Hold on there, 8+ sounds like you mean seasons 8 and on. Season 8 has the Scorpio episode, Milhouse's dad drawing dignity, prohibition, and "the baby looked at you?"

A vast patchwork of incredibly different lifeways that you can flee to whenever then taxman and his goons come round.

This experiment with democracy

I agree with the thrust of your comment, but I think it's an overstatement to say the US was ever a democracy.

Our country is an imperial power that was built ontop of a genocide, by slaves, to support white male property owners. It was always designed as an oligarchy with features like the electoral college to make sure the will of the people could never compete with the will of the powerful. Policy outcomes haven't reflected public opinion on any major issues since the 70s.

I'd say what's going on is moving from a broad oligarchy to a narrower more centralized oligarchy. Which is still moving in the wrong direction and will definitely make life worse for most Americans.

nothing gets out of your brain on its own, except heat.

I heard a recording of a song made by reading a brain that was thinking that song. It was far from perfect, but you could tell which song it was. I'm no neuroscientist, but if that information can already be plucked from a brain, surely that's proof that reconstructing thoughts is possible to some degree?

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neuroscientist-pink-floyd-music-brain-activity

If it's a nation state, it's already not a democracy.

The idea that choosing which particular rich people sit in a fancy building is somehow democracy is quite funny.

Whenever I'm depressed about the Republicans and their fascist destruction of our country, I like to think back to that pitiful plea of jeb exclamation point. It still makes me smile.

It's important to remember that Republicans are committed to ending democracy because the majority of people do not support their brutal white supremacist vision for the country.

If they had majority support they wouldn't be illegally seizing and destroying the institutions of governance.

Even Vietnam is now looking more to USA because they don't trust China anymore!

Vietnam (like so many smaller states) is playing both powers against each other to maximize their own gains. But they are tectonically unable to move away from Chinese influence.

I heard a quote from a Vietnamese diplomat that the US was a great mistress - it's very exciting, you can have a lot of fun. But when you come home, the wife is always there.

Vietnam won't divorce China.

Free will.

It's hard to accept, but free will is just not compatible with reality. It's like geocentrism. It seems obvious on its face because of our limited perspective, but nothing else in the universe makes sense if it's true. We live in a mechanistic universe and cause and effect doesn't suddenly stop when the atoms are part of a human.

I freaked out for about a week once I came to realize how much of our society is based on a scientific impossibility. Redesigning justice, ethics, healthcare, the very concept of blame, etc. to account for this is a daunting fucking prospect.