thanks for this — you’ve touched on something that generally goes unsaid in “the dialogue” about Black Lives Matter, and movements like it — it’s not really configured to support giving people defined leadership roles. nobody can speak for everybody who has a stake in the fight. and yet within that larger fight,…

Especially when they’re from fucking Australia.

It’s just not fucking true that he ever promised that and it’s beyond fucking aggravating how many people whose politics I’ve had for a two decades longer than they have continue to claim that he did, forcing me to fucking argue with them.

Absolutely agreed. And it’s really not that tough to do, given how meticulous and sensitive most of the MCU is, even if one is susceptible to curmudgeonry!

You know what? You’re right. There’s no way to rule it out. I just recall Fury’s snappening scene implying pretty heavily that this was like a last-failsafe type of move. But that’s in part based on my assumption that he’d have paged her in the course of the previous 20 flicks if it was anything less. And you’re right…

I mean, that’s kind of my point — it’s not actually possible to remove the stones and then put them back with zero divergence between the original history and the new one. We’re supposed to buy that it *is* possible. But what happens to the part of the original timeline between when the stones were grabbed and when…

If preventing the snap would create a new timeline, why wouldn’t reversing it also do that? Never mind, no need to argue about it. The timey wimey mechanics of these movies are, among thousands of precise and restrained writing choices, designed in a sloppy and indulgent way. It is what it is. Pobody’s nerfect

Mmmmmmmmm yeah no I think that is strongly implied by the whole Fury pager situation. Maybe it’s not 100% explicit, but if they wind up having her come back to Earth before Endgame it’ll be very clear that it’s a retcon and not a reveal

Yes! This is also why every single sci-fi theory of time travel is broken on arrival. Magic is the only way any of these tropes can work, so it’s pointless to try to reason about them. The best you can hope for is that any given implementation of space/time smudgery is internally consistent

That last comment is totally inappropriate. If you respect trans folks’ human rights, how an individual trans person feels about you is totally immaterial. Shame on you for that.

Distancing does explain the number of cases, and it’s really not “low”. It’s just a lower R than it would otherwise have, because of distancing, so the exponential growth rate is that much lower as well. I will point out that the shift in R is not uniform across the population. Old folks in homes have no way to reduce…

IMO a lot of that stems from the fact that ethnic differences within whiteness are kind of like breadcrumbs back to the point of whiteness’ origin — to who folks were before they got abducted by the witch of whiteness. If you’re well-bleached, ethnicity is a source of discomfort and alienation; if you’re a new member…

If I recall correctly (from oh my god .. a lot of years ago) the TNG Technical Manual talked about this sort of thing at some length. The replicator is essentially able to synthesize any type of matter out of any other type, and beam it into being in whatever form desired. It works on the same principle as the…

I do agree that there’s nothing implausible about what Trek depicts, but there are a lot of details that could stand to be explored. Remember the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual? I’d love to read a Federation treatise on political and economic theory. The characters’ preoccupation with theory and philosophy from our…

Move. But where did they move to?

You will not survive; make your time.

I strongly disagree with this reasoning. Sanders built a massive movement in 2016 that has had a huge impact on the trajectory of the Democratic Party. Nobody saw it coming, it’s never happened before in anyone’s memory, it’s not the kind of thing that just happens everytime somebody runs for President. To my mind,…

nvm

None of that is evidence, friend, of anything except that the myth of Jesus was useful to kings, queens, emperors and popes. Religion was a critical glue that they frequently forced people to accept, and they used it as a platform to impose all manner of social and legal constructions — some nice, some not. A good…

Because if we’re all unique and special, then our opinions, even about things that we know nothing about, have value.

It’s not, polls show.