This article and the advertised on one on zombie apocalypses within it (link below) left me wondering about their authors. From the first article:
Dystopian sci-fi has a long history of creating neat metaphors for social division by imagining worlds that physically segregate lived space.
Imagining worlds? I’ve read dystopian works by authors who lived their lives in physically segregated spaces (sci-fi as romans à clef). The beginning and ending of the section “Imperious Heights” almost made me spit out my coffee. I couldn’t stop picturing the cities where I’ve lived or visited in my travels.
We’re not just starting to see this, it’s been here for well over a century. The date for The Time Machine wasn’t included (1895). The wealthy have been engaging in similar distancing projects even longer than that. There’s never a place they hide where the have-nots don’t go, too. Maybe these stories should be a cautionary tale for the rich, and not a plan. I’m more concerned that they serve as an inspiration to the rest of us.
It [Snowpiercer] signifies the need for a political movement to rise up from the bottom of society.
The masses will continue to rise up. That’s a common theme in our history, as reflected in most of those stories. Hopefully, the current protests and movements against abuse of power and inequality will have better outcomes than those that came before.
This really jumped out at me:
In zombie movies there are really only two moral dilemmas. One is a replay of the old libertarian question from the Wild West: can I kill this person if I find a good excuse? The update is the obsession of baby boomers and their ageing parents: is it okay to kill a loved one if they don’t seem human anymore?
That he frames the first question in a reference to the Wild West when there are so many current examples was interesting. The second part was raised amid coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes around the world. Both have been answered - and not in a good, moral way. That’s why the final paragraph seemed so jarring.
They [apocalypse movies] take us down a dark, imaginative path so that, when it really comes along, we don’t go there. They project a future that cannot happen because, once projected, it is the future we’re bound to avoid.
So, news reports show we’re far down that path in reality. Like the first article’s premise, people aren’t avoiding these outcomes, they are embracing them. For all their popularity, we’re dealing with the folks for whom the message in these books and movies went right over their heads. Odd stuff, indeed.
Lion’s mane jellyfish can grow to two metres in diameter with tentacles as long as 30 metres, roughly the same length as a blue whale.
What’s more? They sting.
I’d much rather have a weird pagan as a neighbor than some people.
Odd or good?
Well, I’d give it better odds than Sir Clive’s C5…
And they have Magna on board, they build (among other cars) the Mercedes-Benz G and have already worked for Land Rover, they know how to design and build a 4x4.
Whether what the world needs now (besides love, sweet love ) is yet another 4x4, I don’t know.
Yes: Buttplugs and vibrators that can sync with Animal Crossing and vibrate whenever the player swings a shovel.
Not just for Pro Cam Girls any more!
The Soviets had them too. Except that they worked, mostly.
After several episodes I asked Google why the train has to keep moving.
There doesn’t seem to be a real answer. The characters and the train never interact with anything in the outside world. It’s just an excuse to design a giant prison camp so that it’s long and narrow and the “middle class” is physically blocking the proles from getting at the elite.
Well now, that’s where they get their power from see. It has to keep moving at a certain speed or they get power cuts so it’s like a perpetual motion machine - the engine powers the train but its motion through the wheels return power to the… yeah, it’s just an excuse. 
I was lukewarm on the series to begin with but it’s very nearly edging over into must-watch now.
Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now ‘criminal’ EncroChat users are being rounded up
French and Dutch police have boasted of infiltrating and killing off encrypted chat service EncroChat, alleging it was used by organised crime gangs to plot murders, sell drugs, launder criminal profits and more.
The encrypted chat platform is alleged by British, French and Dutch law enforcement agencies to have been used by around 60,000 people in total – many of whom, it is alleged, were members of organised crime gangs using the network to plan their crimes.
The relationship, the team say, is described by the formula: human age = 16 ln(dog_age) + 31
Good. Tired of explosions all night, every night
