She still believes in classical economics, the allocation of resources under conditions of scarcity. Information doesn’t work that way. - Charles Stross

But all these mitigating techniques have severe drawbacks, and as a result there are old ritual magicians, and there are bold ritual magicians, but there are no old, bold magicians. They don’t survive, and they tend to have unique skill sets, thereby defeating the first principle of bureaucracy: that nobody is indispensable.

Almost everything in the pop culture lexicon of vampirism is basically fiction—and fiction is the art of telling entertaining lies for money.

This is the Forecasting Operations Department, where one is supposed to imagine that crystal-ball gazing precognitives may or may not tickle the tummy of Schrödinger’s cat while juggling ampoules full of hydrogen cyanide and giggling madly at the whirling fog bank of the uncertain future.