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.

I have never ridden a horse.

This is an impossible question to answer. But, I’ll give it a shot anyway. I’ve expanded the meaning of “franchise” to include “all properties sublicensable for the purposes of profiteering.”

If “popular culture” refers to the recognizable and persistent elements of living in society that the majority people share in common without having to communicate that recognition, I’d regard the following franchises as having broad impact worldwide:

• McDonalds/Subway and all attendant advertising as a signpost for food. Franchises abound.

• Esso/Shell/BP as gateways to modern conveniences and transportation. Every gas station, residence, farm house, hen house, outhouse, and dog house is connected to these franchises in some way.

• G4S/Securitas/Garda as the front line protecting the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. Franchises abound.

• Most athletic, luxury vehicle, and brands as the status symbols they want themselves to be. Franchisees promote the brands as a means of collecting clients.

If, on the other hand, “popular culture” is, ‘traditions and material culture of a particular society. In the modern West, pop culture refers to cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, cyberculture, television, and radio that are consumed by the majority of a society’s population. … types of media that have mass accessibility and appeal’ (ThoughtCo.) then the following are some fairly strong indicators of popular culture:

• Hello Kitty (be pleasant)

• Pokémon (pursue goals)

• Superman/Batman (masculinity, vigilantism)

• Paw Patrol (institutions are essential)

• the Olympics (do athletics)

• Michael Jordan (be excellent)

• Mickey Mouse (dream big)

• Star Wars/The Bible (G vs. E)

The ones I wish would take hold and have more of an influence:

• X-men (biodiversity is good)

• the Expanse

• Battlestar Galactica (genocide, rebellion, impersonation, terrorism, coups d’état, civil war, infidelity, succession, military conflict, asymmetrical warfare, treason, mutiny, pirate broadcasts, nuclear warfare… and that’s just the first half of the series)

• Tony’s Chocolonely (ethical economics)

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.

Travelers, The Expanse (noted by OP), Beef, and Breaking Bad are all solid. Add Mare of Easttown, the Morning Show, and the Newsroom and you’ve got half of my favourite shows of the past 15 years.

Ted Lasso was the big surprise to me here. The characters are lovable, caring, and well-crafted, and the story is simple but compelling. In all, only the most heartless, isolate, human beings would get nothing from this show.

North Americans, I’m one of you. You have to leave for a while. You gain perspective.

Back in '07, I left. I was in Australia in '09 and some Aussies asked me, ‘what’s it like living over there?’

The only thing I could come up with at the time was " causes neuroticism.’ It’s so much worse now that we have social media, smartphones, and a penchant for duelling forms of misinformation.

What I learned is that there are many ways to live. There are lots of goals people have — and can have — many of them are quite modest: a safe place to live, love, and feel part of community. There are much worse daily experiences than those we hear about in the news, or see on TV, or read about it books. There is truly grinding poverty and privation that does not translate well into a novel or an article — readership is fickle. Yet, from those ashes, there is still joy, levity, and grace.

So, we residents of the most powerful economies must see outside of our bubbles. We must see, first hand, how we are duped into believing there is only one set of goals, one North American dream, one prestige, and one centre of power. When you spend enough years away, you just might forget about homeownership, career-building, and fretting over retirement. You might find that life is about living, about doing good work, and about being with people you care to pass the time with.

At least, that’s what 12 years outside of NA taught me.

Heliocentric model.

Cosmic distance and time. Light speed as a limit.

The geological age of the Earth.

Dinosaurs.

Evolutionary theory.

Continental drift.

The periodic table of the elements.

Quantum theory, including wave-particle duality.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Black holes.

Assuming right-hand side of road driving and right-hand (anti-clockwise) directionality of travel.

1. Look left. Clear? Proceed. Not clear? Yield.
2. When safe to do so, enter the roundabout. Locate your exit.
3. Exit the roundabout.

Corollary: never stop in a roundabout. Go around more than once if you have to, but don’t stop.

I assume roundabouts in Australia and England and UK colonies that drive on the left, all instructions are direction-opposite.

Assuming left-hand side of road driving and left-hand (clockwise) directionality of travel.

1. Look right. Clear? Proceed. Not clear? Yield.
2. When safe to do so, enter the roundabout. Locate your exit.
3. Exit the roundabout.

Corollary: never stop in a roundabout. Go around more than once if you have to, but don’t stop.

I like watching well-done cinematic synopses of characters or storylines. Watched only AFTER having seen the series.

Here’s one for Altered Carbon S01. Very BladeRunner, very neo-noir, 80s meets 20s. Here’s one for the Expanse, story focused, 2 movements, so compassion-inducing

Both are by this creator.

Two of my top ten shows right now. I think I’m going to go finish DEVS right now.

USA, 55th in the world overall, for maternal mortality in a 2018 study.

A fast look at the UNICEF data for 2020 shows 66th.

That’s behind the State of Palestine (61st), Moldova (46th), Albania (34th), Poland (3rd) and Belarus (1st).

https://data.unicef.org/topic/maternal-health/maternal-mortality/#data

This is enlightening. US maternal death rates compared to other industrialized nations.

From: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/nov/maternal-mortality-maternity-care-us-compared-10-countries

Think that the calculus is to stem the tide and activate the electorate in recognition that the EU Parliament outcomes were a surprise?

Trigonometry

Yeah, I don’t mind it. Thor is a name and a title/power. God (presumably) is a name, and Thor has the power of a god.

Prince is a title. It’s also a name. And, to some musicians, Prince is a god.

It’d be rare to win an argument by invoking Prince, but there you go.

Going forward is the worst of corporate-speak. I refuse to use this phrase.

This is the reason I stopped shaving. Cost. I have an electric shaver, but I can’t be bothered with a half-ass shave. Also, shaving too often gives me razor bumps.

And, without a beard, I probably look like I should be in high school.

I almost couldn’t finish Irreversible.

I saw Baise Moi (Kiss/Rape Me) in a theatre just before it was banned. I was not expecting that

This is about the same time that Kids, Gummo, Happiness, and the Brown Bunny were all released.

Each film is fucked up for its own reasons. Though, I understand, Salo and A Serbian Film are next level fucked up.

(Squints) What do you mean by “solved”?

I mean, we’re pretty good at math. We can “solve” math problems. But when the math is applied and we choose to do the opposite of what the math says, then we’ve not “solved” the problem, we legitimately make it worse.

See also: climate change, housing bubbles, food insecurity, pay equity, universal childcare, universal healthcare, universal pharmacare, student to teacher ratios, media consolidation, and most other market-based solutions.

e: and, as said below, war. That math only maths when dominating “others”.

So… What you’re saying is, I need a cat.