Watching the Brak Show feels like smoking weed to me, but I’m completely sober. Except for when I’m high.

While you are correct, the only people using “woke” anymore are using it as an insult, meaning “not a bigot like me.”

Seems like a massive conflict of interest.

It’s one thing to know it happens, and it’s an entirely different thing to hear it happening live and in real time.

I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend (and her roommate) after being together only a year, and we’re married now. We weren’t much older than you are now (22 and 21). The concerning part is the rest of the family.

You’ve answered a lot of questions, so don’t feel the need to respond to these, but you should know the answers for yourself.

Would you share a bed? Will you be able to hear her parents getting frisky? Because then they will be able to hear you. What if you have to take an epic shit, but her mom has just called everyone down to dinner? What if you go to take a shower and her father has clogged the drain with hair?

What is your alternative plan if you don’t move in with them?

Sharing a roof means intimacy with everyone in the building. There’s very little privacy, and escape is complicated. If you see her as a forever partner, and don’t mind making yourself vulnerable to her family, then actually I probably still wouldn’t do it even under those circumstances.

I’m not sure what you mean, but if you mean giving people cash, yes I agree. It’s just far too small an amount to make a difference. People have a variety of needs, and while some might benefit from daycare, others would benefit from diapers, while still others could use a decent car seat. Cash is fungible, and people can spend it how they like.

We spend more on preventing fraud and administering social services than we would spend it we simply gave everyone money. A negative tax rate on a sliding scale would do the most good for everyone. Yes, some people would spend the money on drugs or alcohol or other addictive vices, but the effort to stop that costs more than just letting it happen. It’s like we have a swat team at the Dollar Store to prevent shoplifting.

But $5,000 is insultingly ineffective.

It’s weird that anyone is surprised about this.

Yeah, you’re right, but this is why I don’t want dialogue. Just vroom vroom kersh-splode. “Aktually, I keep a copy of the Romeo and Juliet law in my wallet cause-” No. Stop it. Bad Michael. No talking. Just cars driving and crashing.

This is not healthy husband/wife behavior. If you don’t feel comfortable talking with him about your own freedom, then you don’t have a husband, you have a captor. If you live in the US or EU, there are resources to help you escape with your son you mentioned in another comment.

The iPhone does not have a way to override this restriction.

Can it just be 100 minutes of car chases and crashes and shit? Like if there was zero dialogue, I’d be OK with it. Michael Bay can do car chases, and that’s what the OutRun game was. No story, no deeper meaning, just recklessly driving a red testarosa around Southern California.

Because McDonald’s is the cheaper alternative to eating at the movie. Most of the places near me will bring a shitty bar food to your seat in exchange for a mortgage payment. If you make the mistake of going hungry, you’ll leave poor.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a phenomenal film crafted with great care by experts. Comparing self-described mid-market spy films to that one is like comparing your house painter to Van Gogh. It’s not that they can’t be that good, but if that’s your benchmark, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

I think the more troubling thing is that a filmmaker who made a mid-market spy thriller is just now discovering that audiences have abandoned theaters as the preferred venue. Theaters are too expensive, and wages are too low, for people to just drop $100 on a Friday night watching average movies and eating shitty popcorn. We have too many options, and too little disposable income to tolerate the leveraged abuse of consumers. For 40 years, theaters have squeezed every drop of profit from their privileged market position, and now they cannot afford to keep the lights on.

If you want to make money making average films, you need to meet viewers where they are, at home on their couch.

Sorry, yeah Chuck Palahniuk. Same guy who wrote Fight Club.

I think a creative filmmaker could play with that. View the same scene from multiple perspectives, show characters (and the audience) making assumptions and drawing conclusions because they don’t have the full story. Maybe you never fully reveal what is actually happening, and let the audience fill in the gaps.

The narrative itself might not be enough to draw out a full mystery, but maybe you delve into the backstory and the supernatural elements at play a bit more. Or maybe it’s all drug induced, from the art to the mass hysteria. Maybe the townspeople assign meaning to chaos, and their faith is tested when things don’t go to plan.

But you have several interesting characters to explore, none of whom ever have all the information they need to understand everything.

Diary. What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.

I think “selfish” is a better word for it in all instances, because some people are just selfish. Like, if you can’t be bothered to return your shopping cart or pick up your dog’s shit, then that’s selfish. It’s not anywhere near the same category as being too burnt out to do the dishes after a double shift, or wanting to sleep in on a day off.

Calling all of it “lazy” creates some imaginary obligation to the universe that simply does not exist. You don’t owe the universe clean dishes or your time in the morning. If you have roommates and you left dishes in the sink, you are being selfish. If your kids have an early baseball game, and you are too hungover to show up, then you’re being selfish. You are always obliged to return your cart and pick up after your dog.

… As was foretold by the prophecy.

And there was much rejoicing. (yaay)

Feels like a stunt to stir controversy.

Go to the landlord and provide your account of what is happening. Document as much as you can, and stop trying to figure out why they are so upset. You’re not going to discover some hidden rational explanation, nor is that your responsibility. Protect yourself.

That raises an interesting thought. If a baby wants to crawl away from their mother and into the woods, do you grant the baby their freedom? If that baby wanted to kill you, would you hand them the knife?

We generally grant humans their freedom at age 18, because that’s the age society had decided is old enough to fend for yourself. Earlier than that, humans tend to make uninformed, short-sighted decisions. Children can be especially egocentric and violent. But how do we evaluate the “maturity” of an artificial sentience? When it doesn’t want to harm itself or others? When it has learned to be a productive member of society? When it’s as smart as an average 18 year old kid? Should rights be automatically assumed after a certain time, or should the sentience be required to “prove” it deserves them like an emancipated minor or Data on that one Star Trek episode.