Also an episode Iron Fist… for some reason.

Removing the anatomy portion of sex ed is absurd, but we’ll just file it under the same “everything I don’t like is porn” reasoning they’ve been using. And at least I can understand how someone can think that teaching about birth control only encourages sex.

But what the actual fuck can anyone say to defend removing any discussion about consent‽ I honestly can’t understand it. There’s literally no reason not to cover it unless you object to the idea that rape and molestation are bad.

What’s next, teaching kids that strangers in vans have the best candy? That adults will often reward those who give special favors? The importance of keeping uncomfortable experiences a secret?

Couldn’t fuck the cowardly lion because he was a simp.

Also the barbed penis.

Needs more Clancy Brown.

You’re fabricating outrage at something that does not exist in the comic

The comment I was replying to was clearly talking about a pattern of behavior beyond what is in the comic.

The artist is making fun of the petty nonsense that people complain about.

Which is a pretty goddamn petty thing to complain about. How dare people express their opinions and dissatisfaction with anything that isn’t the end of the fucking world, right?

Yes, there are people who blow such things way out of proportion, but this comic does nothing to distinguish between reasonable responses to these issues and unreasonable ones, it just lumps them all together and tells everyone to shut the fuck up in the most condescending way possible.

It’s also being dismissive of real problems people face. It’s an excuse to not address problems here and now because bigger problems exist elsewhere. But you aren’t going to do a goddamn thing about those issues, so this implied triage is a lie. It’s just a way of trying to act morally superior while lacking empathy.

The whole first world problem concept implies everyone has it easy in first world countries. As though we don’t have poverty, mental health issues, crime, corruption, police brutality, abusive families, disease, loss of loved ones, and so on. There’s no shortage of problems anywhere.

And you know what, fuck this attitude of turning suffering into competition and mocking people for being bothered by things that aren’t life altering. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy expression of emotion when you are disappointed or irritated, as long as you aren’t taking it out on others. But being a snarky asshole to someone and judging them for having a bad day isn’t helping.

If you see someone frowning and your instinct is to tear them down rather than cheer them up, maybe you should take a good look at yourself and figure out what your fucking problem is.

“If that pumpkin didn’t want it, why was it smiling at me?”

Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.

Electric motors also require far less maintenance and have far fewer ways they can break down. Oh, and if you live in a cold climate, you can warm it up in the garage without killing yourself.

And actually, if we reach a point where a solar roof and battery are the norm, and basically every vehicle on the road is an EV, civilization collapse becomes that much more unlikely. There’s no longer a domino effect of the grid going down, pumps and refineries stopping, supply chains collapsing, and technology ceasing to function. Disruptions would be far more localized and their impact would be drastically reduced.

Which is another security thing, I just didn’t include it because I was typing on my phone and running out of time. But yes, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, and all the other OPEC countries that your conservative uncle likely has a long history of not liking will lose influence if their oil revenues plummet.

Also, gas goes bad and it can easily become contaminated by something as simple as moisture building up, after which it will damage engines if used. Not to mention that dangers of fire or leaks. The sun won’t hit its expiration date for a few billion years, and for the most part the worst thing that can happen with solar is that efficiency goes down slightly if the panel needs cleaning.

More like the whimpering twenties.

Downside of being an ageless immortal: oldies stations all play that new crap and no one plays your favorite hits from the roaring twenties anymore. NPR’s still good though.

Aside from the fact that they are listening to propaganda, it’s also a matter of framing. They think of solar as green weenie shit, the ineffectual limp dick replacement for tried and true all American machine power.

It all starts sounding different when you frame it as a security issue. Large scale solar will keep working through almost anything, even if parts of it are damaged. Most other forms of power need constant maintenance and can suffer catastrophic failure that renders the whole thing inoperable and costing a fortune to replace.

More importantly, it adds flexibility since it can be rapidly deployed and remains effective at smaller scales. The military wants solar because the alternative is often a gas generator that needs fuel shipped in by truck, a common target for attack. If your house has a solar roof and battery backup, a blackout isn’t going to effect you. Power can be out for weeks and you’ll barely notice, while previously the only option was a gas generator that only powers a few circuits in your house and is inevitably going to run out of fuel.

The more widespread solar and battery gets, the more secure we are as a civilization against large scale catastrophes that disrupt the grid, whether that’s war, sabotage or natural disasters.

Rockets are literally on fire.

Also a big red flag that he wanted them to identify the owner or a manager, because that’s not fucking ominous when a cop is abusing his power and no longer wants to settle for a refund.

If I ever become the ruler of the world, I’m making a law that every month gets one major holiday, and that holiday shall be confined to that month.

That’s 13 major holidays, plus New Years (and Leap Day) since I’d also be forcing everyone to use a better calendar.

And then everyone making the criticism ignores that passing reference.

Superhero stories are usually well aware of how people might abuse super powers. Those people become supervillains. The only way this criticism makes sense is if you think that no one would ever try to use their powers for good.

Internet troll criticizes comic book fans with chart pointing out that women prefer comic book fans to internet trolls by a 3 to 1 margin.

This video is dumb. It’s making contradictory criticisms while having no alternative of its own to suggest.

The heroes don’t use their powers to radically alter the world because, first and foremost, then it wouldn’t be our world, it would be a very different one. Once you actually apply all the innovations that should be possible, the setting starts looking more like Star Trek, and it becomes a very different story. This is the same reason that Batman will never keep his villains off the street, whether he captures them or kills them. It’s the same reason the Doctor always makes his way back to current year earth somewhere in the UK. The status quo they are maintaining is the one that let’s us continue telling this kind of story.

Second, things like time travel and reality altering magic, things which can fundamentally change our world in an instant have to be kept limited, or we have no more stories. This goes beyond just the status quo of the setting and gets into the basics of storytelling and having tension. Make your heroes too powerful with no limitations, and you can’t maintain a conflict without gigantic plotholes.

Second and a half, fundamentally altering the world with time travel or super science or magic is a concept that should be terrifying in its implications. Maybe time travel could alter the timeline for the better, but who gets to decide what is better, and what trade offs are worth it? Who gets to decide that it’s worth unmaking millions of lives to alter history into something you think might be better? And how many ways can it go wrong? The world is a complicated place, you can’t make sudden drastic changes without inflicting a lot of harm, even if you think the good it does will outweigh the harm. And doing so with forces that we may not fully understand or control is reckless. I mean, fuck, Ultron is the example they give of something to change the world, and would you trust the people making AI today to put that in a self-aware army of iron man robots?

Third, what kind of message would it send if the heroes used some bullshit super science or magic solution that quickly and easily solved environmental issues or social problems? Is that really addressing the issues in a way that’s helpful for us in the real world? Is it setting an example for us to follow when they aren’t faced with any of the real difficulties that come with solving those problems? it seems like that would just be dismissing the problem and implicitly endorsing the kind of vaporware solutions that polluting industries often try to hype up to avoid real change.

Fourth, do you really think the world would end up better if a small group of super powered individuals tried to overthrow governments, destabilize economies, and transform civilization by force? We’re not just talking about intervening in a specific conflict like Ukraine or Palestine here, the video makes that clear. If at the end of the day, they aren’t radically altering society, they are just defending the status quo. But, how do you think that would actually play out, especially in a world where there are other super powered individuals who will oppose them? World domination by benevolent dictators imposing their will on society while tearing the current order down by force is not going to be pretty, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare. And let’s be honest, none of our heroes have shown the capacity for building back the world they would be destroying, which is the much harder part.

Well, actually, no, despite criticizing the heroes for not using their powers to single-handedly institute radical change the video goes on to argue that change would actually require larger movements lead by the public, and condemns the idea of an elite few hogging power (should iron man be flooding the streets with military hardware? And how the fuck is the hulk suppose to share his power?). So, what then is the right thing for them to do? I guess they should engage in peaceful activism and support the people when they aren’t called away to stop some murdering asshole from killing a bunch of innocent people. So, basically what we have now, but with a few more scenes of them making political statements and doing volunteer work that doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.

Fifth, the villains are sometimes given sympathetic motivations because we want some nuance and complexity. The world is complicated and most conflicts are not just black and white. The lesson isn’t that change is bad and evil, it’s that you can’t just view the world in such simplified terms. The alternative of making the villains all bad and the heroes all good is actually far more dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that we can just see the world in simple us vs them terms, with no need to understand other points of view or to question our own.

Sixth, they do fight the status quo, just not the parts that the video wants to address. Daredevil can’t solve all the world’s problems but he can and does fight both organized crime and corruption. Captain America isn’t going to overthrow the government, but he will fight SHIELD when it crosses the line. Iron Man changed his own company to address its role in the world, and uses it to innovate to make the world a better place, that’s just not the focus of the story.