Notices by Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)

OK, I now expect war to break out between India and Pakistan.

India just suspended the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan and the PPP's leader accuses Sharif of scapegoating Pakistan to distract from it's own internal security lapses.

In earlier years the USA would have taken an international lead to cool things off but Trump obviously won’t give a fuck about two nuclear powers going to the mattresses unless he can make bank on it.

https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/either-our-water-will-flow-or-their-blood-bilawal-bhutto-warns-india-amid-indus-waters-treaty-suspension/3822921/

Arresting judges suggests to me that the USA is speed-running 1933 now.
https://mastodon.social/@WarnerCrocker/114399095111148866

Reminder: Trump announced his China tariffs on April 10th.

It takes 30 days for a container ship from Shenzhen to arrive on the US west coast, 45 days to the east coast.

The supply chain shock will therefore really get started around May 10th and intensify through the month, reaching its peak around the beginning of June, as factories fall idle, warehouses empty, truckers are laid off, and supermarket shelves become barren …

So China won't budge before the 10th.

Why would they?

The reason you should pay attention to transphobia (even if you and everyone you know are cis):

They're the canary in the cultural coal mine: when the social atmosphere turns poisonous, it hits them first—and shortly thereafter, it'll poison you too, one way or another.

Because socially accepted bigotry *always* gets worse, if we don't stop it in its tracks immediately.

@saliaku I take it you don't do business with any corporations who require specific proprietary file formats (or you don't get paid). And you don't have a job where the best tools by a very long way only run on proprietary OS's.

Typical student thinking: alas, the grown-up world doesn't work like academia.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux (by @lproven): Turns out that Microsoft will support Windows 10 until 2032 *if* you can live without their cloud and AI bullshit: just download/install an obscure version aimed at corporate clients who want long-term support:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/windows_10_ltsc/?td=rt-3a

(I'm a macOS/Linux guy, but if I had an old Win10 box and wanted to avoid Windows 11 and Recall this would be a great way forward)

Okay, what joker had DEAD POPE on their bingo card for Easter Monday?!?

Boeing begins flying back planes refused by Chinese airlines

Beijing orders carriers to stop taking deliveries of US jets as part of its trade war strategy

(130 undelivered Boeing airliners won't now be paid for and will have to be sold off elsewhere! That's about $25-30Bn of product)

https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/3006447/boeing-begins-flying-back-planes-refused-by-chinese-airlines

#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 18 - Do you write under a pen name? Multiple? How did you choose?

As an earning-a-living trad-published novelist, my name is my brand identity. If I use a pseudonym, it wipes out ALL benefit from having a well-known "name".

If I ever go into a sales death spiral and NEED to rebrand I will do so ... but it'd reset my projected sales and therefore my book advances to entry level.

The only time I've used a 'nym was for a couple of Warhamster novelettes in 1990.

#WritersCoffeeClub Footnote: the time to use a pseudonym is when you DON'T WANT your existing brand identity to carry over to a different genre of work, or are worried about contaminating your brand by doing something your existing readers won't appreciate: eg. using the same author name for writing mens' adventure and wlw romantasy would probably get you some negative reader reviews!

But if you stay in your lane, there's no reason to do that.

I am just now imagining how "the birds and the bees" would go down if we LITERALLY explained avian and hymenopteran sex to kids:

"Most bird boys don't have a pee-pee, they just kind of shit their sperm onto their girlfriend's backside. But they're better off than bee boys, because when a bee boy finally gets together with his lady love HE EJACULATES SO HARD HIS BALLS LITERALLY EXPLODE THEN SHE PULLS HIS PEE-PEE OFF and all his intestines fall out and he dies."
https://mstdn.social/@grickle/114342826912805229

Why the USA is still heading for a DEEP recession:

Trump's 90 day tariff stay causes uncertainty—what happens next? So no sane business is going to make investment plans going forward. Or hire people. They may run existing ops at full tilt to stockpile raw materials or pile up exports ahead of the deadline, but all new plans are on hold for 3 months.

That ALONE is a recession. Business confidence has evaporated. The US administration is non-serious about business, so business will give up.

Footnote: the reason Trump is non-serious about business is because Trump doesn't understand how real businesses work. He thinks like a mobster, or a real estate salesman: all customer interactions are a prisoner's dilemma with no iteration (how many times a month do you buy an office block from the same salesman?!?) so *of course* "always defect" is a winning game-theoretical strategy.

But in the real world, most businesses are built on repeat trade. And Trump has never experienced this.

#WritersCoffeeClub 13, When is it best to be terse? Flowery?

This is a stylistic choice and unless you're playing experimental head games it's basically about how you paint the scenery flats behind the performers on your stage: use it for atmosphere and lighting but don't swamp the story line with it.

Also, modern readers generally prefer terse prose and shorter sentences (try reading Victoriana to get a baseline).

(Finally: flowery, ornate descriptions make for *terrible* public readings!)

Anyone willing to bet against DOGE canceling funds for Voyager 2 tracking before it makes it to 20 light-hours from Earth?
https://techhub.social/@NSFVoyager2/114310722397457392

From a friend: "You can't spell tariffs without FFS"

@HighlandLawyer @Infoseepage @jef @LRRRonEarth @ainmosni A ~Trump would rules-lawyer it by building a thousand-bed hotel in downtown Manhattan and declaring the penthouse suite his primary residence, yes.

@Infoseepage @HighlandLawyer @jef @LRRRonEarth @ainmosni $50M may be too low: there are large chunks of major cities where $50M won't buy you a medium-scale family home (not a McMansion: a 4-bed 2-bath semi with a small garden ... in the wrong parts of central London). Exclude the primary home frokm that $50M and I'll join the bandwagon.

@LRRRonEarth @ainmosni BUY GUILLOTINE FUTURES, CITIZENS!

I can foresee ABSOLUTELY NO WAY in which this can possibly go horribly wrong:

The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/08/uk-creating-prediction-tool-to-identify-people-most-likely-to-kill