kzt wrote:He's the honorverse social expert version of skimper the honorverse tech guru.
kzt wrote:Well, yeah, but you have actually read the books. The cthia and skimpers find that reading stuff all terribly boring, so when they come up with their ideas they are actually talking about a honorverse that has only some vague relationship to what David has actually written.
Inaccurate title assertion. You have a distinct case of mistaken identity in addition to your occasional bouts of bad manners. I can help you with the mistaken identity. The bad manners should have been handled when you were a child. I could recommend some classes for you to take. Need me to pay for it?
The social expert is one Aldona Anisimovna. Hasn't she accomplished enough in that area to lay claim to that title? What books have you been reading? The books I read certainly have as a character one Aldona Anisimovna. The fact that you can't wrap your head around the possibility of this sort of strike is your problem and your shortcoming. If it doesn't have laser heads and missiles in it, you can't handle it. Back away from the laser heads and spanners for a moment and engage in some extracurricular thinking.
Exercise your thought processes to the possibility that the MAlign may set Anisimovna loose. She is the doppelganger of the Salamander. Sally has accomplished a lot of unbelievable feats in the Honorverse. Her navy set her free. Anise has accomplished a lot as well. Yet she has to hide. She has to pull her punches from behind a curtain. She has to operate with her gloves on and her hands tied. Poor little kzt, he thinks he got her and her abilities all figured out. Even though the Manties hasn't. Let me tell you something kzt, she doesn't give aratsass about your missiles. She'll just make you eat one. And just like Rajampet, you'll realize that you underestimated her talents just before you die.
I'm going to assume a bit of you and proceed as if you'll agree that if approximately 5000 people of Winton importance were assembled on some, let's say 600 acres, that an EE strike could wipe them out.
Then the problem only becomes one of...
logistics: the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies.
I think she's proved that she doesn't have a problem with logistics either. Blah, that's really not saying much. She's an Alpha, she shouldn't. That wasn't in your book either?
Thousands! Thousands!! Thousands!!! There are literally thousands of specific people she has to move to a particular place to carry out this strike.
THOUSANDS!
It is just a number to the MAlign people. "Thousands" is as insignificant to the MAlign as "centuries." And if you really think the MAlign cannot move thousands of people to a specific place at a specific time, then I know where you can find that missing missile you've unaccounted for. You must have overlooked the SLN warships they moved with thousands of people in them. Someone else's ships. Someone else's people. Someone else's navy! Not in your book either? Seems you have a reading problem yourself, 'eh?
And nanotech was not even used to accomplish that feat. Now just imagine if it were utilized to accomplish this goal in conjunction with Anise's other already proven talents along with yet others we haven't yet seen, because she hasn't yet been loosed. Can your brain digest that? To help you visualize it, just think of her as a missile. A very advanced missile. You only have one in your arsenal. Why is that?
Oh I know what it is. There's no way that Anise can move ~ 5000 Wintons. They have a particularly special DNA. Their nanotech simply cannot target the Wintons en mass subtly. The only thing your mind can see is the macroscopic destructive use of the tech -- right down your alley. Anise is an alpha, her brain waves are a tad bit more efficient than kzt's. She conceives of that which leaves you playing with your spanners.
"It was simply like pushing baby Manticorans into the kill zone."
A L D O N [A] N I S I M O V N A: Character Profile or Assassination
I imagine she and Detweiler became respected friends much as with Honor and Elizabeth and he began to call her Anise for short. Her writings read like a doctoral thesis. It is common knowledge that Detweiler is hooked on them. You can always see him with the latest publishings of one Aldona Anisimovna. In Detweiler's head Aldona was the archetypal Harrington antithesis. The strategic and tactical Anise solutions of how to deal with a particluarly thorny problem quickly became known as an Anise thesis. Which often prompted inside jokes outside the board room of "Anesthetize them!"
The MA created a monster. She is one Aldona Anisimovna. When you look out of your eyes and you see a monster, what does the monster see? A target.
You know that Old Earth movie whose character line says...
"And Rambo was the best. Period!"
Well, Aldona picks her teeth with the wiles of Georgia Sakristos. She is McGyver. She is Harkness. She is Bond - Dames Bond. She is the Salamander's doppelganger.
As Social Interactions go? Well, Anisimovna is the best. Period!
Several thousand people needed to be herded into one area. The logistics of actually getting that many people together threatened to kill Aldona with delight. The only difficult part was containing the laughter and patting herself on the back.
techtarget.com wrote:Social engineering is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking people into breaking normal security procedures.
wiki wrote:Social engineering, in the context of information security, refers to psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme.
She is the social expert. Again, Has she not yet provided plenty enough of socially engineered carnage to lay claim to that title?
She is a master of social entropy, with a clinical interest in anomie.
Anomie is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals". It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim never uses the term normlessness; rather, he describes anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".
For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:
Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices… anomie is a mismatch, not simply the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie... Thus, fatalistic suicide arises when a person is too rule-governed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
Again, the only problem was a tactical problem of herding the cattle. Anisimovna uses social engineering as a sheepherding dog. That's why it always bites you in the ass.
This is the [equal and opposite] of the Salamander. Honor had a chance to strut her stuff. Anisimovna is a jewel waiting to shine. We've only seen glimmers of what Anisimovna can do. She very well may be the greatest tactical and strategic mind in the Honorverse. If you look up the phrase "We created a monster" in the Honorverse - there lies an HD link to the beautiful but dangerous Anisimovna.
There's so much schit in this woman's head that the innermost recesses of her mind embarrasses even her. Anisimovna is the kind of person who lives buttressed against the precipice of megalomania. IMO, the difference between Honor and Aldona, is when Aldona's plan is successful, she celebrates in her lair. Aldona enjoys the kill. She is a Salamander without a conscience. She doesn't count her dead in her sleep. She counts the living. Can you wrap your brain around that!?
She is so brilliant that it prompted the Alignment to bring her inside the inner onion. Smart of them, but then they are alphas too.
As a reminder. I imagine this can be found in Anise's head...
"It is easy to destroy a planet's entire navy"...
Destroy a CLAC and orphan its LACs.
Destroy a planet and orphan its navy.
—Anisimovna
"Well, let's just put "Operation Orphan" on the back burner. For now. Can you accomplish the same goals without losing so much infrastructure and Manticoran lives?" Asks Detweiler.
"You don't ask for much do you?"
"Considering your abilities? No."
"In that case, I'm certain my "Operation Dismiss" would fit with your approval"
"You don't say, tell me more about this "Operation Dismiss."
"I have a thesis already prepared."
"An Anise thesis? Well, we'll just Anesthetize them!"
Do you guys think that Anisimovna is a joke? She's another huckleberry.
When Anisimovna opens her briefcase, lots of people die.
"All the worlds my stage."
****** *
"Life is all in the conception. Seeing what others don't."
My father taught me that before I was five.
My father...
"There was a contest at a school to find the smartest person. There are people sitting around trying to put circular objects in either a square hole or a round hole. There are many people trying to force it into the square hole. Many many more people were smart enough to place the circular objects in the round hole. But none of them were selected."
"Why?"
"They decided to select the brilliant student instead. He didn't put the circular object in either hole. He recognized it as something entirely special. He put it in his pocket instead and later came up with the idea of the donut and got rich."
"Think outside the box. That's where life is."
And fill the pot full — with a complete decapitation — instead of half empty?