People pick on Batman because he’s a billionaire, but most superheros are pro-cop, pro-establishment, and pro-government. They don’t use their abilities for societal change, choosing instead to solve all problems by punching.

Show me a hero arc where the goal is anything but a return to the status quo.

Milton’s Paradise Lost doesn’t paint Hell as pleasant, but Satan is absolutely the protagonist of the story. That’s 1667.

There was reporting in the Washington Post that contradicts this.

Senior Israeli officials said they voiced support for the cease-fire proposal, but Nasrallah withheld his consent, insisting on a cease-fire for Gaza first, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/05/israel-mossad-hezbollah-pagers-nasrallah/

Obviously this frat-boy shit is dumb, but if you had to figure out if someone was a real American or a spy, this would be an excellent way to do it.

Like if someone said “I eat musli” or “I like grape nuts” you could go ahead and shoot the spy.

You’re gonna have to explain how a public defender has the power to jail anyone. Prosecutors coerce people to take deals thousands of times every day. Not only is that legal, and normal, the system would collapse without it.

There are two kinds of people, the kind who’ll read this and think, “This is science working”, and others who’ll think “Well, you can’t trust science”.

Visiting the UK is like going into the future. That’s because I’m American and we’ll be a washed up hegemon soon.

P.S. I can’t help but notice that you lost your empire around the same time you got healthcare. Is there a way to learn this power?

Parody is hard when the truth is more absurd. Kim’s granddad had his favorite actors kidnapped and brought to N.Korea to make movies for him.

There was a time when feeling suspicious about your victim was a defense called “gay panic” and several murderers got off that way.

You know, it’s perfectly OK to group voters by identity, so long as that identity cannot exclude “Normal” people. Soccer Mom, Six pack Dad, Middle class, working poor, labor, Small Business owner, Rural, Urban, and Suburban are all perfectly fine to promise these groups political power. But you do the exact same thing for queer people or black people and that’s identity politics all of a sudden.

Except… for the combat. By the end of the game, they need 50 bad guys to even pose a challenge to our Max Paine protagonist. But not in the cut scene, of course. By mid-game, you’ve killed more cowboys than cholera.

There is a beautiful quick-draw mechanic that’s only necessary in 2 (optional) side quests.

There is nothing more American than being in traffic. You’re never more in touch with a systemic failure, yet we blame it on the choices of individual drivers, all the while unaware that we’re part of the problem.

Your overestimating the lethality of radiation. The “Demon Core” guy lasted 9 days. The firefighters from Chernobyl lasted a month. The only criticality events that I can find with immediate fatalities also involve steam explosions.

For those who know, steam is scarier than radiation or fire.

I’m pretty sure most consumers of porn are just interested in watching people fuck. The wraparound story isn’t that important. And it certainly isn’t data for some amateur Psych study.

I mean pizza delivery guys used to be a popular “story”, But I don’t think people were secretly trying to recover from their Oedipus trauma with the help of the Noid.

This is America. You need corporate sponsors, rich benefactors, or wealthy parents to get to the Olympics. Athletic talent is essential, but not sufficient.

100 years between giving people like this Medals of Honor and Pardons. Progress, American style.

bart.jpg: What a weird thing to say.

Good thing unwitting Americans are so unreliable.

Market indicators are horoscopes for capitalists. An economist is just a historian with a blue orb.

Seeing these cops illustrated in power stances makes me glad I never got into comic books.

When you think about it, superheroes are really just cops. I mean they love violence and are always vigilant to protect the status quo.