No, it's really true. They even have the biggest ones, which you'd think would pull them into corruption. Your point is further enhanced now that lil Khama has taken over. (May he prove the Augustus in this ongoing analogy.)

I think you missed that I'm equating them because that's what Vibranium is in essence. And it being part of the character design by white dudes in the 60s that thought the superhero idiom worked great for all comers doesn't mean it does.

I hate to be a massive downer, because I'm really stoked for this to rule. But I struggle with the 'African kingdom' element of the BP mythos. The character was created in the 60s, when hopes for newly emerging, self-governing African nations driven by 'benevolent' kings and autocrats were high. It didn't work out.…

It makes me black out with rage. I'm the guy that took unholy piles of shit for lamenting that the execrable Milo Yiannoupolis went down on a dodgy charge; I'm really committed to not overreacting to seeming horrors out of total context. But I just can't see any ambiguity here. Or his films. Not seeing those—and I…

I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about what age of consent means—what it implies about our value system, what child psychology it's drawing on, shit like that. I think probably we're guilty of over-criminalising a number of iffy sex practices in the name of 'protecting the innocent.' Certainly sex…

Not that the only 'with the people' look for an African leader would be standing in a dusty, unpaved shantytown with a shoeless throng carrying fruit on their heads, but placing him alone on a throne he picked up in the Furniture section of Craigslist Asgard evokes a history of African autocrats that Marvel would, in…

I didn't take that to be the thrust. I mean, I agree with what you said.

Ghost Chili/therock2008 2020!

The Shyamalan reality show where he shows up uninvited and tells your family THE SPOOKIEST STORY EVER.

Dude! Me TOO! That is so WEIRD! We should hang.

Those are two cheap shows about nothing. This is a gutsy show about a lot of somethings. It's grueling, but you know, so is slavery, rape, religious fundamentalist oppression, cultural revolution, and endemic misogyny. And I feel this show has some real-ass things to say about them all, as opposed to just making us…

I…I only took my eyes off him for a minute. I'm confident he was right there.

…what?

Yeah. In a season of outrages, ideas and critical responses to same, this is the thing to zero in on: whether the casually, perhaps cavalierly deployed 'always' in this context releases us from identifying with the legacy of culpability, compromise and grossness that Shoemaker is getting at. Because a slightly…

Five lines to say 'I disagree' with no counterargument.

I just don't know. This show is pulling off an incredibly difficult high-wire act already. How many more versions of what these women suffer, with how many more actresses, are there for it to attempt before it becomes miserablism or survival porn? I'd hope the answer would be 'as many as there are kinds of fucked-up…

I lost almost all ability to handle that shit when we had kids, too. If watching one hour of The Missing would definitely result in ten thousand missing children returned to safety I'm still not sure I could swing it.

Oooooh. The hair, too.

'Intense,' 'full-on with the willful mission,' 'going for some heights'—I don't just mean 'powerful politicians with swords.'

I think Keanu would be a pretty hype Spike—twenty years ago. The guy is no Olivier but I don't like how it's become presumed-safe Internet etiquette to be so catty about him. Once again, Barsanti annoys me.