So that’s how Vance is going to try to distance himself from the sinking ship.

It literally saves the hospital money.

Magnets.

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he die 8 times, or only seven?” Well to tell the truth, in all the confusion, I kinda lost track myself. You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do you punk?

Star Trek still has latinum, it’s just not used for things like food or rent so you don’t really have to care about it and are free to pursue whatever you actually want to do.

If a vampire cop can enter with a warrant, then a vampire count would be able to enter any residence in their county, right? Pretty sure that’s not how that works.

What happens if a vampire declares a microstate that includes your house? What’s to stop any vampire from declaring themselves emperor of the world and disregarding the rule entirely?

Iirc there’s a scene in the original Dracula book where Renfield invites him in while a patient at an asylum, where he didn’t have ownership or legal authority.

Has to be “of the household” by Dracula rules.

Tbh I’m not really a fan of Tony Stark for similar reasons.

She-Hulk has gone through a lot of iterations, and in the comics sometimes serves as a foil to Iron Man, from their first meeting in the original run. While she tends to be impulsive and unrestrained, I don’t generally read her as egotistical or arrogant.

The Dan Slott comics are some of my favorite because they play with the duality of the character, switching between She-Hulk and Jennifer Walters and exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each side, while also doing a lot of fun world-building and exploring creative legal questions.

But the show, honestly it just came across to me like the main appeal is that chuds don’t like it and get owned in it. Which is cool and all, but if that’s the only thing going for it, it’s not really saying anything interesting or being fun to watch. It’s not difficult to piss of chuds or own them. I could just follow some reply guy (or reply girl?) on Twitter and get that. There’s a difference between agreeing with a piece of media and it being good.

I dropped it after three episodes.

I suppose I could consider giving it another shot in that case, if the tone changes.

You can’t tell me the comment I replied to wasn’t a negative reaction.

Yeah, actually. I don’t like egotistical characters especially when their toxic behavior is depicted as something to be celebrated. Like the message was essentially, “therapy is for weak losers.”

I found her to be a very one dimensional #girlboss, and I expect more from a show than pissing off the people I hate.

From the assumption that nets would only be installed as the result of a lawsuit and that the nets would cost the hospital money it doesn’t have, when in fact they probably save the hospital money.

What it comes down to is a matter of trust. For example, let’s say there’s a strike going on and management makes a generous offer, but it would only apply to the senior employees. If the union accepts this, then the newer employees will feel like the union is only working for the people who have been there longer, and are less likely to take risks or stick their necks out for the “common good,” because that “common good” seems to benefit some people more than others.

Now, with the workers divided, they have less power and less ability to resist whatever the company decides. In time, even the senior employees may end up worse off.

However, I do agree with you that you don’t have to do everything at once. Small victories can serve as a proof of concept, showing tangible results of organization. But there’s a difference between a small victory that’s shared or fair and a small victory that only benefits part of a coalition and serves essentially as a bribe.

In the hypothetical of “freeing half the slaves” it’s kind of impossible to answer from a purely theoretical standpoint, it depends on the specific conditions. If the level of trust and political consciousness is high enough, then the ones who benefit can be trusted to keep fighting for the others and the others won’t feel betrayed or left behind. But if it’s a fledgling coalition and opportunists are present, then it’s a recipe for the whole thing to fall apart.

Every proletarian has been through strikes and has experienced “compromises” with the hated oppressors and exploiters, when the workers have had to return to work either without having achieved anything or else agreeing to only a partial satisfaction of their demands. Every proletarian—as a result of the conditions of the mass struggle and the acute intensification of class antagonisms he lives among—sees the difference between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion)—a compromise which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise—and, on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest (strike-breakers also enter into “compromises”!), their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists.

• Some guy

It isn’t, actually.

Contrary to what people seem to assume, putting up minor obstacles to prevent suicide has been scientifically proven to be effective at reducing suicides not only at that specific location, but in the general area (meaning people don’t just find another way to do it).

Suicide is generally an irrational, often spontaneous act. Suicidal people are, in the vast majority of cases, not thinking clearly. Requiring someone to engage their brain enough to come up with another method of suicide often makes them also question whether they actually want to do it or not. Having a big open fall on the other hand, offers a quick, convenient escape that someone who is feeling overwhelmed or desperate might be tempted by, even if they wouldn’t do it if they had to actually make a plan.

Empirical evidence suggests that restricting access to certain suicide methods is highly effective at preventing suicide, prompting the construction of physical barriers in many high-risk jumping locations. However, some have argued that these measures are too costly and only lead to method or location substitution.

Results clearly show that physical barriers are highly effective at preventing suicide by jumping with little to no method or location substitution occurring. Furthermore, their cost is far outweighed by the monetary benefits of averted suicides.

A related concept, requiring guns to be kept in nested containers where you have to open multiple layers has been shown to reduce road rage incidents. Every additional barrier provides a chance for you to remember yourself. And having an easy means of suicide around the house (such as a gun) increases suicide rates. People are not computers.

If you ask me (or the scientists who have studied this), any large drop like this ought to have nets, and people on the internet can whine all they want about it.

I’ll never understand why so many people hate suicide prevention.

How much does a net even cost?

I’m not saying that Trump has embraced the divine light of Allah and is doing all this to ensure that the US has to keep giving the Islamic Republic money years and years after he’s gone.

I’m just saying, he did recently tweet “Praise be to Allah.” 🤔🤔🤔

Lol.

Presenting a crayon drawing reading “incels are bad” to the National Portrait Gallery and calling them incels when they refuse to frame it.

Traditionally, America has seen itself as standing for goodness, morality, doing the right thing, Democracy, etc… Most of the voters have, at least.

That’s extremely debatable. If anything, it’s the politicians who pretend to see it that way moreso than the voters. That’s why Trump became a thing.

Now maybe America has sometimes acted like this in the past, but Trump openly stating it is new.

Sometimes??

If you want to talk about “traditionally” and “new,” that depends on what time scale you’re talking about. Like, I suppose when the US was colonizing the Philippines it was nominally in the name of “democracy” (but of course those savages aren’t ready for democracy yet, so we’ll just manage things for a bit, while we take their resources and put in a naval base), but Trump is also nominally talking about “liberating” Iran. WWII was explicitly justified in terms of protecting the national interest, rather than humanitarianism.

In the post-WWII era, some people recognized the importance of soft power in maintaining the global empire we’d acquired, and for countering Soviet narratives, so extra effort was put into these pretences. Sure, we’d still go around invading poor countries like Vietnam, committing mass slaughter and bombing them back to the stone age, but it was in the name of “democracy.” While that was happening, the CIA was also overthrowing democratically elected leaders around the world and propping up dictators who could more easily be bribed to keep the resources flowing, and we didn’t have to worry about justifying any of that because the government could just lie about it.

The problem with all this propaganda is that it kind of worked too well. People thought that committing mass slaughter of the Vietnamese and dropping Agent Orange on them and propping up a puppet dictator was all done for their benefit. And when it failed spectacularly and got a ton of people killed, a lot of people took the lesson of “we need to stop helping anyone ever again.”

That’s why when Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, he was so insistent that “this is not a nation-building exercise.” All of the early rhetoric was quite emphatic that we were not going there to help anyone or build democracy, it was just about “finding the killers.”

Low and behold, despite what the American public wanted, it did turn into a nation-building exercise. And low and behold, just like Vietnam, people didn’t appreciate us slaughtering them and bombing weddings and stealing their resources, so it was yet another failure in the “helping people” category.

As public dissatisfaction grew and grew, as the bodies stacked higher and higher, the establishment of both parties refused to bend. Trump seized on that dissisfaction and promised an alternative and received so much popular support that the Republican establishment couldn’t stop him.

Of course, Trump was merely seizing on that dissatisfaction for his own benefit as an opportunist, and the only real difference he offers is peeling away the ridiculous pretences that other politicians have paid lip service to, while doing the same shit of starting wars everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were delighted at this development because they believed there was a large contingent of center-right people who still believed in and valued these silly pretences. They were proven wrong twice. That Vietnam-Afghanistan “nation building” “spreading democracy” bullshit has clearly become discredited in the public consciousness. This is not something that’s Trump created or that will go away once he’s gone.

“Fighting evil” what on earth are you talking about?

It’s oil. Money. It’s material resources and power. It’s always been that.

Why did the CIA go around the world deposing democratically elected leaders, including Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, who was replaced by a literal monarch? Do you think they genuinely believed the people they were overthrowing were “evil” and the dictators they installed were not? When they invaded Vietnam and funded Pol Pot, was that about “fighting evil?”

Of course not. Democratically elected leaders are more likely to respond to the public will and thereby assert control over their own country’s resources. Tin pot dictators can easily be bought off as long as you cut them in on the exploitation. US foreign policy has never been driven by any high-minded “morality.”

Right now, we are giving weapons to the Saudi royal family so they can continue murdering gays and journalists. If such things are so horrible that our “morality” drives us to forcible invade other countries that do that in the name of “liberation,” then why don’t we start by not actively supporting the Saudis? I’ll tell you why: because the Saudis keep the damn oil flowing! That’s all the US cares about and all it’s ever cared about.

Angron gets it!

He’s getting back to his roots.