Aww, I was hoping it was a replica. That would have been really funny.

I’ve never seen that association with my friends who use it. It’s always been more of a meme word, a meaningless adjective you throw into a sentence to make it “funnier.”

Thanks for this. I had read up on it some time ago, and it seemed like par-for-the-course “paint the government our color once we’re in power” except for a couple concerning points, so when people around here were talking about it like it was literal fascism, I dismissed that as misunderstandings and exaggeration. I hadn’t realized that civil servants were hitherto untouched by the government switching colors.

So it sounds like it’s not literal fascism, but it’s more like… how in some fantasy worlds, higher powers will avoid getting involved in mortal affairs because doing so will give their enemies license to do the same and then the world becomes a mess. It sounds like if Project 2025 happens, then blue’s going to retaliate in kind when they get power back (because otherwise they’re at a major disadvantage,) and it keeps going, majorly hampering the government’s operations. Who wants to get a job that you’re gonna be fired from in 4 years? There’s a chance that blue’s just going to try to hit the undo button, but if red keeps knocking the block tower over and blue keeps rebuilding it, that’s still not going to go very well.

But at the same time… they’ve already stated their willingness to do this. So the damage to the unwritten contract between parties is already done, and the only way to avoid the consequences is to keep blue in power until red redacts, and hope blue doesn’t decide to do it first (which they probably won’t, unless they say something like “the only way to defend against red doing it is to make sure they don’t have their own people in there when they get the power.”)

I don’t like that, though. Sure, blue is generally more reasonable than red, but that’s because they have to be in order to secure votes from reasonable people. If all they need to be is more reasonable than the guys who are literally planning to destroy the government, that’s going to let them get away with some pretty undesirable things. I think a better move would be to try to address the deteriorating two-party dynamics we have. My money’s on Literally Anybody Else.

Ladies and gentlemen, we gottem.

And bears around 130 probably know that too.

You wanna work weekends?

If talking about work is undesirable at the meetings, maybe you can treat it as more of a social event? I don’t know the atmosphere, but it sounds like it might be. You’re getting paid for it anyways.

Yeah, he specifically doesn’t like guns, and it’s because his parents were shot. Other weapons are fine. Even a grappling gun is fine. A gun that shoots bullets is not fine because it reminds him of how his parents died.

He doesn’t use guns because he specifically doesn’t like them. If it were just about killing, he’d use nonlethal bullets. The no killing rule is a separate but related phenomenon.

As for explosives, he generally only uses flash bangs, but when he’s fighting someone who can clearly take it (like Superman or Darkseid) or a robot that it’s okay to kill, then he uses more lethal bombs.

I searched through the whole crossword puzzle twice before I realized you were mentioning an alternate answer (which doesn’t fit in the blank) and not pointing out a nonsense word in the puzzle. 88 across is was, by the way.

52 down: What you say if you’re angry.

This joke actually made me wince.

Some quirk of this version of Markdown I think.
Try putting two spaces at the end of a line before your single newline.

Skeleton divine death blast.

Logically, that does follow, but we’re talking about wizards here.

I’m involved in a few projects that are organized over private Discord servers. No mod abuse or Nazis involved.

Because they’re discussing crimes, or…?

Nice try. You won’t fool me with your pro-propaganda propaganda.

I think it’s generally that propaganda is pushed by big organizations, and there’s no room for rebuttal. You’d be talking to a brick wall. A brick wall with a propaganda poster on it.

Personal persuasion can be just as villainized when politics are involved. Try talking to a lefty in support of Trump or to a righty in support of CRT and you’ll see. But it’s not complained about as much in third party conversations because you can yell at those people to their face (or screens, if online.)

Advertisements are a special case. Nearly universally hated, but not seen as so evil because they’re just after your money to buy a product, not your loyalty to some cause.

Don’t most forms of persuasion leave out inconvenient facts or distort the argument to their case?