SkepticalButOpenMinded

It’s hard to do well, but I disagree that it’s a slap in the face or a low blow. The gender swap of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactic was seen as sacrilege by fans, but she became one of the highlights of the show. Miles Morales was a creative way to do a race swap for Spider Man, and the narrative is richer for it. Jason Mamoa turned Aquaman from white to Polynesian, and the depiction was better than ever. Would Nick Fury be better as a white guy, as he was originally for decades, instead of Samuel L Jackson?

And then there are all the “swaps” that happen before the first day of filming, like Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien, who was originally (edit) going to be cast as a man. This was “controversial” at the time, with people decrying “political correctness”. I would not take “causing controversy” as a reliable indicator for whether something sucks.

Edit: point taken about gender neutral script. See discussion below.

That’s actually even more depressing. The legal minimum wage is so low that it’s not even lifting up the wages of the most modest jobs in the lowest COL areas. It functionally doesn’t exist.

Yes the exception is places like Massachusetts, which has some of the best quality healthcare in the world. But, you guessed it, they have a universal healthcare system similar to Germany.

Vox was started by Ezra Klein and has a good reputation in academia for explanatory journalism.

This is a myth. The suicide rate in Japan is lower than the US, and similar to European countries. South Africa, Russia, and Korea have bonkers suicide rates.

Maybe biking is an exception, but for public transportation and walking, it is absolutely true that pretty much all of Europe is much better. It’s not even close.

Yes, the lack of civic knowledge is sometimes frightening. I’m not one to say “both sides!”, but in this case, I see it on both the left and right: people who don’t seem to understand that most major bills in the US pass through compromise. This is true even when one party has a majority, because the US has some of the weakest party discipline of any system (eg people can vote against their party).

You are acccusing them of invoking a thing that only you invoked and when you’re called out on it, you accuse everyone else of “mental gymnastics”?

I agree with your sensible degree of caution, given the context. It’s good media literacy.

Agreed. I think both are part of the picture. Consumers are buying the wrong kind of car (or manufacturers are selling the wrong type of car), too big and too inefficient, and there is price gouging, especially during the pandemic shortage. It’s telling that car prices were the fastest to come back down of almost any consumer category last year. Shows how much they could come down.

Cars have also ballooned in size since the 90s. In the 90s, sedans were the most common type of car. Now, it’s SUVs and light trucks, which use tons more materials.

Why are you getting downvoted? Why is Lemmy defending rich corporations and not consumers??

You opened dry pasta in a dry room and got less than the advertised amount. If there’s residual moisture in the factory that evaporates, that is their problem, not ours. Yes it’s a small variation, but that reasoning works both ways: they should include a few extra strands to make sure the consumer gets the right amount.