Dark thoughts, Dark Pictures, Dark Deeds

“So you all pass as humans?” I asked Erek. 

He nodded. “Yes. We live as humans. We play the role of children and then grow older, and eventually our hologram is allowed to “die” and we start again as children.”

“How long has this been going on?” Cassie asked. 

Erek smiled warmly. “I helped to build the great pyramid.” 

“You designed the pyramids?” 

“No, no, of course not. We have never interfered in human affairs. I was a slave. I helped to quarry the stone.

--book 10: the android (marco POV)

“We respectfully urge the Justice Department to investigate the state of competition in affected labor and consumer markets following consummation of this merger, which appears to have enabled Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to adopt potentially anticompetitive practices that reduce consumer choice and harm workers in affected labor markets.” (x)

1. Holy shit

I’m thrilled by the modern-day attitudes about this. Genuinely, the way this would go in 2024 is that the intern could say no and tell the press what happened and half of America would support them. But when I was a kid? No way!

And Monica Lewinsky didn’t ride a train to fame from this situation. She was America’s laughingstock and punching bag for twenty years. She was the butt of every sex joke and the least respected person that everyone knew the name of. She couldn’t live any sort of remotely normal life or do the things that she wanted to do because every single person, including all members of the press and every comedian, was out to get her. Every “cancelled” celebrity nowadays pretends they’ve been treated the way Monica Lewinsky was and you know what, she’s right that they wouldn’t last an hour in her shoes.

Because, of course, for a young woman in a male-dominated work situation, it was as easy as "she could walk away" while being manipulated by a man over twice her age with literally all the power in the world to destroy her if he wanted to.

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

This. The media would be explicit. The media would make the case over and over again how nepotism was bad and crime families have no place in government.

"The Don't Say Gay Law has been cut down to size in more ways than this.

- LGBTQ+ students and staff may now be protected by anti-bullying and anti-discrimination measures

- Libraries are free to restock LGBTQ+ books

- LGBTQ+ topics may be discussed freely

GO CRY IN A CORNER RON