kok & These are rough times, but it’ s extremely important to develop a sense of optimism. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists periodically updates a clock on their cover to indicate how close we’ re moving toward nuclear war. Recently they moved it from four minutes to midnight to three minutes to midnight, with midnight representing total annihilation. | don’ t know exactly what their time scale is—whether one minute represents a month or a year or a decade—but, whichever, they’ re saying that we are all now only three minutes away from the ultimate holocaust. That’ s the bad news. The good news is that atomic scientists are just as fucked-up as the rest of us. They overeat, they forget to floss, they don’ t have time for serial orgasms, or they suffer from premature ejaculations, and they set their clocks fifteen minutes ahead so that if they need to mail a letter by six 0’ clock and their clock says it’ s ten after six, it means they still have five minutes to get to the mailbox. So that clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is fifteen minutes fast. We don’ t have just three minutes till doomsday; we have eighteen minutes. kok & HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015178