What have we come to?


mikbone
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20 hours ago, mikbone said:

I bet we are more likely to follow a Star Trek society instead of a Mad Max one.

FWIW, I think the potential of the future ending up like any movie has about at much chance as did Back to the Future II's prediction about it. I think the accuracy therein was...what...0%?

Edited by The Folk Prophet
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3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Well, Mad Max has actually happened in isolated locations on earth already.  Star Trek depends on a purely theoretical technology (warp drive) that for all practical means is completely unachievable by any terrestrial energy sources.

Soooo...

You need to go back and watch Mad Max again.

And warp drives bypass current theoretical newtonian, relativity & quantum mechanics.

When we figure out the ToE, warp drives will soon follow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything

 

 

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28 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

FWIW, I think the potential of the future ending up like any movie has about at much chance as did Back to the Future II's prediction about it. I think the accuracy therein was...what...0%?

I think Idiocracy still has a shot.

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6 hours ago, Ironhold said:

I seem to recall an episode of The Original Series where Kirk commented that a redshirt had "earned [his] wages for the month" as a compliment after they came up with a solution to a problem, suggesting that money was still a thing in the Federation and people were still getting wages and benefits based on their jobs.

Yep.  Then TNG made it clear that money doesn't exist any more.  But they also introduced the Ferengi, and DS9 flushed them out a bit.  The official canon settled on two things:

- Replicators aren't easy to build, require an insane amount of power to operate, and require a bunch of skillful expertise to maintain in working order.  As well as parts that replicators can't replicate.  In other words, advanced utopias have them, but there are still great swaths of sentient life without access to them.  

- There are things that replicators simply can't make.  Rare minerals and complex technological things have to be made in other ways.  They can do gold, but there's still a use for a medium of exchange like gold-pressed latinum. (And self-sealing stem bolts, if you are cool enough to get the joke.)  Ferengi religion is centered around the "great material continuum", full of eddies and currents that carry things from places where there is too much of them, to places where there isn't enough of them.  And the Ferengi ride those currents for profit.

Edited by NeuroTypical
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18 hours ago, Vort said:

What does it even mean for one to "travel faster than light"? This phrase sounds like it means something, but it does not. At least, it does not mean anything within the scope of our models of space and time. 

I'm not sure where this is coming from.

FTL travel (per theoretical warp travel) simply means that one can travel in such a manner that two objectives are achieved.

  • From the relative perspective of an observer on each of two distant locations, the travel time between A&B would be less than the travel time of light between those two locations.
  • The traveler will also experience the same passage of time as the observers on either of the two points of observation.

Warp travel theoretically would allow such a thing.  But good luck getting it to work at all, much less power a vessel the size of an entire planet to generate enough power to accomplish such a thing.  An S/T distorter and Heisenberg Compensator have yet to be invented :) 

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21 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Yep.  Then TNG made it clear that money doesn't exist any more.  But they also introduced the Ferengi, and DS9 flushed them out a bit.  The official canon settled on two things:

- Replicators aren't easy to build, require an insane amount of power to operate, and require a bunch of skillful expertise to maintain in working order.  As well as parts that replicators can't replicate.  In other words, advanced utopias have them, but there are still great swaths of sentient life without access to them.  

- There are things that replicators simply can't make.  Rare minerals and complex technological things have to be made in other ways.  They can do gold, but there's still a use for a medium of exchange like gold-pressed latinum. (And self-sealing stem bolts, if you are cool enough to get the joke.)  Ferengi religion is centered around the "great material continuum", full of eddies and currents that carry things from places where there is too much of them, to places where there isn't enough of them.  And the Ferengi ride those currents for profit.

 

If I recall, the original Star Trek was quite the promoter of American Patriotism (Vs. the communism that was around back then) and Capitalism.  In fact, it is probably a weird conflux which had to be retroactively changed in order for the series to match up.  If The Next Generation and later Star Trek was Socialist, then there would be a few things from the Original Star Trek they probably had to retcon in order for them to make sense with each other, or so I imagine. 

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2 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

 

If I recall, the original Star Trek was quite the promoter of American Patriotism (Vs. the communism that was around back then) and Capitalism.  In fact, it is probably a weird conflux which had to be retroactively changed in order for the series to match up.  If The Next Generation and later Star Trek was Socialist, then there would be a few things from the Original Star Trek they probably had to retcon in order for them to make sense with each other, or so I imagine. 

Past a certain point, the Klingons represented the USSR.

"The Undiscovered Country" was *literally* a response to Chernobyl and the overall end of the Cold War, which is why they had the Klingon home world heavily damaged by an apocalyptic event as a precursor to the Klingons finally suing for peace. 

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The great problem with science fiction is that there is far greater amounts of fiction and little if any science.   I speculate that the reason for this is, in essence, because we view futuristic advanced civilizations (reference the Kardashev scale of civilizations) using current, sub level one (perhaps .4 to .6 on the Kardashev scale) understanding of technology.  An example of this misdirection of science is the comparison of the Star Trek communicator (even from the original S K series) many seem to think relates to cell phones.  The communicators worked just fine on a global scale without cell towers or satellites.

True religion would add something else to technology that is usually missing from science fiction – that is that advanced civilizations of necessity must also be good or righteous to sustain not only “their” civilization but also the order and consistency of the universe.  There are many things that we could discuss in the direction this thread is headed if it was realized that the light of truth is no different in science than it is in true religion.

 

The Traveler

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2 hours ago, Traveler said:

The great problem with science fiction is that there is far greater amounts of fiction and little if any science.

The Expanse is a halfway decent attempt to make a realistic scifi show.  They tried to keep the amount of new outrageous stuff down to two items.  Humankind invents the "Epstein Drive", which inexpensively makes as much power and thrust your craft can handle.  And an alien engineered molecule that builds a gate to other worlds.   Everything else they tried to keep to a reasonable path of human advancement.  So yeah, everything is cheaper/better/faster, there's an autodoc and pharmaceutical printer, and everyone's computers are n times faster than ours.  But people are still tied to their cell phones, and poverty, disease, war, and social inequities are still all around in abundance. 

They had the oceans rise many feet, and humans just adapted and nobody talks about it in the show - it's just background scenery.  And the UN implemented a basic universal income program, which means there's a massive population explosion of unemployed and uneducated angry people. 

And coolest of all - we (as in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are still around.  We used our tithing money to commission The Nauvoo, a massive generation ship that will reach a neighboring star in 300 years.  But it gets stolen shortly before it's scheduled launch, abandoned, and salvaged by the pirates.  The command deck is laid out like the insides of our temples.  

 

 

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16 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

the "Epstein Drive",

It's called the Epstein Drive?

Really?

That seems...rather...notorious in some ways.  I suppose no one connected any dots to that one though in the strange way people do at times.

It never mysteriously dies on it's own does it?  When cameras get shut off and it's guardians suddenly are not anywhere to be found?

It didn't have a G (or Ghislane) series of Drives did it which is encased in a big prison but won't divulge any secrets of it's organization or anything that is there?

It doesn't have the remains of a mysterious cello which seems to have roots with a (Melissa) Solomon does it?  A Melissa Solomon who got their tuition paid...until they didn't?  And the Cello as one of Epstein's items after it leaves or it's demise occasionally?

I suppose if it was by accident than it was probably too late to change the name after the name got out in the open and associated with notoriety.  Strange coincidences in life occur at times.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IDW?p=IDW&.tsrc=fin-srch

IDW Publishing. US comic book company generally regarded as one of the "Big Six" of the industry.

In the mid-2010s they started cramming personal politics and "modern sensibilities" into a number of their books, including the licensed "Transformers" and "G. I. Joe" books they were doing for Hasbro. 

Whenever people complained, IDW ignored it... barring Joe writer Aubrey Sitterson, who was allegedly picking fights on internet forums with the people who were criticizing his material. 

2017 happens. IDW spends so much out-of-pocket trying to produce a pilot episode for one of their in-house titles that they don't have enough money left over to pay a surprise tax hit. Their titles are still popular enough that if sales remain strong, they can finance their way out of it. But they don't remain strong, as Sitterson issues a radioactively hot take about 9/11 that causes the two biggest G. I. Joe fan sites to declare a 100% media blackout on all things IDW unless Sitterson is fired. Hasbro has to get involved.

...Twice, as that November Sitterson opens his mouth again on social media, unleashing a 26-part Twitter rant where he literally admits that he was making changes to the book based on his personal politics (such as making one Hasbro-original character he didn't like into a racist to justify getting rid of him and completely reworking another Hasbro-original character because the Hasbro design offended him). No one knows what went down behind the scenes, but Sitterson was fired and his book cancelled. The entire "Hasbro Shared Universe" that Sitterson's Joe book was a part of would come to a hasty conclusion at the end of 2018 ahead of their Hasbro licenses coming up for renewal, leading to speculation that Hasbro was not going to renew. 

Hasbro did renew, but IDW squandered their opportunity. Hasbro cancelled their Joe and Transformers licenses effective at the end of last year, and the status of their other Hasbro licenses is in limbo. 

For the past month, IDW's stock price has been dipping below $1 / share, a price so dangerously low that they risk being de-listed. That price is so low that some of the more uniquely successful indie creators, like Ethan Van Schiver and Eric July, could actually afford to purchase controlling stake in the company. 

If IDW does collapse, I can only imagine the consequences for the industry. 

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If anyone is curious as to what kind of material IDW has been publishing...

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Price_of_You

This is an issue of Transformers where the entire premise comes down to "spy for me and I'll gaslight your gay crush into loving you back". 

It's no surprise that Hasbro finally had enough of them.

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3 hours ago, Ironhold said:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IDW?p=IDW&.tsrc=fin-srch

IDW Publishing. US comic book company generally regarded as one of the "Big Six" of the industry.

In the mid-2010s they started cramming personal politics and "modern sensibilities" into a number of their books, including the licensed "Transformers" and "G. I. Joe" books they were doing for Hasbro. 

Whenever people complained, IDW ignored it... barring Joe writer Aubrey Sitterson, who was allegedly picking fights on internet forums with the people who were criticizing his material. 

2017 happens. IDW spends so much out-of-pocket trying to produce a pilot episode for one of their in-house titles that they don't have enough money left over to pay a surprise tax hit. Their titles are still popular enough that if sales remain strong, they can finance their way out of it. But they don't remain strong, as Sitterson issues a radioactively hot take about 9/11 that causes the two biggest G. I. Joe fan sites to declare a 100% media blackout on all things IDW unless Sitterson is fired. Hasbro has to get involved.

...Twice, as that November Sitterson opens his mouth again on social media, unleashing a 26-part Twitter rant where he literally admits that he was making changes to the book based on his personal politics (such as making one Hasbro-original character he didn't like into a racist to justify getting rid of him and completely reworking another Hasbro-original character because the Hasbro design offended him). No one knows what went down behind the scenes, but Sitterson was fired and his book cancelled. The entire "Hasbro Shared Universe" that Sitterson's Joe book was a part of would come to a hasty conclusion at the end of 2018 ahead of their Hasbro licenses coming up for renewal, leading to speculation that Hasbro was not going to renew. 

Hasbro did renew, but IDW squandered their opportunity. Hasbro cancelled their Joe and Transformers licenses effective at the end of last year, and the status of their other Hasbro licenses is in limbo. 

For the past month, IDW's stock price has been dipping below $1 / share, a price so dangerously low that they risk being de-listed. That price is so low that some of the more uniquely successful indie creators, like Ethan Van Schiver and Eric July, could actually afford to purchase controlling stake in the company. 

If IDW does collapse, I can only imagine the consequences for the industry. 

We must remember it isn't about money for these people. It's about "the message".

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On 1/8/2023 at 11:17 AM, scottyg said:

We must remember it isn't about money for these people. It's about "the message".

"The Message" doesn't pay the rent, something that they're going to learn the hard way.

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8 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

"The Message" doesn't pay the rent, something that they're going to learn the hard way.

Not really.  TPTB are always going to find a way to fund the protesters and the woke crowd, even if it means bankrupting the US government (which is the endgame).  Once that happens, then they will let everyone rot in the mess they've made for themselves.

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1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

Not really.  TPTB are always going to find a way to fund the protesters and the woke crowd, even if it means bankrupting the US government (which is the endgame).  Once that happens, then they will let everyone rot in the mess they've made for themselves.

Folks would be surprised to know who owns many of our favorite companies, and what else is in their business portfolios. They all have other streams of revenue...the adversary, pathetic as he is, has positioned himself well.

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If you have fifteen minutes to invest in the topic of transgender issues and cultural change, I can't recommend this video enough.  This is Jordan Peterson, interviewing Chloe Cole, a girl who medically and surgically transitioned starting around 14.  

 

 

 

The full 2 hour interview is also very much worth the watch, if you have 2 hours to spend. 

 

 

Edited by NeuroTypical
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