The entire paragraph is is about the Prequels, I said phantom menace was about 1980s decadence and the Prequels theme suddenly shifted to post 9/11 and the transition of republics to empires.

And honestly I think it’s part of why people leave Phantom Menace off of their watch lists because thematically it doesn’t really fit thematically with the other 2 prequel movies.

For as schlocky of an adventure the OT and Prequels were, they still drew on real world inspirations. The OT pulls inspiration from WW2 and the Vietnam War as the backdrop, a small rag Tage group of guerilla style freedom fighters fighting off the highly militarized empire with weapons that can destroy entire jungles I mean planets in its path.

The Prequels, for as bad as the dialoge was (because Lucas was surrounded by Yes Men instead of people who actually knew how to cover his weaknesses), was about the decadence of the 80s and the exploitation of the labor of 3rd world countries (see the disparity between Anakin being a slave on Tatooine and Padme being a queen of/senator for Naboo), in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.

And this isn’t really some reading between the lines speculation, George Lucas has said that these real world conflicts served as inspiration for the movies. Could it be post hoc rationalization? Yeah it could be, but it’s kinda hard to make those justifications even years after the movies have been released.

The sequels just aren’t pulling from any relevant sources. It was all nostalgia bait without any substance the first order is literally just Hugo boss wearing good stepping nazis 2.0, aka The Empire Again, the New Republic narratively exists only to be blown up by The Empire 2.0, everything is “Look its just like the Original Trilogy!” and it all lacks a cohesive vision and an actual hero’s journey for someone to go through. Like everyone has great setups, a rogue stormtrooper, an ace pilot for the rebellion and a girl who survived childhood gathering scrap from dangerous derelict. And they just all get sidelined for all the nostalgia bait.

With all the people talking about how the books in this one library have been destroyed, when Israel has completely razed numerous universities, hospitals and libraries. Lives and information that has been burned from the face of the earth. This level of damage pales in comparison to the damage caused by Israel in Gaza.

If some spray paint in an American library causes you to clutch pearls but the literal bombing and razing of libraries in Gaza doesn’t get this level of response, you seriously have some inverted priorities.

That’s the way it is with every platform, you only have a comparatively small proportion of people who do a huge share of the posting.

Reddit has the advantage of being absolutely massive that the power posters is also still a huge number. I’d imagine even the biggest of entire Lemmy instances is smaller than some of the major subreddits, which personally I’m fine with. This emmy instance isn’t some major corporation beholden to growing value for shareholders at all costs, but on the other end it still doesn’t mean the admins can do everything without monetary or labor support from us.

I’m not mad they used the cloning technology that has been established and even referred to the entire conflict that was literally named after the tech back in 1976 to bring back Palpatine, but that one line is just the encapsulation of “they need people to not have common information” whenever the plot needs it and try to make it a surprise.

Allow me to quote a great political philosopher of our time: Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.

There are quite a few people embedded in our political machinery, in congress, in the supreme court and held the presidency, that are actively working on overthrowing the government and replacing it a fascist state. The police who showed up and supported the jan 6 insurrection are doing exactly what that contingent of fascists want, they did not falter, they did exactly what their superiors wanted.

My point is is that the cops, who you quote replied their role as protest/riot suppression for the government, were on the side of the rioters and insurrectionists on Jan 6.

Suspended with pay. But I was implying the cops didn’t “falter.” Enough of them were in favor of it and some were actually there as part of the insurrection.

Who said Jan 6 was faltering?

It’s not that it’s hard to learn, it’s that we don’t have a strong intuition. It’s not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn’t be able to pick up an object and say, “that weighs about a pound” or look at an object and say “that’s about 3 feet long” but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.

We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.

Yeah that’s been the joke since the Witness was first revealed in With Queen just over 2 years ago.

Because our perception of ninja is based around kabuki theater and not historical accuracy. Kabuki theater stage hands were always dressed in black to blend into the background. When an ninja assassination would happen in a show, the “stage hand” would do the assassination because the audience knows to kinda ignore the stage hands during the production.

IRL ninja would just look like normal people, waiting for the right opportunity to strike at someone.

I see it as they’re like master painters, just because you can see their brush strokes on the canvas, doesn’t mean it wasn’t masterfully done.

The CIA wants people to know what they’ve done but without giving away what they’re doing now and that’s what the CIA is really good at. It’s why things like Trump taking the classified documents with him to Mar a Lago was such a huge deal, because they contained secrets that are still in use today and has led to a number of our own agents getting captured or killed.

The anti woke “historical accuracy” crowd is getting pissy that an african samurai is represented in a game set in feudal Japan, ignoring the existence of Yasuke who served Oda Nobunaga, who is a pretty big deal in Japanese history.

And Ubisoft is going to do Ubisoft things and tell a historically inspired but ultimately fictional story about secret organizations running secret proxy wars trying to gain control advanced magical technology from an ancient prehumanity civilization, and how magical genetic bloodlines let you access the memories of your ancestors.

Nobody’s hating him, we’re pointing out his arguments are untrue and pushing harmful rhetoric. People who hate him would be calling for his banning, not trying to argue against his rhetoric.

Citation needed.

At least the president in Idocracy had the humility and self awareness let the smartest guy in the room advise him on policy.

but we already have more than enough people and no realistic places left to expand.

…in the current economic model. Currently we have enough built housing and grow enough food globally and produce enough consumer goods that ever single person can be fed, clothed and shelter. But the wealthiest few would rather crops rot in fields, hoard houses to extract rent and burn unsold clothing instead of slightly lowering ther profit margins.

Yeaaah CW Flash was really inconsistent with its power curves and growth.