Pretty much. Although my favorite treatment of the Doctor is as the lone mythic figure that just appears out of no where to save the day, occasionally fails and then disappears back into the fog. But then we get to see what happens outside of that, him coping with the failures and the people he's hurt along the way. Which is why I think Tennant's run works the best of all the New-Who's, they actually went to that well and treated it seriously (Well, as seriously as that era Who could I s'pose), so you get the character moments that really hit hard inside all the cooky crazy sci-fi action stuff.

And specifically one of the threads they never really pulled on that I wish they had is how much the Doctor needs other people around him, when he's alone for too long he starts going stir-crazy and letting the darkness that lurks in the corners of brain take over. There was like half a moment in Smiths run that touched on it iirc but it was quickly run over by whatever half assed monster of the week they were doing.

And the ugly truth of it is that a lot of the people who still support Trump don't support him in spite of everything we've talked about, they support him because of it.

"Those fucking immigrants. The fucking women. The fucking foreigners taking our jobs and our factories. We need to go back to the way things were in the good old days. America is for good clean American families." Trump promises all of that, despite it being fundamentally impossible because that's not how the world works anymore. I wish I could find it, but there was a great article breaking down the entire myth of "bringing back the jobs" to coal towns and industrial towns and how that plays into supporting Trump. The basic breakdown as I remember it is a lot of industry in America was the backbone of the community (Coal towns, steel towns, car manufacturing towns etc) and that's how you got rich, you became a manager and worked up the ladder. But as the world globalized and technologically advanced those jobs started disappearing overseas or to more efficient factory systems and these towns started getting poorer.

So now, you have all of these old, embittered people (Old white men) that see all the rich liberal pussies in the cities getting rich off the money that should have been theirs. So you have Trump wander in and go "You're right, all those people in the cities are getting rich off your money, we need to fix that, bring back the factories and mines, get your job back and make you rich." and they go fuck yeah. But it won't work because the world doesn't work that way any more and even if they do open the coal mines (As they are trying to do atm), so what? The demand isn't there any more the world has other sources, the world is moving away from coal, and so on and so on. So you have this entire subsection of the population that is willing to overlook the couple little things they don't like about Trump if there are any, because he's gonna make them rich again and bring back the jobs. Hope is dangerous drug, is how the line goes I think.

There's a reason Trump's primary support base is almost entirely rural middle America.

And yes, media plays a big part in it. An entire generation grew up with their news source (Fox, or related, usually from what I've read) and that was the news you didn't watch anything else, that's the direct line to the truth. The Republicans and by extension Trump effectively have completely control of what comes out of there so yeah, it's literally a propaganda machine pointed directly at the people that support the current administration to keep them angry and scared and supporting the plans of the people in power.

Those are just the couple things I can think off the top of my head, and I'm sick of typing. But hopefully that helps a bit. The thing to remember is that Trump is a force of charisma to the base he targets, he's incredibly skilled at lying and manipulating and telling those people what they want to hear. Facts have, as we know, played effectively no part in his entire campaign and administration.

There's a great bit of NPC dialogue in Mass Effect 2 that's a commander talking to a bunch of random soldiers about kinetic bombardment on one of the space stations, and how important it is to aim REALLY REALLY REALLY carefully before you even think about firing cause if you miss that thing is just gonna keep going until it hits whatever poor planet happens to be in the way a thousand light years in that direction and completely obliterates an entire civilization out of nowhere cause some jagoff a thousand years ago couldn't hit the broad side of a planet.

I'm probably the last person to know this exists but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this is dark.

The highest score in darts is not the bull's eye (50), but the triple 20 (60), because if you miss the bull's eye you are pretty much guaranteed to at least hit the bull which will score you 25, however if you miss the triple 20 you will hit either the 20's above and below it or the triple 1 to the right or the triple 5 to the left. Meaning it is a higher risk shot.

Maybe not the most unknown fact in the world, but I didn't know it until I spent an inordinate amount of time watch competitive darts at the college restaurant because it was ALWAYS playing when I went in there for lunch. Also apparently dart competitions are roughly half a DJ away from breaking out into a rave at all times.

Why is this incredibly narrow definition of progress your metric for his presidency?

That is a laundry list of character faults you listed, and you managed to completely avoid mention of the damage his presidency has done to women, minorities, immigrants, the rise and support of Nazi-ism in America, the blatant and the transparent strides they are making to push America to a dictatorship ruled by themselves., among other horrors I can't remember off the top of my head, because my god there are just so many with this lot.

I can't engage with your question, he is a corrupt mobster who has his eyes on power and money and is doing everything in his power to ensure he gets as much of both at the cost of anyone who gets in his way, and has emboldened not just other corrupt politicians to join him and capitalize on the new found culture of open corruption, but everyone in the country with hate in their heart to fly it in proudly in the street. He and everyone around him are monsters of human beings, and if America ever manages to recover from the damage they're doing, it will takes decades.

However, I am very curious why you are so willing to give up everything that America purports to stand for, for the sake of helping the common worker? Where is the line? If corruption, a love of dictators, nepotism and a lack of qualifications aren't enough to disqualify him from the position, what is? Do we wait until he finally acts on those impulses before we do anything? What makes you think he won't? Why would you trust a man with a love affair with dictatorships and a clear disregard for the law with a gaggle of power hungry supporters around him to stop at looking lovingly at dictatorship through the front window just because he's helping the common worker?

Frankly dude, that sentiment is one of the most terrifying things I've ever heard.

Mine has been pretty firmly in the "It doesn't matter what happens with these testimonies, he's going to get ramrodded through no matter what." to now with Flake flipping and an actual investigation (A shot in the foot investigation, but an investigation), I have no idea man.

Is this what hope feels like?

Just discovered that this instrument exists, and I am in love.

I've been using some slow time at work to go through and experiment with all the Red Giant Universe plugins and get familiar with them. So I wound up just doodling for most of today and made a thingy. Basically the result of throwing as many plugins in one comp as humanly possible before turning it all to shit.