His “not a monster” phase was a play for a new revenue stream as a never-Trump conservative who pals around with Samantha Bee, but it turns out the audience for that is under-served because they don’t exist. Chalkboard anti-Semitic conspiracy rants on Fox News was his main pre-TheBlaze revenue stream, so this is more…

Making the data anonymous is arguably worse, if you’re a data collector working on behalf of a client, you can make the spreadsheets say whatever the hell they tell you they want to see

20% tip was standard when I got my first job as a busboy in the early 2000s, it has not decreased. You’re also confusing the cost of the meal with the cost written on the menu. That is the restaurant’s money. The money you leave for a tip isn’t a favor to the server, it’s their wage.

No, you have 95% of the cost of your night out but that last 5% comes out of the server’s take-home instead of the business’ so you don’t face any legal repercussions. I’m not telling you you can or can’t do anything, I’m saying not paying that final 5% makes you a selfish person who is abusing the system because they…

You’re being far too kind too the writer (who’s also pretty representative of the Trump-era The Atlantic) here

If Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower was known to the characters, logically Jimi Hendrix lived prior to the events of the series and as of the finale he would presumably eventually live once again to record the same song in “our” world since we the audience know the song. If “all this has happened before…

Correct. You have a problem (you don’t have enough money) and you are passing that problem onto another person (the server, who now has less money than they would if they had served someone who could afford to tip the full amount) because you can. Just because you’re able to justify doing it doesn’t change what you’re…

Is that a server’s fault? Being poor doesn’t give you the right to step on other people 

Inflation is a thing, but 20% has been standard for the entire 21st century (and it’s likely to increase since wages aren’t). But more importantly, why would the fact that you, arguably, made peace with a negative experience (there’s a lot of resentment to go around in what you wrote) lead you to deny a better one to…

Bane from that movie delivers a bunch of populist speeches to get angry men on his side so he can topple power structures to enact some other rich person’s nebulous agenda, when he really doesn’t give two shits about his followers and by the end it’s really unclear what he’s getting out of it besides wanting to be a…

He more or less just repeats random conservative internet comments back to the people who are writing them while occasionally acting out some of their power fantasies like the wall, travel bans, or trying to unilaterally defund things Fox News mentions (since they’re basically doing the same thing), and that is…

He put more faith in his own sense of honor and justice than political realities, thought a letter would fix everything, lost his head early on the whim of a cruel idiot he helped install, and is still associated with the whole mess even though he hasn’t been a factor in years

James Comey is Ned Stark

I will never forget how much that bothered me that they ended with a grand “all this has happened before and will happen again” statement, just completely forgetting that they’d rooted the whole thing in a specific recording of Jimi Hendrix that then becomes a paradox

It’s crazy that they’re putting this much money into programming that in years past would have premiered on the Disney channel or post-merger ABC’s TGIF/Wonderful World of Disney/One Saturday Morning program blocks

I feel like moving Magneto’s trauma from the Holocaust to something closer to the Civil Rights era would work, but I agree there’s no rush to include him. Once Magneto shows up he basically demands a cross-over, and personally I would love to see Dr. Doom get one first

I love the Giant-Sized X-men idea, especially since they haven’t done it before. I think integrating them into the main MCU is too tall an order (why would the public like Spider-man but hate Angel? do the Avengers spend their time ignoring abuse of teenagers? or worse, do they help round them up? how could you really…

It has also cycled through at least two main casts of young actors clearly having less fun with each installment and the whole series has that Singer (and Ratner, to an extent) smell that the press would be obligated to mention. And that’s not even getting into the obvious advantages for Disney to reboot the whole…

If Disney is relaunching these properties in a few ears either way what incentive is there to end on a high note? Contractually it probably has to be a finished movie with a full marketing campaign so they’ll check all those boxes, but that was one of the worst trailers (with some of the worst constumes/makeup) I’ve…

Miller never fails Trump: Miller implements Terrible Idea in an attention-grabbing way, Terrible Idea immediately produces terrible results and low broad public support but Trump’s base laps it up, non-sycophantic influencers try desperately and eventually succeed in mitigating the disaster, the broader public goes…