They make new gas in the Mad Max universe. In fact the truck in the middle of the picture is a mobile refinery.

Amen to that. Caffeine is life!

Way more diet coke than can possibly be healthy for me…

Most people around us usually get it so isn’t really a “secret” language, but my wife and I are big Simpsons fans so we talk in quotes all the time.

One that gets a lot of play is “I’m going… to… stalk… Lenny and Carl” for when we’re going somewhere but really sure what we’re going to do

I have my own little pet theory about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I think Sisko accidently created the wormhole aliens.

In the pilot, they don’t appear until his second trip through the wormhole. So my theory is that there was some kind of biological matter on their Runabout and, since they exist outside of time, it evolved instantly and they suddenly existed throughout all time. That is why they chose him as their prophet - he was kind of their father.

More than one thing can be wrong at the same time. The constant whataboutism is exhausting…

Xs gonna give it to ya

These tables are how I keep my house hot!

The Paradox of Tolerance in a nutshell…

Does anyone remember Voat? Man, that place went downhill real fast.

Ever seen “Trekkies”? It’s a pretty good documentary about the Star Trek fandom. I distinctly recall there was a woman who was obsessed with Brent Spiner. If I recall correctly she had a photo album just filled with pictures off him from conventions and could see his house from her balcony so she would go out there for “Spiner breaks”.

Anyway this reminded me of her. Still who can blame her? He’s awesome!

Yep we use placemats in our house. It was the first chore we ever gave to my daughter - to gather up the placemats after dinner and put them away in the drawer. I’m 37 by the way.

Isn’t treason only in times of war? I think that’s why they are being accused of sedition instead. I suppose that’s kind of a minor point regardless since I think the only major difference between treason and sedition is the wartime distinction.

Equilibrium is definitely a fun movie, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that the Matrix does it better.

I remember it had a “Forget the Matrix!” quote on the cover, but when I saw it on a rental store shelf many years ago someone had put a store sticker on it so it just read “get the Matrix!”

This is pretty niche, but if you’ve watched Summoning Salt and are looking for something similar, check out OneShortEye:

https://www.youtube.com/@OneShortEye

He does something similar for the world of speedrunning old LucasArts/Sierra adventure games. Highly recommended!

OK, well I guess if water isn’t allowed at all then I’ll have to go with the Dehydrated Water canister from Space Quest 1

Sorry, I took a look and unfortunately I couldn’t find anything so it is possible I’m misremembering things. In fact, the stuff about Brink becoming an old man might have been something to do with eliminating his addiction to the life crystals - I think that is a detail that was in the novelization?

It did have a chaotic development that had to be restarted a few times. There’s info about that in the IMDB page for the game. There’s a neat tidbit in that there was originally supposed to be a fourth astronaut who had cofunded the mission but they were ultimately cut from the game (though supposedly early artwork still featured 4 sets of footprints)

The music was particularly amazing in this game. I just think the biggest drawback were the very cryptic puzzles especially in the later half. It all makes sense retrospectively once you understand what you are doing but in the moment it can be very frustrating.

It reminds me lot of Myst like puzzles - you end up interacting with a bunch of weird technology and it isn’t always clear on what you are doing.

They literally did have to rush the ending. It’s why the German guy looks like an old man in one of the last cinematics. There was supposed to be more with him going into the weird dimension and something about that caused him to age a lot.

I don’t recall exactly what but I believe there was an final act that got cut.

What does he have to do with this story? His name isn’t mentioned in the article.

It’s in the article I referenced:

“Last December, a report from NGO Safeguard Defenders said it had identified 102 Chinese police stations operating in 53 countries, including five in Canada.”

To be fair, the article you posted claims that NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization. I don’t know if I really buy that, but I suppose it is possible. Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this (particularly when there were a lot of Hong Kong protests) but I’ll admit I don’t have much first hand evidence myself. It’s just, on a balance of probabilities, I’m much more likely to believe that an authoritarian regime like China is capable of doing it.

Also that example about the “Devil Eyes” dolls is bit disengenious to bring up. Your own source states that they only ever built a few prototypes. Granted, it does say an anonymous Chinese source says hundreds were shipped to Pakistan, but again I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.

The CIA has lots of looney plans (likely a product of Military-Industrial complex), but not many come to fruition becasue they are not practical.