Control. Plain and simple. If they fill all of the available slots with their ideologically driven "scientists", who are there for the diversity hire and not to do actual science, they can control the results and release of information derived from the "experiments" that are being conducted.
FTA:
I've had sex with several guys that didn't know I was trans and there was no issue.
Citation fucking needed on that one, because unless a dude has never seen a woman's bits before in his life or is high/drunk as fuck, he's going to know a neo-vagina from a real one.
Hell, the first thing I do these days when I get my mitts on a new hardback book is fold both the front and back cover open so they'll get broken in. Books were meant to be read, dammit, not just sit on a shelf and look pretty like they do in so many wokies' libraries.
I leave books by the wayside all the time and drop them on the DNF/donate stack because they didn't hold my interest long enough or I've already bounced off of them three times and I really don't think a fourth attempt will be worth it. Granted, that physical stack is a lot smaller these days due to me switching most of my reading over bootlegged ebooks, but considering that the vendors want to charge you the same price for a stack of bits and bytes (that has effectively zero overhead for them to produce and deliver) as they do for a physical tome of 150-300 bound pages, they can all get bent.
In my experience, it's more worth it to just not pay attention to the bullshit that goes on online when it comes to a hobby I enjoy. For example: I just recently started getting into vinyl records and have been building a small collection of stuff I enjoy. While I maintain a Discogs account to track my collection and wishlist, I stay as far away as I can from ANY forums or discussion areas in regards to the hobby, on ANY site, because inevitably they devolve into batches of snobs with their own pack of neuroses and gatekeeper-ish bullshit. My life and enjoyment of the hobby is greatly enhanced by staying the hell away from them and only shooting the bull with the owner down at the local record store.
Old version of Kindle for PC + Older version of Calibre + DRM-removal plugin. Download 'em as you buy them, strip the DRM, upload them to your own cloud storage as a backup. Plus, as an added bonus, with Calibre you can set the covers for the books in your library so you don't have to use the godawful "NOW COMING TO NETFLIX", "SOON TO BE AN AMAZON MOVIE", and "COMING SOON TO THEATERS" covers that publishers slap on the books well after you've bought them but Amazon seems intent on updating years down the road.
Fellow Midwesterner here, and I wholeheartedly concur that we need more social spaces where like-minded men can gather, shoot the bull, discuss relevant topics, and maybe have a burger and a beer while we're at it. Somewhat like the Moose Lodges, Eagles Aeries, Masonic Lodges, etc, but without all of the prior associations that go along with any of those groups. Trouble is, with the current political climate I doubt that any place that gets set up would be allowed to get to the point where the Feds could Ruby Ridge it, because the state and local opposition would get wind of it and do everything in their power to shut it down.
The book used to be halfway good back in the '90s when Larsen wasn't a full-blown TDS-unhinged raging libtard. Sure, it fell into the HURR DURR EDGY category like most of the Image books, mostly for crude humor, but Erik has gone waaaaaay off the rails in the realm of wokeshit and self-insert fantasy.
They are flash-in-the-pan easy sources of cash for Disney as people open their wallets so they can be exploited by nostalgia.
Not to mention that the live-action remakes give them a chance to reset the clock on the copyright on their iteration of the characters. I fully expect there to be a lobbying in congress for yet another extension of copyright as the marker for Mickey to go into public domain once again looms ever closer.
I ran across a cashier the other day that had buttons from The Adventure Zone on her smock, and when I noted it (as I had listened to the full run of it years ago) she actually seemed well-versed in the show and its lore, so I was pleased to see that she wasn't one of those "casual fans".
That being said, I definitely get where you're coming from in that the newly-introduced "fans" can be frustrating, especially when they don't want to dive any deeper than a surface skim of the material. We, as the old guard fans, see the signs of fandom and we've been trained to expect that those "showing the colors" are as deep in the fandom as we are. We expect our adaptations of the material to be true to the source, we expect a certain level of knowledge from those who are the keepers of the lore, and when that's not there it drives us up the wall.
I feel like all we can really do is boycott it and move on to trying to create the next thing. Once there is no more profit left in the original product, the parasites will likely leave it, and maybe we can circle back to the original thing and revive it if we can.
This reminded me of a a story I heard a few years back. Friend of my wife had an experience once in a KFC where a Shaniqua-style hambeast was at the counter ordering, by herself, and she ordered up a family-size bucket and sides. Black kid at the register (who looked like a twig that weighed about a buck-fifty when soaking wet), on auto-pilot, asks if she wants that "for here or to go". La'queefa goes off on him, screaming about "You think I'm going to eat all of this by myself?!?!?!" Dude at the counter, who apparently gives zero shits at this point in his day pops back with "Bitch, I don't know your life! You look like you could!"
I mean, if you're obese, and you're ordering enough for three or four, you better expect that people are going to look at you like you're a piggy bastard. "Hammah" here just got called out by an automated system instead of a real person. Sucks to be catching a reality check on your life, but the indignation in her post makes me think that she's been in need of one for a while.
...concerned with creating opportunities for individuals to fulfill their potential.
Bullshit. Every leftist program out there that's supposed to "create opportunities" only does so by ripping the same opportunities away from someone else that they deem to be "privileged" over the recipient of the "opportunity". While they may look good in theory, they've all been bent and perverted.
As a guy who went back to school for IT-related stuff in his 30s, I can definitely say that if they don't have the knowledge at their fingertips, they should at least know how to pull up a MAN page or JFGI to figure it out.
one female candidate who dropped and f-bomb and claimed a couple forms of mental illness in the interview
That was an obvious signal to anyone with half a brain that you should avoid her like the plague. A "woke' hiring manager would see her as a potential diversity hire based on neurodivergence and gender, and once she got her foot in the door you'd never be able to get rid of her unless you literally caught her in some form of gross negligence - and even then she'd probably try to sue the company for discriminatory practices in terminating her employment. Congrats on dodging that bullet.
Honestly, even if the Right retakes both chambers, it's still going to be a shit-show if the Presidency passes from Biden to Harris come January 21st (or shortly thereafter). You know they're salivating over that two years-and-a-day mark so they can have the puppet-in-chief come down with some sort of mysterious ailment and do a hospital bed resignation, putting Heels-Up Harris in the seat of power. After that it's pull a Nixon and install a veep of their choice (lord help us if they drag Hillary back into this mess), and then start rolling out the plans for the next economic catastrophe in the making.
While the parties involved in a consenting sex act between adults really isn't any of our business, it definitely becomes our business once there's a breach of ethics involved. For all I cared she could have been spreading and letting the entire staff of every gaming site out there run a train on her, but once it became known that he was throwing her positive press without disclosing their relationship, that becomes a problem.
Every day they bring the ghost of GamerGate back up is one where I continue to wonder how the hell we let them get so entrenched that they control the narrative to the degree that they do.
It's worth noting that the whole "Bonobo" thing was an error on 343's part due to someone not checking the thing to make sure that placeholder assets were removed before the content was pushed live. A shockingly tone-deaf error, but a mistake nonetheless.
As far as the Amber Heard thing goes, the article on Kotaku was more of the same BS defense of Heard from the stance of women not being believed, yadda yadda yadda. More appeal from emotion that completely ignores the facts of the case. They bring a good point that if she hadn't been found guilty of defamation it would have been an even bigger blow against people reporting abuse - from the male end of the spectrum. You'd think that the wokies would be happy for anything that empowers the abused to report their abusers, but nobody on their side of things gives a shit about men being abused.
The only way I could see an abortion strengthening a relationship would be the removal of a stillborn fetus from the woman's body. They'd mourn the loss of their potential future, move on, and eventually have another kid.
Beyond that? If any woman I was dating in my 20s had turned up pregnant from our relations, and then aborted the child without my knowledge or consent, the confrontation I would have had with her after I found out would be the last she ever saw of me. Any dude who continues to bow, scrape, and simp over a woman who literally murdered their child, ending the future of another human being before it is even born, deserves the hell he ends up living in.
I've never really understood the point of Method Acting. I mean, I can get the idea behind losing a lot of weight if you're playing someone who is starving on a desert island so you better look the part, or studying serial killers to get the physical tics and outward attitudes of one, but there comes a point where you have to separate yourself from the character, otherwise you end up looking like a damn lunatic (a la Jared Leto).
Quoth Hanks:
"We're beyond that now, and I don't think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy."
Uh, isn't the whole fucking point of acting to convincingly play the part of someone or something that you're not?
I think the big thing about the dipshit from Kotaku doubling down boils down to one thing:
Elena, being Kenyan, is "black". Kimberly, being African-American, is "Black". The difference is that the former is just an identifier for her ethnicity, while the latter is a signifier of a political stance and belief system espoused by the woke. Sure, he could have backtracked and they could have edited the article to indicate that she was the first African-American woman in the series, but he didn't, and they didn't, and now he look like even more of a clown-shoe than when he started.
"Gentle Urbanism"? Exactly when the fuck have we ever seen the land set aside in the city for X trees planted for every Y people in whatever urban tenement they're wishing into existence?
This is just more seething propaganda from sheep that can't handle the thought of being separated from their precious urban lifestyle.
So 19-year-old women are still children, but pre-teens have the mental wherewithal to be able to decide what gender they want to be, but at the same time we can send 18-year-old men off to die for their country, but we can't legally allow them to drink or smoke until they hit 21...
The mental gymnastics just get so tiring at times.
L.A. Law, back in '86-'92, the role that put him on the map for most of his career.
That's effectively the equivalent of walking into a rave, taking the strange pills someone hands her, and then yanking off her panties in front of them.
Look up the Rez Trance Vibrator for the PS2 for another early example of tech that wasn't supposed to be all about sex, but somehow was.
From a legal-ese standpoint? If anything, showing up as She-Hulk should actively harm her cases. The opposing counsel could argue for a mistrial based on jury bias, due to her being a superhero/public figure that has saved lives and aided the public.