I tend to be on the side of "the reaction to this is a bit overblown," but that's just not true. Actual acing requires a number of skills that are usually developed through training. The best actors have an ability to get inside other people's heads- empathy, if you will -, they understand character and theme, they…

Imma put this here just because I'll take any excuse to post it and it always makes me laugh:

Sleeper is on my list of best all-around comics, full stop. There are others that are probably technically better, but for me personally, it's one of those very few works in any medium where I'll want to read a scene or chapter or whatever and end up blowing through the whole thing for the fifth time. I like a fair…

It's a pretty short step from cluelessly assuming oppressed minorities have it better than you to resenting and actively disliking them for it, though.

See, this is funny to me because I was on Okinawa last year, and despite going whole years without seeing one in the states, there were multiple A&W locations. Okinawa is obviously pretty historically and culturally distinct from the home islands with a comparatively heavy American presence, but in my experience,…

Definitely. There also seems to be a misconception that if you don't immediately make specific plans to acquire something after seeing an ad for it, then it failed.

Do you ever see movies? Watch TV shows? Book flights or hotels online? Have a credit card, cable, or internet access? A cell phone and cell phone plan? Do you own a computer?Listen to music on a device that can play it? Is every item in your fridge and bathroom off-brand? Do you ever buy things from Amazon or…

I taught a media studies course for a few years, and at the beginning of the unit and advertising, I would always take an informal poll asking whether or not students felt that advertising worked on them. Based on this totally unscientific measurement, somewhere between 80-90% of college freshmen believe themselves…

I'm one of those people who isn't bothered by product placement unless it's really obtrusive, but fictional brands where obvious real ones would go catch my eye immediately. It's the worst when they're used across several works because suddenly I'm out of the story and off on a tangent where my brain tries to…

I was ready to watch the show, Showtime! I'd be watching it right now if you hadn't intervened, Showtime! Literally the only possible way that showing me a teaser for it could influence my show consumption is me deciding this looks stupider than I thought and going to do something else, Showtime!

Oh, yeah, definitely. if anything, it underscores it by providing an example where the author's assertions actually reversed themselves over time.

I think that's more a case of Bradbury getting to "get off my lawn" age and not realizing or not wanting to acknowledge that his views on the matter had changed. That claim didn't pop up until 2007, over 50 years since he wrote the story, and it contradicts what he said about it immediately and as late as 15 years or…

I quite enjoy the implication that god only does his best work if you fuck with him a bit just to keep him on his toes.

My 59 year old father who hasn't purchased any new music in probably 30 years routinely sports a G-Unit t-shirt. I don't think he's trying to pass as anything so much as expressing a legitimate love of deeply discounted clothing.

It's oddly comforting/horrifying (comfofying?) to know that if you follow any electoral process far enough, something really fucking stupid happens.

You seem to be saying that it would be hard to do and lots of powerful people put very little thought into it. I agree, I guess? That was pretty much my point, that we, as a society, should do the hard, right thing over the easy, wrong one.

Yeah, this too. Really, "there aren't enough resources!" is likely a bullshit and at the very least an unprovable assertion until we see what the financial picture looks like when we're not buying automatic weapons for police to fight low-level weed dealers.

I respect a desire to examine things a the context of the real world, but I don't think this issue is particularly complex. Bounty hunters are the Blackwater of law enforcement — a cheap, less regulated alternative that is subject to fewer rules than the real thing.

I tend to agree that this is why it's allowed in practice, but when you're talking about sending armed men after alleged criminals, "we can get this guy for a steep discount if we're less picky about the background checks" doesn't fall under the "non-terrible reason" heading. The real world is not a John Wayne movie,…

Bounty hunters really are an insane thing for a modern civilized society, though. While we're in the midst of another nationwide outcry against our demonstrably racist justice system and considering the implications of the fact that police brutality complaints fall by between 50%-80% in the few locations that require…