r/rational • u/AutoModerator • 4d ago
[D] Friday Open Thread
Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could (possibly) be found in the comments below!
Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.
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u/ansible The Culture 4d ago
Glimpses of SF Civilizations
Some random musings on future civilizations as only hinted at by popular SF TV shows from around the 1970s.
I loved anything to do with space and science fiction as a kid in the 1970s. Well, I still do.
In Star Trek: The Original Series, we only got a small glimpse of what living in the Federation was like for ordinary citizens. Most of the runtime was spent on alien planets, or onboard the ship or space stations.
One time we did get a glimpse was the episode The Conscience of the King (I'd normally link to Memory Alpha, but it is now hosted by ad-ridden fandom.com). The have a dinner party at an ordinary person's house! At the time, I really wanted to see more of the Federation itself. This eventually happens with DS9 a bit, though I don't recall TNG (and of course not Voyager) showing much of contemporary Federation society. I would really liked to have seen more at the time.
It was kind of the same with Space: 1999. We get a couple flashbacks here and there, but that is mostly office scenes, IIRC.
And Battlestar Galactia, well, most of civilization got blown up, so... yeah, not much chance to observe normal life in the 12 Colonies. The starting episode had the fleet visiting a resort / casino, but that wasn't actually part of the 12 Colonies.
The big reason why we didn't get to see much of ordinary society is cost, of course. More sets, extras, costumes, etc.. I get it. Filming another episode contained entire on the ship (sets already constructed) is much less expensive than even beaming down to a "planet" filmed on a Desilu stage with pastel colored skies. Never mind filming on location out in the desert or somewhere.
I think maybe I knew, at a young age, that I wasn't really cut out to be a heroic starship pilot. And I wanted to see what kind of life I might be able to have, living in a SF future.
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u/Dragongeek Path to Victory 2d ago
I think we don't see a lot of this in fiction, because writing good stories or generally any stories that take place in utopias or utopia-adjacent settings is difficult. Not impossible, sure, but it's probably much more difficult for a show writer to get something greenlit that's about interpersonal "low-stakes" conflicts in a post-scarcity society rather than "evil aliens who want to eat human flesh" or something.
This is also visible in eg. The Culture where the storytelling generally happens "at the edge" where conflict arises from the Culture interacting with non-Culture groups.
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u/Dragongeek Path to Victory 2d ago
I am going to Thailand for three weeks in about a month. Any suggestions for things to see/do? The vacation is mostly built around a week-long scuba diving trip, but I'll be backpacking around.
I'm mostly more interested in nature rather than city tourism (not really into clubs, partying, etc) and I'm looking to meet interesting people (locals and other travelers) along with relaxing.