Yup, my tired ass completely wiffed the punchline.

Silencers make the shot less loud, so it still drew less attention that it would have without a silencer becuse it sounded less like a gunshot and the sound didn't carry as far.

I would love being able to group within the 'My List' as well. Let me narrwlow down my 100 things in a backlog to the dozen that are horror tonight so I don't get overwhelmed by flipping through everything. Hell, I'll have a 'background noise' group!

Dope Amphetamines Roofies Extacy

It only took three solid points to convince him.

Nah, that would be a third panel on both rows.

Not doing great --> pivot --> cash out

Doing great --> pivot --> cash out

People get to choose but the guy on top gets to pick the options.

Managed Democracy!

No, because these people are also highly likely to also know English and the vast, vast majority of people in any given location speak English as a default in public. Unless another language is being commonly spoken in public, it isn't even close to having entire states speak a different language.

It is probably going to be used to justify the disproportionate police attention paid to minority communities and to justify activities similar to stop and frisk.

It isn't predicting individual crimes, just pattern recognition and extrapolation like how the weather is predicted.

"There are on average 4 shootings in November in this general area so there probably will be 4 again this year." is the kind of prediction that AI is making.

A New Hope would have only been moderately successful at best without the combination of David Prowse doing the physical work and James Earl Jones voicing Vader. Possibly a flop.

Yes, the rest of the cast was solid and it would have still been a good B movie without them, but the voice and physical presence of Vader set the tone of what the protagonists were fighting against. Vader isn't the best character either! In fact he is a one note villain in A New Hope.

The combination of both actors was the secret sauce that set the foundation for the entire series. Heck, Vader overshadowed Palpatine in their scenes together for me, even with Ian McDiarmid's excellent performance.

Where was communism adopted?

Countries with a strong history of authoritarian leadership, which continued under communism but with a fig leaf of public support. Kind of like how the US was formed as a democracy, but only for male white land owners who were already the ruling class.

The governmental structure has an impact on culture, but it doesn't magically override existing social connections and norms. The people really did elect Putin before he consolidated power and turned it into completely sham elections. The communist party in China was originally what the people wanted before being turned into an authoritarian regime.

It isn't like this is that unique to the countries that adopted communism. Many large countries, including western democracies, end up leaning into authoritarian tendencies over time because central leadership structures tend to encourage the leadership styles of 'strong men'. If the culture isn't there to hold those that abuse their power accountable, that country will slide into authoritarianism over time.

Personally, I don't see communism ever scaling well above maybe a few hundred people because the more people that someone doesn't know is involved the harder it is for the whole to feel like a community. Democracy has a similar scaling problem, but it doesn't lean into authoritarianism as fast. yeah,