Grey Area

"If all this little voice of mine gets to do is tell Oblivion to fuck right off, then that's enough for me."

Rob: Through flashbacks to 1995, we learn that young Dean was arrested after stealing food to help feed Sam, while John Winchester, father of the year, was away on a hunt.   Rich: But, dude, you just made a joke, but I want to talk about it. The father of the year thing. It’s amazing- so many of these episodes REALLY shine a light on  how f’ed their childhood is. Rob: And how bad John Winchester was! Rich: Yeah! Pulling him out on prom night or whatever- It’s crazy. Rob: I know. … Rob: You right, John Winchester - not a good father. And yet, people love him. Rich: I don’t- Dude- The biggest pass in entertainment that guy gets. Rob: People are all upset at me because I snapped my fingers and a dog went poof, but this guy is really screwing these kids lives up. Rich: It is kind of actually really weird that you get more grief for harming a dog than John Winchester gets- Rob: I didn’t harm- he wasn’t hurt- Rich: -Deeply damaging 2 individual young men. As children.

acrylic, canvas 40*50 cm «Lighthouse of the Northern Sunset» 2025

“Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupidest things that someone could say,” says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the book More Everything Forever, which outlines the messianic, sci-fi fantasies of the tech oligarchs. “There are so many reasons why it’s such a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”

I really like sci-fi stories where people have to go off and terraform a planet, or figure out how to rebuild civilization after some disaster, or ideally both. "The last ark-ship leaving Earth right before it becomes uninhabitable" sort of deal. But lately I've been coming around to this same idea, that it will always be more practical to try to save Earth than to try to start over elsewhere.