I really thought that slogan was just a bit in Mad Men. I had no idea that was based on reality.
I try to read books without knowing anything going in; just the title and author. I just finished Piranesi and The Sparrow, which were both good and benefitted from knowing nothing. I grabbed The Witches are Coming off my pile because some more fantasy sounded good. Definitely a bit of whiplash coming off some dark sci-fi, expecting some lighter Pratchett-esque witches, and getting a collection of non-fiction feminist humor essays. It's a good read, but I really set myself up for disappointment.
When I was a kid I would see the magazines with headlines like, "Hillary Clinton gives birth to Bat Boy." I always wondered how they stayed in business; surely even the people buying them for a laugh were a tiny market.
Then I had a lot of jobs that put me at others' homes and I understood very quickly. Fixing computers, painting walls, census taking, even roofing. People that seem normal out in public seem to feel safe revealing their beliefs when they're on their own turf, especially when they have a captive audience.
In the US, at least, it's a frightening amount of people who believe in the really out-there stuff.
That's exactly what it feels like. Cops aren't required to be fair or pull over the fastest. If everybody around you is going 5-15 MPH over the speed limit and you're going 10 over a cop can still pull you over, even if someone just blasted past you.
This is what makes the situation you describe so frustrating. If everyone is speeding you can be pulled over for not joining in. If you try to be in the middle of the pack you'll likely be safe, but not necessarily. And if you get pulled over for something else, like a bad taillight or your kid made a face at the cop, a ticket for speeding is pretty likely.
Same deal in my house. Better not to bring it up yet. You can use it to know who used the toilet last when something breaks.
One of my favorite mechanics is when you place tiles next to each other and the effectiveness of the tiles depends on what is next to them. Suburbia does this but almost goes too far in my opinion. It's way too much to easily keep track of.
A game called Cité is my favorite for this because you share a border with your opponents and you can make deals out of it. "I'll put my x2 multiplier on the border here if you give me one Cloth per turn."
There's a place only 10 minutes from me. I never would have known. Thanks for the link!
I remember they tried to make an American version but it just wasn't as good as the original.
Sadly they do not need warrants if they are within 100 miles of a land or sea border, which Newark is definitely in. [https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone](Border Zone) 2/3s of the US population lives in that zone, meaning we're going to see a lot more of this and absolutely no pushback from officials.
Plus they have two attributes needed to make a great Boogeyman:
- Very small percentage of the population. You can go your whole life without ever realizing you met one, much less get to know them and start seeing them as human.
- Not always readily apparent if someone is trans or not. This applied to Jews in Nazi Germany as well. You can really ramp up the paranoia if people start fearing their neighbors and isolate themselves.
First thing I thought of too. This article seems like Schmidt propaganda.
One old lady started coming in once a week or so to rant at me about all sorts of stuff happening in her life. Every single time I would nod along wordlessly until she wandered off. Every single time she would find my manager and file a complaint that I was swearing at her. My manager let two of the complaints stick so she could deny me raises, but would never file the third. It felt like a conspiracy sometimes, but it never happened to anyone else as far as I could tell and the lady never stopped coming in.