The state of the post-Obama US reminds me of the 1970s. A period of simultaneous political, social, cultural, and economic decline as military disasters and rampant corruption exposes a pervasive societal rot that was always there but was ignored in blindly optimistic previous decades.

When Verizon suffers a nationwide network outage:

Machiavelli wrote that a Prince should try to be both loved and feared, but if he can't be both fear is the more reliable way to retain power so long as he doesn't become hated. Because hate's a powerful motivator that fear can't fully suppress. A lot of leaders seem to have missed that last part.

The strongest fortress provides no defense if there is no one manning the battlements.

It feels like every day Network (1976) becomes more and more relevant. Aesthetically it's very rooted in the 70s, yet the social commentary somehow becomes more and more true even as the specifics of what they were commenting on at the time do not.

It doesn't speak particularly well of our timeline that Cyberpunk 2077's Night City is a more walkable, less car-centric city than probably 99% of actual real-life cities in the United States.

The fact that Scrooge becoming nice resulted in Tiny Tim not dying implies 1 of 2 possible scenarios. 1. Scrooge's newfound generosity results in Tim receiving proper medical care. 2. Before the Spirits intervened, either Scrooge was going to murder Tiny Tim and die in the attempt or vice versa.

"You'll be visited by three spirits." The three spirits:

I think a reason why so many kids look terrified in photos of them with Santa is because to adults, he's a jolly old elf, but to them he's a being of unimaginable power, a nigh-omniscient eldritch god. We're basically telling kids to sit on Cthulhu's lap and tell him what they want for Christmas.

The whole situation with the United Healthcare CEO feels like an Agatha Christie mystery to me, in that figuring out who did it is complicated on account of it probably be easier to list the people who *don't* have a motive.