Okay, hot take: people care about gas prices because it’s how most people are exposed to politics. No matter how wilfully ignorant you are, you can’t not notice gas prices spiking. Most of the rest of politics is opaque unless you’re tuned in.

So why does that matter? Because it means everyone (with a car) knows there’s another war in the middle east. So anyone who thought Iraq was bullshit and voted for Trump because he promised “no more wars” is painfully aware that he lied now.

The sequel was both such an upgrade and such a downgrade

How is the sequel a downgrade? (I don’t know basically anything except playing one of the games for half an hour-ish)

Gunpowder in wholly agrarian societies is normal. In fact, the majority of gunpowder’s existence has been in agrarian societies! Gunpowder has been in Europe since the ~1400s, but the industrial revolution didn’t start until the ~1800s! (You could maybe drop that date back to the 1700s due to waterwheel factories, but then I could drop gunpowder back to the 1100s in China)

When the conquistadors invaded Aztecs/Incas in the 1500s, they were shooting guns handmade by blacksmiths with wrought iron from charcoal-powered forges.

Isn’t that why jaywalking is a crime in the US?

No. Jaywalking is a crime because auto industry propaganda literally invented the term “jaywalking” (“jay” basically means “Hick* or " country bumpkin”) and pushed it in part of a big media campaign in the, IIRC, 1920s, and then lobbied to make illegal.

Before then, everyone blamed the cars for murdering people by tearing down the streets (which belonged to people, not cars, before cars existed - playing sports on the actual street was normal) and not stopping in time.

Whatever rationale has been invented in modern times, the reality is that jaywalking was invented as a victim-blaming campaign by the car industry. Pure and simple.

If we ever ban corporate political donations, maybe. Also, if we put a decent carbon price on everything, including private jets.

Also, and maybe this is a stretch: don’t let billionaires buy and control entire media systems! (Or contribute the majority of its revrnue by paying for ads.) Half the reason for the US Clusterfuck is that the media didn’t call out the blatant bullshit when it could, which legitimised the bullshit because “if it’s so bullshit, why aren’t the media all calling it out?”.