before my political awakening I just took them at face value. But now they're like time capsules of the fairly shallow and hardly biting political commentary of the era.

Specifically im talking about sitcoms that premiered in the late 90s (or early 2000s) and continued thru the 00s. Take Scrubs for example. There's a few episodes where the hospital workers break into camps discussing the Iraq war. Elliott, played by Sarah Chalke, is revealed as a republican. I suppose this mirrors how actual conversations at the time played out but its somewhat endearing how it all seems so quaint looking back. I know watching at the time I was like wow it's refreshing how they're being so political lmao.

I think the cringiest when it comes to this is will and grace. There's a few episodes with bush-targeted jokes delivered primarily by debra messing (yuck). And they all have to do with his intelligence.

I think the only exceptions are either the shows that did it smartly (for libs anyways) like the first three seasons of Arrested Development or ones that just focused on the domestic/life problems of the characters, like Malcolm in the middle (which is probably the last great working class sitcom) or everybody loves raymond.

Playing spongebob the cosmic shake (yes yes low-rent licensed game, look life sucks and I'm getting dopamine any way I can) and I don't know why Manta Fe just had me burst out laughing.

Am I going insane?

no notes 10/10

ngl russia is not making it easy to give critical support lol

A court in Thailand has ruled that the biggest party in parliament violated the constitution when it sought to change a strict law against insulting the country’s monarchy.

The reformist Move Forward Party (MFP) finished first in last year’s election on a progressive platform that included a proposal to amend the lese majeste law that outraged Thailand’s conservative elite.

The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday the plan showed “an intent to separate the monarchy from the Thai nation, which is significantly dangerous to the security of the state

quite disheartening. Thailand is a beautiful, promising country that is held back by a system of rule that should have been abolished long ago. Hopefully the Thai people put an end to it someday.

One of the most well-established patterns in measuring public opinion is that every generation tends to move as one in terms of its politics and general ideology. Its members share the same formative experiences, reach life’s big milestones at the same time and intermingle in the same spaces. So how should we make sense of reports that Gen Z is hyper-progressive on certain issues, but surprisingly conservative on others? The answer, in the words of Alice Evans, a visiting fellow at Stanford University and one of the leading researchers on the topic, is that today’s under-thirties are undergoing a great gender divergence, with young women in the former camp and young men the latter. Gen Z is two generations, not one. In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye. In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up

The state plans to carry out the first U.S. execution via nitrogen hypoxia with Kenneth Smith, who survived an earlier attempt to execute him by lethal injection

Death to America, and death to the South in particular. Scorch that motherfucking earth.

or is there just a sense of please let it die lmao. Fede alvarez seems like a passable director, I'm hoping he pushes out something decent. I'm a bit warmer on the upcoming fx series. I like noah hawley well enough, I think he's up to the job. Hopefully we get a story that really expands on the anticapitalist themes.

A leaked document written by Gila Gamaliel, the Israeli intelligence minister, came to light in late October amid the devastating war in Gaza.

It set out a proposal to relocate the residents of Gaza to Sinai (Egypt) as a solution “which will produce positive long-term strategic results”. But how could Egypt accept such a solution when most of its population appears to be pro-Palestinian?

The answer can be found in the world of macroeconomics: debt.

After being revealed by the Israeli newspaper Calcalist and WikiLeaks, the proposal is getting attention in the Israeli and Egyptian critical press. Tel Aviv appears to be in talks with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about Egypt taking in Gazans and settling them in Sinai, in exchange for the cancellation of all its debts to the World Bank.

This could mean the Israeli government would take on the debts Egypt owes to multilateral creditors (such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund etc.) or that (with the support of the United States) it would convince allied Western countries to write off Egyptian debts to national institutions

Hope Egypt doesnt fall for this

Whats a gaming failure or undeveloped project you wish had a more successful release/was fully realized? For me its tomb raider angel of darkness. There were a lot of problems with the production, ranging from lack of leadership to scrapped concepts to the unpreparedness of the team for the complexity of programming for the PS2. Core design didnt have enough time to iron out the kinks even with all the crunch time, and eidos didnt give them more time because they wanted to release in june.

The game was an unfinished mess, full of bugs and haphazard level design. But its gained something of a cult status within the raider community, with memes centering on its iconic side characters like janice the parisian sex worker as well as lara's feisty one-liners. Its still being kept alive by a dedicated community of speedrunners and unofficial remasters. I often think what could have been if it had more time to at least be passable at launch. Core planned two sequels that would have continued the story. Obviously they were scrapped, core design went defunct, and tomb raider was handed over to crystal dynamics.