Or there's the traditional alternative target to the deep blue--the devil.

After seeing this, we went to Bayeux, and when I with my nose almost touching the glass saw the part of the tapestry with Mont St. Michel, I laughed, because it was like 1000 years fell away in an instant.

With other time agents probably playing whack-a-mole with different incarnations of Khan across the decades, she could've done his Moby Dick rant with the same level of feeling: "He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him to the Big Bang and back again before I give him up!" "

Really is a great way to order books--I just bought some of my brother's books through them.

Strange New World had a bit of fun with the roving date of the Eugenics Wars.

Part of the new 10 capitalist commandments--thou shalt not hoard your goods, etc.

Sounds like death of the author as a textual analysis strategy is sometimes easier when the author is in fact dead. Also, if the dress is for a formal occasion, is that formalism?

Yeah, makes sense, given the possible systems damage. And I get the sense that the transparency problem could be worse (though that may be because of my perspective only: I worked on mortgage-backed deals in the '90s, and I don't see as much detail of today's tech world).

This is interesting--the 2008 problem was that all the mortgage-backed, otherwise secured, and other derivative-like instruments were leveraged 20X over in the global economy. I didn't think the leveraging would be as bad this time, but it probably is--just in different more destructive directions.

Agreed, but a lot of that is because the best dystopian (or just not-so-great world) writers came at the future not solely through particular technological changes, but things like the nature of language (Orwell) or the way people interact with any tech (Gibson), so their work ages well.

When he gets back to hell, demon will be invited by his colleagues to what they call the Anime Club.

Another relevant fictional scene that's been in my head is from the movie version of Clear and Present Danger, when a CIA officer tells Ryan that he has an autographed get out of jail free card for a questionable op, and adds, "You don't *have* one of these, do you Jack?"

Ha, I suppressed memory of that chair. I think the Boba Fett cartoon kind of survived the disaster and got treated as quasi-canonical, right?

It's a cool Jefferson Starship song at least, but that's all the good I have to say about it.

Has a King of Scotland vibe, but I don’t think that’s the right guess

This shows the mystic power of the Irish bards (the power being a calculated use of gravity).

What's up?

Yep--apparently to "honor" the corrupt despot visiting town, and not our corrupt despots quickly fleeing DC before some disaster of their own making hits.

Never heard something quite like that.