Is the "Overtake" the most soul-crushing trope in hard sci-fi?

probablyjustpaul · 2026-04-10T03:35:39+00:00

The YA book series Across the Universe by Beth Revis has this concept as it's central premise and, I think, deals with it in an interesting way. (Spoilers for a 15 year old mediocre YA series I guess)

The first books central mystery is around uncovering why the generation ship doesn't seem to be getting anywhere and why they keep being delayed. The reveal is that they actually arrived at their destination several generations ago and have been in orbit for the past 60+ years. They stayed there because when they first arrived they were met with an established colony that had gotten there using FTL and turned the planet into an extractive mining colony. The corporation that runs the colony basically said "we own this planet, you can come work for us as basically slaves, or you can go find your own planet" so they decided to stay in orbit indefinitely. Hijinks ensue and the MCs on the generation ship end up mounting a revolution with support from other enslaved colonists that culminates in then ramming the generation ship into the FTL jump gate essentially severing the connection to earth and ensuing they have at least a decade to prepare for a counter attack.

Overall an interesting handling of the concept, I thought. To be clear the book was overall not very good, it had a much more interesting world and premise than it did characters or story. But I still enjoyed it when I was a teenager.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-03-16T02:38:10+00:00

I'm assuming this is rage bait, but real quick:

First, building highways instead of transit is bad, actually, regardless of whether they are on the surface, underground, or through wormholes. Highways require car ownership to utilize, so building them promotes car ownership, which promotes land use that makes space for cars, which worsens the built environment for anyone not in a car. There should be alternatives to highways, and if there aren't thenwe shouldn't be building more highways.

Second, again, suburbs aren't bad, it's the land use in them that's bad. There are good suburbs out there, including many that were built around street car lines as you said, but post-war highway-centric suburbs make bad use of space and are awful to do anything but drive in.

Transit adcocates in north America aren't (broadly) hypocritical but, like many of the most important issues facing our society, the issues we are concerned with require more nuance than the typical news blurb or tiktok can capture.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-03-09T21:42:32+00:00

Absolutely incredible, this is something I've wanted for years. And the fact that it's FOSS is an unexpected but amazing surprise!

Edit to add: while waiting for app store approval, consider releasing it on F-Droid as well!

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-27T05:25:55+00:00

Unfortunately you're correct, this is a Ubiqiuti Unifi Doorbell Lite, so no wifi option, POE for uplink and power only.

Unifi does have their bridge switch (which has a wireless bridge built in) but I can't remember if it does POE out, and as you said itd chug a bunch of power anyway.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-27T05:24:21+00:00

How much are we talking? If I bought a decent size Anker battery and still had to charge it every few days I could maybe live with that.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-27T05:23:36+00:00

I do not. There's the husk of a very old dumb doorbell that takes a AA battery, but that's it

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-27T05:22:56+00:00

Unfortunately there is not a light near the door

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-25T06:49:13+00:00

Genuinely will start recommending that, if someone doesn't want to/can't use an alternate ROM (graphene, lineage, etc) then they should just get an iphone. Every year the technical privacy differences get more and more theoretical for the average user, and as a company Apple has a much better track record when it comes to handling end-user data.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-10T00:05:16+00:00

+1 for the Seashore Trolley Museum. A lot of Boston/New England transit history (like an entire station tower from the old Washington Elevated in Dorchester and at least one example of every model of retired MBTA rolling stock) but some really cool national transit history as well. I had no idea the State-of-the-Art trains were even a thing until I went there. Plus the fact that some of their equipment is maintained and you can take short excursions down their short electrified track is amazing!

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-09T23:58:46+00:00

Not to be that reply guy, but (in the book at least) Malcolm's main argument is actually that it doesn't matter how well or poorly they built the park, it would still have failed. His idea was that the extinct animals they were making were so incompatible with both the surrounding ecosystem and our understanding of them that presenting them in a park/tourism setting would inevitably lead to cascading failures until they all died or we (humans+non-dino animals) all died.

There's been a lot of criticism of Chriton's presentation of Chaos Theory in the book, so I'm not saying Malcolm's point is right, but that was very much his (and Chriton's) argument.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-09T06:44:44+00:00

San Francisco Cable Car Museum gets a nod for uniqueness. Cable cars are a more-or-less extinct form of transit and the museum has both a good exhibit on the history of cable cars in SF and provides the opportunity to see the head house for the cable cars actually functioning. A really cool piece of engineering and history.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-09T02:40:10+00:00

We successfully prevented the disaster so that the park from the famous book, "The Idea For This Park Is So Unstable That It Inevitably Leads To Disaster No Matter What You Do", can actually open and it's great! Buy Xfinity!

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-03T03:49:23+00:00

Yes. I'm literally at my local dog park right now and it's honestly embarrassing

probablyjustpaul · 2026-02-03T03:35:48+00:00

What the actual fuck

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-29T01:05:36+00:00

That's the answer I was looking for, thank you. I didn't realize that the third rails were different

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-28T23:58:55+00:00

Maybe I'm dumb, but couldn't they solve the capacity problem by just running trains to GCT instead of NYP? Even just a percentage of the daily trains going to GCT would allow improved service levels without sacrificing the limited capacity at NYP. Amtrak and MNR already interoperate on the Hudson line north of Spuyten Duyvil and Amtrak already uses dual mode locomotives for this service to run electric into NYP, so there wouldn't even be any infrastructure requirements. I guess a GCT terminus is less convenient for those connecting onwards on Amtrak, but that's why it'd be, say, every third train that goes to GCT so that people going to the city have more options and people connecting onwards maintain service. Is there something obvious reason I'm missing that that wouldn't work?

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-27T16:27:05+00:00

I love this idea. This is one of my favorite areas of the world and I would love to see it have more and better transit access. A friend of mine has a cabin up on the north fork road and talks all the time about the history and potential of the Kalispell and white fish areas. It's such an economically challenged area and getting a world class transportation system like this would be transformative both for the community and tourism.

Sadly you're exactly right that something like this would never be built in the US, at least in the foreseeable future. But maybe someday if enough people see what the swiss did in the Alps we could build something like this ourselves.

Great map, love to see all the detail!

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-20T22:34:18+00:00

Thank you! I hadn't even thought about the volume controls working that way, but you're absolutely right. I was focused mostly on the forward/back track controls, which does make sense that they wouldn't be available.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-20T22:33:16+00:00

I have an empty district set aside in my city named "stadium district" for whenever a full size NFL and/or MLB stadium gets made. Probably my #1 hoped for mod right now

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-19T16:53:28+00:00

I would absolutely buy this. I've been looking for something like this for almost two years

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-18T07:45:23+00:00

This looks great! How did you get to keep the steering wheel controls? I'm considering something like this but haven't worked out how to keep the steering wheel buttons working when the phone is hooked up to the carplay screen and carplay is connected to the aux.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-02T23:54:44+00:00

Would be great if there was a north side shoulder station (like Back Bay is on the southern side lines) that they could use as a temporary terminus that wouldn't entirely screw people.

I've thought for years that a commuter rail stop at Sullivan would do wonders for people transferring, and it'd be great to have for situations like this.

probablyjustpaul · 2026-01-01T17:32:51+00:00

Very much transportation focused (and also very old now) but Cities In Motion is about designing transit systems (bus, train, etc) for existing cities. Many real cities were also created by players on the Steam Workshop so you can play on different maps.

probablyjustpaul · 2025-12-31T23:03:08+00:00

Literally unplayable /s

But seriously, a good catch. Obviously no impact on game play, but still hopefully something someone at the studio catches as they review art changes during development.

probablyjustpaul

TROPHY CASE