Well those car manufacturers could stop paying to lobby and use that money to actually innovate. I do not know about the US, but back where I live, people actually want to move away from fossil fueled cars and they do not give a flying fuck about whether it is the Chinese spying on them or the US Tech bros.

No it isn’t and I am not saying that it is. Actually, our media are doing their best to downplay racist police violence in one of our biggest cities.

To return the whataboutism: in the US, as a toddler, you can get killed by the police because your mother alledgedly stole some groceries (and because you happen to have the wrong skin color). If that is the bar for police violence, I can only imagine what will happen during an aactual riot (as in looting stores etc).

You are not wrong and I am not saying that there are no protests. Where I live, protests in the US are severly underreported (due to fear of the far right), but I am aware of them. I was referring to riots, with barricades, looting and all that stuff. As far as I am aware, that is not happining in the US right now, but please feel free to correct me.

Apart from the valid things that have already been mentioned in this thread: police violence in the USA is a thing. Hell, you can get shot for helping a fellow protestor. Yes I know, police != ICE, but if a real riot breaks out, I can imagine sending in the most ruthless (and psychopatically trigger-happy) shock troops to quell them.

Ooooohhh! Good one!

Oh fuck! How did I forget those? Thanks!

I have not read that creepy ass Mr. Sandman song here yet.

A few other recommendations:

• Igorr vs. Bong Ra - Pallbearer / Tombs (EP)
• Saint-Seans - Danse Macabrre (duh!)
• Coil - Musick to play in the dark 1 and 2, full albums ‘Something’ scares my 9 year
• Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (Same 9 year old’s favourite)

Motorcycle. I had my previous one for 17 years and travelled many kilometers with it. However, it has worn down up to the point of the replacement parts being more valuable than what the bike would sell for. In other words, it was a write-off. As I ride my bicycle to work and I have too little leisure time already, I simply cannot justify buying my own motorcycle again.

Fortunately, my FIL has several and will lend me one if I want to.

I am the lead developer of one of the software packages we support. My main client has their own clients. They are generally nice and warm people, and we have a good relation. However, during our weekly meetings it feels like they are using a rusty rake to scratch my open nerves. Those meetings are drawn out, minute, irrelevant details are discussed and I have to answer the same basic question at least once a month, even if they have been using the software over ten years now.

It is the weekday I dread the most.

I run three times a week. I have done this so long that it has basically become a routine. If I do not run, it feels… weird.

The entire ‘Spawn’ soundtrack.

Hang Youth from the Netherlands. One of their iconic song titles translates as “You don’t hate Mondays, you hate capitalism”.

I refer to my wife as a 3D printer. After all, she is the mother to my children.

Not as bad as the hurricane stories, but two anecdotes:

1. Recently, we were in Southern France at ~200 kms from Bordeaux. During the wildfires. It had been in the high 30s (Celsius that is, we use science units). At one point, just before sunset, the wind started turning from the direction of the sea, a penetrating smell of smoke started rolling in and it suddenly got very dark. It felt apocalyptic. I feel bad for all people who had to deal with wildfires in any way.
2. Many years ago, I was on a trip to Scotland on a motorcycle trip with a few buddies. It must have been late August, early September. We were in Fort William, which is pretty much at sea level. One day, me and two of my friends decided to climb Ben Nevis, which is the highest peak in the UK at a (relatively modest) 1375-ish meters. We started with sunny weather in the low 20s and as we progressed, we had rain, hailstorms, snow and fog. Oh, and it was freezing at the top. I have not seen so many weather changes in a single day.

Same. If I am ever going to get a tattoo, it will day “Don’t panic” in big friendly letters as well. It’s… fitting nowadays.

…or probably the Epstein files. Not US-ian, so cannot confirm, but given the state of things my assumption makes sense.

It’s never either-or. Sometimes, it is neither.

IMHO, a good Sci-Fi story has a well built world against which a story will play. I loved the ‘Parable’ series by Octavia Butler. The science level is basically the sameas ours (heck, it even plays ‘now’) and is not particularly important to the story itself. However, this series is one of the best dystopian Sci-Fi series I have ever read.

Favourite: Frank Zappa Least favourite: One Day Fly or Tenacious D (too much Jack Black - he’s not that funny)

Father of two here. I have tried to start sorting through the pictures that were made during the years by my wife, parents and in-laws. We are literally talking thousands of pictures here. Trust me, you do not want all of those.

Let’s project (pun intended) here. I grew up in the time of analog cameras, i.e. somewhere before 2000-ish. Back then you had to buy a camera, preferably a decent one. You had to buy a film roll, which had typically had a capacity of 24 or 36 pictures. If you ran out of film, you had to go out and buy new film. Having done that, the film had to be developed and the negatives had to be projected onto expensive paper, which needed their own chemicals to change actual pictures. When you took a picture, it had to count. A shoe box of printed pictures typically used to represent several years of personal history.

Rarely. I do not want to attract recruiters.