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It gets held up as an example of terrible writing, chanted ad nauseum by the online masses like a gotcha that will end all debates.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned."

Because wouldn't that be stupid? Wouldn't it be so stupid if there was a huge war that was fought against an insidious, genocidal, fascist regime, and millions upon millions of people died before victory was finally declared—only for those same fascist, supremacist, genocidal ideals to make a resurgence a few short decades later?

"Somehow, Palpatine returned."

Wouldn't it be utterly vacuous, you guys? Wouldn't it make a mockery of the lives that were sacrificed the first time around? Wouldn't it be ridiculous if the democratically elected leadership saw the warning signs that this malignant ideology was gaining momentum once again, and half of them were too busy infighting and enriching themselves to bother doing anything to stop it, while the other half were actively cultivating and promoting it because they saw an opportunity to exploit it for their own advancement? 

"Somehow, Palpatine returned."

Wouldn't it be so idiotic if a single, elderly woman, who'd been fighting the good fight her entire life, could have such a far-reaching influence that the resistance would crumble upon her death? It would be so unrealistic, wouldn't it? For one person to be all that was standing in the way of a repressive, corrupt government systematically stripping away the rights of vulnerable and historically oppressed groups? The good guys won, remember? People would never stand by and watch the rights for which they'd sacrificed so much and fought so hard be simply wiped away.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned."

And wouldn't it be such a cliche for the figurehead of this cult-like fascist movement to be a shambling corpse, a repugnant, cartoonish, Scooby-Doo-level, mustache-twirling villain? Nobody would fall for someone so obviously evil, right? There's no way someone like that could rally enough people to his cause to actually amass any meaningful power.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned."

The problem is, I don't think that's true. The Empire has always been a metaphor for fascism, and was before anyone had even dreamed up the name "Palpatine," but not that one guy specifically.

The idea that yesterday's evil could just come back with barely a makeover and become a powerful force again (pun intended)? That's a great idea! The First Order from VII and VIII is, in fact, a terrific concept, both as a picture of resurgent fascism, and as probably a more accurate picture of fascism full stop than we got in the original movies.

But Palpatine is just one guy, and the fact that the entire trilogy leads back to him as the power behind it all is the opposite of an insightful mirror to modern fascism. It means that, far from being a values system with a life of its own that keeps coming back, fascism is just the artifact of one shriveled-up old goblin, mastermind, dark wizard, and general supervillain, and if only they'd killed him right the first time, all this unpleasantness would never have come back.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned" isn't the Star Wars equivalent of "less than a century after Hitler and Mussolini, a new generation of fascist leaders have sprung up and we're going to have to fight the ideology all over again." "Somehow, Palpatine returned" is the Star Wars equivalent of all those shitty twentieth-century spy-fi stories where mad scientists are resurrecting Hitler through cloning thanks to his DNA, or Hitler actually survived and has been hiding out in Argentina all this time. As if the problem of fascism was somehow That One Guy specifically, and not the millions and millions of people who followed him, or the institutions that allowed him to channel that fandom into real action.

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

like without government intervention, strawberry jam would have wood in it. like it's a thing. food companies realized that they could use less of the expensive strawberries as ingredients and just use wood. there are laws you cannot legally call it strawberry jam if you do this. you have to call it a strawberry product or spread. food companies are always trying to get that shit through. they have lobby groups pushing that all the time

it is more expensive to put metal detectors in a food processing plant. companies want to cut costs. it is a legal requirement in a lot of countries to have them. so it forces companies to install them.

also to do routine inspections. that is a government requirement. so are building codes. a lot of codes are the bare minimum. like some companies will exceed the code and have more protections but a lot don't. like if it is not in the code, they don't do it. so that's why having governing bodies that regulate building safety, worker safety, food safety and product safety are crucial. because without them, your employer will not see the need to have exit doors with quick release handles, or do routine fire sprinkler inspections or have road salt for the sidewalks. some of it is basic fucking stuff.

companies when left alone do not regulate themselves. it's been historically untrue. companies want to give you a product that is cheap for them to make and that they can sell at the highest price so they can get the most profit. for everyone who loves capitalism, that's what it is. the free market will not self-regulate. if you don't have anti-monopoly laws and anti-wage theft laws and workers' protections, the open market will not fix that organically.

I think most people think CEOs are like any other group of people, a spectrum from bad to good, so while you'll have evil companies that are run by total scumbags, you'll also have good companies that are run by nice people who do the right thing, with most of them falling somewhere in the middle and being not necessarily altruistic but not complete monsters either...

And the problem is that no, the system pretty much demands that you be a complete monster. After that CEO was assassinated a couple years ago, United Healthcare was literally sued by its own shareholders who accused it of turning down fewer claims in the wake of the assassination. There's an entire ecosystem out there dedicated to making sure companies do not do the right thing.

companies when left alone do not regulate themselves.

I don't have any particular grand vision of How The World Ought To Be, but if there's anything that makes me think capitalism can't be allowed to go on, it's this. Being a government regulator is less about settling good faith disputes between citizens and more like monitoring a thousand crime syndicates, every single one of which will start committing crimes the second they think you're not looking, and truthfully are probably committing crimes right now that you just haven't spotted yet. (And every one of them is constantly working as hard as they can to bribe and blackmail as many people around you and above you as possible to allow them to keep operating). It's not even just the banksters and tech zillionaires; the inspiringly hard-working immigrant who owns the kabob joint down the street is doing the same thing.

so, in other words,

tags via @procrastinatorproject

So while it’s true that the Enterprise is not as big as people think, that goes double for the Falcon!

A good way of thinking about the relative size is by using a bridge comparison:

The Enterprise bridge has space for 11 people to work, as well as a significant amount of space between stations to move around comfortably:

[Bridge illustration by Tobias Weinmann via here]

And the whole thing fits in the nipple thing up on top of the saucer:

Meanwhile the Falcon (beloved weed bus) has a cockpit that seats 4, with only 2 main operational stations, and zero floor space:

And since Serenity was mentioned too…

Serenity has a bridge more comparable to La Sirena - with 2 stations at the front and quite a bit of floor space.

And for those interested in a visual comparison:

(Boeing 747 for scale as well as the Delta Flyer because Why Not)

He's an archetype that anybody who's ever watched a police, military, or espionage show will recognize immediately: the Chief, the guy who's been there and done that, who's often grumpy and somewhat irate at the amount of shit his underlings put him through, but who has their backs at the end of the day.

Each main Legend of Korra villain represents a different political ideology.

also me: did you mention star wars legends(former name extended universe)???

Of course Republicans will tell me that Hillary Clinton isn't a Republican. They'll also tell me that John McCain wasn't a Republican. Then they'll tell me (now, as opposed to twenty years ago) that George W. Bush wasn't a Republican either. Then they'll tell me that Liz freaking Cheney isn't a Republican either. It's even money whether thirty years from now, they'll think Trump was a Republican.

And the other example, communists, are the same way. According to them, every single government ever run by a Communist Party wasn't really communist, because communism has never failed, it's only ever been failed. (Because, really, what else are they going to say?)

-via @madseance, get peer reviewed, 100% agree

Money in your savings account is something everyone should have.

The fact that not everyone has money and a savings account is the result of violence, deprivation, and the deliberate decisions made by the less than 100 people who own half of the world's money