Autopope! — LiveJournal
Sep. 10th, 2017
05:18 pm - A concise history of Asperger's Syndrome (NIH)
A Concise History of Asperger Syndrome: The Short Reign of a Troublesome Diagnosis (Front Psychol. 2015; 6: 2024.
Published online 2016 Jan 25. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02024): "it was not before 1994 that Asperger Syndrome (AS) was included in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, only to disappear in the Manual’s fifth edition in 2013".
I was born in 1964 so already an adult (aged 29-30) before Asperger's was officially A Diagnosis, so I've never been evaluated for it.
But: "... characterized by: social isolation and lack of reciprocity in social interactions; normal or precocious language acquisition, with above-average linguistic skills but subtle abnormalities of verbal and non-verbal communication (e.g., atypical syntax, pedantic vocabulary and absent or stereotyped prosody); a narrow focus of interests, often restricted to unpragmatic and highly original themes; overachievement in specific cognitive domains; and motor clumsiness ..." pretty much sums up my childhood, and a whole lot of my life seems to be consistent with this.
I'm now irritably wondering if I'm imagining things or I am a little bit aspie. (A couple of online screening questionnaires suggest that yes, I do indeed exhibit enough of the symptoms to suggest a diagnosis.) Trouble is, it's a very vague diagnosis and it's been over-used — and ab-used — so much I'm not convinced it's useful. (Also: I'm nearly 53! If I am somewhere on the spectrum, then so what? The halfway point is somewhere in my rear view mirror. Maybe it's a useful clue about things I should be mindful of and try to do better, but pinning a name on an odd bunch of personal habits isn't going to change my life.)
Afterthought: On the other hand, this might well explain why any prediction I make about politics is worth what you paid for it (i.e. nothing); my theory of mind is based on simulation, rather than emulation, of neurotypical thought processes, and is prone to simulation error. (Yes, I write fiction about people as a useful way of working out how people think, why do you ask?)
Aug. 18th, 2017
12:59 pm - So, plans
I have a head-cold. And a panel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to get through tonight. Happy joy.
However.
Once that's done, my to-do list looks like this:
* Finish redrafting "Bank Robber" (a Wild Cards novelette for a forthcoming UK-setting Wild Cards anthology).
* Finish checking the page proofs for "Dark State" (book two of the "Empire Games" trilogy).
* Pivot time: I have until October 31st to finish a first draft of "The Labyrinth Index", Laundry Files book 9 (now at 11,000 words and waiting). There will be a lot of this on the crit filter on this DW account real soon now, including brainstorming and chunks for tire-kicking.
* Some time in December I need to start re-writing "Invisible Sun" (book three of "Empire Games"). The first quarter is okay, but the last half is very weak; too many talking heads, not enough mushroom clouds. Deadline: end of February.
* After that, it's time to rewrite the second half of "Ghost Engine", the space opera, for July 2018 submission.
So, not much work, right?
Anyway. Getting through the redraft of "Bank Robber" and the page proofs will take me a few days. But thereafter, if you're a regular beta reader, expect the traffic here to get a lot more intense. And in particular: I need help establishing what a modern HUMINT operation directed at the USA (under a horrible not-quite-a-coup insurgent government) by the UK (which presumably isn't in the business of spying on its closest ally) might look like, post-CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN ...
Jul. 9th, 2017
05:13 pm - Persistence
Go bag mostly packed and ready against emergency call: I can be on a train south at about 60-90 minutes' notice.
Blockages: my dental bridgework fell out yesterday. It's been working its way loose for six months, and has survived 23 years in my mouth — it can be glued back in, but I need to book an appointment. Also, I have an ophthalmology check-up on Tuesday and a reading/signing on Wednesday evening and a car that needs maintenance. All of this can be deferred in event of dad's decline accelerating, but I'd rather not.
Persisting at pretending to work: I did a Tor.com blog piece for this week's book launch, and a long email to $ANTHOLOGY_EDITOR about requested changes to the novelette (it's a solid first draft but needs some more work). Need to do a piece for my own blog, but it's kind of difficult to focus on blogging without self-exposure. As my blog is a public showcase, I don't want to drag my family life out under the spotlight.
May. 21st, 2017
09:21 pm - Dear Internet, please do my homework ...
(Am about to go away so may be tardy replying ...)
I have a file containing a list of twitter usernames, one per line, viz:
@user1
@user2
@user3
...
And I want to use it to generate a file containing twitter IDs, one per line, viz something like this:
814925411520016384
864529275931807744
251743889
115648424
781640178922360832
864152693199208448
...
Anyone got any pointers for how to do this in Perl (preferably) or, failing that, Python, Ruby, Lua, or some other scripting language on OSX (preferably) or Linux?
For added bonus points I want to block and mute forever every name in the list (by uploading the CSV file to Settings & Privacy -> Blocked Accounts in the Twitter prefs).
(I haven't done any coding in so long that my rust has fossilized, and I know nothing about the Twitter public APIs, so I figured I should ask first because it seems to me that blocking lists of advertisers, gamergaters, and similar must be pretty much the Twitter API equivalent of "Hello, World".)
May. 16th, 2017
07:49 pm - Two bits of news from Trumpistan
I don't normally discuss politics on my DW/LJ, but today the WTF?!? factor is just too high to miss out.
1. According to the NYTimes, the intel Trump burned to the Russian ambassador came from Israel. By implication, Mossad has/had an agent inside Islamic State.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
2. For an encore: Trump will give a major speech on the Islamic faith during his upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia over lunch with the leaders of 50 muslim nations.
I see no way this can possibly go wrong.
Apr. 5th, 2017
01:30 pm - Moving from LJ to Dreamwith in the next couple of days
Livejournal has officially jumped the shark.
I am therefore preparing to migrate my old LJ over to Dreamwidth (here); then we'll see what happens.
Right now this DW account is not locked down; it's publicly visible. I want anyone who follows me on LJ to be able to find me again over here. I will take my DW account private again in due course; it exists primarily to stay in touch with some folks and to act as a forum for kicking the tires on writing works-in-progress rather than as my public blogging face.
NB: While I migrate my LJ account across, and while the DW account is world-readable, I'll be disabling download access to the work of fiction in progress from my own server (to prevent risk of inadvertent side-leakage). I'll restore it once I've set up a new crit filter on DW and confirmed everything is secure.
If there are enough of you on DW to make it viable, I'll continue to do the fiction test stuff here. If not, I'll have to think about alternatives. I won't delete my LJ account for good until I've worked out what I'm doing in that area and publicized it, so not for a month or two yet.
If you want to add me to your circle, post a comment here (and remind me who you are/where you know me from).
Dec. 20th, 2016
03:49 pm - Ahem.
Apparently there is Laundry Files fanfic on Archive Of Our Own. And there's going to be more of it over the next few days. Just saying!
Jan. 11th, 2011
11:35 am - AKILJ: Minneapolis
I couldn't point to Minneapolis on a map, and I've never been there before.
Going there in April.
What is there to do and see there? And what are the goth/alternative, microbrew, and SF scenes like?
curiousSep. 2nd, 2010
10:23 am - LJ/Facebook
Just a quick note that the fastest way you can get me to unfriend you is to cross-post anything in this LJ on Facebook.
I haven't cross-connected my FB identity to my LJ. There is a reason for this.
Mar. 10th, 2010
10:23 am - Hugo nomination pimpage
Just so you know -- the Hugo nominations are closing this weekend -- my 2009 eligible publications are:
Novel: The Revolution Business, Tor, 2009 (hah bloody hah)
Novella: Palimpsest (collected in Wireless, Ace, 2009)
Novelette: Overtime (Tor.com, Dec. 2009)
Semiprozine: Charlie's Diary
(Next year will hopefully have a bit more stuff ...)
Jan. 23rd, 2010
10:05 pm - Facebook
A reminder, folks:
I don't use Facebook.
I just logged in to tighten up the privacy settings on my account -- because they mass-emailed everyone who hadn't logged in in the past few months -- and found 65 people had tried to friend me. Well, I just bounced them all. Because I don't use Facebook, have no intention of using Facebook, and don't have time for Facebook. If you were one of them, it's not personal -- it's a blanket refusal on my part to be sucked in to a system that has an invasive and insidious attitude to its users' privacy.
The only reason I have a Facebook account is to make it difficult for an impersonator to open an account in my name.
annoyedNov. 17th, 2009
05:13 pm - Service Interruptus
As of this morning, www.antipope.org (and www.prattle.net) is down. (I discovered this on getting home from Nottingham.) The machine is kernel panicking on boot before it gets as far as showing a login, with what smells suspiciously like filesystem corruption.
I'm making this post public in case anyone needs to contact me. Mail to @antipope.org will not get through (my gmail back door is, however, fine).
Tech support is poking at it ...
From bad to worse: $SYSADMIN booted it off a networked rescue filesystem and tried to run fsck on one or other of the partitions in the (mirroring) RAID set. After barfing up a few errors while running fsck the kernel panics.
This may mean memory/motherboard/cpu issues. So $SYSADMIN is first building a newer (latest) kernel to try again; if that fails he's going to stick the drives in a new machine tomorrow morning and see if things work any better. But one way or the other, we're probably down (no web or email service) until tomorrow morning. Worst case, we have to rebuild from scratch.
(Memo to self: try to remember that RAID is not a backup strategy, m'kay?)
It never rains but it pours: Frigg just barfed copiously in my office -- I had no idea a cat's stomach could hold so much stuff -- then went into the living room and pissed on one of 
feorag's shirts. On interrogation, $CAT-SITTER couldn't recall seeing more than one pile of Frigg-turds in the litter tray over the five-day period of our absence. Chore #1 for tomorrow is therefore to take Frigg to the vet in the morning (or to the 24 hour emergency clinic if things take a turn for the worse overnight): I strongly suspect constipation, and while it's not immediately life-threatening (like urinary retention) it needs treatment.
NB: I seem to be surrounded by malfunctioning instances of classes beginning with 'c'. Just hope the Volvo starts in the morning ...
annoyedAug. 16th, 2009
11:35 am - WARNING: do not enter septic tank without oxygen cylinder and breathing equipment!
(Unlocked for wider circulation. If you're new here, note: my LJ is almost always friends-locked.)
In case you were wondering why I haven't commented on the shit-storm stirred up by John C. Wright's bizarre effusions, it's not for lack of an opinion on the matter. I've run across him on the net before, and -- bluntly -- this is nothing new. So I've learned to tune him out.
But I note that a lot of folks are now standing on the seats and shouting. And I have a feeling that they don't quite understand what they're shouting at, or why the strange man has shat his pants on stage and is whirling them around his head at the audience.
John C. Wright is a fifty-something novelist who, a couple of years ago, had a heart attack.
Prior to the heart attack, he was an Objectivist. In the wake of his heart attack, which (not unreasonably) he perceived as a life-changing moment, he Got Religion, of a particularly doctrinaire fundamentalist variety.
Note the progression: Objectivism -> heart attack/warning of impending mortality -> Born-Again Christianity.
Objectivism goes beyond mere politicial philosophy towards -- in its incarnation as a movement -- the trappings of a religious cult. Heart attacks, once survived, tend to remind us of our mortality (a trait which the explicitly atheist Objectivist philosophy doesn't address). And so one rapidly proceeds from one memetic infection to another.
Those who argue with Mr Wright are making the fundamental mistake of assuming there's something to be argued with here. Rather, what we're seeing is the rather sad sight of an insecure authoritarian personality -- who can't function without the crutch of a prescriptive ideology or religion -- trying to adapt as the shadows of old age and death close in around him. Because the new ideological life-belt he's found and is clinging to expands by requiring its carriers to spread it around, he's doing his level best to obey its prime directive -- but because he doesn't understand how other people think about belief -- or function in its absence -- he's not terribly effective. (In fact, he's doing a bloody awful job of it. Given the level of background homophobia and sexism in western society today, anyone who identifies as genderqueer has had to square the circle of their own feelings and the authoritarian default settings, and will consequently not be terribly receptive to Wright's message, to say the least, because he's pitching it in a tone that speaks to the authoritarian mindset: OBEY MY INVISIBLE SKY DADDY'S ORDERS, OR ELSE.)
You're not going to change his mind about anything because there's nothing there to change -- unless you can offer him a complete meme transplant in the shape of a belief system that will let him come to terms with his mortality without getting up other peoples' noses. And I'm afraid the particularly virulent strain of Christianity that's infected him is probably too deeply set to excise.
Why, oh why, can't somebody invent a memetic equivalent of antibiotics?
thoughtfulMay. 26th, 2009
12:07 am - Antipope is down again
This time it's not my fault; the UPS for the floor of the colo centre where it's hosted has died, cutting off several hundred servers. Electricians are on site, etcetera.
This wouldn't even be annoying except that the 'pope's cumulative uptime was nudging 300 days, and, er, I don't have a backup. (On the other hand, it's using a journaling filesystem so unless the UPS whoopsie blew the hard drive up we shouldn't have lost anything.)
I think the blog/website rebuild has just climbed my priority tree for stuff to do when we get home. That, and set up nightly offsite backups via rsync.
irritatedMay. 17th, 2009
10:45 am - Why antipope is inaccessible ...
I borked my DNS yesterday (uploaded the wrong -- obsolete -- version of a config file, pointing to the IP address of a server that's gone away).
A new set of DNS settings with the correct IP address has been uploaded but is taking time to propagate from my colo provider's server. Normal service should be resumed within 24 hours.
Off today to visit the Spruce Goose ...
annoyedMay. 5th, 2009
03:25 pm - Testing
This is a posting to my Dreamwidth account, crossposted to autopope on Livejournal.
And this line is an edit to the DW posting, to see if it propagates correctly to LJ.
Nov. 23rd, 2008
12:05 pm - Memo to Cat
Your displeasure at the indefinite closure of your preferred urinal (behind the back of the TV/video stack) is noted. Nevertheless, this closure is now deemed permanent for health and safety reasons (danger of electrocution).
Note: the doorway to the male food ape's office is not deemed an acceptable replacement site -- especially the laminate floor, which when thusly lubricated becomes a frictionless surface upon which the food ape's footwear fails to obtain traction, resulting in loud falling noises and much swearing.
Further use of this venue may result in a trip to the V-E-T.
annoyedMay. 27th, 2008
03:00 pm - cleaning house
Over on my Real blog I have decided, in the interests of running a civilized web salon, to Clean House. For too long, my blog's had a slight surfeit of right-wing trolls, and I'm not happy about this. So I'm working out a moderation policy ...
So far, the rules of thumb I'm looking at are:
* I, Charlie Stross, pay for this server out of my own pocket. I don't accept advertising from third parties -- insofar as there is any advertising content at all on this blog, it is advertising me. (And my writing.)
* This is my soap box. You're welcome to say anything you want -- on your own soap box. If you post here, you do so only by my consent.
* This blog is hosted on a server in London. If you post anything that may be actionable under English libel law the moderators will delete it as soon as they notice it.
* There is a line in the sand drawn between polite contradiction and ad-hominem attack. Observe it. Or else.
* The management will censor or delete anything they damn well feel like if they think it's inappropriate, trolling, or otherwise liable to drag a discussion off-topic.
* If you assert that global climate change isn't happening, that peak oil is a chimera, that the invasion of Iraq has been good for the Iraqi people, that George Bush is doing a great job, or that you don't see why abortion should be legal because surely any woman who's already pregnant can cope with it for a few more weeks[*], don't be surprised if your deathless prose is deleted. Because? We have a problem with trolls.
* There are two kinds of people in this world; those who see in black and white, and those who can cope with shades of gray. Note that black and white are also shades of grey. This blog is for the grey scale folks. We tend to take a dim view of people who deny the existence of the middle ground.
Anyone got any additional suggestions?
[*] Yes, one poster really did say that.
UPDATE: Unlocked so that james_nicoll can link to it in a good cause.
awakeMay. 2nd, 2008
10:04 am - The New Eclectics
matociquala linked to Richard Morgan's call for peace and amity within SF, and thus invited the usual ideological flame war to come roost in her LJ for a while.
Me, I read the Mundane Manifesto and felt called to write a Mundane SF novel.
(So for an encore, I had to do a Space Opera, in late Heinlein mode.)
I am sick of all these soi-disant Movements in SF. So I am hereby considering establishing my own.
My Movement is to be called the New Eclecticism, but you're very welcome to paste your own label on it and claim responsibility. (Schismatic sects welcome; the more, the merrier!) Our key tenet is to embrace and extend: "exclusivity is futile, your movement's tropes will be assimilated and remixed with gay abandon".
You, too, can be a New Eclectic! All you have to do is write something obeying the conventions of an SF movement you wouldn't normally be seen dead with. It feels weird and kind of icky at first, but as your sense of postmodern irony develops you will learn that trangressing boundaries of genre and taste can be both fun and creative! Cyberpunks? Try writing a 1960s psychedelic New Wave story, or an urban fantasy! (Better still, turn your hand to a 1960s psychedelic urban fantasy New Wave story!) Mundane SF folks? Let your hair down, strap on your, er, strap-on whatever, and indulge your filthy and ideologically impure appetite for flesh-penetrating luscious technophiliacal cyberpunk! (Fans self.) Paranormal romance folks? Just for once, how about a story where everybody is human?
We welcome splittists, schismatics, and fundamentalists of every stripe. You, too, can be part of our Official Opposition! All you have to do is denounce us as an impure, mongrel, non-serious, revisionist, or insert-other-derogatory-term-here bunch of no-hopers and you can contribute to the success of the New Eclectics by attracting attention to us! You can enjoy the self-righteous glow of puritanical zeal while knowing that secretly you're helping out!
Innovators are welcome too! If you can think of a new, strange, and hitherto inconceivable, indigestible or just plain immoral twist on SF, please contribute it! Metaphors happily mixed here! The iron jackboot may absolutely be cast into the melting pot while the fascist octopus sings its swan-song (words © and ™ by the Weasel)!
So, to reiterate: everybody is welcome to join the New Eclectics. The only rule is: Embrace and Extend. Opposition is, by definition, internal. You're one of us: live with it!
CAN HAS CHEEZBURGR NAOW?
madApr. 23rd, 2008
03:04 pm - Science question
((POSTING UNLOCKED FOR FEEDBACK AT james_nicoll's SUGGESTION))
Let us postulate a very long-lived civilization, not equipped with magic wand technologies, resident on this planet from, oh, a couple of centuries hence until the planet ceases to be inhabitable.
How long until the planet ceases to be inhabitable?
Note: this is a trick question; I am assuming that this civilization will take a very (gigayears!) long view and play astronomical billiards using repeated asteroid fly-bys to keep Earth habitable for as long as possible. Notably:
It is assumed that plate tectonics will cease at some point in the next 2Gy unless steps are taken to bring the Moon back close enough to churn things up again via tidal drag. (Otherwise Luna's going to go wandering off into solar orbit eventually.)
It is assumed that some mechanism will be needed to drag Earth out from its current 1AU orbit when the Sun enters its helium burning phase, and another planet (Mars?) will have to be expended to drop Earth back close to the Sun when it departs from the red giant phase of its life cycle.
So: what kind of radius is the water zone around the eventual white dwarf resulting from our sun going to be, and where should the Earth end up? (And, come to think about it, what kind of orbit do we need to boost it into for safety during the red giant phase?) If we stick the Earth in close orbit around a white dwarf, do I have to worry about tidal effects slowing the Earth's rotation, or radiation effects? (Pulsars are Bad Things to orbit close to, due to their magnetic fields and polar radiation jets. What's the current state of knowledge for white dwarfs?)
How long is a white dwarf likely to continue emitting heat for (at least at wavelengths suitable for terrestrial life)? Are we talking 50Gy? 100Gy? Longer? Is a 1Ty span conceivable, and if so, what sort of weird effects would we expect? (Cosmological smoothing erasing evidence of the big bang; isotope depletion in the crust -- the U238 will have decayed; that sort of thing.)
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