Hi, guy with Muslim friends here, I don't subscribe to the ISIS/Western Islamophobe narrative of an inevitable war between civilizations. It's just a relatively small group of nutjobs on the fringes of society (ISIS terrorists and bigots like you) who believe such things.
The jihadists won't get a grand showdown against all non-jihadists in Dabiq (where they believe they'll get supernatural assistance) and the deplorables won't get their tarted-up race war.
What opponents of geoengineering ideas fail to realize (or perhaps intentionally fail to admit) is that continuing to use fossil fuels amounts to continuing an unintentional, unorganized, aimless geoengineering effort that's been running for hundreds of years now. Apparently they prefer this to an intentional, organized effort with a pro-civilization goal.
Burning fossil fuels is as much of a manmade climate-altering action as any shiny new geoengineering concept, and may be exactly what humanity ends up doing in the far future to prevent an ice age.
This. Ransomware executed on a desktop at my office while I was on vacation last year. It encrypted many files on the local HDD and a large fraction of the file shares. The source was soon found, cleaned up, and the affected files were restored from backups. What's worth reporting?
Taking less is still taking. It does not become giving until the taking is less than zero, like what happens with those at the bottom.
Which is getting close to my point. People at the top receive more from government than they pay in taxes, overall similar to those at the very bottom. They benefit from plenty of workers who went to public schools and pay them peanuts. They benefit greatly from public roads and register their supercars in Montana. They run money through foreign tax havens at every opportunity. So yes, cutting their taxes even more is "giving."
Human colonies on non-habitable planets would only last a little longer than the people on the ISS would without support from Earth - thanks to their greater amount of storage space. Things would turn ugly real fast after the second or third missed resupply shipment.
Now obviously there are no habitable planets in the solar system, so to get to one, we'll either need to crack physics wide open and invent FTL travel, or gamble all our resources on a generation ship that will become a debris field sprinkled with freeze-dried corpses the first time something goes seriously wrong with it on its seven-zillion mile, centuries-long journey through space.
Nobody's living outside of Earth long-term any time soon.
I'm outside the US and I haven't had to use a proxy to watch official Last Week Tonight episodes on YouTube. SNL sketches, on the other hand, are apparently some kind of US defense secret.
For anyone who doesn't know, Verizon is the arch-enemy of net neutrality. Most of the corporate (and even government, hi Ajit!) opposition to net neutrality today can be traced back to them. If you're a Verizon customer, switch if you're able to.
I realize you might not be able to switch because the wonderful free market of the USA often has de facto telecom monopolies ruling certain regions, but if you can, do.
OK, if I came up with it independently and never incorporated it into a work of fiction, would it be a better idea? Does this mean all ideas in all of sci-fi are invalidated by being in a work of sci-fi?
So "it can't happen because an identical situation hasn't happened before" refutes an idea? The Elysium scenario is just an extension and extrapolation of what's already been happening. The rich are already shopping for luxury apartments in hidden doomsday bunkers (and, stupidly, land in remote areas of New Zealand, which they seem to think is uninhabited?) for when the shit hits the fan, after they've already secluded their houses from society and surrounded themselves with security. They talk about this stuff at Davos, it's not a big secret.
No, you just lied. Less than 10% of the bottom half have negative wealth, by the admission of the same group that compiled the data for that statistic. Although I don't see how any amount of negative wealth affects the truth or importance of the statistic at all. From the same link above:
If you leave out everyone in net debt and recalculate, the number of billionaires who own the same as half the world would be 56.
Less than the number of seats in a double-decker bus.
Ah, the "hidden value in technology" theory, that there is some value in cheaper, newer technology that is economically unaccounted for in the price of goods, but at the same time should count toward the net worth and lifestyle of today's poor. It's self-conflicting and nonsensical.
How wealthy are the executives and owners of supercar, superyacht, and non-ultralight powered aircraft companies? Companies that construct buildings larger than medium-sized houses? High-fashion goods?
At some point people could become so poor and disempowered through runaway inequality that economically, they're only conduits for welfare - the government gives them money, and they spend it all on the bare necessities of survival. At that point, they'd have negligible value as customers and could pose a security risk to the companies they buy from. The rich could place quite a bit of value on "peace of mind."
The Elysium scenario is quite plausible. It could easily work as a boat rather than a space station, and there are already some floating communities for the hyper-rich in service (like Utopia). Instead of escaping climate change by leaving the planet, they just move the ship to wherever's pleasant. It also presents a moving and distant target for any group set on retribution. With drone patrol ships/subs/aircraft and spy satellites, it could be very hard to sneak up on a ship.
It's true, the number of humans who collectively own as much wealth as half the world's population could all travel together in a large van. And it's become much worse over the last 15 years or so. Just a few years ago they would've needed a double-decker bus (although nobody would have to stand), and a few years before that they would've needed a 747.
Correct. Greed was temporarily suppressed from the '30s to '60s. Then it started to creep back in, and finally Reagan opened the floodgates for Greed in the early '80s, and now here we are, most of us massively more productive and just a few of us reaping the benefits of that increase in productivity.
There were PDA-phones that had full-featured web browsers before the iPhone. I remember when it first came out, it was nowhere near as useful as the Palm Treo 650 I had at the time. It had a full-featured browser, and it could also copy and paste and download files, which the iPhone couldn't when it was first released.
In terms of architecture, society and geography, Gotham is clearly supposed to be Chicago and Metropolis actually resembles Toronto more closely than any US city, although there are often associations made to NYC, especially on film.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, guy with Muslim friends here, I don't subscribe to the ISIS/Western Islamophobe narrative of an inevitable war between civilizations. It's just a relatively small group of nutjobs on the fringes of society (ISIS terrorists and bigots like you) who believe such things.
The jihadists won't get a grand showdown against all non-jihadists in Dabiq (where they believe they'll get supernatural assistance) and the deplorables won't get their tarted-up race war.
What opponents of geoengineering ideas fail to realize (or perhaps intentionally fail to admit) is that continuing to use fossil fuels amounts to continuing an unintentional, unorganized, aimless geoengineering effort that's been running for hundreds of years now. Apparently they prefer this to an intentional, organized effort with a pro-civilization goal.
Burning fossil fuels is as much of a manmade climate-altering action as any shiny new geoengineering concept, and may be exactly what humanity ends up doing in the far future to prevent an ice age.
This. Ransomware executed on a desktop at my office while I was on vacation last year. It encrypted many files on the local HDD and a large fraction of the file shares. The source was soon found, cleaned up, and the affected files were restored from backups. What's worth reporting?
Ooh that's handy!
Taking less is still taking. It does not become giving until the taking is less than zero, like what happens with those at the bottom.
Which is getting close to my point. People at the top receive more from government than they pay in taxes, overall similar to those at the very bottom. They benefit from plenty of workers who went to public schools and pay them peanuts. They benefit greatly from public roads and register their supercars in Montana. They run money through foreign tax havens at every opportunity. So yes, cutting their taxes even more is "giving."
Human colonies on non-habitable planets would only last a little longer than the people on the ISS would without support from Earth - thanks to their greater amount of storage space. Things would turn ugly real fast after the second or third missed resupply shipment.
Now obviously there are no habitable planets in the solar system, so to get to one, we'll either need to crack physics wide open and invent FTL travel, or gamble all our resources on a generation ship that will become a debris field sprinkled with freeze-dried corpses the first time something goes seriously wrong with it on its seven-zillion mile, centuries-long journey through space.
Nobody's living outside of Earth long-term any time soon.
Don't you think that the supply shipments would be leaving from a number of different ports, and that they would be very heavily guarded?
I'm outside the US and I haven't had to use a proxy to watch official Last Week Tonight episodes on YouTube. SNL sketches, on the other hand, are apparently some kind of US defense secret.
That doesn't bother me much. I'm becoming kind of a fan of Trump these days.
Mmm yes, delicious regressive tears, this is what I came here for! Now I can leave satisfied.
She already works at Stripe and would be happily hired by any company that isn't run by a bunch of sexual predators! Suck it, regressives! Hahahahaha!
But this isn't "bro culture" or "toxic masculinity", he's just an everyday, run-of-the-mill, common asshole.
"Bro-culture" and "toxic masculinity" are just side-effects of being a common asshole while having a penis.
For anyone who doesn't know, Verizon is the arch-enemy of net neutrality. Most of the corporate (and even government, hi Ajit!) opposition to net neutrality today can be traced back to them. If you're a Verizon customer, switch if you're able to.
I realize you might not be able to switch because the wonderful free market of the USA often has de facto telecom monopolies ruling certain regions, but if you can, do.
Cutting taxes is not giving.
Well then raising taxes is not taking :-)
OK, if I came up with it independently and never incorporated it into a work of fiction, would it be a better idea? Does this mean all ideas in all of sci-fi are invalidated by being in a work of sci-fi?
I don't have any alternative facts if that's what you're asking. Do you think Oxfam's numbers are wrong?
So "it can't happen because an identical situation hasn't happened before" refutes an idea? The Elysium scenario is just an extension and extrapolation of what's already been happening. The rich are already shopping for luxury apartments in hidden doomsday bunkers (and, stupidly, land in remote areas of New Zealand, which they seem to think is uninhabited?) for when the shit hits the fan, after they've already secluded their houses from society and surrounded themselves with security. They talk about this stuff at Davos, it's not a big secret.
No, you just lied. Less than 10% of the bottom half have negative wealth, by the admission of the same group that compiled the data for that statistic. Although I don't see how any amount of negative wealth affects the truth or importance of the statistic at all. From the same link above:
If you leave out everyone in net debt and recalculate, the number of billionaires who own the same as half the world would be 56.
Less than the number of seats in a double-decker bus.
Ah, the "hidden value in technology" theory, that there is some value in cheaper, newer technology that is economically unaccounted for in the price of goods, but at the same time should count toward the net worth and lifestyle of today's poor. It's self-conflicting and nonsensical.
How wealthy are the executives and owners of supercar, superyacht, and non-ultralight powered aircraft companies? Companies that construct buildings larger than medium-sized houses? High-fashion goods?
At some point people could become so poor and disempowered through runaway inequality that economically, they're only conduits for welfare - the government gives them money, and they spend it all on the bare necessities of survival. At that point, they'd have negligible value as customers and could pose a security risk to the companies they buy from. The rich could place quite a bit of value on "peace of mind."
The Elysium scenario is quite plausible. It could easily work as a boat rather than a space station, and there are already some floating communities for the hyper-rich in service (like Utopia). Instead of escaping climate change by leaving the planet, they just move the ship to wherever's pleasant. It also presents a moving and distant target for any group set on retribution. With drone patrol ships/subs/aircraft and spy satellites, it could be very hard to sneak up on a ship.
It's true, the number of humans who collectively own as much wealth as half the world's population could all travel together in a large van. And it's become much worse over the last 15 years or so. Just a few years ago they would've needed a double-decker bus (although nobody would have to stand), and a few years before that they would've needed a 747.
Correct. Greed was temporarily suppressed from the '30s to '60s. Then it started to creep back in, and finally Reagan opened the floodgates for Greed in the early '80s, and now here we are, most of us massively more productive and just a few of us reaping the benefits of that increase in productivity.
There were PDA-phones that had full-featured web browsers before the iPhone. I remember when it first came out, it was nowhere near as useful as the Palm Treo 650 I had at the time. It had a full-featured browser, and it could also copy and paste and download files, which the iPhone couldn't when it was first released.
In terms of architecture, society and geography, Gotham is clearly supposed to be Chicago and Metropolis actually resembles Toronto more closely than any US city, although there are often associations made to NYC, especially on film.