Moe Lane's Blog, page 14

Tweet of the Day, No Lies Detected edition.

I mean, once you point it out…

In the movie Tremors Burt Gummer was originally supposed to have an NRA sticker on his truck however his actor Michael Gross objected not because he refused to play an NRA member but because he said Burt was WAY too pro gun to be in the NRA pic.twitter.com/eXqwaGcy64

— Dr Death (@DrDeath1776) August 11, 2025

PS: I gotcha.

Tremors

#commissionearned

Megacorporations, Part 3 [Unfiltered]

Yup.

…

Megacorporations in the Colonies

Megacorps built the colony worlds, sometimes involuntarily. They scouted locations on the four original planets assigned to humanity by the murdered Amalgamation, set up the first settlements, kept them supplied, cleaned up their inevitable disasters, and facilitated their growth. Some of the megacorporations were Earth-based, but the Jefferson and Bolivar colonies developed their own interstellar companies. Again, sometimes involuntarily. The Great Powers could be remarkably comprehensive about who or what they exiled.

Jefferson: Many megacorps in the salvage archeology business maintain corporate offices on Jefferson, as the colony is both business-friendly, and effectively if not formally independent of Earth. Jefferson is also the colony world most likely to have megacorps willing to be in opposition to Earth’s goals and plans. Both the USNA and the SEDA transported a large number of corporate dissidents there during the Consolidation Wars, and their descendants have not forgotten.Bolivar: Megacorps run Bolivar, under the watchful eye of Cyrk. They are generally left alone, as long as their workers are allowed to change jobs freely and the local environment is not unduly damaged; this has created a patchwork of corporate feudalism that is actually quite popular with the general population. The colony is transitioning to fully offplanet mining and manufacturing, but that will likely take at least another two generations. In the meantime, there’s plenty to dig up.Zheng He: There are no megacorporations in the colony of Zheng He. Ask anyone official. They’ll all tell you that commerce-related activities happen offsite, through the filter of Great Power and NGO involvement. The suggestion that corporate groups surreptitiously engage in wildcat research or unsanctioned biological harvesting is absurd. And for what? Mere riches, beyond the dreams of avarice?Abubakri: Outside the Pale, nobody cares what the megacorps do. Inside the Pale, nobody cares, once they’ve been paid off. As long as things stay quiet enough in the alien relic trades, that’s how it’s going to stay. People don’t go (or get sent) to Abubakri to ask unnecessary questions.

‘The Girls Around Cape Horn.’

The Girls Around Cape Horn, Paul Clayton

#commissionearned

Self-Tweet of the Day, Has It Really Been Eighteen Years Since We Lost The H-Dog? edition.

Herbert Kornfeld. A poet of the street ledgers. And when he was killed off, some of the Onion’s luster dimmed, never to return.

We lost a true poet of the spreadsheets in '07. Mourn ya till I join ya, bro. pic.twitter.com/HG0N2U4OGC

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) August 11, 2025

My mini-review of WEAPONS.

Short version: Geez, dude, lead with “[REMOVED DUE TO SPOILERS]” next time.

Slightly longer version: I was honestly not expecting to enjoy WEAPONS as much as I did. Turns out that it’s a pretty packed movie with absolutely no sentimentality about the supernatural. Period. It’s also got a sequence that is equally funny and horrific, which is a tricky thing to manage. If you don’t mind a little body horror and quite a lot of gore in the service of comeuppance, check this movie out.

Patreon Microfiction: It’s Not Easy.

100WS-It’s Not EasyDownload

“It’s Not Easy,” being green. …That’s it. That’s the joke. There isn’t anything else.

Patreon!

‘Time Warp.’

Time Warp, The Rocky Horror Picture Show

#commissionearned

The CASPER 30th Anniversary trailer

…CASPER must be a very dubious movie, theologically speaking. Good cast, though.

Megacorporations, Part 2B (Unfiltered)

Still on this stuff.

…

NGOs:

Adjudication Council: the Great Powers use the Council to manage the current interstellar spaceship monopoly. The Council uses a curation selection of megacorps to handle procurement. The megacorps hire out various contractors to actually build the ships. The Process oversees the whole thing, to watch for corruption, expense padding, and/or diversion of resources. Whether it would actually do anything about any of that, assuming that quarterly goals are still being reached, is another question.Survey/Colonization Initiative: S/CI has contracted out transportation facilities and shipments to the Mercury Group (a consortium of megacorps specializing in transportation and accommodation services). Once in the Mercury Group’s official pipeline, a transportee is guaranteed safe transit to the colony worlds, with as little anguish and suffering as can be expected in such a regrettably necessary situation. Even the suggestion that not every transporter makes it into the pipeline is scurrilous.Lunar Authority: the LA can be seen as a megacorp itself, in its way. It sells housing and resources to mining colonies and industrial complexes across the solar system, handling the infrastructure and allowing the megacorps to focus on resource extraction. It is also the NGO that has the most isolated outposts and overlooked locations. The Solar System is an extremely large place.United Nations Scientific Organization: the UNSO needs and dislikes megacorps in equal measure. Corporate expeditions are the most reliable sources of alientech, and the megacorps know it. However, the UNSO is the best source of the expertise needed to keep new alientech from exploding, imploding, dissolving, or forming a temporary micro-singularity, and the NGO knows it. This can lead to an interesting dynamic between the UNSO and salvage-focused megacorps, as well as particularly fraught salvage expeditions.Terra United: No megacorporation openly supports Terra United, despite the fact that a one-world government would make things more consistent for financial planners. On the other hand, Terra United rarely lacks for resources.Other Megacorporations: the megacorps avoid creating unsanctioned monopolies, on the sensible grounds that actually succeeding would make them the immediate subject of a Great Power intervention. Likewise, megacorps do not fight each other on Earth, as there is too much for everyone to lose. What happens behind the Oort Cloud is a different affair.Patreon!

Book of the Week: Daindreth’s Assassin.

So I grabbed Daindreth’s Assassin because Elisabeth Wheatley did a small Facebook Reel about what it was like to write Romantasy (fantasy romance, in other words) while being a Christian. More accurately, I grabbed it because one of her commenters attempted to denigrate her faith, in that special oh-I’m-so-disappointed-in-an-enlightened-superior-way-at-your-beliefs sort of way that you get from people whose hot messes have hot messes. I could have unloaded at the commenter, but where’s the fun in that?

Anyway, the book’s been pretty good, so far. I think I might pick up the series, in fact. Isn’t it awesome when evil doth evil mar?

#commissionearned