Pat @Pat@qoto.org

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Day After (1983)

Last week the Retro SciFi Film of the Week was On the Beach (1959), a film about nuclear war. This is another film about nuclear war, but this one is much more realistic. Whereas On the Beach showed no dead bodies, injuries, or destruction at all, this film shows in graphic detail just how horrific nuclear war is.

Each of the films are propaganda films, designed to influence public opinion, but with On The Beach the purpose appears to have been to keep the arms race going, and is told from the perspective of the military. The Day After appears to want to eliminate nuclear weapons, and explicitly says it wants to avert nuclear war.

The special effects and the overall quality are astonishing considering that it's a made-for-TV movie created in the early 80s. It was a really big deal when this movie was released. Some sources say it's the most watched TV movie ever. It was highly promoted and it had a huge impact on society.

It follows the same basic formula as any other disaster movie -- the first half of the film is character development and shows people doing ordinary things and then in the second half of the movie all hell breaks loose.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #film #movie #ICBM #WWIII #NuclearWar #Kansas #Hiroshima #Nagasaki #burn #the1980s #radiation #ColdWar #hair

(fair use video clips)

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accessible video description:

content warning - graphic descriptions of death and injury

A male TV announcer announcing political events as a gray-haired man and a woman watch; then another man and a woman arguing in their home, the man is wearing an Air Force uniform; then men in a barber shop discuss the situation; then cut to a crow in a wheat field flying away; then cut to a scene inside a silo bunker where Air Force personnel are going through a sequence to launch nuclear missiles, pushing buttons and turning keys; then missiles blasting off as ordinary people watch; then on a highway a nuclear bomb detonates in the distance, the gray haired man is in his car and lies down to shield himself from the thermal radiation and blast; an orange mushroom cloud raises into the air; scenes of fire; people frantically running; then another detonation with two mushroom clouds in the distance; then people are being vaporized by thermal radiation with their skeletons briefly appearing as they are vaporized; then fade to a quiet scene with the gray-haired man slowly walking down the street with destruction everywhere and flakes of fallout beginning to fall; then a Geiger counter and a man talking about the fallout coming; then two people dressed in scrubs, one holding a flashlight the other tending to a serious facial burn on a patient; then a farmer walks out into his field and sees his horse dead on the ground; then a night scene and a man is talking about his radiation injuries; then a boy with radiation injuries talks to a doctor, and a nurse gestures with her head that the boy likely will not survive; then back to the man talking about his radiation injuries and asks what can be done; then people gathering dead bodies from a field using horse-drawn carts; then people listen to the president talking on the radio as the screen shows scenes of despair; then cut to a scene of people burying bodies in a mass grave; then the gray-haired man looking exhausted, now with facial burns and patches of hair missing from his head talks to another doctor, then they hug. Fade Out.

@freemo @JonKramer

I remember when...

a guy showed me his new S-100 bus memory card with 256K of RAM, and I said, "What do you need all that memory for?"

(my first computer had 32K of RAM because I couldn't afford the full 48K.)

@LouisIngenthron @Gert

Also, the surgeon general has some nerve recommending anything at all, after the US public health apparatus just killed a million Americans.

Why don’t they say anything about that?

@LouisIngenthron @Gert

“Replace “social media” with “dungeons & dragons” or “rock & roll music” and that language sounds very familiar.”

I remember back in the 60s and 70s everyone (i.e. radio and theaters) was complaining how TV was dangerous. They’d say that there was radiation from the CRT tubes, or that it wasn’t healthy to have kids sit in front of the TV, etc.

That continued until the government had firm control over TV content (by artificially limiting the number of TV channels and arbitrarily enforcing obscenity laws on TV content).

Now the internet has come along and this time it’s TV networks who are promoting this nonsense against the new competition. The internet is the most free and democratic medium we’ve ever had and the plutocrats are desperately trying to find a way to control content on the internet.

@peterdrake

Only when referring to multiple groups of poodles, used in plural.

@Kihbernetics

Wolfram’s work with cellular automata is just one of many simple-rules-based approaches. His examples are very simple two-dimensional models to illustrate how complexity can emerge from simple rules. I don’t think he believes that a two-dimensional model could be used as an actual model for the representation of, e.g., spacetime or quantum phenomena.

Wolfram’s approach necessitates that spacetime is discrete. However, the expansion of spacetime is the expansion of the metric, the scale, so if that involves simply changing the scale of the quantized units of spacetime, then yes that would not involve “new pixels” and any concept of those “pixels” would need to be virtual for purposes of a model only. However if the expansion of spacetime includes the expansion of the quantity of discrete units then that would “add pixels”. In either case, whether the pixels are actual, or virtual only for the purposes of the model, it would still make sense. At least to me it makes sense.

#TruthBeTold

The Agronomic Revolution happened about 538 million years ago.

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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

#immigration #agriculture #food #animals #plants #burrows #soil #MicrobalMat #Earth #plow #revolution #ancient

@Kihbernetics

“For starters, his “cellular automata” do not produce #behavior but #structure, and all of the #complexity originates from the fact that every new row has two more pixels.”

In physics, in a multi-dimensional extent where one of dimensions is time, then “structure” and “behavior” are two different terms that describe the same phenomenon.

Also, in cosmology the expansion of spacetime could be thought of as adding “more pixels”, so if the progression through the automata by adding new rows represents the progression through time, then it makes sense.

@skyblond

Yeah, I got a 2 hour movie waiting to watched, but that yt video looked like it was just some kid who stuck a 50-cal cartridge on the end of pool cue and set it off. I think it just needed maybe a minute or two to set up the premise and then the actual stunt, that's it.

Maybe there's a bunch of humorous discussion and such buried in there during the build of the device, but I was really just looking to see the stunt.

Thank you posting it anyway though, I'm sure a lot of other folks will enjoy it. 🙂

@skyblond

20 minute video...

Too long didn't watch.

@jasonetheridge

ChatGPT, please state the following in a concise, bulleted list, "Maybe instead of getting ChatGPT or another AI to write for you, maybe just say what you want to see in a short, concise way, such as a bulleted list. If what you write can be replicated by an AI, chances are that it's really not worth all that verbage."

- Don't use AI to write for you
- Use a concise bulleted list instead
- It's not worth writing out if an AI can replicate it

😂

@JoshuaACasey

“We really need to start killing these fascist pigs”

Advocating violence isn’t allowed on qoto.

(I didn’t follow the link you provided in your toot.)

@JonKramer

A lot of stuff happens in the world and some of it gets remembered by subsequent popular culture but most of it doesn't. Midway was kind of a big event in a big war so people remember that one. Jack the Ripper is remembered because it occurred at a time when there was a change in the way that newspapers reported the news – it coincided with the development of sensationalism in newspapers and producers of fiction found that the story would sell more books and such, so it perpetuated. I had to look up Krakatoa not because I don’t remember about the volcanic eruption but because I have dyslexia and I don't remember infrequently used proper nouns very well out of context.

It sounds like you have a theory about why certain events get remembered more while others don’t. Would you care to share your theory?

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FYI...

This is a SOCIAL media platform. If you toot stuff here, expect to have people respond to what to toot and want to engage in discussion...

@JonKramer

I heard of it, but I just don't celebrate the anniversary of it.

I think a lot of people here on qoto were not even born when that happened, so they don't remember it.

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Just muted @gricka for failing to respond to multiple inquires.

@Laebrye

>"I had this once in the pub and I replied sardonically "yes, because everyone knows what made them evil was their approach to fiscal policy, not their othering of their fellow human beings."

Shut them down instantly. And I don't go to the pub with them anymore"

Why stop there. Just round them up and send them to concentration camps. (sarcasm)

@mcnees

@stux

>"Apple says it doesn’t steal technology and plays by the rules"

Big tech and large corporations write the rules; they literally write the language that goes into the bills that politicians put into the laws that get passed.

Corporations also funnel money to the judges who decide IP cases, and guess what? The biggest corporations with the most money usually win those cases.

@antares

>"the issue is we don't yet know which side of the "thais changes everything" line AI will fall: "

AI is "the line". Everything that comes after that line will be different.

That guy in the video or anyone else should not feel dread about AI writing programs better and faster than programers do, or AI generally writing better than humans do.

If people still enjoy programming or writing or creating art, then they can still do it if they want. They won't have to do it for money and they won't have some asshole boss breathing down their necks telling them they need to meet some arbitrary deadline.

It will be better.
@lupyuen

@JonKramer

?