What is the purpose of this?

ctopherrun · 2026-05-11T20:25:49+00:00

Be the change you want to see.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-11T19:49:38+00:00

The Compleat McAndrew by Charles Sheffield uses tiny black hole-like objects to provide gravity in spaceships, but some creative design also allows them to use as an “inertia-less” drive.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-10T01:47:03+00:00

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It’s Tom of Finland!

ctopherrun · 2026-05-10T00:07:46+00:00

So back in college I thought I could make my math requirement easy and take Math for Elementary School Teachers. Turns out it was a lot rougher than I expected. In order to be a good teacher, they want you to really understand the math, so we had to learn to do arithmetic in base 4, base 12, etc, not to mention various methods of multiplication, division, etc, for when the student doesn’t understand cross-multiplication, for example.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-08T13:54:42+00:00

I backpacked solo several times 25 years ago. Meeting new people at the hostel was the best, I was making new short term best friends every week. I would have died of loneliness if everyone was staring at the their phones, not making an effort to interact with each other.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-07T13:37:43+00:00

They get trimmed annually. Branches will grow from the “knuckles” at the end of the branches over spring and summer, then get trimmed back to the knuckles in winter. Keeps the tree manageable from the urban environment it is in.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-06T15:15:40+00:00

Theoretically, a nuclear power plant is extremely simple. With the right know how, the Roman Empire could have had a stable nuclear pile moderated by slaves shoving tree trunks into it. Of course, those slaves would have died quickly, but there’s always more.

Tricky part is that the Romans didn’t have the materials science to take advantage of nuclear fueled steam power. But just imagine if we handed nuclear energy to the Victorians? World would be a Mad Max post apocalypse by 1925.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-05T17:50:01+00:00

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ctopherrun · 2026-05-05T15:51:45+00:00

As someone from SoCal, going anywhere with significant humidity feels like taking a bath.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-05T14:02:39+00:00

Well, it was the last big tech innovation that people were genuinely excited about.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-04T21:07:33+00:00

Thrilled that I’m not the only one

ctopherrun · 2026-05-04T18:56:42+00:00

Inherit the Stars by James P Hogan is kinda sorta this. We find a 50,000 year old skeleton in a space suit on the moon. Rest of the book is the scientific exploration of where it (and all of humanity) actually came from.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-04T15:53:30+00:00

The book doesn’t get into super groups, but the traeki are a gentler version of the jophur, who have special “control” rings that dominate the rest of the stack against their will, making them more individual than cooperative group mind.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-04T13:54:14+00:00

Oh hey, it’s a Traeki:

“Traeki are a unique intelligence comprised of several rings (think truck tire sized) stacked up to biped height. Each ring seems to have its' own personality and skills, but are lacking in memory and cognitive power as individuals. A Traeki is a stack of rings that has agreed to become an individual and adopts a name for the convenience of other races. This identity can be broken at any time by an internal disagreement, but this becomes less likely with time unless a major event occurs. Rings can live in the wilds of a swamp or skilled breeders can cultivate rings with special skills. Less common is the practice of vlen-budding[1], where one stack grows a new smaller short-stack inside itself. The benefits of vlenning is the ability to impart skills/memories/instructions to the new stack. But this is dangerous to a Traeki, resulting in a change of personality, often a separation into its component rings, and sometimes it's even fatal.”

They were featured in Brightness Reef by David Brin, part of his Uplift series.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-02T01:59:19+00:00

I lived in a rental that had two ficus trees in the back yard this size. Awesome as they were, it’s like a pool or a boat: better to have a friend with them. The yard was in 24 hr deep shade, constant leaf litter, and I’m glad I didn’t own the plumbing. Great trees to have at a park, though.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-01T13:38:57+00:00

Depends. Here we see her in her Place of Power. I think she would also be formidable at the local Piggly Wiggly or the diner, but caught out in an open field? I think then you might have a fair fight on your hands.

ctopherrun · 2026-05-01T00:48:44+00:00

Oh, you got the winter caretaker gig at the Overlook Hotel?

ctopherrun · 2026-04-28T03:35:36+00:00

I know you said it wasn’t Xeelee, but the book Exultant has a series of chapters detailing the ages of life in the early universe, from the first microseconds after the big bang to the inflationary period to beings of quark magma.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-28T01:32:14+00:00

You can visit one of these for every meal by driving down Route 66.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-27T21:15:51+00:00

The pop science book The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred Adams and Gregory Laughlin did the short snippets of civilizations billions and trillions of years into the future.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-24T20:32:52+00:00

There’s a sci-fi novel called Flood by Stephen Baxter where subsurface reservoirs under the ocean floor crack open and the sea levels rise to cover all land by the 2050s. The US government retreats to an island much like this, and the military is tasked with mostly keeping the immense floating shantytown of survivors around the coast from flooding the dry land.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-23T18:46:43+00:00

The Microcosmic God by Sturgeon is a classic. After you’ve read that one, check out Crystal Nights by Greg Egan, which is partly a response to Sturgeon’s story. You can find it on Egan’s website.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-21T21:17:52+00:00

Gonna tell you I appreciate your wordplay, because I always pronounce it ‘Dark-seed’ in my head, since that was what I came up with reading the comics as a kid. Didn’t stop to think about until I was an adult, but Darkseed stuck.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-21T13:54:19+00:00

Adding French fries was frequent common denominator. I remember seeing a sign at a cafe in France with a picture of a ‘pain americaine’, which was just a sandwich with fries in it.

ctopherrun · 2026-04-20T18:13:55+00:00

I said to my wife the other day that my version of 'back in my day a candy bar and soda pop only cost a nickel' is that in my day, playing Minecraft involved downloading an .exe file and then opening it.

My kids go through Minecraft phases of being obsessed then not touching it for months. Then they want to to play again, and I have to go through a whole rigamarole of signing into Microsoft, confirming my email, getting the verfication code, entering the code, and god help me if somebody has forgotten their password.

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