eightpix

As captioned by Euronews:

Prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. El Salvador presidential press office via AP

Photo credit emphasis is mine.

I’d add to this list:

That’s too expensive! Cash price? Stop here! Speak slowly, please.

And any words you might need to relate a dietary restriction: no meat, no dairy, no shellfish, no gluten.

Read Chomsky’s Understanding Power (2002) and Manufacturing Consent (1988). It’s been an oligarchy since at least the 1980s. It’s Reagan’s fault. Jimmy Carter — rest in power —was the last, best hope for the kind of America that humanity wanted.

Read the Fred J. Cook’s The Warfare State (1962).

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was right about the Military-Industrial complex. It used to just be weapons, technology, energy, and heavy industries. The associated industries have metastasized to include entertainment, finance, housing, and education.

There are also two TV shows. A pretty solid Canadian production from the late '90s called La Femme Nikita, and an early '10s CW series (I’ve never seen it) starring Maggie Q. I also just found out there is also a 1991 Hong Kong remake of the film called Black Cat and a 1999 Bollywood remake called Kartoos.

All this to say that Luc Besson’s original film is an actual treasure trove. And, perhaps, that Peta Wilson played Nikita really well. Better than Bridget Fonda IMHO.

Anticipating Book > Film (musical?) > Play/Musical

Hopefully, what they padded the movie with is the contents — the politics — of the book. As u/MrVilliam said above:

they took a movie-length two act play and padded it out to chop it up into two movies. And they’ll be rewarded for it. Together, they’ll gross over $1.5 billion, maybe over 2.

Checking out more of Richard Linklater’s work is also highly recommended.

Waking Life (2001)

Philosophy and dreams combine for an enlightening journey. It’s a good rewatch if you’ve not seen it in a long while.

Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013, I haven’t seen this one)

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have beautiful explorations of love and the human condition.

Arlington Road (1999)

Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Jeff Bridges in a taut, pre-9/11 domestic terrorism thriller. I’d pair this with the much better known Denzel Washington film The Siege (1999). Last I checked, this film is not on any streaming platform. Good luck!

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)

This Inuit story captivated me. An all-Inuit cast portraying a fable from thousands of years ago. The nearly 3h run time will challenge many. The National Film Board of Canada

Brick (2005)

Fans of Knives Out should really see Rian Johnson’s first feature film. Smart and steeped in film noir, with a fantastic and unique script, this flick starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.

I’d really like to see this done without having the ensemble cast of the Avengers films all claim the same income.

You should read a few good books as well. Might I suggest:

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Frank Barat

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman

Actual journalists like Mehdi Hasan at Zeteo and Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! are doing excellent work on this issue.

No accusation intended. Related my experience and seeking yours. Thanks for sharing what you have read about it.

Then, help me out if you feel inclined. Point me in the direction of some solid sci-fi, written in another language, with good translation to English. I’m always looking for the next read. I could Google it. But, instead, I’m looking for a recommendation from a strong critical eye. As guidance, I’m a pretty big fan of space epics, political intrigue, and/or social

Also, thanks for the language on attenuation. I’ve done a bit more reading on it, and I’ve seen the math. What I’ve learned is that most regulated radio transmissions in the Western hemisphere are capped at 50 kW. There are several transmitters that are in the 150 kW range, and, back in the 30s, there was that one titanic tower in Florida that kicked out 500 000 kW.

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.

Nicely done.

Compared to all of the other ones, Mission: Impossible 2 was the absolute worst of the bunch.

John Woo tried — he really did — but that script was brutal.