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I arrived in China 2001.

I experienced the harshest and largest lockdown in all of history: Wuhan, January 23rd, 2020. A real lockdown, not the cosplay bullshit you experienced outside of China. (Yes, this is me saying you’ve never fucking set foot in the country.)

The rest you’re just flat-out lying about. Sorry, Sparky. Did pet killings happen? Yes. They were not the mass shit that the press you’re so obviously reciting acts like they were. Did some doors get welded? Yes. But nowhere near you and, again, nowhere near in the masses the press you’re basing your lies on made it seem like. The local salaries are garbage iff you’re a fuckwit sitting in the west applying western prices to Chinese salaries. (Which, naturally, you are, good little fuckwit liar that you are.) And you’ve changed your tune from 14 hours to 12 hours really fucking quickly there, Sparky, not to mention using the proper slang only after I gave it to you.

So yeah, you’re just a west-dwelling fuckwit lying about being here. Go toddle off in your China Watcher corners and play with the rest of the intellectual children you belong with. There’s a good boy.

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I read it ages ago when it first came out in paperback (which means, sadly,without the music).

I really enjoyed it, but it was very slow reading.

I think that entire documentary could be summarized as “Drugs. Lots of drugs. Lots of drugs in lots of varieties.”

Babylon 5 is a weird show for me. When it was first running, I religiously watched it. If I couldn’t watch it live, I got upset and went around my circle of friends to see who’d recorded it so I could watch it as quickly as possible. Up to Season 4 I was gripped. (Season 5 was “meh” because of production shenanigans.)

Years later I watched them on DVD and … the magic was gone. Watching one episode after another, without separating them by a week, just took the shine off of it. I didn’t even finish watching the episodes on DVD; I think I made it to mid season 3 (and the amount I watched slid down and down up to that) before not bothering to continue. I eventually gave them all to a friend of mine and never watched the show again.

I can’t think of a single show I’ve ever watched that had that weird impact on me: first loved, second bored. Usually shows I loved I keep loving, shows I was bored by remained boring, and very occasionally a show I thought was boring the first time got more interesting on second viewing. But B5? It’s the only one that goes this way.

Yes. Some people are beyond hope. Therefore we shouldn’t bother with empathy with all people. This is exactly how logic works. Yes.

But yes, indeed, some people are beyond hope. It’s why I won’t bother engaging with you further. (Guess where you just got categorized…)

You’re also conflating empathy with acquiescence.

Indeed. This is because he lacks actual empathy so doesn’t actually comprehend the very concept.

Yes. That’s exactly what everybody here is saying.

I resubmit: you lack all capacity to comprehend any viewpoint other than yours and will only damage anything you believe in as a result.

That “slippery slope” is absolutely vital to slither down if you want to formulate public policy.

If you don’t understand why people mistrust “big pharma” or “big government” or “big [sobriquet]” and reflexively dismiss anything that involves them, you cannot formulate public policy that will be effective.

Very rarely do people say “I’m going to dismiss centuries of scientific progress for this quack cure” without a reason. It’s maybe not a reason you agree with. It’s maybe not a reason reality agrees with. But you know what it might be? It might be a reason that traces back to how “big [sobriquet]” has acted toward such people in the past, often persistently over a long period of time, that has led to that breakdown in trust. In short: you (as in the beneficiaries of the status quo and “big [sobriquet]”, directly or indirectly) may be at least partially historically culpable in the opposition you now face.

Now I get it: accepting that you yourself are partially culpable for “irrational” opposition is a bitter elixir to swallow, but if you don’t take that first step toward understanding, you can’t take the second step to correcting the problem. And the problem will continue to fester and take root until, oh, I don’t know, something utterly fucking insane happens and a million of your fellow citizens die in a public health disaster because half your population doesn’t trust the very institutions that were needed to prevent said disaster.

So maybe you should learn to enjoy sliding down slippery slopes. Or, you know, die in the next easily-preventable pandemic. Like a million of your fellow citizens (assuming you’re American: insert your own numbers for your own country if not) did in the current one.

Not all people can be persuaded by “connected knowing” (not a big fan of this terminology), but many can be (over time).

NOBODY, however, who can’t be persuaded by “connected knowing” will be persuaded by “separate learning”, so I’m not sure what your point here is.

In human language: You are completely and absolutely devoid of any degree of empathy or compassion and thus your own worst enemy when it comes to persuading others. You are far more likely to damage any cause you espouse than to promulgate it.

Human enough for you? If you’d rather have it in binary bits, let me know which ISA you are programmed in and I’ll write the program that explains it to you.

Apparently you care enough to comment.

Now that one does look interesting. I’ll have to wait for it to show up on my usual sites though: it’s not the kind of movie that will wind up in theatres here.

Except that the age of the mid-budget, self-contained movie is dead. Indies are getting squeezed by this Big Tent nonsense BADLY.

Got a link?

Easy for me to say “no”, though, which is what I did ages ago. Maybe someday the public will get as bored as I got with seeing the same thing over and over again and will kill this franchise nonsense.

I’m tired of all these big tent “franchises” entirely.

Hey, filmmakers, authors, television producers, etc.: MAKE SOMETHING NEW FFS!

I think you’re missing a few key points:

1. It’s a COMEDIC series, not a serious drama. It’s Adams taking potshots at things that struck him as funny or upset him. Like the whole “shoe event horizon” thing was an eloquent rant about how he couldn’t find shoes that fit one day. (No, really!) The fact that it blew up into this massive thing was an accident, not a design, and he didn’t set out to write a Serious SF Series™.

2. The “Britishness” of the relationships is part of that comedy. He’s making fun of Brits’ “reserve”.

3. The Fenchurch thing never really fit into the vibe, and given the series’ entire schtick of random things occurring out of nowhere and then vanishing into nowhere (like the guy whose every incarnation was killed by Arthur Dent), it’s on-point for her to just vanish into nothingness. (And as for his reaction, consult point 2.)

TL;DR Summary

This is a comedic series best viewed as a collection of incoherent, inconsistent vignettes with an underlying theme (kind of like the more serious The Martian Chronicles of Ray Bradbury), not as a serious space drama spread out over books.