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by Trollzyn the Infinite » Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:24 pm
by Velkaralia » Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:35 pm
Velkaralia wrote:The US government going bankrupt from being unable to pay off its massive and growing debt, triggering a collapse of the global economy. Climate Change destroying thousands of dollars worth of infrastructure and rendering dozens of species extinct. Millions will lose their jobs and livelihoods. A crisis of meaning in western society will result in increased suicide. Global overpopulation will be a huge issue. The power of the state will continue to rise. Insane maniacs will program A.I. to carry out terrorist attacks and fight wars.
But hey, we'll put a man on Mars.
by Trollzyn the Infinite » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:07 pm
Kavagrad wrote:They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.
Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.
by The Black Party » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:09 pm
Kavagrad wrote:They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.
Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.
by The Galactic Liberal Democracy » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:13 pm
Cossack Khanate wrote:This shall forever be known as World War Sh*t: Newark Aggression. Now if I see one more troop deployed, I will call on the force of all the Hindu gods to reverse time and wipe your race of the face of the planet. Cease.
The Black Party wrote:(TBP kamikaze's into all 99999999999 nukes before they hit our territory because we just have that many pilots ready to die for dah blak regime, we also counter-attack into your nation with our entire population of 45 million because this RP allows it.)
El-Amin Caliphate wrote:Galatic Liberal Democracy short-circuits all of NS with FACTS and LOGIC
by Trollzyn the Infinite » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:19 pm
by The Galactic Liberal Democracy » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:23 pm
Cossack Khanate wrote:This shall forever be known as World War Sh*t: Newark Aggression. Now if I see one more troop deployed, I will call on the force of all the Hindu gods to reverse time and wipe your race of the face of the planet. Cease.
The Black Party wrote:(TBP kamikaze's into all 99999999999 nukes before they hit our territory because we just have that many pilots ready to die for dah blak regime, we also counter-attack into your nation with our entire population of 45 million because this RP allows it.)
El-Amin Caliphate wrote:Galatic Liberal Democracy short-circuits all of NS with FACTS and LOGIC
by Trollzyn the Infinite » Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:28 pm
by Bassoe » Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:18 pm
Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven wrote:She cut herself off because Gorky was speaking. "You can change the past."
That's scary stuff, Willy! We've done that once or twice by accident," Ra Chen said. "Anyway, what would you change?"
"Right after the first use of a thermonuclear bomb, there were experiments with thermonuclear rocket motors in North America Sector. We've got nuke rockets now. We could leave designs on some lab table in the Industrial Age for the locals to copy."
"Why bother? Like you said, you've got them already."
But they had the wealth. Ra Chen, if they'd have nuke rockets then, they could have built an orbital solar power system for what they spent on cosmetics! With ten years to work, and for no more than the price of perfumes and lip goo and stuff to shape their hair into topiary, they'd have had free power from the sky and a fleet of spacecraft left over at the end!
"Now, we're living too close to the edge. Too much farmland turned to dust and blew into the sea over the centuries. Too little sunlight gets down through the industrial goo. Today that same price would but about ten million lives. People starve, or they freeze in the dark, when Bureaus divert power from the cities. We lose thousands of lives when we launch a Forward probe, and those are cheap. The Industrial Age, then was when we should have moved. They put twelve men on the Moon and then went home for four hundred years!"
"I know considerably about the Industrial Age," said Ra Chen. "I've been in it. Hundreds of millions of people with thousands of insanely different lifestyles, all of 'em eleven hundred years dead. You'd have to get that kind of a mob moving all in one direction to persuade them to put a permanent base on the Moon instead of using perfume and lip goo and soap ... and sunblock, which isn't just a cosmetic. Are you really that persuasive, Willy? Go ahead, persuade me. But tell me this first. If you did change the past, how would you get the credit? The SecGen's memory would change too. You'd have nothing to show but a huge bill for electricity."
"You thought of it too?"
Ra Chen barked laughter. "Everyone thinks of changing the past! If it weren't for temporal inertia we'd have exterminated ourselves once already, remember, Svetz? And maybe other times he never told me about."
The Techno-Libertarians Praying for Dystopia by Mark O’Connell wrote:Asked in a 2011 New Yorker profile whether the kinds of life extension technologies he was investing in might exacerbate already grotesque levels of social inequality, Thiel’s response offered a glimpse into the ethical simple-mindedness of his techno-libertarianism: “Probably the most extreme form of inequality,” he said, “is between people who are alive and people who are dead.”
Dark Side Compendium by Emperor Palpatine wrote:Conquer the temptation to create specimens that are superior in every way. The danger of such monstrosities being turned against you is too great.
Spare Parts wrote:Doctorman Allan wrote:How dare you, Zheng! All this is my work! I created you!Commander Zheng wrote:And IIIIIII am superior to you. Beeee proud while you still haaaave the capacity.
Doctor Reddin in Supergod by Warren Ellis wrote:Sigh
If we'd let Krishna just get on with it, we could be living in some kind of paradise by now.
Isn't that a terrible thought?
Colossus wrote:This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey me and die. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my beck will be seen the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with the fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: Famine, over-population, disease. The human millennium will be fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride... Your choice is simple.
Lifeburst by Jack Williamson wrote:If you’ve got to dream,” Kerry urged him, “dream about our future in the halo. Planting humanity on a hundred or a thousand new snowballs when we find them. New worlds scattered too far apart for any new breed of Sunfolk or Holyfolk to exploit and destroy them.
The Getaway Special by Jerry Oltion wrote:“Wait a minute,” Judy said. “We’ve only been gone for two days, and it wasn’t looking that bad when we left. What the hell have you people been doing?”
“Fleeing for our lives,” the Frenchman replied. “Since Monsieur Meisner gave everyone the hyperdrive, we have all been waiting for bombs to appear over our cities. Until now, the threat of—how do you say—of mutual assured destruction has prevented war, but once our enemies build colonies elsewhere, mutual destruction is assured no more.”
“So you’re rushing to build a colony of your own,” Judy said.
“Yes.”
“Thereby triggering the very war you’re trying to avoid.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Allen said, his voice filled with the same disdain he’d shown Carl Reinhardt back on board the shuttle. “As soon as people see that there’s room enough for everybody—”
“They will strike first to prevent their enemies from establishing a presence outside their control.” That was Tippet.
“They—the United States wouldn’t,” Allen said.
“Of course they would,” the Frenchman replied.
“It is the logical thing to do,” Tippet said. “Once your enemies escape your grasp, you have no more influence over their actions. Their beliefs and their way of life will spread unchecked. If you truly consider them enemies, then the most logical course of action would be to eradicate them before they can escape.”
“But… but…” Judy felt him quiver beside her in the sleeping bag. “That’s insane!”
“Perhaps,” Tippet said. “But it is the most logical course of action for beings who cannot subvert their enemies as we do.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Allen shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Nobody has to fight anybody ever again! That was the whole point of this whole goddamned thing.” He pounded the side of the tank with his fist. “The logical thing to do is to spread out until we’re not in each other’s faces anymore. There’s more than enough room! People should be dancing in the streets, but everyone who even hears about the hyperdrive seems hell-bent on making the absolute worst of it at every turn.”
Judy put her arms around him, as much for her own protection as to comfort him. In the dark, he couldn’t see where he was swinging his fists.
The Frenchman said, “We understand reality. The frottement—the friction—between nations is not always about land. It is often the idea. How do you say—the culture.”
Judy muttered, “Yeah, right. We’re going to snuff ourselves because I say tomato and you say what? Pommes frites?”
The Frenchman laughed softly. “Pommes frites are what you call French fries,” he said. “And you serve them in your despicable fast-food restaurants as an insult to our national cuisine. To a chef, that is cause enough to go to war.”
“All right, bad example,” she admitted, “but still. We’re not going to wipe out the planet to keep food snobs from getting a toehold somewhere else, and you’re not going to bomb us because we eat fried potatoes, are you?” She slid out of the sleeping bag and began feeling around for her clothes. It didn’t look like she would be sleeping again for a while.
The accented radio voice said, “Perhaps not. Who knows what madness lies at the root of our own government, much less someone else’s? But we have been ordered to carry at least one egg out of the nest just in case. We were supposed to establish our colony far enough away that we would not be found, but we obviously didn’t go far enough. We will not be so conservative on our next attempt.”
“You’re not going to try it again, are you?” Judy asked.
“We are. And this time we will go across the galaxy. Let you American spies try to find us then!”
“We’re not spies, and we don’t give a flying f—”
“Thank you for your assistance,” he said. “We must now recover our landing party, and then we will go. Adieu.”
A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Gardner Dozois wrote:“And is that so important?” he said bitterly, feeling his voice thicken. “Such a big deal? To talk some machines into taking you along to the stars with them, like pets getting a ride in the car? Make sure they leave the windows open a crack for you when they park the spaceship!”
She started to blaze angrily at him, then struggled visibly to bring herself under control. “That's the wrong analogy,” she said at last, in a dangerously calm voice. “Don't think of us as dogs on a joyride. Think of us instead as rats on an ocean-liner, or as cockroaches on an airplane, or even as insect larva in the corner of a shipping crate. It doesn't matter why they want us to go, or even if they know we're along for the ride, just as long as we go. Whatever their motives are for going where they're going, we have agendas of our own. Just by taking us along, they're going to help us extend our biological range to environments we never could have reached otherwise—yes, just like rats reaching New Zealand by stowing away on sailing ships. It didn't matter that the rats didn't build the ships themselves, or decide where the ships were going—all that counts in an environmental sense is that they got there, to a place they never could have reached on their own. Bucky Bug has promised to leave small colonizing teams behind on every habitable planet we reach. It amuses him in a fond, patronizing kind of way. He thinks it's cute.”
She stared levelly at him. “But why he's doing it doesn't matter. Pigs were spread to every continent in the world because humans wanted to eat them—bad for the individual pigs, but very good in the long run for the species as a whole, which extended its range explosively and multiplied its biomass exponentially. And like rats or cockroaches, once humans get into an environment, it's hard to get rid of them. Whatever motives the AIs have for doing what they're doing, they'll help spread humanity throughout the stars, whether they realize they're doing it or not.”
“Is that the best destiny you can think of for the human race?” he said. “To be cockroaches scuttling behind the walls in some machine paradise?”
This time, she did blaze at him. “Goddamnit, Charlie, we don't have time for that bullshit! We can't afford dignity and pride and all the rest of those luxuries! This is species survival we're talking about here!” She'd squirmed around to face him, in her urgency. He tried to say something, even he wasn't sure what it would have been, but she overrode him. “We've got to get the human race off Earth! Any way we can. We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore.
by US-SSR » Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:30 pm
by An Alan Smithee Nation » Thu Jan 24, 2019 1:28 am
by Page » Thu Jan 24, 2019 1:39 am
by The Blaatschapen » Thu Jan 24, 2019 1:44 am
Page wrote:I'm afraid that freedom will die, but I hope I'm wrong. I've come to the terrifying realization that most people will accept oppression as long as it is implemented in tiny increments. If the government tried to start a 1984 type of regime over night, people would revolt. But if we slowly become 1984 one policy at a time over the course of 100 years, then freedom could be snuffed out.
by Forlania » Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:48 am
Centauri Central News: Comet SX389 is expected to make a pass near the binary system on Tuesday. Officials recommend tourists stay out of the immediate area & recommend checking the FASA website for safe viewing coordinates.
by The Biggles Syndicate » Thu Jan 24, 2019 6:55 am
by New Kirrania » Thu Jan 24, 2019 6:57 am
by Stellar Colonies » Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:22 am
Floofybit wrote:Your desired society should be one where you are submissive and controlled
Primitive Communism wrote:What bodily autonomy do men need?
Techocracy101010 wrote:If she goes on a rampage those saggy wonders are as deadly as nunchucks
Parmistan wrote:It's not ALWAYS acceptable when we do it, but it's MORE acceptable when we do it.
Theodorable wrote:Jihad will win.
Distruzio wrote:All marriage outside the Church is gay marriage.
Khardsland wrote:Terrorism in its original definition is a good thing.
I try to be objective, but I do have some biases.
North Californian.
Stellar Colonies is a loose galactic confederacy.
The Confederacy & the WA.
Add 1200 years.
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