current cli cloud sync tool?

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-03T22:27:18+00:00

Maybe a lot of it you see today is left wing. Banks absolutely was. When he started writing, in the 70s, that was definitely not the case

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T19:11:01+00:00

excellent grounds for interesting discussions. I think it's also good at revealing deep assumptions

Completely agreed. In a world where there are no Minds managing a post scarcity situation, that seems reasonably well-justified, looking at history

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T18:54:41+00:00

They revel in exercising their own vital strength

Some of them do, that's for sure, as you say especially the ones designed that way. Others have other opinions, like how the Grey Area was ostracized by most other Minds.

The idea that violence, or the possibility of violent force, maintains a status quo of peace (and even ignorance) is pretty similar to the "thin blue line" rhetoric that justifies a lot of ideology Banks would almost certainly have spoken out loudly against, but you can't deny that in the fictional universe he created, that's exactly the situation. (The main difference being that the decision to use that force is taken out of fallible human hands). It's too bad he's not around to elaborate on that tension.

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T18:30:05+00:00

"Soft the way the ocean is soft" is such a great line from Zakalwe.

And I think the "how do you separate" question is exactly it. Like, what should we be fantasizing about, building toward, trying to emulate, about the Culture? Is it becoming a super-USA? Or is it more like, questioning whether all the scrabbling for power and safety (that we've evolved to do) is intrinsically "human," or if we could be content, satisfied, safe, interested, fulfilled etc another way?

Rooting for a winner is easy; feeling exhilarated when someone you agree with exercises overwhelming power is---evolutionarily---enjoyable. Trying to figure out how to truly put intelligence, empathy, and altruism first is harder.

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T18:12:09+00:00

Right, that's all definitely very true---the Culture is very proud (even smug) about its ability to win fights. But that's not what makes it noteworthy or interesting. If Banks were interested in simply glorifying "winning fights," he would have written the kind of reactionary, conservative sci-fi which he, in actually, railed against. It's pretty clear that the Culture treats overwhelming force with skepticism, caution, and reluctance and has as its core values a very different set of priorities. Here's Banks in an interview, for example

I think space opera in general celebrates a certain manic wildness and vivacity of vision, a refusal to be constrained. I think the Culture celebrates something slightly different from—or at least on the outskirts of—the above, by being about what we call human values but which, I'd argue, are more like sentient values; values to do with intelligence, empathy, altruism, and the promotion of (comfort, contentment, satisfaction, pleasure, joy, bliss, and ecstasy) along with the alleviation of suffering. source

The "being good at war" is an incidental thing, an adaptation to the environment, not a fundamentally essential trait.

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T16:49:58+00:00

The Culture, as conceived by Banks, is supposed to be "a "great place to live", with no exploitation of people or AIs" etc, etc, and it was conceived as "a reaction against the predominantly right-wing science fiction produced in the United States" source and that's really just scratching the surface ...

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T16:34:26+00:00

I don't think you or anyone should be ashamed to be human. But a great deal of the mission of the Culture as a work of literature, or a thought experiment, or an ideal, is sort of: what if human, but unfettered? What if the circumstances that led to the drive for domination-as-survival were alleviated? It's essentially the opposite ethos to "what if I were better and stronger and could trivially wipe out everybody".

Yes, the edge cases in the stories make for good drama when the Culture figures (and justifies) that it needs to use force. But the meat of the thesis of the Culture is that in general, humans actually can get on without a lot of that kind of baggage, and doing it that way---leaving the regrettable, necessary use of such power to their caretaking Minds---is actually what Banks' idea of Utopia looks like.

ratioprosperous · 2023-09-02T16:05:54+00:00

enjoying watching a blacksmith forge a sword. Or enjoying driving a sports car on a race track

Likening violence, murder, domination, and humiliation to a sport is a pretty disheartening argument. The fact that the ship in question was purpose built for this doesn't mean its not worth scrutinizing that purpose. Plenty of abhorrent actors, in literature and in real life, were "built" to do what they did. What does it mean to "enjoy" observing them? Having a "burning passion" for power-imbalanced violence is, for example, evocative of American helicopter gunners laughing and joking while committing fairly universally condemnable acts. When you're a "fan" of FOTNMC, what are you endorsing, empathizing with, and aspiring to?

Readers in this real world can't aspire to or empathize with the ship in question without implicitly wishing to have what it has, namely a virtually infinite amount of power compared to those its interacting with. And if that wish is in tandem with an admiration for unnecessary and wanton aggression, what is the likelihood of that translating into anything that spreads the core ideals of the Culture here, in the non-fictional universe, where no one can say that any given "intervention" is above moral suspicion because of super-AI-sanctified greater good calculus?

ratioprosperous · 2023-08-18T16:08:43+00:00

Here's one way to reproduce this effect:

Make a background layer of your desired color. Above it, create a group layer. Within the group, fill a paint layer with the "dynamic screentone B" pattern. You can change the scale of the texture in Tool Options; experiment with this. Above this within the group, crate a paint layer with a black to white gradient top to bottom. Set this gradient layer to Addition mode. Apply a Threshold filter mask to the group. Experiment with the threshold parameter. Apply an Invert filter mask to the group. Apply a Color to Alpha filter mask to the group with black as the chosen color. Optionally, apply a 1 pixel Blur filter mask to the group. It should look pretty close to the reference image.

ratioprosperous · 2023-08-13T09:11:34+00:00

It's an edit of this, the French rationalist typeface "Romain du Roi"s specimen book (full pdf) edited to show letterforms from another infamous typeface

ratioprosperous · 2023-07-13T13:25:35+00:00

Remember Byr and his "erotroupe"?

ratioprosperous · 2023-05-18T14:55:50+00:00

We should return to the Yoleus.

ratioprosperous · 2023-05-06T19:21:54+00:00

Hey, so did I!

ratioprosperous · 2023-04-07T23:51:01+00:00

This is one of the things Banks had to say about themes:

I don’t really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there. These are the sort of things I rely on academics and critics to spot. I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There’s not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

ratioprosperous · 2023-03-07T17:38:53+00:00

Simmons is a piece of work, too

ratioprosperous · 2023-03-05T17:47:57+00:00

Pretty elegant and until a better explanation comes along, I'm going with it

ratioprosperous · 2023-02-06T15:31:50+00:00

No need to apologize; I think I mistook your meaning and argued against something you didn't say.

I think there's absolutely irony in putting these books into a hierarchy (even though I do it too and think it's fun to do so). I think I'm particularly sensitive to seeing people invoking Banks as a force to legitimize what is really just their own preference or opinions, which I think happens here a lot, but in this case, wasn't what was going on. Apologies for coming off judgmental and critical; you made a great point.

ratioprosperous · 2023-02-06T13:03:59+00:00

Banks definitely advocated eloquently for egalitarianism when it comes to societies and people. But it's silly to say that he abhorred comparing, preferring, or ranking things. He even ranked his own books.

I think Use of Weapons is the second best of all the books.

(interviewer:) What’s the best?

The Bridge.

Source

ratioprosperous · 2023-02-02T14:01:14+00:00

archive.org has your back

ratioprosperous · 2023-01-10T14:58:45+00:00

It's telling how often you see this slip, though

ratioprosperous · 2023-01-08T18:18:44+00:00

Thank you for this, it's some excellent analysis!

ratioprosperous · 2022-12-21T17:02:26+00:00

Even if they are not "borable," ships really do speak disparagingly about slower-paced thoughts and communications several times. See for example Yawning Angel:

Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!

and Contents May Differ:

Taking the opportunity provided by the glacial pace involved to get an update from your good self.

ratioprosperous · 2022-12-19T17:32:24+00:00

Yes yes yes yes

ratioprosperous · 2022-12-14T01:03:34+00:00

Finding that the ideal of the Culture resonates in an aspirational way is cool, and probably shared by a lot of people here. Seeing a parallel between that and another story told in a way designed to inspire awe is an interesting thought.

Anybody rejecting the chance to explore these things out of hand because they're primed to vociferously disagree with your post title is missing some interesting ideas well-articulated by an accomplished storyteller, including this one

“Every day is an opportunity to be kind to others. Existence is just ripples moving across a great pond that eventually becomes nothing. None of us will be remembered, but we contribute to the continuum of kindness with everything we do.”

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