Say, why aren’t tractors and other vector control tech used for fast atmospheric vehicles (especially aerospace cruisers)? You’ve got plenty of remass just sitting around outside, so you should only be spending fuel for the energy to run the vector control core?
Please find long answer (hopefully) in latest post at -
(Apology &) Glorious New Tractor Factory | The Associated Worlds (eldraeverse.com)
Thanks! That does explain things quite a bit.
So, I am currently inspired by an interesting post @Morgrim made over on another thread (
) to explain something about the impulses in Imperial government that apply a stamp of approval to both meritocratic rule and to the consensus of town meetings and sortitional, etc., assemblies but to disdain representative democracy.
Specifically, each one reflects a different impulse in their systems theory: the former, the Aristocratic¹ impulse, in which it is taken as obvious that the res publica are best managed by the person most fitted by talent, education, and character, demonstrated by proven performance, to do so, and that introducing the ungifted into the process can do nothing except degrade the results; and
the latter, the Consensualist impulse, in which it is taken as equally obvious that since the res publica belong to everyone (even if everyone is neither supremely nor equally gifted to manage them), all must have equal input into the process of managing them and equal say upon all matters that are not matters of fact.
The normal squaring of this circle, as the Imperial Charter prescribes, is that the res publica are managed by the runér, but each and every one must and shall be provided with an advisory assembly (usually, although not necessarily, assembled via sortition) with the power to veto what the former does with a substantive vote.
Representative democracy, on the other hand, is basically the compromise which - as is the reason that compromise is a dirty word in Eldraeic - manages to incorporate the worst features of each. It loses the advantages of the latter because you’re putting one guy in charge who represents the consensus without being bound to it, and it loses the advantages of the former because the res publica aren’t being tended by an expert in the field, but by some schmuck with good hair, a silver tongue, and the willingness to make non-binding promises.
- Meaning “meritocratic”, which is what aristocratic actually means anyway if you overlook a couple of thousand years of linguistic degradation in which people said “aristocracy” but meant “oligarchy”. Bloody humans, can’t even speak their own language right. Mutter, mutter, harrumph.
The Imperial electrical grid, for those curious, operates at 72 cycles/pulse, which in Earth terms is approximately 54 Hz.
Ah, their Base-12 strikes again…
I must admit that I’d been parsing “pulse” as “there-word for ‘second,’” without appreciating a difference in duration…
IIRC a pulse is slightly less than a second, in which case the math would only work out if their electrical “cycles” are only half of a full cycle.
(Reasonably enough if they’re using alternating current, as that’s the frequency of the peaks - AFAIK in most cases the direction does not make a difference for the strength of the produced signal.)
Can we assume that the “pulse” originated as (an average of) the Eldræic heartrate?
@january1may: It’s very close to 0.75 s, which means you win the Internet points for noticing that my numbers didn’t add up. In fact, I just plain got them the wrong way around.
@JAPH: You can.
In apology, have another piece of trivia:
The gift shop at the Golden Tower (i.e., Gilea and Company’s headquarters, in Mer Covales, Seranth - right outside the museum of finance on the mezzanine level) sells both gold foil-wrapped chocolates and chocolate-covered gold bars.
The former are more expensive.
Do they have a slice of lemon with a gold brick wrapped around it? Suitable for throwing at somebody’s head?
When Biogenesis Technologies, ICC (via its Outer Expressions brand) first marketed its adaptable kemonomimi clade, there was some concern where the options in question overlapped with uplifted species - especially in the case of the inumimi - how the uplifts would react to this borrowing of their appearance.
There was no need for concern. The dar-bandal were near-universally of the opinion that with ears as magnificent as theirs, it stood to reason that anyone of taste would want some of their own.
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Eye-in-the-Flame did not intend to develop the rat-gat. It would have seemed cruel and not all that practical as a weapon.
But then the rats down in R&D came up with the idea themselves, and said “That sounds like fun!”
(It’s less a machine gun that fires angry rats and more a Gatling-style quick-deployment system for pa-rat-roopers. So when you think of the rat-gat, think rats with their war face on squeaking battlecries as they hurtle towards your face with tiny daggers clutched in every paw, then running back after the maimery for another go.)
In 8693, after the completion of the first phase of the Spice Way Program (i.e., deployment of the star stations and express routes) and during vigorous discussions in the Conclave of Galactic Polities concerning the expansion of known space and thus of the Accord, the Imperial Couple quietly updated their formal style to include Shahanshah of the Arc.
(For those not familiar with the former style, it became:
Her Divine Majesty Azuma Morotai Ashíënlé, First of Her Name, by Right of Coronargyr and Chartered Mandate Empress of the Eldrae, Chief Executive Officer of the Imperium Incorporate, First of the Free, Defender of the Star’s Flame, Heart of the Realm, Sovereign Lady of the Heights and Depths, Shahanshah of the Arc, and Diarch of the Infinite
)
Other previous emendations include the addition of “Sovereign [Lady|Lord] of the Heights and Depths” after the Talentar Revolt, and the substitution of “Diarch of the Infinite” for the former “Diarch of All Under Heaven” as a preemptive strike against anyone who might point out that there is quite a lot that is not, in point of fact, under Heaven.
As the working heart of nuclear weapons and suchlike is referred to as a “physics package”, it follows that the working heart of ontotechnological devices is referred to, by analogy, as the “metaphysics package”.
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So, they would consider Settra The Imperishable to be an amateur in terms of titles…which would annoy him to no end, but they would appreciate his attitude.
Titles for emperors are much like planets for interstellar empires - it’s not how many you’ve got, it’s how awesome the ones you have are.
- Azuma Morotai, maybe
(And let’s face it, not even five aces beats eslév i-tramézashíël eslévár.)
Back in the wet navy days, in the absence of various limiting treaties, the IN concluded fairly rapidly that turboelectric drive was the best thing since steam turbines and proceeded to implement it across the board in their newer designs.
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Since I can’t remember where I said it or if it’s still there, the attitude in re planets is that while they may only have 243 systems, each one is a perfectly cut and polished utopian jewel worthy of adorning the Imperial diadem, which fully entitles them to cast a critical eye across those regimes proud of the thousand- or million-world breadth of their domain, adopt their best Immortan Joe sneer in the face of this quantity-over-quality tradeoff, and snort “Mediocre!”
While not the only one you can use, all standard Imperial mathematical notation is reverse Polish/postfix/Hsilop, not infix.
(Those who have grown up around slide rules and trad HP calculators will have a distinct advantage.)
Ugh. While I vaguely understand the simplicity of reverse Polish notation and operation, it is NOT native to my brain to process data in that way.
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