There’s a reason why they’re my former employer. Upper management was discussing replacing our badges with the phone. We needed the phones to get into the building because that was where the covid protocol pass was kept and security checked. It was impressive how quickly they took advantage of the pandemic to make creepy breeches in privacy.

Preach. It wasn’t body cams but our company gave us all mandatory phones with custom location tracking software on them. It was done as part of their pandemic response. The phones were supposedly only tracking your location within a mile of the site and were only used for enforcing social distancing and infection tracking. Well when the return to office mandates came around, upper management was suddenly too informed about how much time we spent onsite. They swore up and down it wasn’t the phones and went to pretty absurd lengths to find some other metric to prove it.

Avenue 5 is a brilliant dark sci-fi comedy that I cannot stop thinking about. It’s basically a cruise ship in space but then things go wrong. The physics are actually sound which makes for some really fun and terrifying gags. It’s heavy on dark humor, but if you’re ok with that it’s such a fun ride. I am biased but I feel like this show is criminally underrated.

Portal. I have terrible FPS skills but love puzzle games. Having a FPS where I could proceed at my own pace and wasn’t constantly letting down teammates let me develop the skills needed to actually play.

If you want to get into things but are unsure how to get started, I recommend checking out your local community college. Having a class is nice because it provides the starting point and goal so you don’t get overwhelmed with where to start. I find I really benefit from the schedule that taking classes enforces, otherwise I find myself really struggling to make progress when I do learning on my own. Also it comes with its own built in community that you can reach out to if you’re stuck. Classes tend to be really affordable so it’s a way to try things out casually.

Ok, now if you are looking for a movie that is all style and low on substance, may I suggest: Repo! The Genetic Opera.

It’s a very 2000’s rock opera with pretty good visuals. It’s got a really fun vibe and very goth aesthetics. There isn’t much depth but you will probably be signing along by the end of it. REEEEEEPO MAN! REEEEPO man!

No, the craziest part is how staunchly anti safety regulation the company’s founder was. Per NPR:

The Titan, the small submersible operated by a Washington state-based company called OceanGate, gives tours primarily in international waters, which means the experimental vessel avoided most U.S. safety rules.

In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian magazine, OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush — currently missing aboard the Titan — complained about government rules.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations,” Rush told the magazine. “But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”