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Kale
May 14, 2010

I feel like if this was an actual unbiased jury and not a split Senate with GOP hacks you'd have convinced all 12 to vote guilty already the managers case is so well orchestrated and the defenses so utterly lacking. That said I don't know how you would find an unbiased jury for a defendant like Donald Trump, but this whole case of his culpability is about as clear cut as it gets.

At this point I think this is more for the general public that isn't insane but kind of unplugged and uninformed about political reality's sake and less about actually getting the senate to convict. Almost all of the partisan hack senators are in safe red seat states though that don't give a gently caress and will just vote R regardless though so it's hard to see anything come of how they decide to vote.

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Zoph
Sep 12, 2005

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

He just extrapolated the 80s to get his setting, and it turns out that's what happened in real life as well.

One of Adam Curtis' documentaries goes into some detail about how Neuromancer reflects a nightmare vision of the neoliberal world being created by institutions and politicians at the very same moment he was writing.

I taught a Cyberpunk lit class last Spring and at each new step underscored how the genre was always much more about processing the present moment at the time of their creation, aligning the events of the novels/stories with the transitions in global social/economic paradigms that accompanied them.

skylined!
Apr 6, 2012

THE DEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON
Baked Alaska is appearing in trumps impeachment hearing and the last five years feels like a psychotic hallucination.

Anias
Jun 3, 2010

It really is a lovely hat

Nenonen posted:

Imagine a young girl, an old man and a time cop on the edge of a cliff...

You're getting ahead of me Nenonen

Kale
May 14, 2010

Data Graham posted:

God drat that Gorka interview pisses me off. That even a combative interviewer would just let his "Antifa murdered 40 people" slide without challenge, I mean that is a hell of a claim to just let settle into accepted fact

Who even interviewed this guy anyway? I don't know what's supposed to come of interviewing a total baleful piece of poo poo like Sebastian Gorka anyway who seems to hate just about everybody and everything on the planet. I still remember the first time I saw this dumb gently caress and literally thought he was just some random crazy Trump supporter they found there wasn't an ounce of professionalism or sensibility in the way he spoke or the opinions he held and then finding out he was supposed to be an Administration official. I don't even know how to describe it, he's just a complete shitlord that nobody with an ounce of sense should ever have to consider the opinion of. Even Stephen Miller with his concern trolling is a better interview.

Like I just don't get it at this point, how is interviewing these guys remotely helpful to anyone at this point? You have a real administration now who you can go and ask an official for an interview from and probably actually get something other than a crazy person spitting venom about leftists (seemingly the GOP's literal only talking and policy point now, "leftisim/progressives bad cause reasons, here's some lies about Antifa/Democrats") and the media and yet apparently somebody though it was worthwhile to get this guys opinion on literally anything. Like let me guess NYT?

Kale fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Feb 11, 2021

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


TALK ABOUT POLITICS AND SCIFI HERE: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3956120

thank u kindly, goon bless

half cocaine
Jul 22, 2019


Killer robot posted:

While to some extent that's true, a whole lot of the "predictive" element of classic cyberpunk fiction is equal parts "stuff that was already in place in the 1980s which most readers didn't really know/think about yet", "stuff that was so obviously on the horizon that you didn't need to read sci-fi to be aware of it", and "you need to plug a landline into your cybernetic implant and risk death by rogue computer program" level misfirings. There's some brilliant anticipation of current issues in there, but not that much more than there is in other sci-fi genres with a heavy social focus (which is most of them.)

Neal Stephenson predicted cryptocurrency to a loving T.

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010

davecrazy posted:

Everybody should read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, since its the antithesis to all the take Starship Troopers literary believers.

War sucks, it dehumanizes and alienates the participants.

Heinlein writes that opening scene in a rah, rah America (Argentina?) gently caress Yeah! kind of way but the actions Rico takes are clearly abhorrent. Nuking a water treatment facility and acknowledging that the effects of that would be disastrous for the civilian population. Dehumanizing the inhabitants of that world with racial slurs as he kills them. At one point he falls through the roof of a building and basically says, "I think it was a church or something, it was full of families praying or singing. Anyway I started shooting and burning them with my flamethrower and then dropped a time bomb and got out of there."

I'm not actually convinced that Heinlein's intent in Starship Troopers was actually all that far from the movies. Including the fascist imagery and ideology. Like, the book ends with a prayer session as they are diving in to commit genocide.

Flip Yr Wig
Feb 21, 2007

Oh please do go on
Fun Shoe
If we're still talking about Starship Troopers, my hot take is that it is a very funny and cutting satire in retrospect, but actually watching it is extremely grating. While it was clearly a deliberate choice in service of the satire to frame almost half the movie as massive waves of constantly screaming and shooting bodies with no regard to composition, it is a deeply unpleasant aesthetic experience. Gave me massive headache on a recent rewatch.

We talk a lot about how stupid you have to be to miss the satire, but honestly, I think you need to be even more brain dead to have found it to be effective and exciting as an action movie.

Flip Yr Wig fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Feb 11, 2021

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

half cocaine posted:

Neal Stephenson predicted cryptocurrency to a loving T.

How much of that is nerds going "Actually this is a great idea" though.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

uggy posted:

Is there anything I could read on that at all? Definitely agree and have read Gibson but I’d be curious if somebody has written more about it. I feel like a ton of comics that were near future also have stuff that feels eerily dead on

I don't know any specific texts on the topic off the top of my head. It's something Gibson himself has written about. You may want to check out his essay collection Distrust That Particular Flavor. One of his points that sticks with me is "the future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."


Killer robot posted:

While to some extent that's true, a whole lot of the "predictive" element of classic cyberpunk fiction is equal parts "stuff that was already in place in the 1980s which most readers didn't really know/think about yet", "stuff that was so obviously on the horizon that you didn't need to read sci-fi to be aware of it", and "you need to plug a landline into your cybernetic implant and risk death by rogue computer program" level misfirings. There's some brilliant anticipation of current issues in there, but not that much more than there is in other sci-fi genres with a heavy social focus (which is most of them.)

Oh yeah definitely. The cyberpunks are no more prescient than other sci fi authors, but they appear to be so because they write about such a near future. My point is a lot of the prescient seeming stuff that cyberpunk gets praised for today is more setting dressing and incidental detail than central thematic elements. For example, [i]Neuromancer[/i[ doesn't really say anything about corporate domination. It's much more interested in exploring AI and questions of consciousness and identity.

I'd also add that some of the seemingly obvious social anxieties that the cyberpunks wrote about were also completely off-base. The idea that Japan would soon economically and culturally dominate American was widely held at the time, played a significant role in Gibson's first trilogy, and turned out to be a baseless anxiety.


davecrazy posted:

Everybody should read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, since its the antithesis to all the take Starship Troopers literary believers.

War sucks, it dehumanizes and alienates the participants.

Using time dilation as an allegory for how soldiers can lose touch with their society while deployed is a brilliant conceit.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Since they were talking about it in Congress, I didn't think that the Tanden tweets that they mentioned were bad. Does anybody have her bad tweets? What were they?

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

Does the current House stimulus plan include $1400 for kids as well?

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug
I personally knew some fans of the Starship Troopers novel who were upset with the movie but not in it being a satire so much as it not having the power armor the book was famous for. It's one of those "Make a Superman adaptation but he's not an alien or bulletproof and you also explore the fascististic elements of superhero stories" sort of things which is technically possible but is gonna upset two distinct types of fans.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Kale posted:

I feel like if this was an actual unbiased jury and not a split Senate with GOP hacks you'd have convinced all 12 to vote guilty already the managers case is so well orchestrated and the defenses so utterly lacking. That said I don't know how you would find an unbiased jury for a defendant like Donald Trump, but this whole case of his culpability is about as clear cut as it gets.

At this point I think this is more for the general public that isn't insane but kind of unplugged and uninformed about political reality's sake and less about actually getting the senate to convict. Almost all of the partisan hack senators are in safe red seat states though that don't give a gently caress and will just vote R regardless though so it's hard to see anything come of how they decide to vote.

Do you think the republicans who are holding the line on not convicting trump are worried about negative fallout from this?

I've just been assuming that they feel like they have all the cards and see the impeachment as a way of stymieing Biden's agenda, but that's looking at them from the outside as antagonists. If I were to consider the event from their point of view, do they feel weak or like they're facing something that will be destructive or bad for them? It's hard for me to tell.

DarkHorse
Dec 13, 2006

Vroom Vroom, BEEP BEEP!
Nap Ghost

Kchama posted:

You forgot her infinite legion of invisible silent spy drones that she uses to learn the plans of all of the villains so they can be perfectly countered forever.

My favorite part is that the reasoning given to why she immediately becomes a man and stays that way forever is because apparently women don't get to be 6 feet tall on Safehold ever, so she'd stand out.

Despite the fact that she can just shapeshift to be a foot shorter if she really wanted, and oh yeah, she actually spends all of her time pretending to be a space angel.

Ugh yeah. The Safehold series is weird because the plot moves both too slowly and too quickly. Too slowly, because you have a super powered Batman-and-Superman-combined protagonist with invisible spy drones and a super AI to monitor them going against a pre-industrial society, and too quickly because the "good" society ends up being ok with the changes and revelations about their origins.

Really all the good guys are just good perfect wonderful people and the antagonists, while effort is made to say they aren't inherently bad, are at best misled and at worst are venal carnal corrupted assholes. Just... absolutely no nuance

mango sentinel
Jan 5, 2001

by sebmojo

Killer robot posted:

I personally knew some fans of the Starship Troopers novel who were upset with the movie but not in it being a satire so much as it not having the power armor the book was famous for. It's one of those "Make a Superman adaptation but he's not an alien or bulletproof and you also explore the fascististic elements of superhero stories" sort of things which is technically possible but is gonna upset two distinct types of fans.

I had friends like this and I told them to just shut up and rewatch EXOsquad. I think that's basically what the DTV sequels turned into.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



jet sanchEz posted:

I read a lot of John Varley as a teenager, is he considered crazy?

Every single thing I've read by Varley had some kind of pro-pedophilia aspect to it. Four pieces isn't everything, but I'd call it a good ssmple size for this.

generic one
Oct 2, 2004

I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a wookie in a hat with a bat
And a six four Impala


Nap Ghost

mutata posted:

Does the current House stimulus plan include $1400 for kids as well?

Indeed, it does.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

PeterWeller posted:

Oh yeah definitely. The cyberpunks are no more prescient than other sci fi authors, but they appear to be so because they write about such a near future. My point is a lot of the prescient seeming stuff that cyberpunk gets praised for today is more setting dressing and incidental detail than central thematic elements. For example, [i]Neuromancer[/i[ doesn't really say anything about corporate domination. It's much more interested in exploring AI and questions of consciousness and identity.

I'd also add that some of the seemingly obvious social anxieties that the cyberpunks wrote about were also completely off-base. The idea that Japan would soon economically and culturally dominate American was widely held at the time, played a significant role in Gibson's first trilogy, and turned out to be a baseless anxiety.


The decline of American hegemony and a multipolar future has been a fixation for Americans since the 70s, though. It wasn't Japan, but Americans have been obsessed with the idea that they would be culturally dominated in the same way they culturally dominated the rest of the world after World War II, and in a very deep, pathological way, since well before the end of the Cold War.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
The smart thing for the Republican senators to do would just not be present for the vote. "Boycott" it or whatever.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

mutata posted:

Does the current House stimulus plan include $1400 for kids as well?

Plus another $3,600 per year per kid for the next 4 years.

Start working on those kids now and they'll practically pay for themselves.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
For starship troopers, the TV show was a really weird mix of the book and the movies. It took a lot of the satire from the movies and played it completely straight, which is surprising considering Verhoeven produced it, AND it was explicitly targeted at young kids.

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Feb 11, 2021

Jealous Cow
Apr 4, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

Pick posted:

The smart thing for the Republican senators to do would just not be present for the vote. "Boycott" it or whatever.

The 2/3s threshold is of those present, so if they did that Trump would be convicted.

Rust Martialis
May 8, 2007

At night, Bavovnyatko quietly comes to the occupiers’ bases, depots, airfields, oil refineries and other places full of flammable items and starts playing with fire there
Bio of a Space Tyrant.

Not even once.

Thom12255
Feb 23, 2013
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Plus another $3,600 per year per kid for the next 4 years.

Start working on those kids now and they'll practically pay for themselves.

I have an online friend with 8 kids - she's going to be minted.

Lemming
Apr 21, 2008

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Plus another $3,600 per year per kid for the next 4 years.

Start working on those kids now and they'll practically pay for themselves.

Finally, now I understand why the Democrats have been kidnapping all those children!

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007

DarkHorse posted:

Ugh yeah. The Safehold series is weird because the plot moves both too slowly and too quickly. Too slowly, because you have a super powered Batman-and-Superman-combined protagonist with invisible spy drones and a super AI to monitor them going against a pre-industrial society, and too quickly because the "good" society ends up being ok with the changes and revelations about their origins.

Really all the good guys are just good perfect wonderful people and the antagonists, while effort is made to say they aren't inherently bad, are at best misled and at worst are venal carnal corrupted assholes. Just... absolutely no nuance

Don't forget that one of the big bad guys is named Zhaspahr Clyntahn (Jasper Clinton, yes all the names loving suck like this) and is a very very very very very thin stand-in for Bill Clinton and he's had a fat ugly torture rapist named Clinton in every book he can get away with it in.

Majorian
Jul 1, 2009

Inverted Offensive Battle: Acupuncture Attacks Convert To 3D Penetration Tactics Taking Advantage of Deep Battle Opportunities

mango sentinel posted:

I had friends like this and I told them to just shut up and rewatch EXOsquad. I think that's basically what the DTV sequels turned into.

I gotta revisit that show sometime. I remember LOVING it as a kid, but I saw a clip on youtube a couple years ago, and that animation...woof.

Speaking of "woof," I don't know if anyone saw this already, but...

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1359695883906998277

Time for a hot take, folks: Lindsey Graham is a piece of garbage.

Thom12255
Feb 23, 2013
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY

Majorian posted:

I gotta revisit that show sometime. I remember LOVING it as a kid, but I saw a clip on youtube a couple years ago, and that animation...woof.

Speaking of "woof," I don't know if anyone saw this already, but...

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1359695883906998277

Time for a hot take, folks: Lindsey Graham is a piece of garbage.

He knows he also faces criminal heat along side Trump.

DarkHorse
Dec 13, 2006

Vroom Vroom, BEEP BEEP!
Nap Ghost

PeterWeller posted:


Using time dilation as an allegory for how soldiers can lose touch with their society while deployed is a brilliant conceit.

I really liked the Hyperion series for this. They have FTL travel in the form of gates, but you gotta build them first, and to build them you gotta slow-boat your way out to your destination first, guaranteeing you'll be so time-dilated when you arrive that by the time you finish construction all your family and friends will have died of old age and your great grandkids/nephews will be who welcomes you once the gate opens.

Also I think the way they pay you was dropping a large sum in an account and let it accrue interest while you're traveling for a century, and the only reason most people do it. That and leaving your old life behind.

More on the topic of sci-go authors being weird sex perverts, there's a lot of weird pseudo-pedophilia and disparate age romance in that series given the time dilation effects. The first book is really really good though.

Thom12255
Feb 23, 2013
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY
https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1359920667915870212

zoux
Apr 28, 2006


They were too distracted by all the Neera Tanden tweets.

https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1359895931064262656

Out of touch elites in the mainstream media

Kalit
Nov 6, 2006

The great thing about the thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children is that they can't pull away when you fondle them or sniff their hair.

That's a Biden success story.

Majorian posted:

Speaking of "woof," I don't know if anyone saw this already, but...

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1359695883906998277

Time for a hot take, folks: Lindsey Graham is a piece of garbage.

:allears: I wonder if he'll start making the claim that D senators are now considering to vote against covinction after today.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

The decline of American hegemony and a multipolar future has been a fixation for Americans since the 70s, though. It wasn't Japan, but Americans have been obsessed with the idea that they would be culturally dominated in the same way they culturally dominated the rest of the world after World War II, and in a very deep, pathological way, since well before the end of the Cold War.

Gonna put my response in the Politics and Science Fiction thread so this one can get back to its main topic (or a food derail).

Jows
May 8, 2002

generic one posted:

Indeed, it does.

Will they use 2020 filings? I'd like to get my lower income and 2nd kid on the books so I don't have to wait until next March/April to get the full amount owed.

Kaiju Cage Match
Nov 5, 2012




mango sentinel posted:

I had friends like this and I told them to just shut up and rewatch EXOsquad. I think that's basically what the DTV sequels turned into.

Or play the Earth Defense Force games.

DarkHorse
Dec 13, 2006

Vroom Vroom, BEEP BEEP!
Nap Ghost

Kchama posted:

Don't forget that one of the big bad guys is named Zhaspahr Clyntahn (Jasper Clinton, yes all the names loving suck like this) and is a very very very very very thin stand-in for Bill Clinton and he's had a fat ugly torture rapist named Clinton in every book he can get away with it in.

gently caress I hated the names with a fiery passion. All of them are like this - regular common names but with bizarre spelling and extra letters to make them weird and different.

Jealous Cow posted:

The 2/3s threshold is of those present, so if they did that Trump would be convicted.

That would be the smart thing for the Republican Party - get Trump exiled from political office without having to take a stand

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Kraftwerk posted:

Here's what I don't understand. Why is it the divine mandate that 90% of the global population needs to constantly live in fear of economic destitution.

Like I know many people right now are making 25k or less working precarious gig work under awful job conditions. Obviously we need to be helping these people first and foremost. But if you can climb that ladder and make it to the suburbs with a 70k+ job you're still hosed.

That was a good post and most of what you wrote is true. I've brushed up against both of the numbers and income levels you posted and being on the high end of them STILL it did not significantly change the way i live my life or effect my happiness. If you've ever seen that pie video some guy made from inside a mall, you'll see why. My ex wife makes more than twice what I do is always on the cusp of being broke.

I mean, if you start by taking away 90% of the pie, it doesn't really matter that much how much more of that leftover 10% you obtain. Don't get me wrong, though. An income disparity like that still does make a difference but mostly just means you're starving slightly less and maybe a little bit more secure with a better credit rating and easier ways to go into debt. I think earning closer to 100k than 25 really just changes your borrowing potential and what you have to put on a credit card.

Here's the video I mentioned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANUXO-GQwU

Kale posted:

I feel like if this was an actual unbiased jury and not a split Senate with GOP hacks you'd have convinced all 12 to vote guilty already the managers case is so well orchestrated and the defenses so utterly lacking.

I think I spotted the problem

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Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

DarkHorse posted:

gently caress I hated the names with a fiery passion. All of them are like this - regular common names but with bizarre spelling and extra letters to make them weird and different.


I mean it's an interesting and realish concept, you are going to so drift over that period of time and that far removed from things, but it was just poorly executed.

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