Hmm, a Culture militarized drone might count as a weapon. If there were one that wanted to be my friend and be helpful to me that would probably be the most generally useful weapon possible.

Yeah Culture drones are on both sides of the line between autonomous person and (potentially, if that’s what kind they are) weapon. Plus I was imagining all of the non-offensive things it could do to be useful when I suggested it.

It's likely this station is in the non-commercial band if it used to be a college station - anything below 92 mhz. They're legally not allowed to have actual commercials but they can run PSAs, membership drives, underwriting, etc due to FCC rules.

It's almost certainly not a ploy: it's way more likely the college decided the previous format was too expensive. The college probably decided to lease out their frequency to someone else. The lessee still can't run commercials (or even operate "commercially," whatever the FCC decides that means), but it's very easy to pre-program a music format with all the breaks already slotted in which explains the top 40s and the lack of live DJs. The college therefore reduces their operating costs to nearly zero and they make money from the lease at the same time.

This exact situation happened to my college radio station when I was an undergrad and I hated it too.

That is a brilliant mashup.

For the curious that is very much Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Super Metroid - SNES

In Le Morte d'Arthur we learn that the scabbard is actually more valuable than Excalibur itself because any wounds received by the bearer wold never bleed. In the final panel of the comic there is a large pool of blood forming, presumably by the lady of the lake's death (or maybe her hand being bitten off). There shouldn't be blood.

That’s very clearly Ambassador Tomalak, not Garak.

That’s what those nerds get for disrespecting the water polo jocks.

Piter de Vries (the Harkonnen mentat) from the David Lynch Dune too.

The Culture and it isn't even close.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of therapy when you start scavving people for their chrome. Humanity loss is expensive to recover.

Like many of the comments I had mixed feelings about this trilogy (enjoyed some concepts and large scale plot, disliked some characters and prose and specific plots) but so far no one has mentioned the misogyny. Phew boy the misogyny is front and center in a few places and it's really jarring and unpleasant.

Except that the scabbard makes the wearer immune to blood loss.

It’s bothering me how the cord is coming out of the second tone knob and the jack is just sitting there lonely and empty.

I liked it too, great art style. Although since I'm already nitpicking: a morning star on a chain seems like the least practical underwater weapon imaginable.

Genuinely great movie and book. I didn’t love the newest one as much despite some good voice talent.

All the warthogs at the party are very ugly and have warts, including the handsome one. There's nothing really to distinguish the handsome one except he's got the cool eyes thing going on and he's smoking. So you can interpret the joke a couple of ways: a) it's silly Larson anthropomorphism where humans like us reading the cartoon don't get what attributes animals would find attractive or b) every animal thinks cool eyes and smoking is cool, which probably circles back to being a commentary about those things not being terribly cool at all. Or a hundred other meanings I haven't gotten.

Edit: I don't think it's a specific reference, more just the 70s/80s "movie cool" character would look like that but not be a warthog

That song is great and I hope you’ve also heard the original Failure version.

…that’s his crotch.