No I’ve quit reading this on 3 other occasions in my life, I’m doing the series now. Even if I hate it by then end, I’m finishing it this time

I answered in another comment, but it’s more that when I feel like he’s made his point and he goes on and on and on for paragraphs about the same thing, I start jumping to the next paragraph until I’m getting new information. Sometimes that takes an entire page of jumping. But it’s maybe been 4 pages out of 250, so nah, I’m definitely still reading it. But you’re right, I tend to only do this when I’m bored

I’m still reading it. I’ve maybe done this 4 times where I’m in a the middle of a third paragraph where I feel like he’s just dwelling on something that he has clearly already made his point; so I skip to the next paragraph, realize it’s about the same thing, skip to the next paragraph, realize he’s still prattling in about it, skip to the next paragraph… it STILL the same thing, so I skim everything to make sure I’m not missing new information, and I’m not… so by the time he’s moved on, I’ve skipped an entire page.

I don’t do this a lot when reading, but I do when I’m bored. Skipped through a good chunk of the beginning of The Stand doing this too, but you either pick up on the context clues later or the information eventually gets rehashed in a more concise way. If I miss a grand total of 4 pages out of 250, I’m still reading it

It’s only 11 years older than Dune and I didn’t feel this way about Herbert’s writing. I don’t think it’s just the age, this has never bothered me before. I think it’s purely stylistic, which maybe is a combination of age and culture; Tolkien was nearly 30 years older than Herbert, and grew up on a different continent.

Dude, don't hog the shrooms

I've never in my life heard of an alcohol free bar. I guess maybe fuckin Jamba Juice? if you don't want to drink, you don't have to order alcohol, but an alcohol free bar is a losing proposition

Malls? What is this, 1983? Even out here in the Midwest where you need indoor shopping with heating when it’s under 20° and AC when it’s over 100°, malls are dead. We had so many, now we’re down to 3, and only 1 of them ever has any people at it. The other two are half vacant units too

That bathtub scene gave me nightmares for a decade

There’s decentralized social media with Mastodon, and the decentralized aspect is it’s main hindrance to hitting critical mass in a time where everyone was eager to find a different social media platform

This is the big reason why I went back to apple products after switching to android and windows in 2014. Yes everything apple is more expensive and no you can’t do everything an android phone can, but I can do everything I need to, and their product support is so much longer.

On a tangent, Ted Chiang has an incredible short story stalled The Lifecycle of Software Objects that is excellent

The oner in The Bear

Ive see a lot of people talking about it, both on Reddit, and in articles in my news feeds… but what the talk is has been unanimously that it is terrible. This post is the first I’ve seen so far singing any sort of praise

I don’t care which one is best, I don’t want to fucking use them. Talking to a device feels like such a forced user interaction

Just a nerd :)

We’re in the very early beginning of one. But they will also be short and closer together. One could successfully argue that despite it faults, capitalism has led us to a point where we will forever be living in constant breakthroughs. Enough Rich people have seen richer people get their wealth from having early control over the next technological break through; Gates with computers, Bezos with the internet, Musk with EVs, hell, Andrew Carnegie with steel. As much as many of us complain, myself included, believe that science isn’t funded, it’s really a complaint that science isn’t federally funded, so the breakthroughs aren’t owned by the populace, but by someone who can gatekeep it and make a personal fortune off of it. But that being said, science is being funded to a degree we’ve never seen before, it’s just being done privately, gambling on the promise of future riches. This isn’t a new concept, look at Bell Labs, Marconi Labs… but there seems to be much more of it. As long as this continues, our research discoveries, and by extension our technological breakthroughs will happen constantly, and we will move to a period of constant breakthrough.

Another way of looking at this is most people alive today have only experienced this constant rapid breakthrough. Almost every decade since 1900 has looked vastly different from the previous in terms of tech and consumer products. We’ve only known constant growth, and if you look at just the 2000’s, it’s more like every 5 years looks vastly different from the previous 5. We’re changing so fast.

we’re still dealing with the understanding of quantum mechanics since the 1900s and that is going to keep us busy for a long long time. That led us to what people are calling the silicon age or the information age, both of which are good descriptors, but AI/ML. There is concern about a stall in recent physics discoveries because we haven’t made a catastrophic leap like we did in the early 1900’s, but those are the anomalies, progress typically takes steady incremental changes, which is what we’ve done since. Made hypotheses, proved them wrong or accepted the conjecture, and then adjusted our perspective on how the physical world works.

Sometimes, we have the knowledge and don’t have the capability. LEDs are a good example. First invented in 1907, took over a century to become a mainstream consumer product. Beam forming in wireless communication is another… we had the math do that over a century ago, but the didn’t have the need or the manufacturing capability to utilize it.

Ok, enough history as precedent. Aside from the Information Age, aside from the break through a in healthcare which are the most impressive and largest leaps, we’re also knocking on the door of a space revolution. Mining on the moon, minimums asteroids, those leads to space vessel manufacturing in orbit, that leads to colonies on other planets. Necessity being the mother of invention, that’s how new drives are discovered, how new air purification/oxygen scrubbers get invented… I mean… there’s an endless pool of potential breakthrough here. Necessity being the mother of invention, we’re going to see new desalination techniques to being using ocean water to provide potable water, we’re going to see techniques for removing CO2 and pollutants from our atmosphere (something that is totally possible with enough energy, we just don’t have enough energy cheaply enough to make it financially viable.) enter Fusion, which have had some serious progress in the last few years, but also nuclear power is a great source for both desalination and de-pollution because it’s a constant power draw. Nuclear is difficult for municipalities because demand wavers so much; that wouldn’t be the case with desal and de-pol.

I mean… I can keep going. Battery tech, John B Goodenough synthesized the first Lithium Ion battery in the 70s, and it took 30 years to hit mainstream and it has edged out lead acid as the leading battery. Goodenough, although 100 years old now, is still researching and is working on new battery tech, solid state glass electrolyte batteries, that would decrease manufacturing cost, rely on minerals that don’t have such toxic mining operations, and increase energy density, decrease charge times, and are not susceptible to the degradation and shorting that lithium ion is.

We’re going to have a massive shift in the way we eat. Our climate is going to become hostile to traditional farming techniques and lab grown or synthesized proteins and and vegetables are going to become even more commonplace.

But we’re back to the capitalists making money theme here with some of them; fresh water, clean air, adequate food supply… these are global problems that we’ve ignored for so long. We’re going to solve world hunger the moment rich people think they can make money off it. We’re going to solve the fresh water problem, the moment rich people think they can make money off it. We’re going to solve the climate crisis the moment rich people think they can make money off it. It is the saving grace of techno-optimism. It allows capitalists the be greedy and still do a good thing.

My favorite thing about the 60s and 70s is how much they thought they were living in the future.

Yes, but we are nowhere near it. More in that in my next paragraph. There will be other, most likely human created, road blocks to furthering technology, not a limit on tech itself. As mentioned, AI/ML is burgeoning, but we are also just getting off the ground in CRSIPR/gene editing, Quantum Computing, disease prevention with mRNA vaccines… I think the next world changing consumer device, on par with or replacing the smartphone, will be AR. But there’s likely 10-20 years of further breakthroughs before we get there.

Ultimately, it comes down to science and new understanding. In early 1900s when we finally had a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, it led to us using that knowledge to create things like nuclear weapons, but it also is the same knowledge that led to solar panels, and fiber optic data transmission, and wifi, and now the beam forming that goes into Starlink receivers. Our understanding of relativity allowed for GPS… the more we learn and understand the fundamental nature of our universe, the more we can “hijack” it to use to our advantage. So the day will come where our understanding of physics and the universe will be complete, or at least, all knowable attributes have been discovered. Sometime after that, people will have attempted to use that knowledge in every way possible, and then yes, technology will likely cease to advance in any appreciable form.

But advancement of technology always comes in bursts. The Stone Age is named so because of a breakthrough, and the time period was defined by humans using tools that could make with their knowledge of handling and manipulating stone. Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc… we see them as clear cutoffs through the lens of history, but it was most likely a period of a new discovery, followed by a period of rapid technological advancement, followed by a period of non discovery and living with the current tech. Right now, we’re in constant discovery mode, and that won’t stop until we’ve discovered everything, or some other force (war, climate change, mass economic collapse, pandemic…) puts a stop to it.

Having a positive experience does not negate the negative.

I have a family member who was a side character who became a sort of beloved side character and they brought him back multiple times. He was a teenager, about 14 at the time, and was getting into experimenting experimenting with drugs and alcohol and they not only allowed him to get drunk before shooting his scenes, they provided him the alcohol and encouraged it. Not that this was the make or break instance for him, but he went onto abuse alcohol until he ended up in the hospital one night after nearly dying. He’s been sober about a year now. But I always wonder what it would have been like if he wasn’t encouraged to get raging drunk before shooting.

Now there’s a question. At what distance from a nuclear bomb with the heat from the explosion perfectly cook a hot pocket