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The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

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Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#101

Post by pr0zac »

chasd00 wrote: post #50
Lio wrote: post #28

When I rode from John o' Groats to Land's End[1] I remember riding past a firth on the east coast of Scotland with a load of oil rigs ready for either refitting or decommissioning. It was crazy surreal. The landscape is an amazing backdrop anyway but these things are just so big, so weird looking and so out of place... it felt like being party to an alien invasion. It made me think of the John Christopher classic The…

if you've never seen the refineries on the US Gulf Coast it's worth a road trip. Super surreal, miles and miles of dense piping and machinery. I don't really have words to describe except it's something you'd expect to see in a sci-fi anime and not in real life. Just these massive complexes as big as small cities in a web of pipes of all sizes going in all directions. edit: they remind me of the scene in Aliens towar…

My father did computer hardware work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico up til I was conceived and he decided to get a less dangerous job at IBM. My entire childhood he had a picture on his desk he took from the evac boat of the oil rig he worked on in flames after some accident a few years before I was born. So yeah, definitely only usually!

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#102

Post by MichaelZuo »

dmreedy wrote: post #73
MichaelZuo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like the large majority of the HN audience would participate in this, so it's still a bit weird to assume other readers would know the reference.

The large majority of the HN audience wouldn't participate in social media? I'm not sure what dividing line you're trying to draw here. Communication is always in part a game of references. They are a form of compression of larger and more specific ideas, and of humor, which itself is a primary vector of communication. I'm not sure what demographic I'd belong to, but I understood the reference just fine, and it seems…

> The large majority of the HN audience wouldn't participate in social media?

For the spreading meme 'joke comics' portion, yes.

I highly doubt even a quarter of the reader-base would participate in this.

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#103

Post by cscurmudgeon »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #58
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really though. Phones are not necessary for survival but food made more available and cheap is necessary.

Why yes, I do participate in society. Curious!

Why, yes, I do moralize every time I get the chance without offering true alternatives! Who cares if poor people suffer?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#105

Post by pphysch »

kmeisthax wrote: post #99

Twitter being Twitter, there's a bluecheck fossil-fuel lover account in the replies trying to propagandize for this not being dystopian: https://twitter.com/AllthingsLNG/status/1651223136644259840

That comment seems pretty reasonable. Would it be better if they didn't and have a O&G related name?

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#106

Post by _ph_ »

formerly_proven wrote: post #45
weast wrote: post #31

One of my favourite videos is a striking self-promo clip commissioned by Shell in 1970s. The tech optimism is strong, with visuals that would feel much more at home in a climate shock video nowadays. the video captures the otherworldliness of oil production and large scale infrastructure in a hypnotic way. It really is quite beautiful. https://youtu.be/_zWjT59S_wk

Industry and in some sense "machinery" itself is largely seen as inherently negative, destructive, "unnatural", "against" by many today.

Well, I am certainly as far from techno-phobia as it might be possible, but oil rigs are examples of machinery which are connected to large damages to the environment. Not so much the machines themselves, but the oil they have been pumping. See also those - by themselves - magnificient excavators to dig for lignite. Great machinery, but if you consider the outcome, it is very dystropian.

Nevertheless, they are engineering marvels and as such quite a view to behold.

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#107

Post by justusthane »

weast wrote: post #31

One of my favourite videos is a striking self-promo clip commissioned by Shell in 1970s. The tech optimism is strong, with visuals that would feel much more at home in a climate shock video nowadays. the video captures the otherworldliness of oil production and large scale infrastructure in a hypnotic way. It really is quite beautiful. https://youtu.be/_zWjT59S_wk

Wow! Hard to believe that’s produced by Shell. A outside of any environmental or idealogical perspective, I found it deeply unsettling just on a visual and auditory level.

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#108

Post by cscurmudgeon »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #61
mecsred wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could read this as "you can't say anything bad about the industrial complex because you participate in it", though I think that is pretty obviously bad faith. A more charitable interpretation I would take is "whatever misgivings you have about large scale industrial practices, it's important to remember that they also massively benefit society and are in some cases necessary." Pointing out the flaws is great, vil…

I think at this stage large scale for profit petroleum extraction is literally villainous, so I'm ok villainizing. Whether it's productive to is a question of tactics that I wouldn't expect to find consensus on even among like-minded people. There's potentially a nuanced and worthwhile conversation about what carefully ramping down fossil fuel use looks like, what responsibility we have to the people who haven't been…

Great switch to "for profit" from the general "

You do realize that petroleum is not just for fuel but plays a major part in every part of our lives?

E.g. fertilizers. This kind of zero-order thinking without thinking of higher-order effects is what lead to this:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...

Real life is not Captain Planet (the cartoon) where everything is as binary as you point out.

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#109

Post by muttled »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #100

Working in the oil field in remote parts of the Arctic was decidedly the closest to living on a space colony that I’ll ever get and it was awesome. I miss that environment and the work very much.

Could you give us a bit of what it was like? I imagine it being somewhat like the Vegas hotels where you can spend an entire vacation without actually having to step outside or a military/cruise ship that has stores/entertainment/exercise facilities built right in.

Re: The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs

#110

Post by dtagames »

weast wrote: post #31

One of my favourite videos is a striking self-promo clip commissioned by Shell in 1970s. The tech optimism is strong, with visuals that would feel much more at home in a climate shock video nowadays. the video captures the otherworldliness of oil production and large scale infrastructure in a hypnotic way. It really is quite beautiful. https://youtu.be/_zWjT59S_wk

Previous comment beat me to it... This is Koyaanisqatsi for petroleum.
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