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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • There could be something there, if they tread new ground. Instead of Austin’s semi-misogynistic 60s free-love attitude being out of step with modern 90s sensibilities, you could have the over the top action tropes of the 90s come into conflict with gritty, realistic action sequences that have become popular in modern spy thrillers. Pair him up with a Daniel Craig/Jason Borne style spy; one of them is throat punching assassins in desperate, close combat fight scenes while the other is running casually through gunfire, judo-chopping goons. Might be fun.





  • But without hands, those shrimp people aren’t going to be able to do much in the way of tool use…

    Maybe they have specialized claws that they use to fashion tools out of giant coal trees that grow out the planet’s core. Maybe they have a form so foriegn we couldn’t possibly imagine it. My point is, convergent evolution makes a lot of sense based on our understanding of how life evolves, but in terms of systems that produce life, we have a sample size of one. If we’re wrong about some of the fundamental requirements of life l(ike carbon, water, light), and there are a plethora of systems that produce life, all bets are off.


  • Yeah, this is a viable explanation, although it is dependant on life evolving mostly the same way across the galaxy. If life mostly evolves on ocean planets in the Goldilocks Zone frim the same basic elements, then sure, prokaryote, fish, tetrapod, biped could be an extremely common path. But it’s entirely possible there are a wide variety of initial circumstances that can generate life, and there are tungsten-based hyper-intelligent shrimp people living in gas giants


  • You might be able to get the point of the show across in 30 seconds, but it’s hard to set the vibe. Think about how much atmosphere Batman: TAS built in the minute-plus intro. Besides, it’s not like that time is going towards the episode length; TV shows have gone from 24 minutes in the late 80s/early 90s to 21 minutes in the 2000s, and all that extra time went to commercials. It would be nice if they could at least give 30 seconds back towards a good theme song.






  • His passport was cancelled less than 24 hours before his arrival in Russia. Either he was already in transit when the passport was cancelled, the Hong Kong government was not aware of the cancellation when they let him leave, or Hong Kong fudged the paperwork because they were getting heavy pressure from the U.S. to extradite Snowden and they wanted him gone. To my knowledge, it’s still unclear which of those is true, but in any case, he says he was headed to Ecuador, he had Ecuadorian emergency travel documents, and other famous leakers like Assange have gone to Ecuador for aid, so there’s really no reason to doubt that claim.



  • Then correct me. Back up any of the claim that Snowden, "gave the NSA’s tools of influence and power over the internet to Russia,’ with a single source that actually says that. Or even just explain in your own words what you think Snowden did to help the Russians.

    Ill be blunt; Trump’s NSPM-7 instructs intelligence agencies to treat dissenting Americans as domestic terrorists and Congress is currently trying to extend the FISA authorization that let’s intelligence communities gather their data. The very thing that Snowden was trying to warn us about is currently happening, right now, as we speak, under Trump. So I don’t have a lot of patience for conspiracy theories about Snowden and Russian influence campaigns.


  • Well, it’s not the first time I’ve seen this. A lot of the, “but her emails,” crowd weren’t paying attention to the Snowden leaks because it happened under Obama. They conflate Manning, Snowden, and Assange. They don’t know the difference between Wikileaks and the Snowden disclosures. They just remember, “Snowden, hacker, leaks, Russia,” and assume it has something to do wirh Wikileaks publishing the DNC emails that Russia hacked. It’s especially pissing me off right now, given that Congress is trying to quietly pass an extension of FISA, and even though it gives Trump a massive domestic spying tool, there is a bipartisan effort to get it through.



  • You said Snowden, “gave the NSA’s tools of influence and power over the internet to Russia.” This did not happen. There is no evidence he shared anything with the Russian government, he has long denied that he gave the Russian government any of the materials he took with him, and the only people who suggested otherwise are security agency hacks who tried to smear him in 2014. You’re treating old, unsubstantiated accusations of Snowden passing materials to Russia as proof that he materially helped them influence the 2016 election. It’s absolute nonsense.


  • No, none of that is correct. He exposed the government metadata collection program to the Gaurdian, then the Obama administration revoked his passport while he was changing flights in Russia and he was forced to seek asylum there. There’s no evidence that he gave the Russians any classified materials, and he’s long maintained that the only materials took were shared wirh the Gaurdian.

    In fact, your own Wikipedia article that you just shared mentions Snowden exactly once, in a footnote, and it links to an article in which Snowden criticizes Wikileaks for being careless in how it handled the DNC email leaks. The idea that Snowden helped Russia hack the 2016 election is ahistorical nonsense based on recycled intelligence community lies that were adopted by liberals who don’t know the difference between Snowden and Assange.