humanadverb

Forever DM, running 5e on and offline, and trying to branch out into other systems.

Also movies, general nerd stuff, and lefty/queer politics, but I try to keep all the USPOL stuff behind a content note.

Fortysomething transfemme in California.

--

pfp: Ruby Berserko, from the comic book Casanova: Gula, wearing a jet pack.
banner: "Like many of us, Sgt. Raymond Boombox is still trapped in reality." From Luxury Comedy

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Last Notes

2026-07-24 15:52:14 UTC

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Eggers is like if someone gave way too much money to a grad student. I don't understand how he's able to make movies even at a small scale, but I'm so grateful for him.
And like, I didn't enjoy his Dracula, I think because I seem to be violently allergic to Victorian viewpoint, unlike viking or wickie or even puritan viewpoints. Still: so grateful that's a thing.
But you want to ground me in the viewpoint of a 6th century bce Hellenistic swineherd? Omg yes please.

2026-07-24 15:24:47 UTC

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Very nice point of comparison.
I've talked to people who hated Northman because it was so upsetting, and I think they just didn't understand what he was doing. Yes! It is expected to upset you.
And, weirdly, by trusting the audience to assume a different cultural viewpoint and grok what's happening, Eggers actually sharpened my appreciation for Shakespeare's Hamlet, too.
Nolan kinda does that, I guess, except the viewpoint is always Wife Guy With A Beige Aura.

2026-07-24 12:30:23 UTC

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Isn't that kinda Odysseus's defining characteristic?
... did he turn The Odyssey into another dumb Chris Nolan movie about a wife guy?

2026-07-21 15:27:09 UTC

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That's ... Hmm.
Given that Nolan is kinda the most-secretly-fascist auteur, it's interesting that he's trying not to look like a mogul in public. Kinda feels like a subtle shift of context that disadvantages artists in the long run.
Nothing concrete there, but something to keep an eye on...

2026-07-21 15:07:53 UTC

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If he didn't, I'd actually be more confused. He believes in and is promoting IMAX... why wouldn't he invest it in it.
It's not like he's abusing public office for private profit. If you love the Hair Club For Men so much, you *should* be its president.
The alternative is like... Does he imagine every movie he makes is a pyrrhic victory for a dying form of cinema? Ew.

2026-07-17 19:09:59 UTC

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I think Tenet was more ambitious, but so much less successful.
And a lot of that, I think, was him trying to figure out the tricky bits by throwing money at them instead of working it out in the script.

2026-07-15 16:04:38 UTC

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I do think you're right...
If you need 1200 people building stuff, the art is going to resolve as mush. The creativity of talented individuals is diluted and overwhelmed, and the ship is too big to change course when something does or doesn't work. They get stuck trying to fix unfixable mistakes in an endless post production all because they were going so fast from the beginning.
The blockbuster production mode doesn't work. The product can't not become mush.

2026-07-15 15:06:04 UTC

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Apologies for the reply guy comment, but I think "time & effort" might be more like "quick cheap good pick two." And Nolan doesn't need to worry about cheap anymore---they just hire 1200 putty sculptors to outfit 600 extras on a week's notice.
But, then you look at Kubrick who takes half a decade to do anything, but basically keeps his crew down to a half-dozen people. 10 masterpieces in 50 years.
So, maybe "cheap+good" is more good than "quick+good."

2026-07-14 15:24:01 UTC

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I really expect Nolan to be borderline fascist with anything he does, which is why I'm so confounded by Elliott Page as Achilles.
But, reimagining the Greeks as the Europe's eastern marches, like some good old Frank Miller racism? Totally on brand for Nolan.
Which then suggests casting Lupita Nyong'o is less "race-blind" than othering and fetishizing the oriental Trojans. A little less on brand for Nolan, but not unexpected.

2026-07-10 16:59:20 UTC

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I wish the right way was easier.
Mad respect that you're doing so much work to straighten this out.

2026-07-10 15:11:04 UTC

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I keep hearing my own therapist chiding me, "why are you working do hard to make excuses for other people to treat you poorly?"
Which is a thing I do because it helps me maintain positive feelings towards people who treat me poorly and because it helps me navigate difficult conversations more gracefully.
But I to still hear her point and am working on it...

2026-07-08 15:22:14 UTC

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I hope they hear this. This is the real, real good shit. It sure seems to me like you're articulating it clearly.

2026-07-08 15:19:25 UTC

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This feels very familiar to me. And it sounds like you know what you're in for if you take it on... But, oh the good that could come of it.
Thank you for sharing this here. I'm pulling so much from it that's useful, and I hope it is helping your process and relieve stress.
And shit, I didn't realize before that Fox and Bestie were in the same system. Tricky.

2026-07-07 21:34:39 UTC

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Fox reminds me of someone I know. Imagining that person, I would *love* to see them called out for this kind of behavior.
But also, thinking of that person, I think what could be valuable feedback would be perceived as an attack and they'd find some way to sabotage the conversation and turn it into a fight about something else, and all of the people you have in common would find themselves being forced to choose sides.
I hope Fox isn't like that, cuz it sucks when that happens.

2026-07-07 15:25:00 UTC

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I can't even imagine how awkward I would feel being the only one dirty talking in that situation. And yet, the right thing to do?
I'm reading this entire thread and it's like the thing you see in every situation where sex turns bad between well-meaning people: necessary communication isn't happening.
It feels like maybe you were picking up on that in the moment and were trying to address it.

2026-03-18 20:10:37 UTC

RE: https://ohai.social/@redsad/116251904261821657
Their new moon spread is really good. Recommend.
#note179q…sdl4

2026-02-13 16:54:20 UTC

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I think this is a really good track to go down. Like you said, not to turn them into allies, but just to undermine the enemy.
Like how they don't want to be made fun of, I didn't think they want to be pittied either.
"Look at these sad sack lonely guys, who after everything don't even get their signing bonuses. You know they're not going to get any help when it turns out the shit they're spraying around causes cancer, either. They're not scary, really, just kinda sad and gross."

2026-02-12 03:48:06 UTC

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And it's got Flex Mentallo.

2026-01-30 18:44:59 UTC

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One caveat: it is going as planned.
The plan was to push and push and push until met by meaningful resistance. Then they back up a bit, establish all the previous pushing as a new normal, and get ready to launch the next wave.
It's the Cycle of Abuse. The solution is to recognize the honeymoon that's about to start for what it is and end the cycle.

2026-01-28 22:39:22 UTC

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I think a lot about how we were taught in school that Rosa Parks was "just tired, on her way home from work," rather than part of an organized and sustained movement.
Kinda feel like calling Minneapolis's resistance "protestors" is a similar type of thing.
Anyway, like the civil rights movement, the FBI is on its way to break down all that movement infrastructure you're talking about.

2026-01-26 18:05:37 UTC

Learning a bit about what happens to an IEP when a kid doesn't come to school anymore because ICE had been prowling his neighborhood daily for a month.
In California.

2026-01-22 15:36:19 UTC

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I was hoping to see a positive update about this soon, but it is probably more realistic to expect any change to be in slow motion.
I have all of these Trump types in my life, through my partner, and I can see good values and empathy in them, distorted by a lot of false facts and bad ideology. It feels like I'm seeing them get truly shaken by this past year, though.
I remain hopeful.

2026-01-14 20:32:10 UTC

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A former friend of mine with DID had an alter named "Red." Guess what they were all about?
Powerful color. And powerful emotions that even us singletons are usually trained to partition.

2026-01-14 16:59:28 UTC

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You did free labor to help what I said reach more people?
How very dare you.

2026-01-06 18:04:45 UTC

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"What, you want to ban duct tape and zip ties now, because of what someone might do with them?"
"If you could make it so duct tape and zip ties can't be used for that, why wouldn't you?"

2026-01-05 19:14:19 UTC

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In the early 00s, I caught this quote in the Christian Science Monitor bemoaning that "we have raised a generation of Christians who know nothing about their religion except how they feel about it."
Maybe one of a half-dozen things that best helped me understand this horrific epoch of American politics.

2026-01-04 01:53:13 UTC

One problem with military intervention: unpredictable shit happens when you start blowing stuff up, and before you know it, you have shown yourself to be far weaker than everyone thought. I'm thinking a lot about the F-117 America lost in the Balkans, and Argentina's blunder in the Falklands, and the USS Cole.
I'm in the United States so I think it's actually illegal for me to suggest we aren't omnipotent and invincible, but...
...I keep wondering what is about to go wrong.

2025-12-26 16:36:42 UTC

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I think so. I definitely don't regret what I spent on mine.

2025-12-25 14:10:52 UTC

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I really lean into performative spoiler guarding in just one situation: to get people to shut up about Harry Potter.
I wonder if a lot of people are going that, to some degree, for other hated franchises or just movies generally.

2025-12-18 15:56:45 UTC

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I know it's more complicated and stuff, but it's not hard to imagine, every time a protestant youth minister gets busted for the usual, a Jesuit somewhere sneers, "amateurs."

2025-12-17 21:05:58 UTC

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"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."
I had a feeling if I rewatched that scene from Almost Famous, there would be some really problematic shit in there. And yep! It's like 50% incel screed.
https://youtu.be/WzY2pWrXB_0?si=h-n9_9BTnyF2_KNi

2025-12-15 19:07:15 UTC

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Tarantino hasn't been kind to the people who have done some of his other screenplays (Natural Born Killers, True Romance). And Fincher is resentful of interference.
I'm still hopeful it all falls apart.

2025-12-15 19:03:04 UTC

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David Fincher is doing a sequel to Hollywood that Tarantino wrote, apparently. I'm sick about it.
Just, actual talent being forced to swim in the wake of that pig.

2025-12-11 19:03:47 UTC

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This was me the other night trying to explain Marx's end of history by way of Star Trek TNG.
Which itself was prompted at me being mad at someone saying "replicators in Star Trek give you anything you want so no one has to work." No, replicators make work far more productive, but people still make a choice to work and fix the replicator when it breaks.
For the same reason people grow their own tomatoes.

2025-12-11 02:16:55 UTC

No one:
No one at all:
Me: I wonder if I pick the right moment to tell the evangelical at work that getting help from a fertility doctor is "gender affirming care" it might have a positive impact.

2025-12-10 18:58:44 UTC

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It reminds me a *lot* of the final season of Game of Thrones, where everyone involved seemed over it and were just hurrying to finish it off and cash their checks.
Prediction: we never find out what the Big Bad in the upside down is, which is actually a pretty daring good choice but also convenient for show runners who are bored.

2025-12-10 17:09:04 UTC

So, like, Maya Hawke has a monologue about accepting being gay and ... does this scene strike anyone else as being slightly off somehow?
I can't out my finger on why, but I keep thinking "cis het actor performing gay scene written by cis het writers?" Maybe I'm wrong.
Re: Maya Hawke, no idea about her gender or sexuality. She doesn't ping my radar much, though.

2025-12-08 22:57:09 UTC

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By circling back, she'd seem to be realizing that the way she's handled things so far might be hurting her career.
Whether it's people not wanting to work with a Nazi or just that she keeps failing to bring any energy to any project she does, I give her a few years before she plays Kevin Sorbo's daughter in a movie about the true meaning of Christmas (firearms).

2025-12-04 16:41:29 UTC

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So weird watching such a lauded director slowly shrink and turn into a corn cob.

2025-12-03 16:13:45 UTC

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I am a little fixated on WB's efforts to launch a Stephen King Cinematic Universe. This Welcome to Derry show is pivoting off IT and looping in a bunch of other books' characters and locations and just...
I know Dark Tower is Stephen King's pet project so this doesn't come out of the blue, but IT is a sewer clown who eats children. Revealing IT to be a cosmic force of primordial evil is gonna feel weak and weird.
I think Stranger Things kinda tried to grow too much in a similar way.

2025-12-03 13:50:05 UTC

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Finn Wolfhard(?) being 30 or whatever and playing a teen just kinda fits the 80s throwback vibe. But that with Holly... Very weird.

2025-12-02 21:54:47 UTC

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I'm trying hard not to think anything too horrible about her, cuz hating on femme celebrities is usually pretty misogynistic. But ... Yeah, pretty much.
Though I imagine she'd seem equally annoyed if she were being asked how she balances life and family.

2025-11-30 14:53:04 UTC

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The conclusion of it was the most cathartic moment I may have had in a new movie this year. I think I felt the same things you were, and it just tipped a different way for me.
I wonder if I'm onto Cregger's intention with how he set that all up. Now I'm wondering, though, about my personal experiences serving soup to adults who are jamming forks into their faces... how much was that essential to my strong reaction, you know?

2025-11-30 14:42:04 UTC

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Really solid point, but okay, this is off the top of my head, so sorry that it's half baked ...
The shifting perspectives through these shitty adults do some sleight of hand around who the protagonist is, but it starts and ends with the kids. That's why they get the hero moment at the end.
...the journey through those other perspectives, though, is showing not telling the kids' predicament---these adults are shitty and these kids are alone.
Like. It's all levels, man.

2025-11-20 18:27:47 UTC

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Maybe this is all going to end up as Warhammer 40k, with the zombie god emperor locked in his golden throne.
But *so many* rich and powerful people are going to go down if this is released. What are they doing right now?
Is this why Peter Thiel just liquidated all that stock? To go seastead beyond the reach of any government, sitting on a mansion barge on top of a mountain of gold? (No, he liquidated because AI is bullshit, but still, is that what these people are doing right now?)

2025-11-20 18:12:41 UTC

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...and Trump will be dead within six months, from whatever it is they keep imaging with an MRI, leaving behind a bunch of flunkies who may or may not end up in jail.

2025-11-20 18:11:38 UTC

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I keep thinking about the "signing statement" idea that Bush 43 introduced. Where he signs a bill but says "obviously I'm not going to do the stuff that intrudes on my Article II rights as president."
But it does seem a little bit like competence is fleeing Trump, and there might not be anyone left who can muster a coherent strategy.
So Pam Bondi will stall and do limited releases and talk about "a process," and it will all blow up in their faces like the Comey "indictment."

2025-11-17 19:42:52 UTC

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Relevant to my interests.
I'm trying to be discreet about it, but I'm really struggling with my disposition towards my union. I've got a kinda big job in the state level organization, and I just attended a conference where they seem to have announced a top-down decision to stop fighting the "culture war."
Okay, so we're setting aside some issues so we can have broad unity across a huge organization with a very large minority of Republicans.
I don't know if I can do that, though.

2025-11-07 12:17:13 UTC

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To be clear, I'd cheer if the guy had thrown a brick and the jury nullified it.
I've just seen NPR-liberal concern trolling about how "jury nullification was powerful tool of white supremacists in the kkk era, and I don't think we would celebrate this erosion of the rule of law just because we like the outcome."
That's some self-defeating bullshit that needs to be refuted on its own terms, BUT ALSO that isn't what happened here.

2025-11-07 12:12:44 UTC

The sandwich guy verdict is *not* jury nullification.
The jury had to decide if throwing a sandwich rose to the level of assault, and it just didn't.
If the sandwich guy had thrown a brick and was found not guilty? That's jury nullification.
This was cops pretending to be the real victims here, which is their usual lie to justify murdering poc, and a jury not playing along.

2025-10-31 19:28:10 UTC

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Maybe it's that I don't drink anymore so I never do the "have a beer with" thought experiment but holy shit omg no, this dude is scary.
Yeah, nevermind. Ratfuck or not, good riddance.
I think of "would you leave a child alone with this person" as a good test, too, and he doesn't pass that one either. I hope he's got a great oyster future ahead of him, but not with my children or my Senate.

2025-10-31 19:09:12 UTC

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I'm not trying to defend the guy, exactly. And white guys don't need anyone making excuses for them.
I just have this growing feeling that he's being taken down to clear the way for Schumer's candidate.
When "fuck this guy for his Nazi backstory" is showing up in Politico of all places, I'm just ... huh?

2025-10-31 19:02:21 UTC

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I do get that, but, is there anything other than the tattoo?
The reddit thread stuff all seems very left wing. I was under the impression there was like a trove of stuff where he was using the R or N word or something.
The tattoo is just a little less damning, in my mind, on its own. It fits with a Marine who was young and dumb but sincerely evolved.
But, getting the tattoo removed last week doesn't do much to defray it.

2025-10-31 18:40:13 UTC

Can anyone point me to what Graham Platner said that was objectionable? When I actually started digging into quotes, I didn't see a crypto-fascist. Also, he *did* cover the tattoo, so...
I don't know. I don't want to get another John Fetterman elected. I'm just not understanding the case against him, though.
Can anyone help me? Honest question.

2025-10-30 18:19:27 UTC

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Whoa. I'd never heard that before, but it seems so obvious.
Like, what I got in school was Hobbes and Locke and "actually the Founding Fathers were particularly inspired by this limited sovereignty the Basques held..." And like, dudes.
You've got several nations with their own highly developed political systems right next door that don't require a magic mace to open parliament and all the other dumb shit.

2025-10-30 17:57:29 UTC

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I think "Empire or nothing" was basically Thomas Hobbes's argument.
They've been laying these kinds of arguments (in the West) at us ever since the Renaissance and Enlightenment got people wondering "wtf is this monarchy bullshit?"

2025-10-30 17:14:32 UTC

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I've been keeping this quote handy for like a decade, mostly because of being a masculine-passing person active in feminist spaces:
Australian Aboriginal activist Lilla Watson summed up one of her people’s proverbs as such: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

2025-10-30 16:16:26 UTC

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Fair, and I'll go further...
When I feel panic at something changing for me, I need to recenter myself in the context of "this is not new, it just finally came to my door."
I dunno, maybe there's a famous poem about that which people quote all the time.
And also too also: If you're asking to go back instead of go forward, then fuck off you're just wrong and a moral imbecile.

2025-10-29 18:17:09 UTC

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I'm glad I watched that conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates about Charlie Kirk.
It was a lot along those same lines, with Ezra saying "but things are so bad and we need to reach out to racists to fix it!" and Ta-Nehisi saying "this bad stuff is not new to us and we've never had more woke white people to build alliances with; also wtf dude."
Except now I keep getting push notifications for Ezra's show, which is such bullshit.

2025-10-16 21:58:38 UTC

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Something that plays off the construction of the term "suburban".
Submalevolence? I don't want to rely on two Latin prefixes, though. And "sub" is kinda ambiguous.

2025-10-08 20:53:51 UTC

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This train of thought is bracing for me for two reasons:
(1) No, I'm not being paranoid, because this and worse has happened before. It can happen again.
(2) By the same examples, survival and resistance is possible.

2025-10-08 20:47:41 UTC

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No coincidence that there was that Irish character in the middle of Sinners.

2025-10-08 16:21:09 UTC

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I feel like every time I actually engage a Republican, the conversation kinda dissolves when I push back on whatever persecution fantasy they picked up who knows where.
My favorite version of this is, "You know, construction workers are actually more likely to be injured or die at work than a cop?"
They immediately understand how that's true. "Well, we need to do better for construction workers, too." And a short walk later you've got someone on board for socialized healthcare.

2025-10-08 15:11:49 UTC

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Really a fun watch, too. Kinda a low key masterpiece.

2025-10-08 15:06:25 UTC

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I was just wading in to the comments to figure out a way to tactfully say "Common Side Effects?"

2025-10-02 14:59:04 UTC

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Pan's Labyrinth is incredible, but it's a hard watch with all the fascist stuff. And especially with all the developmentally inappropriate shit that little girl has to deal with.
Great film. Big emotional commitment.

2025-10-01 20:46:02 UTC

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I used that Orwellian nightmare phrase, "the paycheck to paycheck phenomenon" thinking about a particular co-worker of mine. She owned a house in Marin (with mortgage), was sending her daughter to Berkeley including campus housing without student loans, and yet I've never met a person with a more frantic energy of economic insecurity.
And yeah, she was embarrassed that she was paycheck to paycheck and constantly felt like she was doing something wrong.
Our society is so sick.

2025-10-01 20:39:57 UTC

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Not something I advertise, but my family have owned their house in California since before WWII, which means we have access to a level of security that most people just don't.
I was a free lunch kid. I didn't get to participate in pogs or any of those fads. All of my toys were from the flea market. My socks were paper thin and full of holes.
But I didn't have to WORRY the way the kids I ate lunch with did. It was a profound difference. And very hard to explain.

2025-10-01 20:27:19 UTC

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It's especially hard because, it seems to me, the "living paycheck to paycheck" phenomenon is pretty much everyone all the way up into low six-figure household incomes. Whatever your standard of living, they've dialed it into so you have nothing.
It's stratification of the working class more than stratification of the middle class.
...which doesn't really help with your "how do I describe this" problem, but I think it's okay of why the conventional terms fail us.

2025-09-29 15:24:00 UTC

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You are 100% correct.
I appreciate it when someone just kinda owns being a bit of a sellout.

2025-09-29 14:55:39 UTC

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Eh, or just asshole enough to do a shitty thing in exchange for a huge payday. Which is kinda the level of stranger danger I've always gotten from him: basically decent, but inclined to look the other way if the bad thing doesn't impact him directly.
I thought he was kinda perfectly cast in The Mandalorian, as a shitty dude who was pushed a little past his limits by the extreme shittiness of the Empire.
But only after he did a set at EvilCon on Mustafar.

2025-09-29 14:45:14 UTC

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I like Bill Burr, but he triggers my "this is an angry, cis white dude" danger sense. So, not a huge surprise, even if a little disappointing.

2025-07-12 12:18:16 UTC

Bongino and probably Patel too are going to use this as an excuse to quit a job they didn't know would be 12 hour days minimum.
It's a teenager making a bold point of principle because they don't want to eat their broccoli, only broccoli is implicated in a sprawling child sex ring involving murders and the president.

2025-01-08 17:13:01 UTC

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I'm not where you are, but I got to experience this during the Santa Rosa fires in the North Bay a few years ago.
You simply can't understand what this is like until you've experienced it yourself.

2024-12-17 01:47:05 UTC

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Is that the cover? Amazing promo art.

2024-09-18 21:20:31 UTC

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I was just pointing out that "stealing" a word (literally taking ownership even though your figurative use is obvious), instead of just noting that it isn't yours, in a racialized context might come off more oafish than whimsical, but you do you.
Anyway, it's not like you would compound the faux pas by accusing anyone of being oversensitive or anything.

2024-09-18 21:07:02 UTC

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Yeah, it's a pretty well-used word in more intersectional circles, and saying "steal" hits the wrong note.
Not scolding you, just offering a polite fyi.