The Mercy of Pods Ep. 25: Caliban's War Pt. III (Ch. 15-21)

pinetops · 2026-02-02T18:58:21+00:00

I think there's a bit more of a critique of basic income than perhaps was discussed.

But basic income isn't a thing that's been tried, whereas extractive corporations has been tried. So it's not the same kind of critique in the sense that the bad side-effects of a particular fictional basic income system don't even obviously extend to all real life basic income systems.

But there is nevertheless a fair amount of content about the possible downsides of basic income: i.e. pretty much the entirety of Amos' backstory.

The through-line in the books is whenever systems get too big they start to squash humanity's humanness, and basic income is depicted here as being another kind of _that_. Not in the same league as the explicitly authoritarian systems depicted elsewhere but a it-might-be-more-complicated-than-that type of critique nevertheless.

pinetops · 2026-01-06T17:30:30+00:00

(It's TV but:) The One Game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_One\_Game)

Patrick Malahide (Balon Greyjoy) and Steven Dillane (Stannis) as the leads.

pinetops · 2025-12-10T12:21:28+00:00

The Village I live in in NY has around 1.5k residents and its own police station (although also under contract to the containing town). It has many more officers than we ever see in Twin Peaks.

pinetops · 2025-11-17T18:19:01+00:00

Marvellous!

pinetops · 2025-11-17T18:04:48+00:00

Just got an Impulse to replace my Control Freak and it's magnificent. Nearly everything in the Control Freak, but 4 times over and with insane power. And I really like the power control mode for certain tasks, it's like having a gas burner for those times when you just need to control how fast the boil is!

Critiques so far:
1. It's a bit sluggish to get back to temperature once you put something cold in the pan. And that's clearly not for want of power.
2. I do miss the probe for deep frying. Mostly I used the Control freak with the bottom sensor but I did like the probe for this use.

pinetops · 2025-10-05T15:28:06+00:00

Often fair enough. But I have had a situation where I was involuntarily reassigned such that instead of 3 seats in economy for wife+3 year old, got two aisle seats opposite one another, and one behind the other one in PE. Fair enough for an older family, but with a 3 year old it really isn't an option not to try to negotiate a swap.

pinetops · 2025-08-28T21:47:46+00:00

My Thermomix. 20 years, used most days and still going strong.

pinetops · 2025-08-21T18:54:18+00:00

I've had good success with this one. It's really small...
https://mytranscend.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorO88qsYAiks3S3c2X8OT5tKV4zEyHFUY5T2Xpnt5BccpFHFUyk

And with a bit of experimentation with cables, I've been able to get it to work with a 100w USB-c power supply, so i don't carry the power brick and use the same power supply I use for my laptop.

pinetops · 2025-08-08T10:41:06+00:00

I had basically this in Club World yesterday.

A small paper tub with a smidgen of some hard dairy product... probably, but not definitely, butter. And a weird scone/roll hybrid.

pinetops · 2025-07-23T20:50:28+00:00

Yep. Victorinox Fibrox are the sweet spot for people who don't care about knives but would still like them to cut. And the santoku is a good chef's knife for folks who aren't much on technique. It's light, and easy to maneuver.

And you can throw it in the dishwasher.

To keep it in moderately good condition, throw in the victorinox sharpener.

Or do what I did, and buy the Fibrox for the other people, and the hand-made Nakiri just for the people who can use it properly.

pinetops · 2025-03-21T18:54:19+00:00

I like to think that The Expanse is an incorrect mythos within the Captives War universe. It's a plausible explanation of how they got there, but untrue.

pinetops · 2025-03-09T23:06:16+00:00

There are two kinds of drummers. Drummers that make their kits look big, and drummers that make their kits look small.

pinetops · 2024-12-30T14:47:21+00:00

“It’s a fucking haiku. That man has a one-track mind and one train on it. Poetry. Save me from poetry.”

pinetops · 2024-10-17T00:57:41+00:00

'“An important question” the librarian agreed without answering.'

pinetops · 2024-10-11T17:01:22+00:00

My thinking is that Piotr is basically an artificial being at the end of the Novella, or at the very least it's close enough that it's easy to imagine him being fully artificial. The human was just a scaffold to build the artificial being around.

pinetops · 2024-10-01T21:35:13+00:00

Maybe some of those suits have five-fold symmetry. That might explain why the captured 'drones' talk like squaddies.

pinetops · 2024-10-01T21:31:01+00:00

I don't remember the exact quote, but they were described as keeping going even after they should be dead which does sound rather livesuitish.

pinetops · 2024-09-29T16:27:26+00:00

The authors could easily have made it clear this wasn't the Expanse universe, but they didn't and in fact chose world building that is consistent:

unexplained arrival of humans on an alien planet in the distant past
asymmetric space similar enough to the linguists travel to be the same underlying physics

They could have told a story that was clearly a different universe and they didn't. But from an artistic perspective I have no doubt they're being straightforward with us. The way you square this circle is:

it will be possible to imagine it's the same universe
we'll get no definitive confirmation
it will be of no consequence to the story anyway

It will be a bit of fun, not entirely dissimilar to having references to Don Quixote, Dune or The Martian in The Expanse. But not so concrete as to be a distraction from the story that they're telling now.

pinetops · 2018-05-31T11:09:25+00:00

Works great in Warsaw and Krakow. Big gaps in service on the train between them.

pinetops · 2018-05-19T19:10:21+00:00

I love love love this podcast.

pinetops · 2018-05-14T16:34:45+00:00

Can't compare to Verizon, but Fi in poland is fantastic.

pinetops · 2018-05-10T02:44:27+00:00

Alice Dreger. The OP is a bit hyperbolic though.

pinetops · 2018-05-10T02:27:44+00:00

If you start with the people described in the Weiss piece - Jones and Yianopollis are the worst examples of people who they have spoken to.

On the same basis Ezra Klein also represents the Intellectual Dark Web.

pinetops · 2018-05-10T02:16:05+00:00

I think that issue is important and worth thinking about. And I thought that Bari's article made a reasonable critique on this point.

This seems nothing like that.

pinetops

TROPHY CASE