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I think ECBT2000AD covered it on one of their podcasts but thats about it.

God, but they're just poisonous.

I'd like to see Mechastopheles back as well.

So try and recognize the irony of your own post, in all love.

Sort of on-topic, there was this: Mona: Court rules women's-only exhibit must allow male visitors

TL/DR - Feminist art exhibition tries to make point about historical disenfranchisement by excluding men. Man sues and wins right of access.

Linguist's corner: article contains word "contumelious".

Justice Department corruption I've not liked:

1. Smiley Retcon - I was hiding in the walls all along, drinking tea out of china cups. Just ... too silly. And too British.
2. Religious Stealth Judges - a giant moon city tries to take over MC-1 - wah?! Why not just run your moon city successfully?
3. Secret Block Judges - it started well, but Dredd just up and killed them in a single day without breaking sweat. Too pathetic.


Justice Department corruption I've liked:

1. Cal. C'mon - who wouldn't be won over by Pat Mills taking over MC-1 and sentencing everyone to death?
2. The Penitent Man SJS welcome home squad. It was just bleakly realistic. Just in the news that past couple of years, there have multiple examples of corrupt police goon squads doing their own thing.
3. The quiet corruption that ended in Maitland's death. The street judges themselves have become self-serving. In some ways, it's a corruption that goes right to the top.
4. The Judda, if they count. Splitters!
5. That time Texas City almost took over. (If anything, it was all over too quickly.)
6. Sinfield's anti-Mutie takeover. What's the status of muties in the Meg at the moment, anyway?

I've noticed that as well, Jim, about the younger generation. Mini-Solo is non-binary, as it happens.

Talking of the Phoenix, mini-Solo greatly enjoyed their April Fools issue. 2000 AD's long-running Regened gag usurps it, though, in terms of dedication to the bit.

Shurely there's come mileage to be had blaming the Spacewarp delays on some kind of wormhole fiasco? (And if Pat uses my great idea, I'd also like to be recompensed for the research I did. Ten quid should cover it.)

less room to defy the mainstream or suffer ostracisation

I think that's a really interesting observation, because I'd make the same argument in reverse. Like, people who live on a farm in the countryside have literally said to me "we don't really have transgenderism here - it's a country farming community".

It feels like it's way more dangerous to pop your head above the parapet and say "I'm different" in a rural community. There's nowhere to hide, and people are set in their ways.

(The high school I attended didn't have open gayness. That's because open gayness was unsafe, not because nobody was gay.)

Well, yes. I hope it was clear from my post upthread that I'm not anti-farmer. Nor do I believe that all farmers think in a uniform manner. Or that they're all white. Or that the white ones are all supremacists.

There is something that makes *most* folk in large cities in the US not vote for Trump. And there is something that makes *most* folk in rural areas in the US vote for Trump.

Responding to Fortnight:

I find it easier to navigate this argument when I think of the current debate around trans identity being played out noisily in the media. Don't faint! Reason: I think that JK Rowling hates men. I have sympathy for feminism (I even think of myself as a feminist), but when people make blanket statements about men (e.g. "typical man") it gets my hackles up. Rowling seems to be saying that because trans women were (probably) born with male junk, that they're inescapably men, and ergo not to be trusted. She's a misandrist - and she can mostly keep that under wraps, but fails utterly when she gets into her "wolf in sheep's clothing" mindset.

It's a difficult argument to make in public, though. The thing is, that violence against women by men is very real - and very prolific. So, her hatred is grounded in a lived reality.

When writing something, take a moment to mentally search & replace your text with the opposing version of each relevant term... white/black, straight/gay, cis/trans, male/female, left/right, etc, and re-read. If you'd be offended at that version, then what you've written is offensive.

Lots of love and all, but this is leaning into false equivalency - but then the entire left/right divide is an over-simplification (I agree). I suppose what I'm trying to say is that white and black aren't equal, and because they're not, one can validly complain about the inequality. The phrase "black lives matter" does not mean the same thing as "white lives matter", because of the context we live in.

Well, it's complicated. I live in the east of Washington state, which is a blue (Democratic) state. We haven't voted red (Donald/Republican) since 1984. Also, I live in a relatively built up area pretty near to the big cities. That generally means people are a bit more open-minded and liberal, which is kinda what the Dems represent. More or less. If you go east you get to the more sparsely populated areas - and that means farms, and that means people like Republican things like racism, privatization, a maximum of two genders, THE BIBLE, and so on. Again, generally. More or less.

Look, here's a map of our state from the last election:



Red seems to take up more space, but there are literally fewer brains there.

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None of this answers very well why people vote for Trump, because (in all fairness) it's not in anyone's best interest to vote for a fascist who would happily bulldoze you if you looked at him funny. He would throw anyone at all under the bus if it would promote his own interests - as has been made abundantly clear over time by his actions. And yet! Even those who he has personally thrown under a moving bus (e.g. Pence) still lickspittle up to him because they survived, and there's still the smell of power lingering around the Orange C*nt.

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I still haven't answered it. They're disenfranchised and he promised he would franchise 'em, and (crucially) they believe him. The Christian Fundies love him, because he's managed to stock the Supreme Court with a bunch of 'em and now they're all set to enslave women as walking baby-factories, and make being gay illegal. The white supremacists love him, because he's a racist, father. The gun-nuts love him because he doesn't give a fuck if a bunch of kiddies get shot as long as there's some profit in it (and some of them are so bored that civil war sounds kind of like a hoot). 8chan love him because of the Q-lulz. Conspiracy nuts love him because his existence feeds their need for meaning.

I realize you could read this as "farmers are backwards, racist, misogynistic, fuck-heads", and be all like "Funt, man, I know a nice farmer", but look at the map. It's farmers. White ones.

++Nothing to see here++

Donald Trump's ego at work in his latest campaign ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOUSn_pN8o

Ack! I've vomited!

I was watching a bizarre documentary - The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem - which posits the notion that Trump's rise to power is directly attributable to 8chan and Gamergate. While this may seem (and feels) like an ego-stretch, the way it's portrayed in the doc is fairly persuasive.