Fizzzzle

Also, just because I apparently want to hijack every thread to talk about this (kidding, but I had a thought that was tangentially related to this topic and wanted to run with it), there's a legitimate argument that racism didn't cause slavery - slavery caused racism. It's kind of a fascinating rabbit hole to jump down. The first enslaved Africans didn't arrive in America until 1619. For a while, most labor in the south was done by indentured servants with a few enslaved people here and there, but race isn't specifically mentioned. There's a common myth that the first person to own slaves in America was a black man, which is not true, but it did happen. In the most famous case, his name was Anthony Johnson, and the reason that we know about him is because of a court case involving a "laborer" of his who was allegedly set free and then Johnson tried to take him back. The courts ruled in Johnson's favor, which is one of the earliest incidences that we can point to to say "slavery must have been an accepted thing already since the courts already had precedence." Basically, we know that enslaved people came to Virginia in 1619, but specific laws about their treatment, status, etc. weren't a thing until decades later. There's actually a lot we don't know about how Virginia and Maryland operated during the 17th century because records were lost and we've lost a bunch of context, but the first law that we know of that specifically mentions race was a law passed in Maryland 1664 that specifically equated blackness with slavery, essentially making it illegal to be a free black person in the colony. At the same time, they also made it illegal for white women to marry enslaved men (I suppose the theory was that if a white woman married a slave, there would be a case for his freedom, which could become a loophole). It's important to note that these laws were NOT widely popular at the time. The most famous example of backlash would be Bacon's Rebellion in 1676-1677. Bacon's Rebellion could be considered to be America's first labor revolt and was comprised of indentured servants, slaves, and just people who wanted to fuck shit up in general (as an aside: these still aren't good people - part of the reason the rebellion started in the first place had to do with massacring native people and taking their land). People at the time could see what these laws were trying to do and weren't happy about it. I say all that to say - part of the reason why our concept of "race" became a thing is a story of power and labor. "These are the people who perform labor, you can tell by the color of their skin," etc. It wasn't something that happened overnight; it took up to a century to develop. ... what were we talking about again?

It's kind of a weird dichotomy that to dismantle racism we have to accept that race is a social construct, but at a certain point the social construct becomes real and we have to deal with the effects of that reality. Like, there's a spectrum between "I don't see color" and "Rachel Dolezal" and we need to land somewhere at like a 6 on that spectrum.

I giggled at the joke, but it also brings up something that will make me kill the joke and I apologize for that. Who exactly counts as black in a reparations scenario? I don't ask that to be an edge lord, it's a legitimate question that has been asked since the idea was first brought up. Homer Plessy (of Plessy v Ferguson fame, whose court case legalized "separate but equal") was, by basically any definition, white. Here's him right here (allegedly, I've seen some folks claim this isn't really him) He had like 1 black great-grandparent. That was enough to consider him "black" at the time. Plessy's whole thing was kind of a protest to begin with and he straight up told a train conductor "I'm black and I'm not supposed to be here" or some shit so it's a weird case, but that's a story for a different day. Point being: Any time to make reparations would have been while formerly enslaved people were still alive. Trying to do it now doesn't make sense logistically if you think about it for longer than 5 seconds. Who counts and who doesn't and who gets how much and what if you're a rich white person who just happens to have had a black great-grandmother, etc. And like does Barack Obama count? He's black, but his mother was a white girl from Kansas and his father was from Kenya, so technically none of his ancestors were enslaved... Do we give people reparations based on black DNA? "Here, black people of America, spit into this tube, we won't use this DNA for anything nefarious, pinky promise!" I'm sure everyone will love that. The best way to get reparations for slavery is to destroy capitalism.

Every slave-owning white person should have been stripped of their land, to be honest. Formerly enslaved people were supposed to be given 40 acres and a mule, but Andrew Johnson (rest in piss) vetoed the legislation in 1866. That is honestly one of the biggest "what-ifs" if Lincoln lived.

Ass Nazis sounds like a skin head crunkcore band

Tbh I didn't know you guys broke up

I totally forgot about that! That was a fun read.

The problem is people arguing in bad faith will latch on to this anti-straw man that the American government was fighting to free black people, which is objectively not true. IE "the war wasn't about slavery - "If I could save the union by blah blah blah, etc"" As always, nuance is the death of understanding. The American government was definitely not fighting to end slavery, at least for the first couple years. The government of the Confederacy, however, abso-fucking-lutely was fighting to preserve slavery. It shows up in every fucking state secession letter, plain as a black person in a sea of cotton. I'll grant you most of the confederate foot soldiers weren't necessarily fighting to preserve slavery, but that was undeniably why the Confederacy was fighting the war. Something that doesn't get talked about enough (partly because I have no idea if it really has any basis in fact/intention, but I hope it does), is the master stroke that the Emancipation Proclamation had in turning the war against the Confederacy. See, like I said earlier, up until that point, the American military was emphatically *not* fighting to free the enslaved people. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved people *in areas that were still in active rebellion,* meaning it did not affect enslaved people in Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, or I believe, the parts of Tennessee that had been re-conquered. Not to mention it was just a wartime measure, not a binding law. What the Emancipation Proclamation DID do, however, was make the civil war about slavery. It may not have been about slavery before (from the northern perspective), but it sure as shit was now! Consequently, there was a wave of mass desertion in the Union ranks. How much of this wave of mass desertion was because of the EP or simply because it was winter and the men were just cold and sick of losing a lot, who knows, but there is one more important thing - by making the Civil War about freeing enslaved people through the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln 100% guaranteed that Britain could never, ever, ever outwardly support the Confederacy. And British support was the only hope the Confederacy ever had of winning. Sorry, I got lost on a tangent there. Also people love to throw around the fact that "only [x amount] of white southerners owned slaves." In the south in general, something like a third of all southern families owned at least one enslaved person. In deep cotton states, it was more like half. When you factor in most of the non-slave-owning white people working service jobs to support the slaver families, it becomes pretty clear that the idea of "most of the white people in Mississippi were just subsistence farmers minding their own business" is hogwash. Not to say they didn't exist (see the free state of Jones), but they were NOT a majority of people. The vast majority of white people in the south (especially the deep south, not so much in Virginia by 1860) either directly participated in or directly benefited from the institution of slavery.

I mean... let me put it this way... I have 2 friends who work for facebook that live in San Jose. Between the both of them, they make something like $250k/year. They're roommates. Granted, they have a very nice apartment and both drive nice cars, but still. The problem is, especially in the bay area, they've far passed the point where service workers can't afford to live anywhere near where they work, which has led to a dearth of service workers in places like San Francisco. They have no choice but to keep raising the minimum wage, otherwise silicon valley employees won't be able to get their cappuccinos or go out for drinks anymore, because the service workers are commuting from Stockton every day and many/most will find that it simply isn't worth it. As usual, the problem with California is HOUSING. FUCK THE NIMBYS AND BUILD IT

The MCU multiverse is so convoluted as this point that it's like who fucking really cares at this point tbh. Just start putting a "last time in the MCU" montage before everything to give me a recap/synopsis of what I need to know.

If that's not a dire warning that housing should become a right, not a commodity... RFK jr is a fucking idiot, but broken clocks and all that. As of last year, about 25% of single family homes in America are owned by investment firms. These are bodies that have every interest to keep housing as scarce as possible and can completely undermine local politics.

I was on the way to work a Christmas event tonight (a telling of a Christmas story for radio) and this baller ass bitch was rolling by on a bike with a boombox blasting "Awake" by Godsmack. And then I had a really shitty day at work and the only thing keeping me sane was the singer of Godsmack singing "I'M DOING THE BEST I EVER DIIDDDRRRRR" and it made me giggle. For me, that song is now a Christmas song. edit: sorry, the song is called "Whatever." Awake is a different one. Their songs all kind of blur together for me.

Rest in the peaciest of peace, you wonderful person

I know I watched the first season, but I don't remember much of it beyond the jail fight scene. Not sure if I'll rewatch the whole thing. Probably not. But I'll watch season 2.

Like @Spawn_of_Apathy said, just on labor al didone, they're looking at like a minimum of $80 million or so. But now you get into the nitty gritty of how companies purposefully obfuscate numbers like that for tax reasons. Were 100% of the employees working only, specifically on spiderman 2 for that entire time? Assuredly not. Did they pay for assets they already own through another company they already own therefore they just paid themselves and wrote it off as an expense? It's far more common in the movie industry than in the game industry, but they almost certainly did. Movies and games make money far more often than the people who make them like to say they do. If they didn't, no one would make them. It's all a game of obfuscating your finances in such a balanced way that you pay as little taxes a possible but can also show your shareholders that you grew. That's why accountants get paid what they do.

The trusty ol' Palmela Handerson. She never let anyone down

Okay, I'll go bad reasons first: 1) she's been dead almost 5 years 2) when when she was alive, she was the definition of "don't stick your dick in crazy* Good reasons: 1) it's not like the dead care what you do to them. I would rather by a sex doll, but you do you 2) ... Actually nevermind, there is only so much nasty shit I'll say even as a joke, and I feel like I already got there.

They surely nailed the score. I still think my biggest fear is that it will by too serious. I straight up ugly cried during the Tales of Ba Sing Se, and the moments when the show chose to hit you with the heavies was incredibly important. I'm worried it will be til overserious

Dude at some point with cancel culture I was great like... You realise how many movies were directly or indirectly produced by Harvey Weinstein? Turns out it's a metric fuckton of them. He still (presumably) gets paid for every movie produced under miramax or the Weinstein brothers while he was a partner. Every time you watch Pulp Fiction? That's money in his pockets. Same with every Kevin Smith movie, Good Will Hunting, and a bunch of other shit on top of that. Yes, JK Rowling presumably makes a bit of money every time someone buys hogwarts Legacy, and she sucks. Literally thousands of people worked on that game, and some of them deliberately tried to distance their selves from her as much as possible. If you don't want to buy the game because it JK Rowling, that's fair, but also... She won't give two fucks because she's still a billionaire, meanwhile it does actually affect the developer who has never even met her.

You're probably thinking about it wrong. You need to go MMF. You can just peace out and chill for a while (or get with the dude if that's your preference). It ends up feeling like a whole night. I've had threesomes with 2 girls where it felt awkward as fuck, but with 2 dudes and a woman? we're just tag-teaming for like an hour and a half, it's awesome.

you could be right in thinking it's a health problem. I'm active as fuck, but any objective observer would tell me I need to cut back on the booze, cigarettes, and fried food. however, I mostly think it's a psychological thing. I've had confidence issues for various reasons over the last few years, and there's probably some kind of mind fuck where I'm bouncing back and forth between not feeling good enough, feeling like I am good enough but I don't care about sex, and thinking there's something wrong with me. Also, for reference, I seemed to a hit a wall right at age 30. A big reason me and my ex broke up was because we stopped having sex, and that was on me. I was the one who didn't want to have sex anymore. She would jump my bones any chance she got. (of course then I realized she had been cheating on me for months if not years, but that wasn't a factor at the time)

You are probably right. I loved the Netflix version of One Piece, but I also have never seen the cartoon, so... I still think it could be a good time. Emphasis on good time. I feel like so many times cartoons get adapted to live-action, the "good time" part gets lost. Avatar: The Last Airbender made me cry, but the moments (or sometimes entire episodes) of levity were also important because it made the more emotional beats hit all the harder. Like in the first season when Aang finds out the the air nomads were genocided, or in the second season with Tales of Ba Sing Se, it's like getting punched.

Pee on it and THEN sell it, you'll probably find weirdos to buy it.

This dropped like a month ago but I couldn't find a thread about it (sorry if there is one), here it is It looks pretty dope. Given how good they did One Piece and the fact that the creators of the original Avatar at least were involved initially in the project (until Paramount gave them tens of millions of dollars and they coincidentally left for "creative differences"), I think it looks pretty good. The run time of the first season is actually going to be slightly longer than the first season of The Last Airbender, but it's going to be 8 episodes instead of 20, so the pacing will be massively different. I genuinely think Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest shows ever made and I don't think this adaptation is necessary at all, but I think it could be good.

..... did you smash? It's okay, you hadn't even met your wife yet