seeking_perhaps [he/him]

Lmk if anyone figures out wtf is going on in Asteroid City

Think its hilarious that Argentina is all messed up (does it exist?) in this one lol

Depending on what you consider old, I liked Brazil and Silent Running when I watched them recently.

I am so sick of the dream sequence scenes. They just aren’t intriguing at all and waste so much of the runtime.

writing 07/13/24 as we speak

almost caused a panic attack for myself by breathing manually this week

I can say for a fact that some of them do, but it’s definitely a lower percentage of the total when compared to average working class folk that support socialism.

I try not to be that guy, but I have a lot of friends like this (will literally venmo charge you in the moment). It just makes the relationship feel transactional.

Interesting. I’ll have to give it a try!

I thought it was solid. I agree with some of the criticisms about the acting and lack of mystery/intrigue, but you can blame the book for that. I think the characters had to be split up because IIRC there is a lot of internal thinking and strategy that happens in the book that works better as dialogue in a TV show. Overall, the more interesting ideas and scenes come the further off the rails the trilogy goes, so I’m glad they got through a lot of the early wallfacer stuff in this first season.

I love a slow burn but 3BP (the book) isn’t a slow burn. Would be odd to make a TV show version that is.

no I’m being completely serious. we’re talking about the place that builds Mars rovers, not weapons. unless just working for the US govt qualifies, in which case, sure.

agreed

i don’t see how working for JPL is “working for the MIC” in even the most generous of interpretations.

probably the hundreds of workers that just lost their jobs because our congress prioritizes weapons and “border security” over space exploration

You’re not getting paid $115k as an early career hire there for most roles. Have several friends there and, compared to the rest of the LA aersopace market, it’s probably a $10-20k cut.

As someone in the industry, you missed the forest for the trees. There’s a lot more to space exploration than just launch vehicle development. SpaceX isn’t going to be doing bespoke Mars rover missions anytime soon unless it has a profit motive. JPL offers a very unique product in these one-off science-driven missions that the private industry has yet to be able to replicate and may never have the incentive to do so. Further gutting JPL just means losing out on those missions, which offer valuable scientific returns to the world. JPL is the reason we have rovers driving and a helicopter flying on Mars, oribters around the gas giants, satellites in interstellar space. The list goes on.

This is nice in theory, but isn’t how knowledge transfer of this variety tends to happen in the aerospace industry. Many of those laid off have very specific expertise in niche areas of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Some of that is transferrable, but a lot is specific to things like Mars rovers and planetary science. Tearing those people away from JPL will result in the loss of a ton of institutional knowledge and much of it will not be applicable to the private sector and might just be lost all together.

I recently read Starship Troopers and oof was that painful. Just page after page of Heinlein frothing out the mouth about his ideal militarized society. Needed a big time palette cleanser after that one.

good luck with primer! better break out those timelines (spoilers): https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/blogs/the-projector/incredibly-detailed-primer-timeline-210027548.html