Bull, and I cannot emphasize this enough, shit. Everyone is not a little bit bigoted. That’s something bigots tell themselves when rationalizing their own prejudices. You should probably take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re the problem.
“Progressive” describes a position, not a person. A person can be many things. A person can hold contradictory viewpoints, and fully believe two incompatible thoughts at the same time. It’s tragically naive to assume that people are rational or consistent.
Can a person think they are progressive and also be a bigot? Of course a person can. Everybody is the hero in their own story.
There are thick, uncrossable lines, and there are a lot of people who don’t mind crossing them. You cannot compromise with a bigot. You cannot find common ground with a person who would subjugate you, or someone who sees you as less than human.
We can have disagreements about many political issues, but when you are standing next to pedophiles, rapists, fascists, and bigots, you shouldn’t be surprised to be called a Nazi.
So the question becomes, what is the test of “purity”?
Oh yeah, that’s a point I hadn’t considered.
Is fiverr still a thing? I had luck there years ago, but I don’t know if it is still around and legitimate.
Sure, it’s fiction, and Superman’s powers and limitations are whatever the plot demands.
But if he could move that fast, and he was in a real major city with real people and real problems, then he would be saving people nonstop. Because he could. If he’s faster than light, he could go save everyone without anyone noticing he left the room (setting aside physics, of course). But he’d never be able to stop, and he would never run out of people to save.
And none of it would be supervillains and giant robots or space lasers.
But then, applying any sort of real world rationality to Superman never ends well.
He has super hearing and super speed, and can hear everything across the city. In NYC, an approximate analog of Metropolis, there are over 37,000 car accidents with major injuries or fatalities every year. That’s 100 car accidents each day, every day, just car accidents. If he were to actually try to save everyone he could, he would never have any time for anything else, not even sleep. It’s one thing to go take a sudden bathroom break when Lois is dangling from the ledge on the roof of a building. It’s something else to leave the room every 15 minutes of every hour because people can’t stop texting while driving.
What the chicken fried fuck are you talking about?
Fridging is a form of reductionist misogyny. It’s not just that somebody died, it’s that a woman existed only to die in a brutal fashion.
Yeah but that’s because many human cells are really big.
Fiction also usually includes a flashback to see how horrific it was, and then it cuts back to the person telling the story, as though they just finished describing everything that happened. In reality, nobody can ever describe a scene in such detail, and while you are reliving the moment, everyone else just hears you say what happened.
Bacteria constitute 56% of the cells in your body. You’re more bacteria than human.
I think that’s the AI function that would be most valuable to me. Just have an assistant on my phone building a catalog of resources and tasks on my to do list and creating priority lists. “Can you help me remember where I left the miniature paints?” “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You haven’t finished spackling and painting that spot in the bathroom.”
Firmware patch notes: ADHD workaround. Temporary fix.
My personal mental illness is that I won’t be able to finish a project because I can’t find the tool or component I need that’s squirreled away in a bin, but I won’t look for it because that would mean a whole day of organizing my storage shit, and I won’t buy a new one because then what was the point of hoardingstoring the one I had for all this time.
We study animal communication a lot. We know when many different animals have a noise or communication for “human.” Bees have different dances to describe arbitrary locations, so they could also have a specific dance for “that jerk over there with the mesh helmet.”
Keep in mind the nature of fiction. It has an obligation to create friction and conflict. Intrigue is built into a fish-out-of-water story. Reality is far stranger, and far more complex. People and culture interact in imperceivable ways, and our influence on each other isn’t something we can predict. Nor is one type of culture drift good, or another bad. It isn’t better or worse in reality to have concetrated pockets of similar-thinking communities. In fiction, it is narratively expedient.
In project management, we call it “scope creep.” Day one, the job is to use your newfound powers for good. Maybe stop a mugging. Day two, catch a bad guy. Day 3, try to balance life and your secret identity while foiling a bank heist. Day 200, you’re negotiating with an interdimensional cosmic deity for the survival of the Universe by demonstrating feats of strength and fortitude.
Did Einstein actually say that? Even if he did, he wasn’t a psychologist. Plus, scientists recreate experiments all the time, literally doing as close to the same thing as possible and often getting different results.
Looks neat. I’m a comic book fan, so I’ll probably pick it up eventually, if it ever goes on sale. Or not, if it sucks.
I don’t think it’s helpful to think in terms of left and right. That presumes that each side is roughly a mirror analogue of the other.
Think in terms of forward and backward. Will your ideas and political leanings push society forward? Will you be making the world better than you found it? Or are you trying to resist change, fighting against progress because the status quo, or the recent past, benefits you in some way?