Zonetrooper

See, this one I like, because it's one of those "man, I know the writers didn't mean it that way, but it makes sense... and it's horrifying!" theories.

The Falcon is so good, because for decades it has essentially had the crippled, half-dead "ghost" of a droid locked inside its computer systems, unable to fully die yet clearly devoid of her true consciousness.

Char Aznable's wild shift in character between the end of Zeta and the beginning of Char's Counterattack can be directly pinned on Kamille Bidan's mental crippling at the end of Zeta and Haman Karm's actions in ZZ.

Char, who always had a rather strong protective streak, more or less pinned his hopes on Kamille as a key to the future. Instead he directly experienced the Newtype backlash of Kamille being mentally crippled, and subequently could no longer sense him. This convinced him that humanity was doomed to eternal conflict, unless it was forced to advance.

Still unable to get over his protective streak, Char then manages to extricate Mineva Lao Zabi, the last remaining Zabi and perhaps the only one who he doesn't actually seem to harbor any hatred towards, to Earth. But Haman just creates a double, which she uses to drag Neo Zeon into yet another war for personal power. This convinces Char he cannot trust the future to anyone else, even after protecting the ones he cares about.

Thus, we reach CCA with a Char who is fixedly convinced of both the need for forced human advancement, and that he alone must be that leader.

Vox Machina, Scavengers' Reign, Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal.

But yeah, one of the last gasps of the streaming bubble was a surge of adult-oriented cartoons which were far and above anything of the type before them. I'm a little worried that that bubble has started to deflate, we'll see this go away.

Tossup between:

• Seeing a sporty little car neatly stacked on top of a full-size sedan at the local shopping mall. Owner had floored it, jumped the curb, and somehow managed to climb atop the sedan. It was remarkable just how little damage there was on the Sedan, relatively speaking.
• Seeing a truck on the highway shoulder, which had somehow managed to roll itself on its side facing the wrong direction. Like, 180 degrees around into traffic and on its side. Somehow it didn't look like other vehicles had been involved.

I think this would be more meaningful if things cash flow and hirelings had any reasonable purpose in 5e. But the reality is most players will have a pretty stable cashflow by level 5, and most campaigns simply don't have a meaningful role for Hirelings to play.

So like, I could see this being a thing in Waterdeep Dragon Heist, which encourages you to acquire a home base and then take a side in a gang war. One building, 4-5 rooms acting as a bastion for each player? I guess. But it's essentially making mechanics for something a lot of DMs did already, and a lot of other campaigns simply don't have a good basis for this.

I'm also kind of underwhelmed by the attacks mechanic. "A random special facility is shut down for your next bastion turn"? So like, I can't ever actually lose anything I put into the bastion, it just stays there even if I have literally no defenses, the attackers overrun the place, and squat in it for 7 days?

One of us, one of us!

I came here to say pretty much the same thing. It's even more interesting when you're working with a future-of-the-real-world setting, and so you actually have to think about how present-day cultures might evolve into the future.

It's a little bit hard to say, as - like you say - the political landscape can fundamentally shift in four years.

That said, I am very much hoping that a labor-derived leader might stand up in the next few years. I'm not aware of one just yet, but that is where I'd look, particularly as automation and concentration of wealth become steadily greater problems.

I hadn't heard of her before, but after looking her up - I admit, I her record has some strong points.

This is the way.

Right? It has such a distinctive look.

Soooooo, about that indictment...

These fears are both true and (kinda) not.

First, I would preface this by saying that many of those hobbies are functionally things which from the early-20th century / post-WW2 US wealth and population boom:

• Having a CNC machine at home unrelated to your business? Unlikely. Farmers might have had machines needed for their labors, but dense urban populations were very unlikely to have had any machine at home which did not have either practical utility (i.e., spinning wheel)

• Some were simply financially out of reach. "Hobbyist drones" and various chemical experiments for fun were far less available to the pre-WW2-era urban population.

• Some are even directly related to the conceit of living on open, privately-owned land. (No land? No need for each apartment to have motorized snow removal thingies.)

...now, understand when I'm saying this, I'm 100% with you. I love tinkering. One of my dreams is to set up a small machine shop for running various hobbyist engines.

So, what can you do?

Well, there aren't any easy answers. Trust me, I've looked. Local makerspaces are hard to find, and pricey to boot. You can try to limit your housing search to locations which do have a suitable garage, recognizing that this will limit you. You could try and rent a garage or utility space from a local business or something.

But one thing I would say is that if you're using your garage for actual hobbyist purposes, then I don't think you need to feel "car guilt". Or, at least, I wouldn't - at that point, you are paying not for a space to house a car (and all the associated issues), but space to house your hobbies.