DreamerOfImprobableDreams

It’s a far right conspiracy theory, that OP’s trying to tie to legit criticism of the CIA’s atrocities despite having nothing to do with each other-- all in order to try to hide the fact that it’s literally part of the Great Replacement conspiracy.

Because if everyone involved is quitting their jobs, they’ll have no money with which to buy food. Which means they’ll have to farm it themselves. And farming, even with top-of-the-line modern tech, is backbreaking fucking work. Also unpredictable as hell: bad harvests aren’t uncommon, especially for novice farmers with no formal training like these guys would be.

In other words, one bad harvest, and everyone in the system you’re proposing fucking dies. Yeah, there’s a reason in the 1800s people were abandoning their family farms for the horrorshow of Victorian era-factories en masse: because even that hell was still preferable to farming.

Half Life 4: The Search for Half Life 3

If this is actually Half Life 3… it kinda makes sense they waited for all the hype to die down, for it to fall out of meme culture, before releasing it. Even five years ago, the expectations for this game were astronomical. There was absolutely no way a game made by mere mortals could ever live up to that kind of hype. Now, people have chilled to the point they can actually appreciate Half Life 3 on its own merits.

Which is a long-winded way to say my bet is Half Life 3’s been done for at least 5 years now. Valve’s just waiting on the right moment to pull the trigger.

I cannot begin to tell you how fucking vindicated my twelve year old, Warrior Cats obsessed, Ashfur-hating self is after reading this write up, lol. The first internet argument I ever had was over this incel kitty. Got my first ever ban, from the Official Warrior Cats Forums^TM, over him, too. I never understood how anyone could find him sympathetic, let alone hot (yes, tween girls unironically found a cat hot, and no, I’m pretty sure most of them weren’t furries). Over fifteen years later, and… yeah I still don’t get it, lol.

Also, for anyone who’s wondering WTF a kid’s series about cats is doing having such a dark plot line: this is pretty much par the course for Warriors. I’ve heard it described as “Game of Thrones for tween girls”, which is pretty bang-on. War crimes, child murder, torture, graphic depicitions of childbirth (err, kittenbirth) and gruesome battle wounds, adult themes like infidelity and emotional abuse discussed at length, and that’s just the stuff I remember from the first arc off the top of my head, fifteen years later!

Good points, but even so I’d still rather have a less-than-optimal sub that still lined up with what the characters were saying in the dub, than having the two conflict with each other. (Maybe if you turn the dub off, the subs could be replaced with the better sub-only version?)

Yeah, to be honest I’m a bit worried studios might use this technology to start changing lines in already released movies, so subtly only film buffs who know the film line-for-line would ever notice.

Even done for well-intentioned reasons (like removing slurs from old-timey movies) it would open up a whole moral and ethical can of worms about whitewashing the past. And I have zero faith in studios to do it for well-intentioned reasons-- especially not when they’re under pressure by religious fanatics, authoritarian governments, etc.

Also, for some reason the dub and subtitles use different translations, so the character will be saying one thing and the subs will read something completely different. It’s confusing AF. Often end up getting so frustrated I just turn off the dub and focus exclusively on the subs.

Sharp disagree there. I understand you need to keep some things, like the exact locations of the shelters, a secret, but right now things are so opaque it’s hard to even figure out how to check for what services might be available to you in your area. Like, literally, I wouldn’t even know where to look (google “DV shelters in <my area>”??? I guess? But then you have to worry about being scammed, and the conditions, and if they take kids / pets / male victims, and, and, and…)

That’s a lot of fucking time and energy to waste trying to figure out where to even ask for help, let alone actually asking it. And if you’re in that situation, you do not have a lot of time and energy at your disposal.

Would be so much easier to just have a hotline you could call that could help you figure out what options are avaliable to you and how to access them.

Maybe not quite what OP was imagining, but I was less focused on the extraction itself and more the destination: a network of safe, private residences you could flee to, then stay at until you’ve found a job and are ready to move into normal housing. Even better if they have psychological professionals on hand to help you deal with your trauma-- or hell, even staffers who’ll help you get in touch with psychological professionals and other resources to help you get back on your feet would be a big plus.

As for the “extraction” itself, yeah, just going in guns blazing wouldn’t work. It’d probably have to vary from client to client. Could be something as simple as venmoing you money for an uber. Or maybe you could work together with the staffers on some kind of skullduggery scheme-- like you say you’re going out “grocery shopping”, then there’s a car waiting for you in the grocery store parking lot to take you to the shelters.

Honestly, even just having a friendly voice on the other side of the phone helping you figure out a plan to get out would be a huge help.

Absolutely. And safe, private apartments the people being evacced can stay at for a few weeks / months while they look for work. Not “shelters” that are usually anything but (assuming you can even ones with space available for you in your area).

988 is a phenomenal, life-saving service, but unfortunately they don’t help you get in touch with services to get out of dangerous situations.

There is the National Domestic Violence hotline, but they’re A) run by a private organization, and B) literally hang up on you unless you’re experienceing “intimate partner violence”-- because apparently all other forms of domestic violence don’t count!!!

This is one of the reasons abusers pressure you to quit your job-- so even if you were finanically stable before, you end up becoming financially dependant on them so you can’t just leave. It also makes it nigh-impossible for kids, even kids of wealthy families, to escape abusive situations before they’re old enough to get a job (and you can bet their parents will run interference to keep that from happening as long as possible, or else figure out a way to coerce them into giving them their paychecks.)

Police don’t help you get out of your home. The best case scenario is they arrest your abuser, who’ll be back home the next morning (and hopefully won’t retaliate too severely against you for humiliating them). Then, weeks to months later you have a court date-- by which time, your abuser’s likely threatened you into saying whatever it takes to get them off the hook, and the judge is more than happy to play along so they can get you out the door and move onto other, “more important” cases.

And again, that’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is your abuser convinces them you were actually the assaulter, and you’re the one going to jail instead! Actually, I lied, that’s the second-to-worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is the police do nothing, and leave you alone to deal with your abuser’s rage at almost getting them caught. Or, you know, they just charge in guns fucking blazing because your skin’s the wrong color.

By the time things have escalated to the point the abuse victim is desperate to escape, they’ve spent years trying to fix things at home. Remember, most victims start off having loved their abuser once. It’s only after you’re met with failure after failure after failure that it finally starts to sink in your abuser doesn’t want to change, because they like having power over you.

The only safe option at that point is to GTFO before things escalate even further.

The “something” he’s not denouncing is genocide, my dude.

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin’s favor, and anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn’t done so.

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that’s not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he’s shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

And yet he’s happily kept his mouth shut about Russia actively committing genocide.

If I were him, I’d get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists. The fact that he hasn’t done that speaks volumes about his character. None of it’s good.

Snowden doesn’t make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government. You can’t trust anything he’s said in the past few years, especially not since the war began.

Kind of similar to how people gradually stopped using the phrase “social network” (implying the main point of these sites was to connect with other human beings) and shifted to calling it “social media” (implying the main point is to passively consume content).

Maybe I’m entering the cranky old women yelling at kids to get off her lawn phase of my life-- but why are all the TikTok challenges always something ridiculously dangerous? (Emphasis on “ridiculous”)