multiverses can work as isolated alternates or one-shots, they are a terrible idea to introduce to a franchise because they come to dominate the franchise

They sap every plot of meaning because no choice matters

I would not be surprised if there was a contract rider.

But Ant-Man 3 really just crapped the bed with the character and it was best to move on.

We knew from implication which Chinese COVID vaccine actually worked (their first J/J equivalent) because they gave it to their troops.

surely no army in military history has ever been laid low by disease, a famously uncommon problem among people living in enforced close quarters

Reading Lyz’s profile and then looking back at Tucker’s trajectory, it’s easy to just see him as a full on opportunist. He started working for the Neocon Weekly Standard when neoconservatism was cool. He became a libertarian when the Iraq War went sideways. Then he became a right wing nationalist

35% with over two years to go and no plan to change course

Dems: We're confident that more Dems are going to vote but we can't figure out a way to ensure partisan polarization in this non-candidate ballot measure.
Trump:

Everyone complaining about "austerity" w regard to the US is in this specific insanely stupid bucket.

maybe a little anecdotal, but i've seen this a few times

heck, there's several . . . uh, robust debates happening in my mentions right now that are uk lefties vs us libs about us politics, & it's really clear that the brits are operating on a labour = dems model

As America has gotten richer, most public good services have lagged under the strain of more people being able to afford them. This is why air travel sucks. Traffic sucks, etc. It's part of the same seemingly costless decline. I do think there is some unspoken psychic harm to all of this.

i haven't noticed this one way or another personally but is this accurate, that the spammers left ~when Molly did?

Moore's scandal is one way. The GOP being dumb enough to hit SNAP when they're now dependent on a lot of those white voters is another.

Because of the nature of racial polarization in the deep south, you need something abnormal to happen to get voters there to shift. GA got an influx of economic activity which brought in transplants. Rest of it...not so much. (NC bathroom bills were designed to push transplants away.)

They hit SNAP. They do not understand their new coalition.

Were I a Dem super PAC, I would be very quietly putting 5ish million behind targeted persuasion and deep mobilization canvassing.

The better framework for the whole thing is doping. The UFC had TRT "exemptions" that eventually had to be outright canned cause athletes are gonna abuse every leeway you give them with this stuff. (see: Lance Armstrong, etc.)

I don’t think this game of “The serious candidate gives a suboptimal answer and gets hammered for it, but the clown candidate gets a free pass for being a clown” is a sustainable way to do politics.

Biden's admin vetoing the budget airline merger was so bad

A lot of working class people also hate the pmc for various reasons and that's part of the appeal of Trump/the right to people who won't materially benefit from them.

Maybe the most depressing conclusion I’ve come around to in the past decade (and there are many) is that trying to teach & promote widespread “critical thinking” has been a complete and catastrophic failure. Most of the population is not capable of it, and it is socially disastrous when they try.

Rural whites when Democrats try to help them in literally anyway

It's all cope from people who want to claim they were tricked and weren't just stupid idiots

It's silly and wrong to act like Trump was gonna be committed to pacifist foreign policy before the Israelis blackmailed him. And, yes, it is in fact anti-Semitic. For one thing, there's evidently a section of the American military establishment who have been gagging for war with Iran for decades.

Good thing the catastrophe he's called down upon that segment of the population is going to give them ample reason to despair of politics entirely, fuck off, and go back to never voting.

He's the president of the United States. He can order for someone to be killed by a drone. He chose to start a war six weeks ago.

Being anti-middle management is one of the dumbest positions that smart people take. I'm in an organisation that slashed middle managers and nothing gets done because execs are swamped with paperwork and there's no resilience when someone senior resigns

Arbitrage opportunity

i was just saying to a friend a few days ago that trump's public opinion collapse opens up the field of possibilities in ways that are truly unpredictable. it is one thing for a president to be this popular at the *end* of their turn, but not even two years in?