Swagnarok

Well, I don't know a whole lot about what's going on either, but right now it looks like the UK is approaching a deadline after which, if no deal with the EU is reached and ratified, there'll be a "hard Brexit" (that is, with no deal attached to ameliorate its worst effects). Teresa May has broken with her party, the Conservatives, and is asking the EU for an extension (that is, more time to hammer out a deal before a hard Brexit kicks in).

Basically they couldn't come up with any agreement, which probably has to do both with a gridlocked Parliament and a EU that wants to play hardball and punish the UK for its decision to leave.

If I'm exhausted after a 75 meter sprint, does that mean I'm ridiculously out of shape?

Fun Fact: If they made a Star Force 4 I would immediately blow the dust off my 3DS, find a charger for it, make a withdrawal, rush to GameStop, and then return home and marathon that mofo, my pending ConLaw final project be darned.

Not really much of a gamer anymore. But I used to be. If I had more free time (and wasn't about to lose most of my free time) then maybe I'd enjoy getting back into some of that. There were a lot of games that I enjoyed, but a few that stand out are: (1). Donkey Kong 64, which was a gloriously lengthy adventure in solo play (2). Super Smash Bros 64 and Brawl (3). Age of Empires II, which had this game-modding feature that you could spend hours playing around with (4). Pokemon Mystery Dungeon gens I and II (everything past that was garbage) 5. The Megaman Star Force series for the Nintendo DS, which in many respects was revolutionary for its time and a blast to play through (6). The main title Pokemon series, though I never finished gens IV or VII and possibly III. I particularly enjoyed V and II, in retrospect. (7) Tony Hawk 64 (8) Fire Emblem: Awakening was something that I only played through once but it had a fairly memorable soundtrack, among other things. It left somewhat of a lasting impression on me and I get nostalgic thinking about it. (9) Kid Icarus: Uprising, which was I think the first game I got for the 3DS, though it doesn't have great replay value and I never did the Wi-Fi multiplayer for that.

If this definition includes board or card games, I'm not big on those either (and never was, unlike video games), but I was usually up for a good game of monopoly or Settlers of Catan, or perhaps Blokus. Anything where you get to "take over" stuff or part of the board, though my mom usually had to make me play because of course I would much rather just be on the internet instead. She made me play no small amount of Munchkins too when my sister brought it over. Hated that game, though I usually liked it well enough once we were deep into it. Getting started was always the hard part. It had to have been like pulling teeth. We also had a "Harry Potter Clue" boardset that we played a few times on and that was neat.

My brother once fashioned this Pokemon game out of playing cards and that was pretty cool too. We only played that a few times, but I distinctly remember an absurd amount of life points could be lost if a Parasect was attacked by a Moltres (yeah, it was kind of Yu-Gi-Oh based).

In terms of physical, I always hated sports (with the semi-exception of soccer) but we used to play Capture the Flag  at the park and I always had a great time being part of that. The teams were pretty large, and so was the park, which is the only way to go with a game like that. One time I intentionally betrayed my team, grabbed the flag which I was supposed to guard, and ran to the other end. I knew exactly what I was doing, but I don't quite remember what my motivation was.

I usually just skip the homepage and go straight to "Forum". As I normally did on DDO as well. If there's one debate that's really drawing a lot of attention and activity then it should be featured on the homepage, and hopefully that feature will not malfunction for at least a couple of years.

I wish this was a broader "census" (I suspect you meant consensus) thread for the site in general, because there really isn't a whole lot to say about the homepage. Umm, the three things included at the bottom are either heavily redundant or misleading. To my knowledge there is not currently a "general chat" feature, though I do believe that earlier on in this site's life cycle Mike was working on designing something to that effect, which I presume he since abandoned work on.

*as frick

Anime has kind of a bad rap among normies. And it's easy to see why. It definitely has an *ahem* less than savory undercurrent that I've come across more of in the past year or so.

However, one thing that immediately catches the eye when it comes to anime is that it's often WAY more imaginative and creative than most of the drivel coming from the US (and of course, since the US utterly dominates the film and television industries in the Western world it goes without saying that anime is superior to most of the stuff put out by, say, European countries). Shows like Breaking Bad, and possibly Game of Thrones, are the exception and not the rule. The Harry Potter film series was also incredible, but I digress.

If you want an example of what I'm talking about, try a fairly obscure anime called "Shin Sekai Yori". I never finished because it was gay af*, but it entails an extraordinarily elaborate scenario that probably no US show can compare to in that regard.

Alternatively, if you just want an anime that people who normally hate anime love, try Attack on Titan. It's mainstream enough.

Two countries which once could've been considered part of the 2nd World but today are decisively 3rd World include Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Likewise, two countries today that are not officially communist but which are considered to be 2nd World holdouts include Angola and Belarus.

The 1st-2nd-3rd world dichotomy comes from the Cold War. The industrial (formerly colonial, in many cases) powers which were not communist generally aligned themselves with the United States against the 2nd World, which was led by the Soviet Union. The 2nd World, of course, comprised the communist nations, though a few of these, such as China and Yugoslavia, ultimately parted ways with the Soviets after a little while (though it should be noted that China is often considered 3rd World instead of 2nd World). The 3rd World tried to stay out of the fight, though in practice most of these were closer to the 2nd World than the 1st World, often embracing Socialist politics.

Ironically, the 2nd World ended up better off than the 3rd World in most cases, even though you'd think that full-blown communism would prove more disastrous than a form of socialism that allowed some private enterprise to continue. Their economic system worked better for whatever reason and of course they were less susceptible to foreign meddling and/or civil war that destabilized economies and set back years of progress, since they fell under the umbrella of Soviet protection.

Today, the 2nd World is increasingly irrelevant, making it far more of a 1st-3rd world dichotomy than anything else.

One episode away from finishing Breaking Bad. And every minute of it was TIGHT TIGHT TIGHT. Truly the greatest Western ever made, even if, as some people have pointed out, a lot of the characters are so one-dimensional and stereotypical as to seem downright cartoonish.

As my pastor once said on the matter (and I paraphrase), "All they ever make are dirty movies (or in this case music) and everyone's shocked when they act inappropriately in real life? Seriously?"

Yes. The world owes a debt of gratitude to all the men who risked their lives in the fight against Daesh. Mainly members of the Iraqi army and Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, but in any case the large majority of these were Muslim. Hopefully the fact that their coreligionists were the ones to ultimately take them down will help deter future generations of young Muslim men from taking up the banner of jihad. May this be the concluding page to an unfortunate chapter in Middle Eastern history.

The Islamic State's last territorial holding in Syria, the town of Baghouz, has been declared liberated. Unfortunately the likes of al-Baghdadi had long escaped, but this still marks a significant victory against the group, which once controlled a piece of real estate the size of Great Britain.

I think you're kind of overthinking this. As far as I can tell the majority of the empire's population (until, at least, the 4th or 5th century) would've consisted of Egyptians, Greek speakers, and Jews (collectively). Most people did not have Roman citizenship until the reforms of Caracalla in the early 3rd century. They most certainly would not be bound by Roman norms and conventions, beyond perhaps veneration of the Roman emperor as required by law.

What allowed Christianity to be successful in the first place, beyond such obvious culprits as a well-maintained road network, relatively safe travel by land, etc, was the religious hyperpluralism that marked the empire. There were SOOOO many fringe cults out there it's not even funny. The religious landscape of the empire was some kind of buyer's market where people just picked and chose what religion they wanted to follow, based on what looked most alluring or whatnot. The reason for this was straightforward: classical paganism was dying to a large degree, especially among Greeks and Romans. The emperor was obviously not a god, and there were many instances where an ambitious general murdered the reigning emperor, then was emperor himself for a couple of months, and then finally was murdered and replaced by somebody else, who himself would likely end up being murdered and replaced.

What people really want is something to believe in. You're never going to be happy wandering from one thing to the next hoping that one day something will stick. Christianity addressed that need better than any other contender.

And that's why I drew the analogy to Rome. In many respects America is not like Rome. We're actually doing a pretty good job at the moment of avoiding many of the key mistakes that proved deadly to them. However, as the Greco-Romans fell into disillusionment with the traditional religion of their day, and then began a desperate search to replace it with something else, so too are Americans, who for the most part have abandoned non-superficial Christianity, dividing themselves up into ideological and identity-based tribes. It is hyperpluralism in our day, like nothing that has been seen on this earth since Rome.

So on its face Social Justice politics, which obviously have come to wholly dominate the Democratic Party in the age of Trump, seem to be a manifestation of chaos as caused by the decline of the traditional Christian faith. But what I might've been missing is this: does it comprise a holistic narrative that the entire population can eventually get behind, and instill a strong sense of moral clarity in a confused people? Can it adequately capture the strengths of religion in its application to contemporary America? What exactly will that look like?

That is to say, is there an order that underlies the appearance of chaos and that will serve the purposes of our generation?

Nah, if anything Christianity helped foster social cohesion in an excessively multiracial and multireligious society that was on the verge of collapse. It didn't actually save the empire but I suspect that it made the transition to the Middle Ages somewhat more smooth.

Believe it or not, I did not link to this article as your run-of-the-mill attack on Social Justice. Rather, I did it because I actually thought it was fascinating to draw parallels between this emerging consensus and the late religious consensus of the Roman Empire reached by way of Christianity. On its face it looks like Identity Politics will only serve to tear us apart and rip our country to shreds, fracturing it into a chaotic hodgepodge of feuding "identity-states", but alternately it could develop into a coherent framework that actually serves to unite a country and fill the void Christianity left behind. Either a highly corrupt leftist "democracy" of the Latin American variety, permanently looking to slide into despotism, or a renewal of our Republic. It could be either.

As a (completely amateur) historian and sociologist. That's my primary interest in this. As a matter of future history. Thinking of Social Justice in these terms actually makes me not want to hate it as much.

Well, I guess that's the answer I should've expected. But imagine this:

The government begins some big spending program. Say, the Green New Deal, which I've heard might cost up to 90 trillion dollars, which obviously would mean a dramatic tax hike. But whatever, this is a hypothetical so you can substitute the Green New Deal for anything you want.

Or for whatever reason, let's say. Companies and affluent persons/parties begin pulling their money out of the United States at such an alarming and sudden rate that the national GDP is cut in half.

So let's say, for purposes of simplification, the GDP goes from 20 trillion to 10 trillion overnight. And there's no indication that our country would be getting that money back any time soon, if ever. At the same time, the increase in the national debt over time was largely predicated upon the assumption that such an event would not occur (that is, that we'd be rich enough to ensure that the debt was manageable, that if need be we could begin shrinking it significantly over a certain period of time, that we could afford to pay down the annual interest on said debt, etc).

So at that point the national debt is doubled for all intents and purposes, so far as our ability to pay goes.

So at that point, other countries would be the ones in a position to tax that wealth. Even if they aren't, the fact remains that we can't because they gave that money somewhere to go to. Obviously there are a lot of small tax haven countries that don't hold a lot of US debt so this wouldn't work to simply target them. Rather, we would simply have to consider "the rest of the world" as in contrast to the United States.

If the "rest of the world" is holding on to the wealth that we could be using to pay off or otherwise manage the national debt to whatever degree, and thereby preventing us from using that money for that purpose, I would propose that we deduct from the national debt according to a formula that calculates how much we would've (or, could've, under normal tax rates, accounting for the fact that realistically most of it would not go towards that purpose under normal conditions) collected in taxes. Under these circumstances I'd even be hesitant to call it sovereign default, but rather a fine or penalty imposed for damages incurred to our economy, of a severity that was equivalent to the severity of said damage.

Understand, of course, that the measure I've described would be reserved for a national emergency like what I've described above. This kind of deduction would NOT be made every year under normal circumstances to compensate for normal rates of capital flight, because of course to do it to any degree harms the reputation of the United States as a debtor, and quite severely. But if we're stuck with this unpayable debt because they bailed on us, then I'd hardly call the US government the most heinous offender here.

So long Victoria.

Obama's Constantine, Trump's Julian, and AOC's Theodosius. I can see it now.

(It's quite long, don't get me wrong, but also a pretty amazing read.)

Behold, O America, thou who hath abandoned the old piety, thou who now wanders aimlessly in a thousand directions, chasing after a thousand ideological gods to find one whom might be worshipped, a new gospel is proclaimed in thy midst, uniting these feuding lands under a holy banner of righteousness and wokeness.

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!

Is sovereign default (that is, a declaration by a state of nullification of public or private debt), in full or in part, justified if in response to and proportionate to large-scale capital flight?

So, I saw a poll yesterday saying that among Democrats Andrew Yang is the preferred candidate for only about 1% of them. I think we can safely say his campaign is a train bound for nowhere.

I did not know that the Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton, though. That's crazy.

I mean, I'm sorry, but that was such an incredibly basic mistake. That you were flaunting the "fact" that the source was the New York Times would seem to suggest that you did in fact check to make sure the source was the New York Times before posting.

In any case, try to avoid this same kind of fiasco in the future. New York Times is definitely liberal, peddling in anti-Trump conspiracy theories on a near-daily basis to condition a certain kind of extreme reaction from their target audience, whereas the New York Post is your run-of-the-mill conservative news source that the vast majority of liberals will not consider to be particularly credible or prestigious, because it probably isn't (per Wikipedia it's largely a tabloid paper).

I would just like to point out, before anything else, that you literally just mistook the New York Post (conservative) for the New York Times (liberal). How you made such an elementary blunder, I do not know.

D--E--C--B--A nac

1. Yes--Plan D, though of course there's an obvious limit to how far the COC requirement can actually be enforced. Since the requirements for vote quality are already quite high I don't have a problem with a 200 post rule, though of course there are here and have been on DDO plenty of people who inflated their own post count in a short time via stuff like the "Last Comment Wins" thread or whatnot. A debate requirement is likewise somewhat meaningless because those debates might simply be some 1-round camaraderie where they post one short paragraph of juvenile banter masquerading flimsily as social commentary as their "argument". But at least Plan D would slow these people down a little bit, or so we can hope. I would also recommend a probationary period of at least one week on the Site before "new users" be allowed to vote, but w/e.

2. No. There are people whose consciences are sensitive about an excess of unfiltered profanity but who would like to participate on this Site. You wouldn't think that an asterisk substitution here and there would really make a difference to them, but sometimes it does. You never know. The human mind is an interesting thing. Granted, this rule was never enforced all that stringently in the first place; obviously there are people who say things like "you're nothing but a *redacted* tool" and nothing happens. But it's like anything else: repealing a rule that is enforced some of the time, and then publicly announcing that such is the case, only makes things worse.

3. Abstain

4. Abstain

5. Abstain

6. Abstain

Oh? What's on your mind? You considering a career choice? Or what do you mean?

(Nevermind. Further research, though I'd done a fair bit beforehand, shows I don't know what I'm talking about.)

You've said that you were once a teacher, so:

In regards to the earlier stuff about unpaid internships, is it true that at virtually any high school where somebody applies (after being certified, of course) they have to spend a year working without pay in an intern capacity before they're let onboard to be paid as an assistant teacher? If showing a decent amount of prior teaching experience is good enough to waive this, could somebody spend that year instead getting paid to teach English overseas (with a simple TEFL certification plus the normal teaching certification he already had), and then upon their return flout that on their resume to get hired right away?

(I'm asking for myself, kind of at a career path crossroads right now and teaching high schoolers sounds like a pretty solid source of income for a guy with a degree that isn't known to get people very far in the real world.)

Sure. Try to defend her record as SoS if you can. I highly doubt that "right wing agents" caused the mass CIA failure of Obama's first term. More like a lack of sophisticated online methods by the CIA at this time caused it (not necessarily Obama's fault but still). I certainly hope they've gotten better since then, but the fact that this was covered up so that it didn't come to light until friggin' 2018, whereas every little blunder Trump's made (or possibly never made at all) hits the limelight virtually as soon as it happens (or is alleged to have happened) is quite telling. What else happened from 2009 to 2017 that we don't know about? Are we really in any position to judge the former president's administration as being objectively better than that of the current president, with the information available to us right now?

If the mass-destabilization of the Middle East under her watch, at least 30 CIA agents getting busted by Iran and subsequently murdered under her watch, and the Benghazi attack under her watch are the marks of the "most efficient, single best Secretary of State ever...(who) most likely won't be outshone for the next century at least" then the federal government is incompetent as fudge. I'm not sure how else to tell you that.

I mean, well, obviously they "shouldn't".

But say, for example, some billionaire guy, a couple of weeks before he filed his tax returns, made a several billion dollar donation to some private foundation. He reported as much on his tax returns. That income, I presume, wouldn't be taxed at all, and they'd get a tax deduction for everything else.

A couple weeks later, after they've gotten word back from the government that their returns have been received and processed, the foundation gives them a full refund, claiming that there was some kind of filing error on their part. Poof. Tax evasion.

Should I take your response above as to say that things like this do not happen as a general rule?

What role do charitable foundations play in tax evasion schemes?

Clearly the author is guilty of blasphemy against the tenets of the imperial cult as laid out in the official catechism handbook. This will be deleted in short time because the opinions and sensibilities of the artificial majority take precedence over all other concerns, including free speech. Never mind that the context of this was about whacko editors pushing for weird made-up pronouns on Wikipedia articles to describe certain people, not as a general rebuke of transgenderism or whatnot, and the author clarified about this in the comments.

"Despite there being no strong or even compelling circumstantial evidence to suggest that David and Jonathan were homosexual lovers I'm just going to make that claim anyway because hey why not? The best way to discredit the Apostle Paul and OT prohibitions against gay sex is to make stuff up out of thin air! Why won't those gall-danged Christians believe in my interpretation of the Bible? It's just as good as theirs!"

"Despite the vision that Peter had, and the various epistles of Paul, both of which strongly suggested otherwise, obviously the OT prohibitions on such things as eating shellfish, getting circumcised, and wearing clothing made from two different fibers still apply because that 'interpretation' of mine is the best way to point out Christian hypocrisy where in fact none exists! The fact that rules governing sexual norms still apply while these do not is something that I'm completely unable to grasp because I lack nuance and am Biblically illiterate! I spent two years at a community college and took one or two Bible classes that I jacked off on my laptop in the back of the room during the whole time so clearly my opinion on Christian theology is as good as that of Thomas Aquinas!"

Not sure why you'd refer to an atheist as a "theologian". "Biblical scholar" is a much more appropriate term. Theologian involves one who interprets the explicit ideas and underlying themes in a sacred text(s) to try to decipher what God wants the believer to understand. An atheist is usually going to nitpick the text simply to find contradictions, which is all well and dandy for Biblical scholarship at a secular university but not for theology. In theology you always assume that there is some kind of coherent explanation consistent with the claim that everything it's saying is Divine Truth, that any confusion reflects error or insufficiency on your part rather than on flaws in scripture, and that an explanation that would seem to discredit the faith is not a good explanation. They always put the pieces together to craft something logical enough for the believer to digest. That's what the job entails. Somebody whose first instinct is to throw his (or her) hands in the air and cry out "Bah, it's all nonsense that illiterate bronze age shepherds dreamed up in a drunken stupor!" cannot be a theologian by definition.

And, I mean, I don't know. It is possible, of course that somewhere in the world there might be an atheist who's simply fascinated enough with the Bible, and the two religions stemming out of it, and especially the theology deriving from such, that they're both willing and competent enough to participate in the discussion as something resembling a theologian. Maybe that's what this woman is. I don't know who she is, but what she was saying in the video didn't seem to give off that vibe at all. So I'd be very hesitant to call her by such a title. Giving people a title that suggests credibility to advise the Christian ecumene on the tenets of the faith, just so they're in an ideal position to tear down the faith down from the inside, is insanity. It's like ordaining a Satanist to serve as a Baptist preacher.

Automation+UBI will create a situation where companies are kept afloat by consumers, who are supplier with cash by the income taxes from the companies.

The incentive would be to relocate to countries with cheaper taxes. The government would try to prevent this by restricting access to the American consumer market. But anyone on earth can consume just the same. If at some point the American people collectively ran out of cash, the companies could bolt, as there'd be no market that they wouldn't have to pay for first. All national consumer markets would eventually become equal in some economic equivalent to entropy. All of the world's people would be equally poor, with the obvious exception of those few who had a share in the companies.

When GDP per capita for the average American is the same for, say, the average guy in Africa, well, Africans far outnumber us so conventional wisdom would suggest that what was formerly the third world would be richer than us by virtue of sheer numbers. That, combined with a global uniformity of culture brought about by consumerism, would eliminate all effective barriers to a single global government, where the interests of the former first world are those of the powerless minority.

...I think I like this guy, just going by a quick search. He doesn't seem to believe or espouse anything crazy. UBI is not crazy if done as a last resort response to the Singularity, though ultimately America is screwed either way. There's no way around that except an international treaty to keep humans squarely in charge, but that's not going to happen except at nukepoint. A leader with much more reckless abandon than Trump.

You'll need a gimmick to set yourself apart from the other 10 or so Republican candidates. That's how Trump won. Maybe your battle cry could be:

 "THEY'RE TAKIN' ER JRRBS!"

Yes, I'm sure that your 35 year old self could run for President of the United States and have a good chance of winning.

Ironically, the Islamic fundamentalist state of Iran is fairly tolerant of transsexualism. The individual peoples of Iran are generally more liberal than their counterparts in the Arab world, so this is probably the reasonable outcome of a necessary compromise. The male-female dichotomy is not threatened by a select few people being allowed to "switch" in a by-and-large irreversible procedure that takes time to complete. And the Iranian government knows this.

A person ought to be allowed to use only the bathroom for the sex listed on their birth certificate, which is then reflected on things like their driver's license. People who've been "certified" by the branch of the medical establishment that has been set up to "treat" gender dysphoria (whether a real condition or not), via a process that begins with diagnosis and ends with SRS, should be allowed to change the sex listed on such a document. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

In the Jim Crow era South, there was the kind of attitude where any provocation by blacks, real or perceived, was taken as justification for vocal outrage. They might as well have been looking for stuff to stay mad about instead of just trying to live their lives.

That's the impression I get from the feminist commentators for extremist media outlets:

"I posted a selfie of myself online in a revealing outfit, and some small, negligible percentage of the comments said not nice things about me? OUTRAGE! It's not evidence that there are people on the internet in general who troll, or that some people have religious sensibilities and/or more conservative fashion senses that are offended by what I do pretty much for a living, it's about men being pigs who must be shamed!"

"Some male Senator (always Republican because Democrats can do no wrong) interrupted something that a female Senator said in some context? MANTERRUPTING! It's obviously physically impossible that a man might interrupt another man, or that a woman might interrupt a man, because we are all Martians instead of humans and so the normal rules governing human interactions with each other do not apply at all!"

"Some MAN took a picture of AOC while she was at a public rally? CREEP!"

"I am a woman born with hirsutism (beardedness) and some of the guys who I date say 'Just so you know I'm okay with that'? HOW DARE THEY! Whatever they say about the matter will trigger me so they must read my mind with their ESP powers and know not to comment at all on it! In fact, if they even notice that it's a thing then the fact of them wanting to date me is offensive!" (Yes, there was some dumb*ss who wrote something to this effect, and it was published on some news site.)

"Some MEN in New York are kind of rude and bump into people slightly as they pass by? This is obviously a sexist conspiracy against women and I will respond by deliberately slamming into every filthy man I pass by!"

I swear, some of these people's parents should've used rubber back in the day. But these kinds of opinions are, unfortunately, given mainstream "respectable" platforms, which proves that the system we live under is run by extremists.

Testosterone does not have to only equal heightened "aggression" but also "ambition" and "drive". To attribute the comparative want of these things among women simply to a sexist culture is pretty naive. That obviously plays a big part in it, but the reverse is true as well: a general lack of ambition makes them more likely to allow others to make important life decisions for them. One things reinforces the other, but heightened testosterone among women would break the cycle.

That is to say, men are overrepresented among pioneers/innovators and felons for more or less the same reason. Too many on the left consider masculinity/malehood itself to be a moral evil with no redeeming qualities. It's in some respects akin to the Christian doctrine of original sin, except that, unlike the universal scope of the latter, the former singles out 50% of the human population as potential devils and hagiographizes the remaining 50% as victims of devils. This idea can go by any name it so pleases but at its core it is sexism and misandry.

I think it'll definitely be interesting to see how long you're willing to keep this up.

I mean, female rulers tend to have a disproportionately bloody track record, historically speaking (if I'm not mistaken, Catherine took power by having her husband murdered). Are you talking about bureaucrats? What yardstick is there to measure something like that?

I'll bet Jussie Smollett was simply the first to get caught. There's probably a butt ton of other guys who everyone believed.

Alright, fine. "Zero danger" was a stretch. But in that sense any worker is in hypothetical danger of some disgruntled former employee or angry customer barging in and opening fire.

Ten guys since the year 2000, huh...and that list probably included close to every documented example since the mid-1800s. Out of the probably tens of thousands of Americans employed in that capacity, I'd say that risk is extremely small. And there's no evidence that Trump's rhetoric is increasing that risk. Those four guys in 2018? Some random guy mad that they reported on a guilty plea he entered. Nothing to do with Trump.

And...? I'm not sure why some people put the press on a pedestal. News organizations are private corporations, owned by a small handful of billionaires and larger companies. The reason behind the inane notion that journalists are these hallowed guardians of democracy who can do no wrong (except when it comes to news organizations that espouse opinions you don't like, of course, in which case you say whatever you want about them) evades me.

When they talk about journalists dying in large numbers, they're talking about those covering war zones. Reporters are not only in zero danger in the United States but in fact they enjoy special privileges and protections in that, unlike literally any other profession, nobody holds them accountable for the damage they cause.

That was such a weird trailer. What was Elsa trying to do? Make her way across the sea on foot? Was there a nearby island she was trying to get to? Why not use a boat?

It doesn't make sense at all.