Better hurry, though, since culture might change and suddenly domesticated animals like cows are recognized as people with rights and 20th century burger-eating culture becomes taboo.
Drive out enough librarians and eventually youʼll find yourself needing to drive 4 hours to get a tool pulled or a melanoma whacked off since good dentists and doctors usually want decent schools with libraries for their kids.
Just, buy a new iPhone and Mac every two years.
Termux, rsync and SSH.
Worked okay until I got overzealous and killed my battery from leaving Termux on for convenience.
The USB Type-C is useful for sharing files offline between smartphones while the USB Type-A is useful when you want to backup files to a PC at some point.
We could probably spin it around and give a tiny tax break for those who vote.
Now you’re talking!
Make tax refunds and all tax write-offs contingent on proving you voted. >:D
and then ends it, always leaving you wanting more
After several years of reading, I have realized that most of his books fall into the “Status Quo” genre, much like Marvel movies in which superheroes are cops that work to prevent relatable characters or governments from falling too out of sync with reality. The second their dystopian speculations start to imagine a society better off (due to redistribution of concentrated power or wealth), they immediately end.
Diamond Age (1994): corporations control society by controlling the centralized Feeds that supply matter compilers, justifying their monopoly by saying they keep society stable. MC publishes blueprints for compiling your own Feed. Story ends.
Anathem (2008): The government executes most scientists en masse and imprisons most survivors because technology was too disruptive 3000 years ago. A new global disaster forces the release of the scientists so they can wield ancient technology to solve the crisis. Story ends.
Cryptonomicon (1999) / The Great Simoleon Caper (1994): Some cryptographers think Bitcoin is a good idea even if it might topple governments. They publish it. Story ends.
Termination Shock (2021): Climate change can be solved by billionaires by getting governments addicted to shooting sulfur into the atmosphere. The story ends basically as soon as the operation begins.
Seveneves (2015): The moon blows up, forcing a crash course construction of a modern Noah's Ark in the form of a fleet of spaceships in low Earth orbit. Eccentric billionaires sacrifice themselves to make the project work to save seven genius women who rebuild society with eugenics and a racial caste system. They discover some pre-disaster survivors whose culture is incompatible with the new society. Talks begin for reïntegration. Story ends.
Fall (2019): People upload and emulate their brains into datacenter computers. The first rich people to upload themselves gain an enormous first mover advantage in the digital afterlife and control the minds of newcomers whose surviving families pay ludicrous amounts of money to keep the dead billionaire-controlled Bitworld running. The system keeps running smoothly until the admin with the credentials to shut everything down dies, is uploaded, defeats the incumbent dead billionaire, thus making the world more equitable. Story ends.
The closest thing to an exception I can find is Atmosphæra Incognita (2014; part of Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future), in which a billionaire fights environmental regulations and NIMBY pushback to build a 20-kilometer steel tower to reduce space launch costs by acting as scaffolding for a mass driver. Although the story portrays most people as against the construction of such an audacious structure, and although the main beneficiaries are corporations wealthy enough to purchase space on the tower to install equipment, if you weigh your definition of “society” towards billionaires and their company org charts, then the story is about breaking the Status Quo (of NIMBY California landowners).
Expected behavior: The file is not composed of null bytes.
Actual behavior; The file is composed entirely of null bytes.
I agree, but Earth's solarpunk phase doesn't start for another few millennia. We're still in the era where factory farms still exist.
Damn. Now I want a solarpunk isekai.
Recommendation: I just finished The Terraformers (2023) which basically has all the bullet points. It opens with a rich kid being executed by a forest ranger for LARPing a carbon negative campsite on a private planet to eat some skewed rabbit. Wealth inequality is still an issue, but technology is crazy; people figured out Earth animals were people the whole time, and baseline Homo sapiens are treated as animals if commercial interests are not restrained by government. I would be a miserable monster living in that arguably better future simply because of my upbringing: I love me a good burger and feel squeamish about people being born from bioprinters. It really humbled me, making me realize the current status quo must change if we want to improve society for everyone; a typical Japanese isekai MC would be a complete fish out of water.
So, you're telling me my plan to measure atmospheric oxygen isotope trends over geologic time by grinding up sharks is bust?