Lurker > Necronmon

Oh, please. Outside of Zahn's trilogy, the writing for SW material has always been pretty trash-tier and on-par with some of the worst of the Trek books.

James Luceno, Matt Stower and some of the others don't deserve to be lumped in with that.

It wasn't instinct. He was being influenced and manipulated by the Dark Side of the Force, through Snoke's machinations. Yes yes yes we can argue Luke should never be impacted by that ever again. He is also a Jedi who did not have to face a Sith and their abilities for what... 20 years? Not sure what the timeline is.

We know Sidious had been messing with Ren and Luke for decades at this point...he even somehow blew up the Jedi Temple from across the galaxy with a lighting bolt and Luke did not realize it was him...

And Luke HAD been fighting other darkside users..in the Disney cannon book Shadow of the Sith he WAS looking for The Sith world and defeated the soul of Disney dark lord Viceroy Exim Panshard...but he just...gave up on everything but it showed he did not suddenly just stop fighting in the years before what happened with Ren.

Ugh...that book was suppose to" Make sense of things" but it just made everyone look even more stupid since Luke and Lando just stopped for years without even asking Leia's help and just...did nothing...because they had to do nothing for the plot to work...showing just how god awful the writing in this era has been.

Like if there wasn't a revolution in the US during the Depression when people were literally eating shoe leather to survive, it's certainly not gonna happen rn.

I mean...Roosevelt warned others if they did not do the New Deal America could go down the path of Germany or Russia so...it was getting there.

In the end...the only chance at change is forcing the billionaires to give up power...one way or another that will be brutal.

Lucas basicslly made Rey, KK didn't. How her story originally ended is unknown, how Luke's originally ended is also unknown but I dont think its a stretch to say Rey was always going to carry the torch after luke.

Its one thing to have a woman successor, its another for Luke to have failed utterly so that said woman successor did everything the " right way."

Its not even that Luke died, its that he died without ever marrying or knowing real success and die as a total failure because" Ray is going to rebuild the Jedi the right way because Luke could not do anything right.

He was never supposed to bring balance. That was his dads role.

He didn't fail to revive the jedi order. He was not the last jedi. He knew he wouldn't be. He preserved the galaxy for a future that jedi could exist in, and for new ones to come. The last Jedi lives, and she walks by his example.

He may have partially spawned a plague. But he also helped sire the one who would be the cure for that plague.

He has a student. A student he shared with his sister. One that she adopted as family.

In other words Luke was reduced to just being the one to prop up KK's " True savior" for the sake of her proving she was superior to Lucus...ugh.

"We will root out the communist, marxist, facist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines in our country..."

I do feel if Trump returns to power all" Liberals" would be treated as enemy of the state and everything would be about making conservative culture the only culture allowed in the nation.

I forget, did he abuse the women in the past or does everyone hate him for dating those younger then him alone?
Did Robert Nero not just have a kid with someone who was decades younger then him to?

....no..." Not my Skywalker/ bring EU Luke back from the Multiverse."

He becomes a weird hermit.

Yeah, he really does doesn't he? I wonder why he would ever have chosen to remove himself from the rest of the galaxy and become an oddball hermit. *stares directly at Obi-Wan and Yoda*. The only two Jedi who ever trained Luke at all did EXACTLY the same thing in the face of intense failure. They removed themselves from the galaxy. Now, it can be argued that Obi-Wan and Yoda both "trained" in their exile, but quite frankly with the source material that Rian Johnson had at the time, the only two Jedi Masters that Luke ever was trained by BOTH chose self exile in response to their failures and it's not like (from what we are shown) they went deeply into the philosophy of why they chose exile. Luke was taught when a Jedi has intense failure, you remove yourself from the galaxy.

The Key...KEY difference is that Obi Won and Yoda went into hiding because the government was taken over and they HAD to go into hiding. EVERY thing would have changed if Luke just went to his sister and freaking talked but he just hid and CAUSED everything to fall apart further and I'll never forgive Disney for making Luke that pathetic.

That's American culture. You are your work. Your work is your life, and defines you. When someone asks "What do you do?" It defaults to work. Your hobbies should be work adjacent. If you're unhappy with it, oh well, you'll never be free anyway.

We've built our entire culture around being soulless dead eyes cubicle farmers, basically.

I seen how so many folks Facebook and other social media stuff has devolved entirely about there work, even if in theory they could make a social account just for there work it shows how so many are expected to just live and breath there job 24 7, for jobs like Voice actors and other artist types its almost expected that if your not selling yourself all the time your not" hardcore" enough and are just trash.

Trump's rise to power does seem to come from at least a chunk of men who hate woman as much as he does.

What policies can you make based on nostalgia though.

Make everything how it use to be by force.

Why do I have the feeling they are reconning the entire series to make Chani the" True " hero or something...the last film's ending sure seemed to hint that she was going to kick out the entire universe with a " Pure rebellion on all outsiders" or something since she kept ranting about how she did not want to rely on anyone to help them win there own freedom.

He's all hate and racism now...all he has to offer his those that hate others and want " revenge" on society.

But on one hand most other movies were not really that different then Star Wars when they came out on the ratio of white men having the roles so its more of a overall Hollywood thing at times.

Gaza had democracy before Israel decided to fund Hamas just to f*** with their election.

Do you REALLY think that the Fatah government lead by Yasser Arafat was beacon of freedom and justice?

Hamas was not the only ones that caused harm when you account for

• The 1970 Avivim school bus massacre by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), killed nine children, three adults and crippled 19.
• In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second-largest PLO faction after al-Fatah, carried out a number of attacks and plane hijackings mostly directed at Israel, most infamously the Dawson's Field hijackings, which precipitated the Black September crisis.
• In 1972, the Black September Organization carried out the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes.
• In 1974, members of the DFLP seized a school in Israel and killed a total of 26 students and adults and wounded over 70 in the Ma'alot massacre.
• The 1975, Savoy Hotel hostage situation killing 8 hostages and 3 soldiers, carried out by Fatah.
• The 1978, Coastal Road massacre killing 37 Israelis and wounding 76, also carried out by Fatah.

And more...Israel has its sins but acting like Gaza was a peaceful jolly nation that Israel turned into monsters is revisionist history.

Give Palestine recognition. Set them up with a constitution and new political parties. Give them a government and self-determinism, and I think we can see things improve from there.

Did pepole forget we spent over twenty years trying to mold Afghanistan into a functional democracy only for it to be a total failure...how long do you think it would take to prop up Gaza as its own state so it would not end up to be as failed a state as Afghanistan?

Does seem like he is either dismissing or seriously can't see how having all the aliens be based on stereotypes is a insult. It does seem like its a thing where he can't grasp that what was seen as liberal in his time is not seen as good enough

https://variety.com/2024/film/festivals/george-lucas-star-wars-critics-all-white-men-cannes-film-festival-1236015478/

Er...so...um...I'm not sure if Lucas is being tone deaf here...his age might be starting to be effecting his mind.

Some states have also gone after nudist recreation too. Ohio and Wisconsin for example this past year.

Seems to be clear its a outright attempt to force all of America to be a conservative culture.

The simple fact is that a political ideology, especially an extreme one that is based on "martyrdom" and "revenge", can never be killed by violence against it, it can only be removed by removing the need for that mentality in the first place. I can guarantee you that this war and murder and destruction made many of the people who weren't hamas into hamas, to get "revenge" and "martyrdom".

I mean...if you kill anyone who would have that mentality you would kill the ideology to even if its the extreme option.

How much more regressive can this court actually get between this and potentially axing gay marriage?

...on second thought, I'm not sure I want to know.

They would bring back slavery, and for a king to take any woman on there wedding day as his " right" if they could get away with it. Its clear they think Westeros is there ideal America.

For the people saying it's best for her or whatever...

how did Ted Cruz or Mitt Romney or Chris Christie actually benefit by bending the knee?

They are still invited to GOP events instead of being exiled?

Which is one of the biggest challenges with addressing climate change. The countries that need to make the biggest changes have the least incentive and unless the rest of the world literally forces them to play along all our own actions are almost meaningless.

The only way anything is going to be saved is for some pepole to be forced to give up there luxuries, the only question is going to be who has to give up what first.

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-above-normal-2024-atlantic-hurricane-season

Oh yah everything's normal...aside from double the storms...lets hope they stay away from the country or a lot of places could be seriously wrecked.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/middleeast/israel-idf-hostage-video-hamas-intl/index.html

No matter what side your on...when you see this its hard not to see why pepole in Israel will never trust anyone in Gaza again. The fact that its a after thought to the powers that be in Israel is @#$#$'d up to.

pretty sure it's tik tok/youtube/twitch

I would say that does seem like Broadcast TV, and even Cable TV has been all but sacrificed for the glory of streaming but even streaming is starting to crack for everyone but Disney, Netflix and Amazon...does feel like the entire entertainment industry is starting to implode from greed.

Like, it starts to hit home when you realize there is legit hardly anything coming out in the fall...and all the major streaming shows have such long gaps that its really leading to wide gaps of nothing coming out anymore...and the shows that come out end to quickly now to with how short seasons are if they are not just released all at once.

https://www.ign.com/articles/walker-cancelled-four-seasons-the-cw

SO...never been to big a fan of the show but...its clear that after Superman and Lois is over next hear Nexstar will have completed turning CW to a graveyard throwaway channel....its a damn shame.

More or less the first leaders of kingdoms were just those who hoarded over resources others needed...and only became more friendly when they had to rely on more then brutality...I suppose this is humanity reverting to its most savage nature...only with tech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIiXPPEm4A

Bump since I posted it at a late time...and the point is how the rich are getting to the point where they are making it so that they don't even bother to make quality whatever and just rule by crushing everyone else and giving everyone with no options.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/

This was over a year ago but, never saw anything about it so here it is. Some segments are," Growth in this case is not necessarily about being bigger or better, it is simply more. It means that the company is generating more revenue, higher valuations, gaining more market share, and then finding more ways to generate these things. Businesses are expected to be - and rewarded for being - eternal burning engines of capital that create more and more shareholder value while, hopefully, providing a service to a customer in the process.

In the public markets, that means that companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft were rewarded for having unfocused, capital-intensive businesses that required mass layoffs when times got tough, because the market loved the idea that theyd found a way to save money. They werent punished for their poor planning, their stagnating products, their mismanagement of human capital, or their general lack of any real innovation because the numbers kept going up.

They repeat a very specific cycle - company is the next big thing, company is now worth over a billion dollars, company is experiencing unheard of growth (with no question as to whether they are sustainable or profitable), company is now challenging the big dogs of industry, a little M&A, an absolutely insane valuation, and then a sudden realization that actually, perhaps this wasnt a good business at all? I am hammering on TechCrunch links here because I am being lazy - they are far from the only outlet to assume that a company like Brex would not simply run itself into the ground through virtue of existing - but the path is always the same - growth, growth, growth, legitimization, growth, growth, acquisition, and then an eventual reckoning with real life.

As my friend Kasey put it in a recent conversation, growth is a fire. If you build a nice, sustainable fire, itll keep you warm, cook food and sustain life. And if the only thing you care about is how big your fire is, then itll set fire to everything around it, and the more you throw into it, the more itll burn. Eventually, youll have nothing left, but if you desperately desire that fire, you will constantly have to find new things to burn at any cost.

And we, societally, have turned our markets and businesses - private and public - over to arsonists. We have created conditions where we celebrate people for making big companies but not good companies.
Venture capital and the public markets dont actually reward or respect good businesses or good CEOs - they reward people that can steer the kind of growth that raises the value of an asset. Elon Musks success with Tesla didnt come from the inarguable point that he ended the monopoly of the internal combustion engine - it came from his canny manipulation of the symbolic value of a stock through lies and half-truths, meaning that there was always a perpetual reason that Tesla was a growth company and a good stock to buy. Sundar Pichai isnt paid $280 million a year because hes a good CEO. After all, Google has all but destroyed its search product. Hes paid because he finds ways to increase the overall growth of the company (even while their cloud division still loses money), and thus the stock goes up.
The consequences are that these companies will continue to invest in things that grow the overall revenue of the company over all else. They will mass-hire and mass-fire, because there are no consequences when the markets dont really care as long as the company itself stays valuable. Venture capitalists certainly dont mind - after all, its less burn to get you through tough climates that were arguably created by the poor hiring decisions of a company that was never incentivized to hire sustainably or operate profitably.

Until we see a seismic shift in how major investors treat the companies they invest in, this cycle will continue. I guarantee that we will see each and every one of the companies doing mass layoffs do mass-hirings in the next few years, and then do another mass layoff not long after, because they are simply treating human capital as assets to be manipulated to increase the value of a stock. They are not structured to evaluate whether the business is sustainable, because their only interest is seeing their current profits grow by multiples that please Wall Street.
Good companies should not have to repeatedly lay people off. They should not be mass-hiring for fear that the demand they are capturing is temporary, and those new employees will soon find themselves at the receiving end of a pink slip.
The lens through which we evaluate businesses is cracked, and until we fix it, we will continue to experience these punishing cycles of binging and purging on human capital.

This is the problem at the center of almost everything Ive written. Why are bosses mad they cant bring people back to the office? Because their alignment of business success isnt really tied to profit or success, but rather the sense that they are big and successful, which requires a bustling workplace and ideas.
Why did billions of dollars get pumped into cryptos countless non-companies? Because success as defined by capital has been reframed to mean number go up. As a notion, it is divorced from any long-term thinking, fiscal probity, or even what you and I would call morality.
Why did these companies never seem to get blamed for hiring and then quickly firing tens of thousands of people? Because at the heart of the business media and the markets, workers were necessary casualties of the eternal struggle for growth. Layoffs are inevitably reported as a large number (10,000 employees at Microsoft), which makes it all too easy to remove the human element. When confronted with numbers of this scale, its easy to ignore the individual human agony that comes with losing a job. The uncertainty and shame that follows a firing.

The truth is that nothing lasts forever. Companies can (and should) die or, at the very least, understand that there is an inevitable limit to growth, and eventually they must reconcile with being a stable, albeit plateaued, business.
A product may be profitable for a while, but there is a line at which profitability comes at the cost of functionality, and your company may simply not be able to grow more. A business that cannot generate profit is not a good business, and a business that can never generate a profit deserves to die.

And the net result of all of this is that it kills innovation. If capital is not invested in providing a good service via a profitable business, it will never sustain things that are societally useful. Companies are not incentivized to provide better services or improve lives outside of ways in which they can drain more blood from consumers. And the street doesnt care either - just look at Facebook and Instagram, two products that have grown endlessly profitable and utterly useless in the process.
If capital wishes to call labor entitled, capital must acknowledge that it is the most entitled creature in society, craving eternal growth at the cost of the true value of any given service or entity.

More or less...obsession with short term is really undoing everything because no one has any damn impulse control...damn it all.

So they are going to fight both sides of the conflict like this or something? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUbLGK2RCbE

It's weird because overall Republicans have shifted away from "Climate change is a hoax and not real, stop talking about it as if it is. Those 99% of scientists whose job involves knowing where they're talking about in regards to the climate doesn't matter because I can point out dentists and chiropractors who say it's fake" to "ok fine, it's real, but it's too late to do anything and fossil fuel money go brrrrrrr".

People are not even denying it anymore but just care to much about there personal enjoyment over a doomed future...it really is at the point were most know they are screwed but would rather spend every moment they can how they want and let everyone else live in ruins.

Its like, we know now that most plastic stuff might give you cancer and just shrug it off...humanity really is becoming a race that knows its dooming itself for short term pleasure and is a race that as a whole has no real restraint.

Trump is proof that the Republicans don't see it as banning sex, but banning sex for the masses who don't deserve any pleasure...@#$#$.

Ah...well at least this won't lead to World War 3.

So...do we know what caused the crash yet?

The other day, they killed 5 of their own soldiers and wounded 7 others in a "friendly fire" incident because the soldiers were exhausted, and exhausted soldiers tend to ignore RoE (yes, this excuse was used) Doesn't sound like Israel even gives a s*** about its own soldiers if it's forcing them to fight uninterrupted for so long that they get "tired" and ignore RoE/make mistakes. Mistakes jeopardize the lives of the entire unit (not to mention everyone else in the area)

Don't forget the time when they murdered 3 of their own hostages against the orders of their commanding officer.

I don't know how any but the most blood thirsty soldiers could possibly tolerate the higher ups when they are THIS extreme...like this is Stalin level stuff here.

And with the last topic done...the show must go on. Sigh...the descent to madness goes on with no end in sight...and no idea what will be left of either Israel or Gaza by the end of it...but pepole got to know what's going on so here we are.

https://newstral.com/en/article/en/1253336168/out-of-ideas-netanyahu-sees-biden-and-gallant-as-a-cabal-plotting-against-him

SO...Netanyahu really is in the point where the movie/ anime bad guy mistrusts everyone and does something really horrible...he really has to be removed from power before he burns everything around him.

I fear he might really turn Israel to Russia's ally at this point at the very least and well...we saw how that's worked for Syria...AKA Assad more or less has become untouchable.

So its still going on even with Dale's actor dead eh? Are they going to recast him or kill Dale off?

What's worst is that they seem to be canceling Power Rangers as we know it to reboot the entire franchise to be more like the movie and might get rid of the Zords to focus more on Teen Drama because they don't want to share with Japan anymore which is so not going to end well.

When Hasbro took over it seemed like they respected the fans...but then it seems someone who cared about the series in the company died so they were replaced by someone who just does not give a damn...

I'll be more hyped if Geto comes back...honestly feels he should be the final boss.

History will look at Boomers as the ones who had everything, but as a result were spoiled so much that they refused to share anything and destroyed all progress because of that refusal to willingly give up anything...if humanity survives the damage they do what they did can never be forgotten.

Well if to many say that then pepole might start to realize it and go berserk so you can see why many in power are still trying to pass off the illusion as reality...as Trump and co keep trying to blame everything on minorities and hide that the world is reverting to just the lords and the serfs.

I suppose its just the writer's opinion but more or less it might as well between that and this one a month ago it might as well say that there won't be a Middle class soon as anyone not rich will just be reduced to poor beggars more or less...and so many are just seeing this fate as a fact of life.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-things-middle-class-won-150007805.html

https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/budgeting/things-the-middle-class-wont-be-able-to-afford-in-less-than-a-decade/

https://apnews.com/article/justice-samuel-alito-upsidedown-flag-trump-jan6-f5809b9fd3be19b2359907f7b16651e5

In other words a upside down flag means he supported Trump's insurrection and that the election was stolen....it seems...he's blaming it on the wind.

While it seems minor there's more to it then that.

An upside-down U.S. flag has long been a sign of dire distress and versatile symbol of protest. But in January 2021, when it flew over the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, it was largely seen in connection with a specific cause: the false claim by then-President Donald Trumps supporters that the 2020 election had been marred by fraud.
The revelation this week about the flag flying at Alitos home was the latest blow to a Supreme Court that was already under fire as it considers unprecedented cases against Trump and some of those charged with rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Alito has said the flag was briefly flown by his wife amid a dispute with neighbors and he had no part in it. But the incident reported by The New York Times adds to concerns about an institution thats increasingly seen as partisan and lacking strict ethical guidelines.

The high court is now facing questions about whether the spouses of two of its members question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and if those justices should be hearing cases related to the Jan. 6 riot and Trumps role in it. Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, faced calls for recusal after reports that his wife Virginia Thomas was involved in efforts to overturn President Joe Bidens 2020 election win.Were talking about a fundamental bedrock American value about peaceful transfer of power, about elections, said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog organization. Its just the integrity of the democratic process.

Several Democrats in Congress, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, called for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases. Justices can and do voluntarily recuse themselves, but those are their own individual calls and they arent subject to review.
There was no indication Alito would do so. He did not respond to a request for comment sent through the courts public information office.
While the Supreme Court long went without its own specific code of ethics, an institutional reputation of staying above the political fray has long helped bolster its relatively high levels of public trust. But in the wake of the 2022 decision overturning a nationwide right to abortion an opinion that was leaked before its release public trust sank to its lowest level in 50 years.

Theres also been sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices. The high court adopted a code of ethics last year, but it lacks a means of enforcement.
Alito, a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed in 2006, has been one of the most courts most conservative justices and authored the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. During oral arguments in the election interference case against Trump, he appeared skeptical of Justice Department arguments that past presidents arent completely immune from prosecution, and seemed one of the justices most likely to find that prosecutors went too far in bringing obstruction charges against hundreds of participants in the Jan. 6 riot.
Ethical guidelines generally make it clear that judges should recuse themselves in cases where their spouses have financial interest, but the situation is less clear when spouses have a publicly known political point of view, said Arthur Hellman, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He pointed to a federal judge in California who refused to recuse himself from a same-sex marriage case in 2011 even though his wife was a head of the American Civil Liberties Union there. Spouses finances are generally intertwined, but the idea that wives and husbands always share political views is outdated, he found.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether Alito was aware of the inverted flag at the time or its links to Trump supporters, said Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University School of Law. I dont believe Alito knew the flag was flying upside down or if he did know, I find it hard to believe that he knew the relationship to Stop the Steal, he said in an email.
Flags were used as communication devices at sea centuries ago, and sailors would hang them upside down as a signal of extreme distress, said Marc Leepson, author of Flag: An American Biography.
More recently, anti-Vietnam War protesters used the symbol as a statement against their governments actions, he said. Some would put flag postage stamps upside-down on their letters to express their opinions about the war.

The inverted flag has also been flown by anti-government extremists and white nationalists who used it as a signal of a broken nation, said Jeff Tischauser, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project.
Its one thing to go to a rally and see a Patriot group carrying it. Its another thing for me to go driving past a Supreme Court justices house and see it, he said.

Martha-Ann Alito hung the upside-down flag during a dust-up with a neighbor in Alexandria, Virginia, who had a lawn sign referring to Trump with an expletive near a bus stop during a the heated time of January 2021, Fox News anchor Shannon Bream said in an online post, citing a conversation with Justice Alito. Upset after the neighbor blamed her for Jan. 6 and used vulgar language, she hung the flag for a short time, Bream wrote, saying Alito described some neighbors as very political.

Politics often overlaps into everyday life, and no human can be completely free of personal opinions, said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University. But the duty of a judge is to do what you can to keep them at bay. That means you dont trumpet your biases by running them up a flagpole, he said.
Appearing to enter the political fray can contribute to a growing distrust of the U.S. Supreme Court, which Geyh warned could have dire consequences.

Demands for recusals by justices and judges have been part of political disputes over the high court and elsewhere in the legal system. Thomas has rejected Democratic calls for him to recuse himself from Trump-related cases.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have called for New York Judge Juan Merchan to recuse himself from Trumps hush-money trial because hes given small donations to Democrats and his daughter is a party consultant. He declined, in a decision backed by a state ethics panel.
But while a system exists for penalizing lower-court judges who are accused of conflicts or other wrongdoing, there is no mechanism to sanction Supreme Court justices.

To me the fact that such a protocol does not currently exist at the court is a real deficit, said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, an advocacy group pushing for judicial ethics.
Only Congress can impeach a Supreme Court justice, said Michael Frisch, ethics counsel at Georgetown Law. One justice, Abe Fortas, resigned from the Supreme Court in 1969 amid a controversy over receiving $20,000 from a Wall Street financier. An impeachment, though, has only happened once, to Justice Samuel Chase in the early 1800s. He was later acquitted by the Senate.