Category: Science Fiction
-
This is the second adventure in the Flood series. It is half a year since the near-catastrophe with the old man on the raft community, and our heroes have been split up, working in different parts of the Hulks on security jobs. They were surprised then to receive a text message from Captain Dilver in…
-
Next weekend I will be running another short adventure in my Flood campaign world, and the adventure trigger will be the arrival near the Hulks of one of the drowned earth’s most potent environmental threats: the Miasma. The Miasma is a special type of jellyfish swarm that can only exist in the depopulated aquatic deserts…
-
The picture above[1] shows the latest estimated volume of arctic sea ice in March, 2015. The red line is 2015, and it looks like it is heading below the 2010 maximum. This is a disturbing trend because 2014 had a very high minimum, but the March maximum may well be very low. We know that…
-
If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance – Inuit proverb Drew stared, blank-eyed, at the doctor. He was watching her intently, probably thinking his expression meant something to her, but to him he was just the same as all the rest. A man, not old enough to be…
-
Date: 6th October, 2177 Weather: Rainy Mood: Inconsolable. One day I will be powerful enough to come out from under these shadows, and destroy the people who have made me beg and cower. When that day comes the list of people I have to shoot will be long and detailed, and I am going to…
-
This is a report of a one-shot set in the world of the flood, specifically in the gyre. There were three characters: Crimson, an aging warrior once famous for his military exploits but now gone to seed, slower and past his prime Quark, a man of genuinely diminutive size (a dwarf, in fact), albino and…
-
Date: 5th October, 2177 [will this day never end?] Weather: Rainy Mood: Disappointed. Does our hacker really have to be this incompetent? Outfit: Today I wore my maid outfit, because we were torturing this Rice dude and Pops wanted me to get coffees. I don’t know why this hunk of existentially doomed meat needs coffee,…
-
Following up on yesterday’s post about the new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, today I investigated his involvement in computer game economics a little more. I found this article by Brad Plumer, written for the Washington Post in 2012, which describes the growing role of economists in computer gaming. Modern online multiplayer computer games are…
-
Date: 5th October 2177 Weather: Rainy Mood: Frustrated and exhausted. Who knew killing Americans was this tough? Outfit: My shiny new combat armour, that I bought with the proceeds from icing Lima. It’s snug and super tough at vulnerable points where other armour fails. Not very breathable and the peripherals on the helmet are…
-
I’ve recently been building a fairly complex series of Bayesian spatial regression models in BUGS, and thought I’d share some tips based on hard won experience with the models. The various BUGS packages have the most cryptic and incoherent error messages of any stats software I have ever worked with, and although various Bayesian boosters…
Compromise and Conceit 