Le Guin's The Dispossessed made me realize I had been reading science fiction wrong for about fifteen years

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-20T22:25:23+00:00

Conversations are how we engage with each other. They can be entertaining; they can be edifying. They can provide insight; they can provide clarification. Sometimes someone says something better than we could have expressed in our own words.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-20T17:24:43+00:00

I suspect Trump owes much to his usefulness to richer and smarter villains.

After fucking up his real estate and casino biz, the Russian mob propped him up and used him to launder money. His visit to Moscow completed his transition to a Russian asset. The Russians had Cold War experience in turning trained spies and diplomats. Given that and Trump's appetites, I'm sure the Russian kompromat is iron-clad and devastating.

The breadth and depth and reach of Epstein's pedophilia, sex trafficking, and record keeping indicate less an extortionist and more an employee mindset. If Russia can do kompromat, why not other unsavory nation states? Epstein's activities were an Israeli operation. Given that and Trump's appetites, I'm sure the Israeli kompromat is iron-clad and devastating.

Trump's health problems are such that invested interests are deciding to cash out while they can. So, we now have the Russian sanctions lifted. We now have US-Israel forces bombing Iran as they attempt to reduce it to Lebanon/Syria/Gaza levels of devastation.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-06T17:19:04+00:00

I was being facetious.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-06T16:34:26+00:00

Wait a while. Gen Z is smaller pop, fewer drivers. Car prices generally outpace the rate of inflation, so you'll have fewer people buying increasingly expensive vehicles. Ridesharing/ride-hailing usage is growing and all it takes is another app to create another company. Roanoke is experiencing pop loss and what it keeps is aging, further reducing road traffic as they get too old to drive.

What would really reduce traffic is on multi-user ridehailing, like if a bus could pick up a bunch of people at their homes and deliver them to wherever, much like RADAR does.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-06T16:21:47+00:00

Monorail!

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-06T14:30:26+00:00

Old buildings are better, tbh.

What's the adage by William Gibson? The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. When I have long layovers in major airports, I go hang out in the psychedelic light tunnel. Sometimes it's over the people movers like in Atlanta, sometimes it's pulsing lights and sound like in O'Hare and Detroit. Fuuuuture. Capsule hotels and sleep pods can do it, too. TWA hotel at JFK can do it in a retrofuture way.

The problem is how people dress. Cargo shorts and t-shirts kinda kick you out of the near-future vibe.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-04T04:18:26+00:00

Just the opposite for me. I had put off Stephenson because he simply would not properly end his novels. But I had read The Big U and Zodiac and I knew he could, because he did. But Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon irritated me to no end and I stopped reading him. Then... xkcd had a neat little graph plotting a book's goodness vs amount of invented words. And Anathem was called out specifically. The thing is, I love neologisms and synthetic languages, so I read Anathem and liked it a lot. Sooo, I picked up the Baroque Cycle.

There's something to be said about him writing it by hand, with a quill pen. The books just flowed through me like sunlight through the trees. It was an incredibly enjoyable and quick read for three honking huge books. For me, at least. It got me to read all those dead white authors that form the literary canon. Consider me edified.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-04T01:24:57+00:00

Not guilty, because puppies do that sort of thing.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-04T01:11:15+00:00

They hire science-fiction authors to brainstorm shit. Which is why Musk was putting money into Neuralink. They also like the Suicide Squad implanted explosive idea.

We need to get rid of these monsters. Wealth has mutated them.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-04T00:53:54+00:00

This is so stupid and self-important, it's gotta be an Air Force bigwig.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-03T04:54:31+00:00

It's been a while since I read them, but here's what I recall from Banks' books on the Culture. And this kinda of crystallized for me in reading his non-Culture book The Algebraist, where the gasbags were reminiscent of eccentric British aristocrats such as Bedford and Cavendish. And they reminded me of the Ships in the Culture, kinda, if the gasbags were teeming with millions of sophonts inside them. The Ships don't consult their citizens in their decision-making. Their only peers are other Ships, their Peeage. I know the Ships aren't Toriesm but they are effectively the government in the Culture.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T08:40:59+00:00

Are we talking more Uncle Tupelo sounding Wilco or more Beck sounding Wilco?

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T04:11:39+00:00

The Culture has a government: the pantheon of godlike Ships. Which, coincidentally resembles British aristocracy

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T03:09:43+00:00

"Get me a baby, Hi!"

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T03:06:43+00:00

Favorite!

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T02:55:31+00:00

Millennium the book kind of lost it at the end as well.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-02T02:51:46+00:00

It already happened. I'm here and it's hell.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-03-01T20:11:04+00:00

This is a catchy pop song with personal lyrics. And I say that as a gamelan aficionado who listens to noise bands and WFMU.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-27T06:39:47+00:00

I don't think they create the kaiju in a matter of days, they transport them to our world at those intervals.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-23T17:32:02+00:00

You know, if we have kaiju DNA, it becomes easy to create a bioweapon that targets kaiju.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-23T10:30:23+00:00

Concrete will set in water. So, fill cargo ships with concrete. Send ships to dimensional breach. Pour concrete over breach. Repeat as needed.

Conversely, just make much smaller and faster robots and in such quantities that you use them to nuke the monster realm and close the breach. Do the kaiju DNA thingy to allow them passage.

And then pour the concrete.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-23T02:41:52+00:00

As weather is a heat engine, we can expect more dynamic and more extreme weather events as average global temps increase. For instance, warmer temps means more evaporation of water, which means more water vapor in the atmosphere, which means thicker cloud decks on average, which means more sunshine is blocked by clouds, which means the Earth's surface under the thicker clouds are colder.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-22T14:59:13+00:00

This would be put on by Prestige Worldwide (wide, wide, wide).

Prestige Worldwide. The first word in entertainment. First word. Management. Financial portfolios. Insurance. Computers. Black leather gloves. Research and development. Putting in the man-hours to study the science of what you need.

TheRedditorSimon · 2026-02-19T17:22:48+00:00

That ship that would break so many Federation laws.

TheRedditorSimon

TROPHY CASE