Look at the technology we use. We’re cyborgs. We’re attached to our phones at ever-younger ages, while the phones have evolved forward. Most people don’t even have short-term memories anymore. We’re becoming machine people. I think superheroes are part of the vision of what we may become: Individuals with our own chest emblems. Something is going on there, a strange collapse. Like you said, more and more people want to become superheroes, even as comic-book writers and filmmakers have spent the last 10 years trying to make superheroes much more real, relatable and convincing.

In the case VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017, the judge denied the Canadian adult film company access to subpoena ISPs for the personal information connected to the IP-addresses of their subscribers. The reason? IP-addresses do not equal persons, and especially in ‘adult entertainment’ cases this could obstruct a ‘fair’ legal process.

Among other things Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the U.S. authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections. Using this example, the judge claims that several of the defendants in VPR’s case may have nothing to do with the alleged offense either.

“The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment,” Judge Baker writes.

A Mexican dentist said he tired of paying a weekly extortion fee of 800 pesos, about $70, in Juarez, and, after suffering a beating for nonpayment that almost killed him, he made the move to El Paso.
He now runs a clandestine clinic in his El Paso home, using his car to pick up patients at a distant location and discreetly driving them into his garage, where he welcomes them to his office.
“Whether you agree, or disagree with this war, one thing is clear. This will go on for years,” the dentist said. “This clandestine office is Plan B for now.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese colonies in Africa continue to grow at an extraordinary rate, shipping minerals and diamonds back to the mother country. Only the Indian Empire, which recently signed a trans-continental alliance with booming Brazil, comes close to rivalling China’s dominance of Eurasia.

Some experts insist that Chinese growth is unsustainable. But Beijing’s victory over Russia in 2028’s Four-Day War tells a rather different story. For years, tensions had been growing over influence in the crucial Central Asian oil states. But when border clashes escalated into open warfare, even military experts were shocked by the speed of the Chinese advance.

And culturally, too, the Chinese still make all the running. On the University of Beijing’s East Anglia campus (formerly Cambridge University), Chinese Studies remains by far the most popular subject.