happycamper

The Fifth Season and sequels, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and sequels by NK Jemsin (last one is fantasy) Altered Carbon - It's been out a while but I just learned of it. Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos - military sci fi. Dystopian in a "way too many people" way that current population trends seem to indicate isn't likely but still a very interesting read. You can substitute "overpopulation" with "obsolete due to automation" and the book's themes work just about exactly as well. Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. His other books are good, but this one is excellent. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Interesting scenario and it plays with gender norms by explicitly not stating the gender of anybody with pronouns. That works a lot better than it sounds, it makes you think a lot more about the characters when you read it. Comedy wise, it came out a few years ago, Redshirts is great. A take on how living in a Star Trek universe would be for the characters and I'll leave it at that.

Ok but my criticism of him is from a leftist perspective?

The Expanse? Also, novel wise or show wise? novel wise sci fi is undergoing a little bit of a quality renaissance IMO.

Closing a bunch of schools that disproportionately affect the poorest and blackest neighborhoods, running a city whose police department has black sites and that treats civil rights with the same respect that the CIA does, red light cameras and other revenue generators that are effectively tax farming?

Trekkies pretend it is. It's space opera too. It's always operated as "let's make up something we want to do and handwavium our way into being able to do it", their handwavium just incorporates some physics instead of gobbledygook.

Individual tasks will be done by AIs but jobs will still be the realm of people. If your job is "one or two tasks, full stop" then just like in previous eras, look over your shoulder.

It's space opera

In theory I agree but coming from Emanuel it makes me feel dirty

Sure but it did take a couple hundred years of upheaval to adapt. Unless you're planning on living for 500 years "upheaval" will be most of our lives.

The correct answer to "does chocolate milk come from brown cows?" is "yes". 7% of Americans are stupid? no, only 7% are able to think critically.

No! Now I'm going to have to go back and facepalm all my responses

No, they can't. You have to know who to buy from. You have to know how to act. You have to be able to not creep hotties out. Just because you can do it, mr. "was a weed dealer in high school while also being a 3-sport varsity athlete recruited to college athletics", does NOT mean that "anybody" can do it. Uh huh. It's almost like, ya know, having decided to have a boring life (cause I prefer it) makes me aware of how a boring life is a series of choices. What crawled up your asshole this morning?

Dude, are you drunk? You want an exciting life with hotties at a "low end job" be a fitness trainer, or a waiter, or work crew on a cruise line, or, or, or... there are a lot of jobs that are low paying and provide plenty of opportunity to party. You want a comfortable but boring workday where you get government bennies and retire in 25, one path is to be a customs agent. It's a HELL of a lot harder to have an exciting life as a customs agent than any of the jobs I mentioned above. I guess you didn't see where I used quotes around man thing? As defined by the OP, the "man thing" is to have coke parties with 20 something insta models. Having a a boring job makes that shit a lot more difficult and far less likely, yeah.

Nailed it. That's totally what we were getting at, thanks for cutting through the dog whistles of "boring explicitly white collar job is boring" and "hotties with cocaine sounds fun" with "low end jobs make you not a man".

Maybe in the good old days, when men were men and giants ruled the earth and "customs agent" meant "designated bribe taker". Not any more tho