Disconnect it from the network and factory reset it.

That stopped mine showing me adverts. Won’t stand adverts from a device I’ve paid to bring into my home.

Only had to do that because I checked to see if the “download subtitles” feature would actually work.

Megas XLR was great. I very much dig giant robots.

Invader Zim, Clone High, Duckula (and Dangermouse (original) are all very good - but of them only Clone High is aimed at people older than 14 (not that older people don’t or didn’t appreciate them) none of them feel obscure to me, although neither Clone High nor Invader Zim were well known in the UK when released in North America, but Internet word of mouth got them known in time.

Chilly Beach, Oblongs, Undergrads, and Mission Hill I have never heard of. So deep enough, at least to a Brit of my age.

Actual deepcut: cybersix.

Edit: although edited from the comics to be much more child friendly. Forgot the original prompt.

Yeah, I mean I love my Adult Swim line up but very few of them are deep cuts.

I’ve not, but it looks very British.

I’ll try to get round to giving it a watch if/when I get the chance/time.

Obscure for people outside the UK:
Monkey Dust

Yeah, the sinophobia is often atrocious. I lived and worked in China for a few years, so saw a lot of the good and some of the bad. People are people, and have the same needs and goals mostly, regardless of made up lines on a map.
I try to bring a reasoned, level line when I can… But I’m pretty done with trying to correct all the sinophobia nutters running off lies. It wears me out. Thankfully others do that so I can rest less guiltily.

Both the PRC as well as Anglophone media love playing into and orientalist stereotypes for their own reasons. Which doesn’t help.

https://mordheimer.net/docs/campaigns/skills#strength-skills

Was on my way to a game and needed to get my level ups in order.

I decided on Pit Fighter in the end.

“Internal migration rules” - yes, the Hukou system is alive and well.

Though for some smaller cities the restrictions have been lifted, but for any city most non-Chinese have heard of legal migration to it won’t be easy.

But there is a lot of illegal internal migration, and those people are pretty much the bottom rung of Chinese society, working hard jobs long hours in poor conditions, and often sleeping 4, 5 to a small room.

You’re right to quibble.

I’ll gesture towards “cementing” and “remained”, but your clarifications are important for people to bear in mind.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Sykes-Picot also did a lot with this stuff, and the Suez Crisis is not the start or end of any story.

Everyone else seems to have covered the basics… But what’s missing is The Suez Crisis.

France and Britain, the two preeminent colonial powers in Europe thought that they could use Israel to pressure Egypt into returning the Suez Canal to them (which Egypt had nationalised following Britain, France, and the USA reneging on their obligation to help build the Anwar Dam).

France and Britain coordinated with Israel for an Israeli invasion of Egypt, and then France and Britain would step in “as peacekeepers” and control the Seuz as a demilitarised zone. However, the US was having none of it, and went behind France and Britain’s back to undermine them and coordinated with Israel and showed to the world it was a British and French plot, humiliating the two nations, cementing the US as Israel’s main backer, and destroying what good will remained for France and Britain in the Middle East.

For the formerly top dogs of Europe, it was a rude awakening which showed them that the pre-Second World War order was truly gone and they could no longer make big geopolitical decisions without the US.

More that as independence movements grew, and the economy shifted to valuing high value manufactured goods colonies became more expensive to hold and less profitable.

Combine that with the anti Nazi rhetoric, it made holding colonies militarily much harder to do. Especially as Britain, unlike France, has never really seen itself as a military force.

We much prefer to control the seas and play off local groups against each other and help the preffered side to come out on top and work as a local ruling elite.

Just slice of married-family life.

Things like this occur and are relatable, or so I’ve been told.

On the one hand, you’re right and I know it. It’s the power fantasy over structural and social solutions/cooperation.

On the other hand, some are more fascy than Superman:

• Batman (general ignoring of structural issues, the even heavier glorification of vigiliantism over most capes)
• X-Men (if the gay, persecuted minority stuff gets occluded, and possibly due to those a lot of the villains)
• Green Lantern (might be wrong here, but seems to be space cops with a strong link to US military. I’ll assume Nazi-coded villains to make them seem more heroic.)

The tension of violent and peaceful activism is a history long one.

That knowledge and thought coming through is probably why Black Panther is, in my opinion, one of the best MCU films.

Unlike many Black activists however, the Wakandan Royal Family - like royalty in Africa - did not experience the bulk of racism in the Americas. Which might be why their step towards “coexistence” is to fund some community centres, which while important and having a powerful, Black, African nation would do a lot of psychic good - the racism in America isn’t really shown and the focus is on Killmonger’s dad being assassinated by T’Chala’s father. (iirc.)

You’re right in that it is more thoughtful overall, and less fit to this discussion, than most MCU films.

Ironically Superman is one of the least fascy superheroes, at least when written by anyone who understands the character.

If only there was some record of US military budget being spent on making these films and limiting the way that the US and it’s armed forces could be portrayed in these films… Surely not.

For examples, classical and neoclassical economics really run away with “selfish people maximising self interest”, to the point try to reframe family decisions as “intra-family bargaining”, and Maggie said “there is no such thing as society, only the individual and family” (because as a Tory she couldn’t admit to tearing those apart).

I took this to be about MCU specifically, so I’ll skip the first two Spiderman film continuities.

Homecoming - the villain is a lower class guy who has been screwed by the fallout of the Avengers and is making money to improve his family off of it. He is somewhat sympathetic, but the moral of the story is trust in the authorities because a well meaning guy will fix the hiccup in the system, and responding to systemic issues with force is wrong. Could be argued the real villain is Tony Stark.

I did not see the remaining MCU Spidermen, but they look to focus on more otherworldly Meta-continuity forces.

Black Panther - the villain is an extremist with a point. Killmongers desire for revenge and modes go too far. He should be better, like the royal family are. Luckily Killmonger inspires the legitimate authority to make a choice to do more and be more benign. Maybe he just should have trusted in the legitimate authorities all along and stayed inside the social bounds… Which had not made change until his use of force and theft?

I have seen the Iron Men, but not recently enough to engage with.

Civil War: the authorities want something that is controversial, but it turns out they weren’t the legitimate authorities, but secret Nazis trying to bring harm to everyone. The legitimate authorities had folks best interests at heart and fix everything. Could go either way, since forming a terrorist cell to fight authority is pretty radical.

The Thanos films: Thanos’ malthusianism is presented as bad, but not actually as wrong. There have been plenty of ways at this point to show that Malthusianism isn’t accurate, (and wasn’t actually an original part of the character) but it was put in here and not debated or shown to be wrong in itself, just “bad that he did it”. Malthusian ideals are strongly linked to right wing ideologies (as well as some nutty far left ones) that have been ascendent in relatively core right wing parties in the last 20 years.

Capitalism, positivism, and post-modernism have all eroded those things.

When we have less free time, and everything is commoditised and given a monetary value, interhuman connection - which resists the economic lens - falls by the wayside, as the modern “homo-economous” values only what has a price tag.

When gathering spaces, and natural groupings are either made to focus on money or wither, there is no space for community in a casual sense.

The death of meaning with the rise of post-modernism also means that grand narratives, and the myths of belonging have also lost a lot of their power to a rightful dose of skepticism. (Descriptive rather than prescriptive, but probably did speed things up a bit.)

Capitalism will eat us all.