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Eiba posted:The Expanse is basically there.
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Feb 24, 2017 06:12
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Earth is capitalist as hell. It’s just that wealth comes directly from capital goods (read: robots) and goes directly to people like Jules‐Pierre Mao, with few human labourers required. Mars seems more socialist, but then there’s that one Martian marine whose family owns all the terraformers, so who knows? 
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Feb 24, 2017 06:19
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The rich Martian is a show invention. But in the later books they mention several Martian ships names after Ayn Rand or her works so I dunno. Books Mars seems capitalist but with smarter and harder working self selected population harnessed to a unifying social goal, so you don't have the welfare masses of Earth and relatively greater equality and middle class.
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Feb 24, 2017 06:33
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ATP_Power posted:It's not deeply explored in the books, but I think that the kind of Basic system depicted in The Expanse is one that supports a capitalistic society, not abolishes it. A having a UBI doesn't mean that you're a socialist utopia. Platystemon posted:Mars seems more socialist, but then there’s that one Martian marine whose family owns all the terraformers, so who knows? If there are markets and individual ownership of resources, it's probably in the context of a state-controlled economy. (I may be using any or all of these terms wrong, but I hope it's clear what I mean.) Number Ten Cocks posted:The rich Martian is a show invention. But in the later books they mention several Martian ships names after Ayn Rand or her works so I dunno.
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Feb 24, 2017 06:34
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It's not that Mars has a population of self-selected idealists. Billions of people live there, and most of them were born there. Mars doesn't have something like Basic because it can't. They just don't have the resources to support an idle population. The average Martian is definitely better off than the average Belter, but life on Mars is still pretty Spartan by our standards. Luckily, however they're going about terraforming, it requires a shitload of people.
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Feb 24, 2017 06:51
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I looked up that Blindsight book and it all sounded good but for seemingly no reason at all apparently vampires are real and someone on the mission is a vampire and at the end there's some sort of vampire war. What the hell. Some dude just had to jam vampires into his scify?
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Feb 24, 2017 07:17
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Baronjutter posted:I looked up that Blindsight book and it all sounded good but for seemingly no reason at all apparently vampires are real and someone on the mission is a vampire and at the end there's some sort of vampire war. What the hell. Some dude just had to jam vampires into his scify? closes tab Platystemon fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 07:19
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it isn't that kind of vampire. I feel like I read somewhere that the idea originated when he challenged himself to come up with a plausible scientific explanation for "vampires." the backstory is that long long ago there was a predatory cannibalistic human subspecies. it died out but you know how scientists love to dabble in things man was not meant to know... they keep them around because they're more intelligent than normal people and their brains are wired in a fundamentally different way than baseline people. kept under control because they have a brain quirk that causes them to seizure and die if exposed to certain kinds of imagery. if the vampires behave themselves, they get the anti-epileptic drugs they need. there was no vampire war that I can remember, tho. if you're gonna balk because of that description you're really missing out. really the whole vampire thing is just one minor plot thread. uber_stoat fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 07:24
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Baronjutter posted:I looked up that Blindsight book and it all sounded good but for seemingly no reason at all apparently vampires are real and someone on the mission is a vampire and at the end there's some sort of vampire war. What the hell. Some dude just had to jam vampires into his scify? It's not... quite what you're thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdCvGDpM9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUkeD4gYdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsHKT0fJ3jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WLpx2BI5BI
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Feb 24, 2017 07:26
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I wasn't a huge fan of the vampire in Blindsight either but he does serve a story purpose as a slightly inhuman intelligence to contrast with the totally non-human aliens. Kind of a stepping stone, thematically. They feature a little more heavily in Echopraxia, a sequel which has some neat ideas but on the whole I think Blindsight is the only important one to read. E: oh fwiw the audiobook of Blindsight is good too but you gotta be prepared for some technobabble comin' atcha. I had to re-read to get a good grip on a couple things like what the alien ship looks like.
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Feb 24, 2017 07:39
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Platystemon posted:The entire system is dangerously dependent on Earth, and in particular the biosphere. It’s not just genocide. It’s almost suicide. That's the whole point. Both Mars and Earth realize the situation is utterly and insanely untenable since anybody with enough delta-v can just bump one or several asteroids in the belt onto a collision course with the other planet. So Mars keeps building their ships and Earth keeps building theirs' in preparation for a war that will never come simply because nobody wants to initiate a war that would destroy the entire human race. Course, once they start exploring the universe and colonizing other systems then welp that's gone out of the window
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Feb 24, 2017 08:16
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I want to give money to the people who make the expanse but the TV industry is flaming garbage and I can't figure it out without buying physical media disks I don't really want. Space.ca just has all the episodes for free on the website. God I wish TV shows were like buying a PC game, you just load up steam, buy the game, and the creators get most of the cut.
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Feb 24, 2017 08:18
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Baronjutter posted:I want to give money to the people who make the expanse but the TV industry is flaming garbage and I can't figure it out without buying physical media disks I don't really want. Space.ca just has all the episodes for free on the website. God I wish TV shows were like buying a PC game, you just load up steam, buy the game, and the creators get most of the cut. That's not how the industry works, at all, and even if you did buy the physical media the actors/directors/producers of the show are getting tiny fractions of cents on the dollar in residuals from your copy. Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 08:20
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Baronjutter posted:I looked up that Blindsight book and it all sounded good but for seemingly no reason at all apparently vampires are real and someone on the mission is a vampire and at the end there's some sort of vampire war. What the hell. Some dude just had to jam vampires into his scify? Others have commented on the thematic utility of vampires. Like others, I wasn't big on them but they make sense. The person who told you there was a vampire war at the end . . . that's a very wrong way to take the ending. Like, thinking over the ending I can see why someone would think that if all they did was read the book until they explained vampires (very early) and then skipped right to the last couple of pages and read those. Reviewing is hard work and sometimes you are going to phone it in. Blindsight has a lot of great ideas but the prose is . . . pretty poor. It reminds me a lot of "The Helix and the Sword" where the plot is good, the new ideas as fantastic and the writing is very poor. I can't fault whichever reviewer you read phoning it in but really the book deserves a read if only because the ideas are so fantastic.
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Feb 24, 2017 08:38
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I was really looking forward to seeing skittering packs of skeletal hand spiders, but I like what they showed anyway.
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Feb 24, 2017 08:55
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The episode was righteously good but the way it ended, then just cut to silence and flashed the credits. So drat nice to have such care.
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Feb 24, 2017 09:01
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How much time passes between Eros starting it's road trip and crashing on Venus? I guess if Eros kept a 15+g acceleration during the whole trip this might have been pretty fast. I didn't bother to rewatch yet, but I think I understood they said Eros was about 1/4 of the rock that killed the Dino's. Is this accurate? I would expect real world Eros sized asteroid crashing on earth to be a total ELE. Also the whole Roci chasing Eros scene with a totally juiced up crew up to the limit was awesome. It even said the juice was starting to reach toxic levels so this means a crew can never sustain these high G's forever.
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Feb 24, 2017 09:46
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I think it was the other way around, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was 1/4 the size of Eros.
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Feb 24, 2017 09:48
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Shbobdb posted:Reviewing is hard work and sometimes you are going to phone it in. Blindsight has a lot of great ideas but the prose is . . . pretty poor. It reminds me a lot of "The Helix and the Sword" where the plot is good, the new ideas as fantastic and the writing is very poor. For what it's worth, I don't agree with this at all, the prose in Blindsight really got me going, the dude has a way with words: The first paragraph of the book posted:Imagine you are Siri Keeton. I'm reading Echopraxia now, though, and not enjoying it anywhere near as much, because I'm two-thirds of the way through and it still doesn't seem to be about anything, it's just poo poo happening, which is a far cry from the tight thematic and mission focus of Blindsight. Boing fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 10:46
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Echopraxia took me two readings to really 'get'. It isn't as immediately fantastic as Blindsight but it's a good sequel and makes you view the first book in a different light. And Watts has great prose.
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Feb 24, 2017 11:03
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Blindsight and Echopraxia end spoiler: is the thing shipped back to Earth at the end of Blindsight really Siri or just a thing that thinks it is Siri
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Feb 24, 2017 11:15
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uber_stoat posted:they keep them [space vampires] around because they're more intelligent than normal people and their brains are wired in a fundamentally different way than baseline people. Wouldn't a replicant / AI serve a similar function that's less idiosyncratic to the setting?
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Feb 24, 2017 11:33
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Armilla posted:Ready to enjoy the new episode like the irredeemable nerd that I am: Where can I get me one of these?
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Feb 24, 2017 11:35
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I, too, require one of those.
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Feb 24, 2017 11:38
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Xealot posted:Wouldn't a replicant / AI serve a similar function that's less idiosyncratic to the setting? Perhaps, but Watts also makes a series of arguments about intelligence and consciousness and the imperfect nature of evolution when faced with unforeseen developments, and the vampires are basically there to make his rhetorical points clear. Sarasti (the vampire in question) is also a very intriguing character. And, if you recognise that name from The Witcher 3, it was a deliberate reference to the novel.
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Feb 24, 2017 11:40
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Xealot posted:Wouldn't a replicant / AI serve a similar function that's less idiosyncratic to the setting? Honestly, no. Part of the author's thesis is that consciousness is not inherently valuable, and unconscious creatures are just as capable of what we consider intelligent behaviour, with much less dicking around. Humans only outlived vampires on the savannah by a freak maladaptation; the more likely outcome (the one that is implied to be the galactic norm) was an unconscious civilisation. Replacing them with a human-created AI would undercut that point.
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Feb 24, 2017 11:45
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you should think of the blindsight vampires as similar to the protomolecule: alien intelligences that have been captured and slaved to corporations and kingdoms as a strategic tool. the only thing keeping them from turning on their masters is a drug, which is when you think about it hilariously flimsy
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Feb 24, 2017 11:56
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watts likes reusing this idea of flexible intelligences, his previous rifters trilogy had lab grown neural nets trained for problem solving, and 'lawbreakers (humans given authority to use napalm on outbreaks of synthetic plagues and tactical warheads on angry dissident groups, in a world spiraling out of control, held in check by a chemically-induced guilt reflex that would kill you if you even thought about abusing that power)
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Feb 24, 2017 12:01
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CLAM DOWN posted:e: also are they going from silo to space in like 2 seconds holy poo poo Eyeballing the perspective in Google Earth, the camera is at least 3000 km up. The missiles are going more than 1000 km⁄s. 
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Feb 24, 2017 12:20
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Baronjutter posted:I was reading the whole kiss at the end was just the actors going improvin' the scene because it felt natural, wasn't in the script at all. I'm not surprised. I didn't get the impression that the kiss was particularly romantic or that Miller was a creep. Miller knew he was going to do and Julie didn't know what the gently caress happened except she died in that room abandoned and all alone. It was basically just the last moments of two lonely people who had no idea what was going to happen next but wanted some human intimacy and closure. There's a similar scene in Person of Interest that came about because the actors felt it was right.
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Feb 24, 2017 13:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktnPXYSaqGg preview scene for ep 6. Good scene. Lots of Amos.
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Feb 24, 2017 13:22
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Number Ten Cocks posted:If your retaliatory nukes are on the planet you force Mars to wipe out your population and provide an incentive for you to do the same if they want to disarm you. Space or Luna based nukes leave you vulnerable to being disarmed and blackmailed, making it genocide or nothing is better MAD. Yep, I like the cold war type reference. Ensured population death/difficulty of first strike or sabotage is the only reason to keep the nukes on the surface of Earth. Baronjutter posted:I want to give money to the people who make the expanse but the TV industry is flaming garbage and I can't figure it out without buying physical media disks I don't really want. Space.ca just has all the episodes for free on the website. God I wish TV shows were like buying a PC game, you just load up steam, buy the game, and the creators get most of the cut. I bought a season subscription on youtube, 20 odd bucks. Hopefully the team gets a decent cut. Still bummed about Miller... for me it is like if Darryl on The Walking Dead got killed off, or Jorah Mormont on GOT. Without Miller, the belter kid character is going to be tricky to watch on his own without a new awesome character to fill the void. Bobbie ain't going to cut it so far.
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Feb 24, 2017 13:24
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Can we get a "Doors and corners kid" title change to honor Miller?
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Feb 24, 2017 14:43
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VagueRant posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktnPXYSaqGg Haha, they kept one of my favorite Amos lines!
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Feb 24, 2017 15:04
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That scene is amazing in the books and sublime here. Very well done.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:14
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So quick question here, but is there a particular reason the author decided to include Mormon characters in the books/tv series? It just seems a bit odd to me because you don't really see them portrayed often/at all and it's not a sect of Christianity that is particularly well understood in a general sense. Having grown up with a lot of Mormon family members and friends, it feels like they've captured a very familiar tone.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:25
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gfarrell80 posted:Yep, I like the cold war type reference. Ensured population death/difficulty of first strike or sabotage is the only reason to keep the nukes on the surface of Earth. Yeah, I bought both seasons on iTunes despite watching on TV. The show is worth re-watches and the digital versions look amazing. I imagine the BluRay transfer will be even better, but my iTunes version at least is the best TV show in terms of video quality I've seen on the platform.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:32
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gohmak posted:Can we get a "Doors and corners kid" title change to honor Miller? Do I just PM a mod for this?
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Feb 24, 2017 16:01
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Spuckuk posted:Where can I get me one of these? It's an Emsa City Cup (Amazon.co.uk link), but I hear there are problems getting them in the US at the moment. I made some transparent transfers for the logo. If anyone can find a place to get the cups I can help out with the transfers.
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Feb 24, 2017 16:11
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Solkanar512 posted:So quick question here, but is there a particular reason the author decided to include Mormon characters in the books/tv series? Mormons being the ones to bankroll a generation ship is probably the most accurate prediction of any future ideas for the Church. They're just a convenience plotwise (I don't even think there are any named Mormons in the books) for a group with that kind of cash. quote:The name Nauvoo was painted in massive white letters across it.
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Feb 24, 2017 16:33
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