My brain still refuses to believe that this is a real thing that was actually made, instead of a prop from a Snow Crash movie
So, who else wants to watch gladiatorial combat between drones?
Assume a wide open bubble of transparent bulletproof whatever, filled with obstacles suitable for each individual match, surrounded by audience seats like a stadion and populated by cheap camera drones (because collateral damage) and not-so-cheap armored camera pylons, tracking interesting events and streaming them to the audience which can follow things with their naked eyes and devices alike. Drones operated either with remote control or their independent AI, operators in their own extra-armored bubbles at the opposite ends of the stage, surrounded by screens and whatever they wish. Almost everything is permitted within the bubble; from jamming to hacking to the most devious weapons and countermeasures.
Sounds like fun! I would add that style matters a lot, too. I notice many robot fighting tournaments go for a cheap 90s sci fi look. It’s like the show people need to inform everyone that yes, two or more machines are fighting. That doesn’t seem right to me. Change up the scenery! I want a Cthulhu arena with motion-activated fountains, or a rock garden arranged as a maze into which a drone could dive.
YES
If traditional robot fighting is sparring in a garage, let this be big budget spectator sports.
If traditional robot fighting is a platformer from the early 90′s, let this be …ummm okay I don’t really know any of the latest video games that well and my standard go-to examples of Portal and Mirror’s Edge aren’t exactly what I’m looking for but let’s say if there was an Eclipse Phase videogame (there should be) let this be that one.
If traditional robot fighting is a vhs home video of children pretend-swordfighting with sticks, let this be the your favorite action movie.
If traditional robot fighting is pbem Civilization II, let this be the e-sports world series.
I approve of this, and the suggestion that Eclipse Phase be a video game.
I am extremely disappointed that Eclipse Phase hasn’t been made into an MMOFPS/RPG yet because it’s basically the perfect setting for one. Plenty of different factions and origins (read: can sell people extra character slots), politics, conspiracies, exoplanets for exploration, savepoints justified in-universe, etc.
On the other hand I’m not because then I’d be tempted to get back into video games.
I’m against criticising fanfic for being problematic because I’ve so rarely seen it done well, and so often seen it be destructive to young writers and to communities and to healthy conversation, that it’s probably better to just say “don’t like it, don’t read it”.
But I’m amazed that no one who is enthusiastic about criticising problematic fanfic says anything about what is objectively the most problematic fanfic, which is “character A is a sex worker and character B saves him and then he quits sex work and they fall in love” fics. Like, that’s perpetuating an actually really harmful message to an audience that actually mostly doesn’t know better, the people writing it often pretty much believe in the message as presented and basically never problematize it (also, none of them use the phrase ‘sex worker’), the characters are mostly morose caricatures who lament how they “fell so far” as to be “selling their body”, and there are disappointingly few subversions in which the sex worker is not, in fact, miserable and abused or brainwashed or enslaved (or in which they want to stay in sex work after Falling in Love.)
ending state violence against people involved in sex work (by legalizing it) is really important. stopping the hot fanfic in which the narratives that serve that state violence are used to fuel plot is less so. but I still find it unpleasant to run across, and it’d be cool if writers would throw in a scene that reflects the actual biggest source of violence and risk in the industry: the police.
Me: Is there anything you believe the US government does well?
@theunitofcaring: *looks at the roof and contemplates for about half a minute*
Me: …The longer the pause, the more libertarian the person.
How does it count if one can immediately think of a list but it’s really really short? Like, if someone asked me about Finland I’d be like:
Giving each new baby a cardboard box full of stuff. Stuff is taken out of the box and given to the baby, the box is filled with sleeping baby.
Holding cops responsible for their firearm use. They may be absolute barbarians with their batons and “projectile launchers” (have I mentioned finnish cops use weapons that are too dangerous for US cops?) but they don’t shoot people with gun-guns.
Being really really soft on crime.
Giving all children free school lunches.
(crickets chirping)
I like roads.
I don’t. Roads are an unearned subsidy to car users, who then proceed to pass the costs on to everyone else, such as a promethea who spends every spring choking from the dust traffic causes around here, without being compensated for it adequately by those who benefit from roads.
Furthermore, the non-toll non-internalizing-externalities nature of most roads means that public transport can’t compete fairly on the market and needs to be similarly subsidized, only in a more obvious way, which means that public transport is usually comparably underfunded.
Also, the oversupply of roads along with bad city planning policies damages the fabric of society by making it artificially favorable to live in otherwise unaccessible places.
I’m not saying that privatizing all the roads would be the perfect solution because the system as it is would basically just be a windfall to rentseekers, but making the users of the roads pay for the harms, instead of the people living near them, would be a damn fine start. The existing road infrastructure could perhaps be treated as a natural resource like aquifers and used to extract monopoly rents from users, which are then shared to all the people living in the area. Or something. But subsidizing drivers is definitely a really bad approach, so naturally that’s the one the government does.
My brain still refuses to believe that this is a real thing that was actually made, instead of a prop from a Snow Crash movie
So, who else wants to watch gladiatorial combat between drones?
Assume a wide open bubble of transparent bulletproof whatever, filled with obstacles suitable for each individual match, surrounded by audience seats like a stadion and populated by cheap camera drones (because collateral damage) and not-so-cheap armored camera pylons, tracking interesting events and streaming them to the audience which can follow things with their naked eyes and devices alike. Drones operated either with remote control or their independent AI, operators in their own extra-armored bubbles at the opposite ends of the stage, surrounded by screens and whatever they wish. Almost everything is permitted within the bubble; from jamming to hacking to the most devious weapons and countermeasures.
Sounds like fun! I would add that style matters a lot, too. I notice many robot fighting tournaments go for a cheap 90s sci fi look. It’s like the show people need to inform everyone that yes, two or more machines are fighting. That doesn’t seem right to me. Change up the scenery! I want a Cthulhu arena with motion-activated fountains, or a rock garden arranged as a maze into which a drone could dive.
YES
If traditional robot fighting is sparring in a garage, let this be big budget spectator sports.
If traditional robot fighting is a platformer from the early 90′s, let this be …ummm okay I don’t really know any of the latest video games that well and my standard go-to examples of Portal and Mirror’s Edge aren’t exactly what I’m looking for but let’s say if there was an Eclipse Phase videogame (there should be) let this be that one.
If traditional robot fighting is a vhs home video of children pretend-swordfighting with sticks, let this be the your favorite action movie.
If traditional robot fighting is pbem Civilization II, let this be the e-sports world series.
Anonymous asked: "picking a side in an actual ongoing battle" *thousand-yard stare while I have to remember once more that plenty of people actually believe that's literally a thing that's happening, that a literal Satan actually exists and goes around doing things and influencing people and is responsible for everything they don't like* well, thanks for that, I think I'm going to go for a walk now--
I always get frustrated when I see stuff like “men benefit from sexism”. Because, like… absolutely, most men are better off than they would be if they were women under sexism. But men are not in general better off than they would be if there were no sexism at all, except possibly under some narrow metrics like income. The “benefit from” framing implicitly reinforces the zero-sum eternal conflict model that makes oppression seem superficially attractive to begin with, and sets the privileged up with the unsustainable dichotomy of choosing what is right vs choosing what is good for them.
And, since I suspect this will come up: A world in which it would actually be in my interests to maintain some or all of the structure of oppression that currently exists is so different from our own that I’m wary of making any claims about what would be right, but as a first guess I expect I would happily and guiltlessly reinforce those structures and it would be right to do so. That world isn’t ours, though. (Except possibly with respect to speciesism, if that’s actually a thing).
Not sure I agree with you on that last part, but I find it weird that people choose to frame social justice as a zero sum game. If it’s zero sum, why shouldn’t I just do whatever’s in my best interests? I (theoretically) only care about taking actions that increase the amount of good in the world as a whole.
This is probably my biggest SJ “heresy”.
No, the world isn’t zero-sum, and recognizing this fact isn’t the same thing as always centering able-bodied neurotypical straight white cis men. Why are you so insistent on signaling “no we don’t care about them” so hard that you make it look like it is zero-sum. Why are you ‘splaining what the privileged groups "””actually””” want. How about instead of telling that no, they really should rationally desire to oppress you because ~group interests~ or whatever, you be like “okay good now start removing the things that hurt you as well as us”. You don’t need to give them cookies, just stop trying to turn this into a bullshit zero-sum game for ~purity signaling~. Okay fine I’ve got a plan. Let’s call it “promethea is deviously tricking the privileged people into acting against their gender interests”. Yes, that’s what it is. Definitely. They’ll soooo mistakenly believe they are so ~liberated~ in the postgender transhumanist morphological freedom utopia that they won’t even notice that they ”””really””” would prefer going back to the oppressive bullshit system because being a bit higher on the hill of flowing bullshit is so better than not having any hills or bullshit at all. And they’ll support us in constructing our utopia in which they will be terribly ~oppressed~ by ~not being able to oppress others~. No, I’m not sarcastic or questioning anyone’s life choices or anything what makes you think that.
Me: Is there anything you believe the US government does well?
@theunitofcaring: *looks at the roof and contemplates for about half a minute*
Me: …The longer the pause, the more libertarian the person.
How does it count if one can immediately think of a list but it’s really really short? Like, if someone asked me about Finland I’d be like:
Giving each new baby a cardboard box full of stuff. Stuff is taken out of the box and given to the baby, the box is filled with sleeping baby.
Holding cops responsible for their firearm use. They may be absolute barbarians with their batons and “projectile launchers” (have I mentioned finnish cops use weapons that are too dangerous for US cops?) but they don’t shoot people with gun-guns.
My brain still refuses to believe that this is a real thing that was actually made, instead of a prop from a Snow Crash movie
So, who else wants to watch gladiatorial combat between drones?
Assume a wide open bubble of transparent bulletproof whatever, filled with obstacles suitable for each individual match, surrounded by audience seats like a stadion and populated by cheap camera drones (because collateral damage) and not-so-cheap armored camera pylons, tracking interesting events and streaming them to the audience which can follow things with their naked eyes and devices alike. Drones operated either with remote control or their independent AI, operators in their own extra-armored bubbles at the opposite ends of the stage, surrounded by screens and whatever they wish. Almost everything is permitted within the bubble; from jamming to hacking to the most devious weapons and countermeasures.