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Megillah Gorilla posted:The Man-Kzin Wars had this. Niven's lunacy and Reaganite-brain quirks aside, I've always had a soft spot for the Known Space setting - and the Man-Kzin 'history' is a fun read. Especially when the hidden details regading meddling by the pupetteers (who else) comes to light. And how after the Kzin keep getting their asses handed to them, a not-insignificant portion of them start to regard Humans as possibly a divine creation - "Maybe they were made in God's image, not us? How else do we keep losing?" To that end weren't we supposed to get a Ringworld miniseries or movie or something? -------- Another good example of Human shittery shows up in the Tuf Voyaging stories by GRR Martin. As a last 'gently caress you' to a planetary civilization, instead of wiping them off the planet entirely (something well within their means), a ship is programmed to orbit their world and descend every few decades to shower radiation across the surface, poisoning and mutating everything and basically killing off any possible progress. DarkDobe has a new favorite as of 19:23 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 19:14
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Gump is a loving slog and I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't care for it. Learning that it beat out Pulp Fiction, a legitimately fun movie, is just boggling.
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Jul 13, 2021 06:10
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I just watched The Vault - silly heist movie, but for whatever reason the insane security bank does not have ANY sort of interconnected system that tells the guards that THE VAULT IS BEING OPENED You know, the most basic kind of interlock that requires a third party to approve access from a remote location - or at least tells people that your hyper secure vault beneath the building is being opened up right now, dummy!
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Aug 7, 2021 19:26
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Definitely design robots to: A) Feel pain B) Be unable to disable function A) as required
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Aug 11, 2021 10:38
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For some reason I have been binging the 'Secret Service Guy Saves President'/'Bodyguard takes on an army' movies and firstly: holy poo poo there are a lot of these! But also a mild peeve: every single one of these movies hinges on the evil plot against the white house/london/billionaire having an inside man at work. Like its unfathomable that security could be breached without someone working from within. Makes it a game trying to guess which one of the three extra characters introduced at the start will be the traitor. In the end my action movie itch is mildly scratched but I have yet to meet tue schlocky dumb movie that tops The Rock.
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Sep 30, 2021 06:30
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Morpheus posted:Then there's London Has Fallen in which the terrorist organization is the greatest undercover agency in the world, having infiltrated not only like every aspect of the police force, but also the Queen's guard as well as even emergency personnel. And they've reached all these positions in two years. London Has Fallen had an insider working with them as well - a very minor character that gets offed in a garage at the rear end end of the movie, but he gives them access to the surveillance network.
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Oct 1, 2021 00:28
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Memento posted:I actually edited my post to take that out, I thought it might be a spoiler. It's sort of explained in the prequels as a feeback-loop of some sort that leads to a matter-to-energy conversion (wherein 1 gram of matter = approx 21 kilotons explosive force) but generally yes: shielded thing and lasgun both exlode - just how -much- explode is random, as it could be just the air molecules interacting with the shield and laser beam - or it could be more stuff/mass. So, short of someone absolutely suicidal with zero regard for collateral, or a long term risky plot like a timed-trigger lasgun pointed at an installation shield (mentioned in the book) it's generally a very bad idea. DarkDobe has a new favorite as of 03:10 on Oct 25, 2021 |
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Oct 25, 2021 03:02
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Phanatic posted:We do not talk about the prequels because they are so insanely bad. I only read the pre and se quels out of morbid curiosity and to see what the gently caress the Honored Matres were fleeing / Scattering was intended to protect against and I guess I got to find out after a fashion! R.e. a point made earlier: they really should have made a bigger deal about the Suk Doctor imperial conditioning and how absolutely unthinkable it was that Yueh would turn traitor.
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Oct 25, 2021 03:30
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Problematic old scifi ideas aside, The Mote in God's Eye still stands as one of my favourite examples of interesting technological limitation that lends itself to a cool story - and in this case the concepts for the 'FTL' drive and spaceship shields. Rather than using magic future tech to handwave problems, the tech has problems that are integral to the plot.
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Nov 21, 2021 09:59
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Can I nominate Mr Robot for the 'good shows' list? Because it's amazing start to finish (if anything it only gets better)
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Dec 15, 2021 04:02
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credburn posted:Oh shoot, you're right. I forgot what it was about it that annoyed me. It was just Xavier's naivete, now that I think about it. Wasn't there a whole thing with Xavier shouting that he 'can't hold him for long' - so literally not giving much choice short of uh... knocking him out or something? Brain penny it is!
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Feb 9, 2022 07:55
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Prometheus:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFfhttZYoEw An aggravatingly awful movie with a sequel that manages to be even worse? Sign me up! I've given up hope on having a 'horror' movie that doesn't just progress by characters being idiots.
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Mar 21, 2022 23:18
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nine-gear crow posted:And then they also introduced a proper super villain prison after that just to reassure people that the criminal justice system was at least pretending to work in the Arrowverse. But that was around the time I stopped watching the show because it just became abysmal and not fun anymore. It was never good, but it eventually crossed a line where it just stopped being fun to watch, which is the only saving grace of a show it its type. Was it in the season that hinges on the fastest man alive not being fastest man alive?
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Mar 23, 2022 06:18
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I'm almost finished with Dark and so far I feel like if anyone was going to come up with a functional time travel paradox plot it'd be the Germans. (Love it so far)
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May 10, 2022 15:41
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Shard posted:I also think the zombie thing wouldn't hit everywhere as hard as others. Like with the amount of guns in america I just don't see it being as big a problem as say Japan. And how strong are zombies? Shouldn't the be getting weaker as their muscles deteriorate? And for that matter what is actually moving them? Sometimes zombies with no stomach are eating folks - what is actually animating their bodies? If I removed the teeth of a zombie am I cool? Can they bite through let's say riot gear? Or even just tough leather? This is where I think some movies/franchises have tried to make a departure from the classic 'corpses reanimated' type of zombies to more 'explainable' ones - be it the fungus mans from Last of Us or even the rabies-offshoot zombies in I am Legend. Something has to keep blood flowing and nerves firing, once your zombies cross over to the 'dead' state, you're playing with pure fantasy if they last more than a few days/weeks without deteriorating like corpses do. Hell, Larry Niven had a zombies in a short story from 1974 where the corpses (of humans and animals alike) are infected by some sort of plant/fungus that flowers during the daytime to soak up nutrients and animates the corpses at night to be more 'traditional' bitey hordes in an attempt to spread the pathogen.
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Mar 15, 2023 21:08
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oldpainless posted:I want a 4th riddick movie to end the franchise. And please don’t try to pawn off the anime or one of the games as “like a movie” to make it four I just want you to know you are not alone in this desire, oldriddickless. I'm one of the weirdos who loving loves Chronicles. The over the top setpieces. The elemental themed planets. The loving ridiculous design of the Necromongers and everything about them. The planet invasion scene is one of my favourite things I've ever watched in a movie theater (remember those days?) - especially since it came after the wet fart of 'planet invasion' that we got to see in the garbage star wars prequels. It's an incredibly dumb movie but I want more of it. Please. The third one was like a crappier remake of the first but at least it tied some things up I guess? Give us the fourth.
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Apr 11, 2023 07:24
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FFT posted:re: factory farming humans for blood I may be remembering Blade Trinity or something See now this is a BAD BAD movie, not a redeemingly entertaining bad movie like Equilibrium. gently caress. I wish I could forget watching blade 3.
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May 15, 2023 07:50
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If only people programmed their killbots to aim gooder. This goes for all killbots.
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Jul 7, 2023 01:52
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I quite like the way Peter Watts handles zombies in his work - in that they're not dead or undead, but instead it's a modified encephalitis strain that attacks and kills the brain that leaves only the fight/eat reflexes operational. So you end up with semi-lobotomized frothing crazies with a highly infectious disease and no immediate way to discern them from uninfected: are they panicking, angry, desperate survivors... or are they trying to murder and eat? It's employed as a bioweapon/terror tactic as it really makes a mess of already-desperate situations, especially among refugees. I also really doubt it's a unique approach to making 'workable' zombies - and they're never really a focus of the books beyond something that happens in the background as the world goes to poo poo on every front. I remember enjoying the WWZ book enough and thinking the movie was godawful. Hell, we had plant/fungus based zombies from Larry Niven in 1974.
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Aug 11, 2023 18:59
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Tunicate posted:Disney managed to steal bits from The Glove Of Darth Vader and still make them boring I think that's the one I read back in HS? Some evil guy finds Darth's glove and it gives him evil force powers or something idiotic - but also decays his hand or something. Woo spooky haunted glove. Literally can't remember anything else.
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Aug 29, 2023 22:13
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DrBouvenstein posted:In the first X-Men movie, Prof. X says he can't look for Magneto because he helped him build Cerebro and (as we find out) his helmet blocks it (and all of Xavier's mind reading/control.) If Prof X did the thing he can do with any regularity, there would be zero movie plots - without macguffins like the immunity helmet. His power is insane. muscles like this! posted:Saw Stuff Arrath posted:Saw Stuff I remember generally enjoying the first movie - then the rest became a dumpster fire immediately. No I don't intend to rewatch them ever. The same can be said of similar-ish movies like Phone Both and Buried. Once is enough! DarkDobe has a new favorite as of 03:40 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 03:37
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Star Wars falls into "The Road Not Taken" territory very quickly. It's a short story about aliens with antigravity and hyperjump tech invading earth.... except their technology level is that of civil war muskets and firing lines. Turns out humanity failed to discover the antigrav by pure happenstance: most other aliens have because it's something stupidly primitive and simple, so instead humans have developed insane technology levels compared to the galaxy at large... and now the invaders have given them Antigrav on a platter. Star Wars feels like that: hyperspace jumps combined with WW2 Era tech at best. Never-mind that maintaining anything resembling civilization would be nigh impossible in the face of space pirates and marauders that can pop in and out of hyperspace on a whim: hence having to include limitations like mass proximity and planetary shields. You can't protect a city or space station if all the enemy has to do is warp in, fire long range weapons, warp out. For all it's other faults, the Foundation show actually demonstrates that: the Empire maintains extremely strict control of jumptech. And we see what a rogue foundation ship with the tech can do by literally warping almost inside the empirical palace to mount a rescue. "Hyperspace whenever/wherever" quickly becomes unmanageable. DarkDobe has a new favorite as of 15:08 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 15:01
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Armacham posted:Everyone who worked on adventure time is crazy. I dated Natasha Allegri in college so I got to see the rise of Pendleton Ward in real time. He had some weird poo poo before he got famous. I mean he had weird poo poo after, as well. Now _there's_ a show with some surprising twists in the overall theme and mood.
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Oct 24, 2023 07:32
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The crab episode is the best one I think. But they're mostly good to great!
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Nov 17, 2023 18:40
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Yeah, arguments about Prometheus, like those about zombies, pretty much stopped a few months into COVID. That kind of holds up ... until you point out that these are supposed to be the best and brightest. Not as terrible as the idiotic sequel where we get more 'super smarts' landing on an alien planet and going helmetless, hugging a clearly infected guy, trusting a clearly evil android, or putting an entire colony ship in danger because 'my wife'
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Dec 29, 2023 23:03
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Baron von Eevl posted:Colbert is a very good Not Reed, but that's the episode with the Grand Galactic Inquisitor so it gets extremely overshadowed. IGNORE ME
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Jan 8, 2024 00:05
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Fil5000 posted:The shields in Dune are funny because if you fire a laser at them they cause nuclear fusion. The series expects us to believe that everyone changed battle tactics rather than pretty much every planet in the galaxy being a glass wasteland Given that actual nukes get you locked out of interstellar transport, I'm pretty sure there are repercussions for purposefully using that strategy. It's even brought up in the books as a viable tactic though - things like a lasgun on a timer pointed at a shielded installation - but the effects are also random: it doesn't always go fully 'nuclear'. Sometimes it just annihilates the shooter, sometimes the target, sometimes both, sometimes everything within a radius.
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Jan 27, 2024 19:31
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lord funk posted:2 mins per book is too long for you? He doesn't even have useless intros to any of his videos. Yea I watched that one and it's a good list - and I absolutely agree with his number one choice. Roadside Picnic is perfection.
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Mar 27, 2024 09:18
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My lame superpower go to is: able to turn any traffic light red but only if you are going to be stopped by it.
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Apr 13, 2024 01:28
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Ghost Leviathan posted:... the Bozar (which is a reference to a bugged weapon in Fallout 2 that basically ended up being a sniper machine gun)... Ah yes, Fallout 2 where you beeline to the vendor to rob his guards of Bozars.
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Apr 20, 2024 21:51
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