• fubo@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    In some mid-20th-century science-fiction novels, people in the 21st century are piloting rockets by manual control, using slide rules to calculate trajectories.

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
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        26 days ago

        That’s the most believable.

        The cigarette companies will eventually cough up for the cure for cancer that’s being withheld to keep money flowing into the cancer treatment industry, and then smoking will become fashionable again.

        • folkrav@lemmy.ca
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          26 days ago

          To be honest, if the health issues that came with cigarettes ever got some kind of permanent cure, I definitely could see it happening. I quit years ago, when we were starting to think about having kids, but if it wasn’t for the health risks, I’d probably still smoke today. I actually enjoyed smoking, weirdly…

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      I remember a moment like this in Asimov’s Foundation series, a series set in a far-off setting of a galaxy-spanning empire built on easy interstellar travel. At one point a couple gets on board their personal interstellar space ship. As they’re getting on, the husband tells his wife to go cook dinner.

      Oh, and for an added bonus, their ash trays are nuclear powered.

      • fubo@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Yep. I was thinking of Heinlein’s 1952 The Rolling Stones, where the person doing the timing calls out commands to the person controlling the engines, like an old-timey sea captain. (And in German, despite being an English-speaking family, because rocketry is German, donchaknow: Brennschluss!)

  • paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works
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    26 days ago

    I think it’s pretty clear extreme fatness (and the resulting dependence) was either intentional to keep everyone basically sedated for 700 years, or the natural side effect of that sedation.