Sure, unless there was a correlation between the technologies deployed by the individual companies and their vulnerabilities.

I’m not saying there is in this case, but it’s a phenomenon we see all the time in systems ranging from technological to immunological. When network (social, computer, whatever) connect systems with correlated vulnerabilities, there can be cascading failures that do not spread outside those networks. It’s been so long (over 30 years) since I’ve even thought about RF and related systems that I have no idea what specific or proprietary technologies the major companies have, so I just shrugged it off as I was unaffected, and penciled in that there may have been a correlation with solar activity.

You’re absolutely right. In my memory, though, the ones that stick out the most are the ones where the hero is pro-corporate but in an anti-corporate way. I’m thinking about movies like Working Girl, 9 to 5, and Secret of My Success, and even Other People’s Money. The villains were the very straight and square boss types and the heroes were the young(er) upstarts who could out-business them. OPM was a little different but I think it fits the theme.

The main difference I’m seeing is that even in the pro-capitalism shows, it was still all about sticking it to the man. If the good guys were cops, the man was the chief of police. If the good guys were businessmen, the man was their boss. If the good guys were soldiers, the man was their CO, or the generals or politicians back in Washington.

Maybe it’s purely subjective on my part, but it seems like there’s a lot more pro-authority movies being made now. You can’t take a movie like Top Gun (which still had the shaggy haired rebel as well as one of the most homoerotic themes in mainstream cinema at the time) with something like Bill Murray in Stripes. Stripes is great comedy that I’d place almost at the level of Caddyshack, but even though both movies could have been shown by recruiters to get people to enlist, Stripes was still a goofball comedy of the slobs against the snobs (with the snobs in this case being their leadership).

I’d really like to get back into that kind of default cultural image. Cops were mostly corrupt (Serpico) or idiots (Cannonball Run), or else inept (Escape from New York, or all of those stupid Charles Bronson movies).

It just feels like we hit that point where the default is to love Big Brother.

Wasn’t there also a report today (I think) about an unusual level of sunspot activity? Without digging into it, I think I sort of just assumed they were related.

I have AT&T fiber and a Verizon iPhone and I didn’t notice disruptions on either. My partner has an AT&T iPhone and didn’t notice any issues.

Ironically, Robocop would have defended him from the terminators.

I really do miss the 80s/90s era anti-capitalist dystopian future movies. We have the Purge series now, which has been pretty good (at least 3 and 4), but nothing approaching the massive numbers of productions ranging from They Live to Rollerboys to Robocop to Running Man and so many others.

It feels like we’ve hit a tipping point where subconsciously at least we’ve figured out we’re actually the bad guys from Red Dawn and the Wolverines are the people we’re killing, and just decided to lean into it. I’m waiting for Handmaid’s Tale to get a Birth of a Nation makeover in the next ten years.

It’s going to be a glorious disaster. Didn’t they slash the initial IPO estimate about six months after announcing it and shortly before the whole API thing? I haven’t cared enough to follow it closely, especially since abandoning the platform, but it really seems like the stakeholders wanting to cash in on a sinking ship before it finally goes down.

I already control technology with my thoughts. I just use my fingers to do it.

“Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good goat trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

-John Lewis

Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Seriously. It’s an old joke, but it’s funny. I upvoted it, I was just playing off of it. Threaded humor is like jazz. We just have to play off of each other.

I’m afraid I can only give half marks for this one because that’s technically a molecular biology joke, not a chemistry joke. As a biologist, I’m very sympathetic. It’s just that DNA helicase isn’t going to be covered in the coursework of chemistry, much less in a freshman chemistry book.

On the other hand, a tasteful pun about bondage would have received full marks.

Oh shit! I didn’t know they did a live action of him!

I ate the onion today.

Max Headroom has escaped cyberspace and he looks pissed.

Depictions associated with slavery and servile minorities are different than a little girl in a sun hat. Who would have guessed?

Depictions associated with slavery and servile minorities are different than a little girl in a sun hat. Who would have guessed?

Depictions associated with slavery and servile minorities are different than a little girl in a sun hat. Who would have guessed?

Yeah, I know. I was just calling them on it.

First, the deck is responsible for almost half of “Linux” users, so it’s not in competition with Mac computers.

Second, by your logic, Linux is better than macOS by a very slim margin, but windows is by far and away the best operating system out there.

Yes. I use the term “hard atheist” because in my experience that’s the term that people who aren’t necessarily familiar with atheism get on the first read. I think I first came across it being used by Dennett or one of those guys, but I can’t remember at this point.

Okay, I’m a hard atheist (meaning I have a positive belief that no gods exist), but I’m not really using that to make this point.

People who actually believe this kind of thing should be considered candidates for clinical treatment. This is not “I believe that Jesus was god” level stuff. This is complete tinfoil hat levels of crazy. If they didn’t get a free pass because their beliefs are considered a religion, I honestly think we’d have a lot more people in treatment.

I don’t know if the Pat Robertsons of the world actually believe this kind of crap or not, but some people obviously do. There’s a hypothesis you occasionally see floated that the Nigerian prince scam emails are written that badly on purpose because you know if someone falls for them, they’ll fall for anything. I really have to wonder if that’s what’s going on here.

It’s a genre called magical realism.

I never read the books, but this sounds like what they mean.

If they work on the steam deck, I’m going for it. University lan parties in the computer labs with smuggled in beers while playing Warcraft were fantastic.

That is, until they figured out that the one winning strategy was to play Orcs and get blood ogres asap, then just swarm with them. After that, the entire game hinged on the fastest clicks and where you landed for your starting base.