I’ll take “no shit, Sherlock” for 500, Alex.
The worst part is that the article says that Wilson took the sequel trilogy on a sudden left turn, but then blames Abrams for not playing nice when he tried to clean up the mess. That’s like blaming the EMTs for a car accident.
Think of foreign policy as a ladder, and you are the person in charge of your country (or at least their foreign relations). Each rung is a new action you can take to influence the behavior of other countries.
The first step is formal communications. That’s easy, you’re probably on that step with just about every other nation. The next few rings are all other friendly diplomatic steps, things like opening embassies, making trade agreements, non-aggression pacts, etc.
Now let’s say a neighboring country is doing something you don’t like. Your nation’s grievance with them will fall into one of a few broad categories: they are a threat to your security, they are a threat to your interests, or they are a threat to your honor (meaning your international reputation). Whatever the reason, your job is to change their behavior and none of the previous steps on the ladder have worked, so now you climb higher.
The next rungs are less friendly, but are still diplomatic. These are things like denouncements, cessation of trade, tariffs, and sanctions. At the very top of this set of rungs, you close your embassy and demand they close theirs. You break off most communication. Finally, you tell the whole world why they have wronged you.
Now you’ve done everything you can diplomatically, but their behavior is still a threat to your security, interest, or honor. How do you change their behavior? There are more rungs on the ladder.
Going all the way back to Sun Tzu, generals have known that their job was to take over when the diplomats failed. This doesn’t mean that total war is immediate or inevitable. The military could conduct raids, surgical strikes, or enforce an embargo. Warfare is simply the top rungs of the ladder of foreign policy. Some nations climb it more quickly or willingly than others, but war exists on the same spectrum as diplomacy.
This is the poor man’s Oedipus Rex.
How the fuck do you think gas pumps work?
I’m done feeding the trolls.
Sure, but it’s on the list.
If it saves even one human life it’s worth switching to an alarm instead of immobilization, even if that means hundreds of breakaway cables get snapped by morons driving away from chargers.
It’s about hitting electric cars, self driving or otherwise.
Cars can still move with punctured tires, at least far enough that a would-be robber or carjacker could get dragged a good distance.
You smash the window and open the door. Now the panicked driver is speeding away, leaving you high and dry or dragging you along.
Being able to completely immobilize a vehicle while keeping it intact is a criminal’s wet dream. It’s incumbent on car manufacturers to consider that while implementing safety features.
Pry bar to open the hatch, like I said.
And yes, today people are walking around with angle grinders to chop off catalytic converters.
So being normal is bad, huh? I guess I should stop living my life how I want and start doing the opposite of normal. Surely that isn’t just letting others define how I live my life by making me avoid what they’re doing.
There were even bigger structural issues than that. A good production team could make the “I want a baby” motivation work. A good production team could make changes to characters work. The show did not have a good production team.
I can’t remember which season, but there was one scene where Jen takes Ciri to a bank (I think). They wanted to have the man they met with deliver a few lines of exposition explaining how he had run into Jen in the past, she had helped him, and now he was in her debt. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s perfectly functional storytelling.
The problem was that they had Ciri being moody and bored, walking around the set and poking at props. Meanwhile Jen was sitting across the desk from the guy delivering the lines. That meant that this dude was sitting there telling Jen her own backstory.
That means that either the writers were idiots who fucked up their own blocking and nobody on set questioned the script, or somebody on set insisted on the blocking despite it making no sense. My wife is a fan of the books and games, but I’m not. Even with no knowledge of the story being adapted I could tell something was deeply wrong with how that show was being made.
The difference being that not being able to start the motor with the door open is only a problem if the driver was being attacked in a parking lot.
It’s not too big of a leap to imagine a world where a person could immobilize a car at a red light with the plug cut off from a public charger. Wall up to a stopped car, open the hatch (maybe it needs a pry bar) and put the dummy plug in. Now the car is immobilized. Smash the driver side window and they’re in business.
Sure, there are some safeguards that can be added like requiring a current to immobilize the vehicle, but it’s far from the simplest or safest answer. Car manufacturers need to stop putting in hard limits and just use alarms instead. I bought a new Subaru that has collision detection standard. The hedge next to my driveway was overgrown, but I drove right through it. The car sounded an alarm and flashed a bunch of lights, but it didn’t engage the brakes, I was able to blast through an obstacle that I knew was minor even though the car thought it was a threat. If a manufacturer feels compelled to add a safety system, it’s possible to do so without taking control away from the driver.
What is this, a comment from 2005?
It’s less about their role in the long term and more about having another front open at the outset of hostilities.
Every Arleigh Burke not tasked with intercepting Iranian missiles is another one inside the first island chain.
That level of change took centuries and I still understand it.
The internet speeds up change to the point where we’ll lose intelligibility.
Yep, real childish of me to insist that our goddamned primary communication protocols remain consistent because it would cut down on fun improvisation.
See, this is exactly what I was worried about. Now I’ve got to write a whole fucking essay because history classes never get past WWII.
“Relatively recent” here means “in the past few decades”. There was a period of time in the early 20th century where (due to a long domestic propaganda effort that, frankly, you’re going to have to read up on yourself) the racist connotations were significantly diminished.
During this time period, the Confederate naval jack was more broadly seen as a symbol of Southern pride. Perhaps the best example is the Dukes of Hazzard, although this was closer to the tail end of this period.
What precipitated the gradual shift to the modern interpretation was the Vietnam war. The army was racially integrated by that time, and black soldiers were encountering the Confederate flag that their Southern, white comrades sometimes brought along. For fucking obvious reasons, the “it’s not racist” argument didn’t exactly fly with them. To almost criminally abridge an interesting and important part of history, a symbol that those soldiers may not have ever seen or even really cared in civilian life was at the forefront of their minds.
It took years for that bad experience to move the needle of public opinion. To (again) abridge decades decades of history, that experience in Vietnam “trickled down” to the public. Over time, the mainstream view of the flag shifted from one of primarily Southern pride to one that was primarily (and later, overtly) about racism.
I’m gonna start and end this comment with the same disclaimer: I’M NOT HERE TO DEBATE THE MEANING OF THE FLAG, JUST COMMENTING IN THE CURRENT USES OF IT. THIS IS AN OBSERVATION OF THE BELIEFS OTHER PEOPLE HOLD, NOT MY OWN.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who still interpret the Confederate naval jack to represent southern pride. In recent decades the nationwide interpretation changed to basically “racism”, either wholly or in part.
This (relatively) recent change means that people who want to express southern pride but weren’t racists tended to move away from using the flag, instead opting for things like using their state flags. The other end of this is racists who specifically and explicitly leaned into the new interpretation and use the flag more.
There is a (very much) smaller subset of people who want to stick by the older “Southern pride” meaning and reject the more modern interpretation. While these people probably deal with a lot of funny looks and awkward conversations, they exist. Apparently there’s a large enough cohort that feels that way and support LGBT rights to warrant someone printing Confederate naval jacks on a rainbow field.
Again, before I have a dozen motherfuckers here to tell me why their interpretation of the flag is the correct one: I’M NOT HERE TO DEBATE THE MEANING OF THE FLAG, JUST COMMENTING IN THE CURRENT USES OF IT. THIS IS AN OBSERVATION OF THE BELIEFS OTHER PEOPLE HOLD, NOT MY OWN.
Yeah, I missed “to mean”. Looks like at least one other guy did, too.
Christ, I hate Lemmy.