Read up if you have to be vaccinated or if it's enough to have had the wuflu and have recovered. If you've got the time, just get it and recover. 6 months of "recovered" status should mean you count on the same level as vaxxed AFAIK
Foreign intervention, which just makes everything worse. If it's the EU, we just get infected with similar political instability in the west. If it's China, they get clapped unless they bring in heavy guns or act amazingly stealthily, or they get a puppet. The only power I trust to try some sincere foreign intervention that might not go bad horribly and actually work out for both sides, might be India. They got the least stake and serious chance of abusing the situation whilst still being powerful enough to make a positive impact.
I feel like Star Trek is just a small symptom. Modern society is simply not fit for manliness. Comfort is everywhere and devours ambition. True achievements are hard to come by or feel random and unearned. Everything seems new and changed, even though it's only superficial. The more you fit yourself to ancient and basic ideals of manliness, they better off you often are. I think I speak for most average / normal people when I say that exercising, building muscles and being careful of your diet on purpose - all suck. It's much easier to live healthily when you have to do manual labor and ensure your own food supply and that is still a meaningful and (comparatively) luxurious and good life. When a healthy, muscly body and good diet are just side-outcomes of your job and you still earn enough to live better than your parents - that's almost a dream for many men today. You are more alone and isolated than ever. You don't have a nation, you don't have a religion, you don't have an ideology, you don't have a family, you don't have a wife and you don't have children. What is there to believe in and put faith in (and not just religious faith, but who or what gives any man the hope that tomorrow will be better)? There is nothing you can throw yourself behind. The only thing you can do is live in a complex, global web of gears which try evermore to make you fail. The question isn't "Why is the world so crazy" the question is, "How can you not be insane?" It's just a systemic problem. Ronald Reagan made the joke that the Soviet Union collapsed because of the spread of the car. When you have a tool that allows you so much freedom - to just sit down and drive however far you want to go - that's something you just can't stop. And just like the car definitely played a part in making Russians want more freedom and hope, so does everything I said before about society and how it works systematically influence us. Of course that will be expressed in media as well. So don't blame Star Trek - blame EVERYTHING :) The only things we have are our mental health and whatever you worked for and can keep from the rest of us. The rest will probably get screwed down the line.
The Olympics have to be held NOW because of the stupid idea that was the 2002 Fifa World Cup with Japan & Korea. They built huge stadiums in Japan for the occasion which simply are NEVER filled with just the domestic audience. These fell into disrepair over the years, but they wanted to get some use out of them. That's why they were somewhat renovated and gotten back up to beauty for the Olympics. That's why the Olympics HAVE to happen, cause otherwise they spent almost 20 years of investment on those stadiums for nothing. It's a case of sunken cost fallacy and wanting to make the best of what shit their predecessors built up, at this point. Once the Olympics and the World Cup are done with, the stadiums can basically be gotten rid of. There won't be another comparably huge event in Japan within the next 30+ years, particularly because the population will keep going down as well.
Spoken like someone who's never lived in a hostile and/or foreign environment. Go move to China and see how well you can do on your own, with your values. Or dangerous parts of South Africa, though most of sub-saharan Africa would probably be good enough of a "foreign" environment to see how successful THAT kind of thinking would be.
Morgan-Lloyd wrote that reading “Just Mercy” “makes me reconsider my view on the death penalty” because it “was far too easy for the people to convict a man of a crime that he could not have committed.” ? Emphasis mine.
"Looking for images of architectural materials? Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information.
Photographed by a designer for designers, these pictures show specific materials and how they change with time, weather, wear, and different lighting. Each section offers general views of the material, a gallery of commonly used or manufactured samples, and hundreds of specimens showing types and finishes in architectural settings. Captions provide information about the physical properties, dimensions, construction techniques, specific varieties of the material, and types and styles of treatments.
Interviews with eight design professionals provide practical advice on how they approach visual research, and a comprehensive glossary of visual and technical terms offers a vocabulary for professional communication. An index of subject matter and materials makes it easy to find just the image you need. 1000 color illustrations." taken from https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393730077/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Literally the first words on the back of the book:"Looking for images of architectural materials? Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures - wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass - ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information." (emphasis mine). Hilarious when you do what the book tells you to and then get sued for it.
Relentless sex appeal to the opposite gender + two decades of marketing and forming a cult fan base. https://youtu.be/AHhEv03iAe4 Also because they censor so much sexual shit, they have adapted and pushed and prodded to be always on the line of sexy/suggestive but still good enough to get past censors.
I don't enjoy special effects fests too much, so I don't think I will miss them. I watched Star Wars 7 in the cinemas and was disappointed. I watched Joker in the cinema - and it was good. But I rewatched it at home and I didn't feel like I missed out on anything. I enjoyed watching it privately more actually. Beyond that I don't watch live action stuff (outside of Youtube). Anime is fine on home screen, the lewder parts are always awkward in a cinema too.
And this is will probably be the best election they've ever had! If their chancellor candidate didn't obviously copy from others for her book, they might have even been the biggest party in Germany right now. Right now they're #2 or #3.