Actually, Fury’s always been black in the Ultimate Marvel Universe; the character and the design was actually based on Jackson so casting him for the MCU probably was an obvious direction choice.

I also had my boss, when I worked in fast food, list this as one of the issues he had with the movie, when it came out (to quote him, “he’s a white character; no offense but that’s what he is,” which was particularly galling, given the aforementioned fact).

That’s absolutely fair; I guess, more so, what I was trying to push against is the implication that eye contact is a necessary component of sharing interactions with people IRL (and, rather, it’s perfectly possible to be IRL with others without eye contact), if that distinction makes more sense.

Some of us are autistic, Harold.

Honestly, that’s the best critique I’ve heard of this, so far; so much of us complaining about people’s noise in public just reminds me of the adults in our youth and just…I dunno, rubs me the wrong way.

True but Lina Khan’s been doing some great work in changing that agency’s track record.

I don’t know if you’ve been following what Lina Khan’s been doing with the FTC but there’s some incredibly antitrust work which she’s been putting into play. They’ve been really going after monopolization and Biden’s been putting forth rules to make breaking subscriptions easier, which would help with OPs particular problem: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/us/us-government-unsubscribe-memberships.html.

But do you think he had no strong feelings one way or the other? He certainly put forth the image of him wanting the best for everyone but his hands were pretty firmly in the controls of most of his worst policy decisions.

I’d argue Bush, Jr. is a better example of a centrist with no strong opinions on anything (and, thus, enabling those around him to do truly awful things).

While I agree with you, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Hilary still had the popular vote. I think the Dem.s will still win due to Harris not being as hated as Hilary, likely better campaigning than Hilary, Trump being an abysmally bad candidate (just in terms of general political competency, regardless of his beliefs/positions; I think them winning will continue people not taking that point seriously enough), and Harris actually being able to bring out black (and, I would wager, Indian) voters.

I don’t think that black people were necessarily excited about Hilary but they absolutely are about Harris. I think they can likely win like this; it won’t be a landslide but it’ll be O. K.

I agree with what you think they ought to be doing (I want to push the Overton window leftward and going back to the center after it’s been pushed so much leftward over the last 8 years is both frustrating and bad policy) but I think Kamala has a bunch more shoring up than Hilary did. I also think it’s going to convince Dem.s that this is the way to win; if Kamala continues to govern from the center rather than like her voting record in the Senate, I think we get the same rush to neoliberalism Clinton ushered in. But I’m hoping otherwise.