I’m guessing you have not been alive long enough to remember that newspapers, especially tabloids, have always been demeaning of women. To be honest I think headline is timid sounding compared to twenty years ago, when tabloids were more popular and running sensationalist headlines, and the picture of the person being always the most unflattering. I don’t really see that kind of reporting nowadays, but it is now on social media where sensationalist shaming happens.

In the American sensibilities, the Democrats are left wing.

I know we’ve shat on Americans too many times that Democrats are not leftists and Republicans are far-right, but there is a place and time for doing so and I learned to cut Americans some slack. Americans simply have different Overton window because of different history and culture (I have explained before as to why, but I cannot be bothered to write another wall of text about it). Other countries don’t even follow a left and right political dichotomy. Many places, especially in developing countries, vote on personalities than policies. But few of us crap on people from developing countries for not following policy-based discourse, or not following the European-originated sensibilities of “left or right” politics.

The novel “The Handmaiden’s Tale” is literally inspired from real life based from the author’s observation of unfolding events in the 20th century, particularly the rise of Iranian theocracy and Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and how they treat women. The author fears something could happen in the United States. And her fear is inching closer to happening in the United States.

Many mosques in Xinjiang are reportedly damaged or destroyed though. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67483202.amp

I watched “The Man in the High Castle”, and the Christian imagery and symbolism in a former Christian Church were replaced with Nazi symbolism. I thought it was a bit farfetched, but now hearing something similar being done by China as part of totalitarianism, it is rather spooky. I’ve heard religious buildings being destroyed, but converting places of worship and blatantly removing its past to align with state ideology is far more surreal and haunting, and I am an agnostic atheist.

It’s not allegory when both religions claim to know objectively how the earth was made and yet contradict each other. Either one of them has to be true.

Which is it then, is there only one or multiple gods? Was the earth conceived from dreams according to Australian Aboriginals, or did a deity created it by his/her own hands according to many other religions? Where is the single truth in this?

Shittiest take on this community by far.

It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.

Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.

Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.

To be honest, I totally forgot about Epic until articles are popping recently that it’s not going well even after all these years.

Also, what’s wrong about discussing this? Epic is a good example of a business venture not doing well for failing to do one of the most basic business philosophy: set yourself apart from the competitors.

I’m far from being a business savvy person, but honestly, from business perspective what exactly is Epic offering that sets them apart from other competitors? Even if Epic fixed their launcher issues, how would they be different to Steam that is already well established for 20 years? That’s why I like GOG as Steam’s competitor. GOG focuses on selling DRM-free and retro games. If a game also happens to be available in GOG, I would prefer to buy it from there than Steam. Moreover, GOG keep old games well maintained and updated to run in modern computers; something that Steam is very poor at doing. What does Epic even do differently, apart from doing exclusives which any companies could do?

ITT: Tankies being apologists for an equally corrupt regime who obviously rigged an election.

I also rolled my eyes when I saw the headline. US don’t really have much of credibility on this one. But tankie wankers think the election result is perfectly okay simply because “suck it 'Murica”.

An Afghan Hazara refugee who fled persecution from the Taliban and migrated to regional Victoria with her five children in 2013, Jan’s lawyers have said she suffers enduring “grief” over the death of her daughter but continues to maintain her innocence.

Escaped a fundamentalist, authoritarian regime only then to implement her own personal authoritarian, fundamentalist beliefs.

Not to excuse the mother, but I wonder if trauma played a role. She was traumatised by a toxic situation and perhaps to gain a sense of control, she repeated it to others. There is a book called “The Body Keeps a Score”. The author is a psychologist, inspired from when he was a child when his father, a Holocaust survivor, told him to not question him and just obey. To which the author replied that he sounded like the Nazis who imprisoned him. Again, I’m not trying to excuse, but I’m curious if the Afghan mother has had something similar experience and acting on trauma.

Different culture. Canada is far more liberal than the United States.

But with the ongoing migration crisis and continuing stupidity of Trudeau administration, I’m afraid that the momentum gained for the Canadian right to eventually become mainstream.

It’s apparent there’s a crisis brewing in Law Enforcement and Officers are not getting trained properly.

Apparent? Other countries train police for three years, not six weeks. You won’t hear disproportionate abuse of authority and power in other developed countries, but in developing ones where corruption and hierarchical structure is systemic.

In other countries, malls are still alive and well. In Philippines, that is where people literally chill in a hot tropical climate because of 24/7 air conditioning!

Malls are also seen as a sign of progress and modernity for many developing countries, so there is some cultural expectations to building and maintaining malls.

AC: Black Flag is such a gem after the hot mess that is Assassin’s Creed 3.

The person you replied to said “subsidized”, which implies what you just explained. The US military provides support to movies and TVs. However, it would be naive to think that the military still doesn’t try to influence the production. It’s been a long time since I have listened to it but there was a podcast mentioning “Zero Dark Thirty” having influence from the CIA; and the movie is about justifying torture to get results for “the greater good”. This is in spite of the report commissioned during the Obama era that torture never yielded any significant results.

Ironic isn’t? The victims of fascism are now the fascists.

I always use Mozilla Firefox

sips hot chocolate

So that isn’t my concern.

You mean to tell me that industries sacrifice long term consequences for short term profit?!

shockes Pikachu face