themeatbridge

I think, since future Bill and Ted appear to the earlier Bill and Ted, and Rufus directly assists in creating his future, I think we have to assume that all of those historical figures always experienced those things, and then returned to their timelines with knowledge of the future. Napoleon rode the waterloops before Waterloo. Socrates played catch with Billy the Kid. Those are historical events, as much as Rufus and Future Bill and Ted helping present Bill and Ted pass their classes.

With one linear timeline, you basically have Back to the Future rules. You can go back and change things, even if it rewrites you out of existence. Of course, there are some logical paradoxes that arise from that theory of time, so most versions rely on some delayed repair mechanism, like how the photo of Marty slowly disappears, or how The Ancient One explains the Time Stone to Professor Hulk. Time Cop, Butterfly Effect, and Looper do the same, with changes going into immediate effect like old injuries becoming later scars in real time, but erasing yourself really ought to be devastating to spacetime itself. I liked the concept in Butterfly Effect where the time traveler experiences all the memories of their new life in the altered timeline with every new change, but then they abandon the hard sci-fi aspect to get cute with stigmata. Donnie Darko probably handles it the best, where time travel itself creates a universe-ending paradox that requires the destruction of the time traveler.

Essentially, you jump from now back to another location in spacetime where you didn’t exist the first time around. If you overlap with yourself, you’re either going to gain a new retroactive memory, or there’s some magical maguffin that erased the memory (like the Tardis does for the Doctor), or some universal force reconciles the timestream and eliminates the paradox.

It depends on how you imagine time travel and causality. Is it a stable time loop? Or do you visit another version of reality with different outcomes? When you travel, are you unraveling the course of history to be redone? Or are you visiting an unyielding etching of the timespace continuum? If time is a set of dimensions, as all modern physics supports, then theoretically it wouls be possible to move through those dimensions in all directions. Special relativity confirms that movement affects how you move through time, but if you go backwards in time, you are still moving forward from your own reference point. That’s the only way to retain your memories.

Oh I see. And that’s a fair observation. Especially online, it’s become edgy and cool to take the side of a CEO assassin, while it’s still touchy to vocally defend the Castro regime. But you will find people, notably Cubans who fled to America, who were directly affected by Castro and the Cuban government. I don’t know any health insurance CEOs, so that might be a factor in the discourse you hear.

But again, it’s not like these are the same people. Support for the Cuban government isn’t a cause celebre because Fidel Castro has been dead for almost a decade, and few Americans could even tell you who the current President is. Luigi is a source of engagement, the currency of social media. Some Americans only recently learned about Venezuela because we’re about to invade their country.

Support them? Like how, with money? Votes? Attending rallies? Because no, I don’t actively support any of those countries. I do think each country has the sovereign right of self-determination, and I oppose my country’s efforts to overthrow or undermine those governments.

I also oppose authoritarian dictatorships like the DPRK and the Trump administration.

As far as Luigi is concerned, I do not condone murder, but I also don’t think he’s guilty of murder. I think the oligarchy needed to find the killer, even if they didn’t find the actual killer, and planted all the evidence against Luigi.

I’m a Western leftist, and neither of these positions represent me. I do know people who are represented by one or the other, but I don’t know anyone who is both. Are you sure you’re not just conflating the loudest voices as being from the same people?

Based on what? Twitter? Polling? And what do you mean “support Luigi”? Because while I don’t condone murder, I am not convinced he murdered anyone. I think the oligarchy is trying to make an example of him and unintentionally made him a martyr.

I’m not sure why you’d assume that these are the same person.

I’m sitting here watching the Philly Thanksgiving Parade, and I’m just hating all the dunkin colors. It really makes me not want to buy anything from the brand.

They also refused to release the remains of the people killed, denying they retained any. Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania admitted to retaining some of the remains of 12 year old Delisha Africa and returned them to her family, in 2021.

I oppose it simply because it doesn’t work. It is not a deterrent, and it does not serve justice to put people to death, and it costs far more to execute someone than it does to rehabilitate them (the most expensive alternative - I’m not suggesting rehabilitation is an option for everyone).

And sometimes we execute innocent people. Like, how many of your family members would you be willing to put to death to keep the death penalty? Every innocent victim of the death penalty had a family, and that family never imagined it could happen to them.

I would argue that it would impact the effectiveness of the effort, but the intention is just as important.

Like if you want to make the world a better place, you can pick up litter in your local area. You could volunteer at the library or conserve energy in whatever way is easiest for you. The desire to move forward is critical, because nobody has all the information. Nobody can know all the angles, and be aware of every impact. Everyone is just doing the best they can with the information they have.

Wanting to be better informed is also a progressive ideal. Know better, do better. We might discover that something we thought was beneficial is actually harmful. The difference between a conservative choice and a progressive choice is that when new information demonstrates that behaviors conflicts with values, the progressive changes their behaviors while a conservative changes their values.

I don’t think it’s helpful to think in terms of left and right. That presumes that each side is roughly a mirror analogue of the other.

Think in terms of forward and backward. Will your ideas and political leanings push society forward? Will you be making the world better than you found it? Or are you trying to resist change, fighting against progress because the status quo, or the recent past, benefits you in some way?

It’s a two part process. One part happens on your machine. The browser is given a fingerprint to shift colors, and then the trackers can identify you even in a screenshot.

Covid masks can be effective, and it’s not as suspicious as asymmetrical makeup or a reflective hoodie. But no, there’s no good way to avoid being photographed in public.

You can just block whole communities and even instances, if you prefer. I use the blocking feature for forums in foreign languages. It’s not like an insult or anything. You can just hide all the F1 and comic book stuff.

A go bag is a bag you keep packed for when shit hits the fan. What’s in it depends on what shit you expect to hit which fan. Maybe it has survival tools and rations. Maybe it’s prescription medicine and warm clothing. Maybe it’s a map and some weapons. In theory, it should be only essentials, but being prepared for long stints of boredom is often a part of preparing for the worst (aka prepping). People frequently include a deck of cards or a harmonica to help pass the time, maybe a tennis ball to play fetch with their dog.

And yes, preppers will often stock a “stay bag” although the priorities are different. Mobility and weight isn’t a priority, but it is still a factor. Preppers will stock water, weapons, ammo, and food, often in larger quantities, but keeping a small subset available for quick travel. For instance, they might keep 2 weeks worth of water in their home or bug out site, but the water will be in jerry cans they can throw in the trunk of a car, or carry to a stream for refills. If you plan to hunker down, then having a library of books or other low-tech forms of entertainment are recommended to help stave off the crazies.

It sounds like OP is asking for a generic sling bag, aka a purse for daily use. Like “I’m going out the door for the day, and I might find myself with some spare time to read.” I haven’t heard anyone call that a go bag, but maybe it’s just the phrase expanding in use. I recently heard a 9 year old walking around a parking lot in bare feet say she was “out here raw dogging the pavement” and I seemed to be the only person fazed by it, so I just keep walking.

Nothing wrong with Swift, but she’s not a political though-leader. Best I can tell, the conservative vitriol has more to do with misogyny than any particular message she’s putting out into the world.

Who’s that lady that wrote the folk song “It’s not going away”? There are like three or four folk groups and troubadours writing protest songs for tiktok. Mon Rovia with Heavy Foot, Jesse Welles with The Poor, stuff like that.

Taylor Swift sorta got under Trump’s skin, but she’s not particularly political.

Learning a language is easiest when you have opportunities to speak it. Which one are you more likely to use? A book might not be as effective as an app, like Duolingo or similar. Duolingo is free for a single language.

French phonetics is a bit more different from English, but both Italian and French are romance languages (based on Latin). Many English root words are Latin (also German, Greek, Dutch, and Indigenous languages). English also borrows loanwords from French and Italian, but pronunciations vary. I’d say both are relatively easy to learn as an English speaker (as is Spanish or Portuguese).

Grammatically, sentence structure is close to English. French introduces an extra word for negation which takes a little getting used to. “I cannot” becomes “Je ne peux pas” while Italian conjugates the verb to remove the subject “Non posso”.

One big difference with French is that there is a governing body that determines official French spelling and pronunciation. L’Académie Française was founded in the 17th century by the bad guy from the Three Musketeers, and is committed to maintaining linguistic purity. They tried for years to get French people to say “le courriel” instead of “email” but I don’t think anyone actually says that. Italy also has Accademia della Crusca, aka la Crusca, which had a similar function until the early 20th century when they were made more of an philology organization.

The benefit to both is that, once you understand spelling and diacritics, reading a word tells you precisely how to pronounce the word. The downside is that the languages have been basically stagnant for 350 years, so there are many strict, archaic phrases and sentence structures. English is notorious for homophones, homographs, and homonyms, which aren’t nearly as common in either French or Italian.

That said, reading from a book will never be the same as speaking with and listening to a native speaker. If you don’t have someone to practice with, there are online resources and probably local community options to find people who will help.