Stealth Fighter

CONCEPT

Breaking Pop Smoke

MONSTER

GIGANT

MARIJUANA

THE DUKE

PAINT JOB

LOG CABIN

TELEVISION

THE MAN IN BLACK

TRAFFIC

5 FINGERS

Bloomberg drops out of presidential race endorses Biden

NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. It was a stunning collapse for the…

Via

The Player of Games

 

The second Culture novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction.

The Culture – a human/machine symbiotic society – has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy.

Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game … a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life – and very possibly his death.

Praise for the Culture series:

‘Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution’ Independent on Sunday

‘Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future’ Guardian

‘Jam-packed with extraordinary invention’ Scotsman

‘Compulsive reading’ Sunday Telegraph

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

 

Only $3 on amazon.com right now!

Via

MOONSHINERS

Planet Plastic

How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades

Via

CHOPPERS

FURY

POTATO FUDGE

GASSER

HAIR

KEYHOLE

GARTERS

John Xena

TASMANIAN TIGERS

LAST KNOWN TASMANIAN TIGERS

LISTERINE

DRIVE IN

JOHNNY RAMONE

THE TEEN ENGINE THAT COULD NOT EVEN

BLIMP

HAT

sanders in 78

green skull

pinker cyber

free your mind kill your tv

you’re not even watching the movie

tall phone

Watch Hardball Host Chris Matthews Retire Suddenly On Air

Matthews has hosted the show for 20 years.

Via

cyber pink

How the World is Most Likely to End

Behold, the apocalypse!

Scientists and self-appointed prophets agree that the world is coming to an end. Well, not the world as in Planet Earth but the world of humanity. Or, as the great philosopher and social critic George Carlin said: 

It’s apocalypse o’clock, peeps. The way things are standing today, we are en route to an inevitable end. When will the end come, and what will bring it? Let’s take a look at some of the most popular apocalypse scenarios today.

Climate change

Climate change is the apocalypse with the best-sounding name. Compared to “nuclear holocaust” or “plague”, it almost seems benign – but its effects are not. Perhaps it would be a good idea to change its name to “climate apocalypse” – it would perhaps make more people realize what it means.

(Photo: icheinfach / Pixabay)

In a nutshell, climate change can lead to an entire series of spectacular and deadly events, all of them out to terminate human life – or life, altogether – on Earth. These range from “heat death” – when the temperatures become too high for us humans to be able to survive – to water scarcity, food scarcity, the rapid spread of various diseases that, as society collapses on itself, will be next to impossible to control, will decimate the population. Yet the most spectacular scenario is the one related to massive quantities of methane being released from the underwater stores in the oceans that, when ignited by lightning storms, would explode in a violent manner that puts even the biggest nuclear explosions to shame, destroy the ozone layer, and the remaining life in the oceans – in short, it would burn us first, then cook us slowly in cosmic radiation.

Artificial intelligence

Surprising as it may sound, artificial intelligence is more likely to wipe us out than a giant asteroid. In a report published in 2015, researchers from Oxford University have shown that there is a 1 in 10 chance that AI will end us all simply because it has no use for us. Then again, a global AI overlord taking over our lives could be overall beneficial for the life and thriving of humanity. Thus, it’s far more likely for us to have a world similar to the one depicted in Isaac Asimov’s novels than one like in the Terminator movies. 

(Photo: 024-657-834 / Pixabay)

The scientists compiling the report have admitted that AI is the area with the largest uncertainties – there’s no way to predict if or when our robot overlords will take over the world. 

The usual suspects

Finally, let’s take a look at the “usual suspects” that seem never to go out of style: nuclear war, a deadly disease, and the global collapse of society (possibly caused by the first two). While the latter is unlikely to end humanity, the former two do have the potential to wipe us out completely.

Back when the arms race was ongoing between the two big powers – the USA and the Soviet Union – the idea of mutually assured destruction successfully kept the apocalypse at bay. Now, in turn, there are eight, maybe nine countries with nukes ready to deploy. And at least two of them – India and Pakistan – are involved in military conflicts. 

A deadly disease pandemic – intended or not – is another possibility that’s relatively plausible today. We’ve seen viruses spread like wildfire across the world in the last two decades – think of the H1N1, the MERS epidemic, Ebola, and now the novel coronavirus. As the example of the coronavirus has shown us, we are pretty much unprepared for a new, deadly, successful disease – one that spreads rapidly and survives in a range of environments and has a long incubation period and is fast to mutate.

sick of him jeopardizing our relationship

raccoon fashion

Coronavirus Last Week Tonight with John Oliver HBO

As coronavirus spreads to the US, John Oliver discusses what’s being done to fight the illness, what’s gone wrong, and how to stay safe. Connect with Last We…

Via

neon hair

city watch

NY City BOX CUTTER Prohitibits KNIVES

Church is over

the world is an amazing place

RainbowSEX