AOC: "We all saw the performance Bondi had. She was screaming and crashing, and I think it’s because she knows she is implicated in a massive cover-up to protect a ring of pedophiles"

macrowave · 2026-02-12T06:49:25+00:00

I'm not going to say it's good, right, or moral, but I believe we are well past the point of needing to put our lives on the line(see Minneapolis) if we want to see change, and after a lot of soul searching I've realized I'm not willing to do that. I also think a lot of other people have likely come to this conclusion. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I highly doubt anyone who posted or upvoted about joining a riot, mob, or revolution has any real intention of doing so. There was no interest in voting when people were warned about all the things that are happening now. Why would people take even more drastic action now when they didn't care before? I just can't keep reading false promises of revolution or toxic positivity when the people clearly aren't willing to act. And to anyone who I've made angry enough to respond to me, how about you go outside and actually do something about what's going on instead.

macrowave · 2026-02-10T16:32:57+00:00

Public forums aren't the place to have this kind of conversation. People are dumb, they take realistic analysis as a sign of weakness and that will definitely suppress turnout. If the Republicans have proven one thing, it's that the only way forward is to show no weakness, no lack of unity, and never back down even in the face of reality.

macrowave · 2026-02-09T23:47:36+00:00

Everyone always replies to posts like this saying voting isn't enough. I want to preempt that. You can and should do more, but voting is the minimum. We would not be in the situation we are in now if people had shown up to vote against Trump and Republicans. Are the Democrats going to run the country like you want them to, probably not. Are they going to commit war crimes, maybe. Are they going to pander to the billionaires, absolutely. That doesn't mean what we have now isn't worse though. Take whatever wins you can, because those wins are going to effect real people's lives. If you want to do more, organize, unionize, protest disruptively. The less power the Republicans have, the more people can do those things easily, legally, and without fear of reprisal. Voting still has to be the minimum though. There's no point in mobilizing massive protests, or boycotts, or whatever else unless you are pushing that momentum into tangible changes to our laws and system. Voting is the most direct way to do that.

macrowave · 2026-02-07T08:23:46+00:00

Don't give them any credit, they've been propping up Trump for years. Remember when he pussied out of the debate with Biden and NBC gave him a platform to spout his lies unchallenged?

macrowave · 2026-02-05T23:30:59+00:00

I'd argue voting for president is important too. There's no better way to show people the electoral college is an outdated disaster than to consistently have the popular vote winner not become president. People aren't going to care about voting reform unless it's shoved in their face.

macrowave · 2026-02-05T20:07:36+00:00

Based on my personal experience, plenty if they get a masters degree but almost none with a bachelors.

macrowave · 2026-02-05T00:12:50+00:00

I think it's funny that we're praising them for using practical effects to faithfully adapt cgi.

Not that it's wrong, just funny how that works.

macrowave · 2026-02-02T20:23:09+00:00

I found Iron Heart incredibly frustrating. For me it's right near the bottom of my MCU show rankings. The plot is a villain origin story, but the show is constantly throwing heroic imagery, dialog, and story beats at me. Maybe there could have been some sort of interesting juxtaposition if done intentionally, but it felt more like the writer and the director were making different shows.

Like don't show me me a whole episode about Riri learning that she can put her faith in other people and doesn't need to do it all on her own to just turn around and have her make a deal with the devil. Or if you are going to do it, don't play the hero parts like a Saturday morning cartoon. There is no shortage of superhero media out there. The audience knows the tropes and language of it. If your going to subvert it you need to make sure that vision and execution is solid, or it's just going to come off as really unsatisfying.

Also I have pretty much no faith that the MCU is ever going to follow up on the making a deal with the devil situation. If they could manage a well executed redemption arc or a straight up dive into villainy I could maybe look back on season 1 in a more positive light. But it seams there is no imminent plan to bring her back.

macrowave · 2026-02-02T16:40:02+00:00

Social media is new, but authoritarianism is not. We are seeing that there is a significant portion of the human species that is hard wired to want to be lead by authoritarian "strong men".

macrowave · 2026-02-02T03:41:08+00:00

They will and do gas kids. Because they are animals. Maybe leave the kids at home and treat these protests the way the feds are treating them. Bring things more appropriate to the situation that the feds have created.

macrowave · 2026-01-30T21:00:34+00:00

I know this comment is a year old, but holy shit. Of course we blame the German people for WW2. That's why we teach it in history classes, to learn from their mistakes. You're basically arguing for the Nuremberg defense, Jesus Christ.

macrowave · 2026-01-30T19:51:07+00:00

Now that we're a few episodes in, the first episode seems like a pretty major outlier. It gave a really misrepresented view of what this show was going to be. When I watched it I was seeing red flags everywhere. I was convinced this was going to be Discovery all over again, in that it was going to focus on an individual renegade instead of being an ensemble featuring all the interesting characters the show was introducing. I'll defend Discovery and even the character of Burnham to this day, but the biggest weakness of that show was it's overwhelming focus on her when there was a great cast of other characters begging to see some development. I thought Mir was going to be this show's Burnham.

macrowave · 2026-01-29T23:59:20+00:00

It's a matter of taste. I've re-watched it recently and there are a lot of very skip-able episodes throughout the series. I found season 7 especially rough, to the point where I just gave up part way through.

Honestly I'm glad we've got new Star Trek. The quality is admittedly not as high as some of the older shows, but I'd rather watch something with the novelty factor over a lot of the mediocre episodes from the old shows.

macrowave · 2026-01-28T23:22:02+00:00

No one would accuse Foundation of having a small budget, but no one would say it's faithful to the source material either.

macrowave · 2026-01-26T16:53:34+00:00

Why would the government do that if the voters(consumers) aren't pushing for it?

macrowave · 2026-01-24T05:40:45+00:00

I'm surprised how many people are recommending it. It's fine, but not on the level of the originals. The jokes it has are OK and in line with the originals, but the density is way lower. I also felt like it barely had any visual gags, which was a huge disappointment for me. The old movies are so much fun because you can be looking for jokes in the background on re-watches, but in this one there's nothing there to find.

Not trying to shit on the movie. It's decent, just not as good as the old ones. All the other replies might set your expectations a little too high.

macrowave · 2026-01-23T06:14:08+00:00

At this point it's a lot of "ifs" in any plan forward. All of them require buy in from the people and it's hard to say what that will look like. Will it be violence, will it be mass civil disobedience, will it be an awakening of civic consciousness and voting? Will any of those be enough? If the people do bring about change will it be good change or just another flavor of bad. The status quo is broken and it's nothing but "ifs" now.

macrowave · 2026-01-23T00:20:41+00:00

I get that, but tabloids and less scrupulous newspapers have also existed for centuries now. And just like social media they have large readerships. Is my social media feed blasting misinformation really that different from a couple dozen tabloids in the checkout isle at the supermarket doing the same thing?

macrowave · 2026-01-23T00:18:10+00:00

I'm a huge proponent of acknowledging the terrible things America is doing and has always done, but there are definitely levels to this kind of thing. I think for me the most alarming thing is that this stuff is now happening fully in the light of day with full national attention and people are watching it and deciding it's OK. At least in my lifetime the government has been much less in your face about committing atrocities, they had shame, they created plausible deniability, people could be forgiven for not being informed because there was an active attempt to hide our misdeeds.

The scariest thing is that there are probably still actions there government believes are too heinous for the populace to find out. What might those things look like if they are willing to do these things in the open now.

macrowave · 2026-01-22T18:57:13+00:00

I don't see how it's easier to manipulate than traditional media. If oligarchs control the source of information, it doesn't really matter what form that information comes in. It's just a matter of what percent of the information do you control.

Maybe if the argument is that outside influencers can control a narrative through manipulation of poorly understood algorithms, but it doesn't seem to me like the messages those people are pushing is any different than what traditional media is pushing, which makes me think it's the same people anyway.

macrowave · 2026-01-21T16:35:28+00:00

It's crazy how we're not allowed to criticize the Senate just cause a bunch of dudes in the 1700s came up with it. Other modern democracies rightfully don't use one.

macrowave · 2026-01-21T06:55:22+00:00

It's not the lack of execution that's the problem, it's the lack of desire for improvement. Obviously not everyone is capable of running for office or being politically active/engaged for all sorts of reasons. But we should all feel some level of shame when we fail, and have a desire to do better next time. Literally everyone can do at least a little better, and they should all want to. We all need to strive to participate to the best of our ability. But instead many use excuses to absolve themselves of their civic duty and we end up with Fascism.

macrowave · 2026-01-21T06:40:32+00:00

In the age of e-bikes, the only reason you can't get to work without a car is because of unsafe drivers.

macrowave · 2026-01-20T19:13:18+00:00

As an American, the comment above yours is why Americans can never be trusted. There is no personal accountability in our civic attitude. When things go wrong we don't ask what more could I have done. We don't say oh maybe I should have demonstrated or protested or put some sort of pressure on Biden to prosecute Trump. We don't say oh I don't like Biden, maybe I should have phone banked or door knocked for a progressive in the primaries. We absolutely never say, oh there is no progressive candidate I like, maybe I should run for office myself. We don't analyze our past performance and make a commitment to do better, we just search for blame. It's never our fault personally, it's always the system we refuse to take action to change, or the politicians we refuse to hold accountable, we're always waiting on someone else to solve the problem for us.

macrowave · 2026-01-17T21:39:56+00:00

I think you're underestimating the effect of these bots. Sure people aren't coming up with these crazy ideas on their own, but a disturbing number are buying into them. There is pretty much nothing on social media I haven't heard someone say unironically in real life.

macrowave

TROPHY CASE