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[keenir]

Random, classic-horror-movie related thought:

Do I understand this correctly that in the various "The Fly"-movies, a scientist turns into a giant fly because, during his teleportation experiments, he doesn't notice there's a fly in the teleportation chamber with him?

OK, I can accept a person slowly turning into an insectoid monster, but a conscious, able-bodied human being with no serious medical conditions sharing a small enclosed space with a fly without noticing it - that goes too far for my willing suspension of disbelief.

the fly was probably asleep at the time.

[Starbeam]

Got a new part-time job at the local airport. Wheelchair handler, about a 1-2 hour commute by train. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch and say i finally have stable employment, but this does pay well for what it is and hopefully i can finally leave home actually live my life with the money made from it.

[Raphael]

Got a new part-time job at the local airport. Wheelchair handler, about a 1-2 hour commute by train. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch and say i finally have stable employment, but this does pay well for what it is and hopefully i can finally leave home actually live my life with the money made from it.

Congratulations and good luck!

[Starbeam]

Ay thanks! I finished my first week, it's going well so far. Technically training but it's easy.

[Raphael]

Does anyone else find it weird how the English word "bruise" can mean anything from something that just changes your skin's color a bit in one specific spot to something that effectively leaves you unable to walk for a while?

[linguistcat]

Does anyone else find it weird how the English word "bruise" can mean anything from something that just changes your skin's color a bit in one specific spot to something that effectively leaves you unable to walk for a while?

I'd argue that the bruise that keeps you from walking is pretty much always accompanied or caused by other damage to the body like muscle damage or bone fractures. I don't know that someone would be unable to walk if, somehow, they had a very large bruise and no other damage. Unless maybe the bruise was so extreme that it negatively affected the person's blood pressure and caused them to pass out.

[MacAnDàil]

xxx, WeepingElf, MacAnDail: This is discourse from an alternate reality. We're dying out here. You might not realize this because of the bubbles you're in, but to people working harder than anyone else while going hungry from poverty, you sound no different from: "If we all just lie down and stop eating, we'll never have to move again! Yay!" Most humans would happily wipe out all life on the planet before adopting this line.

Eating is obviously not waste. Wanting to stay alive is obviously not waste either. It may from an alternate reality called the First World, but it's to criticise other behaviours from others in the same alternate reality bubble.

In this discussion, the most important subject missing is the greenest form of energy: none at all. Sobriety is too often forgotten (but less so since the Putin invasion). It obviously is not possible in every circumstance, but in many circumstances we could accomplish tasks without any form of energy but kinetic and be healthier for it. Or realise that the task is superfluous and opt for a less energy-consuming task instead.

Right - energy saving is the cheapest and safest energy source of all!

I'd argue that in an energy-starved world, this is effectively saying, "Let them eat cake!" Let me know if this is not obvious.

Which world is energy-starved? Maybe that might apply to India, but certainly not to anywhere else I've been.

I read it as, we can accomplish tasks without any form of energy but kinetic and be healthier for it, does not mean "doing more work" causes "power could be saved"...I read it as meaning that we can use healthier forms of energy (some of which are powered by the human body - these devices exist right now and can be purchased), and thus our health can improve - an outcome difficult for those who are stuck breathing in car fumes.

I think the original post was saying that you can be healthier by working a little harder. E.g. This point makes sense for people who ought to walk instead of driving to the next block. But it becomes "Let them eat cake!" when generalized to how the world economy works.

(Personally, I have never owned a car and can't afford one. Not even a beat up, used car. My father died when I was in school. I was raised by a single mother.)

Indeed, it was targeted exactly at the kind of behaviour like driving to the next block.

OK, on my count, that's four people in this mini-debate so far raising a nuclear vs. coal binary. For someone from a part of the world where the pro-coal people are usually pro-nuclear, too, and the anti-nuclear people are usually anti-coal, too, that looks and sounds pretty surreal.

I'm told the Greens in Germany were forced to rely on coal once they had neither nuclear nor gas.

As far as the graphs I have seen, Germany has never really been weaned off coal since the nineteenth century, which gives that impression.

Self-criticism: I could be mistaken if they're talking about increasing energy efficiency by, say, creating public transportation in America. My interpretation was was colored by the fact that I've heard MacAnDàil inveigh against technology and modernity generally. Hunting and gathering can no longer support the current human population.

More and better public transportation in the US and in Réunion among other places would be an improvment.

Even austrolopethicus, let alone homo sapiens hunter-gatherers, used technology. Many technologies, including digital ones, are overused nowadays, especially in the parts of the world rich enough to do so. I did make a semi-jocular comment about modernity being a problem. There are both negative and positive points to any period.

most of our exorbitant energy use (airplanes, internet, over-consumption) is for pleasure,
but it's a shame that it jeopardizes our vital uses...
but contemporary individualism cannot tolerate frustration of any kind...

This is partly true...

most of our exorbitant energy use (airplanes, internet, over-consumption) is for pleasure

no, that is incorrect. i'm afraid you might have swallowed the billionaire-developped global-warming-is-caused-by-lifestyle pill. they developped it so that people like you make this exact case: that there's nothing to fundamentally change about the system that's destroying the planet, it's just a matter of us using fewer plastic straws and buying a tesla. for example, the neoliberal world free trade blabla system entails that the can of peaches I've recently bought was produced thusly: peaches were grown by some dude in San Felipe, a peach-producing region near my city. then those peaches were shipped to the philipines to be canned, and then returned to my city so I eat them. this, economically, makes sense cause the per-peach-canned price in the philiphines is somewhat lower than here in a sufficient magnitude to justify the shipping, so bazillions of tons of fuel are burned shipping shit around for no good reason (other than it makes megacorpos 0.02% more in revenue). same with shirts, same with socks, same with tables, same with varnish, same with practically every product you buy. this is not a conscious choice for pleasure on the part of the consumer, but a consequence of the political-economic system the world uses to produce and distribute the results of human labour.

And so is this.

[bradrn]

Right - energy saving is the cheapest and safest energy source of all!

I'd argue that in an energy-starved world, this is effectively saying, "Let them eat cake!" Let me know if this is not obvious.

Which world is energy-starved? Maybe that might apply to India, but certainly not to anywhere else I've been.

When I visited family in South Africa earlier this year, we went half the day without power. Most of Africa is similar. Back home in Australia I feel very, very lucky to have reliable energy.

[MacAnDàil]

I'd argue that in an energy-starved world, this is effectively saying, "Let them eat cake!" Let me know if this is not obvious.

Which world is energy-starved? Maybe that might apply to India, but certainly not to anywhere else I've been.

When I visited family in South Africa earlier this year, we went half the day without power. Most of Africa is similar. Back in Australia I feel very, very lucky to have reliable energy.

I suppose that's a good example. But that wasn't what I was referring to anyway. Why direct energy saving at South Africa when could direct to a specifically rich one like Elon Musk?

[Raphael]

Does anyone else find it weird how the English word "bruise" can mean anything from something that just changes your skin's color a bit in one specific spot to something that effectively leaves you unable to walk for a while?

I'd argue that the bruise that keeps you from walking is pretty much always accompanied or caused by other damage to the body like muscle damage or bone fractures. I don't know that someone would be unable to walk if, somehow, they had a very large bruise and no other damage. Unless maybe the bruise was so extreme that it negatively affected the person's blood pressure and caused them to pass out.

I think the relative of mine who still has trouble walking because of a major bruise she got a bit more than a week ago would disagree with you. And yes, a doctor has checked her, and there's no bone damage (thankfully).

[Travis B.]

Is this what Germans think Americans eat?

[Man in Space]

Is this what Germans think Americans eat?

They don’t offer a complimentary firearm with qualifying purchases of €250+ during America Week? Philistines! How are you supposed to eat a completely imbalanced breakfast the American Way if you can’t display poor trigger discipline while you enjoy your honey mustard pastry balls?

[Raphael]

Is this what Germans think Americans eat?

To some extent, yes. But keep in mind that an "American week" of that kind will focus mainly on things less common in Germany, so the stuff that's already shared between the cultures will be left out. Germans have been slow to pick up that a lot of individual Americans are more into health food than McDonald's, though.

They don’t offer a complimentary firearm with qualifying purchases of €250+ during America Week? Philistines! How are you supposed to eat a completely imbalanced breakfast the American Way if you can’t display poor trigger discipline while you enjoy your honey mustard pastry balls?

Well, they have to, you know, follow the laws and stuff...

[masako]

They don’t offer a complimentary firearm with qualifying purchases of €250+ during America Week? Philistines! How are you supposed to eat a completely imbalanced breakfast the American Way if you can’t display poor trigger discipline while you enjoy your honey mustard pastry balls?

Well, they have to, you know, follow the laws and stuff...

How very un-American-ish!

[Travis B.]

Is this what Germans think Americans eat?

To some extent, yes. But keep in mind that an "American week" of that kind will focus mainly on things less common in Germany, so the stuff that's already shared between the cultures will be left out. Germans have been slow to pick up that a lot of individual Americans are more into health food than McDonald's, though.

The thing is that these sorts of things are, well, what you could call "culinary pseudo-Americanisms" (by analogy with the linguistic term "pseudo-Anglicism")...

[Raphael]

Unrelated:

Our apartment has a balcony. There's a door leading to the balcony. That door can be either turned shut, or turned non-shut so that you can open it, by means of a lever next to it. This is that lever in the "door is shut"-position:

hebelzu.jpg (183.79 KiB) Viewed 5430 times

Unfortunately, when the lever is in the other, "door is not shut"-position, because of something that's wrong with the spring attached to the lever, it sometimes snaps back into the "door is shut"-position on its own accord. This can be bad if the only person who's at home is on the balcony when that happens. It can also be bad if someone's face or other body part is in the lever's way while it suddenly snaps to "shut".

To solve this problem, our landlady put a little bolt-like thingy near where the bottom end of the lever is when it is in the "door is not shut"-position:

hebeloffen.jpg (179.78 KiB) Viewed 5430 times

I don't know about you, but I see this as a classic example of an engineering solution to a problem cause by earlier poor engineering.

[WeepingElf]

I have the feeling that science fiction, which once was the "literature of ideas", has deteriorated into a literature of worries. Almost all modern visions of future worlds are dystopias; few people now envision future worlds that are better than the present world. Of course, there are enough things to worry about today: the Left worry about climate change, the rising popularity of right-wing ideologies and artificial intelligence (and I do worry about these things myself, being myself a moderate leftist), while the Right worry about Islam, China and (as always) moral decay. But I think these problems can be solved, and I even consider it likely that they will be solved, considering how many past evils humanity did deal with successfully. And I think that science fiction writers could write stories about how these problems can be overcome, but there are so few of them, one example being The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Hence, I am planning to write such stories myself, and am collecting ideas for them.

[Raphael]

Related to that, I don't really don't like the way many progressive science fiction fans these days seem to insist that every utopia needs to be torn down and exposed as having really been a dystopia all along. I understand that tearing down society's illusions has long been an important part of left-wing politics, but if you tear down every idea of a future better than the present, you'll eventually arrive at the idea that the world always has to be as bad as it is now. And, no matter how popular that idea might be among a few leftists, it is still a fundamentally conservative idea.

As for story idea in the vein you describe, how about this: A reboot of Only Fools and Horses.... set in a not perfect, but still significantly better than our times socialist utopia?

[WeepingElf]

When I posted my vision of a science fiction that tells how our problems can be solved or at least mitigated in a science fiction fan forum some years ago, several other users replied that such stories exist - and mentioned as examples stories of the "false paradise" type you mention. They had understood nothing.

[alice]

Don't forget: science-fiction is, despite its pretensions, all about the world now, often projected into the future, but still about today's issues and concerns.