Their characters get caught in a spiral of trying to awkwardly out-polite one another until they both have a meltdown.

Bernie was never going to actually win the primary. A huge majority of Democrat voters are so liberal that they think folks like him are just whiny. John Oliver did a whole piece where he used actual polling numbers and demographics to prove Bernie never would have gotten the votes.

Which is what makes the DNC's decision to astroturf for Clinton even more neurotic. Like, she was already gonna win. But that wasn't good enough. They insisted on trying to make Bernie's supporters look bad for daring to not support "their" candidate.

My understanding is that Afghanistan is not really a country, in that it has a single national identity. Rather, it's a contiguous chunk of land divided along ancient tribal boundaries. Their "federal government" never existed to serve the country as a whole, but rather to extract assets from whatever foreign power was willing to prop them up. Their military had no loyalty to the country as a whole, but rather each regional division had loyalty to whatever tribe the soldiers came from.

When the US left, we hoped that the government we had propped up for 20 years would have enough self-interest to continue fighting the Taliban. But why would they? To your average soldier, they were essentially being asked to defend one group of assholes (their neighbors who they've feuded with for millennia) from another group of assholes (the Taliban). Or they could just not fight at all and fuck off back home.

That's how the Taliban won. They hid, knowing the US was going to leave eventually, confident that none of the "government's" soldiers were interested in dying when they started sweeping through population centers. I think a major miscalculation from the West was assuming soldiers would want to fight to protect the rights of the women in their lives. That clearly was not a factor in the decision-making process, generally speaking.

The narrative that the Taliban were strategic geniuses is not supported by evidence. They were clever, and the West did waste a truly tremendous amount of resources fighting them, so calling them cowards is ridiculous. But anyone on the ground in Afghanistan knew this outcome was inevitable. The surprise wasn't that the Taliban took over, but how quickly it happened.

Not OP, but they may have been referring to how overtly anticapitalist Dropout's content is.

All of the cabins tend to be on separate decks from the food, shops, and activities. So when you crawl out of your room for breakfast in the morning, your first stop is probably the elevator. You're probably vaguely staring forward as the doors open, so the first thing you'll see is the floor.

This may be one of those things where it doesn't really make sense until you experience it.

Just another way to artificially slow down progression, by literally slowing you down.

My wife and I asked our friends if they'd be interested in a PowerPoint party. Nearly everyone said no. Some weren't comfortable with the performative element, but most simply didn't want to put in the effort. The general consensus we got was people would watch us do our presentations, if they didn't have to participate.

I don't find this to be true about myself. I'm perfectly capable of looking at this post and thinking, "Ew gross," without feeling even slightly upset or angry. It's a fundamentally different set of feelings.

Celebrity appearances really should be kept to special Game Changer mini episodes, unless they specifically want to be on something like Um Actually or Make Some Noise.

I didn't interpret Jonah as being actually annoyed with them, but that doesn't mean they weren't being annoying. It seems like most of the criticism I've seen is precisely that: Harvey and Milana were not fun to watch, regardless of how the rest of the cast felt about it.

This is France. I have colleagues who work in France. They get 12 weeks of vacation per year, not including the lab basically being shut down for the whole month of August. 28 hour work weeks, 6 month maternity leave minimum, with comparatively higher wages than us.

And you know what? They, surprisingly enough, barely get anything done compared to us. I doubt they'll be operational in 10 years.

The reality of global capitalism is that the nations with the best labor protections invariably lose business to nations more willing to exploit their workers.

The woman in this story is in one of the most privileged positions in the world for her circumstances. If she lived literally anywhere else, she would have it worse. I genuinely don't know what more she expects, and good for her if she gets it, but it's hard to muster up any sympathy.

You shouldn't. The major problem with this episode wasn't that 2 of the contestants had never seen a horror movie before, although that choice was baffling. Rather, I found the worst part to be that they didn't seem to understand or even care about the premise of the show. I've been a fan of Milana and Harvey for years, and I genuinely like both of them less because of this episode.

They came across like they were only there to promote their movie, had very little interest in actually participating with the premise of the show, and instead opted for generic talk show energy. I don't think either of them put an ounce of earnest effort into the game.

Dropout is a very carefully cultivated ecosystem, and a big part of that is how they only cast people who "get it." Celebrity stuff like this is always going to fall flat if they don't seem like they understand or care about what's happening. Most of the celebrity stuff they've done so far has been great, so this isn't a general criticism.

all you’ve done is gotten a legend of the alt comedy scene who the cast is likely familiar with but who much of the audience isn’t, put him in a situation that doesn’t play to his strengths, had him exert an outsized influence on a game, and then just… dips?

This reads exactly like a Tim & Eric sketch, to be fair.

I was convinced the whole reason they went with Eric was to get the cast reaction at some point. Otherwise... why bother? It's been said elsewhere, but he wasn't any more chaotic than the rest of the cast, and I bet a good majority of viewer reactions to his reveal were, "Who's this?"

On the other hand, the whole situation - "We hired Eric of 'Tim and Eric' for a cameo role. No one knows who he is and he doesn't interact with anyone" - is, in fact, a very 'Tim and Eric' thing to do. So that does make me laugh. But going forward, if they revisit this game, I do hope they make some changes.

My wife used to work at a "toy store" downtown in a big college town, and it was exactly this. The owner's husband owned the (extremely successful) jewelry store right next door, and the toy store was essentially just an excuse for her to buy designer clothes for her grandkids. The basement was packed with boxes of clothes no one ever bought, and yet new boxes came every month or so.

Brown is just dark orange, the same way pink is light red or indigo is dark blue.

I think it has very little to do with any actual ideology, and more to do with being pissed off that they're still single, or bitter at how long it took them to find a woman willing tolerate them. When they were younger they were more worried about weed and taxes, but now that they've gone most of their adult lives without being in relationships, they've decided that all the reasons women don't want to be with them are actually bad and the government should do something about it.

And it's placed on a shelf where a mild breeze could knock it off. Dumb place to put a mop, dumb place to put Legos.

If you get more than mildly infuriated by your girlfriend knocking your Legos over, you need bigger things in your life to worry about. Especially if you have it sitting on the corner of a random shelf in your hallway.

OP himself only seems mildly infuriated. But man, some of the people here need to go touch grass.

I'm starting to think libertarians don't even want small government. They literally just want yes weed and no taxes. The number of libertarians I've seen supporting, not just abortion bans, but birth control and no-fault divorce bans, is really telling. It's almost like their political philosophy is that society should perfectly cater to their personal preferences, and they invented a bunch of bullshit to justify it.

I would like to point out that he writes for James Corden. That may inform some of his choices.

Mentopolis 2. The players have to race to the balls, where they find all the microplastics have dissolved in the piss to create a mutant monstrosity: the Giant Purple Spworm.

That's how I took it. I look at the whole thing as a story, too. She starts by pining after her "perfect fit" who's already taken. She settles for a guy with nothing to offer because he's convenient, but realizes she needs more. She swings the pendulum in the other direction and finds a guy who is perfectly happy on his own and doesn't need her. She looks around, realizes how many people force themselves to fit into relationships, and then decides on a pet.

Convince the county to approve your construction permit by claiming the construction will let them house people during natural disasters. Get your contractor (a member of the church) to quote you $250k for the job.

Have your contractor start construction, then inform you it'll be closer to 4x that amount if they still want the building to be rated for its intended purpose.

Cry to the county that your new construction will bankrupt you unless you go with a "less ambitious" plan, so unfortunately you won't be able to house people during natural disasters.

Laugh to yourself knowing the county would receive a ton of backlash for going after the church, and no one in the community even knows the new construction can't be used for natural disasters anymore.