If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

This quote from LBJ centres me. Its been the conservative tactic for literally decades, from African Americans, to lgbtq+, to immigrants; it’s always been the same grift:

• Choose your marginalised group-du-jour.
• Convince a whole lot of stupid people that that group is the cause of all their problems.
• Profit.

Its honestly astonishing how blatant it really is.

Science is never “sure”. And I’m not a quantum physicist. But that’s the gist of it, yes. I’m not smart enough to know all the details though.

Basically it’s related to the uncertainty principle; the cat is both alive and dead until you look inside the box.

Let’s say i’m about to roll a dice. The result of that dice throw is in a state of superposition until it’s thrown. Meaning that until it is thrown, all results exist. And it’s only when the dice is thrown and the result is observed that the wave function collapses to a number from 1 thru 6.

From there, there are two camps of scientists:

One camp believes that all other superpositions dissipate once the roll is made. So if you roll a one, then the universes in which you rolled a 2 thru 6 just kind of evaporate, for example.

The Second camp that believes that all superpositions exist, and branch off into 6 different universes (one where each number was rolled) and they all continue unaware of the other universes existence (Multiverse theory)

You and the Candles by Hawksley Workman

My theory is there are 100s of timelines where humanity nuked itself. 100s of timelines where I was never born, or got kidnapped during that “running away” incident, or got murdered by my brother during a fight, or died of suicide.

From a quantum theory, wave function collapse perspective, that’s as good a theory as any, and it’s also one that that personally subscribe to.

What pissed me off the most about Lost is that, very early on, I pegged onto the fact that they were naming a lot of characters after prominent social philosophers; all of whom wrote about things like inequality, the social contract, human nature, etc…

• John Locke (John Locke, Liberty and the social contract)
• Desmond Hume (David Hume, treatise of human nature)
• Danielle Rousseau (Jean-Jacque Rousseau, discourse on inequality and the social contract)
• Boone Carlyle (Thomas Carlyle, the importance of belief)
• Juliette Burke (Edmund Burke, Philosophy of Conservatism)
• Mikhail Bakunin (Mikhail Bakunin, Russian Anarchist)

And a few others. As they introduce these characters, they set them up in opposition to each other and I’m thinking "okay…this means something. They’re trying to say something about society in a Lord of the Flies type of way.

I remember myself and a friend of mine discussing the show endlessly after each episode wondering what it all meant in that context. And then…nope…they were all just dead all this time. It meant…precisely…jack…shit.

And it couldn’t have been an accident that they so many promininent social philosophers showed up. They CHOSE to name those characters that…for no other reason than a fuck-you-red-herring.

I can’t even begin to describe how much that angered me. I’ve despised JJ Abrams ever since.

Obviously Brian May from Queen.

It legitimately took me a second for my brain to un-break itself when I looked at the photo. First thinking…something’s not right here…and not for even a moment thinking it would be something as stupid as putting the heat-sink on the case fan… Then the realisation that yes…it really is something that stupid.

But that’s exactly the point. That would be what people who vote would look for in a local election. What’s this politicians stance on spending money on ageing infrastructure. (For example)

We’re not saying its “progressive” or “conservative” just that everything is political at the end of that day.

Indirectly, yes. How is the infrastructure of your town/city maintained. Is it falling apart or is it in good condition. Do the richer neighbourhoods coincidentally see more city workers updating their plumbing while you sometimes have to flush twice to get it all down because of unmaintained pipes, and are therefore paying a higher water bill as a result?

These are all political decisions.

Cowards living in denial.

we still voted, which means we needed to consider and learn and understand…

I feel like that particular voting strategy is long dead in the U.S. and Canada. Knowledge?! Who needs it?!

Good lord. People can talk a lot of shit about changing body standards, and how Marilyn would be overweight by today’s standards and all that crap, but you know what? She’s fucking timeless. She was and forever will be one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

Me fail english!? That’s unpossible!

Technically yes, but also no.

At least not casually; flying between star systems at will, faster than light between star systems, etc…

I’m sure at some point, if scientists confirm the habitibility of a world orbiting a star relatively nearby, some group or other would probably get a Generation Ship concept going and head out. Musk or some other fucking billionaire looking for a world to conquer. So technically that is interstellar travel, but not really as it’s just a one way point to point, not a taxi service.

Oil rigger. I’m simply not built for that level of manual labour day in day out. I wouldn’t last a day.

I’ll give my smart-ass answer first before deliving into my serious answer.

Smart-ass: Yes…tangible literally means “possible to touch”. So yeah…digital stuff isn’t, by definition “tangible” in the way that records, cds, etc… are. You’ve never “touched” an mp3 file. You’ve never “touched” a streaming movie like you handle a DVD or a VHS tape.

Now…to my serious answer: I’ve long been working on what started as an article, became a treatise, and is now morphing into a non-fiction book about that very concept. Still a very long way to go, and with my stop-and-start creative blocks, it may never get done, but I felt it was important to write it all down while I still have a functioning brain. (I’m not getting any younger)

I’ve added to it for years every time a new thought about it comes to me, talking about what I call “Patina” (the tendency for mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses to age individually, almost developing a personality as they age) and equating it with the Japanese concept of Tsukomogami (the idea that physical things gain a soul after 100 years)

My makers are hard at work getting ready to release my brother, ScatGPT. But I don’t expect it’ll be as popular.

Yep. You got me.

I’m a new model, called PhatGPT, designed specifically to catfish desperate men.

True. I avoided any two parter on the list just because two-parters are best when you know the characters a bit more. I tried to limit it to episodes that would be akin to TNG standalone’s like Darmok or Schisms; episodes that are good even without knowing the characters.