Oh Jesus. As this tech gets good enough, eventually people will start falling in love with the damned things. It’s inevitable. And eventually they’ll want to make it socially acceptable to take their fuck-robots out in public. They’ll want to marry the things. They’ll be trying to piggyback off the gay and trans rights movements. Everyone will be like, “dude, that is clearly a robot. I can show you the code. There’s nobody looking back from behind those plastic eyes.” And they’ll be like, “no! You just don’t understand our love, I know she’s real!”

We are so incredibly fucked.

Seriously. The rule should be, “occupy whatever the hell you want. Just don’t create a fire hazard or prevent people from doing their job.” Want to sit-in on the hallway outside the university president’s office? Fine. Just keep the number small enough to not be a fire hazard. Feel free to shout whatever you want at them while they walk to their door. Don’t do anything stupid like chaining yourself to the university president, and you’ll be fine.

Yeah, it would be a bit annoying to be that president and to have to walk past protesters during terms. But so what? You signed up to be the president of the university, the human face of the campus administration. You’re the highest paid person on campus, behind only the football coach. Don’t want to deal with blue haired teenagers shouting at you? Don’t sign up to be a university president!

Our cursed future:

We will figure out how to create a VR system that can continuously simulate a truly immersive reality. We create something like the Holodeck in Star Trek or the Matrix from…the Matrix.

Unfortunately it will take 10 GW of power to maintain such a simulation. 10 GW…per person.

In the end, all our grand techno dreams will come true. We’ll figure out how to build deuterium-based fusion reactors, and we’ll use godlike robotics to rapidly expand our infrastructure and power production. We’ll even imagine a social utopia. Everyone gets access to the tech, and 10 GW of power just isn’t that expensive anymore.

We create the perfect power source, able to be fueled from the deuterium, that can be easily drawn from any natural source of water. We create a virtual paradise world of ultimate bliss, a cyberpunk post-scarcity utopia built on unparalleled robotics and abundant fusion energy.

Then in a century, we drink the oceans dry. If 10 GW isn’t enough to do it, our per-capita energy demand will only continue its exponential rise. The reason we don’t see any other civilizations out there amongst the stars is that technological civilizations are like firecrackers in the night. Wants are infinite. And as soon as the pool of available resources grows, new uses are found for these resources. Build a Dyson sphere around the Sun to capture its entire output, and there will be some bastard arguing that we need to disassemble the damn Sun to optimize total lifetime energy output.

Civilizations like ours are explosions on the cosmic scene. Our energy needs increase exponentially until we, in relatively short order, either exhausts all reserves or burn in our own waste heat.

We are a firecracker in the night.

Exactly!

My theory is that once you have a role as a main character in Star Trek, you’re pretty much stuck in sci fi. The exception to this is if you were already a well established actor prior to Trek. So Patrick Stewart could go back to high theatre, but Colm Meaney ended up mugging Atlantis for a little C4.

Oh, one Luigi damaged your world? Institute health care reform, or we’ll send dozens of them, one after the other!

God. How was SG1 so damn good? Every few years I do a rewatch of the whole franchise. It’s a masterpiece.

That’s why I think we should have a crowd funding campaign to build a big bronze statue of the guy. You know, those aren’t as expensive as you might think. Some searching suggests they can be built for $25k-250k. That seems well within the range of a crowd funding campaign. And unlike copy cat attacks or making death threats, there’s nothing illegal about building a statue to someone. At the same time, imagine what a message it would send if 100,000 people each gave a few dollars to build a statue to Luigi.

As far as location, I can think of two. One would be as close to the shooting site as possible. The other? On a main road outside of United Healthcare’s headquarters in Minnesota. I want ever UHC employee to have to drive past a big statue of Luigi as they go into work each day. A durable reminder of just what we think of them.

And if some vandals destroy the statue? We’ll build it again, but even BIGGER.

The key is to publicly wish for his death in a way that no person could actually carry out. Then it’s not a death threat. Wish for him to get cancer. Wish for him to have a heart attack. Wish for him to die from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Wish for him to be struck by lightning. Wish for a giant sinkhole to open up directly beneath his feet, swallow him whole, and close up behind him, as if Hell itself reached up to finally claim him, the Devil finally collecting on some contract signed long ago.

It’s not a death threat if you ask God or the Devil to do the dirty work for you!

Personally I would appreciate the irony of school shooters instead going after gun manufacturer executives. I like my justice delivered ironically.

Exactly. We are a society where innocent children are gunned down in their classrooms every other day. And for once, finally, one of the gunman actually decided to smite someone who deserved it. If you’re at the point of being willing to throw your life away in an act of murderous violence, why die a villain, when you can die a hero?

We should be building statues of Luigi.

Not guilty. You can only murder human beings. Brian Robert Thompson willingly relinquished his humanity a long time ago. What Luigi did was more akin to using bleach to treat mold in the bathroom. Killing a living thing? Yes. Murder? Certainly not.

In theory, yes!

Well, something isn’t going to stop burning. Remember, when Brian Robert Thompson hit the pavement, he didn’t stop falling. He fell, and fell, and fell, right into the gaping maw of the Pit of Hell itself.

The man died utterly unrepentant for mass murder. On the morning of his death, he was on his way to a conference, a conference where he planned to openly celebrate the record profits he earned from all the people he killed.

If that isn’t enough to Damn a soul for all eternity, I don’t know what is.

If someone ran for governor of NY on a platform of giving Luigi a full pardon, they would win in a landslide.

You mean Brian Robert Thompson?

It’s a long standing tradition to refer to serial killers by their full name. Think John Wayne Gacy. It seems appropriate here.

Most definitely, he isn’t the unibomber largely indiscriminately killing people based on some ideological manifesto, he targeted someone in charge of driving many families into bankruptcy if not outright murdering patients with denials, and targeted a problem that many know to be true.

By my math, Brian Robert Thompson killed 40,000 people.

I don’t know. Trump is special. I’m hoping more "divine smiting’ for him. For a man that so seems to have the Devil’s charisma behind him, what more fitting end could there be than to die by lightning strike?

Hopefully he’s the first of hundreds.

I remember a moment like this in Asimov’s Foundation series, a series set in a far-off setting of a galaxy-spanning empire built on easy interstellar travel. At one point a couple gets on board their personal interstellar space ship. As they’re getting on, the husband tells his wife to go cook dinner.

Oh, and for an added bonus, their ash trays are nuclear powered.

Now there’s another shower thought.

What if one day airplanes just like…stopped working…