I’ve thought about this a lot. I think its more the sheer oversaturation of “culture” than it is a true lack of imagination. People alive today consume exponentially greater amounts of “culture” (for the broadest term possible) than anyone ever before, and it’s not even close.

When tech enables you to experience a movie or a video game or a performer 30 years after the death of everyone involved, in essentially the same fidelity as the day it debuted, “old culture” has a much harder time making way for “new culture.” If Star Wars exists, why care about Rebel Moon or whatever that movie was called?

I think the public consciousness can only maintain cognizance and interest in so much, but at the same time creatives are constantly adding to the Culture Pile. But the more tech enables us to hold on to our past, it becomes more and more difficult to move on, and the majority of new stuff goes unwanted and unappreciated. And so the mass market dives into keeping the old alive with reboots, remakes, remasters, and now AI recreations, because that’s what people respond to.

How else are cops supposed to buy new sidearms every 3 years?

With something like 2/3 of American military-age men being too overweight or obese to serve, these drugs would likely be considered strategically essential in any [hopefully] theoretical throwdown.

Suing the Church of Scientology for wrongful death? Yeah, good luck with that.

This is kind of where I’m at. I don’t imagine any amount of cash in a bank account is going to prepare us for what’s to come. Even if you could put money aside, the money you typically put towards retirement might just be better off towards becoming a doomsday prepper. Probably wouldn’t save you either way, but it may buy you a little time that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Like others have said, I imagine my “retirement” as bearing witness to the collapse of modern society and ultimately dying in some lousy brawl with other desperate refugees, or by some untreated bacterial infection.

This country will break before anything meaningful happens, just like with chattel slavery.

1. That’s why they reference the Insurrection Act. Whether the current situation meets the criteria laid out does not matter to them.
2. It should be obvious by now that words on the books do not stop fascists. They intend to stack public institution far and deep with party loyalists so that nobody can say “no” to their will…legally, anyway.

The only thing Bethesda is motivated to do, frothing, absolutely chomping at the bit, is figure out a way to successfully monetize modded content.

I could be considered a gun nut myself but I will not pretend that this behavior is some abnormal outlier. There are plenty, plenty of American gun owners who think like this man does, they just haven’t had the opportunity for their malformed amygdala to get someone killed.

You mention Rittenhouse but he’s a gun culture hero. Zimmerman and the like, all heroes. People who get to use their gun to lay down the law like the Earp posse are generally seen as heroes when they don’t completely fuck up like this guy, they’re not shunned as short-sighted and reckless.

In the conservative household children do not have agency. They are simply the father’s progeny, and are expected to carry on their ideals and generally act in ways that please them.

I feel like this should have been released closer to tax season? Now the big filers will have 10 months to strategize and try to sabotage the use of this service before it hits their bottom line.

Backwoods small town yee-yee crap.

I’ve often wondered how many bodies are buried out in the sticks that never get found because the locals, including the local sheriff’s office, all cover for each other.

The product doesn’t need to be viable, just needs enough plausibility to be able to sell it to your desperate rube customers.

Reminds me of those companies who sold literal divining rods to the government as high-tech explosive detectors post-9/11.

I’d settle for it being widely seen as the ignorant anachronism that it is and their power over secular government being completely wrested.

If an elected leader from my country said that we need to curry favor with Neptune to stop a dry season I’d want them thrown out as would many others probably. But every day we have leaders around the world making decisions based on their Iron Age faith and that’s seen as okay…because they’re part of the same club? Out of the spirit of acceptance? Personally my acceptance is wearing thin watching these nutjobs break whatever they can. They belong in communes in the woods, not leading nuclear-armed countries.

What are you going to do? Shoot at cops executing a lawful search warrant?

He’s celebrating the murder of a “liberal” dissident, which cancels out any and all positive qualities in the MAGA fascist mind.

Moreover, he wants far right murderers and those who aspire to be far right murderers to know that he has their back, “when the time is right.”

The GOP is both a criminal enterprise and a seditious terrorist organization, and they intend to seize the levers of power by force very soon.

I put that there to emphasize that it was a fairly even two-way exchange, “active,” as opposed to something like him setting an ambush where the FBI got little or no shots off. Probably didn’t serve that purpose but I tried.

In 1986 someone used the bottom to basically single-handedly kill 2 FBI agents and wound 4 others in an active gunfight. In most other countries, both weapons are heavily regulated if not prohibited for civilian ownership.

Assault weapon bans are both a product of ignorant perception and the lack of political will to ban all self-loading firearms or subgroups thereof.

Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners but there are also a worrying amount of terminally fearful people with violent ideation. Many are likely one bad life event, one half-cocked response to an uncertain situation from being a mugshot on a news story like this prick.

It should be noted that, for better or worse, importing “parts kits” of firearms, even machine guns, is not illegal in and of itself. Once the receiver and barrel is torch-cut into pieces per ATF guidelines, it ceases to be a firearm in the eyes of the law and it can be sold like any generic hardware in the US, with some state exceptions.

This is usually done by a proper import-export outfit who is careful to follow the laws, though. It sounds more like this guy was on Telegram with Vadim trying to skirt sanctions and make a quick buck, and the kits were likely not properly demilled, given the machine gun possession charges.