Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@admitsWrongIfProven

Yeah, that's why I talked a lot about the efficiency of electric cars in the toot. You still need to get one that uses less fuel, even if the fuel is electrons.

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

The Blob (1958)

This movie was marketed as a horror film but technically it’s also a science fiction because the Blob came from outer space on a meteor. This is a B-movie with a lot of cheesy special effects but it makes fun of itself and it was marketed to young people many of whom actually thought the film was scary.

The Blob itself was basically just watered down gelatin with food coloring and they got it to move by placing it on a table with a camera mounted on it. Then they would tilt and jiggle and move the table around at various angles to get the gelatin to move around. Then they’d film it in slow motion or print the film in reverse or turn the whole jig upside down to get the different effects that they wanted.

The scene where the blob jumps from the stick onto the man’s arm was simply filmed upside down to get the blob to defy gravity.

To the producers of the film, the Blob was a self-referential metaphor. The film was produced about a decade after the end of World War II; all the returning veterans had jobs by then and were making a lot of money. This was the beginning of the hay day for a new advertising and promotion industry for all consumer products including movies. Just a couple of years after this film was released, The Beatles arrived on the scene using the new promotion techniques to help fuel their meteoric rise, resulting in Beatlemania during the 1960s.

Here’s a trailer for the film, showing the style of advertising they used, which seems quaint compared to the psyops employed by businesses today.

Accessible video description:

The trailer opens with Steve McQueen and another woman entering the police station to tell the police about the blob then there are big title graphics that say “Beware of the blob” as the announcer talks about the film.
It shows a bunch of people sitting in a theater and it shows the blob oozing from the projection booth then it shows a bunch of people running from the theater screaming.
More Title Graphics say “it crawls... it creeps... it eats you alive!” The Blob, now very large, oozes out of the front doors of the theater. a man and a woman are briefly shown kissing in a car as they are interrupted by a falling meteor, the man and woman drive off. then it shows an old man with a stick with the small blob on it and the blob jumps up from the stick onto his arm. Shows the blob indoors, about the size of a bear, a man tries to shoot it with a gun. then it shows Steve McQueen trying to calm people down but they run towards a diner. then the blob engulfs the diner. next it shows Steve McQueen, the text says, “starring Steve McQueen”, then more title Graphics say, “Get Set it's coming soon”, then in huge type “The Blob” with smaller type that says “a Tonylyn production”, “color by Deluxe”.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #ET #extraterrestrial #alien #space #1950s #1960s #badmovie #blob #horror #oldpromos #beatles

@bonifartius

Actually, the rocket produced much fewer greenhouse emissions during its flight than did civil aircraft that happened to be in the air during the same time.

Cars that were on the road at the time produced about 833,000 times more greenhouse gas emission during the launch than the rocket did during its flight.

How many of those vehicles were driving for frivolous reasons? To drive somebody to a sports event or on a camping trip.

@admitsWrongIfProven

>"I do not see any better alternative."

As I said, right now I'll support just about any (non-violent) revolution that comes along.

Anyone who kills fewer than a million Americans is better than what we have now.

>"Don't care about some flag, do you have a viable way to help someone around you? "

I always try to help others. Supporting the revolution will help just about everyone in the US and the world.

@lupyuen

I remember when Microsoft was first developing Windows in the early 80s, this was one of the choices they were mulling over.

@quesoloAna

He was banned "after" reporting a story. What was he banned "for".

(I'm not going to go read the article -- I'm avoiding mainstream media.)

@admitsWrongIfProven

>"@Pat Is this a joke? I mean really, calling for individual mobility when public would be so much more efficient..."

It says, "It’s best to try to avoid driving whenever you can by planning your errands, living close to work/stores, car-pooling, walking or riding a bike."

@lurker

I don't think those are representative of life in the USA.

Recently, most killings in the US are done by public health officials who mislead people into doing things that kill them from COVID-19.

@freepeoplesfreepress

One of many tactics that Trump has borrowed from them.

@stux

I mean, Baaaa!

@stux

Woof!

@admitsWrongIfProven

>"It seems like you alternate between agreeing with the direction i go and then again not"

Yeah, it's almost like it's 50/50, isn't it.

>"And encouraging people not to breed so much... you hint at another red flag that rich people are the problem: breeding encouragement! "

Is that a play on words? 🙂

>"Earlier i saw a hint that you thought that the button should remove desire for kids also... yes, it should, but that was not the question in the survey."

The poll is more of way to encourage discussion on the topic. I don't know if that change in wording would have changed anybody's response to the poll.

I think a few years ago very few people wouldn't even entertain the idea that we would actually want to end our species.

@peterdrake

HDMI = high-definition multimedia interface (spec for the cable that connects a display to another device)

ASMR = Autonomous sensory meridian response (the tingles)

TLDR = too long, didn't /don't read (used to flag textual information that may be too long or verbose - also signified as TL;DR or tl;dr, it is internet slang to say that some text being referred to has been ignored or should be ignored because of its length. It is often used to refer to excessively wordy Terms and Conditions statements. It is also used to introduce a summary of an online post or news article. It may sometimes be used simply as sort of content warning for linked content that the poster feels readers may not want to waste a lot of time on because it's so long so they flag it with this TLDR so that users that don't have a lot of time at the moment or maybe have dyslexia and have difficulty reading long walls of text may want to avoid following the link to that content. The phrase dates back to at least 2002, and was added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in 2013.)

@lupyuen

Yeah I have closed captioning on all the time too when it's available. 🙂

@lupyuen

This is a welcome feature. I wish I had a dime for every time a sound effect or music stomped on a crucial line delivered by an actor in a film.

@admitsWrongIfProven

It is difficult to form conjectures about timelines that are so long -- up to 100 years.

I don't think we know what will happen for sure. Some animals may do better and some may do worse, but overall I think such a rapid change in environment will make it difficult for most species to adapt or migrate.

I think the human suffering will mostly be due to migration and hunger. I don't know how this compares to historical global catastrophes like the plague or genocides caused by global colonialism. The shear size of today's human population will increase the numbers of individuals who suffer, I think.

I think a lot of the human suffering will be due to scarcity of resources to sustain the human population. So, I think if we started now encouraging people to not bred so much and actively tried to reduce the global population in advance of the catastrophe it would minimize the suffering.

Frankly, I don't see why anyone would want to bring a new life into this world under current conditions; to see their own children suffer like that.

@admitsWrongIfProven

I don't see it that way. I don't think we are cogs. Each person is an individual with autonomy and we can decide to be nice to one another if we want to.

@admitsWrongIfProven

I was comparing infertility extinction to a sudden mass extinction like a plague or an asteroid or something.

The reason for considering this at all is not just climate change but all the shit that humans do -- war, corruption, oppression -- what we do to each other and do to other animals. Our species is a very harmful species overall.

I'm actually surprised that half the people even considered such a thing. This is an indication that we are really in a bad place now.

It's sad because all we have to do is decide to do something different and we could easily fix it.

@braindouche

I heard a similar story about developing microbes to digest oil spills and then they end up getting into everybody's gas tanks.

@Deglassco

Liberal = classical western liberalism (not progressives or the left wing)