stratford. Where it is designed is tourist boats on the Upper Nile (and maybe the rest of the Nile) in Egypt which all have walkthroughs in the same place as there are many more boats than mooring places.
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@davidtheeviloverlord Yes, Asimov was the optimist whose ideas didn't happen. But we need both sorts of fiction - the dystopian warning and the utopian possibility. (Except a lot of utopias turn out to have a dystopian core, but that's another story.) Oddly, a lot of Clarke's other novels described futures it would be nice to live in (although everyone portrayed is middle class or better, we don't know how it is at the bottom of society).
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@cstross@wandering.shop Discussion online with some Americans indicates that for all their healthcare provision issues, they can get free covid shots just by turning up. (I don't know if that's just some states or national, but it was all who commented.) In fact no other country represented in that discussion (typical richer countries) had the not unless you pay (and it's not cheap) position most of us have. (I used to qualify sometimes, but no longer. A friend whose wife does get a free shot doesn't himself get one as her carer.)
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@cstross@wandering.shop I lost days due to covid this last year. But as I'm retired (early, though in a couple of months only early because they raised my pension age) that doesn't matter to them.
I'm generally on the anti- side of discussion of Jackson's films. But credit where it is due, "one does not just walk into Mordor" is a good line. And one does not just sail through the Strait of Hormuz.
Deliveroo (yes, I know I shouldn't use them) have a reasonable security process where you are given a two digit code on ordering to give to the person delivering (who I do tip when the option is given). At least it was reasonable except that for some reason my code seems to have frozen, it's now always the same code. (No, I'm not posting it.) Probably not much difference in security in practice, but why make such a change? (Or not notice the change when something else is changed would be my guess.)
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@davekarpf Yes, but. The but would be how you consider earlier examples of founders who became cult figures. From the twentieth century that would include Henry Ford and Walt Disney, and from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Thomas Edison. There are many more. Are these the same phenomenon, or a different one?
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@virtuosew @courtcan Zelazny's Amber doesn't really fit. It's not impossible to force it, but it would be a strange way to interpret it. (The companion for one book really isn't. And I don't recall if the most obvious bird is a raven, I think it's unspecified.)
@Scmbradley@mathstodon.xyz @ColinTheMathmo@mathstodon.xyz In particular, the USA, although often referred to as a new country, is older than most other countries. Older countries are in Europe - though many of those are also newer - plus a few other cases like China and Japan.
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@harib_murshidi@mastodon.social @patrickhadfield@mastodon.scot Nobody should hate Chris or Christopher! I would stand by that the first four Chrises I mentioned easily top the famous list today, Pine as Captain Kirk and the other three starring in multiple MCU films.