Not really.

The fundamental critique of capitalism is that not even the capitalists are really in charge. Marx lays out quite thoroughly in Capital that the profit motive is what’s actually in charge, and the capitalists are just along for the ride, and that any attempt by the capitalists to flex their power in a way that the market cannot abide will result in them losing their privileged status and being replaced by a different capitalist who will better serve the needs of the profit motive.

By contrast, socialist systems are run by people. That makes them flexible and able to serve the needs of society in a way that capitalist societies simply aren’t. And yes, people are capable of mistakes, failure, and betrayal; but so too are they capable of insight, success, and solidarity. The best of existing socialist societies past and present is when they buck the demands of the market and provide for their people in ways that capitalist societies don’t, and the worst of socialist societies is invariably the things that they are required to do in order to maintain their existence on a predominantly capitalist world.

The worst things that happen are when students lock the door to a building, or when fascist counter protestors (often in police uniforms) show up and escalate shit.

Americans live in one of the police states of all time. Capitalism can only produce this result, there is no alternative, because the ruling class knows just as well as the socialists do that the contradictions will only keep getting worse and the protests will only keep getting bigger but of course instead of wanting to change the equation to produce a different result like the socialists do the capitalists want to cling to power by any means necessary.

If you HAD to choose between Communism and Fascism

Oh no, please don’t force me to make this choice, it’s impossible.

Slow news week? Just make some shit up!

Of course the post-gamergaters have been making shit up from the jump. Come to think of it so were the gamergaters and pre-gamergaters.

Nobody drives in New York, there’s too much traffic.

I feel like, because you can see the moon moving towards the sun for the hours leading up to the eclipse, and see it moving away from the sun in the hours afterward, you’d be able to put two and two together even if your sense of scale is way off.

Plus there’s gonna be institutional knowledge whether you’re agricultural or not - eventually you’re going to see multiple eclipses, and eventually your tribe will have elders telling kids about them, and eventually someone will think to record when they happen and start being able to predict them.

Mar-a-Lager

Damn that’s a good one Trump could become a billionaire again if he sold this.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to look it up, it’s exactly as awful looking as it sounds.

And then setting the car they’re sitting in on fire.

I guess it’s a very specific fetish? But if so it’s extra gross because the character is like fourteen.

Your characters walk into a magic shop, but instead of buying magic items the shopkeeper offers to sell them scrolls of ownership. “There are infinite number of these scrolls,” he explains, “but they all use a decentralized mechanism to determine ownership!”

“Okay, I’ll buy one. Now where’s my +1 sword?” The fighter asks.

“The scrolls say that you own it” the shopkeeper unhelpfully reiterates. “And every other scroll will be updated to agree that you own it.”

I like this because then you can say that a non-worthy person can wield the hammer, if they’re stronger than Odin and can beat the enchantment. Magneto is probably on that level.

The trope probably goes back further than that, but yes.

I remember getting a trophy from being on a soccer team that lost every single match we played except one - and the one match we won was against another team that lost every single match they played except one of the two games that they played against us.

My mom displayed that shit. I took it down and threw it away in the night, don’t remember if she ever said anything about it.

I wasn’t even salty about being on the team. I was on a lot of sports teams, some that I hated and some that I had fun on, and that was one of the fun ones. I’d just rather remember hanging out with friends than losing almost every single saturday for three months.

AMERICANS BUY OPTIC AND FOREGRIP OF CHEAP DEPARTMENT STORE INSTEAD OF MANY CARTRIDGES OF PRACTICE. SOME BUY TWO HUNDRED RUBLE LASER AND TWO THOUSAND RUBLE NIGHT VISION GOGGLES SO THEY CAN PRETEND TO BE FASCIST MURDERER SPECIAL FORCES KILLING CIVILIANS OF DARK SKIN COLOR WHILE NOT ABLE TO HIT BROADEST SIDE OF BARN. AMERICAN MARKSMANSHIP HAS FALLEN FAR SINCE DAY OF MARINE CORPS TRAINED MARXIST PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSIN LEE HARVEY OSWALD.

I mean it’s a pretty typical wish fulfillment “the girl who is so pretty she intimidates everyone is actually extremely shy but she opens up to ME” so I can’t get too chuffed about it. I only sat down to read it once for about an hour and never went back.

The one that made me feel the way you describe is Nagatoro. Like my god man grow a fucking spine.

If ironic internet fans could get Morbius a second theater run, they could make this happen.

YIMBY logic is that the new apartments will depress prices in the older apartments, so even if it works the way they think it does (it doesn’t) it still has the baked-in assumption that poor people should live in lower-quality housing because they’re poor.