Cory Doctorow wrote a series of short stories and this is the first one in the book. They just want toast.

Fittingly, the book is called Radicalized.

Don’t forget, there’s more than 800 000 imprisoned people working for the US economy as well. They get paid an average of between “13 and 52 cents an hour”, according to reporting by the Guardian and the ACLU from June 2022.

“Seven states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas – pay nothing for the vast majority of prison work.”

Update

The latest report from the Human Rights Research Center on this came out on Tuesday, 2 June 2026.

Kaitlyn Andres, “Modern Day Slavery in the United States: Exploring Forced Labor for Prison Inmates”, Human Rights Research Center, June 2, 2026

“Most incarcerated workers (~80%) work in jobs that maintain their facilities including janitorial duties, groundskeeping, food preparation, and laundry.3 For this type of labor, inmates at federal prisons can earn between $0.12 and $0.40 per hour.” (Andres, 2026)

So much for keeping up with inflation.

In January 2025, an insightful report from the Economic Policy Institute states,

" from fighting wildfires to toiling in the kitchens of some of the country’s most popular food franchises, incarcerated workers perform vital functions across the United States and produce billions of dollars in value… Incarcerated labor is rooted in slavery and bears an especially striking resemblance in the South." (Mast, 2025)

Now add the 60 000 immigrants, migrants, and refugees kidnapped and imprisoned by ICE since 2025.

“Tens of thousands of detainees participate in the VWP because it is their only available source of income while in detention and they are often coerced into participating or threatened with retaliation if they refuse to participate.”

“for-profit companies running America’s immigration centers are permitted to put immigrant detainees to work for just $1 a day, based on a 1950s era law.” (Pasternak, 2026)

So, basically, this horseshit tariff is pretty rich coming out of anyone in this administration.

The Newsroom - this clip, from the pilot, you’ve probably seen.

Deep dives into 21st century US History, as it happened in real time. Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) style. Remixed with melodrama about the people within the Newsroom. Sloan Sabbith is my favourite.

Topics include:

• Deepwater Horizon

• SB 1070 (Arizona’s racist detention law)

• the Gabrielle Giffords shooting

• Arab Spring

• Citizens United ruling

• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident

• the Death of Osama bin Laden

• Glass-Steagall Act (this video threads a few scenes together)

• the Tea Party (described as the American Taliban) - significant because The Tea Party is antecedent to MAGA

• Occupy Wall Street

• The Boston Marathon bombing

• Climate Polycrisis (chef’s kiss)

• Edward Snowden leaks

He really captures the vapid, ho-hum, space cadet, business-as-usual, “this is fine” look in his eyes.

Pepper-spraying people isn’t an “of course” event. It’s an off-course event. This part of the world is broken — and anyone who takes blithe satisfaction and daily pay from it is a broken person.

I’d never heard that rumour. But, I took it an ran with it. As rumours go.

It was a reference to The Boys, a graphic novel and TV series about superheroes behaving badly.

The Deep (basically Aquaman) can speak to sea animals and has a sexual relationship with an octopus. He’s also a weak, go-along-to-get-along, hegemon-appeasing sycophant.

Now, knowing that, I’m reasonably certain that I havent sold anyone on the Boys as a show. And, my apologies because it might take you a while to forget.

But, if Dom Fruze is seen entering a bathroom with an octopus and exiting without out it… you heard it here first.

I think you’re thinking of the Deep.

But, I can see the similarities. Secrets and lies inside a single building committed to world domination. Of markets.

I gotta hand it to Vaughn Snooze tho. He played himself really, really well in Magnolia.

IMO: Brand Tom Hanks was established with Big (1988!) and solidified with A League of Their Own (1993). From then on, he’s basically a hit factory.

The biggest departure for him, that I saw, was the Road to Perdition (2002). Not exactly off-brand, but a risk. It was excellent.

Sure. But, in more of a plug-n-play sorta way.

Thought process: If it’s a Tom Hanks movie, then it’ll be enjoyable in a vanilla ice cream sort of way. Few people would reject, out of hand, vanilla ice cream. Unless they’re Tom Hanks intolerant… but now im strangling this metaphor.

True great actor? Stage & screen, sings & dances, transforms the medium where every they show up.

I think I understand male actors better, so that list is longer.

• Daniel Day Lewis

• Christopher Walken

• Gary Oldman

• Denzel Washington

• Philip Seymour Hoffman

• David Strathairn

• Mark Rylance

• Jim Carrey

• Ian McKellen

• Viola Davis

• Lupita Nyong’o

• Jennifer Lawrence

• Frances McDormand

Edit: how did I miss Alan Rickman!

Yeah, true.

But it’s VERY pretty. Like, extraordinarily pretty. Zack Snyder pretty.

Vapid, sure. But, so nice to look at.

Sometimes, you go for eye candy.

Hiro Murai, Tom Ford, Denis Villeneuve, and Jordan Peele do smart and pretty. At least, their directors of photography support the smart with pretty.

Try out Brick (2005). Mystery and set in a high school with fun, noir-specific language. Same guy wrote and directed the Brothers Bloom (2013) and Knives Out (2019 and 2020), which is some fun mystery.

Nope (2022) and Get Out (2017), Parasite (2018), the Prestige (2004), and Primal Fear (1994) are all great thrillers.

You might also like Shane Black’s movies. Funny, some action, The Last Boyscout (1991) and the Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) are guilty pleasures he wrote. Links are fun samples.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005) and The Nice Guys (2018) are quite solid later work that he wrote and directed.

Romcom/ light sci-fi? Her (2015)

Give us a few to go on, OP.

i.e. Sci-Fi

• Arrival

• 2001

• Dune (2021)

i.e. Crime

• Heat

• Sicario

• Brick

i.e. Non-Blockbuster Comic Book

• Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

• Comic Book Villains

• Dredd (2012)

i.e. Beautiful/Painful international

• Dancer in the Dark

• Incendies

• La Vita e Bella

The Wrestler (2008)

Requiem For a Dream (2000)

Thank you Darren Aronofsky.

The Cell (2000)

Thank you Tarsem Dhandwar Singh

This thread deserves Dancer in the Dark. Another film that I love but cannot recommend.

Set up your depression-treatment space beforehand. You’re going to be there a while. Beauty and tragedy so tightly bound that it feels monumental.

This is the thread that deserves Todd Solondz’s films.

Start with Happiness (1998).

For me BladeRunner (Final Cut) is joined with Sicario, Heat (1995), Léon (Version Intégrale), and No Country for Old Men

Indomitable people facing nightmares with guns.

All are part of my “men with guns” film festival.

This is most my contact with others who read what I read and write what I write or think about what I think about. And, I vent here. Sure. I’ll admit it.

The North American town I now live in is decidedly not like me. I work with youth. I parent young children. 21st century parents, and those who marry into my partners social orbit, need to book engagements five months to a year in advance.

So, this is just easier.

Also: Fuck Reddit. Fuck Xitter. Fuck Meta. That’s the venting. I quit, gave up, or got hacked on all of them. Admittedly, I use WhatsApp to appease my extended family, workplace, and some friends. I’d dip back to T9 SMS if I could.

And I use Bluesky to microblog — keeping a timeline of the tragicomic decline and fall of the Western empire. And books.

We teach people to do all kinds of things. We also teach people why not-to do all kinds of things. They do them anyway.

Furthermore, if all that is needed is the information in order to be able to do the thing, theres no absolute way to prevent every person from accessing that information and, thereby having the means to do what they’ve be taught not-to do. So, in your scenario, someone, sometime, will use the weapon despite know not-to.

That said, wishing a nuclear weapon into existence — the highly-enriched uranium, the implosion core, the triggering mechanism, and the delivery system needed — seems like a helluva waste when literally everything else is also within reach. I’d hope that intelligence would be needed to understand the process; and that same intelligence would be sufficient to understand the possibility of a thing is not reason to do a thing. There’s a very crude example coming up.

Personally, I think the command of matter-energy interconversion, higher-dimensions of reality, and cosmic-levels of power might inspire one to travel widely, live fearlessly, and create new possibilities. Petty grievances — those solvable with nuclear weapons — would seem like non-problems when literally everything else is not a problem either. No hunger, no cold, no lack of shelter, no distance too far, no need for authorities… just wish-fulfillment.

Summoning a nuke would be base, awkward to the point of being detrimental to all relations. It would be like a Supreme Court justice shitting in his own hands and deliberately smearing it on the faces of elders, kindergarteners, military service members, civil-rights activists, and puppies.

Like, ew. Who would do that?

That’s an old teacher trick. A better one is using a dry erase marker to remove permanent marker. Not perfect, but works in a pinch.

First and foremost, she gains cleaning. Everything except bathrooms.

Half the cooking. She has dietary restrictions, I don’t. We don’t eat outside of home often. Except phở bò.

Every form of maintenance. Cars, computers, all machines and objects with moving parts.

Weekends away with friends. I never question and I never say no.

Few hard feelings when she’s temperamental.

What do I gain?

I’ll probably live longer because she makes me go to the doctor, the dentist, physiotherapy, and reduces my cheese and bacon intake. But not salt. She loves salt.

I gain perspective. I don’t occupy i high tower where I know everything and remain academically distant and untouched by the world. I gain knowledge of all the books I don’t (and wouldn’t) read. I gain access to emotional and psychological non-fiction content.

Finally, I gain the companionship of someone who lets me do my wierd. Nothing kinky or malicious or wasteful or destructive — just unreasonably high standards and unreasonably low output. No blame for it as long as bills are paid and food is in the fridge.

She’d like to see me try to shoot the moon, and I love her for it. We’ll see. I can’t even put together a string of Lemmy posts worthy of acclaim.

Do not lick the window.

Do not hit the window.

Do not draw on the window with permanent markers.

Dry erase are fine.

Do not moon, flash, or full monty the ground crew. Baggage gets lost that way. Fueling hoses are misconnected that way.