The United States needs a department like ICE

No, they fucking don’t.

What the US needs to do is fix its broken as fuck immigration system. That’s what’s creating the vast, VAST majority of the problem in the first place. For fuck’s sake, it can take decades to obtain citizenship, and that’s if you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t just get lost in limbo for reasons.

America should be thanking the people who want to come here to go to school, to find work, or just to live the “American Dream” ™. Instead, we ended up with a whole bunch of nazis doing fucking nazi shit like tear gassing, hog tying, and frog marching 6 year olds into the back of an unmarked van.

We don’t need ICE. What we need is way fewer nazis.

Seriously disappointing they didn’t put sharknados in the game. smh

I have no idea how you managed to read OP’s post and fuck up the comprehension of it so badly, especially considering that OP put their point in the first fucking paragraph and even bolded it for you:

If you voted for Trump and your friends and family cut you off because of it, then I do not feel any sympathy for you.

How does this ^ have anything whatsoever to do with your off-the-wall crazy-ass interpretation?

This kills the human.

If this feud continues, one of them might actually reveal something the rest of us don’t already know.

To which the old man replies: “Man, what the fuck is up with all of you people coming up here to ask me what the meaning of life is? I moved to the top of the tallest mountain I could find to get away from you all!”

I’m going to throw a trigger warning on this next part just in case:

deleted by creator

I dunno, man. Seems like a leap to believe he’s doing it for cynical, shady business reasons when the far more likely explanation is just that he’s a stupid cunt.

I deleted my Reddit account back when they fucked over the 3rd party apps, but I still do browse their site. Much as I think that Lemmy is the superior platform, Reddit still has a huge numbers advantage, and so the amount of content over there is much greater than here.

Any time I go into the comments section, though, I am reminded that Reddit is a shithole. So I try to stay out of those and just read the linked articles.

I’m a bit puzzled by the logistics behind the “I’ll shoot you, then you shoot me” plan. Gonna chalk it up to raccoon logic.

It certainly would put a novel wrinkle into things.

Yeah, so was second world because of Russia or because of communism?

Err… yes. It was essentially a capitalist vs communist thing, but really it was more “US-aligned” versus “USSR-aligned”, since the US and USSR were the two big superpowers with guns and nukes pointed at each other. First world meant “the US, and people who like the US”, second world meant “The USSR and the people who like the USSR”, and third world was everybody who wasn’t aligned politically with either major player. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the phrase “second world” pretty much fell entirely out of use. I’m not sure why “first world” and “third world” ended up sticking around in the lexicon, but their meanings morphed to “rich countries” and “poor / developing countries”, respectively.

My guess (and this is pure speculation) is that the terms stuck around because they were related to foreign policy. Because the foreign policy wonks were primed to think of the world in terms of blocs of allies or as spheres of influence from decades of the cold war, it’s probable that they had gotten used to referring to their allies as “other first world nations”, and to the countries they sought to influence as “third world nations”. The Vietnam war, for example, was a proxy war fought against the USSR, where half of Vietnam was second-world-aligned, and the other half was first-world-aligned. Prior to those lines being drawn in the sand, it was a third world country. The same could also be said about Korea. Also, pretty much the entire continent of Africa was an ideological battleground between the US and the USSR, as both vied to woo, coerce, and force individual countries into their respective spheres of influence. Because the terms “first world” and “third world” were so frequently used as a matter of policy, it’s easy to see how the use of those terms could persist even after the original definitions became obsolete.

As for why a numbering scheme was initially employed… it’s unimportant; simply an easy way of distinguishing between teams. If the USSR had originated the concept, chances are they’d have put themselves as first world, with the US & affiliated nations as second world. Or they might have used letter designations instead of numbers. Or color coding. It doesn’t really matter in the end.

You know? I didn’t even really consider that, due to the fact that the original definitions pretty much lost their meanings with the fall of the USSR. However, since Putin’s basically working to recreate it now, it seems like those definitions are relevant once again, so yeah - you’re absolutely right.

Technically, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland are all 3rd world nations. At least, according to the original definition.

Edit: this isn’t meant to counter the point made by the comic. I just think it’s interesting.

For a deeper gut punch, remember that in “Heart of Gold”, Zoe tells Wash that she wants to have a baby with him, and she won’t brook any of his lame excuses, like “the universe is too dangerous for kids”. It’s possible that if there was ever a second movie or a continuation of the series, they’d say that Zoe did get pregnant just before all of the shit went down, but with it being abandoned IP, we have to guess. So what do you think? Is there a mini Wash in Zoe’s future?

Wash’s, in “Serenity”. It was just so unexpected and abrupt, and it served to generate a sense of unease in the viewer; after Wash’s death, no character seemed to be protected by plot armor. Granted, Shepherd Book bit it before Wash did, but the movie seemed to set him up to be separate from the rest of the crew. I loved that Whedon played with this concept of fragility in the ensuing battle, with Kaylee getting darted, Zoe getting sliced up, and Simon getting shot. And then, Mal’s battle with the agent… I thought the misdirect was masterfully done.

I’ve been affected by character deaths before and since, but Wash’s death was the only death I’ve seen in media that has made me worry for the safety of the other characters. It made a lot of sense outside of the movie, too, as “Serenity” was more or less a tribute to some IP that was never going to get resurrected. While watching the movie for the first time, I was left thinking: “what if Whedon just said ‘fuck it’?”

Humans are just exceptionally weak to cute. If aliens ever show up and try to conquer us, we’re going to be so screwed if they happen to be adorable.

Well… that is entirely a you problem. You should do a little soul searching to figure out why it is so difficult for you to pay someone dear to someone you call a friend the bare minimum amount of respect.

Would you be upset if your friends constantly misgendered you, then acted like you were the asshole because you took issue with it?

I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of “the social contract”. The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called “the justice system”. But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.

It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.

When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson’s murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother… we ain’t the owners.