I sometimes think the token representation is on purpose. Riles up the “anti-woke” and means that internet discourse about your show is all about how there’s some black people, not about how shit the writing is.

Like I really don’t give a rats ass if the dwarves are brown or purple or pink. (Although the lack of bearded dwarf women is unacceptable.) The other changes in Rings of Power are actually bad.

Charity can serve as a means of control. This is way Republicans advocate against social services.

The government cannot mandate that you attend church to receive EBT. A church can require you attend a service to feed you.

I’ve heard from friends in Utah, for example, that access to many social services is through the church. Friend was trying to rescue a girl from FLDS - pretty much all job training/housing required she play along with mainstream Mormonism.

Orgs like the Salvation Army are known to require trans people to detransition to recieve services as well.

Another benefit is the rent seeking - Goodwill is a good example. You can still turn a profit with the right combination of PR, and tying access to services based on things that’ll make you profit (Goodwill “provides employment” for disabled people - they are legally allowed to pay them far below minimum wage.)

It’s the two pillars of the contemporary Right - control and grifting.

Ah. I think Jackie Chan wasn’t really a CCP apologist/propagandist until the past ten years or so. He’s from Hong Kong - his movies are actually great to watch if you are learning Mandarin because of how simple his lines are, Mandarin wasn’t his first language. I’m not sure what changed, but being pro-CCP is a relatively new development.

Nickelodeon was concerned enough to offer Jeannette McCurdy a lot of money to shut her up. She doesn’t use his name, but does describe an incident where it is clearly him pressuring her into drinking alcohol in her book. What she describes is similar to what other victims have described.

We also know that Brian Peck assaulted Drake Bell, and that almost everyone on set knew about it. There’s evidence of a culture of coercion and silence.

They weren’t cops in Jackie Chan’s Animated Adventures, they’re like secret agents.

Chan plays a cop in the Police Story movies, which would be interesting to look at from a copaganda angle.

He’s completely responsible for sabotaging his own career. Difficult to work with, allergic to deadlines, and a weirdo sex pest.

Good example is the 2016-2021 Honda Civic! Tons of electrical issues, and refrigerant that is incompatible with the ac condenser, so you sink thousands into your AC for it to stop working after a couple of months.

A lot of suicide prevention has to be community based though.

Affordable housing, accessible and good quality mental health services, career development programs… some people are suicidal because their situation legitimately sucks.

For all the talk about ending stigma, I also think there needs to be a discussion about the way suicidal people are treated. In the US, involuntary holds can be hell and fucking expensive - especially when we consider how many people are suicidal because of finances. Lose your job because the 72 hour hold, during which you get to see a psychiatrist once. (From my personal experience, no guarantee they got a great score on their TOEFL).

988 is a great idea, but patchy in execution and assuming a lot of other systems are already in place. It’s a can of fix a flat when you haven’t changed your oil in so long it’s starting to look like tar.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking help; I just think we really need to recognize that help is not always readily available. It’s not free, appointments aren’t always readily available, and you can end up with really bad providers. Services like BetterHelp are preying on that gap too, and have cooped the destigmatization of mental health into their ad campaigns that are uncomfortable.