I would just think you’re trying to be funny. If you keep a deadpan face, you might succeed.

For years, I had my own headcanon for the Labyrinth movie. In the scene, the young Sarah correctly solves the riddle, passes through the correct door, says “This is a piece of cake!” and then she immediately falls down a pit of doom. This confused me, because she got the answer right. So I reasoned that the guards were both liars, and because they both participated in explaining the rules, they were lying about the rules.

It was only a few years ago that I read in an interview that the Labyrinth (or Jareth) dropped her down the hole because she said it was a piece of cake. It was her arrogance that set her back, not that she got the riddle wrong.

But now it still bothers me that the liar, whichever one he is, helps explain the rules of the scenario. If he always lies, then she can’t trust that either of them ever tells the truth. The rules have to be described separately, like on a sign or by a disinterested third party. Or you could phrase it differently, like “One of us will answer your question truthfully, and one of us will answer your question dishonestly.” That way you avoid saying that they always lie, and specify that the lie will only be in response to the one question.

Fuck, I’ve had too much coffee. How the fuck did I get up on this soapbox? Why are you still reading? Go do something productive.

deleted by creator

There have been several high-profile systemic failures in the past few years that give us a glimpse into the hypothetical you’re describing. Most interruptions have lasted mere hours, if not minutes, before causing mass panic and devastating economic catastrophes. Planes are grounded, banks stop operations, global trade shuts down, and hospitals can’t access patient records.

The question isn’t how long before it would be a huge problem. That starts immediately. The better question is, how long before people adapt to a world without the internet? How long would it take to build an alternative?

I know, it’s a bummer.

Probably not since she put herself out there as a political advocate for the patriarchy and fascism.

They should make it canon. Fitz’s stable time loop theory of time travel explains the end of Endgame better than the director of the movie explained it in interviews after it came out. Cap was always Carter’s husband, and they always grew old together. He didn’t need to travel between different realities to return the shield, because he was there the whole time.

For sure, there have been events that affected all Americans in various ways, good and bad, but the context of the conversation is events that would encourage a general labor strike. The moon landing, world wars, the Great Depression, the Macarena, big things happen. I probably could have been clearer by saying that nothing in history has unified the American working class as a singular political group to use our power as a labor force to exert pressure to stop oligarchical abuses by means of a general strike, but that seems overly pedantic.

It’s never happened before because the working class has never been unified nationwide before. Soybean farmers in Utah are not connected to teachers in Boston or steelworkers in Pittsburgh or auto manufacturers in Michigan or nurses in San Diego. There’s never been a singular cause that affected all of those groups of people at the same time.

If it ever could happen, it would be because the President was a colossal dipshit who fucked every aspect of the economy across the country, except that would almost certainly cause the legislature to put an end to such rampant and corrupt tyranny.

Right?

It’s not rocket surgery.

Stand up with the sheet.

Place your hands inside two adjacent corners so the elastic is at your wrists.

Bring your hands together, folding the sheet in half, and flip one corner over the other hand so that one is tucked in the other.

With your free hand, reach down and gather the other two ends which are not tucked.

Let go of the tucked corners, which will slip apart again.

Curse the gods, and then roll the crumpled mess between your arms until it’s small enough to stuff into a closet or drawer.

Profit.

Fake outrage was funnier when we didn’t have real problems to argue about.

Right? Like, maybe the precursors to cancer reduce libido?

Yeah, but like a four foot turkey with sharp teeth and talons. I’m not sure I win that fight.

Like, I’m pretty sure I could beat up a 10 year old kid. That’s about the size (if not the strength) of a velociraptor. But if that kid is all coked up, has kitchen knives in each hand and a football helmet with razors on the face mask, I’m not nearly as confident. Then if there’s a second one waiting to attack from the flank, then fuck that.

And those are just the ones we know about. Thousands of people have been abducted without due process. We don’t have an accurate record of everyone ICE has assaulted or kidnapped.

They also refused to release the remains of the people killed, denying they retained any. Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania admitted to retaining some of the remains of 12 year old Delisha Africa and returned them to her family, in 2021.

Like, imagine a baker hired to bake bread. That baker claims he makes the best bread, using a traditional Grimm’s recipe where he grinds up human bones to make bread. And you think that’s a terrible idea, because there’s no source of human bones that would be not horrifying. But everyone wants him to be the baker, so he starts murdering people to grind their bones to make his bread. And you’re horrified because of all the murder and mutilation, but also the bread is terrible. You can’t bake bread from ground up bonemeal. It’s bad bread. But all the people who wanted him to bake are eating it, insisting through gritted teeth “Mmm, sooo good… You’re just a hater. Are you triggered yet? Yum, delicious.” And you want to scream because none of this is normal or moral or even human, but also it’s just poorly done. The bread is all weird and clumpy, and it’s been burnt on the crust and underbaked in the middle. There’s either too much or not enough salt, and none of it is consistent at all. It’s just the absolute worst bread ever made because the baker is incompetent and evil. And he’s transparently stealing money from the register. But because they love the baker, and they know it bothers you, all the people who voted for him are pretending this isn’t a nightmare collapse of society. They keep eating the bread, dying from the lack of nutrition or basic hygiene, and sometimes their loved ones will be murdered to become the bones that make the bread, and suddenly it’s all terribly unfair but they’d still vote for the guy again.

Telescopes would be fun. Everyone doesn’t need their own, if you can sign it out on a clear night and return it in good shape.

I oppose it simply because it doesn’t work. It is not a deterrent, and it does not serve justice to put people to death, and it costs far more to execute someone than it does to rehabilitate them (the most expensive alternative - I’m not suggesting rehabilitation is an option for everyone).

And sometimes we execute innocent people. Like, how many of your family members would you be willing to put to death to keep the death penalty? Every innocent victim of the death penalty had a family, and that family never imagined it could happen to them.

I would argue that it would impact the effectiveness of the effort, but the intention is just as important.

Like if you want to make the world a better place, you can pick up litter in your local area. You could volunteer at the library or conserve energy in whatever way is easiest for you. The desire to move forward is critical, because nobody has all the information. Nobody can know all the angles, and be aware of every impact. Everyone is just doing the best they can with the information they have.

Wanting to be better informed is also a progressive ideal. Know better, do better. We might discover that something we thought was beneficial is actually harmful. The difference between a conservative choice and a progressive choice is that when new information demonstrates that behaviors conflicts with values, the progressive changes their behaviors while a conservative changes their values.

I fully believe that this is an attempt to proactively delegitimize any attempts to prosecute former Trump officials for their actual crimes. You can just hear the dipshit chorus of “You protested when we prosecuted Comey and James, and now you’re trying to do the exact same thing to us!”