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Michael W. Kaluta - Metropolis

image sources: X X

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If you genuinely enjoy being alone, do you ever wonder if it is an inherent part of your character or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place until you taught yourself to enjoy the peace and happiness one can find in solitude? what if the reason you now prefer & choose solitude at every turn is because you were a very lonely child, or teenager, not by your own choice, and that’s how you learnt to thrive and grow, so you no longer know if you can do that around people? There might also be an element of personal pride, an unconscious “you can’t fire me I quit” point when your brain decided to switch your feelings about solitude from distress to relief. I often find myself defending my love of being alone, to people who worry that I can’t possibly be happy to live in an isolated house in the woods; I insist that I do! I really do specifically enjoy the isolated factor and chose to live here because of it, but then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off unchosen loneliness, to learn from it and be nourished by it; to what extent it might be a form of contentment built on a bedrock of resignation.

#huge mood #random personal shit

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On a side note: fuck you too, Tumblr. John hurt didn't deserve this.

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Not to mention the fact that Keiza Burrows, who did the motion/face capture for Amanda Ripley in Alien Isolation, played Dr. Emma Fisher in Observation. And that the developer (No Code) includes lots of staff previously employed at Creative Assembly during Alien Isolation... 🤔🤔🤔

Okay was anybody going to tell me that Anthony Howell voices the AI in Observation or was I supposed to learn that myself

#nothing in this universe truly dies my friends #it only changes form #(ships included) #that AU idea sounds rad as hell too #ripuels

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me watching zima blue

#no spoilers tho :) #zima blue #love death and robots

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Love, Death & Robots: Zima Blue (2019) dir. Robert Valley

#coming out of retirement to make sure all yalls 2001 fans are watching this fcking short because GOD DAMN #zima blue #love death and robots

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Women weren't excluded from early science fiction: they were erased

Science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek’s recent book The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin, is a secret history of women in science fiction, reframing the story of exclusion (“women weren’t welcome in early sf writing circles”) as one of erasure (“women made vital contributions to early science fiction, and these were systematically expunged from the record when the first wave of historical sf anthologies were published, as part of a backlash against first-wave feminism”).

Yaszek’s work is very personal to me, dealing extensively with Judith Merrill, the great feminist sf writer, editor and critic, who was my mentor growing up in Toronto.

In a new interview with the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (MP3), Yaszek elaborates on her work and its ramifications for how we think about the story of the future.

https://boingboing.net/2019/02/02/erasure-not-exclusion.html

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The Trump Dictatorship

The only redeeming aspect to Trump’s presidency is he brings us back to basics. And what could be more basic than the difference between democracy and dictatorship?

Democracy is about means, not ends. If we all agreed on the ends (such as whether to build a wall along the Mexican border) there’d be no need for democracy.

But of course we don’t agree, which is why the means by which we resolve our differences are so important. Those means include a Constitution, a  system of government based on the rule of law, and an independent judiciary.

A dictatorship, by contrast, is only about ends. Those ends are the goals of the dictator – preserving and accumulating personal power. To achieve those ends, a dictator will use any means necessary.

Which brings us back to Trump.

The conventional criticism of Trump is that he’s unfit to be president because he continuously breaks the norms of how a president should behave.

Trump’s norm-breaking is unsettling, to be sure, but Trump’s more fundamental offense is he continuously sacrifices means in order to preserve and accumulate personal power.

He thereby violates a president’s core responsibility to protect American democracy.

A president who shuts down government in order to get his way on a controversial issue, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico, and offering to reopen it as a concession when his opponents give in, is not protecting democracy.  

He is treating the government of the United States as a bargaining chip. He is asserting power by any means possible. This is the method of a dictator.

A president who claims he has an absolute right to declare a national emergency and spend government funds that Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate for the ends he seeks, is also assuming the role of a dictator.

A president who spouts lies during a prime-time national television address over what he terms an “undeniable crisis” at the southern U.S. border, which is in fact no crisis at all, is using whatever means available to him to preserve and build his base of power.  

The real international threat to America is not coming from Latin America. It is coming from a foreign government intent on undermining our democracy by propagating lies, turning Americans against each other, and electing a puppet president.

We do not know yet whether Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. What we do know so far is that Trump’s aides and campaign manager worked with Putin’s emissaries during the 2016 election, and that Putin sought to swing the election in favor of Trump.

We also know that since he was elected, Trump has done little or nothing to stop Putin from continuing to try to undermine our democracy. To the contrary, Trump has obstructed inquiries into Russian meddling, and gone out of his way to keep his communications with Putin secret, even from his own White House.  

The overall pattern is clear to anyone who cares to see it. Trump’s entire presidency to date has sacrificed the means of democracy to the end of his personal power.

He has lied about the results of votes, and established a commission to investigate bogus claims of fraudulent voting. He has attacked judges who have ruled against him, with the goal of stirring up the public against them.

He has encouraged followers to believe that his opponent in the 2016 election should be imprisoned; and condemned as “enemies of the people” journalists who report unfavorably about him, in an effort to fuel public resentment – perhaps even violence – against them.

To argue, as some Trump apologists do, that whatever Trump does is justified because voters put Trump in power, is to claim that voters can decide to elect a dictator.

They cannot. Even if a majority of Americans were to attempt such thing (and, remember, Trump received three million fewer votes than his opponent in 2016), the Constitution prohibits it.  

The choice could not be clearer. Democracy is about means, while dictatorship is about ends. Trump uses any means available to achieve his own ends.

We can preserve our democracy and force Trump out of office. Or we can continue to struggle against someone who strives to thwart democracy for his own benefit.

In the months ahead, that choice will be made, one way or the other.  

#politics #if ya'll dont mind I'm just gonna put this here #and possibly everywhere else

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I'm not back for good; just checking in on the shitshow as it unfolds before our eyes, slow-motion-car-crash-style.

I also wanted to say that I plan to eventually post the mini-fics that i wrote on this blog to my AO3 account, so in the worst case scenario, they will still be available to read. I highly doubt this blog will get deleted though, so i will leave it up as long as possible, since it does get occasional visitors who enjoy looking at the old content. 😎

Take care, ya'll!

#best of luck to you all and i hope you've been treating yourselves well!!!

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In science fiction, AIs tend to malfunction due to some technicality of logic, such as that business with the laws of robotics and an AI reaching a dramatic, ironic conclusion.

Content regulation algorithms tell me that sci-fi authors are overly generous in these depictions.

“Why did cop bot arrest that nice elderly woman?”

“It insists she’s the mafia.”

“It thinks she’s in the mafia?”

“No. It thinks she’s an entire crime family. It filled out paperwork for multiple separate arrests after bringing her in.”

#can i offer you all some artificial intelligence based existential horror in this trying time? :)

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https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005118894-Export-your-blog

https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005118894-Export-your-blog

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If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?

Arrival (2016), dir. Denis Villeneuve

#*crosses fingers* #arrival

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What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how?

#😢 #john hurt #inspiration

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#I love this story #d&d #long post

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Sci-fi show: They’re sexless androids……………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….but they’re straight sexless androids

#lmao yes #robots

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Behind the scenes of the Hive set from Aliens.

#looks even creepier in these candid set photos #aliens #behind the scenes #gore tw #body horror