Keep in mind too that they’re not always accurate. I know of one in my city that regularly takes photos of people going through on the green because it’s a bit of a wonky intersection. And that means a person gets to spend their day in court instead of at work fighting a ticket they did not deserve.

So Octarine, basically.

It’s addictive. People get addicted to stress too.

The difference is hate makes you feel stronger and more focused than you really are. It gives you a target that’s not you, so you don’t ever have to face yourself.

It does, but if you do have a source of wood (or I guess if you go out and scavenge) so you don’t have to buy it, just haul it, then you don’t have to pay for gas or electricity for heating, which can get very pricy.

Well, wood is a good option if the power goes out somehow.

It should also be pointed out that a wood-burning stove may be a cheaper option to heat the house for poorer people.

The biggest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Or something like that.

The prison is a labor camp you twat.

It is true.

You might want to switch news feeds if you missed that memo.

I think you might need to brush up on your reading comprehension, and maybe your empathy. You’re coming off a bit condescending her. e

It’s actually down in most areas.

Broader claims about trends in retail theft have not panned out. Walgreens, for example, cited spikes in shoplifting as an explanation for falling profits and store closures. The claim has since been retracted. Target blamed theft for a rash of store closures. But an analysis by researcher Jeff Asher showed that, according to the limited data available, the stores Target closed in Portland and Seattle had less crime than stores that were not closing. Reporting by CNBC in September 2023 also cast doubt on retailer claims about the impact of theft, noting that “certain retailers” have “pulled back” from blaming organized theft as “a primary cause of losses.” In fact, to the extent it can be relied upon, industry data cuts against the idea of a recent national spike in retail theft.

Nothing like being treated like a criminal when I go into a store to give them money.

Hahahaha I’d forgotten about that! Man, and people unironically call him a genius still.

They plan to import workers with visas and then hold those visas over their heads to force them to work for peanuts.

I mean, they do this small-scale already.

Pretty sure you’re too old to be this stupid, dude.

Well that’s a bit alarming.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

I did like Spiderman the best, I will admit. It felt a lot more relatable and real.

But then the Gwen-Stacy-as-a-plot-device-and-not-a-person nonsense started, and I was just like… oh, here we go. Again.

At least the manga I read never treated women as fridge stuffing, even if they were regulated to background characters.

I think the thing that grinds my gears the most about Rob Liefeld isn’t that he’s a terrible artist; it was that he’s a terrible artist who was kept on the payroll and allowed to keep making terrible comics. They could have fired him and hired someone else, anyone else.

Hell, at the time there were lots of successful women doing manga in Japan, and I doubt they had the only women in the world who could draw comics. It really feels like he was mostly keeping his job because he was white and male.

Even today Marvel and DC all but body-check women comic artists out the door. Thank goodness for the internet, so they can put their art out anyways, and on their own terms.

Edit to add: I recommend reading Magic Knight Rayearth if you have the time. (Maybe don’t watch the anime. Trying to simplify Clamp’s highly detailed art… didn’t work that well. Although the OAV wasn’t too bad.)

It’s an oldie, but it’s one of the comics that first got me into manga back in high school. It’s by an all-woman team, it’s beautiful (really, pretty much all of CLAMP’s art is, and I recommend checking it out), and not only did it have teenage women as the protagonists, but it was the first story I read where there was no actual villain or hero, and the story was actually compelling!

This This is a funny one. It looks like it was drawn by someone who carves wood with a chainsaw for a living. It even has the dark areas where you’d use a blowtorch lol.

Plus bonus parade balloon muscles.

With the source material, at least for me as compared to western stuff like X-men, Superman, etc, is that one, it crosses all genres and appeals to all genders. Comic books for much of their existence were largely geared to a specific, very male audience, and it was made quite clear by their writing and the actions of people into comics at the time that other genders (and, to a certain extent, skin colors) need not apply to join the club.

Since I’m a girl, when I was a kid I got teased a lot for liking ‘guy stuff’ like Batman and GI Joe. The problem was, well, I liked action stuff for one, but back then there just wasn’t anything for girls. Hell, I remember them even taking Wonder Woman’s power away, because apparently women empowerment reasons?

Those comics were all written by largely out-of-touch white guys who had, shall we say, definite opinions of what a woman could look like and should act like. And as a woman, I was never impressed. Especially by the time I got to the hundredth drawing of a woman’s ass and legs framing a supposedly ‘serious’ scene.

Then I found manga, with all-women writing teams, and artists who wrote well-rounded characters of all genders and orientations (Sailor Moon had many adorable scenes between a lesbian couple, just to name one example). They drew women who were people. They were sweet, they were brash, they were rude and crass, they were funny. And who weren’t afraid to fireball their way out of trouble. Hell, they drew varied guys who were weak, strong, silly, spacey… they felt real, in a way that I’d never seen in western comics.

Another thing is that mangaka tell the story, their characters get a satisfying actual ending, and then the artist moves on to another story. None of this ‘Oh, the X-men found happiness and solved their problems! In our next comic, watch as everything goes back to the shitty status quo because we have no idea how to write different stories!’ or ‘Welcome to the 2,171st reboot of Superman, now with Extra Edge^TM (because we hear that’s all the rage with kids these days). And remember that this iteration specifically references that one part of reboot #1,023, so read that too (if you can find it lol).’

And the third thing for me is it was quite a bit more beautiful and fluid and varied than western animation. Especially in the case of the days of Too-Many-Pockets Rob and his wooden doll faces, or the small beady eyes of, well, every comic character ever. Anime and manga faces were much more expressive, the worlds more varied and creative, and they weren’t afraid to draw regular people as protagonists, without muscles bulky enough to make you think you were looking at a Macy’s parade balloon.

And of course he adds in a picture of John Wayne, the draft-dodging, woman-beating, other wannabe cowboy poser.