Lots of other countries have worse problems with gun violence (not counting wars and insurgencies). There are idiosyncratic elements to it, but it's not like any country has exactly duplicatable overall criminal patterns.

Hear, hear.

I can certainly get behind the, "You probably shouldn't suppress your innate wisdom through other cultural or scientific processes (except for the many cases where you really need to do so)" but I really think prayer is FAR from the right thing to blame in this case.

Suicide by cop is what gets me. Particularly in the rural-ish areas where I used to do social work. A lot of those officers would have histories trying desperately to save people from themselves and then one day the depression pulls a good hand and all the good will in the world loses in the worst way possible.

This thread is moments and one synod away from becoming the most delectable debate on trinitarian theology in a thousand years!

You cannot possibly be pretending that the "common" usage of trope isn't a direct attempt to steal legitimacy from academic speech. Unless you have a vehicle for its dissemination outside of TV tropes the utter dependence of the term on an academic cachet is entirely obvious.

That is delicious, "Bitching, An Issue of Privilege" a decent punk-song or an episode of It's Always Sunny? Discuss.

That is in no way a bad way if you can get it.

So let me get this straight, you're consuming a giant prosciutto ham just off of your kitchen table? Well, you're either Italian (and a weird one at that) or some sort of magical genie who lives out my dreams rather than granting them (starting with the bit where you're living in Italy and I'm in a place that is…

To be fair: the male gaze as Mulvy originally articulated it for cinema is NOT about catering to straight men, it is about CONSTRUCTING a gaze for straight men. It's Hollywood making a market and not Hollywood finding one.

Good lord, Sonia had a good list there.

It really should have been Jedi investigating the Sith/themselves foreground with political stuff background.

Celebrity Homonym is a thing I want so badly I dream of it almost as vividly as I do of Timedesk: The Adventures of Dean Dangerous.

Sure, but he's not a film reviewer, he's a member of the audience. And surely you aren't saying that reviewers lack agency in choosing to introduce terms?

It's like a pink hand gun, women don't buy it - but boyfriends buy it for girlfriends.

But resistance to such changes and insistence on jargon function are ALSO perfectly legitimate linguistic dynamics.

I think the iconoclast tradition in America makes a difference too, but the musical traditions alone put a lie to any claim of American protestant artlessness.

I agree completely with your sentiments here, Idiotking, as per usual.

Galantis sounds to me like a Leslie Knope Joint and/or Production.

I would be completely and totally down for a well made Breaking Bad pop-up book. That would… get some good indie graphic novel types on that, maybe make it unboxable so that it can only 'be read' once before it requires remixing.