Interested in #science, #environment, #gaming, #auspol, #australia, and more. Currently moving away from corporate social media to exclusively ActivityPub networks - find me on Mastodon, Lemmy and Kbin.
JFC, have you been under a rock the last decade? The majority of American population? Maybe. The oligarchs and ruling class? Pft, Trump looks up to Putin as a ‘strong man’. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/28/politics/trump-putin-ukraine-russia-smart/index.html
It’s not about ethics, it never was. It’s about CONTROL.
Damn I forgot about the dropbears. Keep your wits about you and you’ll usually be OK, plus we teach kids to stay in pairs if they’re passing through a eucalyptus area.
As an Aussie, I can say the trope of “everything wants you dead” is highly overhyped. I’ve seen three venomous snakes in the wild in my life (and I’ve mostly lived in rural areas) and there’s a couple of venomous spiders, but none that will kill you (unless you’re very young, very old, or very sick). Blue-ringed octopuses, crocodiles and sharks exist, but rarely cause human deaths. You know what we don’t have? Bears. Alligators. Cougars. Wolves. Very few carnivores trying to eat humans here, it’s mostly creatures with excellent self-defense mechanisms.
My fav movie! The perfect blend of sci-fi, action, comedy, and fashion model catwalk.
I came here to make this comment. The Edenists, a genetic fork of humanity, have created sentient machines through biotech. Some of the large space habitats are grown with a layer of neural cells a metre thick - in a cylinder shell that may be 30km long, totalling cubic kilometers of brain matter. Super-intelligent space buildings.
There are some great suggestions here - I’m also adding to my reading list!
I almost exclusively read sci-fi, and my favourite author is Peter F. Hamilton. He has written some mind-bendingly good space opera, much of it spanning multiple novels.
His best work IMHO is a one-shot, standalone novel called Fallen Dragon. It’s got rampant uber-captialism, space marines, geurilla warfare on colony worlds, and aliens. And a very satisfying conclusion that I didn’t see coming.
I came here looking to see if my point had already been made. Thanks!
I refuse to pronounce it that way. But at least “kaysch” sounds better than “cash-ay”
Yes, while not as good as the OG, still a great read!
One of my top ten fave scifi novels. Niven and Pournelle’s best work.
No. If you can’t find it in an autopsy, did it ever exist in the first place? Too many people confuse ‘soul’ for ‘mind’ (IMHO)
Holy shit, that ISO is real. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103