I worked in a private library that still had it's card catalogue up until 2005. People were always ripping out the cards (there was something like a metal knitting needle that passed through a punched hole in each card to stop idiots from destroying the catalogue, so the gobshites ripped them out instead).
The early digital catalogues weren't great so the old card system persisted.
Trump and co. are merely impatient oligarchs that feel that they now have the technological and propaganda controls fine tuned enough to reduce the chances of blowback ever reaching them as they ramp up the extraction of value from the rest of us.
For the other lot were doing this apace too but most of the worst of their efforts were hidden in the global south.
Which goes to show that one of the mightiest weapons against the oligarchs turning the people against each other is the teaching of critical thinking in schools.
That's why this cultural virus attacks teachers and coups education boards. The pay off is these automatons believing that there is a direct mirror between the egoless Dredd having the ultimate power to end a criminal's life within the boundaries of a harsh but ultimately unprejudiced set of laws and their own prejudicial bloodthirsty fascism that constantly corrupts the law to suit their ingroup and individual needs.
Should've been having this conversation ten years ago but all our 'liberal' governments were drunk on the invasive data aggregation and propaganda reach that these US companies were selling them.
Judge Dredd is never portrayed killing someone for his own gratification in 2000AD. He isn't racist, or to my knowledge, even a classist.
Yes, he is a 'judge' in an ultra violent society that devolves execution, due process and investigation to the officer on the beat.
But no one is above the law as far as he concerned not even the judiciary.
There probably isn't a president of the US that he wouldn't have arrested for their crimes, and quite a few he'd execute for their crimes against humanity. Trump wouldn't have made it to this millennium.
These ICE thugs are just cowardly fascist scum. Law is just a weapon of suppression to them. For Judge Dredd the law was sacred and the only thing preventing humanity from eating itself in his post apocalyptic future hellscape.
This is it: low income folks that graduated in '94 were the last to get full student grants and no fees to pay + renting was relatively way cheaper too.
I've been cycling for 45 years and have only ever retired one bike. Theft or catastrophic damage took care of the rest.
That particular bike had a steel frame and an aluminum seat post that became permanently fused and much of the the bottom bracket barrel was rusted out so I had to let it go. A couple of salty winters in Calgary killed it.
I have a single speed that is almost twenty years old. I've easily spent six times the original price in replacement parts. It's such a low-key ridiculously good bike. If the frame geometry is good for you then keep it ticking over.
Side splitting isn't it