I had graduated college before I ever met somebody who called soda “pop”. I remember before that somebody telling me that some people called it “pop,” and I was sure they were wrong. My mistake was thinking that just because I hadn’t experienced something, that meant that it didn’t happen.
I think mid-twenties was probably too old for me to have made such an elementary mistake.
Speaking of MAGA, I recently heard a history professor say that, regarding fascism, your society is in trouble when you feel the need to assure yourself that you’re not going to be targeted because you’re in a “safe” group.
This reminds me of the theory that Popeye was allergic to spinach, which is why it caused his body to swell up so quickly.
It really depends on the movie, but I think most movies that people see as “universally loved” are children’s movies, and the people who love them the most are those who watched them when they were kids. Sometimes, they’re not very good if you see them outside of their intended demographic.
On top of that, everybody has their own tastes. I know a person who doesn’t like Shawshank Redemption because she feels uncomfortable with enclosed spaces. And I’m personally not fond of movies with people who act like gangsters, so I’ve never felt particularly affectionate towards Godfather movies.
A character acting out of character may not technically be a plot hole, but for the consumer of the media, it is tantamount to the same thing. The character’s previous characterization is equivalent to “the existing rules of the story”.
Not to say that characters cannot change, but you can tell when a character suddenly does something out of character simply because the author decided that some event has to happen for the plot to work, and it makes the plot seem impossible.
I promised myself that I’d try my best not to argue with people on Lemmy over completely trivial things, but sometimes it can be a challenge.
Our timeline is even stupider than the Biff timeline.
“Entire Trump team hated Elon Musk”…
If you’ll recall, after Trump’s first term, it was revealed that the entire Trump team hated Donald Trump.
Basically, any marginally competent person will hate working with people like Trump or Musk who make drastic changes without any reason or even any idea of what they’re doing.
AOC told a story about how a pro Israel person offered her a huge campaign donation, which she declined. One of the reasons she could easily decline it was that she already had enough money. By that time, her seat wasn’t in that much danger.
I’m not saying that AOC would have taken the money if she had a smaller campaign fund. There’s no way to know that.
But you can be sure that if we did proper campaign finance reform, and stopped every instance where a single source of money can create undue influence, then a lot more politicians would be able to afford to be honest.
Our current system nearly guarantees that honest politicians will be forced out by corrupt politicians who can easily accept huge donations.
“The more people I kill, the fewer who will be alive to resent me.”
I don’t think Donald Trump is capable of speaking like that.
There have also been a few “this you?” sort of messages responding to people outraged at 8647 who had previously posted 8646.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did this primarily to make the news.
Serial killers often have this desire to be remembered. The same desire that Trump has.
Trump and serial killers have a hell of a lot in common, right down to their pathologies.
Probably the most significant difference between Trump and your garden variety serial killer is that Trump is responsible for countless more deaths.
Well, that, and when you hear their neighbors talk about serial killers, they always say, “I never would have believed it was him.” But if you opened a closet at Trump’s home, and found it stacked with dead bodies, you’d say, “I always suspected he had a closet like this.”
The logical end to that sentence would be something like, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me, and in fact, in retrospect, it seems like it was a mistake for President Trump to appoint me as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services in the first place.”
Of course, RFK Jr. didn’t say that, though. And people shouldn’t be taking advice that relies on logical thought from him, either.
This is how you get past the problem of Senate confirmation hearings when the person you want to appoint is so horrible that the process could expose things like how they’re less of a Nazi sympathizer and more of an actual Nazi.
Similarly, Trump’s team has repeatedly denied that Elon Musk was the head of DOGE in order to reduce the amount of congressional oversight that he receives.
If all of these Republicans, including members of congress like Rand Paul, are complaining, where are their actual teeth?
If they have even the tiniest bit of integrity left, they should be saying, “If he accepts this plane, which would be a huge crime, I will personally do everything in my power to ensure that he is impeached and removed from office.”
The problem is that he doesn’t have the authority to do this via executive order. So if he does create this illegal order, it will almost surely be struck down by the courts, just like the previous one was.
But in doing so, he can claim credit for trying, despite never doing anything.
It’s easy to assume that Witkoff is, to quote the article, “a bumbling fucking idiot,” but it’s not outside of the realms of possibility that this is a deliberate act of a Russian asset.
If you assume that Witkoff is a Russian asset, then he’d want fewer intelligent Americans in the room when he speaks with Russians. It would be silly to think that he’d be getting orders or giving a report in a meeting with Putin, as there would be other less high profile opportunities, but assuming he’s heavily compromised, there’s a good chance he’d give something away to his American team. Fewer people means a smaller chance of being exposed.
I’m not saying that it’s off the table that he’s “a bumbling fucking idiot.” Just pointing out that there are other possibilities. Witkoff is described as a real estate tycoon and a cryptocurrency trader, so there would have been plenty of chances for him to be targeted by Russia in the past, similar to how they targeted Trump long ago.
Bad headline, WaPo. “Judges say” is pointless. There’s simply no other explanation. Somebody is saying, “I know where you live.”
Every wealthy donor who doesn’t want the government packed full of fascists should be pushing their representatives for significant and meaningful campaign finance reform.
It’s too bad that they’d be giving up some of their influence, but at this point, everyone should be able to see that it’s becoming a matter of physical safety.