Zonetrooper

Tossup between "You didn't join the military?" and "Why the hell do you want to sleep so much! You're an adult! You could be up at midnight!"

Absolutely solid choice both.

Talon isn't that deep of a character, but he's a great look at a smuggler who "made it". Mara, meanwhile, is just distilled awesome.

Grand Admiral Thrawn - but only the EU version.

Really a fascinating character in so many respects. One of the more complex and difficult to decipher ones. Was he really a genius out for the good of the galaxy? Or a social status-climber willing to latch on to any cause he could while serving his own ends? Were his more questionable deeds really done regretfully "for the greater good", or was that just an excuse?

The problem is honest conservative media is basically gone.

Yep. And it's frustrating, because it also makes it harder to engage with people who are on the edge or might be drawn back to a more sane position, when you can't say "So I read this article, and I think I understand where you're coming from..." when there are so, so few sources which aren't totally divorced from reality.

(moderate left, for reference)

• BBC. Mildly right-wing, very national POV.

• WSJ... sometimes. There's definitely points where they become utterly insufferable, but sometimes it can be helpful for an insight into the approach of a business-centric, right wing POV.

Really, as a moderate lefty, the collapse of the right-wing movement in the US into its current state has made it very difficult to find reasonable sources from the opposing side. Even "mainstream" right-wing sources take a lot of the batshit stuff at face value, or try and excuse off the more overtly insane elements.

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.

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.

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.

This is the way.

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.