Makeitstop

Which is just about enough to pay for Trump's birthday parade.

Reality is steadily moving past The Onion and into The Twilight Zone.

Chiana and Scorpius on Farscape were both intended to be guest characters, each for a single episode, Both instantly became main characters, with the latter replacing the main villain for the series. And then he did it again when they retconned Harvey into existence.

Babylon 5 has a few really good ones,* including a very early role for Bryan Cranston. But Wayne Alexander as the inquisitor is particularly notable. There's layers to the character and the performance really rises to meet the challenge. He perfectly balances a character that is cold, heartless and monstrous while having a surprising amount of humanity. In his performance you can see the idealist and the cynic, the zealot and the apathetic, cruel but without malice, a man who is totally devoted to his his mission who would like nothing more than to fail. His last line is understated and it should seem like an afterthought but it's only because of the performance and the writing that it can work so well because we're so invested in this character, and suddenly all the pieces fall into place.

* Walter Koenig as Bester needs to be mentioned but I believe he was always meant to be a recurring character.

Just wait, before you know it Russia will be our biggest trading partner, with their chief export being all the shit we were buying from China but now with a cut lining Putin’s pocket.

As disgusting as it is, he's a lot more likely to make progress with some narrowly constructed flattery than with overt criticism no matter how well deserved.

Trump is a narcissistic manbaby who would do damn near anything just to satisfy his own ego. It makes him particularly vulnerable to manipulation, and at the same time it makes it virtually impossible for him to take criticism without throwing a tantrum and doubling down on whatever shitty thing he's doing.

Don't worry, we're cutting education and removing child labor laws for that very reason.

I miss the little mob money laundering pizza place that I went to as a kid. Absolutely amazing pizza. Never the same after the feds shut down the drug trafficking ring behind it all and deported the owner.

On the flip side, there's a local pizza place where I currently live that's fucking terrible. Some of the worst pizza I've ever had. It made me wonder how they could stay in business. Then I found out that name of the business happened to also be the name of the local mafia family.

Clearly this someone who has never had to deal with an aggressive rooster.

Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one... he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he's being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm's way.

In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won't, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).

MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn't. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.

And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that's willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.

Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?

Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he's done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.

Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.

Iron Man 3: Wouldn't you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.

Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.

Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.

Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.

Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.

Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.

Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.

Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.

The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.

Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.

Alright, I'm not listing any more, there's a million of these things, you get the idea.

Kasper will remain an adviser at the Pentagon in a special government employee role, limited to working no more than 130 days a year.

And also consequences are for show, he's not really fired.

It makes sense. The damage Trump does to the the economy will be felt by everyone, and even right wing media struggles to defend the tariffs.

In contrast, immigration as a political issue has always been about hype and narratives more than reality. The anti-immigration argument is mostly fighting an imaginary problem. As such, the effectiveness of the policies are irrelevant, they need only to claim that things are getting better and their supporters will believe them.

I would be much more interested in knowing what people think about the specifics of Trump's immigration policies. How many people support deporting us citizens, suppressing free speech, violating due process, etc. I would bet that those numbers would look very different.

Getting closer to what I want, which is a reasonably sized and priced EV truck built for actual utility. I'm ok with it leaving out all the extras that I don't need, and hopefully that means it isn't also going to be tracking people and harvesting their data.

My biggest objection to the truck itself is that it's still trying to look like an ICE truck. There's no engine in front, you could easily slide the cab forward a bit to make room for a larger bed. I would much rather have a tiny frunk and an 8 foot bed, even if it means making the whole thing slightly longer. It's shorter than a corrolla, so it's not like they couldn't add a little length to the design if necessary.

Bezos being involved is also a massive turn off, but than I'm not sure who is going to go into mass manufacturing EVs without some rich asshole funding it.