There’d be motherfuckers on TikTok snorting lines of asbestos

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Trump never dropped tariffs on China, did he?

Yeah in a global environment essentially China is the workforce/factory workers of the previous gilded age.

Maybe 15-20 years ago, but not so much anymore. Cost of labor has been rising in China dramatically to the point that a lot of manufacturing is leaving China.

when my own joy brought others joy. That was the only thing that was worth it.

If that’s something you truly value, then you should absolutely have kids. There is no joy greater than that which a child feels, especially one with a loving family.

I also don’t think experiencing life is inconsequential. Sure, it doesn’t have some grand cosmic consequence. Our existence has virtually 0 impact on nearly all of reality. But that’s not the only way to define something as consequential. What’s important to me is my life and the lives of those I care about (which extends far beyond just the people I know personally). My kids’ existence has been enormously consequential for many people who I care about, and my life has been enormously consequential on that of my kids.

I don’t need some grand cosmic meaning behind that. The meaning of life is whatever you choose to make of it. For me, that’s providing as much enjoyment and fulfillment to my family as I can.

I whole heartedly disagree.

The entire season was laid out the same way they do comic book runs. There was a series of shorter story arcs which each bled one into the next and all fed into a single overarching arc that lasted through the whole season.

The 1st episode was a bridge between the Netflix series and Reborn while setting up the overall season arc.

Episodes 2-3 were the trial of White Tiger while establishing both Muse and the context for the ATVF.

Episode 4 was a bridge between the White Tiger arc and the Muse arc while furthering the ATVF story.

Episode 5 was a bottle episode, but did a LOT of world-building and is probably the single most comic booky episode of television Marvel has ever produced.

Episodes 6-7 was the Muse arc which also fully established the ATVF.

Episodes 8-9 was the culmination of the season-long arc and bringing Bullseye back into the story.

Even the season ending on a new paradigm (Fisk’s martial law and beginning the full-on war between Daredevil and Fisk) is such a comic book move.

I know they came in and had to rework the original plan for the series, but I think they did an excellent job. The only thing I’d have changed is to have more Karen and Frank.

That’s a sign to me that this is a fairly full continuation of the prior Daredevil series

We didn’t need to wait for the finale to get that. It was clear from the opening of episode 1.

Excellent, Excellent season. I really have no serious complaints about anything beyond that I wanted more Frank.

I can’t wait for the Punisher Special Presentation next year. I’m hoping it’s a direct continuation from the credit scene here. A whole show of Frank hunting down and killing fascist cops would be chef’s kiss.

Of course not. Everyone suffers in their life at some point. That’s called being alive.

I think that’s also an absurd hurdle to insist someone has to clear.

The fascists have no qualms with having kids and raising them to be little fascists, too. I had kids because I wanted to love and care for people as I help them develop into capable and caring people, but I’m also glad that at least 2 of the members of the generation who will be running this planet when I’m old won’t have been raised by fascists.

I think this whole line of reasoning that it’s immoral or cruel to have children at all is just plain dumb and utterly nonsensical. Yes, there’s a lot of fucked up shit in the world. But, other than climate change, this is far from the worst the world has ever been. Brining people into the world now is not particularly worse for them than, say, having kids in Medieval Europe where there was a decent chance they’d die as an infant or get the plague, but the best case you could hope for was to give them the life of a subsistence dirt farmer. Or ancient Mesopotamia, where, again, odds are they’d die in childhood, but they couldn’t expect better than barely surviving on the edge of starvation. Etc, etc, etc.

Yet through all that people managed to find ways to improve their conditions and that of those around them. People fought and built better lives and a better world. Fuck anyone who tells me I should just give up and just resign that the world now and forever belongs to the fascists and capitalists.

Having kids is not cruel. Despite the darkness, there’s still a hell of a lot of happiness to be had in this world. I look at the expressions of pure joy on my kids’ faces as they explore the forest near our house, or when I get home from work, or when they make cookies for their mom, etc. And you’re telling me giving them that joy is cruel? How detached from reality do you have to be to believe that?

I, too, would very much like to know. Not so much to get a new Reddit account, but if Reddit is able to track me across devices, IP addresses, browsers, etc, then who knows who else is tracking us across all that.

I did. I was pretty active on NoStupidQuestions there. I called another user a fascist sanewasher because he was claiming Musk’s Nazi Salute at the inauguration was perfectly normal and something every politician does all the time. Within 15 minutes of me posting my comment I got a 7 day ban from the sub. Less than a day later I got perma-banned from Reddit completely. I hadn’t even commented or posted anything between getting the 7 day ban and the perm-ban.

I also had an alt account which I hadn’t used in a few years. I logged into that and found it was also permbanned, referencing my other account.

A couple of weeks later I got a new laptop (unrelated). I downloaded a new browser I’d never used on any device before (Brave), turned on my VPN and created a new Reddit account using a burner email address. Within a day, before I even posted or commented anything, the new account got permabanned and they referenced my other account. I don’t know how they knew it was me. It was a device that had never logged into my old accounts, in a browser that advertises itself as secure and that I had never used before, on a VPN so they weren’t matching my IP address. I’m clearly permanently banned, though.

This is a big part of how it’s become so pervasive lately, although the racists have been complaining about the same thing for a very long time. The internet and influencer culture has allowed them to monetize the outrage in ways that weren’t possible before.

You’re not crazy, and it’s not new. The current buzz word is “DEI”, but they’ve been doing the same thing since before any of us were alive. Before DEI it was Woke. Before that it was Critical Race Theory (CRT). Before that it was Social Justice Warriors (SJW). Before that it was Politically Correct (PC). Before that they used terms which are less polite.

That’s sort of the whole premise of The Wire, especially the 1st, 4th, and 5th seasons. The mass surveillance side is mostly shown through the cops’ perspective, and the show is now 20+ years old, but it shows an extremely realistic portrayal of how cops use surveillance to build cases against criminal organizations and career criminals.

It’s set in the early days of mass adoption of cell phones, so there are some pretty dated moments. The entire 1st season centers around monitoring a drug enterprise that uses pay phones to communicate. There’s a moment in a later season where the cops have to have text messaging and sending pictures over cell phones explained. They go into a lot of detail about what a burner phone is. It’s kind of funny in retrospect, but it was all very timely when the show originally aired.

The title “The Wire” is a reference to wire taps, ie the police getting warrants to allow them to listen to phone calls.

When were those days, exactly? I’ve studies a hell of a lot of history, and I can really only point to two moments:

1. The American Civil War, but we were both the good guys and the bad guys there, so doesn’t really count.

2. WW2. We fought against fascism. We were squarely on the side of the good guys.

I’ve never been alive when America was the good guys, and neither has the vast majority of anyone else.

There’s really only failing, then learning, then death

My kids have me listening to way too much Disney music lately…

In a magical hypothetical world where we could make this happen without it being absurdly cruel to the animals, I’d love to see it.

That’s not a species of animal. That’s the living embodiment of a fundamental force of nature. No mortal, man nor beast, can defeat one.

Cannabis

I think a grizzly bear or a polar bear would take it. Any other bear it’s going to the gorilla.