sp3ctr4l @ sp3ctr4l @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Somewhat ironically... actually using an Alcubierre drive has been theorized to...

...well, basically, when you 'come out of warp speed', turns out you've been accumulating, and energizing, a whole bunch of exotic particles and radiation along the threshold of your 'warp bubble'...

... so when you uh, decelerate/stop fucking spacetime so hard... you spew out an immense amount of exotic particles and radiation.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.5708

So you wouldn't even have to nuke it from orbit.

You just have to come out of warp right next to your target planet, and that'd probably boil off a good portion of its atmosphere, and give everything biological on the side facing you lethal radiation poisoning.

Yep, you got it!

There indeed are older kinds of weapon tech, ... but yeah, they havent't been widely used for like... thousands, tens of thousands of years before the Battle of Yavin 4.

It does indeed end up being a sort of... largely post technological progress setting, most things are ossified... almost everytime something is doing something 'novel' with tech... its basically been done before, or its just outright a 'find the lost relic' scenario, and yeah, you do run into weird situations where 'ancient relics' can actually be quite useful in more or less rare and specific scenarios.

Hell, you can even say that... the Force itself is roughly analagous to the Warp, in many ways.

Welcome to Fight Club.

Thought you were getting a mostly dumb, dude bro story about guys in an underground fighting ring?

Surprise!

Our trailers were intentionally deceptive, we had to trick you into consuming something more cerebral, that may actually cause you to have a complex thought.

Yep, I was very dissapointed as well, having read both books after seeing the first movie, lol.

Yeah, if you didn't know, the whole movie franchise is ultimately based on the book, Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton, who I honestly feel does not get enough credit as a genuinely compelling sci-fi thriller style of author... all the way back in 1969 he wrote Andromeda Strain, he's written a lot of ... yeah, sort of gritty, dense, thriller sci-fi novels.

The original series of movies... well, the first one is a pretty good, pretty faithful adaptation if you're going for a wider, more family friendly audience... some characters are kind of merged together to keep the plot simpler to follow... its a reasonably faithful adaptation in terms of sticking to the exact contents of the novel, and of course, just a wildly succesful and beloved movie.

Crichton wrote Lost World, a sequel to his book... but the movie sequel Lost World... is basically an entire alternate timeline, a totally different story, only vaguely sharing some similarities with the book Lost World.

Then, every movie after that is just fan fiction, utterly diverged from the actual way the characters are portrayed in the books, plot is completely different, only really just keeping a few characters from the older movies around, but they're no longer anything like they are in the books, and of course you've got all the new characters just shoved into this completely divergent timeline... bleck.

I would strongly encourage you to read at least the first book.

Either every, or nearly every chapter begins with a sort of... disembodied, tangentially relevant thought from Malcolm, who is often relating whatever is roughly going to go on in that chapter to the actual mathematical principles and formulae of chaos theory.

The book functionally gives you an actual 'Intro to Chaos Theory 101' lesson as you read through it, with many of the chapters serving as an example, in at least some analagous way, of the concepts in these sort of disembodied, psuedo narration blurbs from Malcolm.

Its some of the best ludonarrative, or maybe... meta, self referential at another scale, consistency, and depth that I can remeber reading in something that is also paced so well that I again call it a 'thriller'.

Technically, yes, colloquially, no.

It is very, very common for people to use science as a noun or even verb, to describe just... doing anything that requires an at least moderate understanding of some or multiple scientifc fields to be able to do properly.

So... in the actual book(s), the problem is a bit of both.

The 'science' goes wrong because... well, they do not have complete dinosaur genome sequences.

And they fill in the gaps with a lot of DNA from a certain kind of frog.

A frog, that is later discovered to change its sex, transform from female into male, in environments/situations that are not sufficiently male/female balanced.

The explanation as to why the dinosaurs will not be a problem is that they only make female ones, so the population will remain exactly as they engineer.

... this does not work, because some of the dinos transform their sex, and begin breeding, which they essentially entirely did not account for.

So... 'the science' absolutely fucked up there.

...

Also in the book(s)... Hammond is much, much more clearly an unscrupulous capitalist... think roughly somebody that would have their accounts managed by Patrick Bateman, or maybe like a modern techbro, but his tech isn't crypto or ai or hyperscaling whatever bs app... its genetic engineering.

(cough 23andMe cough)

The original movie makes him into... much more of a genuinely enthusiastic, but more innocently naive, and sympathetic character... he is much more straightforwardly a thinly veiled corpo asshole in the book.

...

So the books feature capitalism, capitalists, as another majorly bad thing that fucks up.

The idea as I see is that... these two things, when both unrestrained and pursued recklessly, well one of them would be bad enough on their own, but when you combine both of them, shit gets real bad, real fast, high likelihood of catastrophic co sequences.

Its the 'tech is not inherently good nor evil, it all depends on how a society uses it' line of thinking.

It just says hey, here's a worst case scenario for you to chew on, how seriously you should consider this.

Like maybe a modern version of this would be LLMs.

Theoretically, an LLM on its own, used reasonably, responsibly, can be a tool for arguably mostly good. You could theoretically power one of these things with wind, solar, geothermal, have a societal structure where its provided as a controlled and regulated public good, not a private for profit business.

But when you couple this with the ravenous nature of capitalism, well, a whole fuckton of shit starts cascading out of control into negative consequences... vital processes and info get fucked up by LLMs hallucinating shit and make heuristic decisions en masse that lead to say, millions of people being denied or charged out the ass for healthcare...

Major corporations massively downsize their work forces and replace them with 'good enough' (but not really, actually) LLMs... which then craters demand in a consumption based economy, so now we have a Great Depression 2.0...

And the widespread usage of these things to answer anyones questions and do everyone's home or coursework, means that now humans are net stupifying themselves, as they no longer need to learn how to do critical analysis, research and source verification, etc.

...

Its been a while since I've seen the original movie, fhe first sequel... and then yeah, never saw anything after that, because they just look immensely, increasingly stupid and nonsensical, not even having internal logic that is coherent or consistent... so I can't well comment on how the movie universe has evolved.

You entirely did not understand what I said.

Yeah, I know what you mean... I also have wished to not live on this planet for a long time now... a whole lot of my life has been... extrapolating from incomplete data, then forming my own theory, then finding actual academic papers that have done the same line of reasoning but actually got funding to properly study it...

...and then most of the people in my life acting like I am a crazy person... and then about 90% of the time, 5 to 10 years later, sometimes even more quickly, what I concluded was likely to happen just does actually happen, and all the people in my life just don't mention or care or apologize.

But also, at the same time, in many important life aspects, as I've described in other comments in this thread... I've been uh, deficient in, and had to put in an abnormal amount of time and effort into getting those skills/abilities up to a functional level.

And yeah, a number of either comms or whole instances on lemmy have automod for the r-word, and it is annoying, because the term does have a literal, medical/psychological meaning and usage that isn't just a derogatory insult, as wll as other contextual, domain specific, non derogatory meanings.

Somewhat ironically, I bet I can here say 'lobotomite', and that won't be automodded.

Hey, engaging in good faith here:

Yeah, I get that a socially stunted basement dweller 'elder gamer' is indeed appealing to and relatable with a younger generation of basically the same.

And I totally get that many, many people are just highly dismissive of and rude toward such socially awkward people, which reinforces the entire dynamic... when what they should be is more appealing to, sympathetic and empathetic to the younger disaffected crowd, that are basically scared and confused and angry kids, many of whom could be easily set toward a better path in life and development of their world view if ... just anyone would actually make them feel heard.

I really, really do get that, as I myself come from a right wing family, and genuienly didn't even realize how fucked up a good deal of my young beliefs were, how self-destructive some of my own behaviors were, untill I actually encountered and got to spend a lot of time with people less shitty than my family, irl... granted this was 20-30 years ago, I think I am roughly the same age as Asmon, so this was... back when computers and video games were actually niche, weirdo nerd things, not the widespread bog standard for children's socialization.

I have no argument with any of that.

I do however request at least one actual example of Asmon having a take on literally anything that is... lets say, more well thought out and reasoned than a high school sophomore's 5 page book report.

... And in saying that, I am now remembering that American literacy rates and scores have plummeted since I got out of high school, I think within +/- 2 ish years of myself graduating from college, that was the actual high point for average American literacy levels...

Maybe my standard of 'well reasoned and thoughtful' just objectively is higher than the modern standard.

Hrm.

... you pull the blinds down... and go noseblind after enough 'exposure'.

does lemmy have some kind of a !remindme type thing to pester me into actually doing this, lol?

I mean technically, extremely reductively, yes...

... but 'denim' specifically refers to a way that cotton is done with a twill weave, that gives it more rigidity and durability and puncture/slash resistance...

... than what 'cotton' on its own, tends to refer to in the realm of fabrics, which is a much more flexible and breathable weave, that is also less rigid, durable, and damage resistant.

Before the advent and proliferstion of synthetic fibers... a whole lot of different fabrics... yes, are literally cotton, but they are wefted and woven in different patterns that give them both different visual appearances, as well as different physical properties.

Like uh, corduroy.

Corduroys can be made out of pure cotton as well, but look, feel, and have different tensile strengths and such than denim...

...and even denim has many variations of exact kinds of denim weaves... and nowadays, things that are marketed as 'denim', often contain a good bit of some kind of synthetic fiber, to give them a bit more stretch without losing too much durability.

this is subjective. Your whole argument may as well be "I don't value having a made up bed", which would be fine, but that's not an unpopular opinion so much as a personal preference.

???

Is... a personal preference... that is not universally or widely shared...

How is that not an opinion, a potentially unpopular opinion?

Like uh, in my opinion, Hawaiian pizza is great.

Many people do not agree with this opinion, do not share my personal preference.

Like, yes, generally speaking, an 'opinion' is often more broad, more wide ranging, has prescriptive solutions or suggestions for more people than just a 'personal preference'...

But OP pretty explicitly says that they have no problem with people who do regularly make their beds... they just wish people would realize its largely a cultural artefact derived from disciplinarians and military regimentation.

That last part, that's the broader opinion.

The part of your response here that I've highlighted... that is, in my understanding, a 'small' opinion, which is functionally totally equivalent to a literal 'personal preference', that does not extend beyond them, does not instruct or suggest others behave or think in a different way.

Generally speaking, I agree with you, for many people... yeah there isn't really any real compelling reason to habitually do this.

However, there are fairly common circumstances where this does actually make sense:

Maybe you just have a tad of OCD, and well... this'll make you feel a bit more steady and comfortable, and it doesn't really hurt anyone, assuming you're not full blown OCD doing it over and over and over because its never perfect.

Maybe you are mildy to moderately depressed... and... just being able to have any kind of regular structure, regular task that you can accomplish... maybe that means you're not a completely useless piece of shit, and if you can keep up this good habit, and give yourself a pat on the back each time... maybe that means you can start to step up toward more, or bigger tasks.

Maybe you're a bit ADHD, and its... anchoring, helpful, to have that same just bit of predictable structure or routine, to help you get your day started.

Maybe you have a cPTSD / Trauma response to a messy bed from associating it with very shitty situations in your past, and... having a made bed just removes a trigger for you.

...

Or maybe you have pets, or toddlers, and don't want to 'lose' them, lol, or have their uh, debris of whatever sort, just get everywhere in the bed.

Maybe you live in a studio and eat food on your bed, clip your nails on it, and you adopt a regular 'crumb removal from your bed' routine as basically just a hygeine pattern, like brushing your teeth or hair or what not.

Maybe your heat went out or its just fucking freezing, and having a properly made bed makes it just a bit warmer to get into for sleep.

Maybe you have very fancy, high maintenance bedding, that will wrinkle and deform if not regularly ... re normalized?

(Yeah I dunno, this is apparently a thing, I am apparently either too simple or broke a man to have ever entertained the idea of a high maintenance bed, but apparently people do?)

You know, I think I might make a cut of this, but... more somber, tense music, ... more relevant modern references.

I remember the gyroscopic weight stuff somewhat, but always sorta dismissed it since it felt like it was selectively used by authors and many of my favorites made little to no mention of it.

I completely get what you mean on that.

Personally, I wish it was more prevalent... I think the main reason it isn't, is that... its actually fairly difficult to write a description of ... what this would be like, and it is also difficult to depict this visually, both in still and moving images.

Again this I will freely admit is my preference/opinion, but yeah, I really wish they had actually gone a bit further into this...

Like with Frank Herbert, Dune, and the basically bizzare combat style that comes with the daggers and personal shields.

The slow blade makes the cut, in that universe, literally, because the shields block things moving at high velocities, but not slow velocities.

I just love the shit out of... physically based, but playing by different rules, martial combat, hahah!

I also really like in say, Enders Game, where Ender has to essentially just learn/invent an entirely new paradigm of combat to work with zero G and the suits that constrict and paralyze theb part of your body that gets hit with whatever kind of weapons they use.

Makes me want to go back and read some of the best of legends.

I think I am just gonna do that.

Somebody's gotta tend to the old, sacred texts =P

I fully support a reread!

=D

Also, because I am in nitpick mode:

Canon is a body of work accepted as legitimate, official, standard, etc.

Cannon is what you fire a cannonball with.

=P

Anyway, I'm off to go enjoy a dessert in a desert.

Yeah, they can just do whatever the fuck they want in the mean time, cops rarely ever get stopped by a 'reasonable suspicion' standard, which is much, much, muuuuuuch more lenient than an actual 'probable cause' standard.

Like here's how reasonable suspicion works:

We are looking for a brown guy.

We were near his apartment complex and saw a brown guy roughly matching his description go into an apartment.

This guy is wanted for... whatever made up bullshit immigration violation... so, we have 'reasonable suspicion' that that was the brown guy we were looking for, going into, i dunno, maybe his neighbor friend's apartment, maybe his, who cares, thus we are justified in breaking down the door.

And no, no it won't matter in court, its been a year and a half, brown guy died in GITMO or CECOT or Alligator Auschwitz 3 months before this case brought by his remaining US family actually got before and judge, and even if the ICE agents are found guilty, whablamo, Trump pardons them.