December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.

December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.

May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.

December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.

I’ve slept in some weird places.

Epstein. 'Nuff said. There’s even a herpesvirus.

And Douglas. This may just be in my life. Nonetheless, it is what it is.

I guess we are going to have to disagree. The writing style and, as I perceived it, motivations within the text were clearly not of the Western tradition. It’s true, in lending the benefit of doubt, I may have enjoyed it more precisely because I disregarded standard writing mores, tropes, and conventions because it was a translated work.

I’m curious: Did you also try Murakami’s 1Q84? I found that I had to suspend expectations there in much the same manner.

I think I’d agree with you wrt. short species lifespans after developing telecommunications, space flight, and highly concentrated energy sources. The leap in capacity for attendant social distortion — and extortion — has brought us to the brink of global destruction many times since Signal Hill in 1901. The Kardashev Scale comes to mind here. The leap from about Type 0.73, ostensibly where we are now, to Type 1.0 is fraught.

As for the communications we have sent, the early ones were low-power and, over a distance of 100 ly, would significantly degrade against background EM radiation. At a range of 50 ly, where our first, more powerful and higher fidelity digital transmissions have reached, there are relatively few star systems — about 1300 (source). This source uses data from 1991, so there may be more, but not many, that are magnitude 6.5 or brighter.

I’d read that David Brin reviewed something similar in '83, but I didn’t chase it down to Saberhagen.

In following the links provided in the Wiki article, for the Berserker Hypothesis, there is the following:

The Berserker hypothesis is distinct from the dark forest hypothesis in that under the latter, many alien civilizations could still exist provided they keep silent. The dark forest hypothesis can be viewed as a special case of the Berserker hypothesis, if the ‘deadly Berserker probes’ are (e.g. due to resource scarcity) only sent to star systems that show signs of intelligent life.

So, silence is survival in the Dark Forest. The Berserker Hypothesis seeks and destroys.

e: Nice call on BSG as well! Though, that considered only human and Cylon life.

And, for my part, Cixin Liu’s second book was a really solid read. The first book, Three Body Problem, suffered all of the hallmarks of the pains taken to establish a story and a world. The last book, Death’s End, while mostly good, also suffered in needing to bring the grand story to a close.

Here’s one more:

Dark Forest Theory as a solution to the Fermi Paradox.

In 2016, the number of bacteria was reviewed, and the estimate reduced from 300 trillion to about 38 trillion microorganisms.

Cronenberg is a countryman. I’ll hand him a pass on that one.

The data is skewed. All of the functioning systems we use reward concentrations of power.

Thereby, systems of rule must distribute power and contest the concentration of power. It literally takes a village to save us from ourselves.

David Graeber and David Wengrow introduced me to historical examples of non-hierarchical societies in The Dawn of Everything.

I’m glad someone put the prions in here. As a biology student, there was only one thing more terrifying than retroviruses — prions.

Heres two:

The ratio between cells of your body that belong to you vs. cells on or in your body that are microorganisms is about 1:1 — slightly favouring the bacteria.

If the Sun were destroyed, we would not know about it until more than 8 minutes after it happened.

Act to honour and recognize all humans as human. This is Said’s Law.

Act to sustain human security. This is Cura’s Law.

Act to accept responsibility for each action, especially where it guides future actions. This is Sartre’s Law.

Bought the book. It’s the only dictionary I’ve enjoyed reading.

Inequivocal yes! Grew up with Batman:TAS.

I have never ridden a horse.

It was a cycle for me:

Not swearing led to swearing.

Swearing led to learning to swear in other languages.

Learning to swear in other languages served me well as I moved out of North America to teach.

Being out of North American led to me being more humble and less the brash North American. Also, I spent a lot of time with children.

Being less brash and speaking in other languages led me to think more about what I say before saying it.

Thinking about my speech led to downgrading swearing to make a point. I’ll swear, depending on the audience.

Specifically — like L-Boogie said — “I’ll add a MFer so you ign’ant ****s hear me.” (Fugees, The Score, “Zealots”) If I’m cursing, it’s prolly because there’s some ignorance in my area.

I admit, sometimes it’s mine.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that L fell off not too long after this rhyme. Celebrity culture can be a scene full of ignorance. I don’t blame her. I blame the industry.

And instrumentals.

Ixcanul

Submitted and short-listed for Oscar nomination in the international film category, this Guatemalan film had Spanish subs for the parts delivered in Kaqchikel.

Never saw it after its initial release in Guatemala City.

Charging for cell phones. So much better than a decade ago.

By the same token, and I consider these a different category, headlamps. Camping got a whole lot better with a solid headlamp setup. The red light is crucial.

Right, because being America’s whipping boy (yeah, I said it) is really working out for Ukrainians.

America needs Ukraine to buy obsolete weapons now, use them against Russia’s current military capacity so that there’s real-world applications for next generation weapons. Also, all the strategies designed to contain a more militant Russia needed to be gamed out. Ukraine will be paying this war back for generations. Think Haiti’s reparations to France, but with bigger numbers.

A years-long conflict also “softens” Russia up for the next round of sanctions — maybe they’ll be effective this time!

Chomsky said, in effect, ‘Nope, that’s dumb’ (not a quote). Also, there were months and months of Russian build-up on the border. Before that, years of signals, comments, and overt actions showing that they are legit pissed that NATO came knocking. There should’ve been diplomacy, dialogue, deal making. ‘Nope, that’s dumb. War is profitable.’

NATO (read: USA) wasn’t about to be told who can be in their little club. Russia wasn’t about to be told that ICBMs would be parked on their doorstep. So, conflict.

So, what else has Chomsky said?

“the U.S. seems to be fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, reiterating the conclusion of Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison that in the 1980s the U.S. was fighting Russia to the last Afghan.”

"It is, surely, worthwhile to think seriously about the history of the past 30 years since Bill Clinton launched a new Cold War by violating the firm and unambiguous U.S. promise to Mikhail Gorbachev that “We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”

"Those who want to ignore the history are free to do so, at the cost of failure to understand what is happening now, and what the prospects are for preventing “much worse.”

Sources: Chomsky.info and Truthout