Yes, but he only looked at Venus from the aspect of research which is missing half, or more, of the point of a Mars mission.
The advantage of Mars is that it is ( hypothetically ) acceptably compatible with persistent surface-based habitation. Not an easy life, certainly not compared to Earth, but more sustainable than balloons floating in sulphuric clouds.
Venus doesn't offer an 'alternative cradle' option unless we invent anti-gravity. Until then the emphasis will be on finding a way to improve human civilisation's resilience.
The point of the blog post is that while flying humans across the solar system to Venus so they can float in clouds of opaque sulfuric acid above a hellscape of certain death sounds and objectively is ridiculous, it's still easier and arguably more sensible than trying to send humans to Mars and back.
But, if our airship in the Venusian atmosphere finds nothing interesting (no life signs), then there’s not much more to do at Venus, because atmosphere is all mixed and all the same. Going to the surface, even for a day or two, is hard and very expensive.
OTOH Mars - that can be explored for many years, on the surface and below the surface. We might still find nothing, but it’ll take hundreds of years to be sure.
This is quite interesting. I'm not sure what can to be done to reverse this?
When you've reached a level of untrust where you deem trust itself naive, how can you recover?
Teach Americans to look at news sources in other countries?
Shooting from the hip here. Feels like a duct tape hack on first thought.
I mean that's what I do, subconsciously. I think a lot of Europeans do this because a lot of Europeans tend to speak English and then their actual native language, or something similar (e.g. I wonder how Swiss people experience this).
> The name and logo of "NERV" are used with the explicit permission of khara Inc., the copyright holder of the "Evangelion" series, and Groundworks Corporation, which manages the rights to the series.
For people unfamiliar wanting an easier comparison, Evangelion is Japans star wars. It'd be like learning of tornadoes from someone with Empire insignia
Which is funny to say because Star Wars is actually the Western version of samurai movies (especially but not exclusively Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress).
That's the movie that Lucas is pretty open about heavily drawing "inspiration" from (all the way down to specific characters and plot beats) but Hidden Fortress is itself part of a larger genre of similar stories.
I suppose on the surface, but also that analysis would also put akira and serial experiments lain in the same "for teenagers" category in a way that really doesn't fit any of these shows. The broader implications about the psyche is probably lost on most teenagers (I say this as someone who first watched these as teenagers, and I only picked up on some of the finer details because I knew they were there already. It's why I wanted to watch them)
wouldn't it be more accurate to say its their star trek? admittedly not a gundam fan but I don't see it talked about or merchandised nearly as often as evangelion.
Maybe not in Western countries, but Gundam is HUGE in Japan and neighboring countries like Taiwan. A big part of it is that the merchandise is heavily focused on model kits, like Warhammer on steroids.
Oh yeah, I forgot about gunpla. I think the reason I'm so unfamiliar with that side of the mecha world is that it's so fractured if that makes sense. I have friends into it that I could ask but I don't need another expensive hobby haha
Evangelion is so mega overrated of an anime im experiencing second hand embarrassment on behalf of Japan for letting its national personaification be exlempified by shinji.
Lain is 10/10. Akira/Ghost in the Shell are great too. Evangelion is a weak 7/10 in comparison to them in every aspect imaginable. I also realized that Evangelion is Japan's version of assigning weird mysticism to religions they don't understand (much how westerners depict shinto/daoism/buddhism with tons of mysticism).
Evangelion is a disgusting anime to consider part of your national personification. Drop it and pick up Ghibli films more please Japan.
Evangelion is not “Japan’s version” of anything in terms of western religions. It’s one guy who was making a TV show. It’s not Japan’s “national personification.”
If you want to go down the rabbit hole you’ll find a lot of quotes from Anno and others on it.
A lot of it boils down to “we did this because it’s cool and we have no idea what Christianity is” down to Anno going “Yeah I could do this because no one in Japan is really going to care and I don’t really care about the Western world anyway.”
It’s fine to not like it but it’s quite a step to go “this is how Japan thinks.” It’s akin to saying America is personified by the Simpsons every time they go to Japan.
It is a show about depression, which is why people love it.
The "weird mysticism" is just the reification (pun intended) of the urge to self-harm. i.e. Literally turning into a puddle of emotion, or allowing oneself to be crucified.
It's visceral in a way I've never seen before or since. Going all in on a surface-level understanding paid off in my mind.
It's an unpopular opinion for sure. Evangelion had great potential, a mysterious world, but it never reached it. I kept waiting for it to get good and then it just abruptly ended. I couldn't stand Shinji either. His situational paralysis was so frustrating. If he'd been a coward it would at least be understandable. But no, he sits there frozen half the show.
the emotions of the story are the point, not the story itself. Also, shinji is a coward. That's literally the whole point of the show, showing a cowards reaction to being forced into a situation that isn't avoidable in the most drastic way possible
Luckily, the show does a good enough job at explaining itself to those who care to learn the message. I watched it in my teens but only now in my 40s on my fourth view through does it actually finally make sense the way it should. Sometimes things take a while to click.
I feel like the easiest way to distinguish between those that get it and those that don't are asking their thoughts on the ending. If they prefer the original, they get it, and if they prefer the end of evangelion movie they don't totally get it. If they prefer the rebuild films they're in it for the yaoi and mecha which tbf I don't blame them kaworu is hot
I actually really like all of the above, is the thing; the idea that there are multiple ways the story goes broadens things. The Congratulations ending is still pretty brilliant though. You're making me want to go watch it again.
Anno Hideaki and his followers are just not capable of actually doing stories with much depth. It's all just shallow dopamine-maxxed mecha-tronic fetish paired with brutalist architecture and rushed out barely meeting deadlines. But pointing that out is like pointing out that ramen is just a single bowl meal with barely tolerable PFC balancing. Who cares. Uh half noodle garlic vegs sauce please. Yes half.
That's true, but I think the difference lies in the fact that the company using the NERV name for their product is a public disadter alert service, and doesn't seek to do or emulate anything it's named after.
That's not the same for a surveillance company or a defence contractor named after the big bad of a media franchise.
If (probably bad example) FEMA started referring to its aid workers as storm troopers I'd find it a bit unsettling (actually I kind of wish they'd do that because dad jokes are the best). Similarly, while I find the reference amusing the NERV moniker doesn't exactly inspire confidence. I suppose an important difference is that they're a mixed bag rather than a purely evil organization but still.
A private organization delivering critical infrastructure and emergency services. Just no. Not even if it has a cutesy anime external shell. It always ends up being a race to the bottom by the nature of it.
For many users it's just not true. I run a subscription weather forecast service for pilots, with a free trial period. A significant number of users reset their device every week to avoid paying 10 euros a month. These are aircraft owners.
Just because you own an aircraft, doesn't mean you have a budget to pay random EUR 10/month subscriptions.
People save money to buy expensive stuff. Or take out loans. One cannot assume that everyone doesn't care about spending < X dollars, where X is = 1% of the most expensive asset they own (see e.g. $3000 gaming PC vs. $30 software, elsewhere in the thread).
Everyone's poorer than you think, and sometimes the richest seeming people are under a mountain of debt.
> own an aircraft, doesn't mean you have a budget to pay random EUR 10/month subscriptions.
Still, if you can't afford a €10/mo subscription necessary to operate the airplane safely, when hanger fees are well in excess of that, then perhaps you can't actually afford to own an airplane? Airplanes aren't cheap to own, nevermind the aircraft itself.
Put it another way. I like driving BMWs, but, y'know what, I hate having to pay insurance, and I can't afford to pay that after
the monthly BMW lease payment, so I just don't pay it, cause fuck that noise.
I don't think most people's response to someone saying that would be "eh, sounds fine, BMWs are expensive". "So don't drive a BMW." seems like more likely reaction to me.
The reason people will tell you that is because paying for car insurance is rarely something you can just opt not to do, at least not without consequences. The consequence for not paying for a $10/month service is having to perform a minimally inconvenient chore once a week.
Indeed. Where I live, civil liability insurance is mandatory and if you own a car, you have to pay it, even if you don't intend to actively drive. It's not an optional cost.
Yeah, for a fucking airplane. In most of the world, that's way up there with yachts as a rich people toy rather than a everyday necessity. The real question though is, upon having discovered this, why allow them to keep doing that?
"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks." The same habits that let a nouveau riche amass enough fortune to afford a plane make them penny pinch after they no longer need to.
There will always be some amount of people who are too cheap to pay.
However, that doesn't mean that if you plug all the holes that they will pay. No. They'll just not use your service.
In the long run it's better to keep these types of people around because they at least advertise your service. But getting any money out of them is a pipe dream.
People often frame piracy as "oh 5% pirated instead of paying!" Well... the "instead of" part is doing the heavy lifting there. The options arent pirate or pay. They're pirate, pay, or not use.
In the short term, maybe. I don't think that's the case in the long run. They normalise the behaviour for others, even telling them about how to get around paying. I see strong clustering of the behaviour.
I think op meant the subjective feeling of having a system that runs in a stable manner.
I don't quite follow their reasoning either (maybe the smaller changesets expose compatibility bugs before affecting general ux?), but I agree that arch was a joy for me to use and felt "stable".
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