I may sneer at the commodification of livable designs, but I guess I see your point... We've gone way beyond the scope of this comic, using a single word as a launching point to talking about leveraging hype machines for good.

Would you care to give an example? I have a hard time picturing this kind of thing as sincere, because it's usually the tip of the spear in a cynical marketing campaign to divest people of their money.

Begone, prescriptivist!

Hahaha jk, but I agree in part. For the other part, though, I think there is a partial duty to a communicator to realise how words will be interpreted, and use the word as they know it will be understood. Or else they should do some work to explain their meaning.

For instance, in the comic, the word "technological" could be removed altogether, and the meaning is only clearer for it.

For my part, I set out to draw a fairly detailed map of the part of the fictional world that my story takes place. Here's what I came up with:

I'm pretty happy with it, but it still feels like just an outline/draft/unfinished. But maybe it's enough for now. Does this image make sense to anyone else? I imagine it's pretty vague if your brain isn't loaded up with all the context I've been soaking in for the past year (!!!).

My second goal was to connect two scenes together, which I didn't even start on. But I have a good reason (lol)! Previously, I was working this material into a WIP Twine game, but since reading about the "Snowflake" method of writing, I realised I don't even have an outline - which has been making the writing of these Twine game scenes harder than it has to be (because I essentially have to invent motivations on the spot to puppet my characters around).

So I'm doing a slight pivot. I'm going to write this story as a short story first, then maybe adapt it into a Twine game. I'm hoping to use the Snowflake method to my full advantage this way (yes, you guessed correctly, I do like structure hahaha).

So my goal for this month is to finish my short story outline: characters, plot/events, worldbuilding (enough for the story anyway), beginning, conflict(s), and end.

Good luck, me!

It's just too bad the industrial revolution lead to capitalism overdrive. That would have been a great historical inflection point to switch over to socialism. I mean people tried, but they got murdered.

I can hear this

Yeah you can play with the numbers, and it all depends on the economic context.

Sure, but that's not how most people read the term. Going back to my point about how I both dis/agree with this because of how vague it is.

I love your username. Is it meant to be a naughty bilingual pun?

Yeah like who wants to see something giants built or like study the ruins to find out everything we can about a race of giants and where they came and what their society and biology are like if they still exist, snorrrre 😴 give me huge monuments to humanities anxiety over our inability to escape death built by humans who were mostly unpaid! Now that's exciting!

POV you're about to encounter a little ol' Fate Worse Than Death

Me furiously taking post-apocalyptic worldbuilding notes from your comment 🫨🫨🫨

Me, imitating the pose of a thoughtful looking person I saw in a magazine: have we tried AI the line? Like make AI do the line, and me have more money? Need more money for AI implement line AI money make?

Also if the genie is a thinking agent or even just capable of detecting an infinite loop this falls apart.

Bounce this (does elaborate football move, succeeding on the third attempt) ha (visibly out of breath)

Rofl

I don't think you need to spoiler that - that's good Intel to know going in!

I both agree and disagree, because this comic is dangerously vague.

A good example is electric cars. It would be great if everyone switched to electric cars, but it would be even better if we built a city that didn't treat pedestrians, cyclists, and public commuters as second class.

The difference being the latter doesn't let private equity make fat returns.

And yes ofc we can both.

I think it works for slightly more expensive things too. Like absent any noticeable difference we would assume that a $5 hotdog was better than a $2 hotdog.

You may be thinking of Veblen goods, which are marked up to such a degree that the high price point is the point of the purchase. It makes the product more exclusive.

Love that

Not completely safe there with Buddhism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

I don't have anything to back this up, but I wonder if there's a strong correlation between a religion being minority in a region and how "peaceful" it is, because my suspicion is that majority/power of any kind will always come at the risk of attracting chuds or corrupting the fearful into protecting themselves by attacking others. Literally "others" I guess.

Pet hypothesis just held up by vibes though so