Thanks for the great article. I saw the original Star Wars as a teenager in 1977 before there was even an inkling of a sequel, let alone a prequel, in any ones mind. It was a stand alone film and my point isn’t to emphasize my age but that how I viewed that original film is pretty much how any film in this franchise…

The old Expanded Universe WAS official canon, wasn’t it? It just got de-canonized when Disney bought the property, and now a few pieces of that old canon, such as Thrawn, are being brought back as the new storytellers decide if and how they fit into the new story.

This is why farming is better of done in large scale than bunch of small communes, hippie/organic fans wish it to be. It is more efficient and that makes produce cheaper. Goal of farming is to produce food, it isn;t to produce more farmers.

I would argue the 5th Dimension is very real as well.

This. The inconvenience factor of piracy quickly dwarfs compared to expense. I’m proud to pay for Netflix. I have prime video because I got prime for shipping. But I’ll be damned if I have to nickel and dime to a dozen other subscription services.

Not sure how this is new, i learned it in high school and college and have taught it to my high school history students for years. The plague hit Europe and near east in cycles...

In early history almost every “plague” was not that plague. It was an illness without know origin. The plague behind the wall was propably a mix of different illnesses that occur when a lot of people are forced to live together with animals in very little space. Also the symptoms that were descrypted to be the reason…

“Should everyone stop exploring a country if they disagree with any practice of that country?”

Your second to last paragraph is exactly why you shouldn’t go in the first place. When you sign on to one of these tours, your endangering the lives of everyone you come in contact with. In exchange you get the insanely stage managed tour of the country, and the official propaganda ministry view of the culture. And…

“The government does not reflect all people in the country”

The problem with this argument is that literally nobody thinks the people of North Korea are somehow “bad.” This isn’t some cultural misunderstanding, nobody’s sitting there going “Gee, man, I don’t know about those 5 year-old North Korean dirt farmers. They seem pretty sketchy.”

put dry ice in some green slime and a bunch of bubbles started forming out of nowhere.

Guccifer 2.0 is the same hacker that claimed responsibility for the recent widespread hack in July, although US security officials have put the blame on Russian hackers.

The hacker is most important.

For the last 18 years, I’ve worked around the military (active duty and civil service). Everyone’s Personal Identifiable Info is out there in the open. Everything is tied to your SSN and there are rosters with all of that stuff that gets passes around for one reason or another. Your spouse and children’s info are…

Did you actually look at any of the documents?

To be more clear on my point:

I’m talking about the campaign document. It’s crazy that you can say that the fact that a foreign government hacked Nancy Pelosi’s computer is a nonissue.

That document is extremely run of the mill. Again, it’s crazy that you’re defending a list of personal information being released, especially since it also has the personal email of random staff.

Yeah, Fuck me for being against releasing personal information of not only elected officials but staff members as well. Cool.