Time To Fire Up The Blessing Generator
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For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade and a half, in over 3,000 posts and over 130,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year-summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
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As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
Now share ye links and bicker.
it’s surprising how many seemingly “progressive” people appear to have a fetish for cultures which have remained largely stagnant and unchanged for several thousand years. Cultures in which there is a demonstrable lack of the very thing they claim to admire.
For example.
Behaving in class is “white supremacy,” apparently.
Just got around to listening to this and to be honest, I kind of agree with him. Not so much on the “white supremacy” part but more in an “elitist supremacy” context. Just sitting, taking things in without debate and then regurgitating them back at a later date is a big part of the problem we are in. That is pretty much what indoctrination is. Of course were he to get actual pushback from other, possibly white, asian, hispanic, or wrong-thinking-blacks, his white ass may not be quite as enthusiastic about the idea. Careful what you ask for.
Re the envy of the world I doubt the veracity of the car mechanic’s comment on the grounds that there are no male GP’s.
new ringtone
April Winchell is a treasure. She’s a friend-of-a-friend in the “outsider music” community, and she was also the genius behind “Regretsy,” which was a source of delight for the few years it was active.
(But life is too short to waste time reading all those thousands of pages.)
You’re missing out. Banks is one of my favo(u)rites.
Bit late but:
I am not at all sure what is happening here.
Waffen SPQR?
Alright don’t push – I’m leaving.
Waffen SPQR?
Given the weapons, except for the guy with the Luger, more like the VII Guards Rifle Legion “Order of Suvorov”.
By the way, thanks to all who’ve chipped in so far, including all those much too shy to say hello, or who’ve subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon links. It’s what keeps this place here and is much appreciated.
I agree with Governor Squid. Iain Banks’ SF got me to pay attention again to the genre after it went weak and woke.
The Culture’s energy sources and sociology are unlikely, but they make possible the interactions with non-Culture which generate the stories, which are well told.
Banks and I lived twenty miles apart, with mutual friends, though our paths never crossed. I am told he spent nine months of the year on his cars and motor bikes, then three months furiously writing the book, SF or not, he had conceived and plotted in the months before.
A sad loss.
McLuhan’s actual statement – much misreported and misunderstood – was The Medium is the Massage.
Massage = Mass Age
Behold the truth:
You’re missing out. Banks is one of my favo(u)rites.
Thanks, but unlikely: Leftist sf tends to annoy me and there is lots of other fiction to read.
Leftist sf tends to annoy me and there is lots of other fiction to read
Baen has a lot of exploding starships, although I now find Weber’s Honor Harrington series utterly insufferable.
An American love letter to Laurie Penny:
https://journal14.com/laurie-penny-and-americans-weird-about-our-first-amendment/
You got me with ‘The Year Reheated’. 😀
Tip jar hit.
Tip jar hit
Bless you, sir. When playing your favourite game on a tablet, as opposed to the phone on which said game has long been played, may you not lose your ninja-level muscle memory.
A prostration occurs:
Pale skin being a sign of “innate racism,” you see. According to Dr Crystal Duncan Lane, an educator at Virginia Tech.
Perhaps an apology for being a pretentious, neurotic, gaslighting shitbag might have been more appropriate.
Dear class, I sincerely apologise for being white.
It’s like a sickness.
It’s like a sickness.
It’s certainly not healthy. Just imagine, you turn up for a class on disability, and the first thing you get is a pantomime of pretentious collective guilt, which, by implication, insults any white students in the class as being innately racist too.
I suppose the question is how far gone you’d have to be, as a grown woman, to believe this woo, or to pretend such, publicly and ostentatiously, over and over again. (Which, in terms of neuroticism, amounts to much the same thing.)
It’s pernicious, degraded and revolting. Maybe our woke educator should just roll on the floor and piss on herself and be done with it.
Maybe our woke educator should just roll on the floor and piss on herself and be done with it.
Or nail herself to a cross? That, at least, would be less smelly. 😏
Part 2, QED.
I had no idea who that surly child was, until Ace of Spades identified her as Cara Delevingne, who has a history of very serious psychological problems. So…another entry for David’s thesis that leftist politics attracts damaged people.
My favourite of that genre is a couple of lads hearing Jolene for the first time. They pulled out some elements to praise that one takes for granted when it’s a really familiar piece.
Iain Banks’ Culture series.
You should read it. It is generally excellent.
The Culture’s communism works because it has such an abundance of everything that it can live by: from each according to what they fancy doing that day, to each whatever they can dream of. It is a society which has solved the fundamental problem of economics.
BMX kids FTW.
and the first thing you get is a pantomime of pretentious collective guilt, which, by implication, insults any white students in the class as being innately racist too.
Microaggression!
“Theodore Dalrymple described African towns which were wonderful to visit in the daytime but deadly dangerous at night when, in the pitch-dark streets, robbers would waylay and murder the unwary for what little they possessed.”
I may have mentioned that a lamp-post in my street hasn’t worked for at least three years. The Council spent much of last week painting markings on the road in preparation for the Great Parking Shakedown (50 years ago it was a private road; now they’re making us pay for the privilege of parking at our own front doors), but in the middle of winter it gets dark before 3 in the afternoon and I can’t help wondering how their enforcers are going to be able to see who has a ticket and who hasn’t.
Maybe they’ll give them miners’ lamps on their heads like the binmen used to have. Of course, that means we’ll be able to see them coming and move our cars as soon as we see the tell-tale flashes of light in the window.
I don’t think they’ve thought this through.
Maybe they’ll give them miners’ lamps on their heads like the binmen used to have.
Like 1960s Cybermen? Cool.
Did that Cyberman outfit pre or post-date Grolsch?
It is a society which has solved the fundamental problem of economics.
Which is why I find it facile (along with Star Trek‘s replicator-based post-scarcity). Economics is not a mathematical field of study; it’s the study of human behaviour. Human behaviour is determined by innate biological instincts evolved over a quarter million years in a neolithic hunter-gatherer environment. Banks’ SF makes the typical Soviet New Man mistake; the limited amounts of transhumanism in the system doesn’t address the fact that if you take away all scarcity human beings will still find something to define as artificially scarce and hoard that because we’re wired for it.
SF authors mostly assume that everyone in their milieux is an upper-middle class white SF author. There are never any soccer hooligans or teeming hordes of third-world underclass.
*emerges from bushes*
*throws quids in tip jar*
*hides in bushes*
*emerges from bushes*
*throws quids in tip jar*
*hides in bushes*
Bless you, madam. May your friends know the importance of punctuality.
SF authors mostly assume that everyone in their milieux is an upper-middle class white SF author.
And that upper-middle class white SF authors will always act for the greater good and never, ever, create cult religions, abuse children, advocate racism, or preserve their positions of power.
The Culture’s communism works because it…has solved the fundamental problem of economics.
I don’t buy it–just another fantasy, and intended in part to get people used to the idea of Full Luxury Communism as a desirable and possible thing. Chesterton and Dalrymple have criticized the basic assumptions in some depth.
Which is why I find it facile (along with Star Trek’s replicator-based post-scarcity).
I now find Star Trek frequently tiresome, too.
SF authors mostly assume that everyone in their milieux is an upper-middle class white SF author. There are never any soccer hooligans or teeming hordes of third-world underclass.
And have you noticed how few sf authors were/are believing Christians and Jews? Far, far more worshipers of technocracy, socialism, etc.
I don’t buy it…
Clarification: I don’t buy what Iain Banks was selling. I am far more genially inclined towards everyone here (unless certain not-to-be-named trolls were to reappear.)
SF authors mostly assume that everyone in their milieux is an upper-middle class white SF author.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sten_Chronicles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sten_Chronicles
Never heard of those stories. How do they relate to the topic at hand?
Oh, you found an exception to a qualified general statement?
Well, congratulations. You found an exception.
There’s no prize for that.
Star Trek’s utopianism was tiresome and all, but it sure was a pleasant fiction. Personally a little more starry-eyed idealistic SF/F would be welcome against the sea of blackpills being served up currently. Authors thinking of ways we get from here to some beautiful, majestic future would possibly even help a little.
Nobody needs a self-help book about How To Be Sad, and our culture is brimming with How We Fall stories, almost like we collectively lack the imagination to foresee how humanity and society can improve or even thrive beyond limit. Maybe it’s just me.
“I blame Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“We represent the vegetarian space socialists who are always right”
“You guys are the worst”
“We know”
Youtube>”Every Episode of Popular Space Show™”
“And that upper-middle class white SF authors will always act for the greater good and never, ever, create cult religions, abuse children, advocate racism, or preserve their positions of power.”
Besides Sci-Fi and (some) fantasy I also enjoy (some) alternate history series. One of the more prolific authors is S.M. Stirling. He is now “verboten” for his Draka series and his comments about “der muzzies”. His Emberverse series about a post utopia US set in and near Portland (prescient !) is decent enough and he made one of the main villains a university professor. Always seemed on point to me.
Oh, you made a BS general comment that isn’t really true?
No prize for that either.
Full Luxury Communism as a desirable and possible thing.
It’s neither desirable nor possible, unless some drastic changes are made to human animal biology and psychology. The only thing the hand wavey utopians “fixed” was where all the free stuff comes from. In the current world, somebody has to make it and/or pay for it before it can be distributed. Even assuming the fantasy could be made reality with replicators or whatnot, the assumption that everyone would therefore find happiness and satisfaction is false, I think.
Animals in zoos are/were given everything according to the zookeepers’ understanding of their needs. Yet they were depressed, lethargic, miserable. When zookeepers added a little competition, some spice into their lives – made them have to work a little bit for their food/mates/whatnot, the animals’ quality of life improved. Human animals are no different. Theodore Dalrymple has documented the stories of people on the dole in the UK, and both in the UK and the US, where people are housed in zoos – housing projects – and given food and expense assistance, the result is far from utopian. Give humans everything according to the State’s understanding of their needs, and they become entitled, dissatisfied, and in my opinion, lazier. Why bother to expend effort when it’s all given to you, regardless of what you do or don’t do. And it’s never enough. A friend of mine used to say that if people were given a check for $1000 a week, with the only stipulation that they had to show up at a physical location to collect it, it wouldn’t be more than a few months before some would be asking why it couldn’t just be mailed to them.
If these Full Luxury Communism stories involved alien species that were not like human animals in any respect, I might be able to tolerate them, but it still sounds kind of boring. I prefer my science fiction and fantasy to be adventure stories, where the heroes overcome challenges, beat the odds, escape the evil whatever – that sort of old fashioned thing.
It’s neither desirable nor possible
Agreed. Now why can’t I get my Mensa friends to understand that? 😉
Heh.
Via Ben.
“Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link…”
Nice timing… 😉
Even assuming the fantasy could be made reality with replicators or whatnot, the assumption that everyone would therefore find happiness and satisfaction is false, I think.
The lead characters in the Banks books are always doing that. They are from the Culture, but they need more to make their lives worth living. And so they take risks in a world where they can live forever, should they wish to. (And Banks does get that in the end, we all choose to die.)
I prefer my science fiction and fantasy to be adventure stories, where the heroes overcome challenges, beat the odds, escape the evil whatever – that sort of old fashioned thing.
Which his does. You think he has become popular by writing books in which nothing happens?
You might not like the Culture idea, but it pays not to discard his books on a false basis.
By the way, a thread with rumblings about Star Trek’s later iterations can be found here.
The “pernicious ideal,” as Dicentra puts it.
And this is your brain on wokeness.
Every Episode of Popular Space Show™
FTFY.
No need to thank me – I do it instead of paying my bar tab.
[ ducks ]
PayPalled coz you deserve it!