Pigsflew.com

Dear Microsoft:

Open up, or else.

Love,
The EU.

Microsoft may face daily EU fine

I don’t think there’s ever been a better photograph taken by the Associated Press, and there have been some awesome photographs taken by the Associated Press.

-Adrian

P.S.:
A livejournal icon, for your consumption.

Ok, so just about every scifi involving aliens, also involves aliens kicking human ass. Why is that? I mean, take Halo. Covenant come, and we can’t do a damned thing, we just lose world after world until we’ve got one last stronghold, and our only defense for that is that they don’t know where it is.

Here’s scifi realism: Humans find a planet with the right composition of elements for life. Humans send a fleet of colonists. Settlers arrive on planet, find aliens; mass genocide ensues. Or, y’know, xenocide. It’ll be about as complete as the wipeout of the Native Americans, with some left over, but not in quantities that could threaten our totalitarian rule.

Come on guys, Genocide is what we do. It’s in our history, nay, our very blood.

Also, first alien convoy that comes here, if it’s more than five ships, we’re going to blow them out of the sky. If it’s three, we’ll try the peace-and-communication thing, but if it’s more than five, we’ll assume they’re warships of unfathomable power, and take the fuckers down. And we’ll find that we’re stronger than modern scifi has assumed. Or, at least, that aliens are weaker.

Mull that over for a moment. They’re not the ones who are likely to kill humans off; we’re the triggerhappy alienkillers. That should be somewhere in scifi too, because it definately has a place.

I was walking from the dining hall to work at the library last night, nothing special, and someone was walking just a few paces behind me. I took a small cut off the path and through a bit of snow so that i’d end up beside her. Her. She had been whispering something, I think. She stopped. I cut through the parking lot, she took a left and went alongside a building. We both then crossed the street and met up on the other side. Finally I asked, “Heading to the library?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been working on a paper there all day.” She was maybe two inches shorter than me, if that, blond hair, glasses on, if I remember correctly, blue eyes. Not your magazine beauty, but instead a kind of bookish look that I liked. Quiet, but there’s a spark there. Plus, I’m a stranger, why wouldn’t she be quiet? She said she was a comp-lit major. We talked a bit for the rest of the way to the library.

We stopped at the stairs. She was headed up, I was headed down. There was a brief moment there where there was an almost tangible tension: get her name. Now.

“It was nice talking to you.”

I ducked down the stairs.

In retrospect maybe I’m glad I didn’t get her name.