I remember Mickey$oft had a short-lived thing, "Digital Nervous System" or some such nonsense, and trumpeted as "DNS". I thought, "Do they really think they can co-opt a standard acronym of the Internet?"

I read that as "parasitical" relationship. Eh, tomayto/tomahto.

I'm reminded of an old Heinlein novel, "Friday". One chapter describes an environment of immersive gambling in all walks of life.

A quick setup with shameless copypasta from the usual source:

"Friday is a 1982 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It is the story of a female "artificial person", the eponymous Friday, genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better than normal humans. Artificial humans are widely resented, and much of the story deals with Friday's struggle both against prejudice and to conceal her enhanced attributes from other humans. The story is set in a Balkanized 21st century, in which the nations of the North American continent have been split up into a number of smaller states."

Friday is a ""combat courier in a quasi-military organization", traveling across the globe and to some of the near-Earth space colonies."..."Friday travels through the California Confederacy, the Lone Star Republic...and the Chicago Imperium as she attempts to reach her headquarters."

Well, ol' Bob had a lot of fun describing a California Republic, er, Confederacy of the future (no, he didn't go there--it was just a name). The Governor is some old guy who wore a war bonnet, f'rinstance, and "Lottery Day" is a national holiday. People roll dice with cops to see if they're really going to get that traffic ticket. It was one of the lighter chapters in the book, and Heinlein played it for laughs. I enjoyed it and imagine people not from California would enjoy it even more. Anyways, Friday happens to win the big jackpot on Lottery Day (a lot of Heinlein's books work best when the protagonists are independently wealthy). It's a big scene and the entire population breathlessly awaits the televised results. When she wins she gets the great honor of being presented with the winnings by the Governor in front of the cameras (contraindicated for a combat courier). Shenanigans ensue. More stuff like that, then the story moves along.

Ok, so that's the relevant bit. I'll close with this: The book got several awards nods and was a fun read. One critical viewer had this to say, "Heinlein's ability to write a sentence that makes you want to read the next sentence remains unparalleled...Every sentence and every paragraph and page and chapter lead on to the next, but it's just one thing after another, there's no real connection going on. It has no plot, it's a set of incidents that look as if they're going somewhere and don't ever resolve, just stop." Frankly that's one of the things I liked about it. While not a stream of consciousness work like perhaps Vonnegut would do (which would have the same criticisms), it was an adventure story dealing with the random hits of an impersonal universe whose only "plot" is to eventually kill you.

Funny.

But...“People don’t realize just how much time their TV-watching habit–or, shall I say, addiction–eats up. Four hours of television a day, over the course of a month, adds up to 120 hours. That’s five entire days! Why not spend that time living your own life, instead of watching fictional people live theirs? I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am not to own a television.”...when I look at the last paragraph, I think, "He's not wrong."

The sun is behind Earth. The "dark" side of Earth is lit by moonglow and photographed with a large f-stop. I'm assuming that the light in the center is a reflection from inside the capsule. It may not have been apparent to the photographer, but a camera with wide-open aperture can pick up stuff that the eye can't see.

"Sure as shit would have been nice to lead off with those actual professional accomplishments"

WTF? This is NASA. Whatever else you think is going on there, those kinds of things are a given. And the information trivially available.

A man walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, you just missed it!" The man sez, "Naw", and waves his phone, which has the same image of the big stack on fire as the bar's 72".

That was fun. Perhaps my favorite line:

"This mix (superior insight + ultimate futility) is common in people who've burned out on online activism or forums like Slashdot."

I like it. Hard to get it on the marquee, perhaps. Mine was a more prosaic "The Floyd Project". Welcome to the machine.

Interesting. Mythologized an eon later, "Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat, the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay.

—Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (c.1800 BCE)"

Those address the first application of spoken language to writing. Just to confuse matters a bit more, "The first writing can be dated back to the Neolithic era, with clay tablets being used to keep track of livestock and commodities." (per the wiki. I'll have to look more into this, I don't know if I've seen anything about it.) I have read that Egyptian hieroglyphics were originated for accounting. (Allegedly for beer, but I read about this in a "history of beer" article, so YMMV.)

I wish we had Feynman's insights around now. Besides the science of the small, here's what he had to say in '04 about what we have come to call AI today:

"Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to
the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting---if they could be made to be more
complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make
judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about
to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we
would give to them. And in many other ways, they would have new qualitative features"

Zeek teh Cockroach: "Must have something to do with those disgusting Scarabs."

The gift that keeps on giving. I was idly wondering why we have Bronze age, Iron age, etc., but no Clay age, then realized every age is a Clay age.

Thought a little more and wondered when pottery was first created, and found China was doing it around 18000BC, and we've been labeling the different potteries over time and space. So in a way we do have different "Clay Ages", but it's delineated in the descriptions of the technology and styles of the main product of the clay used by different civilizations.

"I love the smell of iron oxide in the morning!"