I could swear that Disney had learned a lesson about flooding the market with MCU content - and they’ve cut back substantially to focus on quality over quantity. But given this, I guess it was Marvel Studios that took the lesson, and Lucas Film decided to take the opposite approach. 😶🌫️
I certainly agree with you here - all of the fascists of history were HIGHLY effective leaders that actually got shit done. The people lived with it because they did what they said they would do. Instead, this disfunctional band of morons can’t seem to get a single thing done without a cavalcade of unforced errors and fuck ups.
Oops, we deported the wrong guy. Oops, we fired the folks managing our nuclear arsenal. Oops, we fired ATC during a preexisting ATC shortage. Oops, we sent a letter to Harvard earlier than we meant to, and forced our own hand. Oops, tariffs tanked the world economy, they’re paused! No wait, they’re back on now! Paused again! Well, we’ll make an exception for semiconductors though. Except we never said that? No exception! And now oops, someone caught us exfiltrating all government secrets and data to Russia.
This is the source of my own hope. They’re so incompetent and so stupid, execute every plan so poorly… that I find it hard to believe that the American people can ignore it for much longer. Even his racist, Nazi base can’t ignore him ruining their lives too.
I love your optimism here, but it’s naive to believe that after everything that the president has done to date that is blatantly illegal and he has no authority to do that he will not somehow coopt the National Guard under some bullshit 200 year old law that was never meant to give him this power. Or fuck laws - he has shown his entire career a complete disregard for them and thinks he is completely unbound by the law - and he just does it anyways. Republicans in congress have proven over the last 3 months that they’ll happily cede the power their constituents entrusted them with to their dictator. What makes you think he won’t make the governors bend to his will? Republican first, then by force for the rest.
I think the one thing you’re missing is the American lies. The dehumanization of the opposition. The propaganda. I don’t think that the whole country will fall for it like they did with Bush, and it’s not like we have a MORE charismatic leader to sell it this time. But AI generated content and bots selling the lies are unfortunately going to convince a lot of people, we’re already seeing it. With a leader that is trying to litigate what higher institutions teach and destroying the public education system, the longer that this wears on, the dumber and dumber the electorate becomes. Military leaders not kissing the leader’s ring are already being removed from their posts to be replaced with sycophants.
I hope you’re right that there would be rebellion from within the military, and without. Otherwise, we have no friends left and every country on the planet has is justified in rising to the challenge to crush our new axis powers.
At my last job, I started shortly after the union had negotiated a one-time payout of $500 for every associate, at the cost of the $2000+ bonuses department heads received yearly. The savings for the company were immense of course, because the recurring cost of paying bonuses was gone. And the masses were happy to vote for a free (as far as they were concerned) $500 payment. I still find myself wondering how many yay votes ended up as department heads down the line and realized how utterly stupid that was. But most won’t have done, and simply got free money.
I’m not sure that tactic could possibly work here - there would have to be a contingent of people who actually wanted that in the first place - and as far as I can tell, no Greenlander even wants to touch the US with a 1,300 mile pole.
Damn, I wish I lived under the rock you apparently do.
I disagree, but to each their own. You do have a potential option here:
Oops, filing FOIA requests to an empty department. They all go here now. 🗑️
I certainly haven’t read the Art of the Deal - can someone point me to the chapter where he explains the strategy of spreading misinformation about your counterparty, aggressively pressuring them to do something not in their best interest, and anger an entire continent of world leaders? Because it sure is sounding like he’ll get NOTHING and Europe will protect their own. The Felon is just racking up the wins.
100%! And, 6 generations in the tech is pretty well advanced now. I don’t mind being an early adopter, but with folding phones being so fragile and early ones having hideous and unusable cover screens for instance, I was fine waiting it out the issues until it was a bit more mature. They’re still getting continuously better, it’s a great time for anyone into the idea of a foldable.
That’s fine man, but you don’t have to tell us about it.
Agreed, from the Fold6. If you’re looking at it off axis, it’s QUITE noticeable, but during normal use when I’m looking at it head-on I don’t notice it visually. If I’m using it in landscape, I can feel it while scrolling - it’s the sort of thing that you expect to bother you, but it’s just not a big deal once you’re used to it.
It’s certainly true that they’re profitting off of the cheaper labor. I imagine their factory in Germany only has so much capacity and is tooled for manufacture of specific models. The original strategy with the resources they had lead them to break down their global manufacturing strategy in this way; but that’s not to say they CANNOT do it differently, it just made fiscal sense due to probably a thousand different factors.
So I imagine that yes, they COULD move operations to the EU. But it’s probably cheaper to fight legal battles and continue to operate this way for years while they’re resolved in the courts.
Pediatric patient among 6 on plane that crashed in Northeast Philadelphia: ‘It was just horrific’
So… A child? What the fuck is this headline?
The headline was weird to me at first, but it WAS an air ambulance… I guess it makes more sense than I gave it credit for.
It wasn’t your “car” ignorance that was the issue, it was your “failed to read the article before commenting” ignorance that was in question.
citing the burdon of managing numerous pending cases.
It’s so easy to not have numerous pending cases against you in the first place. I want nothing more than for this dipshit to be stuck in court defending every one of his illegal actions taken the last 55 years. Couldn’t happen to a better person.
I wouldn’t attribute to malice (on the part of China) what can be attributed to stupidity (Boeing taking short term gains at the cost of their entire brand). Capitalism ruins everything eventually.
I want to see how this looks without the log scale on the y axis.
The problem is unfettered capitalism. Our leaders are far more concerned about enriching themselves than acting on behalf of their constituents, so we’ve got this really jaded electorate.
And then as a dominant super power in the world, we’ve been targeted with enormous misinformation campaigns, both from our own “news sources” (Fox News is NOT real news, it’s lies and half truths and proliferation of hatred!) and fake internet trolls. All of that on top of decades of political corruption, decades of businesses lobbying in their own best interest and spreading lies to support their position (“tobacco is safe and very cool!” “guns don’t kill people”, “weed is the root of all evil!”, “pEoPlE ARe tERMinatInG 9 mOnTh oLd feTUseS anD bORn bABiEs!”).
Conservatives have always been the temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and once they get theirs, fuck everyone else. Generations bought homes at affordable prices, then pulled the ladder up behind them and fuck all future generations. “Pull yourself up by your boot straps!” is sort of bullshit you get from them, but they didn’t do that at all and they’ve broken the whole system in their favor.
Now conservatives are trying to break our educational system by banning books, banning subject discussion like evolution or slavery, foregoing sex education in favor of the provably bad “abstinence education”. A country founded on “separation of church and state” is pushing harder and harder to make a “Christian nation” that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. They want a stupid electorate making tons of babies who also grow up stupid and vote for them. The majority of Americans are liberal and have genuine sympathy and compassion for others, so before they wake up and actually get involved, the conservatives have to breed up a bunch of idiots they can convince real easily to vote their way.
All that to say… I don’t think it’s going to get any better anytime soon. Get me the fuck out of this place.
An expensive, scattershot-style experiment I guess. It’s certainly… a choice. But you’re right I’m sure.
I’m glad to see Mandalorian getting a film for sure. And in the course of this discussion, I have discovered Skeleton Crew and if it’s a Mando spinoff, I’ll certainly have to watch that now.