111–120 of 273 posts
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Almost all space opera is positive, not depressing. In case you are into that.
Well, until you realize how unbelievable the entire genre is. Then it's just aggravating. Old man yelling at book "don't you realize your tropes are completely stale??"
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What does fascism have to do with anything?
Fascists chase ideals / purity, so put a lot of effort into their uniforms, for one. Places like Ordensburg Vogelsang, where they trained Nazi officers, explains how they cut themselves to look experienced in battle, among other things. The Wikipedia page doesn't do the place justice. It's terrifying to visit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordensburg_Vogelsang Fascists have strong opinions on "correct" art: https://e…
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Curious what subcultures comes to mind for you. I havent finished my coffee, but and drawing a blank on cultural interests that cant be commodified.
Funny that no one yet mentioned the elephant in the room given that this is HN: Hacker and FOSS culture. Of course there are attempts to commercialize it, but people are naturally resistant.
It's the same reason Linux has had a limited success in other spaces (embedded, mobile, desktop) - as opposed to something like Windows, it's poorly engineered for the needs of these domains (lack of realtime, good IPC, binary compatibility, native audio, graphics capabilities etc.). If you think of early 2000s mobile hardware, which used to run a variety of mobile OSes, yet Linux was incapable of properly supporting this domain. All attempts to rally around Linux as a consumer OS in these domains failed, because it just wasn't really built for that. Yet Linux was powerful enough to suck the air out of the room and prevent the emergence of competitors.
(I don't really consider Android Linux.)
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Curious what subcultures comes to mind for you. I havent finished my coffee, but and drawing a blank on cultural interests that cant be commodified.
Not sure how mainstream furries are. Sure, they have conventions and whatnot but do you expect to see one on a box of cereal anytime soon? Probably not.
I am a sci-fi nerd and I also found Neuromancer incredibly boring, but that's probably because it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine. I'm not a fan if present-ish day sci-fi though, reality is depressing enough as it is.
I am a sci-fi nerd and I also found Neuromancer incredibly boring, but that's probably because it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine. I'm not a fan if present-ish day sci-fi though, reality is depressing enough as it is.
> I'm not a fan if present-ish day sci-fi though, reality is depressing enough as it is. I subscribe to the Asimov's sci-fi short story magazine (I highly recommend it!) and yeah, I have to skip every story that starts with "the world was devastated by climate change 20-50 years ago, here's how we're surviving now above the flooded remains of our world." I just can't take it.
I have read a lot of blogs and articles from authors and agents about thematic checklists for publishing.
On the flip side, immigration makes up the vast majority of content creation, and the leading edge were using these premises 20-30 years ago when they were more novel
Dumpster diving is one of those sub-cultures that is hard to commodify. One of my kids prefers the ethics of dumpster diving. What a privilege.
I just tested an app that let's you pay $3.99 to get a bag of food about to go in the dumpster: https://www.toogoodtogo.com/
It's not replacing dumpster-diving, nor would I consider myself to be part of dumpster-diving subculture. I don't talk about it to my friends. It's just cheap food.
Capitalism absorbs everything. Just look at the anarchism symbol. It has been turned into a fashion element for edgy teenagers. Even a brand. https://www.acupuncture1993.com/
All that's being "ruined" is people's ability to pretend that building identity through access to exclusive cultural groups and hard-to-get consumer items represents some kind rarified social achievement. Commodifying it punctures their illusion of specialness and makes it clear that they don't value their culture in itself, they value how it sets them apart from putatively lesser people. If capitalism ruins that for…
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I think that you can make a pretty good case that global scale isnt necessary for modern quality of life, and the world would be more efficient with 10 or 1% of the current population. Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. Natural resources are still the primary constraint on human prosperity: food, energy, land, metals, ect. In a depopulated world, the average person…
>Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. This is laughably naive. Not only would "innovation suffer", but it's pretty doubtful that current technology could be maintained with a population as small as that. Humans are a (weak) hivemind intelligence, and everything we have now is only capable with a population as high as we have it currently. Sure, there might be some in…
I think we are well into the linear and decreasing scale for most industries.
How many parallel factories do you think there are around the world building tractors. How many independent factories making cars and trucks?
Also, consider how much labor is spent on R&D, investment, and growth.
I think you are drifting back into innovation when you are talking about geniuses.
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I think that you can make a pretty good case that global scale isnt necessary for modern quality of life, and the world would be more efficient with 10 or 1% of the current population. Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. Natural resources are still the primary constraint on human prosperity: food, energy, land, metals, ect. In a depopulated world, the average person…
>Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. This is laughably naive. Not only would "innovation suffer", but it's pretty doubtful that current technology could be maintained with a population as small as that. Humans are a (weak) hivemind intelligence, and everything we have now is only capable with a population as high as we have it currently. Sure, there might be some in…