Thank God for that.

There was this party I had at my house senior year when my parents were out of town when those cheap little disposable cameras were all the rage. Of course my folks left a camera of their own laying around and some sort of intermingling seems to have occurred. Oh the looks I got when that film was developed.

As much as I hate to ruin gay America's romanticized view of heterosexual dating I have to inform you that it was full of hook ups, friends with benefit situations, failures to commit, two timing, and various players and player hating of the most sordid variety, even before gay marriage was legal. Don't ask me how I know.

While amusing I think this is just what happens when you staff your admistration with whatever is worse than backbenchers (nosebleeders?) and media personalities who have never been accountable for anything of significance. Don't let Fox News fool you, the people on that chat are better understood as JV dilettantes with very low IQs. They aren't taking cues from the great unwashed involved in 1/6.

Heh I believe it is actually Christoph Waltz (Austrians require lots of extra words and t's) who drinks a glass of milk while the gestapo ransacks your farm house.

Beware the horse shoe theory of hate speech.

That is very interesting anecdata. My perspective on the park is minimal. We did it twice when I was a kid but our version involved ferrying back and forth from my dad's high school buddy's house where you slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. Fun was of course had but it wasn't the immersive experience they designed the place to be.

That said, a couple years ago we decided to forego our normal OBX trip due to the pending arrival of our little guy. Just seemed crazy to do it with a newborn. As a consolation prize for my oldest we did a long weekend at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg. Now obviously this was not at the level one would expect of Disney but it delivered that slightly hokey Americana thing, same kind of vibe you're describing with the sing along, and damned if kids didn't still eat it up. My son (5 and a half at the time) was in heaven. We have a picture of him from that trip sleeping with the most serene look of happiness on his face I have ever seen. This is consistent with similar experiences at various other little camp grounds and things like that we've done that were clearly ripping off Disney whenever they went live in the 70s-90s.

All of which is to say there is still juice in those old formulas. I was never invested enough to feel that sense of betrayal you get from other people about Disney but it's hard to look at them without asking 'wtf are you people doing?'

Don't worry about it. We all said a lot of things back there in that thread. The important thing is that we now have this review and can move on with our lives.

https://youtu.be/dzk0yH9Achw?si=cBJy_E3hzy1DHt98

That is an interesting angle I would never have considered.

I'm just glad my comments can be interesting.

No, they certainly aren't doing the anime thing, though one gets the sense there's a part of them that at times might kinda sorta want to be, but for the fact that those are also problematic in their worldview. No matter how much that genre has matured we all know who the butt kicking babes were originally designed to please.

I also didn't mean to imply it was that simple. That's just one small subset of their problem, which is that they don't believe in their own product anymore. However they also know they can't totally get away from it so keep releasing mediocre messes.

We've gone from the uncouth but love-able neighbors with a rednecks that won the lottery vibe to total dicks with a penchant for the petty and vindictive.

My goodness. If you find yourself in the market for new hobbies I can vouch for those things my Clark Griswald lifestyle permits, which currently are lifting, shooting, and a very unserious dart league. Otherwise all I can say is I am deeply sorry for your loss.

OK don't make fun of me. My last serious gaming was of the Quake Team Fortress and C&C Red Alert era. Did the original run Halo games with my little brothers. Dabbled in Warcraft 3. Sometimes would get really drunk and play Soul Caliber with my friends in like 2004. I gave up games to chase tail and haven't persojally owned anything for gaming, console or PC, since the first term of the W admin. I am completely ignorant and uninformed. My questions:

1. Are those cut screens actually in a video game? Because they look like South Park. I mean.. the voice...LMAO

2. Are you telling me they made a game in feudal Japan but your character is a black dude? Because that's also f-ing hilarious.

I don't know that it's liberalism exactly. It seems to me more that they've decided that the princess archetype, which inherently involves a plot around interpersonal/social (as opposed to violent) disputes, vulnerability, and a romantic heterosexual resolution is just too problematic to deliver. The result is they don't make them anymore or when they do it's reluctant, soaked in derision, and embedded in a constant pitch for something else.

Their problem is that people but in particular lots of little girls still love the princess archetype. Not all, nothing wrong with those that don't, or boys that do. But there are enough that love it to support a several hundred billion dollar a year business empire in an otherwise tough and fractured media market. Disney used to serve up the best princesses but now it's like going to a steakhouse where the ownership has gone vegan, the waiter won't stop asking if you're sure you don't want the sustainable fish paste instead of the ribeye, and when they finally bring you the meat its dressed up in a bunch of crappy sauces and bewildering sides that weren't what you came for. Maybe the best way to think about it is that while Disney invented the modern steak house they seem unable to understand that they did not invent the steak.

I am completely unfamiliar with this controversy.

One has to be amazed at just how intentionally Disney has gone about sabotaging its ownership of the market they themselves created.

Oh for sure. Even with my degree I would classify myself as having not mere holes but gaping chasms.

That is not how the issue is understood by the voting public and I think you know that too.

Obama was in a defensible place, constantly and prominently asking for security the GOP in Congress refused to fund while being careful to champion the cause of only the easiest, most sympathetic cases. Biden was a total disaster. As soon as he took office he ended remain in Mexico and reversed the other Trump EOs that were creating some breathing room. Then he sat for over 3 years while the asylum system was made into a total mockery. It's night and day.

I dunno. Omitting a national abortion ban from the platform for the first time in 40 years is a pretty big deal. Especially if you're looking to give cover to socially moderate women in swing states open to voting for you.

I think there are multiple angles to it. One is 'law and order.' One is the perception of government dysfunction. One is that we have more foreign born people as a proportion of the population than any other time in history, plus fertility decline of the native born citizenry, plus the larger 'late capitalism' malaise and disenfranchisement driving a bunch of cultural panic.

As you note there are lots of ways you can play it that might work but the one thing you probably can't do is occupy the middle of a ven diagram that says 'nothing is happening,' 'we don't care that this is happening' and 'you are a racist.'.

Heh in fairness to my wonderful professor the course was Medieval Europe. UMD's history department had plenty of courses on the Islamic world. My concentration was Europe and there were courses that got into those kinds of topics, including Scandinavian history and Germanic Mythology (for which I got credits both for my major and my German citation).

I don't want to do too much projecting of intelligence but it seems to me that the GOP's slight edge comes from apparent willingness to make trade offs and even take hard lines with their constituencies. The big business wing has gotten a big middle finger on immigration and tariffs. A quieter but still firm 'shut up' seems to have gone out to the pro-life movement. Which doesnt mean they aren't still very off-putting and alienating. There's a reason they're in charge only by a thin margin. We have yet to see the Democrats do anything quite like it, in the sense of picking some sides for the sake of getting/holding power.

My recollection of the survey is that we talked 'fall' of Rome as prologue, spent 5 minutes on Byzantium and Clovis, then Einhard acting as the center of gravity for basically everything else from that (sub) period. A lot of reason to to question whether this is really a distinct era but I'm also not sure there's an obvious alternative approach at the 100 level. Gotta go to the 200 and beyond for the rest.

There are official policies and de facto policies. Chances are way lower that Trump is president if from the beginning Biden had approached the border the way he did in the last 8ish months of the administration. It's also the common thread in every important European country from UKIP to National Rally to AfD to Brothers of Italy.

When I was getting my history BA the distinction they made was low medieval (approximately 410-1066 i.e. Alaric to William) versus high medieval (approximately 1066-1400). The low medieval period is characterized by breakdown of central authority in the early years followed by slow re-establishment of governments based around vassalage and the church. I don't see anything happening now as a parallel.