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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1aa67d3 | since the draw-down in forces triggered by the 2010 defense review, the units the Laundry can draw upon have been depleted. There are now just two SAS squadrons, 120 men in total, to cover all contingencies: and only half of them are available at any given time. If the shit really hits the fan they can draw on the regular Army and the Air Force for support, but there will be delays in getting everyone up to speed. | Charles Stross | ||
| daa9c48 | Policia genetica! !Usted, expulsado ahora mismo del acervo genetico! | Charles Stross | ||
| 4ce3fc6 | ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten. Because we are not in the business of generating policy--it's not a task for which agencies like ours are suited, and in those countries where spooks set policy, it always ends in tears. We vet politicians on the way up--that's an entirely different matter--but by the time they're moving into Number T.. | Charles Stross | ||
| dd07056 | There is probably no way of explaining Project Koschei, or XK-PLUTO, or MK-NIGHTMARE, or the gates, without watering them down into just another weapons system -- which they are not. Weapons may have deadly or hideous effects, but they acquire moral character from the actions of those who use them. Whereas these projects are indelibly stained by a patina of ancient evil ... | cthulhu nuclear-war nuke nukes weapons | Charles Stross | |
| a522415 | All around the UK, the lights are going out and the shutters are falling across the doors of dozens of offices and remote installations. The lights will stay on for a while longer at a handful of sites that are only tenuously connected to the rest of the nation, sites that are isolated by virtue of the perilous forces they work with or by the most draconian of security perimeters; but the orders have been issued, and by Friday evening the L.. | Charles Stross | ||
| fff7d27 | When humans gather, crime is certain. | Charles Stross | ||
| ad25583 | There are races that do not enslave, do not slay, do not war. There are races which do not lie or falsify. You think them weak? But they are among the strongest and finest denizens of the Will. They waste no treasure, nor time, nor grief, nor lives, nor blood, to maintain the ungainly apparatus of suspicion and bloodshed you call government, the princes and policemen and hangmen without which you humans dare not risk to live with each other.. | Charles Stross | ||
| 867f776 | He looks like the bastard offspring of a multitool and a mangabot. | Charles Stross | ||
| 12eb2b8 | Russian espionage directed against the West has been rising since 2001. We kind of forgot that you don't need communism to set up an east/west squabble between the Russian Empire and Western Europe--in fact, communism was a distraction. | Charles Stross | ||
| ae325a2 | Not everyone is concerned with the deep future," Manfred interrupts. "It's important! If we live or die, that doesn't matter--that's not the big picture. The big question is whether information originating in our light cone is preserved, or whether we're stuck in a lossy medium where our very existence counts for nothing. It's downright embarrassing to be a member of a species with such a profound lack of curiosity about its own future, esp.. | Charles Stross | ||
| fa865d6 | Mulle tundub, et astronoomide seas on mingi seltskond suisa solvunud, et need, kes selle ketta ehitasid ja meid siia toid, ei maandunud Valge Maja ette murule ega tutvustanud ennast. | Charles Stross | ||
| 2d2acc3 | In case you're worried about BLUE HADES, Professoe O'Brien speaks the language and is qualified to Liase. She's also completed her certification fixation on combat epistemology and can operate as your staff philosopher, should circumstances require it. | Charles Stross | ||
| f2cd07b | If he wakes the ancient sleeping horrors I am going to have to brief the private secretary and the Joint Intelligence Oversight Committee so that they can explain CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN to the COBRA Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, and I expect that will make them extremely unhappy | Charles Stross | ||
| 82c7982 | This is serious business: you're representing the Laundry in front of the Black Chamber and some very big defence contractors, old school tie and all that." "I went to North Harrow Comprehensive," I sat wearily, "they didn't trust us with neckties, not after the upper fifth tried to lynch Brian the Spod." | Charles Stross | ||
| bc79037 | Shut up. Stand up. Put this on. That's right . . . if you were the kind of man who found it easy to do that kind of thing do you think I'd bother with you?" Her question takes him by surprise, rattling his introspective daze." | Charles Stross | ||
| ff72aac | Brains mouses over one of the images. | Charles Stross | ||
| 60f81df | Everything he's learned about the Civil Service tells him that having tea poured for you is one of the ferociously guarded signifiers of rank, like the grade of paintings from the Government Art Collection hung on your office wall, or the quality of your carpet. | Charles Stross | ||
| edc527e | he looked like an escapee from a reeducation camp for fashion criminals. | Charles Stross | ||
| fad2117 | The first law of Bureaucracy is, show no curiosity outside your cubicle. It's like the first rule of every army that's ever bashed a square: never volunteer. If you ask questions (or volunteer) it will be taken as a sign of inactivity, and the devil, in the person of your line manager (or your sergeant) will find a task for your idle hands. What's more, you'd better believe it'll be less appealing than whatever you were doing before (creati.. | Charles Stross | ||
| b44cbc6 | Angleton is not to be trifled with. I don't know anyone else currently alive and in the organization who could get away with misappropriating the name of the CIA's legendary chief of counter-espionage as a nom de guerre. I don't know anyone else in the organization whose face is visible in circa-1942 photographs of the Laundry's line-up, either, barely changed across all those years. | Charles Stross | ||
| 4376ed8 | What are the consequences when the government, the media, and the leaders of commerce all speak with one voice? Why, it means that if you hold opinions other than the ones you are told to, you are out of step, and if so, it is best to bite your tongue and be silent. The most efficient kind of censorship isn't the heavy-handed black inking of the secret policeman: it's the self-censorship we impose on ourselves when we're afraid that if we s.. | Charles Stross | ||
| d7fcff5 | MONDAY DAWNS BRIGHT AND HOT AND EARLY, AND I FIND MY SELF waking to the happy knowledge that I can go back to work, and nobody will order me home. | Charles Stross | ||
| f432442 | This is a joke. Right?" I'm pointing at the green-screen terminal on the desk, and the huge dial-infested rotary phone beside it. "No sir." Bill clears his throat. "Unfortunately the NDO's office budget was misfiled years ago and nobody knows the correct code to requisition new supplies. At least it's warm in winter: you're right on top of the classified document incinerator room, and it's got the only chimney in the building." | Charles Stross | ||
| 6fd101d | Did it have a name, this project?" "Yes. The books and posters are called MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY, but she said I'd find it in the stacks under a very strange reference--KGB.2.YA--what's so funny? Bob? Are you choking? Bob? Bob? Do you need help?" Kiss Good-Bye 2 Your Ass: I love the Laundry sense of humor." -- | Charles Stross | ||
| 3d94126 | I gather Andy is still in full-on Office Flying Dutchman mode . . .) | Charles Stross | ||
| c4c5d6a | So Ah'm no evil, Ah'm just plain bad. | Charles Stross | ||
| cc25f63 | The official Government Random Number Generator used for seeding new encryption keys is a thing of legend, running as it does on a type of punched paper tape that hasn't been manufactured since the 1950s. (We had to invent some really neat hacks using digital cameras to read it into our oldest trailing-edge minicomputers in order to use those numbers . . .) | Charles Stross | ||
| f77cca9 | And rumor has it that the Central Ammunition Depot hanging off Box Tunnel still contains two thousand barrels of iron-tipped English longbow arrows, in case it becomes urgently necessary to re-fight the Battle of Crecy. | Charles Stross | ||
| 5111880 | Dear God," whispers Pete, "it's full of posters!" | Charles Stross | ||
| 5073e4d | The morning after her date with her nerdishly cute prince of darkness, Cassie is scheduled for a lecture at nine o'clock. She blows it off because life's too short and anyway the world is going to end in about two weeks' time, when the Second Heavy Cavalry Brigade rumbles into town accompanied by skies that rain wyrmfire and the death spells of combat magi. | Charles Stross | ||
| d687a42 | Nor can I tell him--lest the SA's command override cause my arterial blood vessels to burst and my eyeballs to catch fire--about Long-Term Continuity Operations and the Resistance. | Charles Stross | ||
| 375e249 | The perfect criminal, should he or she exist, would be the one who is never apprehended - indeed, the one whose crimes may be huge but unnoticed, or indeed miscategorized not as crimes at all because they are so powerful they sway the law in their favor, or so clever they discover an immoral opportunity for criminal enterprise before the legislators notice it. Such forms of criminality may be indistinguishable, at a distance, from lawful bu.. | criminals white-collar-crime white-collar-criminal | Charles Stross | |
| fea9c4e | Cassie believes that she is Agent First of Spies and Liars, daughter of the former General-Overseer of the 14th Western Host of Air and Darkness, who is now the All-Highest of the Morningstar Empire (or what remains of it, all other claimants to that status having been crushed by the ancient horrors that ate the moon). But at the same time she is also Cassiopeia Brewer, | Charles Stross | ||
| 9fdd93c | Autarchies had been shattered, hermit kingdoms destroyed. Almost a billion had died in war, plague, starvation, and madness. But worse was yet to come, as what passed for civilization on this world guttered and faded beneath the penumbra of a darkness deeper than eternal night. | Charles Stross | ||
| cb14bdc | Hate the sin, love the sinner: it's hard to stay pissed off at someone for doing something wrong if you know you'd have done exactly the same thing if you'd been standing in their shoes.) | Charles Stross | ||
| 54c5474 | Organizations are not human beings and they don't obey the same priorities. They're hives. Like the bank you worked for, I suppose, but you were too specialized, working at too low a level to see the politics going on around you. Hives run on emergent consensus and policy. | Charles Stross | ||
| 9986da2 | All life is based on the destruction of other life, even on tremendous scales of space and time... Our ancestors understood that right back to the Ice Age, and venerated the animals they had to kill. | Charles Stross | ||
| 15b9eb4 | Was failure to make tenure track justification for an honor killing? | Charles Stross | ||
| 9ddd80b | Everything is terrorism these days: downloading, uploading, jaywalking with intent to cause fear. | Charles Stross | ||
| c131601 | Non-euclidian sofa | Charles Stross | ||
| 6247abb | I can't get out of here soon enough, he thinks, and glances at his smartwatch--a birthday present from his wife--only to see that it has crashed and frozen on reboot, mocking him with an image of the apple from the tree of knowledge, one bite down. | Charles Stross | ||
| 8380c05 | Stuff that really will improve my survival prospects when the tentacles hit the pentacle. | Charles Stross | ||
| ba94ad8 | By the way, what is that you're working on?" "Software-configurable RAID grid." She pauses, a cable in each hand. "Go on, your ride will be waiting." "RAID grid being . . . ?" "Redundant Array of Interconnected Demons." She bares her teeth at him. "Demons!" he squeaks, and clutches his magic dice." | Charles Stross | ||
| 2a4fa6b | Jim can't tell if he was screaming from fear or yodeling in exhilaration. | Charles Stross |