#mb pd

[coquelicoq]

i liked that mb got to preserve its deus ex machina role in platform decay despite the fact mensah's family was pretty much expecting it to show up and rescue them...you know who wasn't expecting that, though? the militia. from the militia's perspective, a rando with the exact skillset and knowledge they needed appeared out of nowhere on the cusp of a firefight and volunteered its services, nonchalantly pulled one of them out of the line of fire in the nick of time, asked politely for a weapon and exploded an enemy's gun basically instantaneously, and then peaced out and they never saw it again. i think they had an even more quintessential deus ex machina experience than the ravihyral polycule.

[coquelicoq]

this meeting could have been an email 🤝 this ground transport could have been a transit pipe

[coquelicoq]

the children in your post-scarcity collectivist society yearn for grand theft auto.

[coquelicoq]

[...] Three looked at me and said, "Perihelion-drone is angry that I didn't follow the plan." Yeah, I bet. "You know that's a you problem." "Oh." Three was disconcerted. Welcome to the consequences of your actions, Three. It said hopefully, "It can't be a we problem?" "No, it can't," I said. "Get in the shuttle." (Platform Decay, ch 13, p 241)

three used COMMUNIST BUGS BUNNY

it was not super effective!

[coquelicoq]

She [Naja] had put a receiver outside the house and hardwired it to the internal feed. It was a one-way connection, pulling in a public news and info channel but not sending anything. Not bad, especially since Naja wasn't augmented. (Platform Decay, ch 3, p 47)

five pages later...

Naja had small knee augments compensating for eroding joints. (ch 4, p 52)

so she has augments but isn't augmented? meanwhile we have this from Network Effect:

Augments were supposed to help humans do things they couldn’t otherwise do, like interface with the feed more completely or store memory archives. Augments that weren’t feed interfaces were meant to correct physical injuries or illnesses. Augments are helpful; implants are like governor modules. (p 93)

confirming that there are different types of augments, including the kind that naja has in her knees. maybe when murderbot says "augmented human" it means specifically "human with augments that have [some criterion that is salient to murderbot]"? i guess that kind of fits with my prior observations that murderbot's use of "humans and augmented humans" is a) not super clear and b) at least partly predicated on how the presence of augments affects murderbot's ability to do its job and/or avoid being caught and dismantled...