The Statue of Liberty USED to be one of its greatest symbols, nowadays its all about getting your panties in a bunch over some culture war bullshit with the other side of the aisle. Only difference is one side thinks they’re protecting ‘the American Dream’ (even though the fantasy they have in their heads never existed in the first place), and the other side (which has legitimately been marginalized for decades if not centuries) just wants the equality they’ve been promised since birth.

Regardless to all the above, we the American people have proven time and time and time and time again that we truly do not care about anyone other than ourselves and our immediate families, not even the rest of the country and certainly not anyone else in the world. If it means having to make any change from the status quo, the vast majority of voters will simply abstain and push the issue onto the next generation. God I’m fucking tired of living here

Yes

That’s an unfortunate codename in the modern day: STI

This reminds me of that one bit from Dark Knight Rises where its revealed that Bane and his crew (disguised as construction workers) have been pouring cement laced with explosives all over the extremely corrupt city of Gotham. I’m not saying anyone needs to go that far… maybe just one specific address or something haha lol jk… unless 👀

To be completely honest, I didn’t even hear about this movie at all until like 2 weeks ago and I just assumed they’d release it as a Disney+ exclusive or something. I even went to a movie theater like a month ago and I heard absolutely nothing about it. Anecdotally, this tells me their marketing team had no faith in their product, so why should anyone else?

Every person’s reality is warped in one way or another. Unrestricted internet access from a young age certainly can and does warp it differently than growing up without that option, yes. But the implication that it is somehow inherently, objectively worse in such a case, I disagree with. Still upvoting because its a funny meme, I just wanted to get that opinion off my chest

The Irish have never liked Cromwell, he led an invasion of the island that led to the deaths of anywhere from 15-25% of the island’s population:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland

Checkmate criminologists

Ohhh youuu

Fair enough. Cool name btw, I just got the pun

So the vampire bit is used in both, in book 1 the main character journeys with one and at the end of the story starts to think Earth has been taken over by vampires due to radio transmissions he’s receiving on his long voyage back home. Book 2 begins with a prologue of a group of vampires breaking out of their holding cells, reversing the Crucifix Glitch on their captors, and then their leader eventually groups up with the main character (as well as the dad of book 1’s MC) and they all journey to the Sun (or rather, a station orbiting the sun). The second book also has that group/cult of people who are trying to make a gestalt consciousness, the Bicamurals I think they’re called.

Like ai told another commenter, I don’t like it as much as Blindsight, but I still think Echopraxia is really good, they just focus on wildly different topics.

You still face the problem of running into something the program isn’t designed to handle, like some new 31st Century Trolley Problem or something.

Now what did you think of Echopraxia?

I won’t spoil shit, but you be sure to have fun with the rest of the book! It’s uh… well it stuck with me for a while. Also be sure to give his other book in the series, Echopraxia, a look as well. In my opinion it wasn’t quite as good but that’s like comparing a 9 to an 8.9, they’re both incredible

Anyone who’s even slightly interested in the idea of a Chinese Room (or just good sci-fi), PLEEEASE go out and read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Not only is it a phenomenal deep-dive into what consciousness even is, but it’s got dozens of fantastic ideas in it that could make for compelling stories on their own. Also, scientifically-plausible vampires in space! That is all

So a “Chinese Room” is more of an illusion of consciousness than anything else. The main idea is that the person operating the room doesn’t speak/write Mandarin/Cantonese/etc, they’re just giving pre-determined responses according to the flowchart/binder full of rules. They don’t actually understand anything that’s going on, not what they’re being asked, not what they’re providing as an answer, they just know that when the symbol “A” appears, they must respond with “B”. If asked to do anything outside the parameters given, or otherwise not listed in that flowchart then the whole system would collapse. A “Chinese Room” is just a very elaborate version of those automated phone systems where they ask you to “Press 1 to go to Accounts Recievable”; if you know EXACTLY what to say and where, you’ll probably be fine, but most of the time its just going to be easier to talk to a real live person instead.

So true, so true. Wasn’t that the plot for L.A. Confidential?

Not inherently, no. But in practice, absolutely. Especially when you consider that people who have been in power for a long time almost certainly have better/deeper connections/corruptions than someone who just got elected into their first term

My thoughts exactly. Almost a complete reversal of “One Battle After Another”; I’m convinced the director for that one just wanted to make everyone look as evil/incompetent/misguided as possible in some kind of botched ‘both sides bad’ argument

This is even funnier as someone who watched the entire film because >!they weren’t actually corrupt, they were just trying to find the person on their team who was!<