Congo Under Pressure

Rwandan-backed military group M23 is making inroads into Congo’s territory, taking the city of Goma in a strategic coup. Eastern Congo is home to some of the richest minerals on Earth. This African region, dug at by hand in primitive conditions, produces gold and — particularly — coltan, a tech-friendly material that goes into a […]

The Intricacy of Fate

Fate. Does it really exist? There are 2 very similar, though not precisely exact and overlapping, words in the English language for a foreordained present: destiny and fate. Fate is the grimmer one, although it also has overtones of normalized seriousness. Destiny is more lite and avoidable. Fate grabs you by the cojones and doesn’t […]

Ontario Homes Built Slower Than Expected

It was a noble effort by Premier Doug Ford: build 1.5 million new homes by 2031. But they’ve already fallen short of yearly requirements to meet that target. With 71,800 housing starts being forecast for this year, the province is thousands of homes short of what it needs to make 1.5 million homes a reality. […]

Random Buffett

The African-American commander of the space station in Deep Space 9 is boring as paint drying on the wall. Zero charisma. Zero. Warren Buffett’s retiring at age 95 with the stock market at historic highs. He has $300B in cash parked in U.S. treasuries and knows that by the time the stock market starts yielding […]

Genetic Editing a Reality

So there’s this baby, see? And he has a rare genetic ailment, a one-in-a-million kinda thing. And yet S C I E N C E comes along and saves his ass… how? By changing a letter in his genetic coding across the cells of his body. And it worked. The defective little tyke was given […]

Mind-Boggling Niche Explorations by Mankind

Yesterday’s article in USA Today was about the manufacture of replicant Tyrannosaurus Rex skin from ancient protein samples to make new leather: The Organoid Company is creating a T-Rex protein by using fragments of the T-Rex collagen protein from fossils, the companies said in a statement to USA TODAY. “An important distinction is that (the […]

Japanese Company Follows the Fads

“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.” — Jean Baudrillard SoftBank Group is a company that invests in other companies, particularly in technology. They are based in Japan. The thing to note about SoftBank is their major investment in a chatbot “AI” software maker. They have invested billions […]

Fact #7

Today’s fact is If you don’t confront a bully directly, he will own you. This applies to all levels of society, from the schoolyard to the overarching government itself. Bullies are on a power trip. They get off on making the “alien” element among them, among their version of society, kneel. It is up to […]

|short story| The Skull

Sitting in the White House, the Conqueror poured wine into his favorite skull: that of the last President of the United States. The skull was sealed up in the eyes and mouth with glass. Wine rose past the eyes to the white brow of the skull. The Conqueror quaffed a goodly amount of liquid ambrosia […]

|short story| Sex Doll

It was the year 2083. With the invention of the realistic synthetic woman for private masturbation purposes, the number of men dating real women plummeted. Some pundits said it was because real women were too fat, while the synth version was slim and svelte and nicely breasted. Some pundits claimed it was because women had […]