Nightmares All Night

Been watching the HBO miniseries on the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster.

HBO has done an excellent job with showing what happened. 

Maybe too good…I was up with nightmares all night. 

Last night’s episode 3 showed in gory detail the initial causalities from the facility and first responders suffering with acute radiation syndrome, and was completely horrifying. 

In the end, the people were in unimaginable pain and were left as mounds of decomposing flesh from the cellular degradation rather than recognizable human beings.  

(The photo here was just a precursor to that end state.)

The ultimate death toll has been estimated at between 10,000 and more than 100,000. 

The effects of the the radiation was described in the show as like trillions of bullets penetrating everything it comes in contact with for the next 50,000 years.

So far we’ve had Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2012)…OMG, let’s hope and pray that we don’t have any others, because this was truly looking at hell on earth. 😉

(Source Photo: Official Trailer here)

VICE News Superior

So I have started watching VICE News and you should too. 

It is on HBO and is superior to the other big news outlets in so many ways. 

The intensity and clarity of their photography and videos is unbelievable!

My daughter said to me:

“This is clearer than REAL life!”

And she was right…I don’t know how they do it. 

Also, they remove all the clutter from the news screen that CNN, MSNBC, and others use at the top and bottom of the screen–instead it’s just clean, focused, and right to the news point. 

VICE puts the key messages in callouts right on the screen in large and easy to read boxes–the impact is you see the visual and the print message dramatically together and you get it and remember it!

They do this for their photos and videos.

Finally, with all the “talk is cheap” news these days, it is nice that VICE seems to focus more on reporting and less on subjective opinion. 

With all the failing, fake, and alternative news out there, it is nice to see that someone has invented a better news program.  😉

(Source Photo: Vice News)

Always An Evil Cersei

So Games of Thrones session 7 was fantastic!

And the evil ruler of Westeros in King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister, never ceases to amaze in her deviousness and wrongdoing. 

There is a great existential threat to the 7 Kingdoms as 100,000 strong army of White Walkers and a zombie dragon (as Air Force) invades from beyond the wall in the far north.

And while Jon Snow (King of the North) and Daenerys Targaryen (Queen heir to the 7 Kingdoms) unites to fight them, Cersei seeks to win it all for herself. 

Cersei gives her word to join them with her armies in the fight against the invaders, but instead she backtracks and plans to conquer them from the south as they faceoff with the enemy to the north. 

This is the classic treachery of getting the upper hand and working to divide and conquer. 

As the Queen of Evil, Cersei will torture and kill anyone in her path to power, even threatening her own brother and incest partner, Ser Jaime, so turning on her competition to the Iron Throne is just a walk in the park for her. 

Unfortunately, this is really a tale of everyday life…where people band together to fight big enemies that threaten us–whether from violence, poverty, or illness–and someone always uses the war of the day as an opportunity to benefit themselves. 

Whether it’s arms trafficking, human smuggling, drug profiteering, intellectual property theft, money laundering or someone else trying to get rich, famous, and powerful by exploiting an opening for themselves, there is always a Cersei! 

Cerseis are people that don’t care about solving large institutional or global problems–but instead are selfish and seek to capitalize on them.

While the White Walkers invade, Cersei is counting bodies of her enemies fending them off, while she seeks to take over once the battlefield is full of everyone else’s corpses. 

Cerseis are people you know at work, school, in the community and in politics…they take when others give, and they don’t give back in return, because they want what everyone else has and works for, and that is how they win the Game of Thrones in everyday life.

How do you stop the Cerseis of the world–anyone got some Dragonglass? 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to HBO via the New York Times)