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“Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

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131–140 of 227 posts

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human fertility itself isn't in decline. Fertility and human births are conflated in the US government definition, implying that we are somehow losing the physical ability to reproduce. What's actually happening is that our society is getting so complex that our agency of reproduction is impaired. It's entirely social; it's all in our heads.

Jury is still out, but there's accumulating evidence that male fertility isn't doing well across the developing world: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a46/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233945045786076... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-158463/Why-male-fe... http://jezebel.com/finally-an-answer-to-declining-male-ferti...

Your first article debates the efficacy of current attempts to investigate infertility:

Recent years have seen many similar reports of falling human sperm counts, but there has been much debate over whether the problem is real. “The principal trouble has been selection bias,” says Joëlle Le Moal, an environmental health epidemiologist at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in Saint Maurice, France, and joint first author of the new article with colleague Matthieu Rolland. She explains that few studies have involved sperm samples collected from randomly selected members of the general population; for the few that did, only a small percentage of men agreed to be included, and the studies were run in restricted areas. So most studies have had to rely on sperm donors or couples coming to fertility clinics, which do not represent the general population.

That article focuses on France, which is rarely counted among developing worlds. The second article is paywalled. The third two could easily be considered Submarine Articles[0] for male supplements and stimulants.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

somewhat related, I live un Budapest which is quite full of homeless people. There is a program by which they distribute a magazine[0], mainly about the homeless life, and in theory with articles written by them. It's still a begging of sort, so not as good as a proper job, but I've always felt it was much more dignified than panhandling. And from the other side, it gives you the idea that people handing out the news…

Seattle has a similar newspaper. The newspaper has licensed vendors, who buy the newspapers at a rate around $1 (I think it's $1.15) and sell for $2. The articles are written and edited by and for the homeless community, and cover all sorts of city business and activities from a unique perspective. http://www.realchangenews.org/

Portugal has Cais, which was in turn inspired by the British magazine The Big Issue: http://www.bigissue.com/

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, there are no cell phones, despite being set decades into the future. Gibson knows a thing or two about seeing their scifi becoming dated, of course. The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so (although for a number of years, many digital TVs would displa…

> "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so when reading that my mind conjures a gray sky, but then again when I was young TVs displayed static if you turned them to a dead channel, not solid blue...

I own a 60" television with no TV tuner attached to a smattering of devices that play and stream digital content. I suspect when my 1 year old is an adult she won't even have a solid conception of a "channel" let alone be able to imagine the color of a "dead" one.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#134
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth. World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers. But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise. Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a catastrophe…

It's not painfully obvious to UN or anyone else noteworthy. Was it also painfully obvious that USSR was going to break up and Russia would have stalled with population growth? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Populati... None of the current trends made sense 30 yrs ago. And in 30 yrs there could be major geopolitical changes that would make current projections useless.

But the worry about overpopulation has been damn near constant.

Rebuked again and again and again each time we reached the previous "unsustainable" threshold.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious, have you experienced poverty? I mean "first world poverty", like the kind you bus drives through? I have, and I want nothing to do with it. I certainly wouldn't choose to walk through it again. Have you stopped to consider you're being a bit of a slum tourist, or maybe you have a saviour complex?

It would be dangerous if everybody not poor wanted nothing to do with poor areas and poor people. All kinds of poverty counted. That is the direct route to segregated communities and cultures of poor and rich, as seen already many places, except that right now, in 2016, most know that there is "lesser" communities and cultures next to theirs, having experienced them themself. If the fortunate communities would shield…

> That is the direct route to segregated communities and cultures of poor and rich, as seen already many places

We have that in the UK, some of the poorest areas are council estates, lots of people never have to go onto them and have little to no incite into the lives of the people who live there, I grew up 'poor' (by the standards of the UK, not talking living in a shanty town or anything) and it leaves a mark on your thought processes that never entirely goes away.

Things are getting much worse here, 6 years of austerity has removed many of the services that poor/disabled people rely on gone or in a perilous state but there isn't widespread anger about it because it has dis-proportionally hit the least 'powerful' in our society the hardest.

Frankly I think we are headed down (if not already some way down) a very dark path and I wouldn't blame the people who are hit by this in the slightest for rioting/rebelling.

Society should be about making sure that the poorest members have at least a decent standard of living otherwise what is it for.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#136
post #20

On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an unintentional period piece[0]. The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first decade of…

Blade Runner's production design is beautiful and almost prefectly timeless in its depiction of a future. The only thing that dates the film for me is the cathode ray tubes. They are even in the flying cars I think. Directors and designers could start using flat blue devices so that interfaces can be re-imagined, in 2-D, or 3-D, and composited in future re-masterings. I like the non-desript tri-fold devices in Westwo…

If Star Wars has taught us anything, it is that later remastered editions should keep to the original as closely as possible.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> direct charity prevents or delays people from finding a better solution What about something like this instead? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/08...

somewhat related, I live un Budapest which is quite full of homeless people. There is a program by which they distribute a magazine[0], mainly about the homeless life, and in theory with articles written by them. It's still a begging of sort, so not as good as a proper job, but I've always felt it was much more dignified than panhandling. And from the other side, it gives you the idea that people handing out the news…

We have that in the UK it's called 'Big Issue' and I often buy one, it's actually worth a read as it covers the politics of things that affect the poorest members of society.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#138
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every affluent country's fertility rate is below replenishment levels. Their population growth rate is only positive due to immigration. In fact, global population will likely peak around 2050, and then start falling, which will be a whole new crisis. People will look back at overpopulation fears and laugh.

Sure, but why does it stop? It doesn't seem to be a specific population density, but culture + economics. Like for example, look at this Haiti plot: https://knoema.com/atlas/Haiti/Population-density It is already 1.5x more dense than Germany. 3x more dense than China. Would it stop? When? Why is Switzerland 9x more dense than Ireland? Is population of Ireland expected to eventually grow to that of Switzerland?

density for countries is such a bad datapoint... (remember half of China is empty which lowers the national average by a lot)

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#139
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a reminder to people, All The Tropes is a fork of TV Tropes, but everything is under a free license and has no advertising. TV Tropes uses a nonfree license.[1] The same page is available here: https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Unintentional_Period_Piece [1]: At least under Stallman's definition of nonfree: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Creati...

Why bring in ideology when you can simply state that TV Tropes is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licensed, while allthetropes is Attribution-ShareAlike licensed?

Eh, it was just an interesting article that was featured on HN a few days ago.

Mainly it's just one more reason that I'm still upset at TV Tropes for relicensing things I wrote without my consent. They took a lot of things that used to be community property, and decided that they should be the only ones to make money off of it. And they've gotten away with it because none of their users really know copyright law. I guess really, it's because sometimes ideology matters.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#140
post #76

Slightly OT but pertains to "Children of Men" The scenes where main character Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is on the really nice buses, and there is classical music playing in the background, while outside the window there is so much poverty really resonated with me. I've lived in SF going on 6 years now. My apt complex has private buses that run from here to FDi in the morning and evening. The route sometimes changes but…

I am curious, have you experienced poverty? I mean "first world poverty", like the kind you bus drives through? I have, and I want nothing to do with it. I certainly wouldn't choose to walk through it again. Have you stopped to consider you're being a bit of a slum tourist, or maybe you have a saviour complex?

What should this person do instead?
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