We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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More sage advice… Dear “Shrill Voice,”
This is difficult. Normally I tell has-beens and never-has-beens (and you seem to be both) to rake in the loot and live comfortably. But you’ve already done that. Clearly domestic political office is out because nobody likes losers. And you couldn’t win international office because all the countries you bombed would vote against you. Clearly, you have to make some Hard Choices.
Why not trade on the fact that you are not the most loved and respected person in the world? License virtual reality game arenas named after you in which contestants would face 100 avatars of you in various settings and have to kill as many as possible. This would be incredibly popular, and players would readily pay $100 a game, with the money going, of course, to the “charity” of your choice.
Hmmm, I wonder who Aunt Agatha is referring to? 😉
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit, as Kurt Schlichter calls her?
Is it Literally Hitler? It’s Literally Hitler, isn’t it?
She could develop a game called Three Days of the Clintons. And build into it the deaths of all those people, including at least two children, that she and her husband have known and who died under suspicious circumstances, over the past 30 or so years.
“The aunt to whom I alluded was my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, not to be confused with my Aunt Agatha who eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon.”
John in Cheshire–Since that figure is now 120 odd, it would be a complicated game.
Confession: on the subject, I was wavering (as it were) between Tony Blair and Shelob. I now see the light.
Hillary Clinton was explaining to some hearing why she didn’t intervene at Benghazi because it was a political protest.
The advice is good, but I don’t think Aunt Agatha has got Shrillary’s manner as well as she has some of the others. Even allowing for the necessities of this kind of spoof, there is too much self-awareness in the question letter.
(It is of course easy to criticise, hard to do; I’m enjoying the Aunt Agatha series – as my imitation, the sincerest form of flattery, shows.)
Talking of “never has beens” the Eeyores of Technology have always said that flying cars are always going to be and never arrive. Well now they have arrived – spun out of drone technology, there are now a whole raft in the pipline: called flying taxis, some of them are pretty smart – expect them to arrive on the scene in the next five years. And they will be another nail in the coffin of HS2 alongside of driverless/electric/connected car data technology.
I was lucky enough to ride in a flying taxi some years ago, in Barbados. Of course, then it turned into a bouncing taxi, and then a rolling taxi, and then a burning taxi. And, like you said, it never arrived.
Personally, I think the concept is overrated.
@bobby b
I remember they said much the same about computers “only 6 of them will ever be needed”….
Railways are the sort of transport which the skids are under: rail lines are no longer needed to guide a vehicle from A to B. HS2 from London to the North and Scotland is going to be V expensive – much easier to get a flying taxi to pick you up – drive to the nearest roof terminal – vertical take off – fly to destination. And probably cheaper – certainly less hassle.
Uber says 2023 for first service Everyone from Rolls Royce to Aston Martin – France – Germany – Japan – Russia – US is getting in on the act.
As I said – 5 years.
J M W Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway is one of the most disturbing images of the 19th century.
The scene is of an imminent death. A train rushes across a bridge and is bearing down on a hare that is running over the bed of a railway track. The train will catch up with the hare and kill it: there’s no escape, the track is encased by walls. The hare’s typical act of self-defence, to turn back on itself so dramatically that it throws off its pursuers, isn’t available: the locomotive blocks its path.
But is it the hare that will be smashed to pieces or…. ourselves.
That Aunt Agatha is a bit deplorable.
HS2 from London to the North and Scotland is going to be V expensive
For one reason – drivers.
Not only are drivers expensive, together with pensions and such, but drivers mean you need larger trains, whereas the optimum is smaller trains that run more frequently that can vary according to demand.
Trains only go or stop, and perhaps two or more speed settings, they rarely reverse, they don’t go left or right or up or down. The DLR has been running them for 25 years without incident (part from when the IRA blew up a bridge). If we can have cars and even planes flown autonomously, then surely trains?
The problem I see with the flying car/taxi thing (see also drones delivering Amazon parcels) is that airspace is very tightly controlled.
I don’t see the CAA wanting to have hundreds/thousands of flying cars zooming around their precious airspace any time soon.
When we get depressed (in my case – a lot of the time) we should remember two things.
Mrs Clinton is not President of the United States and Mrs Clinton will NEVER be President of the United States.
Paul Marks, those two simple truths never fail to bring a smile. God’s in His Heaven and, at least, some things are right with the world.