Max Brooks Has A Word For It: "Lamoe'

 From The Excellent Horror Novel 'World War Z'

It's an acronym for 'LAst Man On Earth', which is a syndrome experienced by solo survivors of the zombie apocalypse, who are not necessarily pleased to have their own little fiefdom taken under control of the South Canadian government.  If you've gotten used to doing whatever in Hades you want, over many months, the rule of law might be seen as a threat.  Art!

     Okayyyy to port we have 'Fist of the First Men' from an obscure television drama called 'Game Of Thorns' or similar.  To starboard we have 'The Last Men On Earth' plural because there are two of them.

     Where am I leading with this? I hear you quibble.  O I thought you'd never ask!  Because we are back on that list of '68 Mind-Melting Sci Fi Books' as compiled by the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.

No. 23: First And Last Men by Olaf Stapledon (1930).  I haven't read it but was aware of it's existence.  Allow me to check teh Interwebz.  Wowsers!  Apparently a rather dispassionate exploration of human future history, covering two billion years and eighteen different human species.  Very influential, praised by none other than Arthur C. Clarke.  Art!

     Up to 400 pages long in some editions, which averages out at five million years per page.

No. 22: A Choice Of Gods by Clifford Simak (1971).  Another nope, although I have read some of his other novels.  Allow me to dig again.  Hmmmmm so, the vast majority of Hom. Sap. vanish from Planet Earth, leaving behind scattered humans and robots, both of which evolve.  There is also mention of a super-intelligence at the centre of the universe, but not whether it is amicable or hostile.  O and the disappeared might come back.  Sounds Rapturous.  Nominated for a Hugo Award, so it must have quite a bit of merit behind it.  Art!

Beyond the robot, I have no idea.

No. 21: Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984).  Yes!  One of the most influential sci-fi novels of the last 40 years and which practically invented the cyberpunk scene.  I can see it on one of my (seven) bookcases from here.  Art!

My favouritest cover art

     The bare bones of the plot involve a lone-wolf hacker, Case, who is hired to carry out a complex and dangerous infiltration, without knowing exactly whom he is working for and that it might be fatal to find out.  The society he lives in is an urban hellscape dystopia, like that of 'Blade Runner' but with more fog than rain.  Gibson covers human augmentation, stand-alone AIs, Turing Police to monitor said AIs, mega-corporations more powerful than governments, and 'cyberspace', a word Gibson invented.  Well worth reading to see what started it all.  No film, but an Apple television series is said to be in production.  Hmmmm <wallet squeaks in anguish>.

No 20: Dune by Frank Herbert (1965).  Another Yes!  Conrad had seen the striking Bruce Pendleton cover illustration for many years, and if Art will put down his anthracite sandwich -

     There you go. Ornithopters, a spice harvester, and Fremen, showing their blue eyes.  I have seen the David Lynch film but not the two more recent ones, and there's also an old mini-series knocking around the ether.

     The plot is too convoluted to describe in detail, so I'll skim.  The novel centres around Paul Atreides, heir to the house of Atreides, his life on the spice-planet Arrakis, and how he becomes a messianic leader of the native Fremen, incredibly hard-bitten desert warriors.  Herby mixes in a ton of politics, ecology and human evolution.  There is also an intruigingly-mentioned 'Butlerian Jihad' after which robots appear to have been completely and permanently banned.  Art!

No. 19:  Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (1969).  Conrad is pretty certain he's read this one, too.  It picks up the story 12 years after the original, and might be summed up as 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown', as all the other political groups across the galaxy combine to attempt to bring Paul down.  IIRC there was something about taking a poison and converting into non-poison and an infant form of the sandworm, but it was over 40 years ago.  Art!

     Conrad is of the opinion that you don't need to read anything beyond the original, and certainly not the spin-offs that were never written by Herby himself.

     We will leave it there.  Don't be fretful, we still have 18 works to go.

Algorithm, Are You Feeling Unwell?

I refer to the Twitter algorithm, which keeps on pimping 'Abebooks' when there is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to do so.  Buying books is not a problem for me, believe it.  Also, what on earth?  Art!

     This, lest ye be unaware, is an oscilloscope.  Conrad last used one back in his college days, which were decades ago, and has never needed to bother about them since.  So - why does the Youtube algorithm keep showing adverts for them?  Art!

     There's a man happy with his oscilloscope.  Good for him.  I hope they have a long and fruitful relationship BUT I DON'T NEED ONE! Art?

    At least we now know what 'DPO' stands for.

Back To The Romanian Rascal

More of 'Daractenus' on Twitter and his satirical listing of must-see Ruffian cities in Mordorvia.  Art!

     Extra-large so you can rejoice in exquisite detail.  Here we see Makhachkala, a port town in Dagestan, one of the poorest and most squalid oblasts in Ruffia.  No, it hasn't been bombed silly by Ukrainian drones, this is the port on a good day.  I can do no better than copy Daractenus' caption.

Famous for its skyline and not so much for its public sanitation system and with just enough criminality to distinguish itself as a city that never sleeps, Makhachkala is a must among those looking to see what is likely to be the next place to start a pandemic.

     Savage, and don't forget English is not his first language.

A Little Domestic Development

Conrad isn't aware if you keep tabs on his life, so you may have skimmed last week's blog about visiting 'Vision Express' to get a new prescription for glasses.  Today I went into Babylon-Lite ('Oldham' if we're being formal) to pick them up, and here they are.  Art!

     Note the stark contrast between my snowy-white hair and the black frames, and the utterly humourless expression.  They're varifocals, which takes a bit of getting used to when shifting from near to far, and they tint in direct sunlight, which they did when I took Edna for trotties.

Back To Food And Drink

Yes, more details from 'Supplying The British Army In The First World War' by Janet Macdonald.  

     Teuton prisoners of war (hereafter POWs) who had been captured and put in camps had to be fed, because Great Britain (ha! take that, Lavrov!) did not starve their captives.  They got a lesser scale of bread and meat but still got it.  Also supplied were sprats, salted herring, potatoes, rice and oatmeal.  No detail supplied as to whether they made porridge with the oats.  The bread ration for Teuton POWs was changed to the black bread they ate at home, rather than British white loaves.  Art!

Teuton POWs not doing too badly

     Conrad hadn't thought about this, but differing religions in the British and Indian armies needed to be accommodated, as Hindus wouldn't eat beef nor Muslims eat pork.  Jewish soldiers in France and Flanders got no such disposition, but the three battalions Britain raised in Palestine were allowed to have kosher rations, which was fine as they could be sourced locally.  Three battalions only amounted to 3,000 men at most, whereas there were about 50,000 Jews serving in the British army in France and Flanders, and precious few local sources, as the French Jewish population was at highest estimate 120,000.

Finally -

From my 'QI Book Of Banter'.  Just to be controversial, and to poke fun at a humourless old git.

"An Islamic regime must be serious in every field.  There are no jokes in Islam.  There is no humour in Islam.  There is no fun in Islam."  Ayatollah Khomeini.

Coal E-Scent

All Will Become Clear

Or, it won't.  One or the other.  

     Imagine how fantastic it would be if you could, indeed, smell the delicious and enticing scent of lignite via teh Interwebz!  A technological breakthrough that would add a new dimension to adverts about food, sewage processing and nappies.  Perhaps not that last.  Harley-Davidson's 'Eau De Toilette' might never have failed if it had been smelt by potential buyers.  Art!

     Sorry to rain on your parade.  You see, we are still detailing that list of 68 mind-melting books as listed by 'Sci-Fi Odyssey'.

No.  29 Coalescent by Stephen Baxter (2003).  Nope, never heard of it.  In case you were wondering, and even if you weren't, 'Coalescent' means 'To unite or come together in one body or mass.'  Yes, it has Latin roots, which is apt, since the plot concerns a female hive-mind based in Rome, which the protagonist accidentally stumbles across.  They are, of course - obviously! - a threat to Hom. Sap. because if all they wanted to do was hug and hand out flowers the story would be over by Page 15.  I dunno if it's quite my cup of tea, though I have read and been entertained by other SB novels.

No. 28: The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula Le Guin (1972).  It is?  Funny, I always thought the word for world was 'world'.  This one sounds very much like a product of it's time, with echoes of the Vietnam Unpleasantness.  You have Hom. Sap. who have arrived on the planet Athshe, which is an anagram of 'Sheath', in order to violently and brutally oppress the natives, the pacific Athsheans.  O and exploit the planet's natural resources.  Did I mention violently and brutally oppress the natives?  Who later on rebel in a highly aggressive manner, because of the violently and brutally oppress the natives attitude of Hom. Sap.  Nuance laid on with a shovel.  Art!

No. 27:A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (1960).  Art!

    The story of a Catholic monastery that acts as a repository of scientific knowledge in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a global nuclear war.

     That makes is sound far more exciting than it is, because Conrad found it wretchedly boring and will never pick it up and waste a day of my life reading it.

No. 26: The Man In The Maze by Robert Silverberg (1969).  Nope, no idea.  Let me check.  Ah, one of those social commentary sci-fi novels Silverberg wrote, that stand apart from the entertaining ones.  This one is about a solitary exile who cannot stand to be near people, just as they cannot stand to be near him. thanks to the mental repulsion field he emits.  What a peach!  Art!

     He is sent as sole envoy to an alien species invading the Milky Way.  From the blurb we don't find out if he was successful or not or whether Hom. Sap. is doomed.  COP OUT!  How to say 'I built up a plot that I couldn't resolve' without saying 'I built up a plot that I couldn't resolve'.

No. 25: Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg (1972).  Ah, now, this one sounds interesting.  I am aware of it, just never read it.  In a clever inversion, Ol' Bob explores what it means to a telepath when they begin to lose their powers, rather than repeat another variant of 'And Then I Got ESP'.  There's also a strikingly horrid cover, which I will try to find.  Art!

     Nothing to do with the plot, yet striking.  It concerns David Selig, a man who has used his telepathic powers for selfish gain - who can blame him? - and now has to redefine himself as those powers fade and become unreliable.  Ironically, it may be this loss that makes him a better person.  A work very well-regarded in the field.

No. 24: Vornan-19 by Robert Silverberg (1968).  Also known as 'The Masks Of Time'.  I have read this one, and remember the ending.  Art!

The edition I had

     

     Vornan-19 mysteriously arrives from nowhere in Rome 1998, floating to a landing on the Spanish Stairs.  He claims to be from the year 2999, from a verrrry different civilisation, where neither capitalism nor money exist any longer.  People can tell he's human as he arrives naked.

     The protagonist, whom I think is Leo, is sceptical about Vornan's claims and wonders if he's just out to cause chaos for shizzles and giggles; then again, he might be from the future, but is he telling the truth about it?

     SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER  Wildly adulated and idolated by your average Hom. Sap. Vornan is touring Rio De Janeiro, using a personal energy shield to prevent him being crushed or mobbed.  The sheild fails, the hysterical crowd fall on him and his body is never recovered.  Leo ponders about the shield's failure; if Vornan was a genuine time-traveller, might another time-traveller be sent back to stop him mucking up the timelines?  Art!

     I think that's enough for Saturday's first Intro, even as I type this on Thursday night.  Sooner-sooner, that's me.

I Think I Know The Appropriate Meme For This

First of all, we need the artwork, so if that semi-sentient scrofulous sack of sago, Art, will put down his bowl of coal -

Elong Tusk may have to busk

     Because people have short memories, that's over six years since the Coronavirues made it's unwelcome appearance.  Art!

     No wonder he has that 'Licking Marmite off a nettle was a mistake' face.

Food And Drink

Because we all need them, despite those bampots who insist they live on sunlight.

     ANYWAY I am cribbing a lot of statistics from Janet Macdonald's minor opus 'Supplying The British Army In The First World War'.  When the BEF had assembled in France, by the end of 1914 it had 324,000 men to feed and water.  By the Armistice in November of 1918 it was 2,973,690.   Daily consumption rates were:

Bread: 20 ounces per man.  Or, 180 tons daily for the whole 1914 BEF.  By 1918 this came to 1,690 tons per diem.

Meat:  17 ounces per man.  Or, 153 tons daily in 1914, and 1,436 in 1918.

Vegetables: 10 ounces per man.  Or, 90 tons per day in 1914, and 885 tons in 1918.

Sugar: 3 ounces per man.  Or, 27 tons in 1914 and 250 tons in 1918.

Jam: 3 ounces per man.  Or, 27 tons in 1914 and 250 tons in 1918.  Art!

     Also issued daily were:  Condensed Milk: 1 ounce; Tea, 1/2 ounce; Mustard 1/20 ounce; Pepper 1/36 ounce.  No I am not going to work out the totals, do it yourself if you're so bothered.

 By these totals ye shall know how important logistics are.

     Ol' Jan doesn't go into water supply for humans until the last chapter, but Conrad did a bit of number crunching, using the guesstimate total of 5 pints of water per man per day.  This may seem on the high side but remember this is the whole BEF we're talking about, including forces in Salonika, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Mesopotamia, which balances things out.  That means 723 tons in 1914 and 6,758 tons in 1918.  PER DAY!

More Gentle Shoeing

Or, 'Making Mordorvia More Miserable'.  Whilst Barad-Dur has been hit by the worst winter snowstorms in 200 years, the Kamchatka peninsula in far eastern Siberia has had them just as bad, the worst in over 130 years.

     HOWEVER! there are a plethora of AI slop videos circulating on Twitter, which I'm not going to bother with.  One shows orcs sliding down a snow slope from the top of their apartment block.  In reality they'd be more likely to plunge straight from the top to street level and smother.  Art!

     The cars in this clip were buried and dug out three times.  The road in Petropavlovsk is cleared by snow ploughs only twice - the city cannot afford to maintain civilian infrastructure and has been completely paralysed, with bread and milk running out at logistics fail.

     Blimey.  Even nature hates the orcs.

Finally -

Let's end it with a definition from Ambrose G. Bierce.

"Abatis,n: Rubbish placed in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside."

Art!

Abatis

Is It Wise To Start With A Question?

Like That One?

Or this one?

     The reason I ask is because lo! we're continuing with that unexpectedly long and fruitful list of the 68 most mind-melting sci-fi books as seen on 'Sci-Fi Odyssey's Youtube channel.  What is the next on the list at Number 36?  Art!

     That's a whacking big clue.

     "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick (1968).  Yes, I have read it, though only the one time.  There is a plot twist half-way through that absolutely threw me for a loop until it was resolved, but I'm going to be coy and not explain what it is.  I have also seen 'Blade Runner' and am old enough that it was at the cinema, and 'Blade Runner 2049', too.  Ridley Scott, the director, and Jordan Cronenwerth, the cinematographer, crafter an absolute classic that is one of the most influential modern sci-fi films evah.  PKD died before it was released in cinemas, but had been invited to view daily rushes and asked 'How did you get inside my head?' because what was on-screen was how he viewed the novel.

     The original title would very definitely have baffled potential audiences, so the phrase 'Blade Runner' was used instead, pinched from a different novel title and because Scotty liked the sound of it.  Art!

No. 35: Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022).  Never heard of it.  From the blurb about it, being a novel about a female chemist becoming a cook show host, it doesn't even belong on this list.  Art!

     And so we move on.

No. 34: Children Of God by Mary D. Russell (1998).  Yes, a sequel to 'The Sparrow' by the very same author.  The sole surviving protagonist of the original first contact mission gone horribly wrong is sent back to the same planet, Rakhat, presumably with more people accompanying him.  Wev.

No. 33: Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937).  No!  Not Simon Cowell's biography.  Look at the date you borks*.  No, I have not read this one.  I have read 'Odd John', about a Homo Superior with finger joints that work both ways, and

     ANYWAY this is one of those books that tackles Big Themes and which seems to have been profoundly influential on later authors such as Lewis and Clarke.  The sci-fi authors not the explorers or the television show.  Art!

     Sounds a tad indigestible to Conrad.  No doubt there'll be a paucity of exotic green-skinned alien females and gigantic ray guns <sad face>.

No. 32: A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992).  Hmmm you know that name sounds like a pseudonym.  I mean, have you ever met anyone called 'Vernor' before?  Me neither.  He al

     ANYWAY AGAIN I remember reading one of his earlier works, having got it cheap as a remainder in John Menzies.  Unfortunately I cannot remember that title, but checking with a quick bit of Google-fu means that it definitely wasn't AFUTD.  Art!

     It has an intriguing premise: that the Milky Way galaxy is divided into concentric 'Zones Of Thought' that affect biological or machine intelligence, from the 'Utmost Depths' to the 'Transcend'.  Plus there is a rogue super-AI intent on galactic conquest.  Ha!  I remember when it was all evil emperors and their minions.  Darth Vader, you have been supplanted by software.

No. 31: The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert (1977).  Yes, he did write other sci-fi books, and I have read a couple.  Is this one of them?  I shall check.  Aha!  No.  One of the other books of his I've read is 'Whipping Star', and TDE is set in the same universe and features the same protagonist, whom I seem to recall had been married fifty or sixty times.  Glutton for punishment.  Art!

     The 'Dosadi' of the title is a planet, and the experiment is to create humans and aliens who are incredibly tough and violent and vengeful and vicious and even vituperative, at which point I've run out of 'v' words.  The experiment succeeds too well, threatening the bampot civilisation that created it in the first place.  

No 30: Between The Strokes Of Night by Charles Sheffield (1985).  Another I've never heard of.  Let me see what the precis is.  Wait one.  Art!

   The first part is set in 2010, when a global nuclear holocaust destroys Earth and it's civilisation.  Ooops.  Those who survive this are revived from their suspended animation in the 277th century, where Hom. Sap. now lives in space colonies.  Probably a bit jaw-dropping for the survivors.

     Okay, that's a good place to stop.  Your Humble Scribe must say he didn't think he'd get this much juice out of the list, and we still have another 38 books to go, with my citric descriptions to match.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Someone Ran This Through ChatGPT To Translate

I think I got this image from Twitter but I've not credited anyone's Tweet nor copied any text, so that's partly guesswork.  Art!

     I'd be verrry wary, were I an orc, of taking any of this as factual or accurate.  'Making attitude to safe troops' perhaps means that the orcs commanders value their men's lives and seek to protect them, which is about as far as you can get from objective reality.  Most Ruffian officers are out to get rich from bribery and extortion, being so crooked they make lawyers look honest.  'Accepted with diseases' means that having a highly-contagious infection need not bar you from a short career in the Ruffian military, where you can generously spread it to your compatriots.  Art!

  
     Thanks to 'Beefeater' over on Twitter for bringing this to light.  These are exactly what they look like - wooden stakes, made of ash, vampires, fighting for the use of.  Their purchase quadrupled in 2025, possibly for second-line troops in Ukraine when a gun would be too expensive, especially if it was used to fire bullets.  There has also been an uptick in the sale of voodoo dolls.  Art!

just a possibility .....

Further To That -

Mordorvia might be battling in Ukraine with that country as the most direct threat to the orcses, but which country lives rent-free in their collective head?  Art!

     You see, GREAT BRITAIN <knowing this will irritate Lavrov most violently> has overtaken South Canada as Barad-Dur's primary opponent, at least as long as the Flabby Farting Fraudster survives.  The television host Solovyev routinely drools at his fantasies of destroying the Allotment Of Eden with nuclear missiles, never once mentioning to his audience that the Allotment Of Eden also had nuclear missiles, SLBM ones on Vanguard submarines that would glass Western Ruffia in 30 minutes.  To formalise this 

"It appears that Russia considers the UK one of its top Western intelligence targets” thanks to its close relationship with the US, and because it is seen as central to the Western anti-Russian lobby, according to a 2020 UK Intelligence and Security Committee report."

      Nothing more than the truth.  Despite having different political parties in charge with different leaders, GREAT BRITAIN has consistently supported Ukraine with weapons, training, money and political clout, exercising that Mordorvia no longer has: extensive soft power.

     They also hate us for having 007, who is cooler than a fridge factory in the Arctic.  AND for not having any Ruffian authors on that list of 68 works**.

     Don't mention the Crimean War -

You Have To Ask What Were They Thinking Or Drinking?

Moving from the heavy themes and topics of sci-fi, Mordorvia and clueless vampire killers, let us revisit one of the 'Museum Of Failure's entries.  This one would appeal to Col, the biker, who began our rounds of drinking in Wool with the signature phrase 'Harley's are <short rude word for excrement redacted>!'  Harley's are those monstrous motorbikes that middle-aged men buy to prove they are still young and dangerous.  They wish!  Art?

     Yes, a perfume.  This sounds as wise as Colgate's frozen meals.  HD tried to diversify in the mid-90s, bringing out products such as Christmas ornaments and baby clothes.  They were not a success and HD still has trouble retaining it's core customer base, whom violently objected to the brand being both trivialised and commercialised.

WHAT BLASPHEMY IS THIS!!!

I will not apologise for using THREE exclamation marks, as I am shocked to my core.  Art!

     <gags in horrified silence, too shocked to verbalise how anathema this is>

     When I take over, this will become an offence punishable by at least five years in prison with mandated tea-brewing courses.

     Conrad will go downstairs and pat and stroke his teapots in case they feel sad or neglected.

Finally -

No Biercisms as we are waaaay over count.

CYA!

*  Like a dork yet more so.

**  I may be reaching a bit here.

Slaves O' Effect

I Know What You're Thinking

"Ha!  This is Conrad trying to all poetical with deliberately missing out letters and substituting an apostrophe"

     Except No.

     What you see here is but an anagram, which, if I can plug it into the AI Art Generator - 

     You see, we are back at the next portion of that '68 Mind-Mashing Mish-Up Manuscripts' from the channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey' and you'll see the hilarious derivation of today's title. I have to confess this Intro serial has gone on for longer than I imagined it would, as Your Humble Scribe has plenty to say on this list.

No. 42: The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov (1954).  The 'Slaves O' Effect' anagram revealed.  I remember this novel as it was always, always, always, promoted in the blurb section at the back of every Panther paperback from 1970 onwards.  Art!

     This is a combination of dysopian future crossed with a policier, where a human detective must co-operate with a robot detective to solve a murder.  No, I have not read it but may get around to it in the future, which is probably a motif Ol' Isaac lived by.  The Earth of this fiction has a population of over 8 billion, mostly living underground in order to cope with their hideous dystopian future, except here we are living in 2026 with - 8 billion persons.  Go figure.

41:  This Island Earth by Raymond Jones (1952):  A turn up for the books, Conrad did not realise that there was a novel that preceded the film, as I have not read it.  Art!

     In case you have been living alongside Luther Largreeves on the Moon, TIE deals with sinister inscrutable aliens from Metaluna whom recruit Hom. Sap. unknowingly into their interplanetary war versus Zagon.  Unlike contemporary fiction, in TIE the Metalunans are repellent authoritarian dictators whom are in the last stages of losing a war against their Zagonian enemy, and are not missed when they get SPOILERED.  Exeter, whom proves to be the principled moral exception, is SPOILERED.  We have put up illos of TOI as examples of matte work in film, which you ought to pay attention to.  We have to also pay tribute to the Metalutant mutant that suffers a fatal interplanetary hangover.  Art!

YOU NEED A HELMET MATE

40: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005).  Reading the plot seems to inform of slaves of defect.  I haven't read it myself.  It tells of unaware clones raised to be organ-banks for recipients, who only gradually discover their reason  for being.  A laugh-fest it does not resemble.  In fact, having read the precis there doesn't seem to be any good reason to read the rest of the thing.  Worthy But Dull.

39: Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015).  Never heard of it.  Time travel fiction?  Allow me to peruse teh Interwebz. Nope.  It also involves lots of spiders, so no thank you and let's move on.  Art!

38: Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989).  Ha!  I read a paperback of this only a couple of years ago and remember exactly what it's about.  Mostly exactly.  Part exactly.  Okay, okay, there was a crewless ship and a monster and 'dissection tables' and people off on an odyssey.   Art!

     Despite my rather shallow description I do remember enjoying this work so we may come back to purchase more Simmons <wallet squeaks yet again and is ignored>.

 No. 37: The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams (2002).  Not only have I not heard of it, Conrad does not want to have anything to do with it.  This sounds like the kind of pseudo nonsense that makes people point and laugh, alongside the worries of what 'Secondary Intellect' might be.  Art!

a

     Apparently about an AI that delivers superabundance, wish-fulfilment and the cure for male-pattern baldness, this one asks questions about what else Hom. Sap. would need to feel content.  'A pint and another woman' as I remember one of my compatriots on the catering crew in Stepping Hill. Yes he was male and single as you speculate. 

     I note that this is the inverse of 'Roko's Basilisk', which is a frankly judgemental and punitive AI intent on delivering Old Testament punishment on Hom. Sap. for being Hom. Sap.  Let us all root for Prime!  Art?

     Nuclear Spinach Pig Force Attacks the Moon.  Or something.

    Time to move onto more serious matters*.  Well, more serious matters in retrospec.  I have a feeling 'Nuclear Spinach Pig Attack Force' is going to be seen in the future.  As in "Only NUCLEAR SPINACH PIG FORCE ATTACK can save us now", Harry Harrison where are you when we need you!

More Misery For Mordorvia!

A bad day for Ruffia is generally a good day for the rest of the world.  This time it's not military incompetence, economic woe or political nonsense, more geopolitical in nature.  Art!

     This is the Qumishi airbase in Syria.  You ought to recall that the barbarous Assad regime there went toes-up at the end of 2024, meaning Ruffia lost one of it's allies in the Middle East.  They lost the port of Tartarus, their only warm water port.  Now the Syrian government seems to have laid down strict edicts about the orc's presence in Syria, because the entire airbase is being evacuated.  Not only have they lost a political ally, now their presence on the ground is gone.  This will be glum news for the orcs who were based there, as they can now be sent as sunflower-fodder to Ukraine.  Ruffia: transitioning from a global power to a local one <points and laughs>.

Once Again, Fire That Sub-Editor

Conrad is impressed with how nonchalant various media employees are, thinking that arcane jargon will be understood immediately by all.

     Not so!  Art?

'Steam dev Valve' makes absolutely no sense to a casual reader.  Is that a typo for 'Stream'?   Who or what is 'dev'?  Let me show you a valve - Art!

     No, I am not going to click on the link.  I shall merely sit and fume silently.

Conrad Is ANGRY! (Yes Again)

It might be time to pause the merciful use of the Remote Nuclear Tormentor and revert to the Remote Nuclear Detonator.  Art!!

     A thing of beauty, isn't it?

     ANYWAY AGAIN let me list the monstrosities that the Codeword compilers have dared to us.

EXIGIBLE:  I mean, what?  Conrad is widely read yet has never come across this word before, making it hard to solve.  It's not even in my Collins Concise, for heavens sake!  Must I resort to teh Interwebz?  Well, if I must - "Able to be charged or levied" when applied to taxes.  Ah!  Like tariffs.  Art!

Tony The Tariff Toad

OHMS: No!  Nothing to do with 'On His Majesty's Secret -'.  It a unit of electrical resistance, named after the Teuton physicist Georg Simon Ohm.  Talk about obscure.  Conrad has studied physics and electronics which I why I got it immediately, but I am concerned about the rest of you intellectual lubbers.  Art!

An Ohmmeter

KIBBUTZ: Referring to my CCED, "A collective agricultural settlement in modern Israel, owned and administered communally by it's members which I am well aware of, given that some of my compatriots at work have been to work on one.  HOWEVER! in glowing neon letters ten feet tall, how unfair is it to hurl Hebrew at a Codeword solver?  I feel a letter to the ICC coming on.  Art!

A kibbutz

Finally -

Let's go out with another Biercism.

"Saw, n: a trite popular saying or proverb.  So called because it makes it's way into a wooden head.  Following are examples of old saws with new teeth.

Where there's a will there's a won't

Strike while your employer has a big contract

Least said is soonest disavowed

Example is better than following it."

*HAH!