There was a point where the MCU stopped feeling like a universe and started feeling like a scheduling board. That is the problem with how Marvel handled Ironheart. The issue was never that Riri Williams could not exist. The issue was never that she was young, brilliant, or female. Marvel has always had genius inventors,…
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Hey folks. Today we are recapping the hype mind. And yes, I know some people want to call it the liberal hype mind, the conservative hype mind, the corporate hype mind, or whatever other label makes them feel like they are on the correct team. But really, it is the same broken machine. It is…
Read MoreNo, no, no, no. The problem with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was not simply that She-Hulk broke the fourth wall. That is the lazy version of the argument. The problem is not, “She-Hulk should not break the fourth wall because Deadpool does that.” That is wrong. If anything, She-Hulk has every right to complain that…
Read MoreThere is something deeply amusing about being told to “read the Constitution” by someone who seems to think reading is the same thing as understanding. That is where these conversations usually start. Someone throws out a slogan, a court phrase, a half-remembered civics lesson, or a clipped social-media argument and then acts like they have…
Read MoreAutopilot is not just a machine feature. It is something we do naturally. Sometimes your brain does not ask, “Where are we going today?” It asks, “Where do we usually go from here?” And if the answer is usually home, then home is where your hands, eyes, and instincts start taking you. That is what…
Read MoreThere are some things I just have to laugh at, because eventually you get tired of hearing people talk like the headline is the whole story. Somebody sees a picture. Somebody sees a name attached to a group. Somebody sees a label slapped on a person, and suddenly everybody acts like they personally watched the…
Read MoreSometimes I have to apologize to the first customers who get in my car after I have been talking to ChatGPT, because my brain is already doing seventy-five in a thirty-five. The conversation is not starting from zero anymore. It is already halfway through history, society, customer service, childhood memories, and whatever strange little moral…
Read MoreI might be getting old, but there are certain things I see on the road that just make me shake my head. One of them is the person driving around in what is probably a six-figure Mercedes, or close enough to it after options, with all the windows down, the exhaust barking, and the whole…
Read MoreThe MCU already proved it knew how to build a universe. That is what makes the later problems so frustrating. Marvel knew how to introduce characters. It knew how to set up future stories without making the current movie feel like a commercial for the next one. It knew how to take comic-book material and…
Read MoreRemember when everything was a Western? For a long stretch of film and television history, the Western was one of the biggest myth machines in American entertainment. You had the horse, the frontier, the town with weak law, the corrupt land baron, the sheriff, the outlaw, the saloon, the standoff, and the lone figure who…
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