Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

[Virginiá]

The concept of creating a new thread every time a previous thread reaches 2000 posts is a bad concept.

Cool thanks

[Virginiá]

The Handmaid's Tale is a pretty stupid work in general. Even the most backwards, repressive and fundamentalist forms of Christianity have next to no resemblance to the regime of Gilead, and some aspects of it are just things that Margaret Atwood completely made up, for example literally no society of any religion or culture EVER has not allowed women to have their own names and only referred to them as the property of their husband.

I think it's only the handmaids that aren't allowed to have their own names.

[Virginiá]

The Handmaid's Tale is a pretty stupid work in general. Even the most backwards, repressive and fundamentalist forms of Christianity have next to no resemblance to the regime of Gilead, and some aspects of it are just things that Margaret Atwood completely made up, for example literally no society of any religion or culture EVER has not allowed women to have their own names and only referred to them as the property of their husband.

I think it's only the handmaids that aren't allowed to have their own names.

Regardless.

Also no Christian group has ever supported a ban on women's literacy for centuries...well ever actually. It might not have been a high priority in medieval times, but it wasn't actually forbidden. (Plus most Catholic leaders then wanted most men to not be able to read as well, so the layity couldn't read the Bible on their own and wouldn't require church leaders telling them what to believe.)

Yea I mean that show's portrayal is unrealistically barbaric imo, and not realistic at all in so many other aspects. The way the SoJ came to power makes no sense, and the idea that banning women from working or even using money in one fell swoop would be accepted by the public is laughable, and it would crash the economy as well (which it didn't seem to do in the story afaik). And what is with Gilead seeming to have armed guards literally everywhere? If they get rid of the entire female workforce, they would not have enough men available to just stand around with guns because they would be needed to fill the gaps left by women leaving the workforce.

[Virginiá]

Isn't actually taking action to help society the opposite of what most people mean by virtue signaling?

Also can't help but feel like there is a lot of projection there. Many people really do care about their communities / the world in general and devote themselves to fixing it. To say all of that is superficial and meaningless strikes me as profoundly cynical towards humanity, and in a way that casually waves away the millions of people who actually spend enormous amounts of time helping other people.

[Virginiá]

I generally think flying across the world to a situation where you are making extremely marginal improvements is not worthwhile. Local community is extremely sensible.

Well, worthwhile can be subjective. Some people think of worthwhile in that context as how it helps a large amount of people and others would be content to just help one or two.

[Virginiá]

People who use public restrooms and leave anything resembling a mess are terrible people.

It must be an unpopular opinion because it seems to happen so often that the only conclusion to draw is that people reject the idea of cleaning up after themselves. I mean, who destroys a public bathroom and just walks away without cleaning anything up? Do they realize some poor person has to go in there at some point and deal with that? Or even more, that the next person who needs to use the bathroom may not be able to without cleaning it up themselves? The vast majority of these people would not leave their own bathrooms in such a disgusting state. The only real excuses that measure up are if you are enfeebled and just incapable of doing it, or if you either meant to, but an emergency came up, or if there was absolutely no paper towels/toilet paper nearby (and nothing within the vicinity of the bathroom) to work with.

[Virginiá]

Forced friendliness in retail sucks. The gas station down the street from me must have a strict greeting requirement for employees because they say "hi" loudly to basically everyone who comes in, sometimes you have like 3 employees shouting "hi" at you. One of them, who has been there as long as I've lived here, says it so much that it's just become the most monotone / robotic "hi" I've ever heard. It's completely meaningless. Greeting someone makes sense when you're actually being genuine about it, but still, in a busy store, why? I'd much rather just come and go without being acknowledged, because it always feels fake anyway. I didn't go in to exchange meaningless platitudes. I just wanted candy, or gas, or whatever. It's not even just fake greetings, it's just the general forced niceness of employees in general. Like at Publix, the grocery store chain here, god forbid you ask anyone a question less you have a swarm of employees descend upon you. The last time I did that, I just asked someone at the front desk to check the computer to see if they still carried something, and while he was doing that, two other employees must have overheard and came over and asked if I needed help, and I said no the other guy is helping, and they ask him, and he tells them, and they are like, "Oh well let's take a look!" despite me just coming from where they were going, and completely ignored me saying I checked it up and down already.

It feels funny to complain about people trying to be helpful but sometimes I really just wish store employees would ignore you unless you actually asked for something, and then maybe not be so overwhelming.

[Virginiá]

i hate the word 'flex' now

[Virginiá]

Not too fond of the original Star Wars movies because the acting isn't much better than the prequels, except since there are no fancy graphics to make up for it. CGI and good battle scenes helps put the prequels over the top for me, although the stupid kid-like talking droids doesn't help.

Sometimes I wish they'd just redo the original SW movies with modern graphics and lightsaber duels that don't give you the impression that they have no idea what they are doing. Like, it's hard to square the idea that Darth Vader is some ultimate badass when you see them swinging around a lightsaber in the OT as if he was some child playing with a toy. Ditto for Kenobi.

I actually love Star Wars in general but that is in spite of massive execution flaws. I think Rogue One might be my ideal SW film, actually. Less comical and more sobering.

[Virginiá]

Lucas did attempt a revamp of the original trilogy's technical aspects and I'd consider it a downgrade personally.

I think my ideal version of the movies would have to include a total redo with huge amounts of CGI. I find the originals unappealing enough where it'd be hard to make it more so for me, although I know I'm in the extreme minority on that. I just don't like old movies in general (pre-90s). The acting is just different (and often crappier - again, in my opinion), and there are rarely any special effects worth speaking of. Star Wars is really a special effects kind of movie.

[Virginiá]

Unity in this country isn't going to happen anytime soon, and the only solution (arguably, from either side's perspective) is total political domination for a generation or more, until the opposition spends so much time in the majority's shadow that they stop bitterly contesting every single election as if their lives depended on it. I'm not saying it's possible for either side right now, just that it needs to happen for things to cool down. It feels weird to say but, American elections are too competitive. The closeness of so many elections, most importantly the presidency, means each party believes if they just "fight harder," they can win. For the GOP, a party that has been embracing anti-democratic principles for years now, that also means pulling up the ladders as they climb, making sure that their power is locked in, even if that means engaging in tactics that are tantamount to rigging elections. That shouldn't be that surprising though, considering conservatives have a long and storied history of subverting democracy to cling to power.

I get that Biden or any other sane president has to make some sort of appeal to the idea of unity and coming together, because many people believe or at least want to believe that we can just "come together." But the fact is, Republicans literally think Biden stole an election from them, and they believe this despite there not being any evidence. They literally just stormed the Capitol building to actually try and steal the election for Trump. A disturbingly large minority of conservatives also believe some or all of the Q conspiracy that Democrats and the elite are cannibal pedophiles who are eating children. Exactly what is there here that gives one even the slightest impression that "unity" is possible? Or even more, what makes anyone think "bipartisanship" is ever going to be a thing over the next decade? McConnell is already back to full-blown obstruction and we are just two days in. It's never going to happen. There is not going to be any holding hands singing Kumbaya at the end of this story.

[Virginiá]

this thread was a mistake