Hero.

Don is an addict. No matter how much money, women or success he gets, it will never be enough. He’ll chase that next high to the end of the earth.

They: “I don’t even.”

You:“… lift, bro?”

I should care less.

Perfect human beings don’t exist. Apparently there’s a religion positing there was one perfect human, but we nailed him to a cross for interfering with business.

Here’s a thought. If you were able to get away with Almost Anything ™ and were surrounded by people praising your genius, dashing good looks and boundless generosity towards their persons, how long would it take for you to lose your moral compass, you think? You would pretty soon lose your frame of reference to the normal people, and your empathy would follow. And that’s assuming you’re not 2nd or 3rd generation ultra rich, in which case you never had it to begin with.

Succession is a very good TV series exploring the mindset of such people, if you want to see it in action. Otherwise, history is full of examples - such as Nero, the greatest poet to ever set fire to Rome.

I know there are exceptions, like everywhere else in life. But those tend to cultivate humility as a habit, like other people go to the gym.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi was made for this, I swear. His latest books also read a lot like movie scripts are contained therein.

Charles Stross’ Laundry series has a ton of potential too, if less Chtullu is required, I wouldn’t mind a Merchant Princes series either.

I heard rumours about Forever War being optioned at some point, but nothing came of it.

Agree on the silliness. Still loved Darwi Odrade as a character.

And Brian’s best work doesn’t come close to Heretics, which for me was the weakest of all of Frank’s books. It’s like a cargo cult construction, all cardboard and no substance.

I really loved Romero’s work. And who knows, maybe this will be great. But then again, it might be like Brian Herbert’s Dune novels - a shameless, mediocre cash grab built on top of his father’s estate.

Either way, I stand by what I said: enough with the torch passing. This ain’t a family business.

Yet another blatant Hollywood money grab. Romero = zombies, that’s sure to sell big. It’s in the genes, man!

Enough with the torches. Go do your own thing.

Nevermind hackers. Look up “corporation in the middle” attacks, which is a prime example of subverting secure channels at scale.

If you don’t own the hardware, nothing you do on it is truly private. Ditto if someone else has admin access to your hardware (eg BYOD scenarios) . Inserting a root certificate into the OS is trivial in both cases.

The right to bear men.

Yeah, it was ragebait alright. Then again, if it were phrased in a reasonable manner, would we be talking this much about it? If the objective was to kick-start a conversation, it did the job 110%

Here’s my take: the bear thing is causing such a visceral reaction that it is very hard to take a step back, not take it personally and have a rational discussion about it. Even if you know the statistics. Even if you’re absolutely certain you’d do the right thing (or maybe especially then).

I was exposed to a somewhat similar experience in college: while walking through the campus one evening I realised the girl in front of me was a good friend of mine, so I rushed to catch up. When she heard me she quickened her pace close to running, and only stopped when I said her name and something like “wait up!”. I was just happy to meet a friend. She, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified, and told me all about it as we walked towards the exit.

That evening I realised that women experience the world much different than men. That there’s an underlying level of potential violence that they evaluate and weigh against potential benefits from encounters and interactions with men in almost all social contexts. And knowing that has recalibrated my behaviour to a certain extent, as I realised women can’t afford to give me the benefit of the doubt, especially in contexts where they feel vulnerable.

I wish more men would get this point, especially in their formative years. It’s not a judgement on their character when women that barely know them are careful around them. Trust needs to be earned. And for a woman, the cost of misplaced trust is too damn high.

FDA vs. Alliance for Hypocritic Medicine.

I thought the point was the inevitability of it all. She could see it, but couldn’t change a thing. At least that’s how I perceived it at the time. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

“Paul was swell, I was cheering for him all the way!”

– Elric of Melniboné, probably

Don’t get me wrong, Dune is my absolute favourite book, I must have read the whole series ten times already, but heroes in that world are in short supply. The guy that comes closest for my money is Duncan Idaho, especially later in the series (God Emperor and beyond).

I was thinking about the future. Think of a cornered Hitler with access to hydrogen bombs.

Wow that’s even scarier than what I had in mind. Good intentions all the way down.

The fucked up thing about humanity is that we invented our own destruction, put a shiny red button on top and wrote on it “do not touch”. As if there would ever be a scenario where pressing it would make sense. And seeing the rethoric coming out of Russia these days, I can’t help but wonder. Damn, I guess this is what my parents lived with at the height of the Cold War?