The trailer music was also a track on the “Rock” radio station.

gets back from Pokemon Go Kingler event Still here!

The Internet is just a fad. Wait until everyone logs into a single central server in Virginia. One database is all you need for Earth.

What would be really neat is if you got some external heat sinks for your brakes that would make the letters glow incandescent.

Session, an Australian fork of Signal with onion routing and no phone number requirement, seems promising.

“Trust the Fungus.” –Luigi

For an academic text on this subject with footnotes, I recommend Chokepoint Capitalism (2022) by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. It calls what you describe “moat buulding” and an “anti-competitive flywheel”.

The US didn’t even get the excuse of being forced to pay obscenely high war reparations to justify their fascism. Instead, it’s dissatisfaction with inflation which, in turn, is the predictable combination of the exponential depletion of scarce resources (real estate, water) and the consolidation of property into the hands of an ultra wealthy minority. If one must frame the emergence of fascism in a “war” context, then the cause is plutocrat beligerantes strategically fighting a social class war while most of everyone else think it’s a culture war.

Americans have been so fat and happy that they’re literally sick. They need a few more LA fires and pandemics to wake up from the intellectual coma they’re in.

Driving time distance from any interstate highway would reveal regions most likely to attempt seceding from the Union.

we need it to be more than this

That goes without saying?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator

In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often used as a synonym for “head of the laboratory” or “research group leader”. While the expression is common in the sciences, it is used widely for the person or persons who make final decisions and supervise funding and expenditures on a given research project.

(Via Masto)

AM radio, FM radio, PM radio, XM radio…

I wonder what that particular scenario’s Gini coëfficient versus Cumulative Assassinations plot looks like. Sounds like the plot for a new season of Death Note.

Two responses, channeling the defenseless future conscripts forced into this world literally to fill a “recruitment” quota:

“Don’t build a person if you do not intend to be their ally.” — The Terraformers (2023)

and

“No! No! No! No! No!” — Team Four Star

Literally the plot of Shin Sekai Yori (2008).

Every story needs an Arthur Dent to ask dumb questions for the audience. It gives the author an excuse to worldbuild without pontificating. So, on the bright side, maybe our crumbling civilization has a lot of authors collaborating with mind-bogglingly panoply audiences, each of which needs their own lovable idiot hero to be a character in our world.

This sounds like a Discworld plot invoking relatable 21st century Roundworld problems like absentee landlords and lack of housing.

God, I wish Terry Pratchett hadn’t died so soon.

More of such laws, please.