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When I learned that Fallout takes place 200 years after the bombs fell, I immediately lost a good chunk of my suspension of disbelief. Like, surely after 200 years humanity could do better than corrugated metal shacks and struggling garden plots.
When I read that it made me think of a dystopic system in a different way. It isn’t the case in the canon, but what if humanity in the series, simply gave up. They determined a sense of pointlessness to progress, if it can so swiftly and thoroughly be ruined.
Why reconstruct the tower, if it is only to topple again, and again? What is the logical thing to do in this case?
They settle into a steady state of just getting by. They settle into never building.
We’ve advanced technology but it is in itself such a distributed system. The keys to reconstructing some of our most commonly used tools (not even cutting edge) are completely lost on the end users. Even if not, such a large portion of humanity has little interest in the topics themselves.
I’ll be studying, while learning something new. I’m reading over the examples and I feel waves of sleep pouring over me. It’s the pull to give up. Doubt creeps in. I say to myself “why am I even doing this?” What I am reading, is not registering.
I say to myself “I’ll never learn this. Not fully.”
When will I give up? Surely it will happen.
2025-02-10
rel:How Will the Universe End?
Starts with clip from Woody Allen film Annie Hall
“Why are you depressed, Alvy?” Dr. Flicker asks. “The universe is expanding,” Alvy says.
“The universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that will be the end of everything.” “Why is that your business?” interrupts his mother.
Turning to the psychiatrist, she announces, “He’s stopped doing his homework!” “What’s the point?” Alvy says. “What has the universe got to do with it!” his mother shouts. “You’re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!” Dr. Flicker jumps in: “It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy, and we’ve got to try and enjoy ourselves while we’re here, eh? Ha ha ha.”
2025-05-21
rel: The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Pollard and Reid
Reading further on what was lost here, I find this comment
For books written on papyrus, it’s not enough that the buildings housing them not be destroyed—the books themselves need to be recopied every generation or two or before they disintegrate. It doesn’t take a fire or a mob or an army to destroy such a library, it just takes a lapse in the public will to sustain it.