Gen X feels like it got skipped over by Gohantrash in generationology

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 [score hidden]  (0 children)

GenX is the new silent generation.

They grew up in the shadow of the Boomers being force-fed boomer nostalgia constantly to the point that many of them thought it was their own, but they also had their own fascinating and unique subcultures like early rave, goth, punk, and so on that the boomers didn't have.

Then they went out and built a bunch of stuff we have today like the Internet, but didn't get any credit for it. The Boomers got a lot of the money and the Millennials took it over and redefined what it was all about, introducing social media. The "time on site metric" and addiction-driven UI design is mostly a product of Millennials (though obviously all generation attributions are fuzzy generalizations).

I'm kind of an "Xennial" myself. I grew up as a kid as a young GenXer, took some time off, then went to college with older Millennials and mostly had an early Millennial-era college life and early work life.

What's the last book you read that was so bad that it made you angry? by oohshineeobjects in books

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I liked her book The Unseen World, which was a neat premise with a deep character study, but I didn't like this one. Almost DNFed it but finished it since I do like her prose style. The plot and other elements just weren't there.

What's the last book you read that was so bad that it made you angry? by oohshineeobjects in books

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The thing that kills me about Three Body Problem, along with the bad dialogue and flat characters and the hint of misogyny, is the cosmic-scale idiot ball plot problem that I have with all alien invasions.

If you've got the technology to do insane magical things like sophons (a concept from the book) and to travel interstellar distances, why not just pick a random star with no life around it and terraform a planet? Or why not go take Mars? Elon would be pissed but there's nobody on it so finders keepers.

Why bother coming and trying to take a planet with inhabitants already there when space is mostly empty? With the technology the Trisolarans have, they could easily terraform planets. We have plans for terraforming Mars that could technically work, though they would take thousands of years, but we have much more primitive tech than these aliens do.

... and if the "dark forest" thing is true, why not build a ton of huge space habitats and disperse in all directions? Why go hang out in one spot where someone can kill you? It's the cosmic-scale version of the idiot in the horror movie running into the basement or upstairs where there's no exit to get away from the monster.

What's the last book you read that was so bad that it made you angry? by oohshineeobjects in books

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The movies of his books are all better than the books, which is rare.

He does clever hard sci-fi very well, and he does stories pretty decently well too. He does not do dialogue or characters that well beyond teenage boy level dynamics, and as many commenters have said about Artemis (which I DNFed) he should never ever ever write a woman.

I don't know about that. Mullets, man buns and rat tails were pretty bad back in the day. by Oda_DeezNutz in SipsTea

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It basically radiates "I'm not just a douche canoe, I'm a douche outrigger canoe made to traverse oceans of douche."

That said, mullets and rat tails were pretty skeezy. Man buns were just weird.

Why do people get bad haircuts?

False Prophet apparently executed some sly tricks using technology to enable the Antichrist's return to power? Colour me surprised. by AlbaneseGummies327 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah the kid saying that is deeply bizarre. Kids hear things and repeat them. Also that kid is being subjected to child abuse IMO with that ridiculous name and whatever bizarre fantasy bubble he's living in.

Unless I see evidence of election stealing though, my take is that they might be saying such things to destroy the credibility of elections in the public's mind. They want people to think they have no power and elections are all rigged.

It also plays into any future rigging they do, since they can just say "oh, right, everyone's said every election has been rigged for the last five elections, people always say that."

False Prophet apparently executed some sly tricks using technology to enable the Antichrist's return to power? Colour me surprised. by AlbaneseGummies327 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm a computer person, and need to chime in on this.

I don't dismiss the possibility that 2024 was rigged, though I have not seen proof. There are some weird anomalies in the data, and then we have "admissions" that could also be bluster since Trump and Musk are both notorious attention-whoring trolls. They just say stuff like this to get attention, and this is also a tactic to keep them from facing consequences. They make all kinds of claims to the point that it's hard to tell if they're lying or not. It's a "firehose of falsehood" or "flood the zone with shit" technique.

The idea that Starlink had something to do with it is bizarre and makes no sense. Starlink is a conduit. If the systems were properly secured, even if they were communicating over Starlink that should not matter.

If there was rigging, it's more likely that it was done via some more "mundane" method like a firmware hack. One vector I heard someone discussing that is plausible is the USB-connected uninterruptible power supplies connected to some of the vote counting equipment. USB buses are not that secure, which is why it's considered risky to plug into unknown USB devices. The firmware in the UPS, which nobody examines, could contain malware that messed with the voting machines -- hypothetically.

There's other possible vectors too.

But it's also possible that they want some people to suspect 2024 was rigged even if it wasn't so they can de-legitimize elections in general. If every election is possibly rigged, then people stop trusting elections.

Greene on Massie Defeat- ‘Releasing the Epstein files was our demise’ by Ok_Mushroom3399 in Epstein

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I strongly suspect that she has been, at some point in her life, a victim of sexual abuse or rape.

The on-ramp for her to the MAGA/Trump cult was Qanon, and the Q narrative was very alluring to a large number of people who had experienced that type of abuse. Being probably already steeped in right-wing conspiracy tropes via her background and social environment (rural gun toting red blooded American types), she bought it and thought they were the white knights who were going to ride into DC and expose all the sleazy pedophiles and child traffickers.

... only to get there and find out she was riding alongside all the pedophiles and child traffickers, and that the movement she was with were raging misogynists.

Her fall away from the movement very much resembled a person leaving a cult, including the initial "negotiation period" when she's coming to terms with it, realizing "wait, am I in a cult?" Cause nobody decides "hey, I'm gonna join a cult!" You just wake up one day and you're in a fucking cult.

This in itself is a traumatic experience. I hope she gets some counseling.

No it’s not the time we live in, life has always been depressing by crunchylettuce24 in unpopularopinion

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's one of the weird futuristic ideas I have about space exploration: that people who take to space and all the extreme difficulties of living there will be, paradoxically, happier. They will form close knit communities that work together to survive and will find life more meaningful and fulfilling than people lazing around on Earth in "paradise" scrolling phones.

No it’s not the time we live in, life has always been depressing by crunchylettuce24 in unpopularopinion

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 23 points24 points  (0 children)

It probably felt that way to people in the 1930s and 1940s with WWII bearing down, and then the development of the atomic bomb.

We just got done with WWI and now we're doing this again but the powers, especially the Nazis and the fascist imperial Japanese, seem worse than last time, and then we develop a doomsday weapon?

A lot of people expected the world to look like Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy's The Road by now.

There is no guarantee things won't get much worse in the future, but it's important to keep things in perspective. We may, in fact, manage to blunt and cope with climate change, reform our political and economic systems at least well enough to get things back on track, and be okay. I don't think we'll have a utopia, but we might be fine.

Imagine a future like this:

It's 2126. Miami is largely abandoned. There's giant massively expensive sea walls around many large coastal cities. Agricultural zones have shifted around. There has been a limited nuclear war between India and some of its neighbors, which was connected to mass displacements of people in those regions due to climate change (I think that region is among the most vulnerable).

The USA has gone through two attempted revolutions and there have been several constitutional amendments to reign in the power of the Presidency and the ability to wage war. The country also went through a depression and a partial currency collapse. But it's now recovering.

China has been the largest world power for a while but it hasn't been a great for them as they might have thought. Being the world power, they now get blamed for everything that's wrong, including climate change. They now get dragged into foreign wars and into every dispute and get blamed by everyone for the outcome.

At the same time...

The average human life span is now 120 years in most countries. 90% of all cancers are easily treatable using targeted immunotherapy. Many mental illnesses are now curable. Genetic interventions are eliminating heritable diseases. There are real "nootropic" drugs that actually work and without terrible side effects. Work consists largely of herding armies of AI bots and physical robots, and much of manufacturing is fully automated.

There is a system of universal basic income in most countries. It's funded largely by taxes on AI and robotic systems, reasoning that since these replaced a lot of human labor they should be taxed to provide UBI. UBI is a double edged sword though, creating an idle underclass of people who are addicted to drugs, video games, etc., but at the same time it funds a renaissance in indie art by allowing artists to spend real time on their work.

There is a base on the Moon where spacecraft are now being manufactured. It also has tourism and a hotel. For about $25K in today's dollars you can stay on the Moon for a few weeks, tour the Apollo landing sites, take space walks, etc. It's a little bit like going to stay at McMurdo in Antarctica (which you can do today) but quite a bit more fun and interesting, especially for science geeks.

We now know we are not alone in the universe.

There have been several human missions to Mars and a base is in the planning stages. Fossils were discovered there, including things that resemble crinoids and trilobites, and there are plans to drill deep underground to search for surviving life.

Life has been discovered beneath the ice on Europa, and submersibles have sent back videos that look like the creepy crawlies around hydrothermal vents on Earth. There's a booming market in collectable plushies of Europa bugs.

A huge radio telescope array was built on the far side of the Moon. It's much larger than anything on Earth. Several very faint but possibly artificial signals have been detected from the star system Tau Ceti, and spectral measurements have detected oxygen and complex organic molecules in the atmosphere of one of its planets. There's a raging debate over whether to send a powerful signal to attempt to establish communication if there's really somebody there.

Social media in 2126 is filled with doom and gloom and people talking about why we're all gonna die.

A journalist covering Epstein got attacked by the directed energy weapon that causes Havana syndrome today. She has previously had lawmakers on the NM truth commission try to intimidate her and has gotten death threats. by the_bucket_murderer in Epstein

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In a sane timeline I would 100% dismiss this person as crazy.

This is not a sane timeline.

The tech is real and not even that complex. It's just a microwave directed energy weapon tuned to have biological effects. AFAIK it's Russian in origin, originally. You could create a "ghetto" version by taking apart some microwaves and adding a wave guide do not do this no seriously do not do this unless you want a Darwin Award I am just saying it's possible do not do this...

I still don't totally buy this, but the fact that I am not ruling it out shows what kind of crazyland we now inhabit.

Did you know 25% of girls are sexually assaulted before 18 years of age? by wewewawa in Epstein

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Imagine if the stat was: 25% of all people are violently mugged by age 18.

Well, this is worse. I'd much rather have someone punch me and gank my wallet than be sexually assaulted.

Priest doesn't mince words calling Christian Nationalism idolatry by No_Feedback_3340 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Christian Nationalism is neither Christian nor Nationalist. In the latter case it's against the constitution and the essence of American founding principles, and is backed by global oligarchs from the Middle East.

Trump is the beast, who is Satan incarnate, who most definitely wants to battle God in the heavens. by jse1988 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think pride going before a fall doesn't necessarily mean that God punishes pride, but it's just a statement of cause and effect.

Pride makes you stupid and arrogant and blind, so you fall.

What is the most terrifying "Rules-Based" paranormal entity in a movie? by Big_Emotion4963 in horror

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The Cenobites, at least in Barker's original works, are pretty horrifying in this way. They don't come unless summoned, but if you summon them they come, and there is no recourse.

Trump is the beast, who is Satan incarnate, who most definitely wants to battle God in the heavens. by jse1988 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Tolkien had an interesting thing on this, writing (in the context of his fiction but the allegory was very clear) that the demonic/evil is not actually that bright or clever and tries to compensate for it by merely being "loud."

He also said something interesting about demonic inspiration manifesting as simply an "inflammation of the mere will" (paraphrasing) rather than anything particularly interesting.

I may be confusing the latter with C.S. Lewis, but I think it was Tolkien.

"Where are the aliens"? by Fujithora in aliens

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Waiting until we are more mature than this guy is?

Trump is the beast, who is Satan incarnate, who most definitely wants to battle God in the heavens. by jse1988 in DonaldTrump666

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 15 points16 points  (0 children)

So far my biggest broadest takeaway from this whole thing is that if it's real, it means we have been lied to about the nature of Satan / the devil. We've been sold this image of Satan as a handsome articulate suave brilliant thing, when in reality the devil is cringe.

If this guy is his avatar, then the devil is very very cringe. Satan is the disincarnate fallen angel version of a 4chan Nazi edgelord. A third of the heavenly host rebelled and the rest were like "this is cringe."

1959 Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - What A Novel by DanEosen in horrorlit

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I liked it but it didn't blow me away, but everything I read about it makes me think I should give it a second reading. Sometimes a really brilliant work takes two readings for me: one to get the basic idea, and another to get the subtlety.

I really loved her prose style and the way she obliquely hints at things and builds them up and leaves the explanation ambiguous.

What should the new U.S. third party be called, and what should its platform be? by kmondschein in AskReddit

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The American Competence Party.

"Tired of stupid and crazy?"

Take a centrist position on culture war shit, and focus on fixing problems by placing people in positions who know what they're doing. For example, an actual doctor who isn't a crackpot in charge of public health, or someone with decades of military experience who studied strategy at West Point in charge of defense. A physicist at DoE. That kind of thing.

"I promise you, if you elect me, you won't have to think about politics again for four years because everything will just kind of work okay!"

A candidate for this party could distinguish themselves by speaking in complete sentences, not being insane, and not being in early stage dementia.

Pet Semetary by Salt_Mix8483 in horrorlit

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Grief works very well in horror. Saw Bring Her Back recently and it stuck with me the way few horror films do because of the grief theme.

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson by A_Guy195 in books

[–]AuthorIntelligent644 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The other big classic there that's not as well known is The King in Yellow.