I think you’re vastly underestimating how quickly culture deviates and develops. A planetary mono-culture would require every person to grow up in exactly the same circumstances. No stratification from class or gender or sex or age or ethnicity. No varying seasons or biomes or climates. Exposed to all the same media at exactly the same time, and all with the same intelligence and personality and ability to interpret it.

In short, the only time a mono-culture makes even a tiny bit of sense is when it’s a hivemind. (Or mind-control but that’s pretty much the same thing)

Mars has no biomes because Mars has no known life. You can’t skip the “bio” part of the word.

tell a story that interrogates people’s beliefs without them realizing it until later.

The term for this, at least as it pertains to science fiction, is “cognitive estrangement”.

Same way it’s always worked. Your best shot is by knowing someone in the field who can get you in the door for an interview.

I didn’t get any credential and I consider college one of the better things I did as a young adult. Learned a lot, experienced a bunch of cool things (and people) that make me a more rounded person, and I paid almost nothing out of pocket. (Thanks FAFSA)

Until you solve scarcity, one way or another, reject as decadent the image of the angelic lofty scholar who learns for the sake of learning.

No, fuck that. I will continue to consider learning for its own sake among the most interesting and important things a person can do.

The viscose rayon made from bamboo requires pretty nasty solvents, and that’s the stuff used to make soft stuff like underpants. It can also be made into a stiffer thread more like linen without a chemical process.

buying more clothes with natural fabrics

Cotton, wool, linen, and leather as well as re-learning to mend and alter clothes instead of everything being fast and disposable. I feel like I’m in crazytown every time I go shopping, there’s so much god damn plastic everywhere.

I think the dogs in Nice eat too much grass.

Why do you think so many fluids are juice colors?

A leech tank would be pretty metal though. Like, imagine the medieval lord aura of leeching at a dinner party.

3070 can’t play them to my standard.

You’ve poisoned yourself. Chasing fidelity and refresh rates has done for graphics what short-form media did to attention spans. I’m emulating PS1 games and playing Fallout 4 on a 970 while my computer fans blow like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and I am free.

There it is, that’s the xenophobia used by right-wing politicians and corporate interests to divide the working class!

I was assuming you’re Australian actually since you mentioned compulsory voting.

No see it’s ok to generalize 300 million people as a cultural monolith this time.

As opposed to every other European colony, that are totally at-grips with the genocidal horrors they inflicted on the people they displaced?

Oh, and it would be nice if the main character wasn’t automatically the leader of every faction in the game.

Really wish Bethesda would get over this and their fear of letting players miss out on some of the content in their gigantic worlds. Taking over a guild should be hard and it should have consequences. Preston Garvey knows Nate/Nora all of fifteen minutes and puts you in charge of an entire movement (while gatekeeping essential system mechanics behind further investment in his faction, fuck you if you wanted to roleplay as a raider warlord you gotta be a good boy first)

Actually the whole first hour or two of FO4 is the core of what is wrong with it. They went all-in on essentially an E3 demo and expect every player to follow along exactly their rails.

What I really want is Steel Battalion.

I really love the idea of asymmetrical games like DBD but the community always ruins it. Evolve was absutely incredible in the first few weeks before players optimized all the tension out (and before the backlash over what is now laughably tame monetization).

Not necessarily. There are an infinite number of outputs that aren’t those things.