Lol I see what you're getting at, but I'd argue that those (incredibly fun!) movies seem "prophetic" only by the same quality that makes them relatable and profound:

They're inspired by history. Just one example being how the prequel trilogy bears heavy resemblance to the governmental structure of ancient Rome, before, like Rome, collapsing from the inside from in-fighting and profiteering in an attempt to control the whole Galaxy, before becoming basically like various monarchies throughout history, that almost succeed in ruling the world (galaxy) by monolithic force.

It's why Firefly was such a success, when it flipped and futurized the American civil / revolutionary wars concept. It gives us something familiar enough to attach to, with twists that make it unique.

Edit: I welcome historians to correct any errors in my rather generalized understanding of history. I tried to get the point across while resisting research rabbit holes. ;)

Never heard of Qidi, thanks for sharing that! Bambu concerns me, frankly, from the "too good to be true in capitalism-land" standpoint.

They're obviously pretty quality built and do a great job off the shelf, but the closed source software is iffy to me too. I think some are suspicious they just don't want to reveal they're basically running tweaked Klipper lol. I'm lured by that temptation of not having to tweak and fiddle for weekends prospect too, but if I can't touch it at all or know how it works, my Ender3v2 still seems more appealing!

I'm concerned if other companies don't seriously step up their game, Bambu will reach market saturation and then go for the" enshittification rug pulling to impress investors" special.

Anyway don't want to be too negative, clearly people are enjoying those machines. But the maker community definitely needs to be ready to raise a riot if Bambu starts taking notes from HP / Apple / John Deere. :)

Yeah, it's not bad! If it's got a good clean view it can tell you when things start to look a little sus before disaster strikes haha.

It's even self-hostable, and a modest dedicated graphics card can be used to run the LLM completely locally. I haven't been able to get that running on my server yet though. (Nvidia drivers. Agh)

Otherwise they're pretty "freemium", which is understandable.

I've been out of the game lately though. :)

It used to be Spaghetti Detective, but they wanted to be trendy so it's "Obico" I think now lol

I extremely miss Craig Ferguson...

Okay you SCARED me there. He might not do "late late show" anymore but he's still around. :)

I got to see his stand-up live once and he was hilarious.

They say it's a Gates'way to things, most unnatural...

"Everything's shiny, Cap'n, not to fret!"

"You told me these packages were supported for another 6 weeks!"

"Your last Pacman -Syu was 6 months ago, Cap'n!"

"My OS don't crash. If it crashes, you crashed it!"

The first thing was probably a set of earrings when I was a really little guy. I handed them to my mom when we got home and she was shocked at what a smooth swipe I pulled and we immediately went back to return them. So much for my thoughtful gift! Hahaha.

I also recall this thing at my very conserva-religious elementary school, where people set up a little market selling things as gifts and such. I was given some money to go buy presents for people, but nobody told me how to pay for anything, and I assumed it was like a big box store where you pay at the end.

So here I am like, what, 6 or 7 maybe? Going from table to table and just yoinking knick-knacks into my little bag. Nobody stopped me or otherwise corrected me. I still don't see anywhere to "check out"! I end up just leaving, basically.

Cut to me waiting in the lunch line and just getting straight up shaken down and accosted for cash by some authoritarian staff types. I just handed them the bag of spending money I'd been supplied with and I don't really remember what happened after that. Looking back though, those people were very mean to a confused child under 10, treating me like some deliberate criminal mastermind of petty-thievery lol.

First Brock's love of "Jelly Donuts" that look suspiciously like onigiri, now this!

Their logic is like "Yeah, our bosses mistreated us! But they're in a tight spot because the invisible economy forced their hand! The market is flooded with mythological job-stealing crime-doing immigrants we've never met, so we understand, boss-man. The democrats will pay for this. Yeah I know you're short staffed we can work extra and not log overtime. One day we'll get to wear the boot! :D"

Lol

Thankfully I've managed to buy any sorta niche stuff I needed from literally anywhere else.

A cursory glance at Amazon revealed it's basically a bloated corpse stuffed with trash at this point.

I'd put more trust in careful Ebay shopping to avoid straight-up fakes anymore.

berated during a meeting with my boss a month later

A MONTH later. I'm willing to bet it didn't even impact anything, and boss wouldn't even have remembered it happened at all if they didn't scribble it down in their little black book.

Good job getting the heck out of there.

I had a boss like this too. Would never just talk to me about any concerns, they would act like everything is fine and then suddenly blindside me with a laundry list of petty complaints they've logged over like 4 months.

All it proved was they spent more time side-eyeing my work and spying on me than doing their actual job. When they weren't wandering off to the other side of the building chatting up other management about nothing, for hours on end, while I handled their job too, alone every day, of course.

Not all people are bad. But the intersection between stupid and evil tends to converge in management.