The difference is back then, it was relegated to the insane fringe. The premise of the X-Files is “what if all those farfetched conspiracy theories were true”, evil FEMA was in the same category as cryptids and alien abduction. Now it’s part of the platform of the second largest political party in the country. It’s roughly equivalent to campaigning on killing Bigfoot, if not worse because at least the latter is harmless.

It’s interesting how the only “states’ rights” conservatives care about are the ones involving denying rights to the people.

Yet you participate in society

You’re already doing that with insurance premiums. Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn’t have a profit incentive to price gouge.

That’s why giving out the last 4 digits isn’t safe. It’s trivial to derive the first 5 with public records and a lookup table.

Threatening violence against civilians in the pursuit of political aims, huh? If only we had a word for that.

It’s genuinely unhinged that the Black Book of Communism counts Nazi soldiers who died invading Stalingrad as victims.

As frustrating as propaganda victims are to deal with, they’re still victims, not perpetrators.

Yeah, Sherman didn’t go nearly far enough. The former Confederacy should have been reduced to a smoldering wasteland and treated as a conquered territory with no federal representation.

Rentals and used games had no such guarantee.

If it turns out that we’re actually truly past the point of no return and nothing we do will save our species, I don’t think the response is going to be as passive as billionaires would like.

It’s only a sign when it hits blue states. In red states it’s HAARP or the Jewish space lasers.

I wouldn’t have put it past them.

They really didn’t think this pardon thing through, did they?

The original is still loss.

And the ground is still saturated from Helene, so it’s not going to be absorbing much of the water. The flooding will be far worse than a cat 5 on dry ground.

The worst was if it was a multi disc game and the broken disc was the last one. You’re invested, excited to see how the story ends, ready to smash Sephiroth’s face in, and it all grinds to a halt.

It’s also always either 5, 6 or 11 years (or 7 in very rare cases, when you’re on both sides of a skipped leap year like 1900 or 2100) between “day X falls on day of the week Y” events unless you’re talking about February 29.

Part of that is just selection bias. Very few people would post Amazon reviews for their shoes unprompted. But if something unexpected happens, like if they have a defective pair, they’re quite a bit more likely to go back and write something.

Good old toupee fallacy.