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1. Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:20:05 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

   • Charlie Stross

   The cool thing about @cstross's The Laundry Files series is that it posits that magic is a branch of applied computation.

   And if you understand how Turing completeness works, that means it's possible to summon Cthulhu by playing Magic the Gathering, or carefully organizing a couple million migrating crabs.

   I imagine The Laundry has a reoccurring problem of their techs treating it like the "Can it run Doom?" problem and doing Bad Ideas just to prove it's possible.

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:22:55 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross "what happened to Steve? He was supposed to help me research this transformation matrix last week"
     "oh, didn't you hear? He managed to summon The Time Worm on a TI-83 powered by a pile of moldy potatoes. Unfortunately it got summoned right into his head, so... He's out of commission, permanently."
     "oh, damn it. He was helping me see if I could cast a fireball from a pregnancy test. The CPU has JUST enough RAM to run the arcane algorithms..."

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:36:15 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • nev
     • Charlie Stross

     @nev @cstross yeah! I think that was included in my paperback of The Atrocity Archives.

   • nev (nev@bananachips.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:36:16 JST nev

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @foone @cstross have you read the short story "Down on the Farm", from the same universe?

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:37:46 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • nincodedo

     @nincodedo sorry, Turing Equivalence means it doesn't matter.

   • nincodedo (nincodedo@ocw.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 08:37:47 JST nincodedo

     in reply to

     @foone was it the regular TI-83 or the TI-83 Silver Edition? just so I can uh... avoid The Time Worm...

   • AN/CRM-114 (flyingsaceur@ioc.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 10:11:45 JST AN/CRM-114

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @foone @cstross What if the events of Doom were caused by someone getting Doom to run on the teleporter on Phobos?

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 10:11:45 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • AN/CRM-114

     @flyingsaceur @cstross definitely

   • Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 16:41:39 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • P J Evans

     @cstross @PJ_Evans can't wait

   • Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 16:41:40 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • P J Evans

     @PJ_Evans @foone You are waiting for "A Conventional Boy", coming out in January. Just saying.

   • P J Evans (pj_evans@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 16:41:41 JST P J Evans

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @foone @cstross
     He's done at least one gaming story in the Laundryverse. Then there's "Halting State", where it starts with a bank robbery in -game...

   • philpem (philpem@digipres.club)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Sep-2024 17:39:51 JST philpem

     in reply to

     @foone I have literally just started reading this series and I'm loving it. I just wish there was a way to keep the Kindle app and my paperback copy in sync...