4 Creepy Ways Everyday Life Is Turning Into Sci-Fi

Well, unless you live in modern Iran. Then it's a fact of life. Iran has a legal marketplace for kidney sales, and while "kidney sale" immediately conjures images of spiked drinks and a bathtub full of ice and regret, it's all above-board. Poor Iranians are so eager to "donate" that the streets leading to some hospitals are plastered with homemade advertisements proclaiming how healthy their signmakers are.

Before you write off Iran as a backwards country with inferior healthcare, it's been argued that their system is in some regards actually better than that of the United States. For all we may squirm at the concept, Iranians in need of kidneys, well, get kidneys. Meanwhile, as obesity and diabetes rates continue to rise, America's demand for healthy kidneys is only increasing. As of 2015, 100,000 Americans were waiting for a new kidney, and in 2014, 7,600 Americans either got too sick (or too dead) to receive one.

Iran's healthcare system saves money overall, because patients get new kidneys quickly instead of spending a long time on dialysis, and the legal framework prevents the donor from getting screwed on payment. Plus, both donor and receiver must be Iranian nationals, so you don't see "kidney tourism." Iran has largely managed to address their organ shortage, although information on the long-term health of the sellers is unavailable, because the future is a morally complicated quagmire of nightmares.

The system has its flaws, of course, with prospective patients making some seriously sketchy side deals to get around waiting periods. Oh, and also the whole vampiric overtone of the rich buying body parts from the poor. That's pretty weird too.

Now, to be fair, Steve Jobs did highlight how the suicide rate in China was about the same as at the factory, which is only a couple steps removed from telling someone that it's statistically unlikely to be murdered while you're stabbing them. Nevertheless, Apple and Foxconn, the factory's parent company, did take measures to prevent suicides. If you think that sounds nice, think more literally. No steps were taken to improve the working and living conditions, which are infamous for their relentless pace, cruel management, and blatant recruiting lies. Instead, workers had to sign pledges stating they would not attempt to kill themselves. Quickly realizing that a pinky promise didn't mean much to someone standing on a ledge, they took one more measure: adding netting to all the tall buildings in the complex.

Shockingly, these measures haven't really helped, as threats of mass suicide have become the workers' only negotiating chip. In 2012, 150 of them gathered on a roof and threatened to jump if working conditions didn't improve. It happened again in 2016 over withheld wages, which suggests that the 2012 protest didn't go as well as it could have. Guardian journalists interviewed workers in 2017 to see if any improvements had been made, and one worker summed things up thusly: "It's not a good place for human beings."

The iPhone X looks neat though, huh?

The empathetic folks at Toyota are trying to save people from the tedious job of keeping their family graves clean by providing a low-maintenance alternative, meaning that a night on the town can now feature both sushi and your father's ashes being brought to you by the same technology. When you arrive at the urn warehouse, you scan an ID card and are directed to a private prayer booth. In under a minute, a conveyor system transfers the relevant ashes into your booth from a behind-the-scenes storage area.

A typical conveyor-fed urn warehouse holds 5,500 remains in just over 20,000 square feet, and a slot is roughly half as cheap as a traditional grave site. The only major downside is that it looks like Ghost In The Shell meets Beetlejuice.

Oh, and that you couldn't be sure -- truly sure -- that grandpa's ghost likes hanging out in a robotic corpse warehouse for all eternity. You know old people and technology.

Tiagosvn would love to hear about the most dystopian elements of your life on his Twitter. Nick is an attorney who hopes his writing career will continue to keep him out of the courtroom.

Michael Gibson's work is intense stuff. Check out his first graphic novel, Archangel, today!

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