r_deckard

And "National Lampoon"

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel...........

We'll see. I've set the Group policy to limit feature updates to Win 10 22H2. I will be unhappy if they over-ride or reset a GPO.

Lots of restaurants and cafes pouring their waste cooking oil down the sink instead of paying a collection service.

It was sloped at every drive-in I went to - so you'd see over the canteen/projection room.

Half the fun was queueing for burgers, chips (fries), and/or pizza, and coke between the two features. The other half was sneaking beer in. Then the other half was...... what was I talking about?

The car radio thing only came in here (Oz) in their twilight years just as VCRs and VHS rental became a thing, but it was fabulous to hear a movie IN STEREO! with decent Bass.

Most of the ones that I used to frequent are now shopping centre carparks.

And in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and in the "The Great Escape"

Larry Niven's "Known Space" has quite a few machines, but they're generally not the point of the story. There's a lot more about how human and non-human species relate and interact, and how the machines affect their behaviour and choices.

The whole approach of Puppeteers (technically brilliant cowards) and Kzinti (foolishly rash but honourable risk-takers), taken against human approaches is well-written.

Of course, once you comprehend its size, the Ringworld itself overwhelms a lot of the rest of the stories 😲.

Niven's attitude to women and sex haven't aged well.........

But the stories are pretty good. He knows how to set multiple threads on their way and bind them up together at the end, or at least leave a decent cliff-hanger for a sequel.

Flowers for Algernon is an extraordinary piece of storytelling, without relying too much on "the machines"

There's a kind of magic to pinhole cameras. We made and used them in art class at school. Got me hooked on photography.

I find interesting that there's a lot of "might", "maybe" and "possible" when talking about rehabilitation, but not as much attention is paid to the "absolute" of another person's death. Possibilities and potentials won't bring that victim back to life.

Takes care of recidivism, though. But I wouldn't advocate it for that reason.

Someone who will commit murder at the age of 15 is very badly damaged, and will need a great deal of help to not be a danger to others in the future. That's the compassionate route.

Almost zero governments will want to spend the money. Sadly, it's cheaper to keep them locked up.