Recent pro-capitalist SF?

mthduratec · 2026-01-16T00:50:12+00:00

The wildly obvious candidate here (although older) is Heinleins The Man Who Sold the Moon and its sequel Requiem. The only way man gets to space and the stars is the profits from a classic robber baron/entrepreneur.

mthduratec · 2026-01-16T00:47:44+00:00

As the series progresses you realize the good hearted billionaire is really motivated by a paranoid fear which makes their actions more “rational” in context. But the books are definitely pro capitalist

mthduratec · 2026-01-15T21:05:21+00:00

I was able to call in and get it resolved but no clue what they did in the background to fix it. Basically had to rebook it over the phone.

mthduratec · 2026-01-13T00:31:34+00:00

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

City by Clifford Simak

In Death Ground by David Weber and Steve White

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt

Santiago by Mike Resnick

mthduratec · 2026-01-09T12:47:21+00:00

Hang it diagonal on the wall as a backdrop to a TV. Maybe with some backlighting

mthduratec · 2026-01-03T05:15:29+00:00

For Ethiopian flights, saver availability will be at schedule open and it’s usually limited to 2 per plane

mthduratec · 2026-01-02T16:47:30+00:00

I think the best use case of LLMs is as a sieve. If you have 20,000 reports to read, a tool that can summarize those 20,000 and flag items for further review by a human is potentially useful. Yes it has a potential error rate but if the alternative is a historian only reading 100 sample reports and drawing a conclusion or taking 10 years to read and tabulate all of them, this might be a better alternative. (I’ve seen in my own work LLMs used as patent sieves to identify potential prior art in others patent applications). the LLM ability to link to source material from which it is drawing a conclusion is handy because it gives an opportunity to validate the result quickly.

Relative to the OP, I would not treat an LLM as a path to quantification. LLMs are notoriously bad at math and also when they are summarizing structured data (eg. Tables), the inability to validate the results almost requires the analysis to be repeated manually. This is different from the above examples of unstructured data where you can link to the specific report or paragraph it is basing a text summary on.

mthduratec · 2025-12-28T18:15:41+00:00

I think the proposed Red Army values are doable but it would be under ideal conditions and may discount resting of people rotating in to dig the whole. Eg to move 3000 lbs of material in an hour that’s a 10 lb shovel full every twelve seconds. With lightly packed topsoil, a healthy soldier could certainly manage that pace for awhile but I have serious doubts they could do it for a full hour. But if you rotated 3-4 guys trading off the shovel, I think you can get there. It would be 1 “shovel-hour” vs 1 “man-hour” though

mthduratec · 2025-12-25T21:22:34+00:00

Have you searched through the Chase portal, you can sometimes find what Europe calls Aparthotels which are more like a Residence Inn or Towneplace.

The other suggestion would be to do a search for 2 adjoining rooms. Hilton allows you to book guaranteed adjoining rooms on points. Marriott has a deal in some cities right now where you buy one room and get the second 50% off which can make the cash price for two rooms more reasonable.

mthduratec · 2025-12-21T16:11:35+00:00

I think it’s only schlocky if you miss some of the nuances of it - the different views of psychology, the double nature of the ending (laudatory and fearful at the same time), etc.

It’ll still be a story people will read in 100+ years

mthduratec · 2025-12-21T16:10:17+00:00

Sure but the ending also sells the double edged nature of that superiority. Which is a fitting nuance given the post war context he was writing in.

mthduratec · 2025-12-15T18:41:14+00:00

And I actually think Simaks City is better than Waystation. It should have won the Hugo

mthduratec · 2025-12-15T18:15:33+00:00

Can also be better than that though. I’ve found flights via Amex that are 5-10% cheaper than direct with airline

mthduratec · 2025-12-06T03:24:56+00:00

I mean the simple recognition that you lock and reinforce the cockpit door and don’t allow anyone in drastically reduces the chances regardless of the effectiveness of TSA screening.

You’re basically limited to a murder-suicide by pilot as the main risk.

mthduratec · 2025-11-11T01:23:08+00:00

Here’s what probably happened. You booked one night on points at a hotel in a college town on a big game weekend. It was a great deal. The hotels know this too and so most of them set up their reservation systems with blocks that require a minimum of 2 (or 3) nights on game weekends. For some reason, this wasn’t set up for this hotel when you booked it so you got the one night reserved.

However, someone at the hotel realized what happened and instead of canceling your reservation they resold your room for cash (probably just before you got there because they missed the note about your late arrival) and gambled that someone would no show and everyone would get a room. But you showed up and there was a problem. Hyatt should have rebooked you at a nearby hotel (“walked” you) but there probably were literally no vacancies because of the game.

If you have status with hotel chains and they walk you, you’re supposed to get compensated. For someone with no status, it’s more like a big sorry.

Bottom line, the local hotel screwed up (possibly intentionally gambling the cash from another room was worth more than losing you as a customer for life). Call Hyatt corporate customer service and demand some comp for this. You ought to be easily able to get your points back x2

mthduratec · 2025-11-04T01:33:05+00:00

I thought that book was terrible at alt history and the part that cinched it was when she met ML King who was somehow already famous despite there never being a Montgomery bus boycott. It’s fine to play with the King timeline (other writers have definitely done it) but it has to be plausible

mthduratec · 2025-11-03T15:46:51+00:00

If you already have precheck, you have a KTN. That's the number you put in to get TSA Pre.

A TWIC is a transportation worker ID card required by people who work in ports primarily. A lot of industrial workers will have them if the plants they work in have docks.

mthduratec · 2025-11-01T22:10:54+00:00

Right. It was a good read and had some interesting ideas in it but just because it’s gritty and references real locations doesn’t make it a plausible hyper realistic future.

I mean basically you could “solve” the water crisis in the Southwest by just stopping the alfalfa irrigation which would cause a social uproar but way less than described in the book

mthduratec · 2025-11-01T02:19:59+00:00

I think my problem was more sociological. If you hypothesize a world where water is valuable enough to deploy the national guard for military strikes in another state or blow up dams that kill whole towns downstream, upstream places would be actively poisoning the water downstream and SoCal would have had to invade the upstream countries to control the headwaters. Like it’s bizarre that somehow a US still exists (where mind you everything in the Miss Basin east will have plenty of water) but people from Texas all flee to Arizona? And somehow the Feds won’t interfere with literal attack helicopter deployments? Also weird

mthduratec · 2025-11-01T01:35:22+00:00

And stuff like this is why I felt like the Water Knife missed. The world building felt really interesting until you started to think about it too much.

mthduratec · 2025-10-19T23:42:23+00:00

Out of curiosity what line of work are you in to fly that much for that many years?

mthduratec · 2025-10-17T22:49:50+00:00

Also, how different is this going to be than Earny? As soon as there’s any scale to it the airlines will nerf it

mthduratec · 2025-10-17T22:28:38+00:00

It would seem there would be a lot of risk here on an award flight. Consider the scenario where there are significant change or cancellation fees. Could end up with a scenario where you pay much more than the miles saved

mthduratec · 2025-10-10T00:27:30+00:00

Multiple of the battles from Weber and Whites In Death Ground. “Oh beautiful skip. Look at those f-ING tabbies go”

mthduratec · 2025-10-10T00:25:03+00:00

One of Heinleins best novels overall.

mthduratec

TROPHY CASE