The failure of Jurassic Park was a labor issue! Even before Nedry sabotaged the systems, builders and maintenance workers were getting maimed and killed by dinosaurs. It wasn’t science run amok it was literally just the same industrialist bullshit.
If you read Michael Crichton’s other techno-thrillers – Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Congo – you pick up how he builds plots by smashing scientific novelties up with other of-the-age trends in society, and that the 1990 novel Jurassic Park is really genetic engineering X the rise of theme parks X “world apart” all-inclusive resorts on Caribbean islands developed by American money.
The book opens before the park is complete or the main characters are introduced with a local laborer being killed by a raptor in essentially a construction accident.
This lunch restaurant has a Grateful Dead station on, and like, some of my high school friends were into Phish, I saw String Cheese Incident play a ski slope in summertime, those guys were noodling but they had a sense it was supposed to be jam band epic in some sense, this just sounds like the band for the 1968 annual tri-county realtors’ dinner banquet started tuning up an hour ago and never stopped
Does our understanding employment in other sectors than our own through TV shows maintaining established characters lead us to underestimate economy-wide turnover rates?
The “water level” of my flesh recedes, exposing beyond the general swelling of the belly specific banks of fat deposit as if lying upon the surface of a general bulk
I lose more weight
They recede, smoothing out the underflesh mass
My next layer of skin is produced smaller, tightening everything up
So I have definitely been having a midlife crisis only minus the ability to feel loss or regret and with the sense already that I have moved away from the person I was to one that more closely matches my idealized visions from youth.
So what’s left is mostly appreciating finitude remaining. Like, 40 years was a long fucking time, but I can now at least somewhat wrap my mind around it as a finite amount. And like, I have about one of those left.
Maybe a bit more! My dad was born in 1938 and he’s still alive, showing a few limits these last 5 years, but maybe with 45 years of American Golden Age on him I’ll make it to 100 and be vital til 90.
But still, I don’t think I have two left.
Who knows, maybe in the 60 years to then AGI will figure how to make us immortal. Yet, that’s where my mind’s at lately.
i was at a Very Legit policy event recently and some Very Legit guy from the frickin’ White House is on a panel, lamenting how government responsibilities are divided up weirdly:
“if a chicken wandering around DC has avian flu and it dies on the Natl Mall, it’s the responsibility of the Natl Park Service. if it dies on the sidewalk NEXT to the mall, it’s the responsibility of the DC metro police. if it dies on the front steps of one of the federal agencies, it’s the responsibility of the Dept of Agriculture. but if YOU eat it and get sick, it’s suddenly the responsibility of the CDC. does anyone see a problem with this?!”
and another person on the panel, a Very Legit academic researcher, leans forward, looks him dead in the eye, and says, “yeah, ‘cause birds aren’t real.”
Always been big on generating sensation through jaw action, chewing and tooth clenching, I guess maybe I should even think of it as “stimming”.
And toothpicks are good for that, and not only are these great chewing sticks just as wood, but dig the taste. The “spicy” is cinnamon, but sharp, hot, and clovey.
