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Seveneves Records presents the new Berlin Eves Vol.6, a colorful and high quality collection of released tracks from Seveneves and Evitative Records. Live Mix by Ludwig Nylow Seveneves Records - It´s not the genre, it´s the music! Homepage: https://www.seveneves.de Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sevenevesrecords Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/sevenevesrecords Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sevenevesrecords Twitter: https://x.com/sevenevesrecord Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/label/seveneves-records/46067
The Drunk Guys try to send all the beer into space this week when the read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Their “hard” rain consists of: Save the Robots by Radiant Pig as well as Morticia and Crowning Achievement by Barrier Brewing Company. Join the Drunk Guys next Tuesday for The
Brendan talks about the books he read in Quarter 3 of 2024. Join us, won't you?Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007)Echopraxia (Firefall #2) by Peter Watts, Adam J. Rough (Narrator) (2014)Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Naomi Alderman et al (2022)Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Mary Robinette Kowal (Narrator), Will Damron (Narrator) (2015)Edge of the Wire by Scott Kenemore (2024)Dwellings (Dwellings #1-3) by Jay Stephens (2024)Death of a Maid (Hamish MacBeth #22) by M.C. Beaton (2007)This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019)JAWS by Peter Benchley (1974)What did you read in Q3 of 2024? Share your reading over on Boardgamegeek in Guild #3269.
Brendan talks about the books he read in Quarter 3 of 2024. Join us, won't you?Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007)Echopraxia (Firefall #2) by Peter Watts, Adam J. Rough (Narrator) (2014)Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Naomi Alderman et al (2022)Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Mary Robinette Kowal (Narrator), Will Damron (Narrator) (2015)Edge of the Wire by Scott Kenemore (2024)Dwellings (Dwellings #1-3) by Jay Stephens (2024)Death of a Maid (Hamish MacBeth #22) by M.C. Beaton (2007)This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019)JAWS by Peter Benchley (1974)What did you read in Q3 of 2024? Share your reading over on Boardgamegeek in Guild #3269.
Humanity needs a group project. From the cave paintings at Lascaux, and the pyramids of Giza, to the national parks of today, there is something beautiful about human beings working on something they will never see fully realized. I am by no means the first person to make this point, two millennia ago Cicero wrote about it, by quoting the poet Statius: “He plants his trees to serve a race to come,” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the dozens of Cathedrals I have visited during my numerous trips criss-crossing Europe.Given their intimidating size, one would be forgiven for being tempted to dismiss a cathedral as merely a tool intended to project church power. As a friend of mine is so fond of remarking on cathedrals, and their pipe organs in particular, “We got the biggest pile of rocks, and the loudest thing.” But to view these structures as only a church-led enterprise, one that common folk participated in as a last resort in the hope of getting a scrap of food, is to miss the evidence right before your eyes at many a cathedral.More than once I have stared up at a menagerie of fantastical gargoyles on the side of a gothic pile and seen something far more familiar. Doubtless you can bring an image of a traditional waterspout creature to mind, a stone dragon or lion with a gaping maw which vomits water during heavy rain. Now picture, instead of the pipe emerging from the jaws of a beast, it comes spouting fourth from the spread buttocks of a human figure. This image is rendered all the more amusing in its posture; clinging to the side of the cathedral in pose more reminiscent of a horny teenager's depiction of spiderman than anything one would associate with sanctity. Elsewhere I have seen Adam and Eve rendered with larger than usual breasts, genitals, and buttocks, a nursing baby Jesus with an all-too-knowing grin, and of course countless improbably shredded Christs. This last group often looks more like something from a recent Marvel film, than anything you'd plan on encountering at church.Please understand, I am not drawing your attention to all of this bawdy stonemasonry for mere jocularity, but rather to make a point. Cathedrals were such large enterprises, and took so long to complete that many details were either beneath the notice or beyond the care of their supervisors. I like to joke about this by remarking: “Remove the butt gargoyle? What do you want me to do? Climb up there and take out the flying buttress support?” But it is more than that, I believe some of these things were permitted in order to allow everyone to feel invested. These things were giant community art projects.Cathedrals often brought prosperity and tourism to the towns where they were constructed, especially if you could throw a relic or two in there to encourage pilgrimage. The downside was that they were usually being built in whatever time could be spared from the important tasks of day to day life. It often took decades, if not centuries, to build a cathedral. You could work your entire life on one of these structures and not live to see it have a roof. They were truly investments in the lives of hypothetical future people you would never see.It is my personal hope that the colonization of space could be our modern cathedral. I owe this comparison to none other than Ray Bradbury who noted that both enterprises are a “vast, ambitious, multigenerational undertaking, a shared vision to work toward together as a culture.” This sentiment obviously fills the pre-2006 installments of the popular Star Trek franchise, but has been seen more in more recent works. Take for instance Neal Stephenson's 2015 doorstop of a tome SevenEves. This book depicts millions of people working to launch a precious few into space, before a disastrous event wipes out all life on earth.But these are pie-in-the-literal-sky science fiction musings! Perhaps we should be focusing on more earthly problems? Sure you could make that argument. But I find it interesting to look at what an intelligent young person could hope for if they studied hard in the fifties and sixties. They could work at NASA, they could be involved with sending people to the moon! In the middle of the last century intelligent people were drawn to the promise of space travel, and they congregated in the United States to help realize that dream. Out of the ashes of the Second World War, a new space age would dawn. For a moment it seemed that it would, but now? If you work hard in science and math you could one day go work for Amazon, Google, or Tesla; enriching a billionaire! Wow! What Fun! The only reason those giant technology companies exist is because previous generations were sold the promise of outer space, only to find themselves chained to desks solving earthly supply chain and video streaming problems. It's no wonder the world seems to be descending into chaos, we're making our finest minds do drudge work.We seem to have lost sight of the potential we possess, we have stopped looking up. We have once again become obsessed with our problems down here on our pale blue dot. I am sympathetic to those who insist that earthly poverty is a huge issue, that climate change threatens us all, that there is no “Planet B.” But I think if we only look down we risk falling into petty in-fighting and sectarian conflict. We need to strive for the stars for the exact same reason people living in tiny mud huts poured so much of themselves into their cathedrals. Because they make us look upward at something greater than we could ever hope to achieve alone. I find that when I'm looking up, it is easy to overlook my differences with the person next to me. To stand side-by-side and wonder. So, let's go build a cathedral.
Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of novels including Termination Shock, Seveneves, Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash. His works blend science fiction, historical fiction, and cyberpunk, exploring mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, and scientific history. Born in Fort Meade to a family of scientists, he holds a degree in geography and physics from Boston University. As noted by The Atlantic, his prescient works anticipated the metaverse, cryptocurrency, and AI revolution. His latest novel is Polostan, the first installment in his Bomb Light cycle. Shermer and Stephenson discuss: professional and speculative fiction writing, the interplay of genetics and fate, historical contingency (particularly regarding Hitler and nuclear weapons), atomic bomb development and ethics, game theory in nuclear deterrence, cryptocurrency, AI advancement and mind uploading, human evolution, Mars colonization politics, and philosophical concepts like Peirce's Fallibilism and Platonic realism.
Welcome to the place where we get to let our geek flags fly and talk about all things geek. Basically a fuzzy guide to life, the universe, and everything but mostly geek stuff. This level of the podcast includes: Terminator Zero trailer - Aug 29 Time Bandits trailer - July 24 Flythrough animation of Universal's Dark Universe land Dune Prophecy trailer - November Kevin Smith's 4:30 Movie trailer - Sept 13 Spellbound trailer - on Netflix Nov 22 The Rings of Power S2 trailer - Aug 29 Details about Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Ministry of Magic The Orville S4 to begin production early 2025 Lando and Hondo additional story content for Star Wars: Outlaws Anne Rice Immortal Universe series about Talamasca - 2025 Images from Rancor Pits & Krayt Dragons Salem's Lot movie heading to Max in October Kaos show on Netflix - Aug 29 Music by John Williams documentary - Nov 1 on Disney+ RIP Bob Newhart Deadpool and Wolverine earns all the money Leia metal bikini sells at auction for 175K Invincible S4 announced Keanu Reeves & Alex Winter to reunite on Broadway Hello Kitty Cafe and Store coming to Universal Studios CityWalk Bruce Campbell doing voice for Ash in animated adaptation of Evil Dead NASA may use SpaceX Dragon to retrieve ISS astronauts Los Angeles Comic-Con line-up Ghostbusters animated series at Netflix Georgia legislature discussing how AI works in films Mattel discussing animated Barbie with Illumination Despicable Me director hopes they never make live-action Minions The Acolyte is not getting a second season Neal Stephenson's Seveneves is getting a TV adaptation from Legendary Backyard Sports returning to games and also film, tv, merch, and more The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim trailer - Dec 13 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 trailer - Dec 20 Stormtrooper Dad Jokes Star Wars: Bounty Hunter remastered on all modern consoles Aug 1 Star Wars: Eclipse has no official release date Speculation about Hondo Ohnaka in Skeleton Crew Temeura Morrission seems to confirm he won't be in the Mando movie Carl Weathers is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame The Mandalorian is the most watched original series on Disney+ Amandla Stenberg re: cancellation of The Acolyte Pedro Pascal may film scenes for The Mandalorian and Grogu Sigourney Weaver joins cast of Mando & Grogu Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer - 6 Sept Halo TV series cancelled New Goofy movie in the works Kumail Nanjiani might play Booster Gold in the new DCU! Marvel Animation taps Matthew Chauncey to write Season 3 of X-Men '97 Xbox controller featuring Deadpool's booty Feige confirms another Marvel Special Presentation Deadpool & Wolverine at DCA John Watts exited Spidey 4… new draft to be delivered soon Greta Gerwig is set to write and direct at least two Narnia movies for Netflix Boom Studios acquired by Penguin Randomhouse Joker: Folie à Deux trailer - 4 Oct Wicked trailer - Nov 22 Alien Romulus trailer - in theaters now Hellboy: The Crooked Man trailer - Sept 27 Kevin Feige talking to Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman about returning for more Marvel dropped an untitled film that had been scheduled for July 24, 2026 Squid Game 2 on Dec 26 - final season to air in 2025 King Spawn writers revealed Mayfair Witches cast tease S2 will blow people's minds House Of The Dragon will continue with two more seasons Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is streaming on Max Reboot of Battlestar Galactica at Peacock no longer moving forward James Spader returning to voice Ultron in Vision series Congrats on completing Level 411 of the podcast! Think positive, test negative, stay safe, wash your hands, wear a mask, and good luck out there. Twitter / Instagram (@wookieeriot). Email: laughitupfuzzballpodcast@gmail.com. Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1879505335626093). Merch: teepublic.com/user/laugh-it-up-fuzzball. Subscribe & rate wherever you listen. May the force be with us all, thanks for stopping by, you stay classy, be excellent to each other and party on dudes! TTFN… Wookiee out! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laugh-it-up-fuzzball/support
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Surviving Seveneves, published by Yair Halberstadt on June 19, 2024 on LessWrong. Contains spoilers for the first couple of chapters of Seveneves Highly speculative on my part, I know very little about most of these topics In Seveneves Neal Stephenson does the classic sci-fi trick of assuming that exactly one thing in the universe is different, and seeing where that takes us. In his case that one thing is the moon has somehow exploded. And where that takes us is the complete destruction of the earth. As the initially huge chunks of moon rock hit into each other they break into smaller and smaller pieces, and take up more and more space. Eventually this process increases exponentially, the loosely held collection of rocks that was the moon disperses into a planetary ring, and earth is bombarded by lunar leavings for 5000 years: There will be so many [meteors] that they will merge into a dome of fire that will set aflame anything that can see it. The entire surface of the Earth is going to be sterilized. Glaciers will boil. The only way to survive is to get away from the atmosphere. Go underground, or go into space. They have only two years to prepare. Which option should they take? The choice seems obvious! But they respond with the absolutely batshit insane solution. They go into space. And not to mars, or some other friendly location. Low Earth Orbit.. This is a terrible choice for all sorts of reasons: 1. They are even more at risk of meteor collision there, since all meteors that hit earth pass through LEO, but at least the atmosphere protects earth from the small ones. 2. There's simply no way to get people up there at scale. No matter how you slice it, at most an insignificant fraction of people can get to LEO. We simply don't have the capacity to send rockets at scale, and two years is not enough time to develop and scale the technology enough to make a dent in the 7 billion people on earth. 3. To prepare as well as possible in two years, the earth economy will have to keep running and sending stuff up to space. But if people know they are going to die, and don't have any real chance of being one of the lucky survivors, why would they bother? I would expect the economy to collapse fairly rapidly, followed by looting, and the collapse of government structures. 4. There's a thousand things that can kill you in space, and just staying alive requires lots of advanced technology. If society isn't able to keep a highly technologically advanced society going in space, everyone will die. 5. Keeping a technologically advanced society going with a small number of people is essentially impossible. 6. Earth technology and processes often don't work in space since they rely on gravity. New technological processes will need to be developed just for space, but with only a tiny number of people able to work on them and extremely limited resources. 7. There are no new resources in LEO. There'll have to be 100% perfect recycling of the resources sent up from earth. But propellant has to be expelled every time they manoeuvre to avoid meteors, so this is impossible. Stephenson works with these constraints, and comes up with what are IMO wildly optimistic assumptions about how society could function. Whatever. But the obvious solution, is to just go underground, which doesn't suffer from any of these problems: 1. The ground + atmosphere protects them from all but the largest of meteors. 2. Digging is well understood technology, and we can do it at scale. There's no reason why we wouldn't be able to create enough space underground for hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people in two years if everyone's lives depended on it. 3. Since people know they can survive, there are strong incentives to keep working, especially if money will be needed to buy one of the spaces in the un...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Surviving Seveneves, published by Yair Halberstadt on June 19, 2024 on LessWrong. Contains spoilers for the first couple of chapters of Seveneves Highly speculative on my part, I know very little about most of these topics In Seveneves Neal Stephenson does the classic sci-fi trick of assuming that exactly one thing in the universe is different, and seeing where that takes us. In his case that one thing is the moon has somehow exploded. And where that takes us is the complete destruction of the earth. As the initially huge chunks of moon rock hit into each other they break into smaller and smaller pieces, and take up more and more space. Eventually this process increases exponentially, the loosely held collection of rocks that was the moon disperses into a planetary ring, and earth is bombarded by lunar leavings for 5000 years: There will be so many [meteors] that they will merge into a dome of fire that will set aflame anything that can see it. The entire surface of the Earth is going to be sterilized. Glaciers will boil. The only way to survive is to get away from the atmosphere. Go underground, or go into space. They have only two years to prepare. Which option should they take? The choice seems obvious! But they respond with the absolutely batshit insane solution. They go into space. And not to mars, or some other friendly location. Low Earth Orbit.. This is a terrible choice for all sorts of reasons: 1. They are even more at risk of meteor collision there, since all meteors that hit earth pass through LEO, but at least the atmosphere protects earth from the small ones. 2. There's simply no way to get people up there at scale. No matter how you slice it, at most an insignificant fraction of people can get to LEO. We simply don't have the capacity to send rockets at scale, and two years is not enough time to develop and scale the technology enough to make a dent in the 7 billion people on earth. 3. To prepare as well as possible in two years, the earth economy will have to keep running and sending stuff up to space. But if people know they are going to die, and don't have any real chance of being one of the lucky survivors, why would they bother? I would expect the economy to collapse fairly rapidly, followed by looting, and the collapse of government structures. 4. There's a thousand things that can kill you in space, and just staying alive requires lots of advanced technology. If society isn't able to keep a highly technologically advanced society going in space, everyone will die. 5. Keeping a technologically advanced society going with a small number of people is essentially impossible. 6. Earth technology and processes often don't work in space since they rely on gravity. New technological processes will need to be developed just for space, but with only a tiny number of people able to work on them and extremely limited resources. 7. There are no new resources in LEO. There'll have to be 100% perfect recycling of the resources sent up from earth. But propellant has to be expelled every time they manoeuvre to avoid meteors, so this is impossible. Stephenson works with these constraints, and comes up with what are IMO wildly optimistic assumptions about how society could function. Whatever. But the obvious solution, is to just go underground, which doesn't suffer from any of these problems: 1. The ground + atmosphere protects them from all but the largest of meteors. 2. Digging is well understood technology, and we can do it at scale. There's no reason why we wouldn't be able to create enough space underground for hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people in two years if everyone's lives depended on it. 3. Since people know they can survive, there are strong incentives to keep working, especially if money will be needed to buy one of the spaces in the un...
Series Four This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features the renowned futurist Tom Lombardo, Director at the Center for Future Consciousness, Exec Board Member of the World Futures Studies Federation, and Editor at the Journal of Futures Studies. He returns to the series to give an overview of his choices of the top futures books in science fiction (author/topic clustered) which are roughly chronologically sequenced as follows: Late Nineteenth Century Classics (Future of Human Society): Albert Robida: The Twentieth Century, Jules Verne: Paris in the Twentieth Century, & John Jacob Astor: A Journey in Other Worlds...Systematic/Philosophical Futures - SF/FS Synthesis: H.G. Wells: The Time Machine, The Sleeper Awakes, Men Like Gods, & The Shape of Things to Come...Cosmic Futures: Olaf Stapledon: Last and First Men & Star Maker... Early Twentieth Century Classics: Aldous Huxley: Brave New World, Yevgeny Zamyatin: We, Laurence Manning: The Man Who Awoke, & William Hope Hodgson The Night Land...Heinlein & Asimov Futures: Beyond this Horizon, Waldo, & The Past through Tomorrow Series & The Foundation Series...Robot Futures: Isaac Asimov: The Caves of Steel and Jack Williamson The Humanoids...Alien Futures: Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time, Abraham Merritt The Metal Monster, Sheri Tepper Grass, China Miéville Embassytown & Jeff Vandermeer Annihilation...Transcendent Poignant Futures: Clifford Simak: City & Walter Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz...New Wave Futures: John Brunner (Future of Everything): Stand on Zanzibar & Robert Silverberg (Psychedelic Future) Son of Man...Cyberpunk Futures: Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix & Rudy Rucker The Ware Tetralogy...Human Futures: Greg Bear: Queen of Angels & Darwin's Radio, Stapledon's Odd John, & Alfred Bester The Demolished Man... Outer Space Futures: Doc Smith: The Skylark and Chronicles of the Lensmen Series, Larry Niven: Ringworld, Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep, Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space , S. A. Corey Leviathan Wakes & Iain Banks Matter...Future of Everything: Dan Simmons: The Hyperion Cantos (Others See Below)...Cosmic/Scientific Futures: Stephen Baxter: Vacuum Diagrams (The Xeelee Saga) & The Time Ships...Philosophical/Scientific/Technological High Powered Futures: Greg Egan: Permutation City, Diaspora, & Schild's Ladder...Cultural Futures/Future of Everything: Ian McDonald: River of Gods, Brasyl, and The Dervish House & Cixin Liu The Three-Body Problem Trilogy...Singularity Hi-Tech Future: Charles Stross: Accelerando & Ernest Cline Ready Player One...David Brin Futures: Earth, The Uplift War, and Existence... Ecological/Comprehensive/Utopian Constructive Future: Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars Trilogy/2312 & The Ministry of the Future...Neal Stephenson Futures: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Seveneves...So…we hope you enjoy the podcast!
Bill Carr is the co-author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. With a background at Amazon of over 15 years, Bill played a pivotal role in shaping the company's global digital music and video ventures, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive in Residence with Maveron, an early-stage, consumer-only venture capital firm. He later served as the chief operating officer of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S. Today he's the co-founder of Working Backwards LLC, where he helps companies implement Amazon's time-tested management strategies. In this episode, we discuss:• What exactly “working backwards” is, and how you do it• Why having “single-threaded leaders” is so effective• Inside Amazon's intense product review process• How to actually follow the “disagree and commit” principle• The thinking behind the principle “Leaders are right, a lot”• Input vs. output metrics• Fostering a culture of risk-taking and innovation• The role and responsibilities of a “bar raiser” in your hiring, and how it significantly improves the success rate of new hires—Brought to you by AssemblyAI—Production-ready AI models to transcribe and understand speech | Coda—Meet the evolution of docs | Wix Studio—The web creation platform built for agencies—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/unpacking-amazons-unique-ways-of-working-bill-carr-author-of-working-backwards/—Where to find Bill Carr:• X: https://twitter.com/BillCarr89• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-carr/• Website: https://www.workingbackwards.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Bill's background(04:26) Amazon's workplace evolution(09:54) Amazon's “fitness function”(11:44) Single-threaded leadership(18:07) Implementing a program orientation with single-threaded leadership(20:16) The GM model vs. single-threaded leadership(21:31) Functional countermeasures needed for single-threaded leadership(25:22) Embracing the “disagree and commit” principle(30:22) Understanding disagreements(32:41) Deciphering Amazon's “Leaders are right, a lot” principle(35:25) An explanation of the working backwards framework(41:16) PR FAQ process: Amazon's innovation engine(44:47) Deconstructing the PR FAQ structure(43:49) The concentric circle model for sharing PR FAQs(44:55) The customer problem-solution statement(47:52) Create a product funnel, not a product tunnel(51:19) How Amazon promotes action vs. talk(54:35) Amazon's flywheel and input metrics(1:00:51) Signs you've got a good input metric(1:04:23) How mistakes can still be made with working backwards(1:06:54) Why disagreements aren't necessarily signs products will fail(1:08:02) Examples of failed Amazon projects(1:09:55) Cultivating risk-taking and accepting failure(1:13:57) Amazon's “bar-raiser” practice for hiring(1:18:21) Selecting Amazon's bar raisers(1:20:41) Advice on implementing practices from Working Backwards(1:23:10) Bill's work as an advisor(1:26:05) Lightning round—Referenced:• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595• Jeff Bezos on X: https://twitter.com/jeffbezos• D.E. Shaw: https://www.deshaw.com/• Eric Ries's website: https://theleanstartup.com/• GM business model: https://fourweekmba.com/general-motors-business-model/• Rick Dalzell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richarddalzell/• The Effective Decision by Peter F. Drucker: https://hbr.org/1967/01/the-effective-decision• Template: Working Backwards PR FAQ: https://www.workingbackwards.com/resources/working-backwards-pr-faq• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996• The Amazon flywheel: https://feedvisor.com/resources/amazon-trends/amazon-flywheel-explained/• Sixsigma: https://www.6sigma.us/• Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries: https://www.amazon.com/Loonshots-Nurture-Diseases-Transform-Industries/dp/1250185963• Andy Jassy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-jassy-8b1615/• Implementing Amazon's Bar Raiser Process in Hiring: A Quick Guide: https://www.barraiser.com/blogs/implementing-amazons-bar-raiser-process-in-hiring• Microspeak: The As-Appropriate (AA) interviewer: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20231017-00/?p=108897• The Practice of Management: https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Management-Peter-F-Drucker/dp/0060878975• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done: https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Executive-Definitive-Harperbusiness-Essentials/dp/0060833459• Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537• Seveneves: https://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062334514• A Gentleman in Moscow: https://www.amazon.com/A-Gentleman-in-Moscow/dp/0143110438• Dune on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Dune-Timoth%C3%A9e-Chalamet/dp/B09LJXY4PH• A Spy Among Friends: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15565872/• Zipp 303 Firecrest tubeless disc brake: https://www.sram.com/en/zipp/models/wh-303-ftld-a1• The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization: https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385517254—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Im Rahmen der “Lob und Verriss” Sommerpause die Rezension eines Buches aus dem Jahr 2015. Ein wirklicher Urlaubsschmöker mit Tiefgang, und natürlich wusste Neal Stephenson mal wieder viel mehr über unsere Zukunft als alle anderen.Holy f*****g s**t, Neal. Neal, Neal, Neal Neal, Neal.. Was machst Du hier mit uns?Neal Stephenson hat einen Roman geschrieben, der unendlich deprimierend ist. Und genauso grenzenlos empfehlbar. Es ist seit langem ein Roman, bei dem man 200 Seiten im Buch nicht das Ende ahnt. Es kommt alles ganz anders. Ganz anders. Deshalb hier mit einem Katzenbild von der Rezension getrennt die Bitte an alle, die Starke Nerven und ein positives Gemüt haben, sofort abzuschalten und sich Neal Stephensons unaussprechlich betitelten Roman “Seveneves”, auf Deutsch “Amalthea” zu holen und wiederzukommen, nachdem die letzte Seite gelesen ist. Ich verspreche beim heiligen Douglas Adams, dass niemand enttäuscht sein wird. Das Buch ist noch nicht übersetzt, aber der Schwierigkeitsgrad is mässig und man vermeidet bei sofortigem Lesen den unvermeidlichen Spoiler, den ein gedankenloser Verleger durch den Deutschen Titel verbrechen wird (was sich überraschend nicht bewahrheitet hat, Respekt!). Neal Stephenson heißt der Autor, “Seveneves” das Buch. und … an alle Fragilen, Daheimgebliebenen, zur Depression neigenden Leser kann ich ohne Angst vorm Spoiler von einem ganz unglaublichen Buch berichten. Ort der Handlung: Die Erde. Zeit der Handlung: Jetzt. Szene: Nacht. Ein Arbeiter genießt seinen Feierabend, schaut in den Sternenhimmel von Alaska. Szene: Nacht. Rio. Menschen amüsieren sich.Szene: Nacht. Eine Party in LA. Kamerafahrt: Blick zum Mond. Action. In einer Sommernacht Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts verschwindet der Mond. Genauer, ein “Agent”, im Sinne von “eine nicht erklärbare Ursache”, “irgendeine Kraft” spaltet den Mond in 7 Teile. 300 Millionen Tweets während eines Super Bowls sind ein Scheißdreck. Jeder kann es sehen und jeder ist starr vor Schreck und Faszination. Wo gerade eben noch ein Mond war, sind jetzt, etwas größer in der Fläche, sieben verschieden große Mondteile, nicht weit voneinander entfernt, umgeben von einer Halo Mondstaub. Faszinierend. Während der Bürger noch am tweeten ist, der Politiker fragt, wer dran Schuld hat, machen sich Wissenschaftler Gedanken um die Auswirkungen. Bleiben die Gezeiten aus? Die Erde stehen? Keine Sorge, Stephenson erklärt uns kurz das Ding mit Newton, Gravitation. Der Mond ist nur gespalten, nicht verschwunden, solange die Masse halbwegs an einem Platz bleibt, sind die Gravitationskräfte, die auf die Erde und damit die Meere einwirken, die gleichen. Puh. Faszinierend. Problem: Der Mensch. Er hört nur, was er hören will. Das Entscheidende am soeben gehörten Satz war nicht, dass die Gravitationskräfte, die auf die Erde wirken, dieselben bleiben werden. Das Entscheidende war das einschränkende Konditional: Solange die Masse des Mondes halbwegs an ihrem Platz bleibt. Nunja, wo soll der Mond hin, die Gravitationskräfte der Erde wirken auch auf den Mond zurück. Dass sich da sublim etwas verändert über einen kosmischen Zeitraum, sicher, aber kurzfristig sollten die Veränderungen klein sein, schreiben wir den Gezeitenplan halt um. Ein paar Nächte später beobachtet Astrophysiker Dr. Harris, TV-Celebrity und Physikerklärer irgendwo zwischen Bill Nye und Neil DeGrass Tyson dass aus den sieben um die Erde und sich selbst kreisenden Mondteilen durch Zusammenprall zweier derer acht geworden sind. Kurze Zeit später 10, kurze Zeit später 14… Faszinierend.Problem: Entropie. Dr. Harris erklärt: Das Universum neigt zum Chaos, zum auseinanderdriften. Vom Organisierten zum Unorganisierten. Der Mond - gespalten von bis zum Ende des Romans unbekannter Kraft - wird sich weiter teilen, immer kleiner, immer kleiner. Vorbild: Saturn. Ein Mondring um die Erde. Faszinierend.Problem: Gravitation. Kein Mond bedeutet keine Gezeiten. Zumindest nicht das Bekannte, das durch das Eiern des Mondes um die Erde hervorgerufene Gezerre an zähen Wassermassen im Zwölfstundentakt. Klingt beunruhigend und ist völlig egal. Weil...Problem: Gravitation. Vor 4,5 Mrd Jahren haben sich Erde und Mond gefunden oder voneinander gespalten, je nach Theorie, so dass beide in einem Equilibrium sind. Die gegenseitig aufeinander wirkenden Kräfte sind im Gleichgewicht, man tanzt umeinander. Das geht mit sieben Teilen eine Weile gut, mit acht auch noch, mit zehn? Mit vierzehn Teilen? Eines leichter als das andere? Beunruhigend.Frage: Was passiert, wenn man es mit 100, 1000, einer Millionen Mondteilen zu tun hat?Antwort: Nichts, solange diese beieinander bleiben. Masse in halbwegs der gleichen räumlichen Ausdehnung ist im Prinzip die gleiche Masse. Problem: Beim sich gegenseitigen Splitten fallen Brocken aus dem Mond. Sie gelangen aus dem Gleichgewicht. Werden von der Erde angezogen und verglühen als Kometen. Je mehr sich der Mond splittet, desto öfter passiert das. Desto leichter wird der Mondstreusel. Desto eher fliegen Tele aus dem Verbund. Zur Erde. Desto näher rückt der Mond zur Erde. Desto ungleichgewichtiger werden die Gravitationskräfte. Desto einfacher werden Teile aus dem Mond gerissen. Desto öfter. Problem: Exponentialität. Die gerade Linie ist in der Natur unbekannt. Nichts steigert sich linear. Nicht die Anzahl von Blättern an einem Baum. Nicht die Anzahl von Menschen auf der Erde. Nicht die Anzahl von Atomspaltungen in einer Atomnombe. Nicht der Zerfallsprozess des Mondes. Insert: Exponentialität kann man berechnen. Danke Herr Euler (1707 bis 1783). Eulers Number: e=2,71828. Viel wichtiger als Pi.Lösung? Der Gleichung? Kein Problem mit Euler: Masse der Erde. Masse des Mondes. Anzahl von Teilungen pro Zeiteinheit. Eulers Number. Endlösung.Und das ist kein schnippig dahin gesagtes Wort. Höhö. Endlösung, so wie bei den Nazis. Es ist ein Gefühl, das das Buch durchzieht. Es ist alles so grausam. Gruselig, wenn das nicht ein Wort für Kinderbücher wäre. Traurig. Zutiefst. Die Menschheit hat sehr genau noch 2 Jahre. That's it. Alles, was sie der Erde, sich selbst abgerungen hat. noch 720 Tage +/-. Dann kippt die Linie in die Kurve. Die Entropie gewinnt. Meteoriten werden größer, mehr. “Hard Rain” wird der Effekt getauft. Es wird der Tag kommen, sehr genau berechenbar, in 2 Jahren, da wird es nicht einen Einschlag pro Woche geben. Nicht einen pro Tag. Nicht einen pro Stunde irgendwo auf der großen weiten Welt, da wird der ganze f*****g Mond in einem Rutsch auf die Erde fallen. Ok, nicht in einem Rutsch. Es wird ein paar hundert Jahre Steine regnen. Hard Rain. Dann wird es ein paar tausend Jahre Vulkane, kochende Meere, dünne Luft geben. Dann vielleicht wieder Bakterien. Irgendwann. Toll ausgedacht, Neal. Ganz toll. Faszinierend.Zwischendurch beim Lesen wird man einfach wütend. What the f**k. Man recherchiert ein bisschen und begreift, dass so astronomische Katastrophen nicht unüblich sind, im kosmischen Maßstab. Statistisch möglich. Diese Sinnlosigkeit. Es ist einfach nur frustrierend.Neal Stephenson also gibt der Menschheit noch 2 Jahre. Nach kurzer Schockstarre beginnt sich die Welt zu vereinen, in der Anstrengung wenigstens die “Heritage” der Menschheit zu bewahren. Etwas zu Hinterlassen. Alle Anstrengungen werden auf die Errichtung einer “Ark Cloud” gerichtet. Um die Raumstation ISS sollen Pods für jeweils 5-6 menschen gescharrt werden. Lose verbunden wie ein Fischschwarm, um Manövrierfähig zu bleiben. Jedes Land soll per Los proportional zur Weltbevölkerung junge, vermehrungstüchtige Menschen schicken, sich über dem Sturm zu halten, zu vermehren, wenn es sein muss ein paar tausend Jahre lang, bis die Erde sich abkühlt von Mondes Dauerfeuer. Keine Wissenschaftler, berühmte Künstler, oder, Gott behüte, Staatsmänner. Hier geht es um Biologie. Jung müssen sie sein, fruchtbar. Der Plan klingt so verzweifelt und aussichtslos wie er ist. Er ist Hoffnung und Therapie und gibt der “Menschheit” etwas zu tun bis zum Hard Rain. Aber der Gedanke, dass 1000 oder 2000 Menschen über 1000, 4000 oder nur 500 Jahre in ein paar hundert Raumkapseln um die Erde segeln. What are the odds? Und ist das dann noch eine “Menschheit”? Was ein Wald ist, was ein Fluss, was ein Berg, eine Bar, ein Fussballspiel ist Stoff von Erzählungen, dann Videos, dann unverständlichen Bildreihen. Was für eine Scheisse.Aber der Mensch gibt nicht auf, Selbsterhaltungstrieb over alles. Also baut man und stößt auf Schwierigkeiten und überwindet sie. Die Monate vergehen, der Mond wird größer, milchiger, Meteoriten häufiger, Einschläge kommen näher. Es sind nur noch Wochen, man verabschiedet sich von den zu Hause bleibenden, wenn man auf der ISS ist, von den glücklichen, die einen Platz dort gefunden haben, wenn man sein Leben auf der Erde runterzählt. Ein paar verzweifelte graben sich ein in tiefen Steinbrüchen. Atom-U-Boote tauchen in tiefe Meeresschichten. Ein Asteroid. Seit Millionen Jahren im Sonnensystem unterwegs wird ausgemacht. In sechs Stunden kreuzt der die Bahn der Mondwolke. Der Auslöser. Der Schmetterling in China, der den Sack Reis auf die Erde stürzen lässt. Panisch werden in höchster Eile die letzten Pods in die Luft geschickt, zur “Izzy” wie die neue Mutter der Menschheit liebevoll genannt wird. Zur Ark Cloud, ihren Babies. Die Einschläge beginnen um den Äquator herum, astronomische Gründe, die keinen mehr interessieren. In den Kathedralen, Konzerthäusern, Stadien der Welt versammeln sich Orchester. Ein letztes Mal Musik, Volkslieder, Hymnen, Mozart, Bach. Radiostationen übertragen aus London, Paris, Sao Paulo, New York. Man spielt durch, trotz Einschlägen entfernt und immer näher kommend. Man spielt für sich und für die Ark Cloud. Dort hört man das Ende der Zivilisation per Mittelwelle. Paris fällt aus. Sao Paulo. London, trotz Einschlägen spielt weiter. Nördliche Hemisphäre, weiter weg vom Äquator. Ein Tsunami löscht die East Coast aus. Die Erde trägt eine Schärpe aus Feuer. London verstummt. Die Erde schweigt.Neal Stephenson hat uns 400 Seiten lang von einer Sommernacht auf der Erde zu derem Ende als Heimstatt der Menschheit geführt. 2000 Arkies, ein paar tausend Reagenzgläser Sperma, Wasser für ein paar Jahre, nicht wirklich funktionierende Nahrungsproduktion sind übrig geblieben vom Jagen und Sammeln, vom Glauben, vom Aufklären, vom Ausbeuten, vom Bekriegen, vom Spielen mit Atombomben. Wie ausgesetzte Kinder hängt der klägliche Rest der Zivilisation aneinander und bibbert. In aller Ausführlichkeit hat uns Neal Stephenson an diesen Tiefpunkt, den tiefsten den man sich in der Belletristik vorstellen kann, geführt. Tiefer geht es nicht. Denkt man, als das letzte von der Erde gestartete Pod anlegt, sich die Schleuse öffnet und die Präsidentin der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika an Bord kommt. Die nunmehr einzige Politikerin in der Ark Cloud. What could possibly go wrong?Es dauert keine Stunden, da fängt Julia Bliss Flaherty, als POTUS noch sehr schön assoziativ JBF genannt, an "Politik" zu machen und sich eine Machtbasis zu suchen. Die Cloud Ark technisch bedingt geteilt in die recht groß gewordene Mannschaft der ISS, meist Techniker, Genforscher, Psychologen, Piloten und in die "Arkies", das fruchtbare Jungvolk, dass in separaten Raumkapseln und nur durch ein kleines Internet miteinander verbunden hinter der ISS her fliegt. Julia, die nicht wirklich etwas dagegen hat, wenn man sie Madam President nennt, hat den für jeden Karrierepolitiker notwendigen Spalt in der Gesellschaft gefunden.Die Cloud Ark, ISS und die Archies, mögen voneinander getrennt leben, aber sie fliegen gemeinsam und nur gemeinsam können sie überleben. Nach all dem S**t, der die letzten 2000 Menschen in diese verdammte Situation gebracht hat, alle Wunden noch offen vom nacheinander Verstummen der Orchester der Welt, sieht der Leser, was kommen muss: ein egomaner Politiker hat nichts besseres zu tun, als sich auf Kosten der Überlebenschancen des letzten verschissenen Restes der Menschheit zu profilieren. Blutdruck. E-Book weglegen. Unvorstellbar. Was für eine Scheiße.Aber Neal Stephenson ist noch nicht fertig mit uns.In den ersten 500 Seiten von “Seveneves” hat er uns eine Kerntruppe von Charakteren nahe gebracht. Fast alle Besatzungsmitglieder der ISS. Da ist Dr. Harris, der Erklärbär aus dem Fernsehen, der immer mehr sieht, dass die Cloud Ark, verkauft an Todgeweihte auf der Erde, eine Sache ist, die nicht funktionieren kann. Da sind Dinah und Ivy, respektive Robotertechnikerin und ehemalige Kommandantin der ISS, beste Freundinnen, die sich auch mal einen Tequila hinter die Binde kippen und sich ewig aufeinander verlassen können, Moira, die Gentechnikerin, die alles daran setzt den letzten Rest der Menschheit, zusammenklebend in Reagenzröhren, irgendwie zu retten, Tekla, eine russische Pilotin, aufrichtig und kompromisslos, wenn es um die Sicherheit der Cloud Ark geht. Luisa, die Psychologin aus New York, die vielleicht ohne die Erde auskommt, aber nicht ohne ein Strassencafe, eine Dive Bar, einen Tacostand und sich darum kümmert, dass, so Scheiße alles ist, es noch Reste an normalem Leben gibt. Dutzende Typen, mit denen der Leser die letzten zwei Jahre der Erde verbracht hat, an Bord der ISS und der entstehenden Cloud Ark, auf einem "Ausflug" um einen Wasserhaltigen Kometen von weit außerhalb der Umlaufbahn des ehemaligen Mondes einzufangen, denn ohne Wasser braucht man das Projekt Cloud Ark gar nicht angehen. Charaktere, die zu Menschen wurden, dank Stephenson, die sich den Arsch aufgerissen haben gegen alle odds, gegen alle Hoffnungslosigkeit, die gewachsen sind, die auf einmal Dinge können, die ihnen und sich selber niemand zugetraut hat, die jedes Problem angehen, alles unter dem Gesichtspunkt diese f*****g allerletzte Chance zu erhalten, diesen Hauch einer Chance, dass das hier nicht die letzten 1500 Menschen sind, die es je gab und dann kommt so eine B***h von abgefuckter Politikerin, Madam President Julia Bliss Flaherty an Board, mit einer Pistole, Feuerwaffe, mit Kugeln und so. Im Weltraum. Diese grenzenlose Dummheit!Bis diese zum Einsatz kommt, vergehen ein paar Monate. Monate, in denen sie zusammen mit ihrer Bewunderin "Camila" und einem fetten Schwein von Blogger die halbe Cloud Ark Besatzung aufwiegelt, sich von der ISS zu trennen. Camila ist ein Schulmädchen aus Pakistan, ein Medienstar und Beleg dafür, wie gut das "Auslosen" von Arkies in den jeweiligen Ländern funktioniert hat. Camila hat ein Vorbild in der realen Welt: Malala Yousafzai - das Pakistanische Schulmädchen, dass bei einem Talibanüberfall in den Kopf geschossen wurde und überlebt hat und seitdem ihre Bekanntheit dazu nutzt, Vorträge über die Situation von Frauen in der islamischen Welt zu halten, ihre Unkritisierbarkeit jedoch dazu missbraucht, dies in einem derart pathetischen, unhörbaren Duktus zu tun, dass man als TV-Zuschauer nur still in's Kopfkissen schreien kann. Neal Stephenson rächt sich damit, sie zu einem der Präsidentin der USA verfallenen, manipulierten Dummchen zu machen. Ich bin Fan.Zumal sich Camila rehabilitieren kann. Nachdem sich der aufgewiegelte Teil der Cloud Ark selbst und -mörderisch vom Rest des Restes der Menschheit gelöst hat, kommt es zu einem Handgemenge (alles in Zero G) und JBF, Madam President schießt auf Tekla und wird nur durch die mittlerweile augengeöffnete Camilla daran gehindert, diese zu erschießen. Aber eine Pistole im Raumschiff, zusammen mit einem Meteoreinschlag in wichtige Teile der ISS, dezimiert die Menschheit auf die Hälfte. Da waren es nur noch 800. Minus all den gesammelten und tiefgekühlten Spermavorräten. Oups. Kann ja mal passieren. Zwei Teile des Schwarmes machen sich also auf den Weg: der Eine, die Abtrünnigen in eine vermeintlich sichere Umlaufbahn, ein Korridor, in dem man den Mondsplittern entgehen kann - für den Preis, permanent Sonnenstürmen ausgesetzt zu sein - soviel zum Thema "Wenn Facebookuser entscheiden könnten". Der Rest macht sich zusammen mit der ISS zum letzten stabilen Teil des Mondes auf, eine tiefe Spalte im selben, in die man sich schmiegen möchte, geschützt von Strahlung, Meteoriten und Politikern. Problem: Physik. Um sich von der Position der Raumstation ISS in stabilem Orbit um die Erde zu einem Orbit um den Mond, oder was davon übrig ist zu bewegen, braucht es Zeit und Energie. Drei Jahre werden vergehen.Drei Jahre, in denen der abgespaltene Teil der Archies, ganz kalter Krieg, keinerlei Kontakt haben möchte. Irgendwann jedoch fehlt Wasser, die ISS hilft. Bald essen, die ISS hilft. Irgendwann, kurz vor Erreichen des Mondes, es sind noch ein paar Dutzend Menschen am Leben, meldet sich der Schwarm, man möchte wieder nach Hause. Mit letzter Kraft, in letzter Minute, auf der finalen Umlaufbahn um die Erde, bis diese in eine Umlaufbahn in den Mondrest umschlägt, stoßen ein paar wenige Überlebende zur ISS, angeführt von Aida. Eine charismatische Italienerin, Madam President Jula Bliss Flaherty entmachtet, die Zunge mit einem verschraubten Beissring ruhiggestellt. Wir sind alle dankbar. Der Schwarm dockt an, die Schleusenautomatik beginnt, das Intranet des Schwarms verbindet sich wieder mit dem der ISS, die Inboxen füllen sich mit drei Jahr lang nicht abgeholten Postings und denen, die gerade nicht mit der Landung auf dem Mondrest beschäftigt sind, stehen die Haare zu Berge. Was da ankommt, sind keine Überlebenden. Was da ankommt, sind Kannibalen. Vom Hunger getrieben hat der fette Blogger angefangen, sich selbst zu essen. Wer braucht schon Beine in der Schwerelosigkeit. Der erste Tabubruch ist getan, und bald spaltet sich der Schwarm in Kannibalen und Hungernde, Fresser und Gefressene, Tabuisten und Tabubrecher. Angeführt von Aida kommt der Schwarm und fällt über das letzte Dutzend Menschen her, mit ihrem Plan, im letzten verbliebenen Ort im Sonnensystem, auf dem wenigsten die Theorie ein Überleben hergibt. Man kämpft mit allem, was man hat, um alles was von der Menschheit übrig geblieben ist. Und verliert.Ja, es gibt Überlebende. Genau Acht. Acht Frauen. Und kein Sperma. Zugegeben, Neal Stephenson hat uns nie Hoffnung gemacht. Kein wundersamer Mondbeschuss mit Atomraketen wurde uns versprochen, keine Aliens haben uns gerettet, der Vater von Dinah, der Robotertechnikeren, Tochter eines Bergmannes, der sich am Tag 1 des “Hard Rain's" in Alaska eingegraben hat, hat sich nicht wieder gemeldet, der Bruder von Ivy, der Kommandantin, der sich als Chef eines Atom-U-Bootes am gleichen Tag unter Wasser begeben hat, auch nicht. Ein paar Arkies waren zum Mars aufgebrochen, keine Antwort von dort. Die Erde, ein oranger Feuerball, die ISS auf Restenergie in einer Mondspalte, 8 Frauen on the moon. Kein Mann. Moment. Seite 553 von 860. Mh.. What the f**k.Wir sind am grössten Climax der Literaturgeschichte. Neal Stephenson hat uns jede Hoffnung genommen, die Erdbevölkerung von 7 Millarden Menschen auf 8 dezimiert und beginnt nach dem literarischen Mord an 6.999.999.992 Menschen mit einem spektakulären Comeback, zu welchem ich alle deprimierten und labilen Hörer nochmals die Chance gebe, sich Neal Stephensons “Seveneves” zu kaufen und wenigstens die letzten 300 Seiten, brillant wie die ersten 550 zu lesen und wiederzukommen, nachdem die letzte Seite gelesen ist. ich verspreche beim heiligen Douglas Adams, dass niemand enttäuscht sein wird. Acht Frauen sitzen in einer Spalte im Mond. Dinah, die Roboterbauerin, Ivy, die Kommandantin, Tekla, die Sicherheitschefin, Julia “Madam President”, Camilla, Ihr ehemaliger Fan und Aida, die einzig überlebende Kannibalin vom Schwarm. Dazu Luisa, die Psychologin. Und - Moira, die Genbiologin.Alle bis auf Luisa, die schon in der Menopause ist, sind fruchtbar. Seven Eves. Sieben Evas.Die Männer fehlen - aber Moira weiss Rat. Parthenogenese. Die Jungfernzeugung, eine Form der Fortpflanzung durch Zellteilung, die verbunden mit Genmanipulation der Menschheit eine Chance gibt. Ressourcen sind genug da, jetzt wo nicht mehr 2000 sondern nur noch zunächst 8 versorgt werden müssen. Zeit ist da, die Genmanipulation von der Theorie in die Praxis zu bringen. FaszinierendProblem: Heterozygosität. Inzucht für Fortgeschrittene. Wenn der Genpool klein ist, und Sieben ist verdammt klein, kommt es in nachfolgenden Generationen zu Erbgutschäden. Aber wenn man schon für die Jungfernzeugung am Erbut rumspielt, kann man auch dagegen gleich was machen, sprich, die Gene der Eizellen vor der Teilung manipulieren. Problem: Moral. Welche Gene verändert man, welche lässt man lieber in Frieden. An sich klar, man baut starke Menschen, man baut kluge Menschen, man baut weniger aggressive Menschen. Problem: Philosophie. Aggressivität verursacht Konflikte, aber beschützt gegen Feinde. Körperliche Stärke löst Konflikte zu Deinen Gunsten, bis der Kluge mit der Pistole zum Boxkampf kommt. Aber Gendiversifizierung muss sein, sonst Inzucht und aus der Menschheit wird in eine paar Generationen ein Stamm von noch größeren Dummköpfen. Also Genmanipulation. Aber welche?Problem: Gruppendynamik. Seven Eves, Sieben Evas, jeder mit prototypischen Eigenschaften, klug, aggressiv, stark, milde sitzen auf einem Plenum. Fünf sind Freundinnen, eine Ausgestossene und eine ist einfach nur evil. Aber gerade diese, Aida, die Kannibalin, ist die Jüngste, und man kann nicht einfach ein Siebtel der Menschheit euthanasieren. Lösung: Ein Pakt. Jede Eva darf sich eine Modifikation aussuchen, die Moira umsetzt, aber keine weiß welche.Lösung? Oder Problem? Aida, die Kannibalin wider Willen, die Ausgestoßene ahnt: Problem. Sie stimmt zu mit diesen Worten:“Ich künde von einem Fluch. Das ist kein Fluch den ich Euch auferlege. Das ist kein Fluch den ich Euren Kindern auferlege. Nein. Ich war nie so "böse" wie Ihr alle denkt. Das ist ein Fluch den Ihr auferlegt, wenn Ihr das tut, was Ihr tun wollt. Und es ist ein Fluch, den Ihr meinen Kindern auferlegt. Denn ich weiss, ich sehe wie es sein wird. Ich bin das "Böse". Die Kannibalin. Die, die nicht mitmachen wollte. Meine Kinder, egal welche Entscheidung ich treffe, werden für immer anders sein als Eure Kinder. Denn täuscht Euch nicht, was Ihr hier entscheidet ist neue Rassen zu erschaffen. Sieben neue Rassen. Sie werden für immer anders und getrennt voneinander sein, so wie du Moira von Dir Ivy. Sie werden sich nie wieder in eine einzige Menschheit zurück vereinigen, denn so sind die Menschen nicht. In tausenden Jahren werden die Nachkommen von Euch sechsen auf meine Nachfahren schauen und sagen, "Da, schau, da kommt ein Kind von Aida, der Kannibalin, der Bösen, der Verfluchten". Sie werden die Straßenseite wechseln, meine Kinder meiden, auf den Boden spucken. Das ist es, was Eure Entscheidung meint. Ich werde meine Kind formen, meine Kinder, und ich werde viele von ihnen haben um mit diese Fluch leben zu können, um überleben zu können. Um Euch überleben zu können."Womit diese Buchbesprechung, halb Buchvorstellung, zum kreischenden Ende kommt, immer noch 300 Seiten vor dem Schluss. Man fragt sich gespannt, warum soll man ein derart deprimierendes Buch, dessen dunkelster Abschnitt mit einem Fluch auf die Zukunft endet, lesen? Punkt 1: Neal Stephenson. Stephenson begann als Novellist und findet durch seine Arbeit in der TV- und Filmbranche den Rhythmus, den ein Buch dieser Länge braucht, die richtige Menge und Tiefe an Nebensträngen und schafft es, wie schon gesagt, über 550 Seiten nicht im Ansatz zu verraten, was am Ende geschieht. Wovon die Hörer dieser Rezension nun nichts mehr haben. Sorry.Punkt 2: Neal Stephenson. Stephenson hat mit seinen Frühwerken Zodiac und Snow Crash, man beachte: in den 80ern, enormen gesellschaftlichen Weitblick besessen, Umweltkatastrophen und die Machtübernahme durch weltweite Firmenkonglomerate vorhergesehen, hat mit dem letzten Werk REAMDE die Parallelwelt viele Jugendlicher in Massenrollenspielen wie Eve Online oder World of Warcraft begleitet und bündelt in seinem Magnum Opus hier nichts weniger als sein Wissen über die Human Condition. Geschichtsverläufe sind aus deren Mitte heraus schwer zu beurteilen, aber wenn man jemandem diese Kompetenz im Ansatz zugestehen kann, ist es Neal Stephenson. Das Verschwinden des Mondes ist anlasslos, was danach folgt, jedoch mit dem heutigen Wissen um unseren Umgang mit uns selbst ursächlich unvermeidlich. Die Konzentration von Macht und Geld in den Händen weniger ist undemokratisch und für das Wohlergehen in “normalen” Situationen schon problematisch. In extremen Situationen ist sie fatal. Was “Seveneves” dabei so lesenswert macht, ist, dass Stephenson sich das alles schon lange anschaut und trotzdem nicht zum einseitigen Prediger wird: Denn man kann das Argument bringen, dass Machtkonzentration in Situationen, in denen es schnell gehen muss, positiv ist. Stephenson tut es. Er lässt einen Multimilliardär nach dem Vorbild von Elon Musk ein Problem erkennen, zukünftiger Wassermangel auf der ISS, und auf eigene Kosten, mit eigenem Antrieb und schlussendlich unter Opfern des eigenen Lebens lösen: der elon-muskeske Protagonist schleppt einen aus Eis bestehenden Asteroiden aus seiner Umlaufbahn zur ISS und ohne diese heroische Aktion wäre die Cloud Ark nicht im Ansatz bis zum Mondrest gekommen. Aber das Gegenargument folgt prompt in Form der schlussendlich renegaten US-Präsidentin und ihrer Machtspiele, die die Cloud Ark den Zusammenhalt kosten. Der Machtwille einer Person löscht nahezu die Menschheit aus. Das Argument “Demokratie löst alle Probleme” führt Stephenson im nächsten Schritt ad absurdum: Der sich abspaltende Teil der Cloud Ark mag von Madam President manipuliert worden sein, aber am Ende entscheiden sich 1100 Arkies, sich auf den Weg in eine eigene Umlaufbahn zu machen - das Argument, dass man dort an radioaktiven Sonnenstürmen drauf gehen könnte, wurde im Spacebook (dem Facebook der Cloud Ark) gemacht, aber verworfen, denn Klimawandel is for Pussies. 1050 Arkies weniger (oder 50% der Menschheit) kommt der letzte Rest derselben dann final in die Situation, solchen Entscheidungen nicht mehr wirklich unterworfen zu sein. Für Demokratie sind acht Frauen zu wenig, für Diktatorentum erst recht. Es bleibt nur noch der Glaube an wissenschaftliche Notwendigkeit, der alles, inklusive der Moral, untergeordnet wird. Eine Verurteilung von früheren Vergängnissen, die Gefahren von Rassismus werden dem Überleben geopfert und damit die achso schöne einfache Welt der “Lösung der Probleme der Welt aufgrund technischer Analyse und daraus gezogener Konsequenz” auch noch diskreditiert. Danke Neal Stephenson. Am Ende müssen sich “Die Menschen” auf das verlassen, was sie alle eint und ausmacht. Das, sorry, cheesy, “Menschsein”. Das, von dem keiner weiss, was es ist, aber für das jeder irgendwie inherent ein Gefühl hat, was es sein soll. Etwas Gutes. Und das wird auf den letzten dreihundert Seiten erzählt. Diese müssen positiver sein als die vorangegangenen fünfhundertfünfzig. Sind Sie auch, aber Aidas Fluch war kein leerer. Es wird ein Wiedersehen mit alten Bekannten geben, und um die letzten 300 Seiten von Neal Stephensons “Seveneves” nicht auch noch komplett zu verspoilern hier nur die Überschrift über diesen, letzten Teil des Romans: “Der Habitatring, 5000 Jahre nach Verschwinden des Mondes.”Gehet hin und leset dieses Buch. Es ist wichtig und es ist traurig und es ist gut und damit ertragbar. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lobundverriss.substack.com
Woody Wiegmann https://twitter.com/WoodyWiegmann What will AI do the ability of people who have limited intelligence and agency? What will AI do to humans who tend to create rituals for guidance on what to do? Back in the 400BC, humans were ritually inclined, to put off their questions to ritual Are there going to be business moats around AI? How do humans seem to get things wrong and that ends up being their superpower? The tribe is now occulted behind crazy complexity, what does that mean? What is the importance of status games in human relationships? What is Keynesian beauty/stock dynamics? Is there a ground truth? What is the relationship between gossip and myths for what both for tribes and meta-tribes? What is trend on vices that represent escapism? In what ways is Twitter escapism? What happens when a bureaucracy tries to intervene? What happens when bureaucracies clash with the uncertainty of the implications of AI? What is humanity going through in terms of its faith in the expert class? Where does credit go when you have low-interest rates and the government pumps trillions of monopoly money into the system? What are the negative externalities of corporations consolidating? What is the relationship between monopoly money injected into the economy and finding consensus among humans? What happens when AGI becomes the deity? What happens when the market becomes God? What is the importance of optics? Can you be authentic when concerned with optics? How does anti-trust law get it wrong? Can we have decentralized anti-trust law? How is the brain built off redundant systems? What is your take on transhumanism? Books mentioned: Seveneves: https://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Novel-Neal-Stephenson-ebook/dp/B00LZWV8JO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Rare Earth: https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe-ebook/dp/B00L60PP0I/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=V3UGRDR27PTV&keywords=rare+earth&qid=1676913897&s=digital-text&sprefix=rare+earth%2Cdigital-text%2C185&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEySUg5NjgyRlBBQ0hJJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNjIyOTI0MkE1QlExN0xCM1NRRyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMDMxNjY0MTczTkU0VDdSQkpPMSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=
On previous episodes of Faster, Please! — The Podcast and in my newsletter essays, I've argued for the importance of optimistic science fiction. But what exactly qualifies as future-optimistic fiction, and how is it different from utopian literature? To discuss one of my favorite science-fiction book and TV series, The Expanse, and to consider the importance of what fiction tells us about the future, I've brought on Peter Suderman.Peter is features editor at Reason magazine. He has written a number of fantastic pieces on science fiction including "The Fractal, Fractious Politics of The Expanse" in the December 2022 issue of Reason.In This Episode* Does The Expanse count as optimistic science fiction? (1:15)* Optimistic—not utopian—visions of the future (9:10)* The evolution of science fiction (19:30)* The importance of the future sci-fi shows us (27:09)Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.Does The Expanse count as optimistic science fiction?French film director François Truffaut famously claimed it was impossible to make an anti-war film. He said, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” And that quote, which has always stuck in my head, reemerged in my brain when I came across a somewhat similar observation from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, who said, “Futuristic science fiction tends to be pessimistic. If you imagine a future that's wonderful, you don't have a story.” I think some people may interpret that as meaning you cannot write optimistic science fiction.And I think of a show that you have written a long essay about, and I've written about—not as intelligently, but I've written about it from time to time: the TV show The Expanse. And I find The Expanse to be optimistic sci-fi. It takes place in the future, a couple hundred years in the future. Humanity has spread out to Mars and the asteroid belts. There's certainly conflict. As an Expanse fan, someone just wrote an essay on it, would you agree that it's optimistic science fiction?I think it is, with some caveats. The first one is that it's optimistic but it's not utopian. And I think a lot of the argument against optimistic science fiction is actually not really arguing against optimism. It's arguing against utopianism and this idea that you sometimes see—there are hints of it sometimes in Star Trek, especially in Star Trek: The Next Generation—of, in the future humanity will have all of its problems solved, we won't have money, there will be no poverty. If you think about the Earth of Star Trek: The Next Generation's future, it's actually kind of boring, right? There isn't a lot of conflict. Writers eventually found ways to drive conflict out of conflicts between the Federation and other planets and even within the Federation. Because of course, they realized the utopian surface is just a surface. And if you dig down at all beneath it, of course humans would have conflict.But I think a lot of the opposition to the idea of optimistic science fiction just comes from this idea of, “Well, wouldn't it be utopian?” And what The Expanse does is it tells a story that is, I think, inherently optimistic but really deeply not utopian, because it recognizes that progress is not an easy, straight linear line in which everybody comes together and holds hands, and there's a rainbow and My Little Ponies, and everybody just sort of sings, and it's wonderful. That's not how it works. In fact, the way that progress happens is that people have things they want in their lives, and then they seek, either on their own or in coalitions, factions, organizations—whether that's governments, whether that's the private sector, whether that's unions, whatever it is—they organize somehow or another to get the thing that they want. And sometimes they build things. Sometimes they build habitats.And so this is something you see a lot of in The Expanse. Humans have colonized the solar system, as the story begins, and there are just all of these fascinating habitats that humans have built. Some of those habitats actually have problems with them. There are air filtration issues, where you have to constantly be supplying ice from asteroid mining. That sort of thing. Some of the main characters, when we first meet them, are working as ice haulers. Because of course, you would have to have some sort of trade of important resources in space in order to make these habitats work. And you could call this, “That's not optimistic. In fact, a lot of these lives are sort of grubby and unpleasant, and people don't get everything they want.” But I think that misunderstands the idea of progress, because the idea of progress isn't that suddenly everything will be happy and My Little Pony-ish. It's not My Little Pony. It's actually conflict and it's clashing desires and it's clashing ideals about how humans should live. And then it's people kind of working that stuff out amongst themselves, day by day, hour by hour, through coalitions, through organizations, through institutions, through technology, through politics sometimes. And all of those sort of tools and all of those organizational forms have a role. Sometimes they also have drawbacks. All of them have drawbacks to some extent. And then it's just a matter of how are people going work out the problems they have at the moment in order to get to the next place, in order to build the thing they want to build, in order to start the society they want to have.It's a six-season TV show based on a nine-novel series. The six-season TV show adapts the first six books, and then there are three additional books, plus there's a bunch of short stories, novellas, interstitial material. There's this moment that happens in both the TV show and in the books that's really important. And it's about it when humanity finds a way to other solar systems. There are 1300 gates that open up and they can sort of go out and colonize the rest of space. All of these colonies are settled, and each one of them takes on an idea and a culture and often technological capability. There's one of them that's really funny that you meet called Freehold. Frankly, it's a bunch of anarchist libertarian gun nuts who decide to basically ignore all the rules that the trade union that is managing a lot of the trade between the gates has put in place. And they are managing that trade for a good reason. Because if you mess with the gates, if you go through them the wrong way, it kills people, it kills ships, it destroys them. And so you have to go through in order, and you have to go through slowly, and it's this whole sort of process. In Freehold, they‘re a bunch of difficult, crazy anarchist-like libertarian gun nuts who don't want to play by the rules. And at first they're a problem. You can see why that would be a problem for the social organizational form that has come up in these books from managing the gates and making sure that they don't kill people. But later, when basically a super powerful high-tech imperial planet that has designs on controlling all of humanity and putting all of humanity under the thumb of basically one emperor who has plans to live forever—it's sort of this, become a kind of a god who is ruling over all of humanity and then basically turn all of humans into like a hive mind but for the good of humanity so that we'll survive—when you have that all-encompassing, super powerful collectivist impulse that is threatening human civilization, it turns out that the libertarian anarchist gun nuts at Freehold are actually pretty good friends to have. This series does a bunch of interesting work of noting that, yes, of course those people can be difficult at times, and they can present problems to social cohesion. At the same time, it's not bad to have them as allies when you are threatened by an authoritarian.Optimistic—not utopian—visions of the futureYou've nailed it. Well done. I view it as optimistic but not utopian—I think that's a key point—particularly compared to how the future is often portrayed. I think it's pretty optimistic because no zombies. We're still around. And the world looks like it's doing okay. Was there climate change? Sure. But New York is surrounded by barriers. Clearly there's been disruption, but we kept moving forward. Now we're this multi-planetary civilization, so it doesn't look like we're going to get killed by an asteroid anytime soon.I think a big mistake that a lot of the pessimists about the future in politics and our culture generally, but in science fiction as well—a big mistake that they make is that they think only in terms of grand plans. They think in terms of mass systems of social control and social organization. And so when you see an apocalypse, it's “all the governments have failed and so has capitalism.” When you see an apocalypse, it's “the oceans swallowed us because we used too much energy or the wrong kind of energy.” And that's it. The grand plan didn't work. And then we're in a hellscape after that. And what you see in The Expanse, what makes it so smart, is grand plans actually do fail.Almost any time somebody has a big sweeping theory of how we're going to reorganize human social organization, of how humanity is going to be totally different from now on—almost anytime that someone has that sort of theory in The Expanse series, it doesn't work out. And often that person is revealed to be a bad guy, or at least somebody who has a bad way of thinking about the world. Instead, progress comes in fits and starts, and it's made on a much smaller scale by these ad hoc coalitions of people who are constantly changing their coalitions. Sometimes you want something that requires building something, that requires a new technology. And so you ally with people who are engineer types, and you work with them to build something. At the end of it, you've got the thing that they've built, and your life is a little bit better, or at least you've accomplished one of your goals. And then maybe after that, those people, the engineers, actually it turns out that they have a culture that is not cooperative with yours. And so you're going to ally with a different political faction and the engineers are going to be on the other side of it, but they've still built the little thing that you needed them to build. And it's just this idea that big systems and big plans that assume that everything falls in line, those plans don't work, and they do fail. And if that's your idea of how we're going to make progress, that's a bad idea. The way we make progress is…In a Hayekian sense, all our individual wants and needs cannot be incorporated in this grand system or grand plan. Our wants and needs today, much less how those will evolve over time. Our future wants and needs don't fit into the plan either.Yeah, this is right. This is one of the issues I have with a lot of zombie fiction, is that it just sort of assumes that after the zombie apocalypse—the zombie apocalypse is not all that realistic, but you can imagine a scenario in which there is something environmental that really goes very bad for humanity; that's not out of the realm of possibility—but what a lot of the zombie apocalypse fiction assumes, then, is that in the decades or years afterwards no one will really find ways to work with other people towards shared goals. Or at best, they'll do so in a really ugly and simplistic way where somebody sets up a society that's walled off but it's ruled by some evil authoritarian and you're living under this person's thumb.I grew up in Florida, and so we had hurricanes. One of the things you see when you have hurricanes is that, yes, there is a government response and they send out trucks and power company officials and all of that sort of thing. But people drive around the neighborhood with chainsaws and cut up the trees that have fallen across your driveway. And other people who may not have chainsaws go and help their friends move the stuff out of their bedroom where the tree fell into the bedroom through the ceiling and there's been some leakages. It's just sort of people working together in these informal coalitions, these little neighborhood local groups, to help each other out and to try to fix things that have broken and gone wrong. It's not fun. It's not like, “Oh man, hurricanes, they're wonderful. We shouldn't worry about them at all!” We should, and we should try to build resilience against them and that sort of thing.At the same time, when disaster strikes, often what you see—not always, but often what you see—is that people come back together and they survey the problems and they work to fix them minute by minute, hour by hour in little ways. And sometimes the first thing you do is, “Well, I got a hole in my roof. I'm going to stretch garbage bags across it so that the next time it rains…” And then you got a hole in your roof with garbage bags across it for a couple of weeks. But that's a solution for the time. It's better than a hole in your roof. On the other hand, you got a hole in your roof. It sucks. But that's progress relative to the hole that's there. That's a way that a lot of people who don't think about engineering, who don't think in a Hayekian manner, it's something that they miss. Because they only think about big systems and big plans. And big systems and big plans do have big risks, and they do often fail. But that's not how humans figure out how to move forward and how to make their life better.An interesting aspect is that, you mentioned how at some point these gates open so we're no longer stuck in the solar system. We can go to any of these other planetary systems. And what's interesting is the devastating effect this has on the planet Mars, which is its own world, its own government, it has its own military, it's independent of Earth. But it's a society that was built around one big idea, which is terraforming Mars and creating a sustainable civilization. And when that goal didn't look important anymore, that was it. It fell apart. People left. There was no resilience, there was no ability to adapt. To me, that's one of the most interesting twists I've seen in science fiction. When the grand plan fails, the whole thing falls apart because they never assumed the grand plan wouldn't work.The Mars example is great because it shows what I think is one of the biggest problems in political thinking and in kind of bad science-fiction storytelling. It's a great demonstration of steady state thinking, where people think that the current arrangement of power and resources is going to persist forever. And so Mars in The Expanse story was basically a competitor with Earth, which in The Expanse universe was the sort of political home of humanity as well as the bread basket. It's where of all the food was produced. And then the asteroid belt, which is sort of the rough and tumble outer world—the outer world were the resource extractors. They provided for the inner systems. They kind of had a blue-collar vibe to them. There was some terrorist activity that came out of this because they were resentful. There's sort of some interesting cultural and subcultural effects there. And then Mars was heavily military and high tech, and they thought that would be their competitive advantage.Almost a quasi-fascist state, in a way. It was very militaristic and authoritarian.Yes, which comes back to pay off in a big way in the final three books of the trilogy which, unfortunately, the shows don't adapt, but are in some ways, I think, the best of the books. And so much of our politics is built around that idea that this power structure, this arrangement of resources that we have right now where everybody's on Facebook, where everybody is on Twitter, where everybody uses Google search, that's going to last forever. And the only way you can dislodge it is through government and through regulation and through interventions that are designed to break that sort of thing up. I'm thinking very specifically of antitrust, and a lot of antitrust theories are predicated on this. But there are other realms in which this sort of approach to regulation and to politics is quite common as well.And in The Expanse, you see, guess what? Those power structures—even power structures that have persisted in the case of The Expanse books at least for decades and I think for a couple of hundred years that's basically been the arrangement as we sort of enter the story—even those arrangements that seem like they're immutable facts of human organization—Oh, this is how politics has always been; this is how the arrangement of national power (effectively in this story) has always been arranged—those things can change, and they can change because of environmental changes and they can change because of technological developments that people don't foresee.The evolution of science fictionIt seems to me that you had this period during the Space Race, the Atomic Age, ‘50s, ‘60s, in which there was lots of somewhat optimistic science fiction. You obviously had Star Trek and even I would say 2001: A Space Odyssey. You could go to the Jetsons, but then you started not seeing that. And to me, it seems like there's a pretty sharp dividing line there in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, and I've written about that. Am I making too much out of that, that there was a change? Or has it always been like this and we started noticing it more because we started doing more science fiction?I don't think you're wrong to notice that. And I think there was a big change in the 1970s. I think maybe one place to start, if you're thinking about that, though, is actually something like 100 years before the 1970s.That would be the 1870s!Yeah. In the 1870s, in the 1890s, maybe even a little bit before then. This maybe tells you how naive I was as a seven- or an eight-year-old, but I started reading science fiction when I was around eight years old. My parents were big fans, and I of course watched Star Trek even starting when I was four or five. Star Wars, that sort of thing. I grew up in a real nerd household, and something that I heard when I was I believe in fourth grade that just blew my mind—but of course, it is super obvious when you hear it—is for a long time in human history, we didn't have science fiction. We didn't have it at all. And you go back to the 1700s, to the 1800s, you start to see little bits of it. Jules Verne, even maybe some of Edgar Allan Poe. But it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution and then some of the fiction that sort of came out decades into the Industrial Revolution. It wasn't until relatively recently in human history that people had the idea that the future would be different, because that's the heart of what science fiction is. It is the idea that the future will be different because humans will organize themselves differently, and/or because we will have invented new technologies that make our lives different.And you go back to 1000 AD or 1200 or 1500 even, and you just don't see that idea present in fiction and in storytelling because essentially no one imagined that the future would be different. They thought it would be the way it was in their time forever. And they assumed that it had basically been the same forever. That humanity's social and technological and resource arrangements would be steady state. And something happened in the ‘30s and ‘40s with the early science fiction that really predicated on this idea that, “Oh, wait! The future will be different and it will be better.” And then you get to the 1970s and things start to look a little bit shaky in world affairs, especially in the Western world, right? And what happens is that then is reflected in a lot of popular science fiction, where you start to see this more pessimistic view, this idea that the future will be different but it will be worse. And it will be worse because all of the things we rely on for the present will fail. I don't think that that's an illegitimate mode of storytelling in any way. I, in fact, really like a lot of…Even as I've harangued against them, those are all super enjoyable movies. I just wish there were the other kind too. And it seems to me that maybe we're starting to get more of the other kind again. I mean, we don't have a lot of examples.So about 10 or 15 years ago, there was literally a movement in science fiction led by people like Neal Stephenson, the author of most prominently Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash in the 1990s, but also some more recent stuff as well. And he was like, “We need ideas about the future that are, if not utopian, then at least sort of optimistic. Ideas about things that we will do that will be better, not things that we will do that will make everything worse and that will sort of contribute to suffering and to collapse.” And Stevenson has been a leading proponent both of other writers doing that but then of doing it himself.Since we were talking about ad hoc coalitions and small-scale problem solving, his novel Termination Shock, I think from two years ago, is a quasi-science-fiction novel about global warming set in the near future in which global warming has both become a real problem and also one that people have started to find a lot of small-scale ways to, not solve exactly, but to address on a personal level. When the novel begins, there are a lot of houses on stilts in Texas because there are flooding issues. But what, they just picked up their houses and they put them on stilts. And people have to wear these sort of Dune-like suits that cool them. There are all these sort of crazy traveling caravans of people who live not in any particular place, but then there are these mega truck stops that have sprung up to meet their needs and sort of become these kind of travel hubs. And then, of course, people start trying to not solve global warming, exactly, but to mitigate global warming kind of locally by shooting stuff into the air that blocks reflections of the atmosphere. Of course, that causes some problems. He's not just sort of like, “Yeah, we can just fix this.” But he's like, “This sort of thing is how problems get solve solved. They don't get solved through politics and grand, multi-lateral agreements.”Of course, I would also point to another Stephenson novel, which is Seveneves, which is a novel in which things get about as dark for humanity as possible. We're down to seven people, and then we come all the way back and beyond.And it's all through distributed solutions. There's a great bit: You get down to the final seven people and then you flash forward, I think it's like 5,000 years. There's just a great like section header in this book. You're like 700 pages into a 1000-page book and suddenly it just says, “5,000 years later.” Okay, okay, I guess. Sure, Neal Stephenson, you can do that. 5,000 years later. And you see that humanity is flourishing again because somehow or another you have distributed rings, habitat systems around the Earth. You have the submarine people. We don't really know what they did, but the submarine people somehow or another figured it out. There are still some Earth-dwellers who survived in caves, like probably the Mars people who just like took off for Mars in the middle of the catastrophe. We think they survived somehow too. Part of this is, there's a kind of cheat in that book in which he doesn't tell you how all of these people survived, but there's also a kind of genius and a truth in that, in that we don't know how it's going to go. But what we know is that when put to the test, people have—not always, I don't want to say it just works 100 percent of the time, because sometimes there are true catastrophes in the world—but people, when put to the test, when your survival, the survival of you, your family, your friends, and the future of your race is on the line, people have figured out ways to survive that their predecessors would never have imagined because they never had to.The importance of the future sci-fi shows usIs it important that we have popular culture that gives us images of the future, a variety of images, to shoot for?I think it's incredibly important. I think even people who think it's important underrate how important it is. Because most people, even the smartest, most innovative people, they're… People are modelers. They kind of do things that they've seen done, even if it's that they've seen it in a story. And I just think about my own history and my own life. I grew up in a household where there wasn't, I would say, a lot of political ideology. It was in the background, but my parents like didn't actually talk about politics that much. It was just that one of them was quite liberal and the other one was quite conservative. And there were differing radio programs that I would hear in the company of one versus the other.But they were both, like I said, science fiction readers. And there was science fiction just all over our house. The first adult science-fiction novel I read was The Caves of Steel, which I was given when I was in fourth grade, eight-years-old. It's like Isaac Asimov's sort of Agatha Christie murder-mystery-in-the-future, in a futuristic New York, story. I was totally hooked after that. I just didn't ever go back. Read science fiction. And like I said, what science fiction gave me was this idea that the future would be different and that maybe—maybe—it could be better in some ways. And I think that if you just listen to interviews and talk to the people who are at the head of some of the most innovative companies in the world and in the United States right now, one through-line you see is that maybe not all of them, but a surprising number of them were science fiction readers growing up as kids.And they spent a lot of time, as a result, just sort of imagining the future. And imagining that it would be different. And I think that exercise, just being drawn into that kind of imagination of a world that is different than the one we live in now and different because people have invented things, because people have reorganized politics, because of whatever it is, but a world that is different because the future will be different—that is an exercise that we need more people to engage in. And when people do it, I think the results… I frankly think that even reading pessimistic science fiction is better than reading none at all, because again, it just constantly hammers home this idea [that] the future will be different. It's not a steady state. That progress or maybe anti-progress can be made.I think it certainly matters on that sort of doer, elite level, where you do have all these entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley folks, who obviously were really inspired by science fiction. Also, I think it's just important for everybody else. I just can't imagine, if people have gotten more of that, not only would they be a bit more resilient to the super negativity. It would just create more dreamers among people about what the future can be. Not utopia, but better. I'll take better.I'll take better as well. And I think that storytellers have a big role to play in that. And I think that anybody who creates images, who is an imaginer for the popular consciousness, has some influence here. Because like I said, people call to mind what they have seen before and people operate based on the ideas that have been handed to them. I certainly would like to see more of those stories. And I would also just like to say that if you're a person who tells stories and who makes images and who tries to sort of worm your way into the public consciousness, obviously you can do it through fear. But wouldn't it be better, wouldn't you feel a little more proud of yourself if you could do it through hope and through making people think that maybe there's something wonderful coming?Star Trek and Star Wars, which is the capitalist show, which is the communist show?Star Trek: The Next Generation's pilot episode is about how basically energy capitalism is inherently bad. The Ferengi are the super capitalists. It's really hard to make like a strong “Star Trek is a pro-capitalist show” argument. Maybe. You get a little bit into that with some of the Deep Space Nine stuff later. But even there, that's mostly just about political conflict. Does that mean that Star Wars is the pro-capitalist show? I don't know. I mean, people do seem to have jobs and buy and sell stuff and make things. I guess I'd have to go with Star Wars just because you can buy droids when you need help on your farm? That's all I got. This is a public episode. 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Join us for a wide-ranging discussion with and scifi author Dave Norman. He came to talk about his novel Halien Aeon, the first of a pentalogy about a deep, mysterious intelligence that pervades the creation of our solar system, but went on tangents concerning everything from Quantum Entanglement, the laws of physics, and why intergalactic travel is rather difficult. If you're a fan of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves or the sprawling Culture series by Iain M Banks, this book may pique your interest.
Neal Stephenson is a best-selling author, futurist, tech geek and swordsman whose works include Cryptonomicron, Seveneves, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash. He has also co-written several other books and graphic novels which we discuss in this episode. His latest book, Termination Shock goes into depth and detail about Sikh martial arts, which he had to research during the Covid lockdowns. Of course, Neal's main claim to fame is that he wrote the preface to my own Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists. We cover an enormously wide range of topics in this episode, from fountain pens to working with Jeff Bezos building rockets. If you want to find anything in particular, the timestamps and related links are listed below: [03:07] How Neal got into swords. Neal's club in Seattle is Lonin. [08:12] Ellis Amdur and Japanese martial arts. [14:31] Bartitsu [17:53] Silver and McBane. Note: It was Captain John Godfrey's 1747, A Treatise Upon The Useful Science of Defence, where he said that “The Small-Sword is the Call of Honour, the Back-Sword the Call of Duty.” [28:50] Indian Club training [37:46] Sword fights in fiction and how to write one [43:48] Working with Charles C. Mann on Cimarronin. The Manila Galleons. We mention Da'Mon Stith and episode 23 of this podcast. For the photo of Ellis Amdur sticking an eight foot spear into Neal's chest, see: https://swordschool.com/podcast/from-katanas-to-creating-the-metaverse-with-neal-stephenson/ [52:40] Fountain pens [55:38] How Neal plots, writes and edits his books, and how he co-writes with another author [1:01:09] How Neal's books changed culture – e.g. influenced the development of the Kindle (see Fiona image here: https://swordschool.com/podcast/from-katanas-to-creating-the-metaverse-with-neal-stephenson/ Fiona is a character in The Diamond Age. Amazon used the codename ‘Fiona' for their Kindle project.) [1:03:47] Working with Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin finding better ways to power space rockets [1:14:05] Bullwhips [1:15:41] LAMINA1 and building a new open platform for metaverses [1:28:28] The best idea Neal hasn't acted on yet [1:32:14] What Neal would do with $1 million to improve historical martial arts For more information about the host Guy Windsor and his work, as well as transcriptions of all the episodes, check out his website at https://swordschool.com/podcast And to support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
Terminámos com algum desacordo o "Prince of Thorns", um livro com alguns pontos interessantes mas com pouca densidade por vezes. Falámos também de: - Seveneves de Neal Stephenson - The Perks of Being a Wallflower de Stephen Chbosky - A Series of Misfortunate Events de Lemony Snicket
Intro/Outro Signal to Noise By Scott Buckley Facebook Email: Badtheologyproductions@gmail.com Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Intro/Outro Signal to Noise By Scott Buckley Facebook Email: Badtheologyproductions@gmail.com Notes: 50's Prime Time Hollywood Studios Clean your Plate, do Your chores Disney Wilderness Lodge Whispering Canyon Cafe Happy Birthday Cupcake Happy Birthday Mr. President Brad Pitt Face Blind Myers Briggs / Enneagram Rob: ENTJ / 5 Lindsey: INTJ / 4 Ring Crazy Book Lady Adam Savage Seveneves Amazon: Rings of Power H.P. Lovecraft Colby's Daedric Mace from Iron Gnome Printing
Seveneves Radio #71 hosted by Stellmach & Taschke Artist Info: https://soundcloud.com/user-508719904 ------------------------- Seveneves Records - It´s not the genre, it´s the music! Homepage: www.seveneves.de Facebook: www.facebook.com/sevenevesrecords Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/sevenevesrecords Instagram: www.instagram.com/sevenevesrecords/ Twitter: twitter.com/sevenevesrecord Soundcloud: @sevenevesrecords Podcast on iTunes: apple.co/2a4mkpk Beatport: www.beatport.com/label/seveneves-records/46067
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: I'm trying out "asteroid mindset", published by Alex Altair on June 3, 2022 on LessWrong. This is a personal note, and not an advocation that anyone do the same. I'm honestly not really sure why I'm writing it. I think I just want to talk about it in a place where other people might feel similarly or have useful things to say. Like many others, the past few months of AI advancement (and more generally, since GPT-3) have felt to me like something of a turning point. I have always been sold on the arguments for AI x-risk, but my timelines were always very wide. It always seemed plausible to me that we were one algorithm around the corner from doom, and it also seemed entirely plausible to me that I would die of old age before AGI happened. My timelines are no longer wide. I should make it clear to any readers that I am under no illusion that I am a particularly notable or impactful. This is emphatically not a post telling you that you haven't worked hard enough. I am in the least position to chide anyone for their impact. My biggest problem has always been productivity/focus/motivation et cetera. I have a pretty unusual psychology, and likely a pretty unrelatable one. I have always been "pathologically content", happy and satisfied by default. This has its advantages, but a disadvantage is that I'm rarely motivated to change the world around me. But in the course of paying attention to my own drives, I have repeatedly observed that I am reliably motivated at the pointy part of hyperbolic discounting. My favorite example is spilling a glass of water. I absolutely never react with, sigh I guess I should go clean that up.... Instead, I'm just up, getting paper towels. There's no hesitation to even overcome. Similarly, when I've been in a theatre production, or when I've worked at a busy cafe, there's no attempt to save energy or savor the moment -- I just do the thing. Again, I'm not saying that I'm any good at the job; otherwise I'd be doing ops right now. But the drive is reliable. I always finish my taxes on time. I always find a job before my money runs out. A couple years ago I picked up the book Seveneves. (The following isn't really spoilers, because it is the premise of the book.) In it, the moon has broken into pieces, and the debris will eventually rain onto the Earth, raising the atmospheric temperature to hundreds of degrees, rending the entire planet profoundly uninhabitable. The characters calculate that there are two years remaining. This is of course a variation on the classic scenario of an asteroid headed toward earth. My reaction to this was -- well, to put it politely, something like, "Christ almighty! What an awful scenario! What a despondent and heart-rending situation to describe! How can anyone bear to read this story?" This isn't the first time I've contemplated the destruction of earth, but reading a hundred pages of fiction on it makes it feel more real. I feel sure that if I was in that world, the hyperbolic discounting would kick into overdrive, and I would burn everything I had to do something about that situation. I don't know that I would be very useful, or that it would be any particular duration of time before I burned out, but it just feels extremely clear that the thing to do is to clean up that spill, to put that fire out. It doesn't feel like there are other options. The only purpose of considering different actions is to figure out which one best fixes the crisis. As a reader of LessWrong you might be thinking, aren't we in that world already? Hasn't that been evident since the original arguments for existential risk? And like, yeah, kinda, except for the part about hyperbolic discounting. It needs to be really in my face before it's like Seveneves, and there has always been way too much fog obscuring the probabilities and the timeli...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: I'm trying out "asteroid mindset", published by Alex Altair on June 3, 2022 on LessWrong. This is a personal note, and not an advocation that anyone do the same. I'm honestly not really sure why I'm writing it. I think I just want to talk about it in a place where other people might feel similarly or have useful things to say. Like many others, the past few months of AI advancement (and more generally, since GPT-3) have felt to me like something of a turning point. I have always been sold on the arguments for AI x-risk, but my timelines were always very wide. It always seemed plausible to me that we were one algorithm around the corner from doom, and it also seemed entirely plausible to me that I would die of old age before AGI happened. My timelines are no longer wide. I should make it clear to any readers that I am under no illusion that I am a particularly notable or impactful. This is emphatically not a post telling you that you haven't worked hard enough. I am in the least position to chide anyone for their impact. My biggest problem has always been productivity/focus/motivation et cetera. I have a pretty unusual psychology, and likely a pretty unrelatable one. I have always been "pathologically content", happy and satisfied by default. This has its advantages, but a disadvantage is that I'm rarely motivated to change the world around me. But in the course of paying attention to my own drives, I have repeatedly observed that I am reliably motivated at the pointy part of hyperbolic discounting. My favorite example is spilling a glass of water. I absolutely never react with, sigh I guess I should go clean that up.... Instead, I'm just up, getting paper towels. There's no hesitation to even overcome. Similarly, when I've been in a theatre production, or when I've worked at a busy cafe, there's no attempt to save energy or savor the moment -- I just do the thing. Again, I'm not saying that I'm any good at the job; otherwise I'd be doing ops right now. But the drive is reliable. I always finish my taxes on time. I always find a job before my money runs out. A couple years ago I picked up the book Seveneves. (The following isn't really spoilers, because it is the premise of the book.) In it, the moon has broken into pieces, and the debris will eventually rain onto the Earth, raising the atmospheric temperature to hundreds of degrees, rending the entire planet profoundly uninhabitable. The characters calculate that there are two years remaining. This is of course a variation on the classic scenario of an asteroid headed toward earth. My reaction to this was -- well, to put it politely, something like, "Christ almighty! What an awful scenario! What a despondent and heart-rending situation to describe! How can anyone bear to read this story?" This isn't the first time I've contemplated the destruction of earth, but reading a hundred pages of fiction on it makes it feel more real. I feel sure that if I was in that world, the hyperbolic discounting would kick into overdrive, and I would burn everything I had to do something about that situation. I don't know that I would be very useful, or that it would be any particular duration of time before I burned out, but it just feels extremely clear that the thing to do is to clean up that spill, to put that fire out. It doesn't feel like there are other options. The only purpose of considering different actions is to figure out which one best fixes the crisis. As a reader of LessWrong you might be thinking, aren't we in that world already? Hasn't that been evident since the original arguments for existential risk? And like, yeah, kinda, except for the part about hyperbolic discounting. It needs to be really in my face before it's like Seveneves, and there has always been way too much fog obscuring the probabilities and the timeli...
Iniciámos a nossa aventura nos livros de Andrzej Sapkowski, o criador do celebrado "The Witcher". Acompanha-nos nesta caçada de monstros. Falámos também de: - Seveneves de Neal Stephenson - The Other Wind de Ursula K. Le Guin - Rama Revealed de Arthur C. Clarke
Concluímos o livro "Seveneves" de Neal Stephenson, um livro que nos levou numa aventura de sobrevivência da espécie e civilização humana. Falámos de: - Magi vol.17 de Shinobu Ohtaka - The Other Wind de Ursula K. LeGuin - Seveneves de Neal Stephenson - O Ultimo Desejo de Andrzej Sapkowski
Eve Parker Finley - Icarus feat. Ah-mer-ah-su Sneaky Sound System - Lost in the Future Laura Marling & Johnny Flynn - The Water Barrie - Geology United Future Organization (UFO) - My Foolish Dream Red - La Moneda Cléa's book - Green Grass Running Water by Thomas King Neil's book - A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and also A World Undone by G. J. Meyer and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson Jamie's book - Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World by Joshua Freeman Suuns - Trilogy Susana Baca - Maria Lando The Halluci Nation ft. Yasiin Bey, Narcy, and Black bear - R.E.D. Lorde - Mata Kohore (Stoned at the Nail Salon) Yusef Lateef - Love Song From Spartacus Sylvan Esso - Die Young
Acompanha-nos neste livro "Seveneves" de Neal Stephenson onde a humanidade têm de responder à destruição inesperada da Lua e respectivos bocados. Uma aventura espacial com tons contemporâneos que promete! Falou-se ainda de: - Tales from Earthsea de Ursula K. LeGuin - Seveneves de Neal Stephenson - The Calculating Stars de Mary Robinette Korwal
This wee we talk about what properties we'd love to become a TV Series!
Bestselling author Neal Stephenson is known for delivering novels with poignant and incisive reflections on our present and future. He's also no stranger to the Town Hall stage and has joined us in the past to discuss his novel Fall and collaborative work with Nicole Galland, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., among others. Stephenson returned to the Town Hall stage to discuss his newest thriller, Termination Shock. In his speculative vision of the not-too-distant future, sea levels are rising, heatwaves and global flooding endure, and deadly pandemics threaten humanity. When the rest of the world continues to respond with inaction, a billionaire hatches a plan that will quickly throw climate change into reverse — but action at such a grand scale is anything but simple. There are consequences of global proportion, and some of them might even be worse than climate change itself. Stephenson's discussion invited audiences to consider questions that can extend far beyond fiction and resonate with us in the present day: Will the world ever be able to take urgent action on climate change? What is the role of technology in this fight? Is there a role for motivated billionaires? What if the answers to these questions are highly unconventional? Stephenson invited us to expand our minds, and ask. Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He is also the coauthor, with Nicole Galland, of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Buy the Book: Termination Shock: A Novel (Hardcover) from Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.
Josh is keeping a seat open for Conor but in the meantime Ryan Haupt is here to talk about this week's comics, and by Crom do they talk about them! Running Time: 01:13:37 Pick of the Week: 00:02:58 - King Conan #2 Comics: 00:13:31 - Daredevil: Woman Without Fear #1 00:18:47 - Rain #1 00:25:23 - Robin & Batman #3 00:36:09 - Justice League vs. The Legion of Superheroes #1 00:38:31 - Fantastic Found #684 00:41:42 - The Thing #3 Star Wars Corner: 00:44:47 - Star Wars #20 Patron Pick: 00:50:12 - Savage Avengers #28 Patron Thanks: 00:57:16 - Divi Vilanui 00:58:25 - Trevor Williams Listener Mail: 01:00:10 - Blake C. from Chicago wants to know if we've ever had to stop consuming certain media to preserve our mental health after getting not being able to handle Seveneves at the start of the pandemic. Brought To You By: • iFanboy Patrons - Become one today for as little as $3/month! Or make a one time donation of any amount! • iFanboy T-Shirts and Merch - Show your iFanboy pride with a t-shirt or other great merchandise on Threadless! We've got eleven designs! Music: "Little King" Robbie Fulks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, we went interstellar with our intercontinental ballistic missiles to talk about nuclear weapons in two science fiction shows: The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica. How are nuclear weapons used as weapons (and themes) in these two stories? What would the impact of a nuclear weapon actually be against a space ship? When are we getting our Gaius Baltar and Paolo Cortázar buddy comedy? Tim Westmyer (@NuclearPodcast) and special guest Stefan Sasse (@StefanSasse), host of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast, answer these questions and more. Before we get in our crash couches and jump the ship, we recommend: -John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor, 1974 -Marco Fey, et al., The nuclear taboo, Battlestar Galactica, and the real world: Illustrations from a science-fiction universe, Security Dialogue 47 no. 4, 2016 - Neal Stephenson, Seveneves, 2015 -The Foundation (Apple TV) -Raised by Wolves (Apple TV) Check out our website, SuperCriticalPodcast.com, for more resources and related items. We aim to have at least one new episode every month. Let us know what you think about the podcast and any ideas you may have about future episodes and guests by reaching out at on Twitter @NuclearPodcast, GooglePlay, Spotify, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Stitcher Radio, Facebook, SuperCriticalPodcast@gmail.com, and YouTube. Enjoy!
In this introductory episode, Jeff and Bryan reminisce over how they met and how each discovered The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. They reveal some of their fandoms and mention some other works by other authors they feel are worth reading. Then, finally, they talk about the name of the podcast, what it means to them, and what they hope to accomplish with this podcast.Here is a list of the books we felt were worth reading and mentioned in this episode...Neal Stephenson “Cryptonomicon” (1999) & “Seveneves” (2015)Stephen R Donaldson “Lord Foul's Bane” The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (1977)Piers Athony “A Spell for Chameleon” Xanth, Book 1 (1977)Daniel Quinn “Ishmael” (1992)Robert A. Heinlein “Stranger in a Strange Land” (1961)Mary Doria Russell “The Sparrow” (1996)Paul Theroux “Millroy the Magician” (1993)Barbara Kingsolver “Prodigal Summer” (2000)Clifford Simak “Shakespeare's Planet” (1976) & “The Werewolf Principle” (1967)Come back the first Thursday of next month for Episode 02...Oh, It'll Hurt, Buddy!Primary Phase vs The LP - Part 1This has been a Froods for Thought production.
We are talking today about Arthur C. Clarke's 14th novel, The Fountains Of Paradise. Co-host: Mallory Other science fiction discussed: Black box, Ad Astra, Seveneves, Childhood's End
Warum fangen wir mit Planet der Affen, das Örtliche und Rosamunde Pilcher an? Es gibt dazu tiefgründigere Aspekte… naja, zumindest beim Planet der Affen. Mehr soll hier gar nicht gesagt werden. Spannender sind die Hauptthemen der Episode: 1) Sind sind die Grünen wählbar? 2) „Kann man theoretisch mit „Warp“ Geschwindigkeit reisen. Dominic sollte auswählen, Dirk stürzt sich und uns aber letztlich in beide Themen. Uhh - ob er da nicht zu ambitioniert war? Leicht erklärt ist Warp Speed nicht gerade. Könnte The German Autobahn vielleicht doch ein generelles Tempolimit vertragen? Die Frage kann man mal mitnehmen, genau wie ein paar weitere Denkanstösse aus dem Wahlprogramm der Grünen. Das Wahlprogramm und Seveneves von Neal Stephenson kümmern sich um die Zukunft. Unser Tipp der Woche, bringt uns die Geschichte von Sophie Scholl als eine moderne und zeigerechte Inszenierung im Gewand eines Instagram Profils näher. Passt zu Dominic, der sich dazu bekennt, ein Second Screener zu sein. Deswegen hat er mitbekommen, was im Rhein entdeckt wurde… und das ist schon der Hammer. So wie die verachtenswerte, wenn auch exzellent betriebene Propaganda von Tucker Carlson und den Fox News Blondinen. Deren Manipulationsversuche am Amerikanischen Volk sind schon perfide. Und teils erfolgreich, leider. Neugierig geworden? Abonniert uns unter: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/ist-doch-wurscht-wie-der-podcast-heisst/id1500941965 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2jORFqugpKOkmyL8EnZK6r?si=vQ_hvXKwQbehIdiwez03Dw Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHug0m47v3pz67oMLWUu7aqkIGb5DCAmV #istdochwurschtwiederpodcastheisst #produktivität #biohacking #biohack #corona #coronavirus #biotech #mainz #chicago #filme #serien #bücher #podcastlife #podcasting #podcaster #applepodcasts #podcastmovement #podcastjunkie #aufwärts #trevornoah #forallmankind #ingenuity #tatort #cdu #diegrünen # # ##bombshell #warp #startrek #sophiescholl Empfehlungen: Bomb Shell: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6394270/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 In the Shadow of the Moon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8110640/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Neal Stephenson - Seveneves: http://www.nealstephenson.com/seveneves.html Marques Brownlee - Retrotech - Teleportation: https://youtu.be/tEmLMCPK8OE Star Wars Bad Batch: https://youtu.be/GK5d2VLvpKA Sophie Scholl auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ichbinsophiescholl/?hl=de https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/instagram-sophie-scholl-101.html
Dan has the number one podcast rant of all time this week (3:45 to skip). A lot of learning about space stuff in this book so hope y’all are ready for the pop quiz! Credit is finally given where it is due but no forgiveness is forthcoming. Luke and Dan fix this wack society; it turns out two idiots and an hour of joking around solves a lot of problems so maybe take a little more time to make some key decisions. Dan pitches a new product and Luke takes training montages to the next level. Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.The post Seveneves: Part Three first appeared on Don't call it a book club..
Dan has the number one podcast rant of all time this week (3:45 to skip). A lot of learning about space stuff in this book so hope y'all are ready for the pop quiz! Credit is finally given where it is due but no forgiveness is forthcoming. Luke and Dan fix this wack society; it turns out two idiots and an hour of joking around solves a lot of problems so maybe take a little more time to make some key decisions. Dan pitches a new product and Luke takes training montages to the next level.Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.
We’re once again warming up with TV about high school, too much cringe! (8:30 to skip). Oh look, your supervisor is trying to turn your workplace into a military dictatorship. It happens. But not always a good idea! And yeah, we know why you’re here and we’re just as angry about Julia as you are. We’ll rant about her so you don’t have to. Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.The post Seveneves: Part Two first appeared on Don't call it a book club..
We're once again warming up with TV about high school, too much cringe! (8:30 to skip). Oh look, your supervisor is trying to turn your workplace into a military dictatorship. It happens. But not always a good idea! And yeah, we know why you're here and we're just as angry about Julia as you are. We'll rant about her so you don't have to.Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 7, 2021 is: brusque • BRUSK • adjective 1 : markedly short and abrupt 2 : blunt in manner or speech often to the point of ungracious harshness Examples: "'Where are you getting all this?' Dinah asked, drawing startled or disapproving glances from a few who worried that she was being too brusque with the boss. 'It's only been, what, four hours?'" — Neal Stephenson, Seveneves, 2015 "Archaeologists look down on him because of his working-class background, and his brusque manner hasn't won him many friends. He doesn't argue with those he disagrees with; he just walks away." — Dan Lybarger, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 19 Feb. 2021 Did you know? We borrowed brusque from French in the 1600s. The French, in turn, had borrowed it from Italian, where it was spelled brusco and meant "tart." And the Italian term came from bruscus, the Medieval Latin name for butcher's-broom, a shrub whose bristly leaf-like twigs have long been used for making brooms. English speakers initially used brusque to refer to a tartness in wine, but the word soon came to denote a harsh and stiff manner, which is just what you might expect of a word bristling with associations to stiff, scratchy brooms.
"Bees use Tools?" Jon wonders. "I'm tired of driving." Eric muses. LoRa attacks outlined and the Mystery of the Eagles is solved. Apple patches, PHP Hacks and Ubiquity Oopsies, oh my! Classic video game inception and there's something alien at the core of the Earth. 0:00 - Intro 6:38 - Bees with Tools? 16:35 - LoRaWAN Attacks 22:27 - Eagle Mystery Solved! 24:42 - Another Apple Patch 28:08 - PHP Hack 33:17 - Ubiquity Oops 41:03 - Doom Snake 43:32 - Alien World at the Earth's Core 47:22 - Seveneves
Luke and Dan finally weigh in on the Potato Head controversy. Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.The post Seveneves: Part One first appeared on Don't call it a book club..
Luke and Dan finally weigh in on the Potato Head controversy.Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.
Any First Law conversation is amiss without some good Glokta analysis, buddy you know there are other jobs, right? Big shoutout to Joe for explaining the Shanka’s eating habits, but now we gotta dig deeper to figure out where my microbes at. Colonel West has some strange preferences, and building a boat at the end of the world seems too easy. Next week we’re starting Seveneves by Neal Stephenson! Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.The post Before They Are Hanged: Part Three first appeared on Don't call it a book club..
Any First Law conversation is amiss without some good Glokta analysis, buddy you know there are other jobs, right? Big shoutout to Joe for explaining the Shanka's eating habits, but now we gotta dig deeper to figure out where my microbes at. Colonel West has some strange preferences, and building a boat at the end of the world seems too easy.Next week we're starting Seveneves by Neal Stephenson!Special thanks to VOLO for the intro and outro music.
Here is our review of Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson. If you enjoy science fiction and well thought out plots then you will enjoy this!
Branan shares his adventures in Greece, he and Anson share what they're reading and listening to this autumn season, and they catch up with Leon "The Martini Samurai" Ingulsrud. If you'd like to learn more about the Greek island of Delos, there are many resources on line including this article and the Delos museum website. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's book BEHAVE helps us understand why and how we do the things we do. Buy it here. Take a look at this video of Dr. Sapolsky discussing his book on Book TV here. Oprah Winfrey's interview with Malcolm Gladwell can be found here. You can buy Neal Stephenson's Seveneves here, and you can also find it on audible. The Hmongumentary Podcast can be found here. Hmongumentary is a play on the word “Hmong” and the word “documentary.” The Hmong people have a history of resilience and adapting to the larger, dominant culture. But what does this evolution actually look like? What gets compromised and what is gained in the process? This podcast explores what it means to be part of the Hmong community whether you live in it or not; whether you're Hmong or not. Hmong people do not have a country and are scattered across the globe so what's keeping us together? Scott Carrier's "Home of the Brave" podcast can be found here. DE STAAT - Torre Florim is the ambitious young man behind DE STAAT, bringing innovation and a much-needed sense of fun to the business of making popular music. This first video caught the world's attention for the strong and creepy visuals and won many music video awards. Their next album featured the song PEP TALK, about breaking up. The music video for it is one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen and includes a sly inside joke referencing the WITCHDOCTOR video.
Gabrielle Blocher, Grace Dobush, and Andrew Garth discuss Neal Stephenson's epic sci-fi novel Seveneves
(NSFW!) PacRim2 gets Boyega. Supergirl v Superman. Doc Savage. Buckaroo Banzai, Mallrats, & Scarlet coming to TV. JLDark animated, Vixen not. Seveneves. Mandrake. Bev is back w/Howard. Dolph/Cable. Arnold. Predator. Iron Man 3 had a female villain? Food Stupid. Jungle Book. Beetlejuice 2. Stay till the end Jimmy reviews Popstar & Finding Dory AND interviews … Continue reading "0421 – New Episode: Dipped in Flock"
(NSFW!) PacRim2 gets Boyega. Supergirl v Superman. Doc Savage. Buckaroo Banzai, Mallrats, & Scarlet coming to TV. JLDark animated, Vixen not. Seveneves. Mandrake. Bev is back w/Howard. Dolph/Cable. Arnold. Predator. Iron Man 3 had a female villain? Food Stupid. Jungle Book. Beetlejuice 2. Stay till the end Jimmy reviews Popstar & Finding Dory AND interviews … Continue reading "0421 – New Episode: Dipped in Flock"
This week, we're coming up roses as we review Supergiant's 2011 double-A (?) indie darling, Bastion. This game has been around forever, and it has made its way onto so many platforms, it's almost difficult to keep track - but it began life as a 360 indie game by a group of seven devs mostly of ex-Westwood/EA LA fame. Needless to say, there isn't much resemblance to the days of Kane & Co., but what remains is a shining gem of gorgeous graphics and a fun brawler, though we wish it was a bit less obscure and a bit more RPG-ey (some of us, anyway).The key thing this podcast might help you with, oh previous player of Bastion, is a far more comprehensive understanding of the story, which our friend Matt knows a suspicious amount about. Listen up!Also featured are extensive recommendations, some of them strange, based on what we feel are similar or precursory games to Supergiant's first. And somehow, zero spoilers for Transistor!Relevant links!Bastion Original Soundtrack via Darren Korb on BandcampAutomodellista: racing made artsy (and mildly age-resistant) [Editor's note: vexels and oldschool DangeRuss on dA are probably inspired by this, wish I had known more about it]Wiki: Zia is an 'unseen character'Neal Stephenson's Seveneves is a book y'all should read. Because it rocks.BT's "Road Trip" (or, ingame Tiger Woods 2006, "Convergence") sounds awful familiar...
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