I have long attested that whatever sci fi can think up, humans will eventually create.
In b4 451 isnt SciFi
Ah yes the good old torment nexus from the hit novel "dont build the torment nexus"
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I still can't get over the fact that the book about the dangers of banning books is one of the most commonly banned books.
He waffled about what the book was really about. At first he said it was censorship. Later in life he said it was intended as a searing indictment of the looming cultural distraction of technology, most notably television according to his biographer Sam Weller.
Which is wild considering he wrote scripts for the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, then had Ray Bradbury Theater in the 80s.
I always hated the obvious disdain with which the author treats a woman doing a teleplay in her own home.
Acting is a skill, and recreation has value. If a person sitting in their own living room doing VR episodes of TV where they play a part, that doesn't make them vapid or foolish or represent an unwise use of their time.
I have watched movies that have had an equal lack of need of my input that still managed to make me think and feel you condescending prick! And I have read books with which I've had infinitely less intellectual involvement than a woman pretending to be a character in a soap opera! Take your elitist victimization fetish and shove it up your ass!
...sorry, I actually love parts of Fahrenheit 451. But I've been angry about this for years. The "hero" of the story denigrating his own wife because of how he views her hobby? Because in his mind, it isn't as intellectually stimulating as his new, illegal hobby? What an asshole.
It is a shame, as what was really wrong with her wasn't that she used escapism, but that she was apathetic. You can escape reality and relax, but there's work to do if we want to contribute positively to the world. All mediums can pacify us from the horrors of the world. Books are slightly better by virtue of having a lower barrier to entry, but the internet lowered that potential barrier.
The problem I had with this is that it's an apathy that he himself had until recently, and now he's a smug prick hating on his wife for not being cool enough to break the law like he does.
He never tells her what he's doing. He believes he can't. So instead of trying to communicate, and dealing with the fallout of a difficult discussion, he just judges her for being who he was.
It's still a dick move no matter how it's justified!
Lots of the book is just "old man yells at cloud", even though Bradbury wasn't particularly old at the time. Not chronologically, anyway.
I do think he made a good point about porches. Places where you hang out and invite your neighbors to just come by. Houses aren't really made that way anymore; my house has a small concrete block out front that's barely enough to fit two chairs comfortably. Setback requirements in zoning mean it's legally impossible to add anything else, at least as the city zoning code stands right now.
There's a definite change in how my parents' generation interacts with people compared to my generation. It was more normal just to drop by and talk, though perhaps with a phone call to check in first. My friends would consider that weird.
Oh! I've always lived more rurally, so I'm not familiar with the lack of porches in cities. That bites!
Don't want people knowing what it would look like before and during a book banning fascist political regime.
You might notice the things in the book start happening here in the real world.
this is what the company behind this says it's useful for:
first two sound pretty reasonable to me, as someone with a very basic understanding of wildfire control.
snow and ice removal, i mean it's definitely gonna do that but i can't think of any place where it would be necessary to use a robot dog for it.
the last one's self explanatory.
i'd love to be optimistic and say that this robot will only get used for harmless or good deeds but i know this thing is already being retrofitted by cops to shoot tear gas or some bullshit
dr evil Riiiight
Why not deploy it as is? Great for crowd control
the first-ever flame-throwing quadruped robot dog
A very competitive category, as we all know
Personally, I’m more interested in the monoped robot dog category.
It's a delightful PR gimmick by a most definitely not a tech company, since there's not much cutting edge technology going on in the world of "flamethrowers are perfectly legal in America and that's our business model".
In addition to strapping a flamethrower to a generic quadruped robot, they also strapped one to a drone.
How about one that puts fires out?
That's what prison labor is for!
I mean... Humanity is pretty screwed as it is so why don't we just turn into the skid and see how bad we can make things
Because "humanity" isn't really screwed, just most members of humanity. I hate this assumption that climate catastrophe or nuclear war will be a certain end. No it won't. Humans will survive, maybe even a large percentage of them. LIFE GOES ON.
Maybe you want death because trying to improve things is "too hard," but I want to live. I hold onto hope because life is more fulfilling that way. You're just justifying apathy by assuming we're all going to die when it's actually unlikely to happen.
Save your Oscar bait speech for another time dude I was clearly joking.
I hope you are right. I would love to see The Culture come to life.
Did someone say Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism? Because I heard Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
Among my favourite takes on the Culture is, I think, from Consider Phlebas: that the Minds basically keep humanity as pets, and everyone is just fine with that thank you very much.
A boy can dream. A boy can dream...
(☝◞‸◟)☞
Now we just need a "Rat Thing". That will solidify the world into a corporotacracy where the Liberterian ideal of Corporate Profits over everything and no pesky regulations to get in the way of profits.
Bring on the Franchise Wars...
Don't we already have that? It's called IMF and World Bank
I'm not remembering a mechanical dog in fahrenheit 451, but it's been decades since I've read it....
Also not at all worried about "footed" robots navigating the real world.
That Boston dynamics robot runs at like 4 miles an hour. The fastest robot dog runs at like almost 12 or something.
Average running speed for humans is between 6.4 and 8 mph depending on gender, etc. And if the obesity rates are correct, I think that it's probably a lot lower and for incredibly short bursts if anything.
Here's the record.
https://youtu.be/-2k7H3CIhoQ?si=DsNJqFaQcN6HVVp2
Strap a weapon to this bad boy, and howdy, you've got a war machine!
Too bad for the elderly and disabled/differently abled.
But think of the cost savings!!! /S
Yep. Just start burning the bodies of the weak and elderly every week. Then only the strongest survive. ..
:,(
Agreed.
Also keep in mind that humans can run even faster if they do so on all fours.
Isn't there a cheetah bot that can burn a good clip. Dunno what its carrying capacity is, but I remember it could out run puny protestors.
After looking it up, it says about 8.86 mph after converting from 13 feet per second. Some sites say it's 13 mph, but I trust wired when they state 13 feet per second.
And is running in the most inefficient way possible
He had a sharp proboscis to stab.
Seriously, can we skip this episode of black mirror.
Sounds useful for firefighters.
Kinda like how the drone with a flamethrower was used to clear powerlines.
:{
As an extra layer or irony this screen shot is a comment on a headline posted on a micro blogging platform.