The Soviet Union announced that they were making a strategic retreat from communism in 1921, before Stalin's rise to power. Arguing that they were ever actually communist or even truly aspiring to communism is tricky. The reality is that Stalin's government leaned left wing in certain ways in the economic sphere, but was definitely hard right socially. Even in economics, if they were trying to be left wing, they sort of missed the point. Realistically, Stalin's system was more like feudalism than anything else. All the stuff about a worker's revolution and worker's paradise was turned on its head to basically create a worker caste under a new version of feudalism. His system had extreme wealth inequality with the ruling class, like himself, living in luxury. They had their own private economy with, for example, special stores that the little people weren't even allowed to know about with products they weren't even allowed to buy. They had palaces and mansions and country estates. They also had servants, though they didn't use the actual word servant.

Possible case in point: _Cosmic Sin_. Maybe not the worst science fiction movie of all time, but definitely one of the top contenders. Of course, one of the problems with that movie is that it's just so awful in almost every way that most people criticizing it never even get as far as the actual core philosophy of the movie. That core philosophy being: genocide is good, and if we ever encounter any alien intelligence our immediate response must be to wipe them all out without exception because that is guaranteed to be what they have planned for us. Now, it can be argued that it's an exploration of the "dark forest" concept for the Fermi paradox, except that it completely fails at any actual exploration of the concept at all, beyond the main characters just having some special wisdom to know what must be done.

The proper precedent for this already exists. You just have the main character wake up, and hear that someone is in the shower. They go into the bathroom and someone who died multiple seasons ago is taking a shower and it turns out the last few seasons were a dream.

I think by YA, they meant more like modern YA tropes. You know: focus mostly on romantic relationships, intersecting love triangles, rampant infidelity in said relationships, promiscuous violence between male characters, backstabbing between female characters, borderline or frankly, well past borderline abusive relationships painted as some great romance, and teenagers with maturity levels dialed down by 3 to 8 years. Basically, a soap opera with artificially de-matured characters (although, saying that may be redundant when talking about a soap opera).

Indeed. No argument. What I am still surprised at is that people fall for these types again and again.

Why is this even a question? Are they stupid or what?

With Firefox you can have the full uBlock adblocker.

Your tust in the authorities is endearing but utterly naive. Privacy laws serve as a second line of defense against the authorities and are direly needed. Hence you are completely wrong. I guess you have never looked at or never understood how a surveillance society or a police state gets established.

So ICE is about to arrest the rapist and child-molester-in-chief? No? Did not think so.

Some drones used are controlled by intelligence.

Some are as stupid as the V1 bombs of WWII.

No problem with the Zorin OS I did set up as a replacement for Windows 7 for my parents.

The race is on, and there is pressure to show results before China does.

The real race is to develop a viable lander. China's seems to be on track for a 2029 landing, while NASA is relying on Blue Origin and SpaceX. SpaceX seem to be a long way off having a viable craft, and Blue Origin haven't said much but tend not to until they are ready for test flights. Both will probably need to do an unmanned demonstration landing and return to orbit before sending people.

Just as an aside to the rest of the conversation, I think you might be underestimating the importance of sophisticated training for pedagogues in early education. While high school teachers should indeed be trained in the subjects they are teaching and in teaching itself, it really is even more critical for teachers in early education to have training in child development including behavioral, cognitive, and social-emotional techniques. Nothing wrong with utilizing volunteers, but those are critical years and the quality of education can make a big difference in later education. Not to mention the simple fact that a lot of people just aren't suited for teaching, or for parenting, for that matter, which needs to be a serious consideration in any system that "drafts" people into parenthood.

Well, the black man (or woman) in the car and the car itself might "match the description" of the white male suspect from a recent robbery who drove off in a motorcycle. So clearly the police are just being diligent. After all, the how do the police know that the robber isn't hiding in the trunk (this is legitimately what one of the apologists for the police wrote in a comment in a story I just read about a black woman pulled over by police looking for a white male in a different make of car).

I do seem to recall that US culture has spend quite a few decades absolutely vilifying teenage mothers. Pretty much regardless of whether or not they are in stable relationships, married, etc. So, among the various factors, that could be one.