I really liked this movie, but I feel like it had the opportunity to rise closer to the quality of Captain America: Winter Soldier that it missed.

To get this out of the way, it was very good. It did a lot of things well.

That said, I feel that it embraced certain widespread bad habits in superhero movies that it could’ve overcome, and which would’ve made this one of the great Marvel movies.

Principally, characters just show up in costumes sometimes for fights that don’t make great sense, talk, and then reappear long distances away after an unspecified-but-short amount of time at the next key location.

Sometimes, a bit of effort is made to provide a bit of explanation, as is the case when Alexi overseas Val in his limo. But let’s be honest: the director of the CIA riding around in an unfamiliar limo (driven by a former Soviet spy!) having sensitive conversations with one clearly conflicted lackey is more Venture Bros. than All the King’s Men.

Does it ruin the movie? Of course not. But it’s representative of the tropes. Where did Bucky get those anti-humvee grenades?? And why the hell did he use one on an unarmed civilian vehicle in the middle of the United States?!? How did he even get them to the gas station? Did they walk because he blew up their car against all reason!?!

Bucky just shows up to superhero. He enters the nightmare dimension that brutalizes you with your worst crimes and flippantly jokes that it’s unpleasant. It tries to sidestep context that would actually make it richer!

For instance: If Bucky blew out the tires on those trucks, followed by the state highway patrol men to take those soldiers into custody that would’ve ruled. It makes the story bigger! What the fuck did Val tell those guys to get them to carry out orders that fucked?? The tension goes up! This isn’t happening totally out of sight! People are going to hear about Bucky getting tangled up in this, and black ops vans live-firing on domestic soil with unclear authority! What??

And would it have killed the writers to have Bucky enter Bob’s attic screaming violent threats in Russian before collapsing to the floor gasping though sobs? To have him just utterly break down and remind us that he was forced to commit atrocities and kill Innocents and people he loved? And then try to compose himself and focus on his mission in the midst of what is clearly a barely managed panic attack?

And then have Yelina point out that it can get better for Bob, because Bucky – and all of them! – are proof that Bob IS NOT ALONE IN HIS PAIN???

Aggh! That would’ve been AMAZING! They could’ve done more with this if they didn’t do the comic-book corner cutting. The corners are where the true greatness often comes!!

Why, because they spoke truth to those who didn’t want to hear it?

This article is true and uniquely human in a way that is rare in the ai slop era.

Bob is a super dangerous sadboi puppygod. He’s a confused, traumatized sweet-hearted disaster with floppy dark hair, bipolar disorder and abs that can destroy the world if he gets too sad, and no one cares about him… except YOU. The article speaks the truth.

And good for them! Whatever the gen-alpha equivalent of a Tumblr girl is, they need this.

This is an amazing shower thought.

Can you put this in any context? Because it seems to confirm what I’ve said: orthodox Jews were historically misaligned with liberal zionism. But the modern form of zionism is much closer to religious zionism, and the hosting of one of the most outspoken and fascistic expansionist Israeli leaders at the worldwide headquarters for the Chabad-Lubavitch sect seems to really remove a lot of ambiguity here.

It looked like a crowd of Chabadniks gathered around the Chabad global headquarters to violently terrorize anti-zionist protesters (or anyone they confused for protesters). I think you might just be operating on incomplete or outdated information about orthodox Jews and zionism.

I think you’re confused.

First, I’m about 99% sure that was a crowd of young orthodox men. I saw a video, and it looked like your standard Crown Heights Haredi mob. It was also outside of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters.

Also, why do you think Orthodox Jews are anti-zionist? Historically I think they were in tactical disagreement with modern liberal Zionism as a project, but I think they’ve come around and are now among the most violent supporters of land theft, settler violence, and exterminationism.

If I’m missing something, let me know.

Here’s the part that really sent me reeling:

An archetypal neoconservative, Coleman started off as an anti-war activist who once worked as a roadie for Jethro Tull, and was suspended from Hofstra University for leading a sit-in. “I went to Woodstock, and I inhaled!” he boasted at the JNS summit. After first taking office as a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, Coleman wound up narrowly losing his Senate seat to Al Franken in 2008 as a Republican.

In addition to serving as the national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and founder of the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, Coleman now works as a top lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I was just at a picket line and there were two folks from the Socialist Workers Party, and I was asking them about local actions and they mentioned that one of their members had recently run for mayor. And I asked if he was the one who was really strangely Zionist and they started explaining how Zionism was a socialist priority and just… it’s so weird.

We all must guard against whatever the fuck happened to Coleman. How you start off as an anti-war socialist and end up speaking in front of a crowd of fascists declaring that the oligarchs must do a better job of propagandizing against the proletariat is hard for me to follow, but we all need to make sure we never wind up catching whatever he caught.

Oof. This is so fucking tragic.

I’m honestly surprised that Adams would actually investigate crimes committed by an Orthodox mob. That’s his base.

We’ll see.

I think the response depends on what your goal is.

I assume that you find it annoying? Or disrespectful? Is the issue impacting work at all, or do you just hate having to talk to them through this impersonal intermediary? I think if that’s the case, the main remedy is to start by talking to them and telling them how you feel. If they want to use an LLM, fine, but they should at least try to disguise it better.

I think animal affection – particularly for cute, non useful animals – is an extension of our infant protection drive.

This is great! Thanks for setting it up!

This is so painful to read. It’s obvious genocide. This is a blatant campaign of extermination.

I was going to say that I’m pretty sure these exist and they’re mostly run and attended by PhDs who love bluegrass music

Try a different instance.

I’m on slrpnk.net and it’s all radical environmentalists.

Come for [email protected], stay for [email protected].

It’s like half of NASA’s entire budget.

From a risk mitigation perspective, this is a case of fighting the last war. We know the war that is coming: it’s climate collapse. We don’t need faster rockets, we need high speed rail.

$41M per missile? And 300 of them?

Sheeet. That’s over ten billion dollars?

Am I mathing right? That’s a lotta dough.

This article doesn’t really live up to the headline.

I read to see why it’s worse than it seems, and the reason given is that Tesla isn’t competitive or popular.

That’s not really worse than it appears. That’s just as bad as it appears.

Which is really bad. But there’s no second shoe in the article. I want my two minutes back.

The same ones listed in the article. Property ownership, speech, privacy, etc.

I feel like the rise of corporate personhood is the elephant in the room this article seems to avoid acknowledging.

I don’t really know much about him, and I can’t dispute your personal gut feeling. But I’m not familiar with anything that gives me this feeling.

For what it’s worth, I think in general that if you say, “I just don’t quite trust <name>. I didn’t know why, but they creep me out,” about pretty much anyone in public political life you can probably find a basis for that over a long enough time scale.

Ah today’s batch of fresh horrors has arrived.

Fucking hell. The courage of this person. That poem at the end nearly broke me.