SunlitZelkova

I’d argue because TV has been sidelined, YouTube is the new TV, and the costs associated with maintaining a platform billions use requires them to use methods of gaining revenue. I agree with this. Also, I don’t think ads should be placed on uploads of albums that just have the cover on the screen and no movement. People don’t watch those so it’s ridiculous to put visual ads on them. That said, I disagree with the library analogy. YouTube is not a library; in the two countries I’m familiar with (Japan & US) virtually all libraries (apart from private universities’) are publicly owned. YouTube is privately owned and is able to do whatever it wants, they have no obligation to listen to some users’ requests. It could be argued that YouTube is so ubiquitous and important as a source of information that it shouldn’t be treated like a normal private business, but existing beliefs about business practice don’t require YouTube to do anything.

Eh, it doesn’t upset me as much. It must cost a lot to maintain nearly 2 decades worth of videos. Plus YouTube is so popular it might as well be present day TV. And lots of people rely on it for their livelihoods (YouTube is their career). I was able to wait 1-2 minutes for commercials to end while watching TV as a kid and I am able to wait 1-2 minutes to skip ads on YouTube. What does upset me is people’s data being harvested to “personalize” the ad experience.

There is no race. China’s development would be proceeding along the same pace even if Artemis III landed on the Moon two months ago. It should be noted the two programs are also very different. The Chinese program is an initial exploration program more akin to Apollo, albeit with the intent to establish a base. Artemis is trying to a build a sustainable sustained presence there. China will not have a Starship-like capability until 2035 at the earliest, if not longer (the publicly shown designs and declared development plans of Long March 9 keep changing). Similar to their early crewed orbital flights, I would expect Chinese lunar missions to be fairly slow in pacing as well, with incremental improvements to the spacecraft and launch vehicle along the way. Due to the costs of Lanyue (which uses a crasher stage) China might not fly lunar missions with a cadence on par with the ones to Tiangong until the late 2030s or 2040s, after Long March 9 is in service.

Some tout science as a means of seeing beyond “biased” human concepts of the world; geocentrism etc. I’ve been building a world for a story and have been thinking about how perception might evolve in the far future. Toying with concepts like “could something replace science (by building off of it just as science built off of religion in some cases).” My thinking behind this is somewhat related to a question I asked here a few months ago, asking if time was a nonsensical concept.

I’ve been getting so many bad gateway messages I didn’t realize the forum had been up at all since late October.

If science studies concepts created by the superstitious hunter-gatherers, like time and space, can it be said to be scientific? Not to say it’s a worthless system, or is nonsensical, just that it doesn’t possess god-like objectivity.

Living in Hiroshima kinda reminds me of being in a Philip K. Dick novel, because its a city that got nuked and was rebuilt in a modern way. Especially because my school is just north of the pseudo-red light district, going on walks there at night can give real Blade Runner vibes (not that I really connect BR with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? plotwise, but the vibes are what matters). The wide streets also give off a unique feel compared to the narrow ones more common in other Japanese cities. I've always thought that so long as a nuclear war is limited to the countries that actually have nukes (which I can count on my fingers if Europe is just mashed together as one) humanity will rebuild quickly with help from South America, Africa, and Australia. I don't subscribe to the nuclear winter hypothesis. If humanity was going to go extinct I think it would be caused by the GG emissions from such a rebuilding effort + general consumption, assuming green technology is abandoned as too expensive in a post-war world. But that would take centuries, it wouldn't occur on a small timeline. This is why I like another of Philip K. Dick's novels, Dr. Bloodmoney, so much. It takes place slightly before, during, and then mostly after a nuclear war. But in the after part, there isn't really any of the usual post-apocalyptic tropes. Its just people going about their normal lives for the most part. There's some mutant tomfoolery but none of it drastically affects the characters' lives. The recovery of the world is even mentioned, surgeries are beginning to happen again in New York after eight years without any, likewise it is possible to send a letter from NY to San Francisco as new paths across the Rockies are cleared (apparently key nodes there got nuked during the war), and the Army-run central government in Cheyenne is even building simple rockets to try and reach the Mars mission that launched on the day of the war and got stranded in LEO after mission control was destroyed (Dick wrote the novel in 1963 so all he really would have been familiar with was Vostok and Mercury style near-total (in the case of Vostok total) ground control of spaceflights).

I love local stuff that's 1000+ years old. The best I was able to hope for back in Oregon was imagining there are giant sloth fossils under my feet as I go on walks around the neighborhood, which is right in the northernmost area of their range. There's exposed strata out in the Columbia River Gorge but that's a good hour away.

You'll be okay. *gives hug across cyberspace*

The Swedish did it too actually, but not only with jets but props as well! The SAAB J21 and A21 had a successful career in the Swedish Air Force after the military buildup begun during WWII began to actually come to fruition during the late 1940s. A jet-powered variant was built in small numbers (I didn't realize but apparently besides the Yak-3 to Yak-15 transition it was the only aircraft successfully converted from propeller to jet propulsion) until all of them were replaced by the Tunnan and Vampire.

It's real life nickname was "A$$ender" (not censored obviously).

Either a lot of Russian language websites with cool art have been taken down/expired or they're region blocked in Japan, because I tried to search "СССР 2000 год" and the results were really lame compared to when I did it back in America two years ago.

Maybe their descendants tried again and succeeded in doing so, and then commercialized the Grail's connective powers and sold it as Scotch Tape.

The motto of my university is to be a “22nd century university.” I had immense difficulty holding back laughter as I discovered the school portal looks like it’s from the 1990s despite the school having been founded in 2021. Even my community college’s portal back in the US looked like it was up to late 2010s standards. There’s a lot of novel things here, but I can’t help but believe there is some truth to the adage “Japan has been living in the 2000s since the 1980s.” Joke’s on people who use that as an insult though, I love me some retrofuturism in real life.

Reminds me of that Minuteman flying through (destroying) a Soviet flag that's painted on the blast door of the preserved Minuteman II silo and Missile Alert Facility. I can't remember which state it's in. I actually drew an updated version of it with a Chinese flag, but not only can it be construed as political but the reasons I drew it were political so I'm not gonna post it here.