Yeah – agreed. I tried watching “The Magicians” because it was highly recommended. No CIS white male characters in the show really. They had a white bisexual guy who spent a lot of time sleeping with gay dudes. Wasn’t much of an issue / commented on for the first few seasons, and it was ‘ok’ viewing, if sorta stupid. But then in season 3 and 4 they were super heavy handed in breaking the fourth wall and saying cis white guys who identified with just that one bisexual white guy character were being racist/sexist for not looking at other characters, in part because that character gets killed off in season 4.

Why they thought that their cis white guy audience was going to identify with a bi-sexual neuro-divergent sort, one who’d spent like an entire (time loopy) life time with his gay lover, I’m not sure. But the heavy handed 4th wall breaking to talk-down to that audience demographic did end up making me not bother with seasons 5.

… Honestly, this isn’t too surprising with how saturated the media is with minority groups. Almost every show I see on various streaming products ends up having heavy LGBTQ+ plots rammed in, trans characters showin up, always a multicultural combo of characters and fewer and fewer generic CIS white people. When the media is constantly blasting you with minorities and minority issues, in a highly biased way, it’s totally not surprising at all that people would start thinking they’re a way bigger slice of the population.

Like someone once pointed out that there were more airplane pilots in North America than trans people. So imagine if every TV show you watched, suddenly had an airplane pilot show up and talk about airplanes a bunch, had whole episodes dedicated to his occupational trauma, regardless of what the main plot of the show may be. That would be more representative of the general public, than having trans people in every fucking show going on about trans trauma.

There’s no particular reason they couldn’t. Even a simple dirty bomb detonated in a high population area could wreak havoc – and any country with centrifuges can basically make one of those in no time.

Basically every sovereign state now has a very clear risk calculation supporting the development of nuclear arms and for ignoring all the UN’s attempts for international cooperation / non-proliferation. Iran was compliant, from all accounts, with the vast majority of requirements that had been set out for it – something that Israel’s nuclear program is seemingly not required to adhere to (it’s still “unofficial” that they have between 90 and 400 functional warheads).

Opening yourselves to international inspectors just gives the USA a very clear target list + floor plans. Further, not having a nuclear option means the USA will potentially attack you. Even if rules of engagement say they shouldn’t attack civilian power plant infrastructure, the USA, Israel and Russia do it without hesitation. North Korea, China, and Russia have shown that having a nuclear deterrent will keep the USA away. It’ll even make the USA suck up to you / praise you, and let you attack/invade your neighbours without the USA taking action.

What Trump and the States have done, in my view, essentially translates to destroying any semblance of international cooperation between nations (cause why bother trying to appease the EU, if the USA is gonna ignore international norms and bomb whoever they want anyway), and has made it so that every nation should now pursue weapons of mass destruction as a “deterrent”, which will no doubt lead to catastrophe in time. But there aren’t really many ways I can see it playing out otherwise.

Like that 5% NATO military spending… should prolly be every NATO country building a nuclear / WMD program of their own, unbeholden to US constraints, “just in case”.