Even older than that

There’s only one type of tank found beneath houses and that’s a septic tank.

My entry point into Star Wars was KotOR so I’ve always been pretty critical of the average Star Wars media. I really enjoyed Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian S1&2, and Clone Wars S7. Star Wars can deliver sometimes.

With a budget of $180M I was hopeful that Acolyte could be great, and it hasn’t delivered yet.

My 2yo niece visited last week and wouldn’t stop singing this.

Why does Communism require “true equality amongst its citizens?” What does that even mean, in practical terms?

Do you imagine a communist system that has social classes?

How would a group of people take advantage of this to form a “practical dictatorship?”

Castro, Zedong, Putin

Capitalism does not deploy the most efficient means of product delivery, but the most profitable…

You’re arguing Communism on a philosophical level against capitalism on a practical level.

What of Marx have you read? Or any leftist theorist?

As I said, I’m not well read and unprepared for the higher level argument you are seeking here.

I can make some suggestions for reading material if you wish.

I appreciate your desire to educate, but I’m too busy being exploited by the current system to dive further into social philosophy. When you guys are ready to rise up I’ll be there, but I won’t be a part of the debate on which system we should implement going forward.

The recurring issue with Communism in practice is that it requires true equality amongst its citizens and there’s always some asshole or group of assholes who want power and dominion over others, so it seems to repeatedly fall into a practical dictatorship.

Capitalism at its best requires businesses to find and deploy the most effective and efficient means of product delivery in order to compete with each other, which means that the consumer will always have the best product at the best price allowed by the market. The problem is that greedy assholes either conglomerate competing companies into monopolies, or otherwise collude with one another to maximize their profit margins.

I’m not well read in Marxism so I’m probably not qualified to answer this, but the recurring issue with Communism seems to be the same as capitalism, in that it requires people to not be assholes in order to properly function.

But this is 200 years before the fall. We’re supposed to see how the Jedi lost their way. This is just a bunch of incompetent assholes with authority. The witches call them kidnappers and they barely deny it while nearly embodying it. Where’s the honor? Where’s the mysticism? Why must we continually suffer this bag of dicks while being told ‘this is what they were always supposed to be.’

Well, according to China, those waters are their territory, which means that the presence of foreign military vessels is an invasion.

Practically speaking, I think you could call that area a contested region, so minor skirmishes like this are expected and could escalate to war (like Crimea eventually did).

I think that the Philippines approach has been something like, ‘You can claim those waters if you want, but you can’t possibly keep us from entering them, so we’re just going to ignore you until you start killing our people, and then we’re gonna call in big brother America.’

They did the Jedi so dirty. The council members are petty, the masters can’t defend themselves against a sith apprentice, and the knights are constantly taking Ls on screen. The only one who seems mostly competent so far is the padawan Jecki.

Maybe it’s someone who just happened to be hanging around

I’m more interested in seeing him kill a couple of the unnamed Jedi. Hopefully they handle it better then the first fight scene.

After the first 3 episodes felt like a 00’s Disney teen sitcom I considered giving up on this show, but this week felt more coherent to me. The forests of Khofar is the best locale so far, the conversational writing has improved and so the acting feels more natural (mostly). I’m still not thrilled that the Jedi Order is being portrayed as mostly antagonistic, and I’m a bit concerned that the best episode so far is one in which very little happens, but the last scene actually has me excited for next week. Here’s hoping that the second half overshadows the rocky start.

India is one of the last places I’d like to visit. This is based on how India has been portrayed in various travel shows over the years (Amazing Race, Top Gear). It looks crowded, dirty, and the locals often aren’t very friendly, especially towards women.

One of your main exports to the west is scam calls. It’s a huge PR problem and your government refuses to address it. Your other main export right now is Russian oil.

Indians used to have a fairly large online presence in English-speaking spaces with mixed results. There were a lot of helpful tech bros on YouTube, but also a lot of horny dudes on Facebook. I don’t really see much of either of those anymore though.

My wife works in software testing and has regular interactions with Indians. Some are really nice, but others are really not. Misogyny is far too common and when Indians are rude they are boldly rude.

It may be a bit early to make this call, but I’m ready to retcon this entire show out of canon. It makes too many bold new assertions about the Star Wars IP without grasping the basics of the lore. It then compounds these missteps with lackluster choreography, cheesy writing, a horribly misguided plot, and several lapses in logic that not even Dave Filoni could explain away if you gave him a 7 season animated series. And it’s only been 3 episodes.

Lee Jung-jae’s back must really hurt after carrying this entire show alone. I wouldn’t blame him if he never worked with western media ever again.

I’m a plate DPS main and I married a healer. There is a lot of pressure to ‘just tank’ for her.

I didn’t realize he wasn’t trying to sell his game, so I guess we need a different analogy.

Ok, imagine you and your brother are making a website where friends can post about their lives and keep up with each other during and after college. You’re pretty open with your project and then one day the one weird guy in your friend group launches your project without consulting you. The project takes off and makes billions of dollars. You sue the weirdo and he gives you some money, but you’re still pissed about it. Did you get Zucked?

Ok, so imagine that you’re hungry and you come across a sandwich shop that has your favorite sandwich for $15, but the shop next door has the exact same sandwich for free. Which sandwich are you gonna eat?

No, wait, that’s not important. Most people are gonna eat the free sandwich, so even if you eat the $15 sandwich, you’re statistically irrelevant.

Yeah, maybe some people that weren’t hungry are gonna get a free sandwich, but the people who were hungry are also getting free sandwiches, which means that the guy trying to make a living selling $15 sandwiches is gonna have to close shop unless he starts lacing his sandwiches with cocaine.

Ryan Fortnine made this point by climbing inside the engine compartment of a Dodge Ram.

They didn’t modify the truck and dude is over 6’ tall.

I went through a period of severe depression following some life-changing events. These changes caused me to suddenly become isolated from my family so my wife was really all I had. I lost my job and struggled to find another one in the industry which only made things worse and made it so that we didn’t really have money for therapy. It was a rough few years, but we made it through.

The best thing you can do for him right now is to be there for him and remain his ally. Try to make him smile when you can and give him hope for a brighter future. If you want to do something more pro-active then you could try to keep his space clean or cook healthy meals for him as these things will help with his mental hygiene, but it’s mostly up to him to make the necessary effort to get better.

Make sure you take care of yourself, too. Practice good mental hygiene so that you can stay positive and motivated to make it through this. You got this.

Compelling villains are written with a deeper motivation for their actions than just ‘hurt people’ or ‘be evil’ and they have a tendency to challenge the status quo in some way. Such villains become sympathetic because the current status quo is oppressive.

It must be very difficult to write a villain for a contemporary piece of media because they can very quickly become a hero of the people.