tjhart85

Cyyris, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

It’s definitely not short, but The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey is absolutely top notch.

The attention to detail that goes into a sci-fi series that lives within a realistic world, with actual physics is incredible - i.e:

• Ships need to calculate when to flip around midway through their journey to decelerate by burning the opposite direction.
• Torpedoes and tungsten slugs have travel time.
• Making hard accelerations or evasive maneuvers can and will crush you into your flight seat due to the intense G forces and the only way to not black out is a cocktail of stimulants, adrenaline, and blood thinners
• Communications take place at actual light speed, which means when you’re dealing with distances up to several hundred million kilometers, it can take anywhere from minutes to hours for your message to be received.

But fear not! This is truly a traditional sci-fi novel, packed full with ancient alien substances that seem to reprogram human cells for their own use - but to what end? Ancient feuds between those born in space, and those born on a planet. And the answer to the age old question: why not just use asteroids as weapons?

The main characters are an extremely close knit group, who it seems at times get by on sheer willpower and a touch of luck (with some excellent planning).

The story takes turns being told from different characters’ perspectives, which really helps you get to know each character intimately - how they think, and feel about the events unfolding - how their morality affects their choices.

If you’re looking for a more “realistic” take on sci-fi, this series is absolutely up your alley.

The first novel is called “Leviathan’s Wake” and there are 9 main books in the series, with a smattering of novellas between that expand on the world.

www.goodreads.com/book/…/8855321-leviathan-wakes

themeatbridge, 2 months ago

The deficiency is in society’s treament of marginalized classes, not in the classes themselves. Affirmative action, for example, is an indictment of society’s inherent racism and our collective inability to see past race.

If you look at exceptions for race, religion, or gender and see deficiencies in the race, religion, or gender, you are the deficiency.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod, 2 months ago

If Ernest is listening, I'd love to volunteer to help be a sysadmin/coordinate sysadmin schedules. I've got like 20 years of tech experience, with a lot of it being handling support teams and administering Linux systems. I know I said I couldn't because of money, I realized that social currency is worth even more and I like you folks and want this place to succeed.

So if anybody can get in touch with him, have Ernest email 246FHD@protonmail.com

ptz, 2 months ago

If I had to point to an exact time when Windows went to complete garbage, I’d say it was right around the time they renamed “My Computer” to “This PC”. To me, that just shows how their view of your device changed.

ahdok, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

I’m not talking about the single outliers at the top, but about the “billionaire class” in general, it’s a pretty modern concept. There’s a reason I said “Average” and not “Richest”

Yes, if we go back to before 1900 the wealthiest people had more of the pie, but this is largely a product of the bottom of society having, essentially, nothing. 1800s societies were capable of producing enough for (most people) to survive, and there wasn’t much excess “wealth” to go around. While the rich collected most of that, the difference is in the scale of “available resources.” It’s not a comparable system when most of your population are serfs.

I don’t find it encouraging to say “oh well, this isn’t unique, look it used to be like this 100 years ago!” when 100 years ago the quality of life for regular people was abysmal.

The fact that your graphs show wealth inequality steadily growing is the major concern. We had a more equitable society in the 1970s by a long shot. Our current state isn’t inevitable, it’s a result of the policies we’ve implemented. With current trends, do we want our society to return to those dynamics of the1800s? In a world where we’ve so much automation and wealth in the world that we could care for everyone why do people still have to work 40+ hours a week just to get by?

Funny you should say “we” and “American History” though :) Maybe the American model is the problem here.

toastus, 2 months ago

I respect your opinion, but I am completely the other way.

A meal wants to be a journey through your flavors.
Each getting a small time to shine, before coming together in the end for that one last perfect bite.

scrubbles, 2 months ago

As an instance admin I get to see people’s deleted comments, they are just marked as deleted. Every time a post comes in like this I like to check a users history.

Yeah dude, you deserve the massive downvotes.

If you’re walking around town and smell shit everywhere you go, maybe you should check your shoe.

swordgeek, 2 months ago

Fuck Oprah.

Her sanctimonious bullshit brought us Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, and Jenny McCarthy.

Her ‘listening platform’ has probably lead directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

chip16, 3 months ago

Why do boomers put a license link on public comments where the license has no value? I’d recommend removing it since having it automatically makes your opinions worth less.

From the notices section

You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain

Which means comments posted anywhere.

ricecake, 3 months ago

It often starts with some form of financial trouble, and not being educated in how money, the law, or any of that stuff works.

So you sign a piece of paper saying you get a truck, and they get $350 a month. This sounds great, so you don’t look any further since you don’t have the best work history, but right now you can afford that usually.

Later, your money situation is worse and you miss a few payments. Suddenly, they’re sending you this letter that says they’re going to take your truck.
It’s bullshit, they can’t take your truck, it’s yours. You never agreed to let them take it, you just owe them something like ten or twenty missed payments.

So you start looking around for what you’re supposed to do with the letter, and most places say “pay your bills” or “nothing can be done at this point”, but it’s not fair that you’re loosing your truck just because you’re not giving them money fast enough, and you need your truck.
But, you find some people who explain that there’s actually some holes in the law, and point you to the law so you can see for yourself. Finally, someone is actually explaining something helpful!
If rich people can use loopholes to get out of stuff, why can’t you? The only difference is that they have people who know the law, and you just found some people who will explain it.
The law says that if they can’t prove that you owe it, then you don’t. The people explain that you need to ask very specifically otherwise they’ll be allowed to ignore you. They reference you to another forum where people have more details, and a lot of other stuff you never even thought about…

Anyway, since you had once acknowledged that you bought the truck instead of possessed it, they were able to get out of the loophole and they stole your truck.
That’s okay though, since you’ve been reading and now you know that the law doesn’t say you have to pay with money, but you can also pay with a “promissory notes”, which someone sold you the template for making, so now you can buy a new truck, agree to whatever terms they want, and use your notes to direct them to collect the money from the taxes you pay. It’s great because you get your truck and keep your money, the dealer gets paid just not how they expected, and the people who make up money (turns out it’s not real? They just stole all the gold‽) send their fake paper to whoever.
The system is perfect, but complicated, so you’ll inevitably make mistakes and face consequences for them, but if you just keep learning the loopholes and getting the special plates and drivers licenses you’ll be okay.

---

It’s a coping mechanism for people who are faced with an overwhelmingly complicated social system and don’t have the tools or capacity to learn how to interact with it on its terms.
Most people in that situation don’t fall off the ledge, but a handful of them are confronted with how overwhelmed they are at the same time they’re offered a hand hold to something that feels like control.

There doesn’t always have to be a crisis, sometimes they just see the handhold and grab on, but usually their story ends up having some routine legal or financial trouble.

admiralteal, 3 months ago

To be honest, I don't see a problem with this kind of requirement for explicit consent.

I think there's a lot of harm in our society caused by complex license agreements and contracts being signed by people who can't possibly be adequately informed to have affirmed their understanding and acceptance of the terms.

It SHOULD be the law that contracts must be as clear, explicit, and unambiguous as possible. It SHOULD be the law that a term that is too confusing for a layman to grock is suspect and possibly invalid on its face. And I think a video record of acceptance along with a signature sounds like a great CYA mechanism for a lot of these contract that have very serious consequences in their terms.

Honytawk, 3 months ago

Nazis are a blight on society, any time you give them a finger they take the whole arm, tattoo it full of swastikas and feed it to their ravenous dogs.

You don’t need to be tolerant to the intolerant. They are the ones who broke the social contract by ascribing themselves to an ideology that is literally about genociding any group that doesn’t conform to their view.

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. No exceptions.

DessertStorms, 3 months ago

The colonies we had were far better treated than most colonies of the era, or ever to be honest.

No need to read any further. It's one thing to be ignorant of a subject, no one knows everything, but it is another all together to be wilfully ignorant and also so confidently incorrect about it, especially after admitting you know nothing about it.
I'm sure at least a couple of people will have the time and patience to spoon feed you information that is readily available all around you to, at the very least, refute this bullshit, though I doubt you'll be open to hearing what they have to say, so I honestly don't know why you're wasting not only your own time, but that of anyone who would try to actually educate you, too..

newthrowaway20, 3 months ago

Is this cuz he talked about Biden being old?

Or is this really about Jon Stewart?

FfaerieOxide, 3 months ago

I am a big fan of kbin but I am posting this from an mbin instance

And good luck to your instance. I wouldn't feel as comfortable uploading anything to US servers myself, and I didn't find any words similar to the following (from your instance) on kbin.social:

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