netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5hr ago
- First mover, or close enough to it.
- No humans, less risk of uncanny valley
- Songs which get stuck in
small children’sheads - Genuine heart??
I think it just claimed the spot of default Christian entertainment. My family was pretty secular and we’d still check out the tapes from our library.
Lazy answer first:
Most fiction actually has a positive vision, to the point where it’s taken for granted. If it’s not actively nihilistic, the characters are probably gonna succeed within their system and be praised for it. Go watch a sports movie or something.
Marginally less lazy:
Your story has to have conflict, right? Criticizing the setting is a popular way to get that. Look for fiction where the conflict comes from man vs. nature instead. Planetary romances with steely-eyed princes fighting off aliens. Rugged individualists making their way in the Old West. There’s plenty of fiction where people just get into adventures and present a personal vision.
I may draw a lot of flak for this, but I’ll slot a bunch of Brandon Sanderson in that category. He plops down a setting conceit, spins out a bunch of consequences, then has his characters struggle and grow within those systems. He doesn’t really do antiheroes. Stormlight Archive is a central example: superpowers are literally fueled by paladin oaths.
Now, if you’re specifically looking for a positive societal vision, rather than personal ones:
Rationalfic. Transhumanist stories like To The Stars. Weirder glowfic and dath ilan: aviation is really remarkably safe. All sorts of other stuff.
For published fiction, I wouldn’t count Ancillary Justice, but Too Like the Lightning probably makes the cut. The Dark Forest made its utopia really stupid, but it certainly didn’t apologize for it.
There’s also an endless supply of uncritical HFY thrillers out there for your reading pleasure. I’ll leave you with a pseudo-recommendation for Tom Clancy. America is always right, government force is always justified, and a shadowy parallel intelligence community which funds itself through insider trading is apparently a good thing. It’s a window into a different world.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Different waistband heights at different ages. That article doesn’t seem to care if the effect is upstream or downstream of historical fashion. I would guess what was popular in 1960 had become firmly entrenched as “old people fashion” by 1990. Add a few iterations of counter-countersignaling and here we are.
Erotica is weird and follows different dynamics than fashion. Also, the subset you’re talking about is heavily, heavily skewed by Japanese culture. I bet you can trace skirt height back to some year’s seifuku standards.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
This is the real reason BLS changed its metrics for inflation.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
The classic fanzine article which introduced “clench racing” begins with a lesser-known section on poetry.
Leonard Nimoy, currently directing his own resurrection in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, is the author of two books of poems rightly considered too hot for bookshops to handle. They're distributed solely through Athena poster shops, in the same series of icky little volumes with tinted pages and silhouettes of weeds that has given the world the if anything even more deathless works of the legendary Susan Polis Schutz, the Colorado Sappho.
I’d say McCann is late to the party, except I’m not sure Nimoy was actually in on the joke.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, and that you can’t explain “the leftist aversion to punishing” by making observations about general human tendencies. There are all sorts of human tendencies. Most of them will be present in a group as broad as “leftists.”
I used the death penalty example for comparison. It would be unreasonable to describe the ban as conserving “energy/time/capacity.” So too with your original question.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Sure, they might. What does their existence say about a broader “leftist aversion”?
Just because a mindset is plausible does not mean it’s prevalent. Maybe some Minnesotans were playing realpolitik with the death penalty. Maybe some of them were Communists trying to recruit soldiers for the world revolution. Maybe some were devout Christians. But the prevailing reason, the one that made it into this history books, was that Minnesotans were outraged after a botched hanging. A single “slot” which drew in enough political capital to ban the practice entirely. Using that to make claims about the broader ideological purity of Minnesotans would be reasoning completely backwards.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
No? That doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps it would be more clear if you posted about specific groups or people instead of the usual bogeyman.
For example, when Minnesota banned the death penalty, was there a demand for purity involved? Were Minnesotans worried about wasting political capital on murderers?
I finished Teckla last night, and, uh. I hope it’s the one that got you. That was a complete train wreck. It’d be one thing to just watch the relationship implode, maybe with an understandable dose of self-destructiveness. But combined with the ideological debates? New frontiers in anti-elf racism? Protest politics?
I’m amazed that the author is still alive. He had to be hanging on by a thread.
If this isn’t the book that you had in mind, I don’t want to know what happened next.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
The Book of Jhereg, Steven Brust. A mob boss/troubleshooter/assassin working in a fantasy city. He solves problems with a combination of sword, sorcery, witchcraft, and powerful friends.
It’s kind of like mid-series Dresden Files, except set in Morrowind. Magic is common but not egalitarian. There are all these guilds and institutions with their own histories. Everyone, including the protagonist, is super racist.
Great fun. I suspect it’s had a lot of unspoken influence on rogue archetypes in fantasy.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
I used to work with some guys who did a related project ~20 years ago. I think you’re slightly underestimating the difficulty of reliable, real time image processing, but more importantly, I think you’re seriously underestimating the culture around automated weapons. Even in peak COIN years, there was an obsessive focus on “human in the loop”. You could only point, not shoot. Couple that with the regulatory and reliability hurdles, and your project bogs down pretty easily.
Those qualms probably go away in an Ukraine situation, sure. Until a Western nation starts planning for that, you might have a hard time with funding.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
Truly, the greatest threat to western civilization is Yuri's Revenge.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
I guess you’d have to send your agent to find the most controversial bits for you.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
Fuck Microsoft and their business model.
I work in closed networks separated from the broader Internet. The version of Windows we chose still tries to shove telemetry and AI bullshit down our throats. If you try to open a pdf, it’ll launch Edge, bitch about how that’s not your default browser, go through two separate dialogues to warn that you’re “starting without your data,” and grudgingly open the document. All while frantically phoning home and shitting out bland, corporate Memphis error pages. Every “app” has a useless Copilot button. God knows what happens if you try to use it.
I can’t tell if our IT guys just didn’t bother to disable this crap or if Microsoft doesn’t allow it even through group policy. It’s inconvenient and aesthetically offensive. Fucky-wucky indeed.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10d ago
It’s not a question of defamation. We are aware of SS’s opinions. It’s more about arguing to understand vs. arguing to win. Mocking a position as predictable tends towards the latter.
See the other responses to Sloot for how fast that goes off the rails.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10d ago
Maybe one data point shouldn’t really change your willingness to believe Internet strangers?
Sure, this guy probably isn’t astroturfed. That doesn’t mean he’s honest or correct. Social media would have picked him up either way.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Is gold behaving more reasonably? Been looking at some rings and I’m wondering if this is the worst possible time.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
The U.S. military had (has??) great taste in coats.
Shout out to the Navy peacoats from the Korean War.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Come on, it should at least be one of the Reagan westerns.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
My fiancee would say her liter canteen. She gets great mileage out of it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11d ago
Sloot, sarcasm is unbecoming.
@Quantumfreakonomics, that's not an excuse to start sneering...or to drag in other users.
@RococoBasilica, same goes for you, in turn.
Hunt for Red October was gold. All the weirdness comes across as a stylistic choice.
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