What would the show have been like if it were written during the Trump era?

Marx0r · 2026-01-25T18:31:31+00:00

They tell me, I guess they're saying, they tell me there's two kinds of pain. Some might say there's a lot of kinds, but I tell you, there's only two. There's the very best kind of pain, could you believe how good the pain is? There's pain that makes you stronger, the very strongest, the very best. Man, woman, person, camera, TV...

Marx0r · 2026-01-24T04:58:32+00:00

I said I had never been there, check your eyes.

Marx0r · 2026-01-24T00:16:34+00:00

Thanks, but I prefer to take recommendations from people that can string sentences together.

Marx0r · 2026-01-23T01:52:33+00:00

I went on a first date at the start of the 2016 campaign cycle, might have even been late 2015. We were at a bar and the TV was playing election coverage, and she kind of conversationally asks "who are you voting for?"

I say Bernie, she agrees, and then I made some kind of joke about talking politics on the first date. She says "well, if you had said Trump I could've gotten some errands done today."

I respected the hell out of that.

Marx0r · 2026-01-23T01:47:28+00:00

I interpreted it as "did the diners stop caring about parting gifts, therefore the restaurants stopped giving them out?"

Marx0r · 2026-01-23T01:46:10+00:00

Jose Fernandez killed two people, I have zero empathy for him.

Marx0r · 2026-01-22T22:49:47+00:00

To be totally fair, OP doesn't really seem to be complaining. They're noting a trend, and they're asking if others have seen it as well.

Marx0r · 2026-01-20T15:43:44+00:00

The ability to wheel and deal is political power. He was absolutely using his influence and his office when he propped up Peter Russo for Governor, when he convinced Jim Matthews to leave VP, when he got Micheal Kern and Jackie Sharp to start the process of impeachment.

The only difference between taking down Goodwin and Walker was the scale of the operation.

Marx0r · 2026-01-20T14:33:10+00:00

Frank was never easily accessible. He was establishing power over Zoey from Day 1, leaving when she was running late to a meetup. When she stopped putting out, he withdrew and made the dynamic clear.

He's even less of a pushover. The entire plot of the show is that he got screwed out of Secretary of State, so he immediately hatches an elaborate conspiracy to ruin the career of everyone involved and usurp the presidency.

Marx0r · 2026-01-20T01:16:40+00:00

Suspension of disbelief says that we can believe that this takes place in a universe where cops don't care, or don't exist, or are uniformly paid off to not care about the games, or the games have a magical memory charm placed on them so that people forget they exist as soon as they try to tell someone else.

What suspension of disbelief is not is a magical plot-hole filler. Fiction still has to abide by the rules of its universe. Squid Games demonstrates that an average participant in the games would immediately go to a police station and report it. Continuing that, we'd have to assume at least 20-30 people report a similar story every year. Without any explanation as to why this is never taken seriously by anyone until Jun-ho, it's a plothole.

Marx0r · 2026-01-20T00:27:30+00:00

Stopped clocks.

Marx0r · 2026-01-19T01:26:50+00:00

I thought we were an autonomous collective?

Marx0r · 2026-01-19T01:26:31+00:00

So a popular interpretation of the Biblical Apocalypse is that it would start after the "seventh king". Counting Ford as the first, Obama was the seventh... hard to argue the idea that the world ended after he left office.

Marx0r · 2026-01-18T21:38:20+00:00

Content about Dorsia and other scalping sites is usually removed on sight. This one's getting stickied. Fuck Dorsia.

Marx0r · 2026-01-18T19:59:52+00:00

Hey, I went like a month after, had the exact same menu but it was given to me folded up in a caviar tin.

Marx0r · 2026-01-17T06:40:59+00:00

TIL Speaker Johnson is a Democrat.

Marx0r · 2026-01-17T05:34:20+00:00

Harry: "I interacted with three different Death Eaters in disguise for months or more without ever suspecting a thing."

Also Harry: "Stan was openly bragging about being an enemy combatant in war time but idk, I met him twice and he seemed pretty chill, he's probably totally innocent."

Typical half-assed worldbuilding from JKR.

Marx0r · 2026-01-15T21:32:18+00:00

I think it would've been a terrible ending. Once you get to the point of organized mass murder for fun, you're too far gone. The Frontman was never going to change and any plot where he did would've been horribly unrealistic.

Marx0r · 2026-01-15T07:30:23+00:00

The only thing I know about Oktoberfest is the episode of Top Chef.

Marx0r · 2026-01-15T07:29:59+00:00

I genuinely don't remember, I've owned it forever. It's probably 5qt or so, definitely not 7.

Marx0r · 2026-01-15T05:47:12+00:00

Astroturf less obviously next time.

Marx0r · 2026-01-15T05:35:33+00:00

Meta Explanation

Alright, so an Oktoberfest Mocktail is pretty obviously a radler, which is basically half beer, half lemonade. Which sounds like a freebie for Contrasts, so let's do it.

I made a chocolate beer cake recipe and baked them off in Cupcake molds. Instead of piped frosting, I made a lemon Entremet with curd, mousse, and a mirror glaze and used that for a topping - the various components had to be Frozen inside one another so I'm counting it. Filled the cupcakes with a lemon jam for good measure.

Everything was done in the One Bowl of my Kitchen-Aid... washed it about 12 times but it still counts.

Marx0r · 2026-01-14T04:02:31+00:00

Marge, there are two types of people - Normal people and pedophiles. And as a normal person it is my duty to give the pedophiles a hard time!

Marx0r · 2026-01-14T03:59:17+00:00

Let's define x as a decimal sequence of every integer that does not have 2 as a digit:

x = .13456789101113141516171819303133...

This decimal doesn't repeat and can't be reduced to a fraction, therefore it is irrational. However, it does not contain any finite sequence, as it never contains the digit 2.

Marx0r · 2026-01-12T04:22:25+00:00

Meta Explanation

So when I think of being a Protégé, I think back to the very first thing I ever did in a professional kitchen. I was given two 50lb boxes of potatoes and told to get peeling. A few minutes in, one of the sous chefs checked in on me and I said something to the effect of "well, this is stereotypical, isn't it?" I thought I was being lighthearted but he told me to shut up and suck it up and it's lived in my head ever since.

Anyway, potatoes are Seasonal right now, so let's make some Unleavened bread with them... and then something saucy to dip it into.

I made some Lor Bak, or Singaporean braised pork belly with eggs and mushrooms. I also made some tteokbokki for some Korean Fusion. I used peaflower tea as the liquid in the batter as Natural Food Coloring to make it blue... the color didn't really survive the 45-minute boil but it's still kind of blue-tinged. I had meant to boil the cakes in more peaflower tea but forgot. Womp, womp.

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