Apocynum

Correct. “This call may be recorded” functions grammatically both as notification that they might record it, and as a statement that granting you permission to.

As it always does. They are still authoritarians after all. The trick is that ours deny even to themselves that they are authoritarian, and so they can’t do that sort of multi-layered hypocrisy. They’ll flat-out arrest at least a few foreign athletes because they’re so high on their own farts.

We won the Women’s World Cup twice in a row, in 2015 and 2019! It’s our men’s team that can’t get its shit together like the women can.

My impression is that those dictatorships have self-awareness, and create sort of “bubbles” around the cities where they host these games to give the illusion of greater freedom.

Trump’s US doesn’t know what it is (yet). They’ll host the games and then arrest/deport the athletes coming to compete.

Godspeed!

Can you knock on their door first?

“Hey, sorry to bother you, one of your smoke detectors is beeping and it’s echoing down the alley and driving me quietly nuts. I brought a 9-volt battery!”

Just an endless succession of people with the authority, power, moral imperative and physical means to stop Trump going "Man, I sure hope someone stops Trump!" and shrugging.

The Comedian from Watchmen saying "it's a joke, it's all a joke."

It's enough to turn one into Watch-Man.

Trump wears a suit because the business suit signifies power in the 21st century sense.

It’s all about what signals power. In the mid 20th century, in the wake of WWII particularly, the military uniform (generally one imitating the style of one of the great powers) was the prime signifier of power and unity.

Now, those uniforms just signify paper tiger dictatorships.

en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schr%C3...

God help your attendance record a few months from now.

Just the worst. I’ve got insomnia sometimes and mine shows up that way. I’m sorry, and I hope yours grants a reprieve soon.

Solipsism?

I’m not the audience either. I’m genuinely sick of it, haha.

I’m so glad you’re back to reading fiction. There’s so much good stuff out there!

All these older dudes gleaned from the sexual revolution was the idea that worlds could exist where hundreds of women could have consequence-free (from their perspective) sex with them. It makes ~1967–1980 a bit of a minefield. Which sucks because there’s a lot of good mixed in with it.

Yeah, 90% of the time when I try and read classic sci-fi I just hit a wall the first time the main character interacts with a woman of any sort. “Oh hey, there’s another extremely uncomfortable paragraph-long out-of-context discussion of the size and shape of her breasts.”

The dystopian setting appeals to the YA audience because it usually involves rebellion against an oppressive force that does not respect them as individuals. For teenagers, that’s a metaphor for becoming their own person, separate from their parents. You may be sick of dystopian YA. They’re not.

Do you *want* to scare the living shit out of your kids? The first book in particular is stuffed with body horror.

I need your arms around me I need to feel your touch.

Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill. Caption: “FUCKING DINNER”

This is one moment when we can steal the “equal rights means equal lefts too” thing from the most rancid chuds on the right. Fuck it, anyone saying that kind of shit in a medical setting gets both of ‘em.

Victorian era?

I’ve got a smaller place around Yachats my mom goes, but you’ve got DMs off. I think. I haven’t ever DM’d anyone on this app and don’t know how it works >.<

I’ve had a whole lot of luck finding places locally. Like, do recon trips and scope out the people who don’t put their places on the internet, but instead on the tackboard at the Ace Hardware or Ray’s Food Place. They exist, and that’s where you find the deals in 2025.

I loved those trips as well. We had this shitty old run-down hotel in Brandon we’d go to with dark wooden paneling. It smelled vaguely of seaweed and ancient cigarette smoke, the kitchen and electrical were from the 1940s, and there was no Internet, but it was on a bluff over the beach.

I think you’re right. Like, nearly every major newspaper and TV outlet is run by billionaires who, if they aren’t at least fash-curious, are studiedly indifferent to democracy as a social good. Most never hear about what the Democrats are doing, just what the Republicans say they’re doing.

I mean look up the name of his cat.