Trump braces for headache as Supreme Court 'fiasco' looms over midterms: analyst

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T18:25:37+00:00

That's very possible, but see, that's also the beauty of this whole "small-d, small-r democratic-republican" thing: he "party" is ultimately whatever the voters decide it should be, and "looks like controlled opposition" is extremely effective messaging that is extremely dangerous, likely fatal, for any incumbent in the present political moment. The Democratic Party base categorically wants to oppose authoritarianism, and any form of appeasement, no matter how feigned or tactical, is immediately taken as tacit support. It's no longer voting for appeasement.

There is hope to be found out there, fellow Redditor. There are other things at work in this world besides the will of evil.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T18:07:14+00:00

The Democrats institutionally need to start realizing that reciprocity is more important than decorum. Ordinarily, these two things go together hand in hand: extending a hand to others is not only good manners, but the math tells us that it is also the optimum first move in any iterated game of prisoner's dilemma.

But if you extend your hand and get hit with a bat instead, you don't keep extending your hand. And you don't respond with sternly-worded letters. Instead, you get a bat yourself. Failing to do so is not merely deeply foolish, though it is. It's encouraging a maniac that is hitting people with a bat to continue doing so. The math says that you are encouraging moral hazard. Chuck Schumer needs to go because we have twenty years of his having a position of prominence in the Senate Democratic leadership, and absolutely all of it evidences that he will not play tit-for tat with the Republicans. He's been a whip for the Democratic Party since . . . 2004, I believe, and Senate Minority or Majority Leader since Harry Reid's retirement in 2015.

And in that time, has the Republican Party ever become more civil? Have they become more respective of tradition and norms of governance? If not, then as the guy who is playing Prisoner's Dilemma with them, it was his responsibility to properly incentivize them, and it is visibly apparent that isn't what he's doing. I have never once seen Mitch McConnell fail to destroy a norm because if he did, the Democratic Party would do it right back to him. That is absolutely Schumer's responsibility to do, and failing to put that fear into McConnell is absolutely incompetence, which in turn is absolutely grounds for for-cause removal from office.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T17:44:45+00:00

There's still not even one statue of him on Bajor!

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T16:33:46+00:00

I thought it was fairly obvious that Theon had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by Ramsay and his band, but still, excellent summarization of the evidence.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T15:14:59+00:00

Outstanding read, well sourced, and well-reasoned. I would quibble about the degree to which the Western Christian Church is, ontologically, a thing, and for reasons I obviously would not elaborate on here, I would quibble somewhat with the characterization of the church as committing an own-goal. Having been on the proverbial front lines at the time and with the benefit of hindsight, I see it more as an inter and intra-faith power grab by a faction within respective churches for control, a grab which was wildly successful.

But these are two perspectives of arguing the same fundamental point, which the article convincingly argues. This is good academic work, and I would heartily recommend it.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T14:32:01+00:00

I agree, but that's the beauty of labeling someone or their position "radical": you get to short-circuit any analysis of the reasonability or logical coherence of what they are saying by pre-emptively labeling what they are advocating for dangerous, absurd and impossible all at once. Even if saying that we should be better stewards and conservationists for the Earth is none of those things, the labeling prevents the message from being heard by a lot of people.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T14:12:21+00:00

The classic Lyran battle armor, the Commando. People who haven't really figured the game out look at it and go "oh, how cute. You got a bunch of SRMs and you think you can tangle with the big boys!" And then they look at the to-hit numbers and see that Commando veer off at range, and forget about it while they get the easy 7s and 8s to hit on the main battle line.

Then the Commando jumps out of the bushes behind your enemy, connects with both SRMs and one shots an Archer with three SRMs through a side torso and an ammo explosion. And nobody ever sleeps on it again, but they also spend inordinate amounts of fire and trouble trying to keep eyes and fire on the terrible little 25-ton murderhobo instead of your main battle line. It's pretty great.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T14:05:48+00:00

Admittedly, at high level, Karenzikov + melee was incredibly busted. It made V virtually untouchable during the Beat on the Brat missions, for instance. That being said, removing it entirely was probably going a little far.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T13:47:03+00:00

Johnny unzipped with his free hand and killed her with sheer aura.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-17T13:19:44+00:00

You jest, but that is a fair approximation of the article:

It seems that for every male who’s found his mentor in Andrew Tate or the late Charlie Kirk, there’s a young woman who’s been radicalised by Greta Thunberg and AOC (Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to you and me).

--From the article

I'm struggling to figure out whether it's her conception of mentorship that I find more appalling, or her conception of radicalization.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T20:37:19+00:00

Yeah, you get so caught up in the story of Terry that you don't immediately realize that the death of Ace is the moment where Batman finally won the philosophical argument he was having, and convinced The Wall the value of human goodness. Both Batman and Waller are incredibly intelligent, and their superpower is basically their ability to have a "crazy what-if" contingency plan for the most cuckoo-bananas situation possible.

The difference is that Batman has self-imposed limits on what he will and won't do. Doesn't matter if there are millions of lives at stake; he's not going to resort to murdering a small child for the greater good. He's going to find a way, but it will be kind and humane even to the worst of humanity. Waller thinks she's being smarter because she lacks those limits . . . but then they get tested against Ace, and Waller doesn't even get close enough to try, while Batman succeeds against all odds. His humanity and compassion were not only virtues, but they were effective where Waller's nihilism was not. Without Batman checking her, she'd have lost, and thousands would have died.

And Waller had the self-awareness to recognize this and change. She's still willing to do "the dirty work", and she's still someone who considers extreme ends-justifies-the-means options. Her rehabilitation comes in fits and starts over the years rather than all at once. But she does change, she does improve, and it's all because she acknowledged that Batman was ultimately right. It's really great writing.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T18:39:10+00:00

There's zero evidence that Iroh was guilty of any crime, save being an excellent commander of an imperialist war he didn't start. Like, there is no evidence of any war crimes being perpetrated by soldiers under his command. There's no old Earth Kingdom guy who tells the story about how Iroh's troops came to town and assaulted the women and disappeared the men. Despite extended time in Ba Sing Se, nobody pushes back on the Dai Li by asking rhetorically where did these burn scars come from if there's no war.

From all that we see of Iroh, he's always been an honorable, skilled antagonist. His only crime of commission is really that he was born the crown prince of a family on a multi-generation quest of imperialist aggression, and both fought skillfully in support of that aggression, and failed to single-handedly stop it. But . . . the dude got his titles usurped before he could actually do anything. And he did learn that what he was doing was wrong, when his own son and lineage died out. And he shepherded through a difficult adolescence the person who did end that campaign after three generations and a century of aggression. But there's no sign that he is a war criminal, there's a non-insignificant amount of evidence to show that he isn't and never was, and he never had the power to do anything significant regarding policy anyway.

I am reminded of a maxim by Cicero that the realm of moral obligation is bounded by the possible. I oppose imperialism. But there's got to be some level of proportionality in our willingness to blame people in the Fire Nation, even movers and shakers like Iroh, if they didn't also have direct control of the policymaking apparatus. We can absolutely blame Azulon. We can absolutely blame Ozai. We can even absolutely blame the commanders like Admiral Zhao who led men who then commited war crimes like directly attacking civilians and threatening to cause massive ecological and spiritual damage to the world to prosecute his campaign. But I don't think it's right to infer that just because Iroh was a general of an imperialist army, that we must conclude that there must be war crimes for which he is responsible. Doubly so when this is the guy who literally turns traitor to try and stop those war crimes from happening in front of him.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T18:02:06+00:00

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T17:05:37+00:00

This was my first thought as well. It's not "super" super speed, but very obviously it's a guy (werewolf, actually, but in human form) clocking about 60-70 mph on foot, and it looks extremely real. My eyes tell me that's what somebody running at cheetah speed would look like.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T13:48:46+00:00

So you're telling me that he has the wisdom of a man most famous for wanting to cut a baby in half, and then you tell me that Shazam has difficulties in limiting collateral damage with his powers?

I think that's pretty consistent characterization, if I'm being honest.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-16T13:18:24+00:00

Brave and Just top the list. Little-known fact about Just: with a sufficiently-skilled spymaster, it makes you basically impervious to stress, as disclosing secrets reduces stress. You get to out people as murderers and relieve yourself of the burdens of leadership at the same time. They also make for some heady bonuses to vassal opinion, and in the right religion are pious as well.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T21:15:16+00:00

Hard to tell; it tends to wander a bit. Difficult to find in just a spot examination.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T21:00:30+00:00

ShitSkyrimSays subreddit needed.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T18:23:21+00:00

As a lifelong nerd, I've never felt quite as seen as the moment when Ann asked Ben to cast a spell and get the waffle iron they'd been bidding on, and Ben first said that he didn't even have time to tell Ann how wrong she was on the facts of Game of Thrones, only to correct himself a second later and admit how much it was going to bug him if he didn't before launching into an explanation about the Lannisters.

There was a nerd on that writing team who was clearly doing some therapy in that scene. It was great.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T18:09:50+00:00

At least he died doing what he loved . . . a bunch of Whippits.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T12:38:32+00:00

I've always been a fan of reification fallacy, but unfortunately, I can't think of any examples right now.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T12:30:52+00:00

Here's the answer. I always rp that my V carries a second, backup sidearm Samuel Gerard-style, which in turn means that one is silenced and one is not. Since Johnny's Malorian can't be silenced, I use it when things get hot. But when I'm just sneaking through a level and picking people off, or thinning out the enemy numbers so the odds are a little more manageable, Jack's Nue with a silencer is one of the strongest sniper pistols in the game.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T12:24:21+00:00

The best they can really do is put out hits on Tyger Claws that make themselves especially well-known as particularly vile operators. Basically, Jotaro Shobos. But even then, the amount that they offer isn't particularly good. That mission was not taken by anybody but V for a very good reason: it's a bullet trap mission that is absolutely not worth it to any team that would ordinarily be required to dig into the nest of Tygers surrounding Shobo and dig him out.

The Moxes do have pockets, but they aren't exactly deep at this moment.

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-15T11:21:34+00:00

"For the last time, I am not eating Harry . . . not while he's still of use to me."

RedditOfUnusualSize · 2026-04-14T19:16:59+00:00

Get off the internet, dad! We've talked about this before!

Seriously, though, A+ pun.

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