• Genetic-level diagnoses and treatments.

• Inexpensive, rapid genome sequencing.

• Commonplace genetic counselling for more than just pregnancy.

• Laws in place to govern the collection, use, ownership, and patenting of human genes and genetic information.

• Cloned tissues (i.e. blood, skin), organs (i.e. heart, lungs, kidneys) for transplant or repair.

I graduated university the same year the Human Genome Project first published completion. Certainly, that project uncovered more questions than answers.

Also, we’ve done an absolutely garbage job of becoming appropriate stewards of this technology. Primarily, today, it would be used to identify, segregate, subjugate, and eventually kill a portion of the population.

Books/Magazines/Podcasts:

• No Logo by Naomi Klein

• Adbusters by Kalle Lasn

• Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev

• A New Train of Thought (though somewhat ham-fistedly) by Various Writers

• Ashes, Ashes by David Torcivia and Daniel Folkner

• Reset by Roland J. Diebert

Fitting the description of movie/show:

• Mr. Robot

• Utopia (UK version)

• Killing Them Softly

• The Big Short, Margin Call

• Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

• 3-Iron (Korean film)

• Parasite (Korean film)

There are several documentaries and short films

• The Corporation by Joel Bakan, Harold Crooks, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott

• Who Killed the Electric Car?

• The End of Suburbia

• Man by Steve Cutts (3m47s)

• Nuggets by Andreas Hykade (5m06s)

• The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

Also, you might search for films about “corporate malfeasance”.

• Michael Clayton (top pick)

• The Insider (top pick)

• Erin Brockovich

• Dark Waters

Send him to the Hague. Then, I’ll know he’s real.

I think there was a POW scene in Magnum P.I. that was a lot for little me. Not sure episode/season.

Honestly, though, coming to the realization at abput 13 that the “General Lee” and the prominent placement for Confederate flags the Dukes of Hazzard represent an American South that promotes white supremacy, Jim Crow laws, and segregation — all antithetical to my BIPOC existence.

The cognitive dissonance involved in the song, pre-programming me to lend them the excuse that they’re “just a good ol’ boys…” — yeah, my parents should’ve known better.

The thoughts I had for Daisy Duke would’ve had me lynched, like Emmitt Till, under that flag. Still might.

As an introvert, it’s actually easier for me to talk to strangers. Fewer attachments, lower risk thresholds, can bail when I need to. Mostly it’s jokes or insights, comisseration and comedy are easy roads in.

Ooh! OOH! Now do teachers!

Expecting, or pursuing the establishment of, human rights as a subjugate group or “subordinate” class.

deleted by creator

호박죽 (ho bak juk, pumpkin porridge). Many a cold morning in the ROK, this was my breakfast.

Actually, a lot of my comfort foods are porridge based: cream of wheat, corn meal porridge, steel-cut oats, rolled oat oatmeal, oatmeal and raisin cookies.

If it’s America… Again, the following:

• target practice

• cheap / unpaid labor

• scapegoating

• entertainment

• political wedge issue

• cannon fodder

• general purpose exploitation

• status symbols

• enemy images

That explosion may have caused hundreds of dollars worth of damage.

The damage to the reputation, the prestige, and the gold-plated hubris of “the greatest nation on Earth ever and for all time” is what’s at stake.

Fortunately, disaster capitalism will generate at least fourteen jobs, resulting in the fortification of this embassy — and all other embassies — at exorbitant cost. The US defense budget will far exceed the $1.5T requested for 2027.

Screw diplomacy, forget peace, pursue power.

At all costs. Until Empire falls.

I’ve never seen Letterkenny. And yet, “Letterkenny cold open” yielded this with the second click.

The only associations I can manage are the following:

1. Canadian.

2. Taught alliteration at school.

3. Friends and family from far down East.

4. The original Alphabet Aerobics, by Blackalicious in 1999 is a fave track of mine.

I guess, in text, I flex the gift of gab.

Not always well.

Riiight.

Attritable, armed aircraft. Add AI autonomy, an authoritarian asshole, and an aggressive alignment — all, appropriately, approaches an ashen Apocalypse.

See, in Seoul, to my eyes, drivers aren’t day-labourers, office workers, company people, or students. They are business developers, cab and bus drivers, delivery agents and the most affluent.

In a city of 45 million, car ownership is very, very low. Parking is very difficult to find — or own as city units must separately rent, lease, buy, or borrow a parking spot for a car.

If any large East Asian city could successfully ration gasoline, its Seoul. Public transportation is efficient and inexpensive. People remember the war and hardship. People respect tradition, unity in struggle, and are willing to fight together.

That’s the Seoul I remember anyway.

They imprisoned their Insurrectionist former President.

For life.

Six-hundred twenty-three days later.

“We cannot afford for Lebanon to become another Gaza,” António Guterres Secretary-General, United Nations, June 2024.

Less that I took this to be the worldview of Card’s books. I’ve also read Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.

More that there are operators in this world who, on reading this, see this as rationale and put it into practice.

Also: Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Greed. Ignorance. Intolerance.

Your workout, food, or personal hygiene regimen.

Exploitation, expropriation, or extortion.

Your subjective experience of opening a box, playing a video game, or viewing media.

Always a treat to hear the quiet part said out loud.

Though, to remain relevant, NATO is has to appease its in-house belligerent hegemon; especially when that particular orange monster is gobbling up oil-rich nations.

Iran may not be under NATO’s purview, but starving Ukraine is. When UKR F-16s are flying without missiles while trying to defend against Russia, NATO has to try to pry loose some armaments that will, otherwise, be funnelled to the aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.

The world continues to slip toward all-out war. One miscalculation, one over-reaction, one missed signal and the several conflicts will morph into a single, giant kill zone between 16 and 50% the size of the planet — a World War.

At least that’s the nightmare we ought to be working hard to avoid.

As much as I hate this quote and it’s shrewd cold logic, this is what’s bearing down on us:

“The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.” ~ Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

Oh boy. Ill make this as short as I can because I really ought to be off to bed.

Nuclear weapons, since the beginning, foment distrust. Neocolonialism, the Red Scare, and Fuckiteering breeds enemies and blowback. And, Iran, having oil and a spotty history relating to the superpower/hegemon that is America, has denied and actively worked against the “Manifest Destiny” of American supremacy in the world and — regionally — Israeli supremacy in Palestine.

Since 1945, the United States has:

• developed nuclear weapons

• used nuclear weapons at war

• tested nuclear weapons at “peace”

• conducted a Cold War against “non-aligned” states — including Iran for a time — and communists and people who America regards as “other”

• supported Israel as an independent state despite the questionable (read: ethnic cleansing) methods employed to declare the state

• overthrown Iran’s democratically elected government and installed a Shah, “friendly” to US interests and brutal to Iranian people

• developed the Hydrogen bomb

• overthrown several other democratically elected governments, prosecuted wars and police actions across 4 continents…

And that barely gets us to the mid 1950s.

By 1979, Iran got fed up. JFK’s words, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” apply here. There was a revolution, they booted the Shah and took some Americans hostage for 444 days. Somehow, an Islamist faction rose from the confusion and seized power. Marjane Sartapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, helped me with this part.

In the cocaine-addled '80s, the States said, “fuckit,” and started paying Saddam Hussein to go to war with Iran. Iran held the line for 8 years. After that, Hussein became the enemy instead of a friend, Iran sat back and watched the States undertake Gulf Wars I and II under the Bush family’s rule. Meanwhile, the Israeli people have lived in fear of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Palestinians. Harsh words, and a few thousand rocket attacks, against the State of Israel and America’s support by AIPAC are part of the puzzle. And of course, Aljazeera conuterspinning the American narrative from its HQ in Qatar is also a threat.

In the end, Iran DID develop the capacity yo make nuclear energy which they claim is for electricity. US doesn’t trust anyone they don’t control, and haven’t since they achieved schoolyard bully status back in '45. Israel also has, but refuses to talk about, its nuclear weapons, which are a threat to all of the countries Israel has attacked (some of whom attacked Israel in the '50s abd '60s). Again, a paucity of trust.

Since about Y2K, Iran’s leadership has declared a Fatwa against nuclear weapons and swears they will never possess them.

There have been at least two Palestinian uprisings against Israel (2000-2005 and the Al-Aqsa Flood of 2023). There was a period of secular society-led protest that is often overlooked. Hamas changed the charter. All actions have been met with tacit or overt Iranian support for Palestinian resistance. That said, the heavy-handed actions of this Israeli government, and several governments back to 2000, have only made the prospect of peace in the region more distant from reality. Certainly, decimating the population of Gaza in 2 years under the Dahiya doctrine fits the phrase “the cruelty is the point.”

So, amid negotiations to not go to war, the children in the room decided to sneak attack and assassinate the Supreme Leader of Iran. This undermines resistance the Iranian people themselves were mounting against their government. It undermines International law and U.S. own laws about Presidency. It destabilizes the region and will impact the global economy.

Anyway. This took an hour and Im going to bed.

It’s in because, well, I was surprised that Grey’s Anatomy is in its 22nd season.

Its interesting that interactions here center on the one pop-culture element of my comment and none on the others. Yes, it’s a non-sequitur. It stands out.

Is it because the others are all self-evident? Flogged to death? Too controversial? Not controversial enough? Insurmountable?