Sternhammer

I agree. Subtly different but overall and surprisingly very similar.

PresAux are more hippy like and a little less like the academics in the book which I find just a little annoying but it’s OK (I’m an academic).

One of the things I’m really curious about is how they flesh out the contrast between the capitalist dystopia of the Corporation Rim and the clearly socialist Preservation Aux. I feel like it’s a politically charged topic in the current capitalist dystopia American context (at least that’s how it looks to me from outside America). I keep waiting for them to water it down but they haven’t done it so far. Good on em.

COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market animals after all, suggests latest study The finding comes from a reanalysis of genomic data.

It’s a brilliant book, though I have yet to read the sequel. Can’t recommend it enough.

I don’t think there’s any coherent end game for global oligarchs, just the habit of acquisition and growth without limit. It’s a kind of mental illness, in my opinion. As they say, the world has enough for everyone but not enough for the rich.

In terms of population and the ruling class it’s interesting to consider feudal Europe. Lords had complete control over those who worked their land. Serfs even needed permission from their lord to leave their village for any reason, they had no freedom to look for a better life elsewhere. (Incidentally this is why there are so many accents in the places like the UK—isolation lead to language differentiation.)

The Black Death destroyed the feudal system due to population collapse (on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend) and the nobility suddenly had to compete for workers, offering better pay and conditions to lure them to work their land. This lead to increased social mobility and the rise of the middle class.

We may be heading towards a new feudalism but it’s difficult to predict what it might be like, especially if there’s a population crash. Capitalism needs consumers no matter how much automation is employed to produce goods.

You KNOW people are bigger assholes when it’s hot. We ALL do

I don’t agree with this at all. That’s not my experience as an Aussie.

Yes, it’s such a beat-up. People don’t understand how important aesthetics is to Apple and I’m totally there for it. If you can’t stand the thought of needing to take a 10 min charge break to get through the next few hours (because you ignored the low battery warnings) buy a different mouse.

I thought it was the Turkish they mostly celebrate for killing?

This phrase illustrates how profoundly you misinterpret these war memorials. These are not celebrations of killing, they are memorials to those who died, markers of grief not celebrations of conquest.

I live in a small village in Tasmania and I’m not aware of any war memorial however there is a grove of trees commemorating WW1 at the nearby Port Arthur Historic Site. I think this is interesting because Port Arthur is itself a memorial to a brutal, horrific past, a past that isn’t celebrated but remembered. The same site also contains a memorial garden that marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history, remembrance of a tragedy not a celebration of it.

What do you think? How should a community treat the memories of those who die in tragic events? Should they be forgotten or remembered? For that matter, do you think that wars should be forgotten or remembered?

“Those who ignore the lesson of the past, will be doomed to repeat it.”
George Santayana

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Indeed and it’s quite clear that the Falcon has two gravity planes perpendicular to each other: 1. the plane that supports everyone on the main deck (cockpit, crew lounge, etc.) and 2. the gun battery gravity plane at 90 degrees. This is easiest to see in A New Hope during the TIE Fighter battle in the escape from the Death Star. Han and Luke are sitting back-to-back, separated by a short corridor that sits perpendicular to the main deck. I don’t think most people notice this because it’s not obvious.

This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.)

lazy and unprofessional

This is a key aspect of Trumpism: it’s all about the grift and that means the shortest path to money.

I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.

From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.

Good luck getting Optus, a communications company, to promptly and accurately communicate with its customers.

I could see this degeneration happing about 5 years back when our vice chancellor started calling herself ‘president’. They gave up on it after a few years but it’s very clear where their priorities lie.