They really were the first online generation. After World War 2, pretty much all the functions we associate with the internet were present, but slower and spread out over multiple systems. Radio, television, telephone - even older forms of mass media like magazines and newspapers played some role. People even note that the sixties marked a new cultural phenomenon - by that point the first generation raised in this "analog online" was old enough to be contributing to it's cultural output. It marked the start of the feedback loop.

The Baby Boomers experienced a lot of firsts for whats now considered the standard experience of growing up in the US. It... really explains a lot.

To say nothing of the backlash from Kira being a self-described terrorist

Not sure how accurate this is, but I remember when New Super Mario Bros Wii came out, there was a Nintendo Power article that noted that Japanese playtesters used the multiplayer features to help each other through levels, and american playtesters used it to throw one another into pits.

For taking on this most serious responsibility, guardians will be compensated with a one-time $500 stipend. That is what state lawmakers allocated for this position.

...

Buried on page 554 of the plan is a directive to execute every remaining person on federal death row — and dramatically expand the use of the death penalty

this kind of scrutiny is, in a weird way, why I think Trump may be the harm reduction candidate. Liberals and liberal outlets have endless excuses for the Democrats and their failures, and with any other Republican they keep the gloves of respectability on. But they hate Trump so much, they do real actual combative journalism on everything everything his campaign does.

Personally, I see that as a sign the strategy is working. Using market forces to your advantage, as a nominally socialist organization, is inevitably going to draw a lot of criticism from your left. You get two groups: purists who see any sort of market action as an immediate and disqualifying sin; and more principled materialists who understand the rational, but also recognize the risk of being overwhelmed by market forces. It's nice to say you will strip out private capital in the future, but when will that actually be? When the conditions are right, will it actually happen? Worse, will your organization even be able to recognize those conditions? These are important questions, but we're not gonna see the answer any time soon.

In the mean time, western leftist doing the fire-&-brimstone preacher act is useful. Capitalists (the smarter, self-aware capitalist...) hear leftist discord over China and interpret that as meaning their oversees investments are safe.

and i thought people who say Romeo & Juliet is a love story were missing the point... yeesh

The kicker is when the app doesn't work without an internet connection -- I wanna find the devs responsible and scream, "You've just built a very shitty website with a mandatory proprietary browser!"

People who hide behind the word "escapism" are absolutely the sort of people who will go off on a rant about how places like China or Russia or [insert target country here] are full of unthinking drones that wouldn't dream of contradicting the status quo. :projection:

It's like when chuds look at the US locking up black people at, like, 6 times the rate of white people, then insist it's not the result of systemic racism but instead a confirmation of their own racist beliefs.

the earth was flat but they used the corners in the COVID vaccine and that's why it's round now

...is this hyperbole, or did a comment actually assert this?

Fuckin' sick, I'm gonna be grinning about that all day