[AKN #94] A Forgotten Science Fiction Plot Which Rings True Today
LAUGH: Judge Judy Highlights, LOVE: The Rich Don’t Own Tech Companies, They Own Auto Dealers
Sup homies?
Unfortunately, I’m sick this week.
Seems I’ve come down with either the flu or common cold based on this table from the CDC.
My symptoms sound way more like a cold, but saying I have the flu gives me more street cred…so looks like I have the flu.
I’m in full on recovery mode and find myself immersed in the cutting edge cold/flu treatments we have available in 2022 such as bathing my throat in chicken noodle soup and herbal tea…
Like seriously this is where we are at with treating this illness we deal with every year?
Call me privileged, but why don’t we have something better than this by now?
Feels like we don’t even care.
When COVID came around 18 months ago, we were sticking people with hepatitis C anti virals and encouraging them to swallow horse medicine.
But common cold comes around?
Looks like all we have for you is the grossest flavor of Ricola cough drops, two Tylenol every 8 hours, and reruns of Judge Judy.
Which makes sense given the results of last years randomized control trial where the experimental group who entered the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin saw a 10-fold decrease in flulike symptoms as compared to the control arm.
When asked about the legitimacy of the study, the study author's noted that the people are real, the cases are real, and the rulings are final.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: A Forgotten Science Fiction Plot Which Rings True Today
In “Where Is My Flying Car?” by J. Storrs Hall, the author investigates the question posed by the title of the book.
His investigation starts with revisiting the plot of H. G. Wells’s 1935 film “Things to Come” — the classic exposition of the technological utopia.
Science fiction is always interesting in the way it lays out a world that could be and this one is no different.
The story included:
A non-democratic structure of society which included “a technocratic elite, extremely aggressive deployment of technology, and a Victorian-style exploratory adventurism that values results over individual life”
Pragmatic, adventuring engineer type heroes who are “willing to go where none have gone before, and risk everything to accomplish what none have accomplished yet.”
Stick in the mud villains who are “well-to-do people who feel that they have enough for a comfortable life, and don’t want any accomplishments going on in their backyard.”
Just like all great science fiction, you can see shades of this fictitious society in our reality today.
But one in particular stands out: the villains.
The villains from this story are very much real people who we have taken to calling NIMBYs — an acronym for Not In My Back Yard.
NIMBYs are a group of people who live comfortably and as a result have become incentivized to maintain the status quo.
This materializes in actions such as blocking new building of homes to maintain the property value of their homes, refusing to let new forms of public transportation be built to connect their neighborhoods to others, and even shutting down flight routes because of the noise over their homes.
It is fascinating to think about what the world would look like if it weren’t for these people succumbing to their selfish impulses and shutting down global progress.
Like imagine if this was the BART system we had in the San Francisco Bay Area?
What new excuse would you need to make up as to why you couldn’t make it to that house party in Danville?
LAUGH: Judge Judy Highlights
In case you find yourself ill like myself, you can heal your cold with this 5 minute and 42 second highlight reel of Judge Judy rocking the stupidest people you have ever heard speak in your life.
LOVE: The Rich Don’t Own Tech Companies, They Own Auto Dealers
The following article does a great job of breaking down who “the rich” are and its kind of shocking.
A groundbreaking 2019 study by four economists, “Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century,” analyzed de-identified data of the complete universe of American taxpayers to determine who dominated the top 0.1 percent of earners.
The study didn’t tell us about the small number of well-known tech and shopping billionaires but instead about the more than 140,000 Americans who earn more than $1.58 million per year. The researchers found that the typical rich American is, in their words, the owner of a “regional business,” such as an “auto dealer” or a “beverage distributor.”
Pretty hilarious when you consider all of the shouting we do at this tech billionaire caricature of rich people.
What a life these “regional beverage distributors” must live.
No one is picketing on their lawn about them not paying their taxes.
No one even knows their name.
They just subtly convince their local politicians to not build new homes in their area and live this beautiful existence selling Surge Energy drinks to your local high school.
CLOSING TIME
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Mahalo,
K.Rapp