Leaderboard

I think the biggest change is the internet. 20 years ago if you said the earth was flat your friends and family would laugh and say, "no that's not right" and you would find no one to agree with you. Now you can go on the internet and find hundreds or thousands of people who will agree with whatever batshit crazy idea you have.

They were preserved in aspic.

My mother used to make jelly this way and it was tasty as well as having a pleasing texture. But in between her limited canning seasons, she bought a store brand jelly that was so stiff it ripped the bread when you tried to spread it. It tasted of grapes and children's tears. Ah, I forgot about how teeth can break down Jello viscosity! The culprit is one of your school's second grade teachers! I remember my eighth grade English teacher drawing a couple of stick figures holding a circle with a dot in the middle of it between them. She asked me what it was, and when I couldn't guess she said it was "two men walking abreast". Of course, this calls for my only jelly joke. In the midst of the Y2K panic in 1999, the KY Jelly company announced it was Y2K compliant. They called it Y2KY Jelly, and it allowed you to put all four digits in your date....

Colossus? 2010 was pretty good; in fact, one of the best depictions of AI and its potential problems. My SO's constant, rankling beef about Star Trek is the "synchronous orbit" where you see the planet rotate by underneath, and yet they never lose contact with the away team. That, and the "full stop" - in space. Mine is: You've developed warp drive and teleportation, but lost the concept of seatbelts and lanyards. Oddly, these niggles never stopped us watching the shows.

Terminator didn’t really talk about the dangers of AI. It used that as the plot device to launch an action film in a sci-fi setting.

Those were not incidents involving hydrogen. Hydrogen has one property which makes it rather more hazardous than natural gas- it has a very low ignition energy. On the other hand, the low molecular mass and comparatively low energy density (a litre of hydrogen carries less energy than a litre of methane) tend to reduce the risk. to exactly the same extent that it will leak through a badly made connection, it will also leak out of the area it is released into. There's a story of a demo where they emptied a tanker truck of liquid hydrogen onto the surface of a lake, waited 5 minutes and struck a match. They then invited anyone to do the same with petrol/ gasoline. Any fuel is, ipso facto, potentially dangerous. The way round that it to not let it escape. Not really. Once you tighten up the fittings so that the metal meets the metal, there's no hole. Practically speaking, Hydrogen won't diffuse through a mild steel pipe any more than propane will

Also it seems to me that OP sees SF in a very narrow context. The genre has almost always been more a commentary on society and its development rather than the application of science to a literary genres. In fact, more often than not, the "science" part is just the vehicle to make a point (similar to the purpose of, say, monsters in fantasy). There are of course notable exceptions where the science part is heavy and sometimes is considered under the genre of "hard" SF. As a whole it is but a small slice of the overall SF picture. As such one could expand the question to ask whether fiction or even literature is bad for society.

I'd put documentary above SF - they at least attempt (the ones I'm tempted by) to be factual, but I find I struggle to keep watching the doco's too; the last time I tried the overly dramatic background music and awestruck narration was just too much. And I was familiar with most of the content, so not much that was new. SF unfortunately presents a fantasy vision of Humans in Space that references the F of other SF far more than it references S. They get so much so wrong that I can't look past the mistakes. Whether back in my youth, when a space monster blocked the air intakes of the ship of Lost in Space - the Robinsons were going to asphyxiate (even then we thought it was stupid) - or my failed attempt to watch "Expanse", that others consider very good. Having the SF standard tyrannical and corrupt UN running Earth badly in Expanse was mildly irritating but I know most people who like SF will be Americans who have been taught to dislike and distrust the UN, so it hits their buttons (but annoy me) and there is an independent and powerful Mars (colonising Mars is inevitable, right?); these are the kind of tropes that get used to suit viewer tastes I don't share. But it was the water shortage on Ceres that lost me. Seriously? They are a major mining operation but they don't know you can heat carbonaceous chondrite material and get water? And don't they do recycling? There are some SF writers (of novels) that I enjoy a lot but very little of TV or cinema SF can grab me; it is the ones that don't take themselves seriously, that are unashamedly fantasy or comedy or both that are most likely to appeal to me.

Hydrogen is not a power source. It’s a storage medium. Hydrogen technology is akin to battery technology. Hydrogen can only be as green as the power that creates it.

There are several parallel issues here. One is that wealth acquired by the ultra wealthy tends to get put into tax shelters and nebulous investments so it grows (but remains outside the system), whereas that same money in the hands of the less fortunate goes IMMEDIATELY into the community around them. They spend it on groceries and vehicle repairs and school clothes for kids and paying the electricity bill so it’s not dark in their apartment anymore at night and their kids can read. The providers of those goods and services in that community where this money is being spent ALSO spend the money once received for THEIR groceries and THEIR service needs and on THEIR kids. Dollar for dollar / unit for unit… the money in the hands of the less fortunate does more net good than money in the hands of the already fortunate. Yes, spending from the wealthy also creates jobs and injects money back into the system, but very little relative to money used in “trickle up” stimulation packages. Also, a bit of extra money in the hands of someone who already has a bunch of it doesn’t tend to change their behavior or encourage extra spending. Getting $1,000 tax break when you’re sitting on $50M isn’t going to suddenly result in them finally making a call to a plumber or the purchasing a new dishwasher… but for the person living paycheck to paycheck that money literally changes lives, gets spent and injected back into the system quickly, and results in lasting reductions in poverty and suffering. When you’re living at the margins, every dollar counts. It also costs a lot to be poor. When the washing machine breaks, you can’t afford a new one but you can afford to pump quarters into the machine at the laundromat… but that ends up being more expensive on net. When the car breaks down, you don’t get to work on time and you get fired. The rich, however, have tax protected ways of growing their wealth and can afford tax attorneys to hide it. Paying more tax has more impact on their ego than on their lived experience. The anger at the rich is out of hand, though. We need better policies and enforcement mechanisms, not more hate and vitriol directed at those doing better than us. Sadly, the anger is probably in large part intentionally being amplified by the very people on the receiving end. If they can keep everyone mad and focused on the wrong things, then the status quo remains stable and no progress or change gets made. Like most issues in economics, we make a huge mistake by treating it as a moral failure when at its core it’s a policy failure. Fixing the policy is just super hard because the people with the power to change the laws tend to be the same ones benefiting the most from them… and also because focusing on wonky policy details is hard for a public who’s often just trying to survive through to tomorrow and who’d much prefer throwing stones and being distracted with us/them tribalism. Perhaps this thread could try focusing on wonky policy details instead of distractions like yachts and steel boats… or not.

Wouldnt let me edit Also keep in mind there are different types of empathy. Each a level up from the other. Some of which can cause physical reactions. Husband getting symptoms of his pregnant wife or feeling scared/nervous for the innocent family in a horror flick. Then theres “The twin thing.” Which there is also no scientific evidence to prove. Myself and most I know have witnessed it enough times, that its not most likely all coincidental. Science can only prove or disprove the physical world at this point. The rest is personal experience. Unless your narcissistic. Which you can be wrong, even with solid evidence. Like the gay guy in here. Thats nothing meant to be negative. Just another example of seeing things that one shouldnt be able to. Probably even a grandiose. Who knows he is. Which is why I mentioned it. Borderline inappropriate, I understand. I can delete that part if necessary or you can if need be. I assumed its ok with no name attached.