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Tunicate posted:Cool, give me your exact plan that everyone agrees is necessary. Massively raise taxes, use them to fund vastly increased social services. If you disagree with this it's because you're exactly who Watts is talking about Maxwell Lord posted:See, I prefer sappy optimism to taking a poo poo on people's attempts to envision a better future. I prefer to read something that acknowledges the unsustainability of our current situation rather than just "yay in the future we fixed everything with magic and smartness" Sagebrush has a new favorite as of 18:11 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 18:04
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Sagebrush posted:Massively raise taxes, use them to fund vastly increased social services. Okay, so what precisely is the new tax rate, how do you ensure everyone at the top doesn't dodge said taxes or move away (this was a reason Reagan's tax cuts, disastrous though they were, passed a Democratic Congress- the top margins weren't paying much anyway despite the paper rates), and what is the structure and proportion of these services? Like, if it's a monthly basic income (an idea I favor), how much? If it's free-at-point-of-service health care (which also needs to happen), do we set that like the UK's system, or Canada's, or France's? Also how does any of this stop police from getting away with murdering black people, or do a drat thing to stop global warming? quote:I prefer to read something that acknowledges the unsustainability of our current situation rather than just "yay in the future we fixed everything with magic and smartness" I am fully aware of the unsustainability of our current situation. I think just about everyone remotely left of center is by now. The question is what the gently caress do we do, and while the technocrats may not have all the answers, at least some of their plans don't require waiting until next November and hoping that voter suppression hasn't cemented a permanent Republican majority.
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Oct 24, 2017 18:52
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Falsely interprets something as Nihilist, then goes on a tear that is the most teenaged interpretation of nihilism I've seen all week. The internet was a mistake.
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Oct 24, 2017 19:09
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Maxwell Lord posted:Okay, so what precisely is the new tax rate, how do you ensure everyone at the top doesn't dodge said taxes or move away (this was a reason Reagan's tax cuts, disastrous though they were, passed a Democratic Congress- the top margins weren't paying much anyway despite the paper rates), and what is the structure and proportion of these services? Like, if it's a monthly basic income (an idea I favor), how much? If it's free-at-point-of-service health care (which also needs to happen), do we set that like the UK's system, or Canada's, or France's? We can start by returning the tax structure to where it was in 1946. 90% top marginal bracket, applies equally to all income, gains, inheritance, corporate profit, and so on. We can also pass any of the progressive budgets you see tossed around that decimate military spending, agribusiness subsidies, etc. We could also remove 100% of the fancy deductions and loopholes and shelters in the tax structure and have zero effect on the median American family, so let's do that. If the wealthy decide to move away, gently caress'em. The attitude that plutocrats are a hallowed class that's responsible for everyone else's success needs to die. We can implement structures similar to what China does with its economy to keep money from leaving the country. Racism is fundamentally an educational problem. Children aren't born racist -- they have to be taught that behavior. You can't really fix grown-up dyed-in-the-wool racists, but if their kids go to school with kids of all different colors and are repeatedly taught that racism is stupid and bad, they'll grow up with an open mind. A general reduction in poverty will reduce street crime, and more importantly will also reduce the sort of stratification that leads to police building an "us-vs-them" mindset. And if nothing else, we can spend more money on Internal Affairs investigations. We're probably too late to fix climate change, but dumping the money that Apple currently spends making iPhones thinner into the NSF and NOAA research budgets certainly couldn't hurt. And, to your last point, if there's no democratic solution to the problem, well, Watts might be onto something... Sagebrush has a new favorite as of 19:42 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 19:39
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Hey friends how about you get this D&D slapfight the gently caress out of my thread and talk about some bad books? e: Discussing overall themes of optimism vs pessimism or whatever is great but holy poo poo seriously don't go posting a big screed full of actual tax reform suggestions, and also please do not ask for the same Rockman Reserve has a new favorite as of 19:46 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 19:44
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Peter Watts is real good and I long to live in his future where Quebec is a world superpower
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Oct 24, 2017 20:02
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My favorite terrible book is The Communist Manifesto.
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Oct 24, 2017 20:03
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Watts story good, nice and snappy. At this point any work that denies the inevitability of our rapidly encroaching annihilation isn't "optimistic," it's deluded.
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Oct 24, 2017 20:18
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Oxxidation posted:Watts story good, nice and snappy. I'd rather make the best of my years trying to do things than wallow in hopelessness.
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Oct 24, 2017 21:19
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There’s a difference between telling a story that discusses social problems, and one that just spews negativity until it eventually declares (via a group of shallow strawman characters) that mass-murder is a good idea. I can understand him wanting to avoid the cliché of the future where everything is perfect, but in doing so he stumbled right into an even worse cliché. I would call it nihilistic because the solution it offers for all the world’s problems involves technology that doesn’t exist, and won’t exist in the foreseeable future. We can’t put nanites in people’s heads, and we can’t rewrite their DNA to make them more altruistic, therefore he’s basically arguing that in the real world there’s no hope. Say what you want about the themes of the winning story, but from a technical standpoint it was better written. The characters felt like characters, at least. Not especially unique or memorable characters, but better than just being mouthpieces for the writer's cynical opinions.
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Oct 24, 2017 22:41
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Bakeneko posted:I would call it nihilistic That's nice.
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Oct 24, 2017 23:19
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Bakeneko posted:I would call it nihilistic because the solution it offers for all the world’s problems involves technology that doesn’t exist, and won’t exist in the foreseeable future. We can’t put nanites in people’s heads, and we can’t rewrite their DNA to make them more altruistic, therefore he’s basically arguing that in the real world there’s no hope. By this definition all speculative fiction ever written is nihilistic. Bakeneko posted:Say what you want about the themes of the winning story, but from a technical standpoint it was better written. lol e: also, I think that the "winning" story wasn't judged to be the best of the pile -- it was the winner of a much broader contest open to the public, and the prize was being included in the collection. It didn't beat out Margaret Atwood and Paolo Bacigalupi. It's amateurish, but in that light it's fine. Sagebrush has a new favorite as of 23:31 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 23:26
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Sagebrush posted:By this definition all speculative fiction ever written is nihilistic. How so? The whole message of the story is that the world sucks and humanity sucks and it’ll keep sucking until we can rewrite our DNA because humans are inherently broken. Other sci-fi works offer fictional solutions to real-world problems, but they don’t usually go to that extreme. Nor do they usually state that the world is doomed unless some unrealistic thing happens within the next 20 or so years. And I'm not saying that the other entry was a masterpiece or anything, just that this story was worse because the characters were such empty shells.
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Oct 24, 2017 23:42
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Bakeneko posted:How so? The whole message of the story is that the world sucks and humanity sucks and it’ll keep sucking until we can rewrite our DNA because humans are inherently broken. Other sci-fi works offer fictional solutions to real-world problems, but they don’t usually go to that extreme. Nor do they usually state that the world is doomed unless some unrealistic thing happens within the next 20 or so years. This is no more or less realistic than saying the world will keep sucking until we can have self-driving cars/robot butlers/vacuum trains/fusion power/matter-condensers/artificial intelligence/etc. Actually, I'd argue that Peter Watts' ideas are more plausible than most science fiction; in his novels he goes as far as writing appendices that cite the academic papers backing up his speculation. And if you don't think that science fiction has been predicting doom-unless-we-change-now for decades, you haven't read enough stuff from the cold war. The only difference between Watts' short story here and one of Isaac Asimov's short stories about future nuclear-powered robots in space or whatever is that Watts comes out and says "if we don't change things, we will all die" while Asimov leaves it as an implication.
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Oct 25, 2017 00:05
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Watts' story reminded me of Neal Breen's film Fateful Findings: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/why-fateful-findings-deserves-cult-status/ quote:Dylan is supposed to be writing a follow-up to his debut novel, but he’s got more important things to do. It seems he’s got a side gig as the world’s greatest hacker, using the many laptops littered around his office to hack into government and corporate files, and he’s discovered more incriminating information than any hacker in the history of the universe. (Of course, to his credit, Watts actually thought about how to fix things beyond "kill the rich.") SerialKilldeer has a new favorite as of 01:26 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 01:24
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PYF terrible thread
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Oct 25, 2017 06:49
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It's fine to discuss books about social issues and to some extent those issues themselves as they relate to the book but keep in mind this is a bad book thread not a thread for extended political discussion. A bad book I read that I mean to try again is The Secret Life of Bees. We had to read it in school when I was 17 and I didn't get along with the teacher at all and I think reading a book as part of schoolwork is a surefire way to not enjoy a good book. Maybe it is just unenjoyable poo poo but I'd like to give it another try at some point. That said when I was 14 we were assigned To Kill a Mockingbird and I read that ahead of the classes and it was pretty good. EmmyOk has a new favorite as of 10:56 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 10:53
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Sagebrush posted:This is no more or less realistic than saying the world will keep sucking until we can have self-driving cars/robot butlers/vacuum trains/fusion power/matter-condensers/artificial intelligence/etc. Actually, I'd argue that Peter Watts' ideas are more plausible than most science fiction; in his novels he goes as far as writing appendices that cite the academic papers backing up his speculation. Don't bother with Asimov, read some John Wyndham. British SF from his era is pretty on-the-nose about "Nope, we're hosed, our best hope is that pockets of humanity survive in the face of an overwhelming threat."
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Oct 25, 2017 11:14
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So I'm reading (listening to, because the ebook was checked out) Quest for the Well of Souls right now, which is a very late-seventies sci-fi novel that was split into two books because it was so big. The audiobook started with an introduction talking about how he'd rewritten the books to work on their own, and then the second chapter is two of the characters sitting down and restating the plot of the first book to each other. The first book also had an incredibly  introduction about how whenever he switches a scene unless he's explicit about time passing it's always simultaneous with the scene before it
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Oct 25, 2017 11:39
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EmmyOk posted:A bad book I read that I mean to try again is The Secret Life of Bees. We had to read it in school when I was 17 and I didn't get along with the teacher at all and I think reading a book as part of schoolwork is a surefire way to not enjoy a good book. Maybe it is just unenjoyable poo poo but I'd like to give it another try at some point. That said when I was 14 we were assigned To Kill a Mockingbird and I read that ahead of the classes and it was pretty good. I didn't like Moby-Dick until I was into my twenties and attempted it again, at which point I loved it. It wasn't a question of me not liking my English teacher - he was a great guy - but there's really no reason in the world that book should be taught to callow youths.
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Oct 25, 2017 13:05
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I keep getting hung up on this paragraph:The Paragraph in Question posted:It's a special kind of mindfuck to realize the moment between “Down With The Sickness,” and Shostakovich’s “String Quartet No. 3 (3rd Movement),” was twenty years for the world and maybe two blinks for everyone on that plane. For the record, Shostakovich is as Metal as Classical gets, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. At first I thought it implied that “Down With The Sickness” and “String Quartet No. 3" were recorded 20 years apart and the people on the plane missed those 20 years. But the I realize that the author probably means that the protagonist was listening to both these songs, and that the plane hopped 20 years into the future in the silence between songs. But the way it's written ("everyone on that plane") makes it seem like the pilot was just blasting Disturbed over the airplane speaker system.
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Oct 25, 2017 13:58
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Pastry of the Year posted:I didn't like Moby-Dick until I was into my twenties and attempted it again, at which point I loved it. It wasn't a question of me not liking my English teacher - he was a great guy - but there's really no reason in the world that book should be taught to callow youths. I'm ambivalent on Moby Dick, but I will say that one of my few happy memories of my short time as an English grad student was reading the blubber-squeezing scene aloud with all the erotic aplomb that that moment deserves.
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Oct 25, 2017 14:49
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A lot of English class depends on the teacher (and the class) making the text understandable and interesting. Providing context, clarifying misunderstandings and talking about your own interpretations and ideas makes it worth the hassle, and is kind of what learning about books is supposed to be about. Even something like a teacher reading out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, interspersed with talking about things like how the original Oompa-Loompas were pygmy stereotypes now considered horribly racist but accepted at the time, and other parts of how the culture when it was written was significantly different to what it is now. (Like with Mike Teevee having aged hilariously poorly)
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Oct 25, 2017 14:57
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EmmyOk posted:It's fine to discuss books about social issues and to some extent those issues themselves as they relate to the book but keep in mind this is a bad book thread not a thread for extended political discussion. I didn't enjoy most of the books that I've read as school assignments - yet I love to read. I think it stemmed down to having to read a set of books in not enough time, with the extreme being Nad Niemnem (which is three tomes, ~400 pages, if I remember correctly, of very dry positivistic prose where people complain about their life all the time) to be read through the weekend. The ones I did like though were The Trial by Franz Kafka and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (and I think I was 16 when we were assigned that)
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Oct 25, 2017 14:58
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Oct 25, 2017 19:41
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DigitalRaven posted:Don't bother with Asimov Mods?!
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Oct 25, 2017 20:02
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The article I read about her basically pegged her as ‘Late Stage Capitalism Meets Poetry: The Person.’ Which is hilarious. Poetry is dead for a reason.
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Oct 25, 2017 20:59
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EmmyOk posted:It's fine to discuss books about social issues and to some extent those issues themselves as they relate to the book but keep in mind this is a bad book thread not a thread for extended political discussion. Reminds me of when we were assigned Uncle Tom's Cabin to read in high school and I wrote an entire essay that was entirely about how bad it was and how the sentimental style was completely at odds with the rest of the book. Like, I went on for a while basically finding new ways to say "the only good thing was the anti-slavery message and i hate the rest of it also it is really racist", maybe I should reread it to see if I still hate it? It did give me the only A I ever got in a high school english essay so I owe it that.
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Oct 26, 2017 03:40
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sff/f is really bad right now
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Oct 26, 2017 04:04
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I seriously can't tell if this is parody or not and I can't not read it in cta guy's voice
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Oct 26, 2017 04:07
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DigitalRaven posted:Don't bother with Asimov, read some John Wyndham. British SF from his era is pretty on-the-nose about "Nope, we're hosed, our best hope is that pockets of humanity survive in the face of an overwhelming threat." e: lmao his full name was "john wyndham parkes lucas beynon harris" e2: kraken wasn't about global warming but if you invoke death of the author it fits surprisingly well the old ceremony has a new favorite as of 04:14 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 04:10
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A Pinball Wizard posted:I seriously can't tell if this is parody or not Me neither but that pretty much says it all
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Oct 26, 2017 04:27
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Don Gato posted:Reminds me of when we were assigned Uncle Tom's Cabin to read in high school and I wrote an entire essay that was entirely about how bad it was and how the sentimental style was completely at odds with the rest of the book. Like, I went on for a while basically finding new ways to say "the only good thing was the anti-slavery message and i hate the rest of it also it is really racist", maybe I should reread it to see if I still hate it? It did give me the only A I ever got in a high school english essay so I owe it that. That is exactly what everyone who studies UTC in graduate school thinks of it, plus with hot takes on the heavy-handed Christian themes. You got it right the first time, friend.
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Oct 26, 2017 04:35
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i think if you don't come away from utc saying "it was really racist" you fail the course
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Oct 26, 2017 04:46
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Saw this and thought of this thread.  https://twitter.com/LanaDelRaytheon/status/923653873356619777
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Oct 27, 2017 18:19
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Brass Key posted:Saw this and thought of this thread. juuust the right amount of no effort 
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Oct 27, 2017 23:22
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Brass Key posted:Saw this and thought of this thread. I think you'll find the dark enlightenment thread is elsewhere, friend.
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Oct 27, 2017 23:41
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there wolf posted:I think you'll find the dark enlightenment thread is elsewhere, friend. explain (idk much but i thought @lanadelwhatever was pretty woke & rupi kaurs poetry is bland as hell with bad mspaints on it?)
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Oct 27, 2017 23:49
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Powaqoatse posted:explain Ha. Didn't see the Rupi Kaur at the bottom. It just reminded me of the kind of silly ethical dilemmas Yud's crowd likes to churn out to make their dumb cause seem deep.
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Oct 28, 2017 04:23
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Never seen trolley problem pictures/parodies before? Hoo boy. (the correct answer is always multi-track drifting)
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Oct 28, 2017 04:27
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