you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.

Except not everywhere does, at least in speech. Half past ten. Quarter to eight. Five past three.

Although in the US I suppose you do say ten thirty, and seven forty-five? So at least you are consistent!

I don’t have it bookmarked any more, but Slashdot is the grand-daddy of them all, and still going strong. Unlike Ars Technica, I can’t vouch for it’s comments being quite as informative or interesting (not for a few decades now)

In my initial short searches I did earlier, Antonio Gramsci comes up as addressing the issue of “cultural hegemony”, where art and entertainment tends to represent the dominant bourgeois culture, which makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard of Gramsci in passing, but haven’t read anything by him yet. I think it’s a good place to begin regarding a critical analysis.

Also worth reading is Camus’ short piece “Create Dangerously”, on the responsibility that artists have to challenge.

Going back to the 80s here, but I would recommend the Taltos series by Steven Brust. It’s a very catchy read, great world-building. It starts as pretty much hard-boiled hitman whodunit in a fantasy setting, but escalated to much higher stakes. He’s still writing the series.

Brusts other stuff is good too.

I second the other suggestion in this thread of Becky Chambers’, classy stuff that really draws you in, very cozy, but not epic sci fi!

The other series I’d recommended then is an old one by Greg Bear: The Way series, starting with Eon. It is about an asteroid which appears in orbit when Earth is at the brink of war, and is one of the most mind-bending, far-fetched sci-fi stories I’ve read, that is still arguably hard sci-fi.

I agree in general terms, but Bernie is not the only “uncompromised politician” in the world. How many politicians outside the US can you even name?

The Earthsea books match your description exactly. Spooky.

another is the hypertext transfer protocol… (?!)

I presumed Arthur Miller

My understanding is that it will eventually used to improve autocorrect, when they get it working properly.

ffs USA, surely you know that democracy is about electing the people most citizens like, rather than the people most citizens don’t not like…

I can’t believe no one has given this advice yet: https://piped.video/watch?v=vvmpc83nv4A

Indeed it would be unfortunate if the press started printing gruesome images of skeletal starving women, men and children, isn’t it… You know, photos that reminded people of some sort of horror that was revealed 80 years ago.

This is more or less how “Ministry for the Future” starts, isn’t it?

I found this: https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/april/scottish-american-heritage-month-april without too much difficulty.

Not sure if there is an English or Welsh version, or British. There may well be local ones…

And meanwhile, in Ireland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig

Around the same time, in Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_Sophia

In 1976, Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother died. A flight from Israel to Paris had been hijacked by some Palestinian and German terrorists, and flown to Uganda, where they demanded release of prisoners, threatening to kill the Israeli and Jewish passengers (the rest were released). Israel decided to launch a mission on foreign soil to rescue them, and I think Bibi’s older brother was the sole Israeli casualty.

What we are seeing today in Gaza is most likely, mostly, as a direct result of that death. Raw caveman emotion. (with a few decades of carefully layered public relations)

[now I’m going to go upvote all the heart-warming examples of human kindness in this thread]

In Biostatistics - only ever use pi in the variance of the logistic density. Using 3.14 gives substantially equivalent results to using arbitrarily large precision. But I use whatever my calculator or R give me.

It’s a good (if dated) analysis of the situation in my view.

It does not focus on the Jewish atrocities and colonialistic ambitions (getting only brief mention in 2 or 3 places), which I am guessing is due to it being a response to some prevailing media (or left-wing?) sentiment at the time.

Can I take that point of view without being labelled pro-Israel or pro-All The Shit, Havoc, And Crimes That Israel Has Wreaked Over The Years?

Absolutely, imagemap. Extra kudos if you use a pre-v1.0 GIMP, pen and paper.