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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Internet Guy: Where was the sci-fi future I was promised?

Me: Star Trek says we have massive riots in 2024 and a nuclear holocaust in 2053.

Internet Guy: What about Back to the Future II?

Me: We have videoconferencing, the Cubs won the World Series, and Biff became president.
Internet Guy: But where's my flying car?

Me: They exist, nobody uses them.

Internet Guy: Intelligent robots?

Me: Siri, look up "intelligent robots"

Internet Guy: How about the Matrix?

Me: Well we *might* be living in it already.
Internet Guy: But I want to fly on a starship!

Me: Have you ever smelled the air on a submarine?

Internet Guy: How about personality upload?

Me: For that, you need a personality...
Internet Guy: Oh come on, aren't *you* disappointed that we didn't get the sci-fi future?

Me: You mean the cyberpunk dystopia where drones hunt humans down, huge techno-corporations control everything, and government AIs track your every move?

(end)
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More from @Noahpinion see all

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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
People with top credit scores are still buying houses. Other people, not so much.
newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/m…
Millennial homeownership is lower than Xer and Boomer homeownership was at the same age.
urban.org/sites/default/…
Homeownership is down for young people of all racial and ethnic groups.
urban.org/sites/default/…
Read 3 tweets
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
Today's @bopinion is about Japan.

A new imperial period, the Reiwa period, is beginning. Where is Japan headed in this new era? And where does it need to go?

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
First let's talk a little bit about the Heisei period - the 30-year era that will end in a couple of weeks.

The Heisei period began with a lost decade

noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/japan-…
During the 90s, Japan's economy stagnated, but its culture and international prestige flourished.

theatlantic.com/entertainment/…
Read 23 tweets
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
Karl Polanyi on the signs of approaching fascism:
economicsociology.org/2017/01/22/kar…
"irrationalistic philosophies"

check

arstechnica.com/science/2019/0…
"racialist esthetics"

...maybe check?
Read 8 tweets

Related threads

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Aum Shinrikyo VEVO 2020 (#CostcoGang)
@nezumi_ningen
Hideo Murai

Born: 12/5/1958
Died: 4/23/1995
Stage: Seitaishi
Holy Name: Manjushri Mitra
Position: Minister of Science and Technology, Aum Shinrikyo #2
When Murai was a little boy he loved animals. He raised birds and tropical fish with his family. He wanted to be a zookeeper.

When one of the tropical fish died he cried for days.

When he was 12 he watched a friend's brother commit suicide.

He died a religious extremist.
The little boy who loved animals an wanted to be a zookeeper was very intelligent and VERY shy. Even going to the pool made him shake.

He was born in 1958. He loved Star Trek. He identified with Spock.

He excelled in school. He was gentle and kind.

Even so, he was very lonely.
Read 28 tweets
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Garry Kasparov
@Kasparov63
Sci-fi is predictive mostly in how it represents attitudes toward tech & society that can be self-fulfilling. If we irrationally fear a tech dystopia we become cautious when ambition is required for growth.
When the predominant themes in sci-fi were "naive" optimism about humans using tech to solve problems, we were very ambitious in real life as well, in exploration & research that created the modern digital world.
The turn toward dystopian sci-fi & tech-pessimism, in hand with the 70s environmental movement, mirrored our turn away from space, from exploration that inspired us all--and also produced so much essential tech & growth.
Read 3 tweets
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Silvia Moreno-Garcia
@silviamg
Oh, and the but poor minority women die giving birth so Padme is a symbol for that. Funny how SFF keeps giving us white, upper class people to 'symbolize' different plights like discrimination (oh no she's a mutant) which allows them to never bring say a black person on screen.
And it's not that you can't have a sci Fi future (yeah, I know Star Wars is in a galaxy far far away but if we call it fantasy you're all going to yell about that) where rich women don't have birth control and stuff. But you gotta bake it into the story a bit.
And it's not that oh no this one issue of X-Men will run lives, is more that it both adds up and we don't notice it so then we incorporate it into new stuff and don't even wonder hey, why do we have this and that trope, etc.
Read 4 tweets
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Emily Suvada is bad at hiatus
@emilysuvada
Plotting the end of TMC#3 and it's time for a craft thread! A lot of people have asked how I write books that are hard to put down. The answer is a lot, a lot, a LOT of preparation. I create extensive spreadsheets for each book, and I couldn't work without them.
IMO, there are two key elements needed to make a story addictive. First, it has to be immersive. That means the world feels real, fleshed-out, and interesting. This could be cool a sci-fi future, an enchanting fantasy world, or a nice house in a quirky town. This part is HARD.
If the world isn't immersive, the reader's mind will wander. You need to create a world they want to see more of and will slip into. This is why castles and sweet apartments and loot-able apocalypse towns are so popular. We *want* to stay there and keep reading.
Read 12 tweets
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Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
Friends, we need to talk about The Future. It is no longer acceptable to complain about not having jetpacks and flying cars. Old TV shows have created a generation of people doing sci-fi-future envy wrong. Thread begins here.
JETPACKS exist. They’ve been around for decades. No one uses them because they are expensive, inefficient, extremely loud, and fantastically dangerous. Want to get somewhere fast? In many cities you can now walk down the street and rent an electric scooter with your phone. Enjoy.
FLYING CARS are a terrible idea. Traffic is chaotic enough in two dimensions. Being in an ordinary car is more likely to kill you than almost anything else you do. And you wanna put *rockets* on that thing?? Go get a helicopter license and stay away from the roads.
Read 15 tweets
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ewan morrison
@MrEwanMorrison
Star Wars was painted. Almost impossible to believe that most of the epic widescreen sci-fi images in the first 3 Star Wars films were done by 3 "Matte painting" artists. These are fake sets made with plexiglass and oil paint. Even the 100s of storm troopers were painted.
Spoiler: Those epic images in the first 3 Star Wars films were hand-painted! Back then before CGI matte paintings were used. Matte paintings typically depict landscapes painted onto glass using oil, acrylics, or pastels, and are either filmed through or added in post production
Pt.3. More of those Star Wars Matte paintings, that I am reliably informed were painted on shower doors - because they were glass and the right dimensions for widescreen. Matte paintings create "the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location."
Read 7 tweets

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