It's the year of the Linux desktop.

It is of course to good a story to be true:

In 2018, a faked snapshot of a UESP page was shared online which falsely stated that, during production of Morrowind, Kirkbride was found under the influence of psychoactive drugs by Todd Howard after being absent from work, paired with a photograph it claimed was taken by Howard of the incident.[49] In truth, no such UESP page ever existed; the story is a fabrication.[49] The image was taken from a music video, fat, that Kirkbride had filmed and uploaded to YouTube in 2013, many years after his time working on Morrowind (the video depicts Kirkbride lethargically overeating as Wesley Willis' I'm Sorry That I Got Fat plays).[50] Lady Nerevar said of the video's misuse, "If you told me that a dumb video we made for fun was going to generate a wholeass conspiracy theory that real life people would ask me about [...] None of that happened in any way, shape, or form".

With regard to the hoax and exaggerated accounts of his writing The 36 Lessons of Vivec, Kirkbride said "You know that comes from a Photoshopped image, right? [...] that’s all a lie. I’ve already given an account of how the 36 [Lessons] were written: a week of bourbon, smokes, and solitude."[52] Kirkbride has repeatedly refuted internet myths that he used recreational drugs[52][53][54][55] and has said that the myths annoy him "more than a little bit".[56] Related rumors that he was dismissed from the company are likewise unfounded; Kirkbride left Bethesda for Zenimax's studio in California,[1] remained involved in the production of Morrowind after leaving the studio,[25] and continued to contribute to subsequent titles.[1][5][9][11]

Source: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Michael_Kirkbride

My first theory was that it was just Naomi Watts' character's masturbation fantasy laid out on film. I still have to watch it a second time to confirm though 😬

However, in practice, between 1936 and 1989, voters could vote against candidates preselected by the Communist Party only by spoiling their ballots, or by voting against the only candidate, whereas votes for the party candidates could be cast simply by submitting a blank ballot.

Nohlen, D & Stöver, P (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1642 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7

Carson, George Barr (1955). Electoral Practices in the U.S.S.R. F.A. Praeger.

KOGAN, MICHAEL (2012). "SHAPING SOVIET JUSTICE: Popular responses to the election of people's courts, 1948-1954". Cahiers du Monde russe. 53 (1): 121–139. doi:10.4000/monderusse.9370. ISSN 1252-6576. JSTOR 23418027.

Getty, J. Arch (1991). "State and Society under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s". Slavic Review. 50 (1): 18–35. doi:10.2307/2500596. JSTOR 2500596

Jessen, Ralph; Richter, Hedwig, eds. (2011). Voting for Hitler and Stalin: Elections Under 20th Century Dictatorships. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-3-593-39489-3.

CANDU reactors are pressurized heavy-water reactors not Fast-neutron reactors.

Since there are economic, ecological, conceptual and engineering problems, only five Fast-neutron reactors are operational at the moment. Three in Russia, one in India and one in China. Not surprisingly these are countries that also have an interest in producing weapons grade Plutonium, which FNRs are capable of.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2968/066003007
https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-breeder-reactor
https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs15glaser.pdf
https://energypost.eu/slow-death-fast-reactors/
https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/report/

And while nuclear energy production peaked 1996 at 17% and was nowhere near overtaking fossil energy production in it's 70(!) year long existence, Renewables will overtake fossil fuel power production in 2025, with only minute risks for the biosphere.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewable-power-set-to-surpass-coal-globally-by-2025/
https://www.renewable-ei.org/pdfdownload/activities/REI_NuclearReport_201902_EN.pdf

So why cling to an outdated technology when there are viable solutions at hand, which are nowhere as complicated and dangerous as nuclear fission? It's the monetary interest of a dying nuclear industry and its lobbyists.

Here's some reading material: https://www.bmk.gv.at/en/topics/climate-environment/nuclear-coordination/fairy-tales.html

It's the year of the Linux desktop! Great time to make the switch 🤩

It would be nice to see this train wreck of a privacy nightmare be banned rather than sold and perpetuated. Let's take FB and Google down in the same sweep and take back control of our data. This *** had been going on for too long.

There are economical implications to this development. But IMHO population decline is necessary to ease the pressure on the ecosystem. 34% of mammals are humans, 62% is livestock, only 4% are wild animals. We shifted the natural world so far out of balance, that the need to sacrifice economic growth for sustainability is inevitable.

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eight-billion-people-in-the-world-is-a-crisis-not-an-achievement/

This is referring to the paradox of tolerance.

1. It's a paradox because if you suppress other opinions you yourself become intolerant.

2. I agree that actions have to be regulated as they are by laws. But opinions and thoughts are free and this freedom is absolute.

Even Popper acknowledged that it's a paradox and stated: I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

These thought are also formalizef by Rawls: Rawls asserts that a society must tolerate the intolerant in order to be a just society, but qualifies this assertion by stating that exceptional circumstances may call for society to exercise its right to self-preservation against acts of intolerance that threaten the liberty and security of the tolerant.

The dedicated reader might notice that he refers to acts of intolerance but not to opinions.

Popper, Karl (2012) [1945]. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Routledge. p. 581

Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 220

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. If a Nazi wants to think and articulate nazi things, it's on us as a society to argue against it, not to forbid thoughts. Here's a interesting article of the culture of denouncing during Nazi and GDR times:

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/creating-a-culture-of-denunciation/

And about the concept of freedom of thought: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought You might recognize that especially repressive regimes resorted to curtail freedom of thoughts in the past.

Don't denounce. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion.

Apple adheres to the principle of form over function, instead of the old but still valid form follows function design principle. But TBH I never liked their stuff or their over the top big cheese attitude. So it's not a disgruntled apple user writing this.

Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco. Just thinking about it makes me want to read this masterpiece again.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault's_Pendulum

Perfect synopsis. Thank you.

The data about LSD lethality in humans is sparse at best it seems: https://www.healthline.com/health/substance-use/can-you-overdose-on-lsd#risk-of-death

The Shadowrun computer games. And of course the original Shadowrun TTRPG

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.

It's strange to me how gamers are viewed as a homogenous group. If e.g. a tennis player misbehaves on court, it's the individual. While with gamers, it's always the group as s whole . I for one, don't want to be bunched up with other people, just because we share a hobby.