Yes, but it’s a bureaucratic process that involves a lot of red tape and ultimately has to compensate the displaced property owner. It definitely gets abused sometimes, and property owners are often undercompensated, but there are at least thresholds that must be met.

In China, there is no private land ownership. Residents lease their land from the state. So if the state says a railroad is coming through, your lease simply doesn’t get renewed, and you no longer have the right to remain in your house. It’s efficient and highly collectivist, but discompassionate.

Alright, I got around to finishing it sooner than I expected.

Fully agree: the second half of the movie does actually go somewhere with all the nonsense. The character development is fantastic, and the sci-fi actually is used as a creative way to explore self worth and interpersonal relationships.

I stand by my frustration with what comes across as gratuitous, dated feeling humor and tropes (Scott Pilgrim, Rick and Morty, “so random! XD” Internet culture), but it definitely has a lot more depth and substance than I was ready to give it credit for.

All true, except he’s in Queensland, Australia.

Noted. I’ll give the rest of it a shot sometime.

See, I didn’t hate it because it was confusing, I hated it because it felt boring and cringy. Once you get over the initial genre hopping whiplash, it’s just more generic action tropes and multiverse nonsense that had already been done to death by the time that movie came out. At the insistence of the people I was watching with, I admittedly didn’t make it past the expository bagel scene, but once I got the pulse that it was a slice-of-life drama and John Wick thrown in a blender with Rick and Morty, I didn’t mind turning it off, and I usually hate not finishing movies.

Yes HDMI forum are shitbags, but there are definitely technical advantages to HDMI. Just that I can think of, DisplayPort doesn’t have ARC (audio return for sound systems), or CEC (device can turn on TV/display, TV remote can pause movie playing on console, etc) and the max length for a DisplayPort cable is no more than 3 meters before you have to go to expensive active cables. Most of these are easy to work around for most PC setups, but if Valve wants the gabecube to easily fit into living room/TV setups, it does present a challenge.

And Spanish is just as dangerous.

The items the people are holding in the video are just generic plastic putty knives, not purpose-made ice scrapers (i.e. they came from the paint department, not automotive). Still works for the purposes of the protest, but I agree they probably don’t stock very many ice scrapers.

No, look. The controls in BOTW/TOTK are really simple. The sprint/go fast button is always B. Unless you’re on a horse - then it’s A.

Or if you’re swimming or climbing, because then it’s X.

That’s my understanding as well. Even if the ballroom can be completely funded by “““donations“”” (bribes, tributes, etc.), it’s still up to Congress to allocate those funds for that purpose. Neither the president nor the donors can designate that money for a specific purpose on their own. That is, if the constitution and laws were still enforced.

I’m actually kind of shocked by the names at the bottom of the list. Like really? Marco Rubio’s entire net worth is less than a cheap house in the SF Bay Area?

Absolutely right. Moore was the lamest, laziest, most uninspiring Bond actor. Some of his movies are fun despite him, but it’s a shame he was in so many.

I’m not mad. I’m glad they’re showing some semblance of backbone for once. I just think it’s a poorly chosen cliche for him to use the “your grandfather’s Democratic Party” bit, when the party of the past didn’t have the cowardice issues that the current one has had this very same year.

No, my grandfather’s Democratic Party instituted the New Deal. The Democratic Party that “just rolled over” was you just a few months ago.

That, and it was seen as relatively healthy for fast food. It was one of the only fast food options at the time where not everything was fried and drowning in saturated fats. Prior to Chipotle, Subway was considered the healthiest fast food chain.

Right, totally in agreement that their popularity has continued to grow since 2010. Now compare that graph to the graph in the post. SUVs didn’t just come out of nowhere in 2010, but the increase in pedestrian fatalities seemingly did. Therefore other factors besides just the popularity of large vehicles must have contributed to the massive increase in pedestrian fatalities.

The overwhelming majority of automatic transmissions made in the last 85 years have had torque converters, not automatically operated clutches (referring to the primary connection between motor and driveline, not torque converter lockup clutches or transmission clutch packs). Cars that use the automatic equivalent of a manual clutch pedal have really only been practically produced in the last 15 years in the form of dual wet clutch automatics.

Assuming you’re referring to the US, the SUV explosion was spurred on by the cheap gas in the early 2000’s. Remember the Hummer? Like the H1 with the tank hatch on top? Those were only made until 2006, and the Hummer brand stopped making new vehicles in 2010. The Ford Excursion, the largest SUV ever made, was only made from 2000-2005. Absolutely, the proportion of large vehicles on the road has continued to grow massively, but they were still everywhere prior to 2010. Something else, like smartphones or statistical reporting practices, is more likely to be the cause of the 2010 uptick in this graph.

…especially for Marian Davies - Pte Neville’s niece - who remembers her uncle leaving to go to war and never returning.

How old is she?? They said the notes were written in 1916. If she was old enough to remember her uncle leaving, let’s say 4 at the time, she’d have to be 113 today. Of course that’s possible but wow, what are the chances of finding a living supercentenarian relative with a memory of the author of a 109-year-old letter in a bottle?

Texas doesn’t require registration in a party to vote in primaries, so the vast majority of Texans don’t bother to affiliate, and so the proportions of affiliated voters isn’t really very meaningful. More than anything, Texas is a non-voting state. It has some of the lowest voter turnout in the country, which absolutely benefits and is encouraged by the conservatives currently in power. Those who do vote tend to vote straight ticket either based on habit, perceived identity, and social pressures, or out of zealous rage over minimizing taxes at any cost.

While there is tons of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other ugly political tactics at play, you can’t discount the immeasurable ignorance of the voters. Yes, there are millions of democrats and progressives in the four main metro areas, but between the Bible thumpers, the suburban NIMBYS, the rednecks, and the flocking tech bros that make up the rest of the population, Texas is definitely still an actual red state.