TITUS: Ever since I was a child, I was always fascinated by Major Tony Nelson's failed space flight: his capsule crash-landing on a desert island, knocking over a genie bottle, releasing Barbara Eden... Thank you, NASA. (happily) She was his slave!

Gene Wilder died on August 19, 2016 (according to Wikipedia) - not recent.

I agree with that, I was just specifically responding to the Hulk bit.

I mean, I kind of think the basic metaphor of the Hulk is that Bruce Banner starts out as a villainous nerd, right?  Like Peter David said, he was mad at the world and his response was to build a giant bomb.

You’re making an assumption here that bros haven’t experienced abuse and trauma, and another assumption that bros are typically bigoted bullies. I think the first assumption is a very badly flawed and potentially hurtful one. All kinds of people can be abused, and I feel like bros in particular tend to come from…

Oh, I agree that it will get you looked at weird, because it’s an outdated term that nobody really uses anymore.  But you’re not going to get hit for using it unless you’re doing something else that’s actually offensive (like a white person making nasty references to “colored people time” or something like that).

I really liked this bit from Sasheer Zamata:

“Most people don’t understand that when you watch a stand-up set, you’re not watching a finished product unless you’re watching them tape their special. It’s a weird art form where in order to get better we have to work out our material in front of an audience, and sometimes…

Where is the word being used? If both parties are the US, that’s a lot more of an issue than if both parties were in South Africa. The location of the use informs the contextual question about whether it’s offensive or not. For pop music, people are listening everywhere around the world (including the UK), so I think…

Hank Scorpio cared about his workers and was attentive to their health and safety. He’s less of a supervillain than Musk, really.

This all makes sense to me in policy terms. My point is just that the law (except in a few states like California with more employee-friendly laws) doesn’t require that kind of treatment. On a meta level, it probably does make sense for the company to have a policy of strict content-neutrality in order to avoid…

The article I quoted actually discusses that link and the responses of people who study the issue to its argument. Basically, their response is that those underreported crimes come from people who haven’t been caught (which seems intuitively true), and that once people get caught, they’re much less likely to reoffend…

Okay, that was a law I wasn’t familiar with and you are correct that it bars employers from making content regulations on stuff like political buttons.  I still think that most states don’t have laws like that, but as far as California and other similarly situated states, I concede the point.

Where you are wrong is that once someone is hired they are granted many more protections against unfair treatment as compared to their coworkers. Specifically you cannot discipline or fire an employee for expressing themselves in the same manner as you are allowing other employees to express themselves. Labor laws are…

My understanding of California law (assume that’s what you’re talking about) is that it only protects off-duty political speech from regulation - on-duty speech still is subject to whatever rules the employer wants (absent NLRA-protected discussion of working conditions, or speech which constitutes some kind of…

I always think this article provides a helpful roadmap for “how should we handle sexual predators in society” whenever that comes up. Basically the idea is that a person who does something wrong needs to face some kind of punishment for it, use that as an opportunity to fix whatever problems caused the bad behavior in…

What do you mean by “so damn high,” though? People like to quote an extremely unsupported number (80%) as an argument for harsh laws on the topic, but other studies have put the number at 5-15%. Which is still definitely “too high” in an absolute sense, but I don’t think it’s high enough to justify “no second chances…

Cheeses rode around on a dinosaur!

This isn’t true. Only government entities are required to avoid discriminating based on political views. Private employers are totally free to do so. Burgerville can allow “Abolish ICE” buttons and ban “I hate Mexicans” buttons, just like it could allow “I love Burgerville” buttons and ban “McDonald’s rules” buttons.

It…

This was an interesting interview about the latter problem:

http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/how-facebook-is-killing-comedy.html

I’m sorry you chose “digial media” as an income source, but that job sucks, and it has nothing to do with Facebook.