☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ @ yogthos @lemmygrad.ml

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you can really tell his ego is bruised

Halving travel time is not a minimal gain, but more importantly it's a demonstration of technological prowess. If China has a commercial maglev operating it's a showcase of things they can build for other countries. It's important to keep in mind that a lot of countries don't have well developed HSR systems or much rail at all. If China can now offer building maglev for them which is ahead of what any other country can do.

That's part of it, but I think the other aspect is that there's simply no alternative to Russia for Europe's energy supply.

I guess we'll see, but I don't really see why they wouldn't bother. I mean it's a way for state to create a whole bunch of employment.

Right, I find it incredible that the west still thinks they can bluff Russia into stopping the war. Like it's been three years, it's not like they haven't tried everything they can think of at this point. Does anybody seriously think that another round of sanctions or weapons supplies is going to move the needle here. Also, the whole threat of secondary sanctions is deeply unserious. Trump already tried putting high tariffs on China, and had to walk that back immediately. Everybody knows that the US can't follow through on any of the threats.

Yeah, definitely going to be interesting to watch. It's worth noting that Syria itself is very factionalized as well right now, so there could just be a massive civil war where HTS gets overthrown. The impression I'm getting is that regime change in Syria is backfiring massively for the west. Russia was able to basically walk away, but now the place is incredibly volatile, and if Israel ends up getting mired there then the US will be forced to pour in resources to prop Israel up.

That's exactly what I'm expecting as well. Israel is doing a land grab cause Syria is destabilized. What will be interesting to see is how Turkey responds. Have they made a deal behind the scenes to carve up Syria or is Israel encroaching on what Turkey planned to control right now. If latter is the case then we might actually see a proxy war between Turkey and Israel in Syria in the near future.

Saving a couple of hours per person is a lot of hours given the volume of people this infrastructure moves. Also, people are a lot more likely to go on a two hour trip than a 4 hour one. This makes it possible to go from SH to BJ and come back the same day which means you'd have a lot more people travelling and a stimulus to the economy as a result.

Yeah I read a bit more on it, and seems like it's still in prototype stages.

I do prefer reading as well, but podcasts fill the niche for people who listen on the go where they're doing something else. Like you're cleaning the house or going somewhere, you can put a podcast on and listen in the background.

I completely agree, the whole notion that the US could spin up an industrial base comparable to China seems absolutely fantastical to me. The impression I get is that the oligarchs drank the AI koolaid, and they think that they're just going to jump straight to automated factories that run themselves.

I'm glad we managed to reach a consensus in the end. :)

if only

Same, it's nice to get a lucid and well sourced analysis in under 10 minutes.

As I mentioned in the other reply, I agree with your take in a context of a broader eco-socialist movement.

Again, Soviet sci-fi aesthetic is itself a part of a broader Soviet aesthetic. It's not an independent standalone movement that aims to differentiate itself from the rest of Soviet art.

i would largely say it is eco-socialism’s counterpart to soviet sci-fi, it imagines the world eco-socialism would create, working to inspire eco-socialists as soviet sci-fi inspired the soviets

And that's fine framed that way. If you see solar-punk as a component of a broader movement I generally agree with you. I think fleshing out the imagery to be more grounded would be worthwhile, but the broader eco-socialist framework would provide the missing context here.

My point stands, the art driving the movement should strive to provide a substantive vision of a plausible society in order to provide a believable ecological/sociological example of what could be. This is really what the discussion boils down to in the end, and I fail to see why this wouldn't be desirable. Why settle for superficial aesthetics without fleshing out the details of how this society would function.

And that's all fine, but my point is that these ideas are not expressed in the art itself. The original discussion is around the aesthetics of the movement. As I mention in the other reply, the constructive take away from this would be to flesh out the vision being presented using the source materials. Have the art associated with the movement encompass all aspects of the society being proposed. That would address the critique of the aesthetics being narrow.

The thing is that the Soviet sci-fi art movement was a subset of socialist art that was produced in USSR. My whole critique here has been that solar-punk offers a very narrow view of society largely focused on empty aesthetic. For example, if the dispossessed is truly the basis for the movement as you claim it to be, then why does the art produced by the movement not explore all aspects of the society envisioned in the book? Why does it not create a believable and holistic vision of the future being promoted?

the art style of modern solar-punk is largely based on earthships

One would certainly wouldn't get that impression by looking at most solar-punk imagery. Nor does the imagery reflect any aspect of the dispossessed that I can see.

when did i claim that inhabited island was foundational media for soviet sci-fi art?

You brought it up as a contrast to me pointing out discrepancies between solar-punk art and what the dispossessed describes. If you agree it's not foundational to Soviet art, then what relevance does it have to the discussion?

is there another piece of soviet sci-fi you want to use instead as an example for it being more realistic and plausible than the dispossessed?

There are plenty of examples of Soviet sci-fi that are more realistic and plausible than the dispossessed because Soviet sci-fi was rooted in a real-world socialist system that actually existed as opposed to a purely speculative one the dispossessed describes. Here are a just few prominent examples from the USSR that offer plausible (within their era's understanding) visions of a futuristic socialist society:

• Andromeda Nebula by Ivan Efremov where Efremov, a paleontologist, meticulously details a future Earth (around the 22nd century) where humanity has achieved a truly global communist society.
• The Noon Universe Series by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky presents an advanced, peaceful, and technologically sophisticated communist society
• Alice Selezneva series by Kir Bulychev paints a consistent and plausible picture of a future communist Earth