37 Comments
Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

I always enjoy the thoughtful comments your posts engender.

Hmmm...would I like to live in this place or not????🤔🤔

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As do I. There are some extremely sharp folks hanging around here.

I support any movement away from high-density living, since I think most of our social ills stem from that one factor. I envision this scenario as a kind of high-tech village, where folks work when they need/want to, and relax when they want. In the vast marketplace of ideas, there are no corporations or governments to manipulate and hide great ideas, and people earn according to the usefulness and attractiveness of their creations, though most basic needs are supplied by free resources. Any society can be dysfunctional, and it depends on the wisdom of those who are part of it.

In my concept, no one person or group could monopolize resources, and thus could never take over more than one ECOPLEX and dominate the masses. With unfettered access to the global knowledge base, everyone would have the ability to reach their full potential, and be as engaged in the culture as much or as little as they choose to be.

Anyway, I'm still developing the narrative arc for the serialized novel, so we'll see what happens.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Then, I will be looking forward to Chapter Two!

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This is just the preface. Wait for Chapter One!

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Jun 17Liked by Radio Far Side

Hahaha! Silly me...I should have known that.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Airports don't have runway lighting like city streets because they would obstruct the vision of pilots using the runway. Streets driven by vehicles with bright headlights don't need external lighting. If sidewalks are lit, their light needn't light adjacent streets.

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Or...cars don't need headlights because the streets themselves are lit, thus cutting down on light pollution. And if the car's sensors are a couple of generations further developed, well even the streets don't need to be lit.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Google wouldn't be having as much trouble with its self-driving cars if pedestrians had and used greater situational awareness. Use of pseudosatellites allows for repeatable GPS positioning below a centimeter. The problem is less with keeping the vehicles inside the lanes and more with keeping obstacles beyond their detection out of the roadway. EVs are exhibiting similar problems because they are so quiet. Someone needs to write an app for those with poor observational skills.

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You're thinking in 2 dimensions. One doesn't hear of many pedestrians being hit at 20,000 feet.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Two dimensions don't exist at 20,000 feet.

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Two dimensions do not exist in our reality, but that's a different discussion. It is worth nothing, though, that self-driving vehicles that are aware of all other vehicles within a certain range (as aircraft are), and that do not engage with ground traffic, such as pedestrians, eliminates certain variables, such as running over people.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

If you follow the premise set down by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza in their books, there is no reason for any dimensions beyond the spiritual.

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Non-localities have no need for navigation.

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OMG!!! I love it! It is beautiful, practical and peaceful! What a way to live and raise your family. It's a good way to use energy from Aether and AI to create a wonderful living situation. I'm going to print that out and give it to my Grand Daughter, so when it's time, she'll have the Printout to show every one a great idea for Humanity's Future. Very nice FUTURE!!

Gee, talk about a wet blanket! The post on top here is really upset. But don't worry Bernard, there will be a place for people who love stress and hardship, colonizing new planets. :) Getting them ready for us!

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Folks who like being piled up will inhabit the living museums we currently call cities. :) I'm really happy you enjoyed it. I'm thinking about expanding it into a serialized novel here under a different section. I have a second one that will start up soon, as well. It may be a dream, but dreams are what the future is made of.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Indoor cities would be better and easy to build into shopping malls going vacant.

Flying cars would kill more people than current ones do.

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I don't want to live in a mall city. I want to live in peace among the trees. As for flying cars, most passenger aircraft are practically autonomous, and it's easier to dodge things in three dimensions, right? You are assuming current technology and infrastructure. Wen Star Trek TOS first aired in 1966, none of their toys existed, and now almost all of it does. Give it time and bright minds.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

If most passenger aircraft are practically autonomous, why do we to spend $12.741 billion in FY24 to fund the FAA?

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A perfectly reasonable question, and one which could be extended to nearly all government agencies and services.

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It's a good utopian fairy tale. But we all know that humans hate happiness and boredom. Humans need stress to survive. The Matrix movie was right about that. I've seen so many people who had it all and could have been happy, but they fecked it up to get the stress.

The modern world is boring. The same movie and TV themes done over and over and over and over. Do you see any new music worth a shit?

Stress makes people have a purpose. The world Rufus describes has no purpose.

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To an extent, you are correct, humans need challenges to grow and thrive. Wait for the novelization coming soon. As for modern entertainment, the corporate rubbish is just that, but the fan films are great! Reform the copyright laws, get rid of the art by committee stranglehold. It used to take a million bux worth of equipment and 10 people to do what i can do with a phone, a laptop and a thousand bux now. The trend, as I see it, is to flatten the pyramid and give everyone the power to create, and there will be an explosion in the arts soon enough.

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Rufus: Have you seen "Furiosa?" What is a "fan film?"

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I have not seen "Furiosa," though I hear it is relatively good. I doubt that I will see it on purpose. As far as I'm concerned, the "Mad Max" series ended with "Beyond Thunderdome".

If you are unfamiliar with fan films, you are missing a very interesting genre. These are (usually) shorts made by fans in the style of the original work. A series I highly recommend is "Star Trek Continues" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBfJMOAgxpLooYH0WkLpmw). Anyone who has a burning desire to see endless prequels and sequels "mining" an IP franchise will find great stuff in the fan film underworld. In some cases, the fan films actually feature the original actors reprising their characters, and the F/X and set designs can get rather elaborate.

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Rufus: I liked "Fury Road" and thought it the best of the Mad Max franchise. Lots of good themes in the film. The story of how they made "Fury Road" in Numibia during Covid is an interesting one. The machines used in the film were shipped to Numibia and then shipped back to the USA when filming stopped due to "Covid pandemic." Stored in a warehouse, then shipped back to Numibia when the "pandemic" was over.

So the movie "Galaxy Quest" has a lot of truth in it about fan films. That's interesting.

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I haven't seen "Fury Road," either. Perhaps at some point I will, but I'm getting tired of seeing the same characters and "universes" endlessly recycled. I want to see fresh ideas and concepts, and not 2 hours of "memberberries". "Road Warrior" was a product of its time, and "Mad Max" did a fine job expanding on that world, but I don't feel a need to keep revisiting it, especially when the cultural milieu has so radically changed.

Oh yes, "Galaxy Quest" was packed with cultural references and commentary. That is one of my favorite comedies of all time, and Star Trek fans consider it a Star Trek film. They tried for a long time to make a sequel, but I'm glad they never did. It is perfect as it is, and with the demise of Alan Rickman there is no sense in trying.

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Rufus: "Fury Road" had some new concepts in the Mad Max genre. The use of Max as a high octane universal donor of blood for the War Babies was a nice touch. Also how the head of the Citadel, where there was water under his control, "Immortan Joe", had his own harem of beautiful women (I think they were all models in real life) as he kept them locked up for only his use to try and make a viable son to take over. Immortan Joe was dying of radiation sickness. His two sons so far are a brainy deformed dwarf and a giant stupid strong man.

The stunts and action scenes are the best so far as are the special effects when used. The cars and trucks are better than ever. The motorcycle stunt work alone is worth seeing the movie.

Max and Furiosa are co-stars of the film, and at the end Max fades away into the crowd. Looks like he's gone for good as the new movie is just about Furiosa and the women. Typical of our world today. Maybe that was the only way George Miller could get funding for the film.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Just think about how much money could be saved if we'd just stop stifling imagination.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Happiness and boredom are eliminated by unhealthy stress?

I stopped paying attention to new music in the mid 1980's, when it started being redundant.

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Sorry to hear that. The grunge genre produced some great stuff, like REM, Crash Test Dummies, NIN, and many others. The 90s were an example of things being relatively quiet and the masses turning to creativity as a pastime.

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You've never heard of the Renaissance?

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Vonu: I can't answer your question. I can't explain the human psyche, just observe.

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BTW, "utopia" literally means "nowhere," and that's what it is.

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Jun 16Liked by Radio Far Side

Oxford says that utopia is "an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect." Imagined things exist only in people's imaginations.

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The word "utopia" has a fascinating etymology rooted in Greek and Latin, coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516 for his book "Utopia," which depicted a fictional island society with seemingly perfect qualities.

The term is derived from the Greek words "ou" (οὐ), meaning "not," and "topos" (τόπος), meaning "place." Therefore, "utopia" literally translates to "no place" or "nowhere," indicating an imaginary or non-existent location. The Beatles' song "Nowhere Man" could be rendered as "Oudamou Andros" or "no place belonging to a man". Here we see also that the term "android" means "like unto a man," with "man" referring to "adult male," rather than the more general term "anthropos," meaning "person" or "human".

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