And he was scared of Ungoliant, and we don’t know what she is, besides nasty, and hungry, and shaped like a huge spider (well, spiders are shaped like her, probably).

(He also got his foot almost cut off by an elf in single combat and walked with a limp ever after — well, at least until he got his hands and feet cut off by the rest of the Valar, I suppose —, but elves were mighty back then.)

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper:

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

(…)

[through his cigar] Mandrake,

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake:

Yes, Jack?

Ripper:

Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?

Mandrake:

Well, no I… I can’t say I have, Jack.

Ripper:

Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water?

Mandrake:

Well I… I believe that’s what they drink, Jack. Yes.

Ripper:

On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.

Mandrake:

Oh, ah, yes. I don’t quite… see what you’re getting at, Jack.

Ripper:

Water. That’s what I’m getting at. Water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven tenths of this earth’s surface is water. Why, you realize that… seventy percent of you is water.

Mandrake:

Uhhh God…

Ripper:

And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.

Mandrake:

Yes. [chuckles nervously]

Ripper:

You beginning to understand?

Mandrake:

Yes. [chuckles, begins laughing/crying quietly]

Ripper:

Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?

Mandrake:

Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes.

Ripper:

Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?

Mandrake:

Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.

Ripper:

Well do you now what it is?

Mandrake:

No. No, I don’t know what it is. No.

Ripper:

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

(…)

Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridated water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake. Children’s ice cream?

Mandrake:

Good Lord.

Ripper:

You know when fluoridation first began?

Mandrake:

No. No, I don’t, Jack. No.

Ripper:

Nineteen hundred and forty six. Nineteen fortysix, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard core commie works.

Mandrake:

Jack… Jack, listen, tell me, ah… when did you first become, well, develop this theory.

Ripper:

Well, I ah, I I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Mandrake:

[sighs fearfully]

Ripper:

Yes a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence.

Mandrake:

Yes…

Ripper:

I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women… women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.

There’s plenty of science fiction without technology playing a significant role.

Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside was the first that came to mind; Asimov’s The Gods Themselves or Nightfall might be other examples; Olaf Stapledon’s Sirius; Clarke’s Childhood’s End has (alien) tech, but it mostly focuses on the psychological and societal effects of the contact with aliens, as does Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (and some of the other stories collected in the same volume, Stories of Your Life and Others); Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five… lots of great science fiction works focus on aspects other than technology.

We’re talking about Donald Trump here… you could replace him with an animatronic muppet and the only thing people would notice is that he looked healthier and didn’t smell as bad.

2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick gave them fucking iPads. In 1968.

Blade Runner was very much a product of its time (though Syd Mead’s visuals were outstanding).

There was something floating in the late seventies / early eighties zeitgeist that would become the cyberpunk genre, and it sort of condensed in several spots simultaneously.

William Gibson had just published Burning Chrome, and was finishing writing Neuromancer (which would be published in '84 and be considered a foundation of the genre).

Ridley Scott and Syd Mead independently adapted a (very different from the film) book by Philip K. Dick into a film that looked and felt like it was set in Gibson’s Sprawl.

In Japan, Kasuhiro Otomo had just begun publishing Akira.

Frank Miller was probably in the process of writing and conceptualising Rōnin, which DC would start publishing in '83.

Bruce Bethke had come up with the term cyberpunk in 1980, but that short story wouldn’t be published until '83.

Over the next few years many other authors would create other works clearly set in the same genre, though at this point they probably had some influence from Gibson and Blade Runner and each other.

Mike Pondsmith was drinking it all up and coming up with a role playing game with that title, to be published in '88.

And, all over the eighties and nineties, the genre exploded, and was everywhere.

there must be another simply-expressed term to reflect their thinking

Monstrous. Sociopathic. Inhumane. Evil. Deranged.

There’s plenty of simply-expressed terms to reflect their thinking.

It’s the USA; you need to own a truck, a house, 30 acres of land, at least 70 pounds of firearms, stocks in no less than five companies, and at least one testicle to be eligible for citizenship.

Trump overspends because he doesn’t know the value of money.

Trump “overspends” because he doesn’t understand the concept of actually paying a bill.

He’s spent all his life refusing to pay a single bill, and somehow getting away with it.

It doesn’t matter if the money is his or the government’s (until he steals it). He won’t pay. If he has anything remotely resembling principles, not paying is his main one.

He’s as capable of intentionally paying a bill as he is of growing a second head. Or bigger hands.

I’m lucky enough to live in a relatively civilised country (comparatively at least; everything can be improved), not some fascist hellhole like the USA.

Unlike the monsters who tortured and murdered this woman, however, I do use the opportunities and means I have to help people around me, but said people are lucky enough to not be anywhere near the USA.

but if these doctors have to stop practicing medicine then more women will die

Whatever these so called doctors are practicing is the opposite of medicine.

If they were to stop practicing it, at least they wouldn’t have the opportunity to torture and murder more victims, and maybe some real doctors would get their jobs and be able to help.

There’s no excuse for collaborating with a fascist regime. The ones obeying the orders are just as guilty as the ones giving them.

I don’t give a flying fuck why they didn’t help her or what the law says.

They’re monstrous torturers and murderers, regardless of their reasons or lack thereof.

You don’t let someone suffer and die when you have the means to save them, regardless of the consequences, except possibly if those consequences would lead to greater suffering and death (trolley problem). Especially if you call yourself a doctor. (And no, the possibility of going to prison does not count as greater suffering and death, no matter how much of a sociopath you are).

Bots ain’t users, spez, you greedy little pigboy.

We must condemn all terrorist attacks

At this point it’d probably be less work to praise them when (if?) they don’t commit any…

Nazis never laugh or attempt to make jokes

To be fair, the original Nazis were German…

What happened to “no taxation without representation”…?

One letter for one sound is a lot less complicated ðan two letters representing two sounds.

Most languages that use alphabets have digraphs representing different sounds than their composing letters. It’s trivial to understand that ‘th’ represents a different sound than ‘t’ or ‘h’.

Most sane languages, on the other hand, don’t use the same letter or digraph to represent half a dozen different sounds (and when they do they use diacritic marks to distinguish them… which English only uses, without explanation, in borrowed words like fiancé or façade, which might actually be more confusing to native speakers than to ESL ones), or half a dozen letters and digraphs to represent the same sound.

you clearly didn’t check my profile

I’ve got enough of a headache from deciphering your posts, thank you

asshats

Pot, kettle…

They can be written now though

Yeah…? Then tell me why in fuck’s name (or should it be facks?) ‘oo’ can represent six different sounds (food, book, door, blood, cooperation, brooch), for instance, and how to tell them apart, or why the letters ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘o’, ‘aa’, and ‘ea’ are used to represent the same exact sound in the words father, sergeant, body, bazaar, and heart…

Let me assure you that this nonsense is many orders of magnitude more confusing to people learning English as a second language than the ‘th’ shit!

Hard drive space might be bottlenecked by the holographic principle.

If you’re going to use ancient letters use pre-vowel shift vowels too, you half assed coward.