The middle drawing appears to be the end scene of Bladerunner 2049 where the protagonist lies on the concrete steps, not a field.

https://youtu.be/bqFwDapu23w?t=3m50s

Meme is 0/10 literally unplayable

EDIT - Added spoiler tag. Also Snape killed Dumbledore

They’re trying to provoke a military response that will be the pretext for war for 2 purposes:

1. Distract the public from domestic issues. President’s usually get an approval ratings boost during war time too.

2. Let the new MIC that’s embedded in this administration test their new toys (Anduril, Palantir).

And the rest of the country is just going to let them do it too.

You know there’s a Canadian sports exec named Dick Pound?

Mr and Mrs Pound had a baby, looked at it, and said “were going to name him Richard, and he will be known as Dick. With a hard D”.

Really makes you wonder.

I disagree but it is interesting to note that your conception of corruption essentially doesn’t make the distinction between extractive and quid-pro-quo.

Extractive corruption is where one party uses authority to essentially shake down someone else. A cop pulls you over for a spurious reason and demands $200 in cash to make it all go away on the spot, or you can fight it and maybe win in court after significant inconvenience, cost, or just be met with immediate violence. In any case, in this case there is a perpetrator and a victim and the victim gets nothing out of it other than getting screwed.

In quid-pro-quo type corruption, both parties benefit to some degree. So for example if you’re applying for a permit at a local government office and you need it done fast, you slip them $50 to bump it to the top of the queue. They get paid, you get your permit faster .

China’s anti-corruption efforts famously dealt very harshly with extractive corruption while allowing a certain degree if quid-pro-quo corruption on the basis that 1) you cannot fully eliminate corruption so you have to prioritize and 2) quid-pro-quo corruption actually meets a market demand that isn’t being met within the official system, as you noted. So long as the clerk continues to eventually process permits for people who don’t pay the $50 bribe , there is a certain like of logic that says that you might as well let that clerk keep doing this since not everyone needs permits fast.

This form of “allowed” corruption itself requires monitoring and regulation, though as it can easily turn extractive and such practices essentially require that the clerk have some reasonable fear of going too far.

Those shares are also generally for sale for a high enough price. Given the immense current value of the brand, when Gabe dies vultures of every variety will start circling. If they offer employees 2x their share price to sell, enough of them will do it to lose control to investors that just want to enshittify everything and milk it’s brand for every last penny as they drive it into the ground.

Even if it wasn’t regressive (which it is) it still wouldn’t work to replace income tax. The tariffs incentivize domestication of production, so people are literally incentivized to circumvent them. That’s also (lol) one of the stated goals here - being back manufacturing. But you can’t use tariffs to both bring back manufacturing and replace income tax or even a substantial part of it in the short term anyways. It’s really just one or the other. Realistically, given the competence with which they’re going about it, it’ll be neither.

I mean it’s not like the kid killed a random person. In a sense he’s the only character doing any kind of root cause analysis.

He’s acting exactly like a current established Democrat leader. He is proudly saying he doesn’t take money from PACs, except AIPAC is the exception and if you ask why you’re antisemitic. He cares about keeping the democratic unconditionally and uncritically 100 perfect behind Israel as his main policy goal, far more than any domestic concern. In that he has tons of company and is doing his job just fine.

Patients are often scared to complain about Doctors.

No they’re not. Especially not in the UK.

If this person wants to fight for Hamas, that’s her choice, but she clearly has lost sense of professional conduct to be a doctor.

Could have just spared everyone this verbal diarrhea.

More and more products that were previously targeted at what was the middle class are now targeting solely the top 10% of income earners. It’s pretty tragic, and corrosive to the long term health of society.

The best Americans can do is an organized protest on a weekend that doesn’t affect the economy, ensuring that it can be safely ignored.

Half these posts are just AI bots shouting nonsense at each other.

Even given their horeshit premises that page is comically badly written. I don’t even think they used AI, because AI could have done it better.

There is a theory that the recent pipeline MOU , given all the caveats and requirements on the part of Alberta (including finding private funding and first Nations consultations) is a strategic play to shut Danielle Smith up for a while. I think Carney would actually support the pipeline under the terms laid out in the MOU, but it’s just a long shot that Alberta can get their end of it done that it seems likely that neutralizing her and the pissy Alberta separatist movement might have been the primary goal .

So what? What is he afraid of? Just say it’s AI. Whatever Putin’s leverage was it evaporated the moment Trump won his second term. Trump just doesn’t want to tank the week of chaos and embarrassment that it would cause because he’s incredibly weak.

How much does it have to shrink for Italians and Irish to get kicked out?

The theory that he can’t and doesn’t ever read (like, at all) could also apply here.

They just want to criminalize homelessness and throw them in jail. That’s it. That’s all this is.

Mostly they’re having a disagreement about whether this is the right time to reveal that they hate Jews.

It only counts if you pour the oat milk super slow while maintaining unflinching eye contact with the staff.