First, we’re comparing a candid photo to one that looks like it was taken at a film premier. Cruise knew he was going to be photographed, so he was probably assisted by a makeup artist, hair stylist, and likely a wardrobe consultant. A fair comparison would be between two photographs where each subject has equal opportunity to prepare.

Second, Cruise is one of the top movie stars in the world. He has access to personal trainers, nutritionists, private chefs, stylists, etc. As a world class movie star, Cruise also has a significant professional and financial incentive to maintain a youthful, well manicured appearance. As such, Cruise has almost certainly had some cosmetic surgery or other work done. At very least, he’s dyed his hair.

Looking your best, especially in your 60s, takes a lot of work. Cruise clearly has a strong incentive to put in that work. McGillis doesn’t necessarily have that same incentive. As a middle aged man myself, I could be doing a lot more to look my best, but why bother? Again, it’s a lot of work and for what? So that maybe if someone snaps a candid pic of you the internet won’t see it and think you’re fat, old and ugly? I mean, who gives a shit, but also they’ll probably think it anyway. And let 'em. Fuck 'em.

Is that crab a fire starta?

I don’t really get what libertarian socialists and libertarian anarchists are.

I’m not sure I understand it myself. There’s a lot about libertarianism, both left and right that I don’t fully understand or agree with.

I think many of them are left libertarians, like libertarian socialists and anarchists. It seems to me that libertarianism, whether left or right, is just liberalism taken to its logical extreme. Libertarians do seem to be focused primarily on individual rights, liberties and freedoms. I think that focus on individual freedom can impede their ability to really organize with a lot of other working class people, because it seems to me that often working class people tend to be more “conservative,” as in they have a less, let’s say, permissive attitude about individual expression.

So, what, if we’re all going to be assholes, some of us should at least be rich? Ok, well, chances are it ain’t gonna be you or me who are the rich assholes, so what’s the point? For everyone to be miserable, but a few people get to be rich and miserable?

No.

You’re better off. Rich kids grow up to be assholes.

Edit:

Everybody thinks becoming rich will solve all of their problems. But even if it does solve some of your problems, it’ll just create new ones. Money is not a panacea that fixes everything. I mean, you look at the richest people and they’re not just assholes, their fucking psychopaths. That’s what you want? You wanna be a fucking psychopath? Oh, but, I know, it won’t be you. You won’t fall into the same trap as them. You’ll be one of the good ones. Money won’t corrupt you like it has them. Bullshit.

And what about everyone else? Not everyone can get rich. There are only so many resources on the planet and the more you have the less everyone else can have. It’s a zero sum arrangement. But, who cares about them, I got mine. Right? Congratulations, you’re well on your way to being a rich psychopath.

That could be, but the sub-heading makes me question that.

Brenda Shaffer, whoever she is, is clearly an idiot.

You can charge an EV from a regular household 120V outlet. Sure, it will charge slower than molasses but that’s enough for a lot of people. You might only get 30 miles of range from charging overnight, but if you’re driving less than 30 miles everyday, that’s enough. I know I drive less than 30 miles a day, most of the time. But for those days where you’re driving more than 30 miles, yeah you’re going to need to know where there’re some fast chargers near you, but there’s more of those being built all the time.

And there are some good deals on used EVs, too. And the batteries they have now last long enough that there’s really no worry about having to replace the battery on a used EV.

Wait, this is real?! Holy shit, he’s gone off the deep end.

Better than them e-lectric vehicles. If my car ain’t big, loud, inefficient, polluting and running on ancient fossil goo that’s totally nonrenewable and expensive to pump out of the ground and refine, I ain’t interested!

The allies? Like the US, who didn’t declare war on Germany until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, two years after Germany invaded Poland? Like the Soviet Union, who signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, a pact that wasn’t terminated until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941? Those allies?

It needs to be explicitly stated because there are still people who don’t understand that violent regime change is wrong.

Unless that one person is god emperor of the country, no.

No, I wouldn’t like it. No country should bomb another to force regime change. I don’t care how shitty the leader being replaced is. I want Trump gone, but not like that. I know this is a joke, but I feel like this needs to be explicitly stated.

There are many smaller democracies that don’t score well, such as most of South America, the Caribbean, much of Africa, etc.

Sure, I acknowledge that. I’m not saying that a smaller population guarantees a successful democracy, nor a social democracy, but I think it is one of the requisites. Those other things you mentioned are probably requisites as well.

Again, I think it comes down to simple math. A single representative can’t represent 600,000 people as effectively as 30,000. More people means greater diversity of thoughts and ideas, beliefs, ideologies, interests, etc. And that’s especially true if the people hold mutually exclusive ideas. For instance, a representative can’t represent both a white supremacist and black civil rights leader simultaneously. Their goals and world view are diametrically opposed. A representative can’t represent both at the same time, at least not on the matter of civil rights. Similarly, a representative can’t represent both a social democrat and a neoliberal capitalist simultaneously. Their goals are in direct opposition to one another. The social democrat wants higher taxes and a stronger social safety net, the neoliberal wants lower taxes and a smaller safety net.

You pulled numbers out of your ass and pretended they’re the right ones with no further consideration or evidence given.

No, I researched the numbers of the Norway government and US government. Feel free to verify them on your own. You will find they are accurate.

I could as easily say that 10 million per rep and 1000 reps should work with the right system and infrastructure.

Ok, well, can you provide a single example? I’ve provided one, and I could provide more. Every one of the top ten democracies have a significantly lower number or represented people per elected representative than the US. There’s only one democracy that has a higher number of represented people per representative than the US, and that’s India, with a total of about 1.7 million people per representative. I should note that India ranks 41 on the democracy index, and has the classification of “flawed democracy.” Also, no one considers India to be a social democracy, that I could find.

Social democracy can, and does work, under the right circumstances. One of those is a reasonable population level. For social democracy to work, you need democracy. It’s in the dang name. But a representative democracy where each representative needs to try and represent 637,000 people is unreasonable. If you want social democracy to work, you need to get the democracy part working, and that requires a manageable population.

So, let’s say each representative would represent no more than 50,000 people. It’s an arbitrary number but I’m just picking something for the sake of argument. We also wouldn’t want the legislative body to be too large and unwieldy, so let’s say it shouldn’t have more than 200 seats. That means the total population shouldn’t exceed 10 million.

Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence.

I was thinking about it and it came to me. It’s actually simple math.

Norway is the world’s top democracy, according to the world democracy index. Norway has a total population of about 5.6 million people. Their parliament has 169 seats. That means each seat represents about 33,000 people. The US, on the other hand, has a total population of about 341 million people. The US Congress has 535 total seats (435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate). That’s about 637,000 people per seat. For each US Congress seat to represent 33,000 Americans, our Congress would need to grow to about 10,300 seats. Obviously, that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to act like a representative can represent 637,000 people as well as 33,000 people.

There’s your evidence.