I love reserved seating. And they seem to have given up on selling lots of tickets. The chairs in my theater are huge and widely spaced.

It’s interesting - the psychology of that. Recently I was answering someone who asked why the US doesn’t have more of a working class movement, and a big part of my answer was that no one in the US thinks of themselves as part of the working class. Even if they are unarguably at the base of the economy, their plan is to get out of the working class, not make it better. Similarly, I can see Americans having a problem accepting themselves as a permanent minority. In other parts of the world this is just a fact of life. Christians in Syria know they will never be a majority. When rebels ousted Assad, one of the first things they said was that they will treat minorities well. Those minorities know who they are. Similarly, Kurds are 15% of Iraq and that is just a fact based on hundreds of years of ethnic history in the region. But in the US, everyone is on their way to something better (at least so we think). Parts of Europe had very formal class systems for long periods of history so there are people who just think of themselves as working class and they stand for workers’ rights. Not so in the US. No one here is working class or a monitory. We’re too full of all the rhetoric about being created equal.

You never know - sometimes people go against the grain. For example some of the best parents I know had shitty parents growing up.

I’m saying they are adults and they have some responsibilities. I have lived in a place where thought options were actively suppressed, and I know how much freedom and information access Americans have. It’s true there is abuse and manipulation and lying out there. But no, I am not comfortable calling MAGAts victims and blaming someone else for how they vote. They are indeed getting fooled, but let’s be real: it’s a “fool me twice” situation in Trump’s second term.

I’m confused… China is dependent on oil imports flowing through the strait of Hormuz. Much more so than the US is. In fact the US maintains a naval presence in the region specifically so they’d have the capability to block that strait and starve China of oil. China produces very little oil of their own, though they have coal up the wazoo. Blocking that strait is the US’s main card to play if China invade Taiwan.

That’s fairly true of everyone and everything. We are born into a culture and it influences us greatly. I don’t think adults get any kind of a pass because of that. Certainly Americans of voting age have options about what to think and believe, regardless of where they start out.

I think what the US gets in return is on the ground intelligence about the region plus a general purpose moral excuse to go to war: “They were going to destroy our ally Israel.”

But these are only valuable if you have a forever-war mentality and a tremendous need for Middle East oil. The US is way past the point where it can and should shed both.

I’m an American and I hate to break this to you but the people elected this clown. That’s how it works here. You didn’t vote for him? Okay. But until you’re doing absolutely everything you can to prevent people like him being elected, you don’t get to just shrug off responsibility. I know exactly two people who are doing everything they can, and neither of them is me.

Death from the sky wherever we judge it to be right. It’s some Death Star shit.

I’m just hearing it for the first time in this thread but my first impression isn’t great. Do you really want a label that brands you as a “minority?” That doesn’t seem like a great first step toward equality.

You could begin with “summary:”

Your comment reads more like a rebuttal than a summary. If you intend to summarize the article for lazy lemmings, that’s cool, but present it as such.

The article already says everything you said. It’s not a “solution” to anything. It’s a small step to show that this is even possible. Perhaps it will help some people whose condition makes them extraordinarily sensitive.

I swear people will find a way to shit on virtually anything and turn absolutely everything into class war.

It’s the same phenomenon as “LGBTQI+”

It was literally LGB at one point. I understand the concept of inclusion but I think pursuing it by appending and appending and appending is a lousy way to go. I believe the “Q” was finally added in part because it was hoped to be some kind of catch-all, but that didn’t work.

I know there are more important things to say about this receipt, but since everyone has already said them:

Wow, look at that receipt. So simple. Actual ink on actual paper. No coupons on the back. And one line per item. No “price - savings = real price!” bullshit or anything else. I long for that kind of simplicity in even the little things in life.

The guy’s closing on 80 and is widely purported to be incontinent. Now ask yourself if he is willing to risk someone seeing his little piggly wiggly dick smeared with his own shit and unable to get hard. I think we’d be flattering him to imagine he’s out there banging away.

All because Trump pressured the rest of NATO and wants more money they signed an agreement promising to do so.

The only cock warmer Donald is capable of is the piss he takes in his diaper every 140 minutes.

If it stars out enshittified then you never had anything to enshittify, just plain shit.

Melania was expected to do something with it and she had no interest. This reflected poorly on her in a lot of people’s expectations, and so the two of them were like “fuck the rose garden.” End of story. The Trumps will never have class so they figure no one else can either.