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.

Google Translate says that means “ Let’s get brunch.”

You should probably look into the chemistry needed to do 2 H₂O -> 2H₂ + O ₂

Obviously the biggest problem is making sure you have an even number of water molecules.

Hint: It’s not because this idea never occurred to any of the scientists and engineers involved in hydrogen power.

This the order in which you should try to access papers:

1. Normal Internet search including quotes to force the title and components like “pdf”
2. Organizational/lab pages of the authors. Very many people will put either full papers or preprints on their personal professional pages.
3. Preprint services like arXiv. The ones you look at will be determined by subject area. Preprints will usually only differ from the published work in formatting.
4. Just email the authors. Most of us are so happy that virtually anyone wants to read the paper we spent months on that we will happily send a copy. Because people are busy you might need to hit them up a couple of times, but most will be more than happy to send you a copy, and most publications specifically carve out to allow authors to do that.

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

-John Lewis

Sorry - I should have realized others would point that out as well. I didn’t mean to pile on.

Well, at least their spamming this post reminded me to block their account, so there is that.

Just say no to fascists, kids.

“Right to work” means employees can work in a union shop and receive the benefits of such without having to join the union or pay dues. It’s a set of laws that have successfully destroyed unions.

You’re thinking of “at will” employment laws, which means an employer can fire an employee for any reason or for no reason, but not for an illegal reason (which varies depending on state but includes the right to organize and rights against discrimination and retaliation).

If you start college (assuming you’re an American) do not under any circumstances drop out. This goes double for grad school. What will happen is the at you’ll still owe money on your student loan, but will not have whatever advantages you might have accumulated as a result of having a degree.

I think it’s more likely that we will see smaller scale attacks by domestic terrorists, ranging from mass shootings to something on the scale of a Timothy McVeigh. I can also see a probability of a return to a 1960s/1970s level of political violence and assassinations.

I think those are more likely than a large scale attack from foreign terrorists.

I agree with you, but it’s generally not too far off. The prefrontal cortex is the most recent part of the brain to evolve, and it’s the most “human” part of the brain. The PFC continues to develop over adolescence, only finishing in the early-mid 20s.

That’s the part of your brain responsible for pushing back on emotion driven reactions and doing more strategic planning, among other things.

The US version that I read lacked chapter 21 for the stupid reason that the US versions lack chapter 21, but it did not have any translations of Nadsat. All of it had to be picked up from context, as was intended. It actually helped me learn Russian about a decade later when I got into intel.

Spoiler warning

Okay, so Clockwork was Anthony Burgess’ least favorite book. In the same way that Sir Alec Guinness hated his role as Obi-Wan in Star Wars, he felt it was populist schlock unworthy of himself as an artist. I think that we have to lay that aside. Although intuitively we might think the artists know their own work best, it’s not always the case.

Clockwork is about a youth becoming an adult. It’s also about mind control and the culture of violence, but the main theme is about growing up. There are 21 chapters because 21 is considered the age of maturity.

In chapter 21, Alex has been “reset” to his old violent ways in the previous chapter, but is now looking back on his violent youth and realizing he’s outgrown it. He’s thinking of getting a job and having a family. The problem was that the American publisher completely missed the point of the book and thought the last chapter was a cop out and that American readers could handle the ending on the down note of Alex becoming violent again. Burgess wanted the money, so he agreed and the US version was published with only 20 chapters.

Kubrick chose to go with the American version of the book because he’s just that kind of guy, but it’s left tens of millions of people completely misunderstanding the story. This alone makes me sympathetic to Burgess’ opinion of his own book.

Anyway, that’s the story of chapter 21.

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.