It would be indeed incredibly stupid for Xi to try to invade Taiwan. There’s the economic cost and there’s a real possibility that he could wind up in the same situation Trump and Putin are currently in. Lots of those pesky drones creating a stalemate situation.

But authoritarians are being really stupid lately, so we can’t discount the possibility of Xi being as stupid as Trump and Putin.

Same tactics of harassment and intimidation are being used by both the far left and far right. Y’all want to be tough guys and have everyone else fear you. Because you don’t have any actual ideas, the internet has successfully directed your dissatisfaction into hatred of convenient scapegoats.

The only major difference between the far right and far left is they disagree on scapegoats. And if the JD Vance / Tucker Carlson / Candace Owens faction of the far right get their way, both the far right and far left will agree on the scapegoat.

Sure, you buy from different merch stores and have different slogans, but you’re all disconnected from reality, “doing your own research” on the internet, denying science and facts when it conflicts with your political narrative, and you all spend more time attacking liberals than discussing any policies you want. It’s the same hateful politics, and it’s very likely a lot of “leftists” will be voting Republican if that party goes down the antisemitism path.

Same. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am…

Nowadays the real rebels are centrists. Everyone else is just repeating talking points they’ve consumed from algorithms that only give them part of the story. My conversations with leftists and MAGAs are basically the same conversations, they’re the same kind of people.

And France is blocking importing solar energy from Spain. Also France has to do some shenanigans in Africa to secure their uranium supply.

Sure nuclear is far better than fossil fuels in terms of global warming, but it has similar geopolitical problems to the oil industry. It makes sense to go to solar and wind, but there’s a nuclear industry that’s doing the same kinds of things the oil industry does to block it.

The biggest nuclear reactor disaster in history was at a government run nuclear power plant. So you probably shouldn’t trust the government with nuclear either.

Yeah and airplane pilots have to do a whole lot of training before they’re trusted with flying.

And yeah, 100% agree on better public transit and more WFH. We’ve developed technology to do this but somehow people insist that we should all sit in moving metal cages surrounded by six lanes of other people in their metal cages every day so we can have a Teams meeting with the person sitting next to us in the office.

Yeah same thing that happens because of weather conditions. Not an emergency.

The biggest problem with flying cars is, well, have you seen how people drive?

It’s stressful enough just crossing the street. But at least you know when you’re doing it, look both ways, look around for idiot drivers. If there were flying cars you’d always be in danger everywhere.

Landing yes, it’s kinda silly to try to implement arresting cables for landing anyway. Takeoff though? If the system is broken, well then takeoff is delayed, but that wouldn’t be an emergency. Planes can’t take off all the time because of weather conditions.

You think he’s not in the authoritarian club? Xi is helping Trump on oil prices, it could be in exchange for a green light on invading Taiwan, which will be a bloodbath. Though I’m sure Taiwanese drones would give China problems similar to the problems the US and Russia are having. It would be incredibly stupid for Xi to do that, but like all authoritarians, he surrounds himself with yes men so may be stupid enough to get himself into the same trap Putin and Trump are in.

Francoist Spain lasted nearly 40 years in isolation. The isolation strategy does work eventually, but it does take decades. The point is mostly to keep other countries safe from the dictators of these countries, since change has to happen from within. Sure the economic problems can create an incentive for the people of a country to change the government, but ultimately the people of a country need to want it for themselves.

And with North Korea, Iran, and Cuba, it’s not like they were completely isolated. These countries have gotten support from China, the Soviet Union / Russia, and Venezuela. Authoritarian assholes of the world sticking together I guess.

I really really cant wait until he has to somehow acknowledge he lost.

He won’t. He’s a narcissist and won’t ever admit failure. And the psychos that run Iran are similarly inclined so they need to brag about how they won so there won’t be any way for Trump to save face.

So the US and Iran are locked into a forever war.

Trade Federation droids that are easily defeatable by a ragtag group of nobodies.

I thought they were defeated by a religious cult working for the government?

I’m the opposite. I consider ads from a more sociological perspective. I’m interested to know what appeals to other demographics.

But since I do watch sports I get a lot of gambling ads. I think gambling is just a tax on people that don’t understand math, and the gambling industry are the biggest scumbags around. So those ads are wasted on me. But I’d rather they show them to me than someone that might be influenced by them. And damn are they insanely manipulative, they try really hard to normalize gambling addiction. Bored at a wedding? Take out your phone and do some gambling! Heard your microwave beep? Good time to do some gambling!

It’s also a waste of productivity. If there isn’t high unemployment, then why is the standard of living decreasing? It’s because too many people are doing jobs that don’t provide any benefit to anyone. Think of all the work involved with gathering data, analyzing the data, all so you can see a targeted ad. That’s a lot of work that doesn’t actually benefit anyone.

That’s technically true, but that Gargoyles animated show was awesome and they didn’t spit water. So under the precedent set by Bugs Bunny on the word “nimrod” the definition of gargoyle needs to be changed.

Why are people who drive motorcycles are called “bikers”? Somebody screwed that up.

I remember first hearing it in a tractor advertisement where they showed putting the tractors under a lot of testing and said “we try to break it on purpose so you don’t break it on accident.”

In that sense I can understand doing that as a turn of a phrase. But then I started hearing “on accident” in a lot of places when not part of some word play. I’ve always wondered if it was something people said before that advertisement or that people started using it because of that ad.

The right wing criticism is always dumb shit about Rey being too strong.

The reality is that in TLJ, Rey was relegated to a support role. She doesn’t actually do anything except become attracted to an abusive asshole (who tried to mind rape her previously) because he looks good with his shirt off. This is what happens when you have Rian Johnson writing women. You know, the guy that did the most egregious fridging of a woman of all time in Looper? That guy made a Star Wars movie and it was the most misogynistic movie in all of Star Wars.

It was advertised as being “about strong women” so everyone pretends that’s what it is. If people actually took the movie for what it is instead of what it was advertised to be the political criticism would go the opposite way.

Yeah I feel like I saw a different movie than everyone else with that one. I think everyone got on their respective hills willing to die based on the marketing, and no one was willing to change their opinions.

TLJ was actually the most misogynistic of all of the Star Wars movies. It was boring and unoriginal. It fails at everything related to action and adventure. Everything that happened in it was just stuff from ESB and RoTJ thrown into a blender with the point of those plotlines removed. It didn’t change anything about Star Wars, it just removed a bunch of things set up in the previous movie and added nothing to replaced it.

I was having problems with that movie, but after Snoke gets murdered, Rey and Ben have one of the best lightsaber fights in Star Wars history

Yeah after the big bad is killed, they fight some unnamed guards. That’s kinda the problem with TLJ in a nutshell, by trying to do everything backwards it removes the point of everything. Normally in an action movie they might fight some guards before facing the big bad to build up some tension. But in TLJ it’s just stuff that looks cool but there’s no point to it. There’s no tension when the main characters are fighting unnamed dudes. Who even were those guys?

Rian Johnson doesn’t understand action movies. Sure he made Looper, but that was basically the same plot as Terminator 2, except gangsters instead of robots, and had way less action. He just didn’t know how to make an action movie, but they gave him free reign on the middle movie of a trilogy.