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Zach Weinersmith

@zachweinersmith.bsky.social

20937 followers 69 following 981 posts

Christ jesus another platform.
Patreon: www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith?ty=h
New book: www.acityonmars.com/

Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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What book in particular would you recommend?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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And yeah, worst offence: they took the joke about how Jeeves was "if not disgruntled, far from being gruntled" and changed it to mecontent/content, which as far as I can tell eliminates the joke, making the sentence pointless.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Because I love the Wooster books and can often guess the sentence :D So I figured I could read a long with the French and pick up some skill.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Ya, it seems like they didn't try very hard for the Wodehouse-ness. Another place they have, in reference to Wooster's lack of interest in a trip, "personne n'est preneur" for "the market is sluggish"

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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I mean it's a fairly weird construction in English, but it's totally comprehensible.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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So I'm trying to read Wooster and Jeeves in French translation. It's interesting how Wodehouse can refer to the "ho for the open spaces chaps" whereas in French they have "Les gens qui, prechant les departs vers les vastes espaces..." Is this just a mediocre translation or is it hard en Francais?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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In other words, given the sheer spending (4% of budget in 1968 I believe), you'd expect NASA to have picked some winners. But I don't think it's a great justification.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Yes, Charles Fishman has a book about this, but it's narrative, not quantitative. Not that quantifying is easy, but personally (though the book was great), I'm not sure. There were clearly computing/microelectronic markets before space. Also Apollo put bets on other tech that failed to be useful.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Yeah-- NASA releases a yearly document on spinoffs, but there's a debate on whether you get more money in than out. I think Carl Sagan once said something to the effect of "if the goal is just better materials science, we should spend the budget there."

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Reposted by Zach Weinersmith

Mathieu's avatar Mathieu @mpl.bsky.social
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Yes, I think it's been shown for a while now that transportation is a ridiculously small part of food production emissions. All the more so by boats.
ourworldindata.org/food-choice-...

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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What happens with your reflection if you're in a large cylindrical room with mirrors on the entire surface? Clearly you get an infinity of reflections but is it just like... wherever you focus you see infinity?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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She talks about carbon, yes, and I think it's implied in "efficiency" which is about energy use.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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So, space is somewhere where I have expertise, and the evidence for the space program doing that is pretty limited. I think there's a slightly better argument that the space program helped support microelectronics/computing, but even that is just a narrative without great evidence.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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She had a really interesting section on how trying to grow tomatoes in greenhouses overwinter is likely much less efficient than shipping the same goods from the part of the Earth where it's summer. (setting aside flavor, of course)

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Having enjoyed Hannah Ritchie's recent book, I'm now convinced one of the big ruiners of cool technology is the fact that over-sea container shipping is extremely efficient and cheap. So, local (e.g. vertical farms in cities, 3D printed local goods) is generally overrated.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Vertical farming is probably top of my list for technologies that are objectively awesome, but for which the economic math doesn't work very well. What's yours?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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TIL in French they say soutien-gorge for bra, literally meaning "support-throat," apparently because in Old French, gorge/throat can refer to something more like the throat plus chest.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Right! Like, tautologically, for any problem there exists *some* solution. Treating that like it means the problem is solved is what leads to people saying we can soon build titanium structures on the Moon because there is any amount of titanium in lunar regolith.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Like by all means there's tons of stuff you can disagree with us about. It should just be stuff we actually said, preferably.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Anyway, I don't know how to explain most of these complaints unless there's some circle of people talking at each other about stuff that's not actually in the book! Otherwise, why do a number of people have the same complaint about something we didn't do?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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More seriously, we know from studies that simply surviving off a biosphere's air and food, barely, is a full time job. So layering on building thick shielding systems, harvesting enough sunlight to power your underground life, cleansing all water and soil, are real issues!

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Or people say we claim perchlorates are an unsolvable problem when we talk about one of the simple ways to cleanse them. What we're saying is "there exists a solution" does not mean "the problem is solved." It's like telling your spouse the messy room isn't an issue because cleaning is an option.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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The weirdest thing is the people accusing us of things we didn't do in the book, e.g. one guy said we claim there's no water on Mars. People keep saying we claim there's no solution to radiation when we have a whole section on shielding.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Wish all the nerds saying "Why would you trust a cartoonist about space science" would explain why they don't apply the same standard when trusting rocket scientists about space medicine.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Great quote on gambling addiction from "Playing with Reality" by Kelly Clancy: "...if gambling addiction is driven purely by a gambler's expected payouts, why don't we ever find addicts gathered around vending machines, faithfully feeding them coins?"

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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One thing that scares me with so many countries going populist is just like in the 1930s you'll get some group persecuted but every country will have its doors shut. We've already got 35M+ refugees on this planet.

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Reposted by Zach Weinersmith

Reposted by Zach Weinersmith

Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Yes, I'm working on a couple books now and it's nice the way you can just fuss with them instead of starting from zero every morning!

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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This'll sound like a small thing, but I just got my first (one full day!) comic buffer since before covid, not counting times I frantically got a buffer together before traveling.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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It's interesting! In a way he reminds me of Kipling. Somehow the literary gifts are so great, they seem to write past themselves.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Niche gripe: "Humanities are dumb. As a scientist I can prove this by cherrypicking the lowest quality paper in modern sociology."

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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It's like a precise inversion of today, both in terms of the modern expectations that authors are activists, and in the idea that what students find important is necessarily important. The result is a long quite enjoyable conversation about poetry, which students seem to have liked too.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Interesting: I'm reading a transcript of Jorge Luis Borges giving a university talk in the US. There are two profs with him and a bunch of students who'd been studying his work. They find the student-submitted questions are all about politics, not literature. So, with irritation, they ignore them!

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Whereas if you were writing an honest book about kids any time in the last, say, three generations, you'd be missing a big piece if you didn't include this sort of thing in the life of a young person.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Are parasocial relationships with celebrities a mostly modern thing? It occurred to me that in 19th century books about childhood I don't encounter it at all. Kids consume books and like certain songs or stories, but not individual people in that way. There also aren't fandoms.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Interestingly, instagram refused to post today's comic. I wonder if the camouflage startled it.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Why is it that a lot of added-protein products taste bad? Like, lots of favorite human foods are high in protein

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Working on some of my beloved relatable humor with realistic dialog

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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If so I would consider that a pretty great outcome. AI with embedded ads seems likely though.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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So like, refusing to be part of the revolution means they definitely lose, but giving into it also hurts, at least until we figure out how to generate 100B a year from AI. I don't know what the solution is but at least in the abstract, a subscription-based Internet is likely better than ad-based?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Like it seems they're in a classic innovator's dilemma situation, where there's a new thing that they need to do, but at least for the short-term, the new thing eats at their money-making monopolizing rent-seeking.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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As a lot of people have noted, you can take action against this, but it only matters if lots of people do so, which they won't. That said, I also don't see how Google wins here, since they make money off sites running ads and off people scrolling down through search results?

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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Oh my God, google putting AI responses atop search is going to murder all blogs and journalism.

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Zach Weinersmith's avatar Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social
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"Putain de plomberie" est le nom de mon groupe punk

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Reposted by Zach Weinersmith