I've had some professional interactions with one person who works for the org, and she came across in a very negative way. I don't want to use pejoratives, and perhaps it's understandable that people who spend so much time on this issue become emotionally invested in it to an unhealthy level, but people so emotionally charged are not well-positioned to craft balanced, rights-respecting digital policy.

That being said, C-22 goes way beyond what would be halfway reasonable to solve the main issues in a fair and rights-respecting way, and I have absolutely no sympathy for the reasoning and goals imported from the UK's Online Safety Act.

Both (i) and (ii) have led the government to this dark place, thinking they're doing good.

From what I gather, it's an attempt to address the problem of observer metamerism, but I'm curious to know how closely it's tethered to D65.

Without giving away any spoilers to the books, the parasites are only that on the surface. If anything, the books present a wary picture of religion, especially the last two Endymion books, but also a wary picture of technology.

It's a bit like nose blindness; you don't appreciate the subtle way that your house smells until you've been away from it for a while. Books have a similar "smell" in the sense that it becomes easier to see what aspects are tethered to a particular era and what aspects are more universal when some time has passed. Even "fun" works like Snow Crash have aspects of this; there are parts of the book that stand out as pretty timeless and others that feel early 90s-west coast ways of viewing the world and people. When I read it for the first time years ago, none of that really stood out.

Same thing applies to film though. Ignoring pacing, My Dinner with Andre is IMHO way more fascinating to watch today than it was 45 years ago, because what's wheat and what's chaff is clearer in retrospect.

In the Halloween Special, the kids don't do the same for Linus, apart from Lucy who pulls him out of the cold and tucks him into bed.

The dynamic between Lucy and Charlie is a lot deeper than her cynical kicking the ball trick. Schultz uses their interactions (the psychiatry booth, him keeping her on the baseball team even though she's consistently terrible) to reinforce an overall theme that optimism is better than pessimism. Occasionally he directly peels back the layers behind Lucy's crabbiness like when Charlie's in the hospital.

Part of the reason the Halloween Special never gained the same cultural relevance/popularity is probably because it doesn't have the same progression. The other kids are mean to Linus and he persists despite it all, but ultimately it ends with no resolution to the mocking.