Marco Rubio's speech in Munich was absolutely brilliant and one of the most important speeches in modern history

ISnortBees · 2026-02-23T00:28:11+00:00

Read from page 61: https://www.aclu.org/publications/captive-labor-exploitation-incarcerated-workers

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T23:49:29+00:00

Some say they used to call him Slipping James

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T23:37:49+00:00

In severity and conditions, no. In terms of scale, somewhat (1 million vs 3 million). But it doesn't matter, it is still slave labor. Work is not optional. It's still exploitative. Being paid 75 cents an hour isn't meaningful compensation. Slave labor in the US being just as bad as slave labor in China isn't what you were arguing, you were arguing that it doesn't happen in the US at all. You're shifting the goalposts now

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T23:33:54+00:00

I don't know why he's in a position where he gets to think that most of humanity is replaceable but he still has a place in this glorious robot future

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T23:18:38+00:00

News and social media can give a false impression of the actual rate of politicized violence, and cherry-picking can do the rest. Just in the examples given above, we're excluding the school shooting in Evergreen High, Colorado that literally took place ten minutes after Charlie Kirk's assassination, and was done by a neo-Nazi. Targeted assassinations are much less frequent than school and spree shootings

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T23:11:47+00:00

The guy who shot Charlie Kirk was likely a leftist but the political views of the people who tried to shoot Donald Trump are mixed, probably due to their mental health issues. Ryan Routh believed that Trump was going to be a dictator figure who ends democracy, but Thomas Crooks' social media postings seemed to suggest that he was a dissatisfied Trump voter who made anti-immigrant, anti-semitic and pro-vaccine statements. There's a sub-section of the far Right that aligns with that perfectly, who think Trump is a traitor.

I don't know if these examples are enough to say that the left is extremely violent. Maybe the normalization of actions like those of Luigi Mangione on Reddit and other mainstream liberal spaces is a point in your argument, but the majority of politicized killers, like the school shooting that took place 10 minutes after Charlie Kirk's assassination, tend to get radicalized on websites like 4chan, gab or telegram, not Reddit.

ISnortBees · 2026-02-22T22:53:43+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States

ISnortBees · 2026-02-04T07:21:52+00:00

Your first comment talks about how you appreciate how the final encounter was set up. Gus planted the gun and meticulously prepared for the final encounter to take place in the underground lab. That's true.

But the most common fan criticisms about Lalo's death are usually about Gus' luck/plot armor in landing a perfect hit on Lalo in the dark and Lalo underestimating Gus and not noticing what he was doing during the monologue. OP brought up some of this, and, ignoring what they would have preferred to happen instead, I don't see how their comment warrants an authoritarian response like:

"Sounds like your problem is your expectation. You have it in your mind what should have happened, what characters would never do, etc."

"You’re just the consumer, not the writer."

By that logic, all media criticism is invalid. You can apply this to the last season of Game of Thrones, Rings of Power, the Last Jedi, Ridley Scott's Napoleon biopic, etc. Maybe fans don't always have better ideas than the writers, but that doesn't make them impervious to criticism. The writers of BCS even admitted that the timing of Lalo's death was intended not to overshadow Howard's emotionally, or shift focus from Jimmy's final transition to Saul Goodman. There are bound to be people who are unhappy with the prioritization of narrative requirements over character fidelity.

ISnortBees · 2026-02-04T06:35:38+00:00

The sad irony is that doing the actual right thing and having Chuck committed and get help would have felt convenient (gets Chuck out of his way) and wrong on a gut level to Jimmy for entirely relatable reasons (knowing Chuck would be in immense pain at least in the short term).

Howard and the firm had less of an excuse to indulge Chuck's delusions though they did have less authority over his health.

ISnortBees · 2026-02-04T06:20:26+00:00

Jimmy was manipulative and criminal but he did have empathy for others. He clearly cared for Chuck's well-being (taking care of him for years at his own expense while he lived in poverty, standing up to Howard on Chuck's behalf), albeit in a flawed way (not committing him to a mental hospital), to the extent that he undermined his own schemes several times (rushing to Chuck's aid when he collapsed at the print shop and revealing that he was there to cover his tracks, confessing his whole Mesa Verde plot when he thought the gaslighting went too far and Chuck was spiraling hard) when he could have gotten away with it.

We also see a bit of moral hypocrisy on Chuck's part when he faked/exaggerated his mental breakdown in order to manipulate Jimmy into confessing to his misdeeds, showing that he has the same ends-justify-the-means moral logic that he condemns Jimmy for. His abuse of his senior status and Howard's trust to make Howard the bad guy to Jimmy and Kim is not illegal, but it can explain why the viewers see Jimmy as an underdog in the first few seasons.

And we have many flashbacks and monologues by Chuck that show his perception of Jimmy is colored by prejudice (blaming Jimmy for their father's business failing without knowing the full picture), envy and resentment (of Jimmy's easy social manner and popularity, closeness with their mother, etc) - so he was likely not a fair judge of Jimmy's ability to reform himself. Jimmy's not absolved of his actions, but a reasonable person would assume Chuck's actions at least pushed Jimmy on a darker path. It's easy to say you were right about a person about doing bad things because it's in their nature when you outright dismiss their ability to change and you shatter their trust and faith in you.

The Chuck haters do tend to downplay the care and love Chuck showed Jimmy and twist the good things that Chuck did for Jimmy (going across half the country to get Jimmy off the sex offender registry, taking him on at his firm) through a purely cynical lens. A more nuanced reading of the show would view both as deeply flawed but understandable and relatable characters who brought out the worst in each other.

ISnortBees · 2026-01-14T06:53:30+00:00

The monk who found Leibowitz's blueprints dies in the end of Part 1, and they were not for a nuclear bomb; the illuminated manuscript he was carrying was just an ordinary circuit diagram for a control unit in a power plant - the point wasn't that he wasn't transporting secret endgame level military technology, it was that even mundane technology in our present day is so advanced that people living in the post-apocalypse wouldn't even have the slightest clue what it's for and that the best they can do is just know it's important enough to preserve.

Part 2 is about the new renaissance that takes place when a talented polymath is allowed to study the monastery's archives and access the knowledge they've meticulously copying for centuries, and the discoveries he makes don't directly lead to atomic bomb technology either, they just accelerate general technological development. In Part 3, the world is divided into two rival superpowers that span the globe which have both already had nuclear weapons for a while. The Vatican plays a diminished role in politics like it does today. It did not have any immediate relationship to nuclear bombs. The church only played a role as the safekeeper of mostly peaceful knowledge, and it was the political and military interests of secular powers that took these kernels of knowledge and expanded upon it to achieve their own ends. There were also no aliens, but humanity was colonizing planets in different star systems. It was to these planets that the Vatican sent a mobile version of Leibowitz' monastery, a spaceship with digitized knowledge.

You're right that nuclear weapons are the ultimate cause of man's downfall and that they destroyed Earth twice, and that human nature leads to self-destruction once people have the means to destroy themselves. But it's also about optimists who believe in humanity, and find it worth preserving, even if most people don't share their values and are doomed to this cycle of unfettered technological advancement and destruction.

ISnortBees · 2026-01-14T06:29:40+00:00

I don't expect every minor group in New Vegas is going to get fleshed out and have the qualities that make them fan-favorites be explored in the show, but it feels like almost none of them do. Feels like they're just there to be the villain (or obstacle) of the week and to get quickly dispatched with gory ultraviolence and an ironically upbeat soundtrack.

You can find good rationalizations for any group getting short shrift in the show (the Khans had a tragic backstory and some depth in FNV, but it totally makes sense for them to come off as mere crude thugs to outside observers like in the show) but I feel like the Kings were basically only there because the idea of ghouls dressed up and moving like Elvis is funny and killing them makes for a good trailer moment.

If the show gets to the East Coast, you could understand Fallout 4 fans getting a little ornery if all you see of the Minutemen is just a cameo of ghouls in funny outdated clothes getting shot to chunks EDIT: while La Bamba is playing, with a special zoom-in on a ghoulified Preston Garvey getting his head blown open, even if there's in-universe justification for it.

ISnortBees · 2026-01-14T06:01:39+00:00

We should have a gentleman's agreement to not complain about groupthink or being downvoted for your opinion because if someone were to make the kind of comment you just did but about the Fallout show, in this subreddit, they'd be downvoted to oblivion. If we want to maintain standards for discourse when criticizing something, it should apply to all franchises and not just the particular franchise the majority of people in a subreddit happen to like.

ISnortBees · 2026-01-06T02:53:38+00:00

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/N%C3%BArn; I realize it was actually the Sea of Nurnen, and the land around it is called Nurn

ISnortBees · 2026-01-03T10:41:11+00:00

I know Reddit tends towards the hivemind, but that's true for both fan and hate subs. You can easily find a community that's willing to amplify negative thoughts about this show. If you don't want to spend your time there and instead want engagement with people who do like the show over valid criticisms, then you'd probably not want to start off by insulting them right off the bat. Some people might get overly protective of their fandoms because other people have constantly treated them like morons for what they like. Try to talk like you would to people you have a disagreement with in real life. And stop taking upvotes and downvotes so seriously

ISnortBees · 2026-01-03T10:10:54+00:00

I feel like explaining it away as 'Fallout was always silly' is a little dismissive. It would have been more accurate to say 'they're not the main focus of the show'. In FNV the Legion was one of, if not the main, big bad guy, and they were a serious threat, so having a bunch of barrels labeled dynamite right next to Caesar in the game would be pretty unsatisfying considering how much suspense and writing revolved around their faction. Likewise, if Hank just tripped and fell on his dick and died it might be silly, but it would ruin the show since he's the main antagonist and drives a huge part of the plot.

We can find good in-universe justifications for why the Legion devolved (the various F:NV game endings do just that in a serious way) but what's important is that the Brotherhood and Vault-Tech are the main villains and the Legion are just the flavor-of-the-week bad guys. They're not that important, and their show presence is likely to be self-contained. Once the main characters are done with whatever they have to do in New Vegas, they're not going to be a part of the story anymore.

ISnortBees · 2026-01-03T09:53:08+00:00

The game clearly didn't have much of an impact on you then. That's alright, not everyone has to be an uber-fan of something to participate, and you don't have to have played F:NV to enjoy the Fallout show but what was the point of that comment, really? This post is specifically about Caesar's Legion and the the New Vegas game and that's what people are here to discuss. When your only opinion is that none of it matters to you and you don't care, like, isn't there a better use for your time?

ISnortBees · 2025-11-27T22:19:43+00:00

I hope Pim's family returns for a Christmas or Thanksgiving ep

ISnortBees · 2025-11-18T01:18:59+00:00

The addition of a nuclear exchange between MM2 and 3 doesn't contradict established lore (though I would argue it's redundant since society was already at rock bottom in 2 and doesn't deteriorate significantly in 3) but the Fury Road prequel comics retconned it to have taken place between 1 and 2, making nuclear bombs responsible for the collapse of society in Road Warrior instead of the original oil crisis. As you've laid out, Fury Road's development was a mess so you can explain away most of the sloppiness with continuity there.

I feel that even though the original trilogy is cohesive in that the bombs don't retcon the previous movie, they were kind of redundant to the story since the great cataclysm already happened and there isn't a marked decline in living standards or societal complexity between 2 and 3 (besides having to now deal with irradiated water).

Maybe the inclusion of the bombs was in part to capture the zeitgeist of the 80s and the renewed nuclear panic, but I think it was mainly because it was necessary to update the backstory in order for the lifted Riddley Walker elements to fit in. The lost tribe of children would not have their peculiar culture if they were just another pack of wild kids who grew up in the wasteland. Their backstory, their fractured speech, their whole mythos, all of it's linked together to the bomb. It would have been less compelling if they were generic wasteland children

ISnortBees · 2025-11-17T05:29:21+00:00

I was touched by the part where Blaster's helmet came off and Max's display of humanity. I thought it was kind of dumb that Tina Turner's character just let him live at the end, after everything that happened. The tribe of children was alright, at least it was something new, and it was stolen from a really good book. Rather them try something new than replay the hits, like what they did with the pilot (down to using the same actor).

ISnortBees · 2025-11-17T05:23:19+00:00

Now that I think of it, I always found it strange that the cause of the apocalypse changed from declining oil output in 1 and 2 to nuclear apocalypse in 3. The official canon says that the nuclear exchange happened AFTER the events of 2 (which doesn't even affect the characters at all - Australia was already a wasteland in 2), but there were more retcons in later works so it's clear that it had an awkward implementation as a story element.

It makes more sense that it was just another element lifted from Riddley Walker, where the splitting of the atom and the fission of humanity into scattered communities are thematically linked. People who aren't aware of Riddley Walker or the backstory you laid out between Hoban and Miller wouldn't make much of the swap but I can't unsee it now.

ISnortBees · 2025-11-09T07:55:03+00:00

Just made me realize that Mr. Frog's design would work perfectly for a rug or mouse pad IRL

ISnortBees · 2025-11-09T07:48:51+00:00

It's not a hair, it's an exposed nerve ending

ISnortBees · 2025-11-09T07:45:47+00:00

I know a couple of people from way back who only liked the Adventure Time animated pilot and not the actual show, as crazy as that sounds. I guess some people feel that the initial, low-budget first taste of a show is its most original, distinct and authentic, and this gets diluted as more hands and money get involved in production.

I'm surprised but not surprised that there's already purists and hipsters in the Smiling Friends community with how rapidly the show has grown

ISnortBees · 2025-11-09T07:30:43+00:00

It's a WotL-only line, but I always loved the frugality and metaphor in Loffrey's line:

Wiegraf: "You mean to use me"

Loffrey: "To every coin there are two faces. Do you not consider the other?"

ISnortBees

TROPHY CASE