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Comment Re:SF Economic Plausibility (Score 1) 300

No. We are not talking about Concorde. We are talking about Hunger Games.
You are drawing parallels between pyramids and Nazis with Hunger Games - NOT with Concorde.
Or are you arguing that Concorde was created so people would suffer?
Which is where you draw, wrongly, the parallel with pyramids and Eichmann.

And NO.
Jews were NOT getting punished. They were being EXTERMINATED. Like lice. Or rats.
They were not deemed as people but as PESTS.
Nazis weren't killing or punishing members of their own society - they were exterminating ANOTHER SPECIES of lower, subhuman, toxic creatures who represented a danger to everything and everyone by their traitorous ways and their disease ridden foul and poisonous blood.
Don't you know that diseases come from impure and degenerate blood and mongreling of races?
THAT is what they KNEW. Not what they believed. KNEW!
It was scientific FACT and COMMON SENSE.

"Fire is hot" kind of thing. Not "Fire is a demon/spirit/god" kind of thing.
And most certainly NOT "Fire is rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products".

Neither pyramids NOR the holocaust have anything to do with "economical or sensible" - because both those actions WERE COMMON SENSE.
To their way of thinking/living.

Just like smoking cigarettes, or drinking, or racial segregation, or slavery, or burning witches is all COMMON SENSE to the people of the time it takes place.
Or take it the other way round - drug and alcohol prohibition, loose gun laws, treating corporations as persons...

Hunger Games on the other hand requires, DEMANDS, that we accept an economic and REASONABLE explanation for the districts.
THEN it demands that we accept that the problem is actually "crazy-mad rulers".

I.e. The system is FINE. It's just being run badly.
See... if we just get some of that glitz and technology to the districts, they'll be able to do their manual labor much more efficiently and thereby enjoy their startrekian technology which has no need for their manual labor... wait... umm... republic... freedom... stuff...

"Fire is an oxidation caused by demons."

The world you are describing actually makes more sense.
E.g. Imagine a scene where Catpuss Everwobble finds out that all that shit that districts were producing is just being dumped into the ocean by robots.
I.e. That the technology shown everywhere in the capitol is actually used in every facet of that society and that hard manual labor of the districts really IS just punishment for insurrection.

"You were born not to be a slave Miss Everwobble, but to be punished for the sins of your species against the something or other represented by the capitol. Racial purity, freedom, government, economy, god... stuff. Fuckit... what was the theme of this story again?"

But that never happens. Because - imagining a working economy demands scientific reasoning.
Collins writes children's fantasy books.

Comment Re:SF Economic Plausibility (Score 1) 300

The name Panem is itself a fucking allusion to Juvenal, who was denouncing Roman demagogues who used gladiatorial spectacles and welfare payments to pacify the masses.

Are you serious or just trolling?

Did you really buy into that bullshit that they've named their PAN-AMERICAN country after a tongue in cheek label for bad government and stupidity of people being governed?
Why not just call it Stupidia or Dumbfuckia? No... wait... I KNOW!

Circussia!

Get it?
It is both a fuckin allusion to that same critique of governing by appeasing the masses, it has a homophonic allusion to another GreatBigCountryTM with historically questionable governing policies BUT with the added twist of turning out to be "here" and not "there" (Readers will never see THAT coming...Hohoho!) AND unlike having your country be called Breadloafia calling it a RoundRingWallia has a certain RING to it...

Like it is an endless ring, or a covenant, or a symbol of a country surrounded on all sides by oceans or enemies, or a link in a chain, or a hollow thing, or a shackle...
Shit, you can write in layers upon layers of meaning and symbolism into that.
Any half decent READER could come up with it. Let alone a writer.

Trouble is Collins is not that good of a writer.
She is a writer of fantasy for children, based on other people's templates - i.e. ripping off other people's ideas.
She can churn out sequels of simple plot, but when it comes to making believable worlds or themes... she can only copy other people's work.

Which is why the main protagonist of Hunger Games is not the prime mover or the explorer of the story but a passive observer whose primary concern during a revolution (that she is a fucking symbol for) is will she fuck the baker or the candlestick maker.

It's a children's FANTASY book, porned-up for teenage girls. Any shit goes. Wizard did it.

I don't know why we're even talking about this.
Might as well examine the logic of magic in Harry Potter.

Comment Re:SF Economic Plausibility (Score 1) 300

Quite so.

Also note the lack of uprisings and revolutions because Squiky Mookmook got voted out.
Then compare with reports from one of the actual or figurative wars USA wages, with "tributes" being killed off in hundreds and thousands.
Note the complete lack of interest for other people's "tributes" and often great pride from friends and family when one of their own gets to be "tributed".
Get blown up by an IED or locked up by DEA - you're sure gonna make your homies proud.

Then, compare with Hunger Games where apparently people are SO FUCKING MOVED by random teenager No. 2567 and her fake romance that they tear down a tyranny they lived under from time immemorial.

She might have just as well dropped a glass slipper on her way to the dwarf compound in the forest and holed up in the tower until her hair grew to insane length.
It would be as cromulent a fairytale.

Comment Re:SF Economic Plausibility (Score 1) 300

Eichmann and the pyramids are not really valid comparisons.
Both those cases ARE extension of the will of the god-ruler AND the cognitive dissonance accepted by the people.
Be it that their god-king really needs that huge thing for afterlife or that the Jews must be eliminated at all cost.
Not a punishment.

At the same time, Hunger Games tries really hard to make a point of it that the districts are actually needed for the goods they produce.
I.e. That it is some kind of an economic necessity to keep the districts poor and hungry in order to keep the capitol rich and fat.

On top of it all, the premise of the games is... ridiculous.
Primarily as some kind of a deterrent and punishment - when the spectacle around it makes it into entertainment.
Seriously, even if it was a show only for the families of the contestants in order to torture them for some made up reason - THEY WOULD NOT CARE for most of the contestants.

There is no reason for anyone other than their immediate family AND MOST CERTAINLY anyone outside their district to care about anyone other than THEIR "tributes".
And if they would care - it would be only in a way that EVERYONE would still love the winner in the end.

Providing people with celebrities is NOT punishment.

Hunger Games are a shallow, not well thought through copy of Stephen King's lesser works supposedly crossed with the Minotaur myth only mostly not.

Comment Re:SF Economic Plausibility (Score 1) 300

This is exactly the problem I had with reading the Hunger Games. Everything worked, except why would a society with hover cars and other advanced technology have need of the services of the districts?

Same thing - in reverse.

Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs books.
It is constantly repeated that there is an oligarchy which "exploits" the "masses" in an economic, political or some other sense.

Trouble is... Everyone is practically immortal.
Sure... for SOME REASON it supposedly costs A LOT of money to get a new body... but... they have virtual worlds.
AND you get to improve your education and earn degrees in virtual.
AND they have colonies across the galaxy and extremely well paying jobs for the taking... yet there is squalor.
AND nearly anyone actually CAN afford to get a new body, but not on a daily basis like the rich.
There are wars... which again don't make sense as everyone is quite happy to nuke people but somehow they still fight using infantry.

Only ACTUAL oppression of the "masses" taking place comes from within the people themselves - through religious rules which prevent people from getting a new body after death.
Which, again, is a self-limiting process - but instead of religions dying out in couple of centuries, their proponents are allowed to become more extreme and push their own dogma onto everyone else AND they increase in number.

And then there are other things that crop up which keep making it all rather implausible even with all the magical technology they have at hand, left by the Martian dei ex machinae.
Like how anything ever gets done with all that fucking AND virtual worlds AND holoporn.

Comment Depends on location and... (Score 3, Funny) 182

...the choice of target.
There are certain people out there willing to kill certain people out there for no money at all.

For bonus points, have the bot convince random people that it is a teenage girl, THEN get them to "off someone" in exchange for sexual favors.
Oldest "girl" with most kills wins.

It's OK. Turing would approve.
I know that from watching that Cabbagepatch movie.

Comment Fucking. (Score 1) 272

I'm pretty sure that for any spreading of civilization a LOT of fucking will be of vital importance.

Machines don't constitute civilizations and clones are more like really elaborate fan clubs.
Sure, artificial insemination IS possible but that's the same result but without all the fun.
And the civilization that rejects fun is a dull and eventually dead civilization.

So... Fucking.
A LOT of it.

Comment Re:What the hell is this guy smoking (Score 4, Insightful) 235

I like the bit where running a space transport company with long term cargo, people and fuel transporting plans and goals, including but not limited to resupplying the ISS is equated with "shoot[ing] endangered animals on [a] safari".

Why not just call Musk an apartheid-lovin fascist nazi-commie from South-WeHateBlackPeople-Africa?

Comment Re:yeah not really (Score 1) 129

would never have written such drivel.

It's not SUCH drivel. It's drivel of another kind.

He "figured out" that if you can afford to live anywhere in the world - you kinda stop caring about things like borders and flags.
I.e. He figured out that it is good to be rich. Whether through personal wealth or by being born in a wealthy society which can afford to be technologically advanced.

Trouble with his "realization" lies around the fact that people have a tendency and even need towards living in and being a part of a group of some kind.
So even should most people reject nationalities as defining criteria, they will still flock to something which will provide them with positive identity image cheaply and readily.

And while being an Apple, Ford or Pepsi man MIGHT be relatively cheap and is an identity that gets advertised readily - none of those can hold a candle to a little flag waving at a sports event or at some other government sponsored achievement. Like landing a man or a piece of machinery on the Moon.
Not to mention all those instances of flag waving during other positive events through the history.

It's not the money or the technology or the lack of that creates the borders.
People will flock to a rag on a pole and march to a ditty because it is a lot EASIER than acquiring a personal identity of their own.
Going with the flow is easy and relaxing.

Comment The part where e goes... (Score 1) 681

People start reading that tweet and their associations light up before they are through (cold, snow, shopping - Jesus) and they expect to read it's about Jesus but then suddenly - SNAP!
It ain't.
Then they realize at about the same time that what they are reading IS true and that their prejudice caused them to be wrong about such a trivial thing.

That's when the E (as in ego) comes in, and the following train of emotionally loaded thoughts rushes through their minds:
       

"That ain't fair. I WAS right. He changed the rules. It was SUPPOSED to be about Jesus. I can't be wrong! I'm smart and shit! He's making fun of me. But he can't be making fun of ME - cause I WAS right and I AM smart. HE MUST BE MAKING FUN OF JESUS!!!111eleven! HE'S CALLING JESUS AN ASSHOLE AND SAYING THAT CHRISTMAS IS BULLSHIT!"

They are not actually thinking all that.
It's purely an unconscious thing, with only the final result floating up to their conscious mind.
Their minds are offering them a way out of feeling embarrassed about their own fault, by being angry about someone else's perceived fault.
It's a defense mechanism.

It's the same thing as being angry at spilled milk (or the container it came in) instead of crying over being clumsy.
It hurts less when your problem is someone else's fault.

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It’s what helps me reach my goals and “start fresh” every day, even when I’ve been off the grid, on vacation or on a not-so-healthy rampage (hey, I’m human!). I never worry about being motivated or finding the inspiration to follow through on the goals I set because of what I’m going to share.

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Comment Yup. And a shitty artist... but a decent modeller. (Score 4, Insightful) 58

His statements in TFA are a collection of fallacies and nonsense.
Navel gazing until you start seeing the world through your own ass is not art. Ask any proctologist.

"Human beings are unable to return to the unspoiled living environment of the past, and have become victims of their own endeavors. In the biblical time, Noah's Ark is the last resort for humans to escape from the termination of the world. However, if Noah's Ark sinks, where is the hope of the human race? If Noah's Ark, a symbol of mankind salvation, becomes just as a shipwreck, human and nonhuman were placed in an equal position. Human subject is losing his predominance as the supreme center of the world." ...
"It is certain that, no matter what circumstance will turn out, there will certainly be a disaster beforehand," explains Peng. "Destruction and construction always grow and demise together. We will once again encounter the problem of moral degeneration."

And the author of the article seems to be in the same category of faux-thinkers.

It depicts a time when the Anthropocene period (a period when human activities have/had significant global impact on Earthâ(TM)s ecosystems), is replaced by the Mechanocene period when machinery begins taking over some of the jobs.

Comment Re:What's the purpose of all those bodyguards then (Score 1) 589

Last time someone made fun of North Korea and its leaders exactly nothing happened.
Same with demonizing them as "invadorz" instead of Chinese.
Or that time James Bond fought a North Korean villain who made himself into a rich and powerful white man.

In fact... Last time anyone actually went out and committed a terrorist attack killing a bunch of people in a a theater - it was a crazy, white, male, American. With store and online bought guns.
And the movie was kept in theaters despite the bodycount.
Why?

Cause it was a final sequel of a very successful franchise whose last movie made over a billion dollars.

In other words...
Corporations have brass balls when gold is on the line.

And again... If they can't really cover a mere 18000 targets...
What good are they? Along with all the other "terrorist fighting" measures?
Trillions of dollars and unquantifiable liberties went up in smoke - and 18000 theaters turns out to be "too much"?

Maybe they should think outside the box on this one? Or more like inside a different kind of a box.
Maybe what's needed is a better kind of a theater? A safe and secure kind, where nothing bad can happen.
We can call it Security Theater.

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