Poltergeist confirmed

I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.

The re-release and Special Editions of the Original Trilogy raised the bar very high for everyone only a few years before Ep 1 came out. The OT was all about action and iconic moments and explosions. Stuff Lucas wrote when he was in his 20s and made as a younger adult.

Then Episode 1 shows up after years of anticipation and it’s about a child with some very child-focused moments (because Lucas did make this a more kid-friendly movie because of his kids and being in his 50s). So it just feels very jerky and segmented, with mixed focus about establishing a big plot and then…what, blood flukes cause The Force? Jar Jar was too distracting, and most of the acting was very wooden except for a few good moments for Portman, Neeson and MacGregor. Product tie-ins were on par with Stranger Things - everywhere and everything. I see more parallels to the movie Hook in Ep. 1 than I do with other Star Wars IP at this point. It’s like a highly-produced stylized caricature of itself.

Fans were in shock a bit because it wasn’t a particularly amazing movie, and when making comparisons that were inevitable, other than visual likeness, it just felt a universe away (no pun intended).

And it’s basic story-centered aspects. This guy did a series of videos where he made basic changes to the Prequel Trilogy, and yeah, he’s right. His concept is a better story.

Important note - this guy 100% called 50% robo-Darth Maul years before Dave Filioni did it in Clone Wars.

By that point, it was too late. Fan hate set the tone and Ep. 2 was years away to balance things out. And Ep. 2 isn’t terrible IMO, it just didn’t capture anyone. I actually like Ep 3. because it starts to bring in more starfighter action and some fun moments with a serious end.

Watching all 3 movies in a row completely negates all of the feels at the time, the huge lull between movies, and the comparison to the OT as the standard.

I seriously doubt that they’re saving all that much money.

I also bet this is correct - if you look at how they collect the data, they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies. They’re editors. This probably puts like 4 people, 2 of which I bet are perpetually near retirement, out of editing jobs. And it’s not like they’re saving server or web hosting time when they also host huge amounts of declassified archives.

John Q. Sapien? The guy they named the species after?

But I am also transparent about it.

Am I Schrodinger.png?

I hear you on this. I was homeless as a kid, and in college I had a friend who I just didn’t understand was wealthy, as I hadn’t learned the subtle social cues outside of a small town context. I was sort of still processing the fact that yes, living for years in the back of a store and not a house was not the experience that other people had, and it is defined as being homeless. Though certainly not as bad as living out of a car or on the streets. “Homeless lite” maybe? Anyway, I told her this one day and she immediately came back with “Oh! Me too! We lived in a hotel for 3 months while looking for a house to buy!” Even trying to get a bit deeper…nope. Steamrolled into her Eloise story.

A year or so later, another friend got it out of her that she, indeed, did have a “small” trust fund for college. To her credit, she wasn’t a shitbag at least. Meant well, but just zero wherewithal about the discrepancy between paying daily to live somewhere and making up a bed every night of camper seat cushions and a sleeping bag

OK, now this I can get behind.

and all the ‘rent is evil’ idiots i know in real life… took mommy and daddy’s money and became landlords themselves and now they complain about how taxes are evil

Yeah, the turn that the Trustifarians take is always so fast. Like you can not see them for a few weeks and suddenly the locks are gone, toes confined to shoes, and they’re already clamoring for trappings as a totem of having forsaken their “sordid past.” All the whiplash from suddenly realizing that your paths in life end in the same few places, simply because your ideals force others to push you away.

It’s really not too dissimilar from Flat Earthers - outrageous ideas that at first put you in a fun and weird community, but long term are the thing that makes everyone your enemy. Though, since Flat Earthers don’t specifically reject economic methods are part of their idealism, they can fare well for longer it seems. Though I don’t have data to back that up.

People aren’t defending landlords per se. People are defending the opportunities afforded by having extra space and letting someone else pay what it costs to live there.

Renting as a concept goes back to antiquity, and this is an absolutist stupid take that makes it sound like OP doesn’t understand how real life works.

Not everywhere is a large city. Not all renters live in the same place for 20 years. Not all landlords are evil shitbags or faceless corporations. Sure, plenty are. Some are just families that are lucky to not have to sell their house if they move for work that lasts only a couple years.

I end up moving every couple of years, and so I’ve had to sublet the last part of a lease I’ve had, and gladly rented places from friends, random people on Craigslist, whatever, for weeks or months at a time. So I’m a thief because I sublet an apartment for 3 months? So dumb.

Long-term renting is really more the issue as landlords do just sit and leech and renters get nothing to show for it. But the fact remains that renting a room or an apartment is something that has since literally ancient times made more sense than huge amounts of unused housing you aren’t allowed to use. So this is actually a nuanced argument against a particular class of people and corporations. Meaning that the premise is flawed enough for most people to roll their eyes and ignore it.

The whole “rent is theft!” trope doesn’t even make sense from a political messaging viewpoint. What’s your suggested alternative? That’s not apparent at all. So this ends up sounding like saying “I want hot spaghetti for dinner!” and just expecting it to happen.

Also, a rather large number of people have rented something out, rented a room out, etc. thanks to AirBnB that this messaging makes enemies out of a whole lot of normal people by using absolute terms. People like me ask “Did my friends that helped me out steal from me? Of course not.”

If you think that anyone who thinks a reasonable exchange of a service for an agreed up on fee are committing theft, then you’ve alienated 98% of people with the premise alone by calling them criminals.

In some cities, typically heavily Democrat ones like Chicago and LA, they’re the monopoly holders, and push their own politics up and force the City Council to take it or accept the political costs of fucking with a union or of fucking with the perception of security and crime. Police unions flip everything you think you know about unions on its head. Unlike normal worker unions, the city can’t close up shop and move if the labor costs get too high. And yet in many large cities police are incredibly ineffectual at everything short of harassing the general public over smalltime BS because it’s easy for them.

Ironically, another Chicago union, the Teacher’s Union, treats themselves with the same level of monopolistic power occasionally, and then asks for a raise and gets smacked down quickly because no one actually cares about schools or learning. Even though most residents support the Teacher’s Union, they are nothing close to holding the same power as the Police Union.

Remember, y’all - according to NSPM-7, they can and will consider anything they don’t like as terrorism. Alex Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” before he hit the ground because NSPM-7 allows qualifying anyone that is near ICE and literally even looks at them wrong as either a domestic terrorist or organized political violence.

Some interpretations see this as effectively declaring at-will Martial Law.

I’m not sure how people don’t see these things as anti-ads. I wouldn’t touch any of these companies with a 20 meter cattle prod.

I’m happy that creators get paid, sure, but if a company has to go out of their way to get someone to make ads for them, it doesn’t inspire trust at all.

In the Epstein files, Gates comes up a lot. One of the instances is a prescription for antibiotics via Epstein’s dentist GF - not for him, for Melinda.

Missing the weirdly-dressed Boomer who clearly has been in a post office before, and has unreasonable expectations, but also doesn’t seem to know anything about how this post office works, and has questions and needs something special from the back.

They don’t want to expose his data, they want to store it and use it and make money off of it by selling it.

Can’t sell it if you’re giving it away.

…DUM DUM

Was this before or after he got an STD from trafficked children and gave it to Melinda?

Gates can get fucked. Not like how he likes, either. I mean like fucked with the thing in the meme.

FWIW, if one’s foodservice experience is bartending, you are given significantly more license to stand your ground and kick people out. Legally defensible license to do so. I genuinely enjoyed bartending most of the time, especially when it wasn’t a high-volume place.

When it’s at a bar/grill restaurant, if you and the cook don’t run tag-team being bad-cop on every table that gets weird to spare the server staff, you’re doing it wrong. You are a weapon to be wielded. A 6-top often loves the suggestion that someone not getting a tip is a mutual villain making drama and that the server is the only person making magic happen against all odds. It’s theater, right? You provide dinner and a show.

Honestly, not really. Someone that worked with Chicago PD was telling me that a lot of the more senior officers (this was also 10 years ago) leverage accruing enough leave to cover half the year. So they collect a salary 6 months of the year, and a lot end up getting second jobs because they want more money. These are taxpayer-funded services, so I’d rather not give ample avenues to abuse the system because politicians have no spine.